Joseph Morgan Schofield

top: these teeming forms, 2021. Photo by Zack Mennell.
bottom: devotion : seduction, 2020. Photo by Fenia Kotsopoulou.

“I work with action and words. I understand my works as acts of mythopoesis, as process driven embodiments of different ways of being in other possible worlds. I think of art-making as technology of divination, a way to vision, prophecy or fiction [other] [queer] futurities.”

Joseph Morgan Schofield (b. Rochdale, UK, 1993) is a performance artist and writer. Articulating their practice as ‘queer ritual action’, their work, which foregrounds the immediacy of the sweating, bleeding, wanting, sensate body, is broadly concerned with  desire, particularly in relation to ecology and futurity. They offer performance as a technology of divination; a place of mourning, yearning, processing and communing.

Understanding acts of gathering and communing as central to their practice, Joseph’s practice incorporates curating, producing, facilitating, mentoring and teaching. Joseph facilitates  F U T U R E R I T U A L, a performance and research project considering ritual and queer futurity, which they established with Thomas Yeomans in 2017, and co-produces move close, with Es Morgan and Sara Sassanelli, and Live Art Club [London] with Phoebe Patey-Ferguson, Nicol Parkinson, Rachel Gammon and An* Neely.

They are the co-founder of V SS L studio (London, UK) and the Assistant Director of ]performance s p a c e[ (Folkestone, UK). Joseph is a member of Chisenhale Dance Space (London, UK) and of the Anam Cara collective (International), and they are a frequent collaborator of Venice International Performance Art Week (Italy).

Joseph has performed throughout the UK – including at Tempting Failure, Arnolfini, Camden People’s Theatre and ]performance s p a c e[ - and Europe. Joseph works for the Live Art Development Agency in a part time capacity.

As a collaborator and performer, Joseph has worked with and for Es Morgan, Sara Sassanelli, John King, Kate Stonestreet, VestAndPage, Benjamin Sebastian, Martin O’Brien, Nat Norland, hancock and kelly live, David Hoyle and Neil Bartlett.