(photo Manuel Vason)

Diversity, innovation and risk rank high on the agenda of Live Art Development Agency (LADA). The organisation champions artists who challenge themselves and their audiences – the kind of work that will rarely break the box office, but will likely attempt to smash a social norm or two. Artist development, curating, research and publishing all fall under its remit; in the next month alone LADA will launch a book on the performance of Lois Weaver, see two further instalments of LADA Screens infiltrate the cyber space and bring a programme of events under the name Just Like a Woman to London and New York.

Just Like a Woman will be presented in London as part of the SACRED season at Chelsea Theatre and comes in a curating double-bill with Old Dears. Expect two days of performances, debates, installations and screenings on the performance of identity followed by two days of performances, screenings and discussions on the feminist practices of an older generation of artists. We used the two events as an excuse to sit down with LADA’s Director Lois Keidan –perils of technology, dangers of austerity and elusive definitions of feminist waves were all discussed.

Run Riot: LADA is dedicated to supporting challenging, risk-taking artists. What constitutes risk within an artistic practice for you?

Lois Keidan: There are so many different kinds of risk involved in making art and being an artist, some are risks that artists have always faced, or have always taken, which we could call 1. Reputational risks (the risk of trying to do something different and new and with it the risk of failure, the risk of being misunderstood, misrepresented or not represented at all, the risk of causing outrage or even inciting riots); 2. Actual or physical risks (to their bodies with work involving blood, endurance or extreme actions, and the risk of breaching health and safety or breaking the law); and 3. Financial risks in making artworks that can’t be bought or sold and will almost inevitably cost more to present than could be earned in return. But in this age of heightened sensitivities around so many religious, cultural and socio political issues, coupled with the kinds of heightened mainstream visibility that the digital age brings to previously invisible practices, making any kind of work that challenges the norm or speaks out runs huge risks of censorship, of persecution and of being deemed too untouchable to programme or to fund.

Run Riot: Fourth wave feminism has found its way to pop and underground culture alike. How is it being reflected in Live Art today?

Lois Keidan: Live Art, pop and underground culture have always had symbiotic relationships, and the histories of Live Art often have more in common with the underground than with most over-ground and mainstream theatre and art, as that’s where the more difficult and provocative ideas and practices are nurtured and tested.  And fourth wave feminism is being reflected in Live Art in similar ways - through brashy, trashy, fearless and uncompromising works about difficult subjects and subjectivities by a younger generation who have grown up under the influence of the pioneering women who have gone before, and who realise that the world can be changed and that they can be part of that change.  And this fearlessness is not just in their work, but in how they approach their practice by demanding and expecting their own agency.

Run Riot: What have been the biggest changes - culturally, politically, technologically - that have influenced feminist Live Art practices between third and fourth wave feminism?

Lois Keidan: I’m not sure if there are fixed definitions of Feminism’s Third and Fourth Waves, but according to Wikipedia Third Wave Feminism is understood to have begun in the 1990s “as a response to the perceived failures of and backlash against initiatives and movements created by second-wave feminism during the 1960s, '70s, and '80s”, and others suggest that the Fourth Wave began in 2013.

Some key changes between the 90s and now would be the internet and other advances in technology which have made the world a smaller place, and brought all kinds of artists out from margins. Technology has opened up new forms of border crossings and collaborations, offered new strategies and platforms for ‘empowerment’, and made it possible to create and access ‘different’ kinds of histories and archives. Because of technology artists can bypass the gatekeepers of culture, can create new online platforms for the dissemination of ideas, and can pursue a practice that is no longer dependent on the permission of others.

The downside of technology is, as I suggested above, that it gives an, often unwanted, level of exposure to artists and practices that challenge the norm and so can be subject to abuse from trolls and other idiots.  The feminists of today can be subject to unprecedented public vilification, and the backlash is as much a cause for concern as the Fourth Wave of feminism is cause for celebration.

The (re)emergence of artist led initiatives and activist practices is a another key change. The Guerilla Girls, and in the UK the short-lived Fanny Adams, are no longer the only feminist art activists we hear about, and Pussy Riot’s impact has been seismic.

Run Riot: Just Like a Woman and Old Dears are part of Restock Reflect Rethink Three. Can you introduce us to the project? What was the its starting point and how do you see it as it approaches its culmination?

Lois Keidan: Restock Reflect Rethink (RRR) is an initiative LADA started in 2006 to map and mark significant artists and practices that had been underrepresented and excluded from both official cultural histories, and the histories of Live Art, and to write them (back) into public awareness, whilst also investing in future generations through specialised resources and artistic development opportunities. 

