I find myself in the privileged position of being able to list four new publications that have recently included my work. My great thanks to all involved.

Art + Science Now by Stephen Wilson and published by Thames and Hudson, features an image of my work Wet Cup (2000) photographed by Manuel Vason in the Human Biology Chapter.

Art + Science Now is a groundbreaking overview of the art being made at the cutting edge of scientific research. The first illustrated book in its field, it shows how some of the worlds most dynamic art is being produced not in museums, galleries and studios but in the laboratory, where artists probe cultural, philosophical and social questions connected with scientific and technological advances. Featuring the work of around 250 artists from the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the USA, Japan and elsewhere, it presents a broad range of projects, from body art to bioengineering of plants and insects, from music, dance and computer-controlled video performances to large-scale visual and sound installations. This comprehensive guide to contemporary art inspired or driven by scientific innovation points to intriguing new directions for the visual arts and traces a key strand in 21st-century aesthetics.

Here is a link to slide shows of the artists from Art + Science Now.

Marina Abramovic + The Future of Performance Art, edited by Paula Orrell and published by Prestel, includes photographs by Marco Anelli of  Stair Falling (2009), made for Marina Abramovic Presents . . . , Whitworth Gallery, Manchester International Festival, 2009.

Abramovic’s remarkable career as one of her generations most challenging performance artists has paved the way for younger artists who are interested in this complex and often radical art form. Lately Abramovic has turned her attention to exploring ways to encapsulate the art from after the performance is physically completed. This project explores the diversity of contemporary performance from exciting new artists from around the world. Their use of story telling, virtual worlds, audience participation, sound and body are documented in this illustrated volume. An interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist with Abramovic outlines the challenges and goals of her new project while essays by leading curators in the filed of performance art explore methods for preserving this unique art form.

The Many Headed Monster, by Joshua Sofaer and published by Live Art Development Agency.

The Many Headed Monster is an original and inventive resource for anyone interested in contemporary performance practices and their relationships with audiences. Across a range of artistic disciplines, artists are dealing with audiences in innovative and creative ways, placing the audience at the heart of their work. Contemporary culture is marked by the emancipation of the spectator and the transformation of the audience from passive recipient to active participant. The Many Headed Monster is a critical and practical resource investigating what is at stake for audiences today when they attend a live event.

The Many Headed Monster is a boxed set containing a lecture complete with presentation instructions, extended notes and author’s commentaries, a dvd of 22 performance works by leading UK and international artists, and 50 full colour image cards.

Ephemera:  Between Archival Objects and Events, by Paul Clarke and Julian Warren,  Journal of the Society of Archivists, Volume 30, Issue 1 April 2009

Abstract:

This article re-stages on the page a dialogue between Arnolfini’s archivist and the research fellow on ‘Performing the Archive: The Future of the Past’, which took place at the interdisciplinary conference Archive Fever/Archive Fervour (University of Wales, Aberystwyth, July 2008). This conference promoted opportunities for archivists and academics ‘to discuss the ways in which both fields intersect and to explore the ways in which mutual co-operation can benefit their future development’. Their dialogue started from two provocations put to one another:

‘How do performances remain? How do they produce traces, or document themselves?’
‘How do documents perform and are archives performative; what do they do?’

Their responses interrogate the discreteness of the archive, the documents contained within, and the performance events that are its objects; questioning the distinction between acts of performance, documenting, archiving and using archives. In the context of this dialogue, ‘ephemera’ refers both to passing moments—the temporality of event-based art—and its residues. In the case of performance, the artwork cannot be collected as an original object, only traces, such as memory and ephemera, remain. The article presents a conversation between theoretical positions and practical propositions, made with materials selected from the holdings of both the Live Art and Arnolfini archives.

Patrick Duggan has very kindly sent me a copy of this article and interview with me which I have made available here: dugganthe-touch-and-the-cut.pdf

It was published in 2009 in Studies in Theatre and Performance, Volume 29, No 3 by Intellect.