The first RRR looked at Race and Live Art, the second at Disability, and the third at Feminism.  Each project has taken a distinct form and involved different kinds of collaborations with artists, but they have all generated a range of accessible and, we hope, useful resources. RRR1 involved discussion groups and workshops with artists and generated the publication Documenting Live. RRR2 involved a major public symposium, the commissioning of new works by Martin O’Brien and Noemi Lakmaier, and the creation of the publication Access All Areas. RRR3 has involved collaborations with UK and European partners on programming, publishing and archival projects, including the co-publication of re.act.feminism – a performing archive; the Fem Fresh platform for emerging feminist practices with Queen Mary University of London; and a research, dialogue and mapping project led by Lois Weaver which set out to share knowledge about contemporary and historical feminist practitioners, particularly those that have been unrecorded or forgotten about, and resulted in the free fanzine and online resource Are We There Yet? In 2013 as part of RRR3 we guest-curated the programme Just Like a Woman, for City of Women Festival, Slovenia, and will be presenting New York and London Editions of this programme in October and November this year.

Run Riot: What was the curatorial thinking behind Old Dears and Just Like A Woman? What made you decide to focus on the topics they tackle (performing femininity or aging for example)?

Lois Keidan: Just Like A Woman reflects the ways that Live Art is a space where identities can be constructed, performed and given agency. It is a particularlyfertile site for representations of gender, with women performing women, women performing men, men performing women, and artists who go beyond the limits of gender binaries altogether. So, Just Like a Woman is a programme of shows, debates, installations and screenings looking at the ways femininity can be 'performed' and representations of gender can be queered through performance.  We know that debates about gender are hot topics right now, but given the current stories about the rise in gender fluidity amongst young people, and the media coverage of transgender celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner we’ve surprised ourselves with the prescience of Just Like A Woman.

Old Dears is about a slightly older generation of women artists (the second wave of feminism?) and hopes to reflect the radical and fiercely iconoclastic practices of artists whose work continues to influence discourses around gender politics. Like Just Like A Woman it features shows, debates, and screenings, but Old Dears also involves a workshop for ten older women artists led by the awesome and formidable Mexican performance artist Rocio Boliver.

Run Riot: Just Like A Woman will also have a NYC edition. How does the context for this work differ in the two cities or the two countries?

Lois Keidan: It doesn’t really. Just like Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, Live Art in London and NYC enjoys its own ‘special relationship’. Artists in NYC and London share an interest in the nature and form of performance, in the kinds of relationships it can have with audiences, and in the kinds of questions it can ask. Artists do not have to ‘translate’ their work for different audiences and contexts in London or New York. Critical thinkers in London and NYC are involved in continuous dialogues and collaborations around similar territories.  If there is a difference it is to do with the conditions in which artists are able to make work, and the kinds of resources they have access to. The funding situation in the UK has been very different from that of the US - there have been grants available for Live Art research and practice for decades, and many more mainstream venues have been able to take risks with new artists and new works precisely because of the way they have been funded. But as the UK Government and Arts Council increasingly expect artists and organisations to be less dependent on public subsidy and more reliant on sponsorship and philanthropy, artists in the UK are beginning to face the same impossible challenges that artists in the US have faced for years.   

Run Riot: What effect is austerity having on non-traditional art forms, radical and experimental practices? What do you expect to see over the next five years?

Lois Keidan: See above! The challenge of funding cuts to the arts means that many organisations will become risk averse. With diminishing funds available, fewer and fewer artists will be able to get grants to make work, and especially challenging, process based, non-reproducible work. Sponsors and philanthropists are unlikely to flock in droves to support nascent artists or work that is in any way problematic, and, more significantly, many artists question who they are prepared to take money from, and what taking that money involves.

The art scene in the UK increasingly reeks of exclusivity and elitism, where the rich have unfettered access to all kinds of events, opportunities and resources, where the privileged still wield enormous influence, and where the rich exert disproportionate power. I believe that the impact of austerity means that issues of class and privilege are going to wield increasingly unhealthy influences on who is making art, where and how are they making it, who they are making it for, and who has access to it.

Live Art will respond to this, in the way it always does, and it will survive, because it is infinitely adaptable, canny, and fleet of foot. Unlike Opera, Live Art can be created from nothing and presented anywhere, but it shouldn’t have to be like this, and it should be allowed to thrive and not just survive.  Over the next five years we’ll probably see the results of cuts to education and the introduction of tuition fees, and an increasing resistance to the “social license to operate” afforded to the oil industry and other dirty businesses in their sponsorship of the arts.  I’m not sure what else we’ll see, but do know that the focus of the next Restock Reflect Rethink will be on Class and Privilege. Watch this space.

Just Like a Woman – 13 & 14 November

Old Dears  – 27 & 28 November

Part of SCARED season at Chelsea Theatre