hancock & kelly live, WAKE Festival. 2017. Photo by Paul Samuel-White.

]performance s p a c e [

]performance s p a c e [ is the UK’s leading performance art specific organisation. Our mission: to facilitate the prime conditions for performance art(ists) in the UK and abroad. We are commit­ted to supporting challenging and difficult practices that embrace performance art as an ever-evolving medium.

]performance s p a c e [ is led by VSSL co-founding co-director; Benjamin Sebastian. Since 2022, ]ps[ has operated as a mobile entity, having temporarily shedded the permament physical space(s) they have come to be known for. Currently (and only for the time being), ]ps[ is imagined as a conceptual space; mirroring the ephemeral and fluid form(s) of the performance art field. ]ps[ programmes and projects take place in spaces and sites locally (London), naitionally and internationally.

VSSL provides a place from which ]ps[ can operate, houses the ]ps[ archive, and collaborates on some of its curatorial and exhibition projects, including PSX: a decade of performance art in the UK (2021) and Rocío Boliver: Decrypting Performance Art (2022).

www.performancespace.org

Charlie Ashwell with Es Morgan, spells, 2019. Photo by Jemima Yong.

FUTURE
RITUAL

FUTURERITUAL is an artist-led research project considering the use of ritual in contemporary queer and performance cultures. FUTURERITUAL is conceived and convened by VSSL studio artist Joseph Morgan Schofield.

Identifying performance art as a potent contemporary modality for ritual,  FUTURERITUAL asks: how can the archaic technology of ritual be deployed in the divination, manifestation and sustentation of something else - of alternative [queer] futurities, wherein states of belonging (in difference) are felt deeply and more readily?

Image by Kane Stonestreet.

Live Art Club

Live Art Club is a monthly open platform for performance art, taking place on the 1st of the month at VSSL studio.

Live Art Club is back, baby!

Do you have part of a new idea, an experiment in working with an audience, a way of moving your body, a series of sounds you’re excited by, an unexpected activation of the space, an interruption of tradition, guttural words that want to explode out of you, a re-performance of a forgotten idea or anything else that might look/feel/taste like Live Art?

We want to see it! Share what you’ve been working on with us at the next Live Art Club.

Taking the function of a studio as a site of artistic creation, Live Art Club expands  the idea of what a studio can be. Rather than imagining a studio as a private, enclosed space, Live Art Club proposes the studio as a place of gathering, where creative experiments take place in dialogue with peers and community.

Read on for info from the Live Art Club Team on how to participate:

“Everyone is welcome to come, to watch, to join in, to present or to perform at Live Art Club - we welcome those with years of experience, those who have never tried performing before, those on the run from more traditional disciplines, those who don’t know what-the-fuck-Live-Art-is.

> ‘What the hell is Live Art?’

Live Art Club offers artists space to try out ideas within a supportive community. We will provide documentation of experiments (or not - as artists decide). Live Art Club exists as a context outside of theatre, dance, fine art and academia.

We encourage you to share part of a new idea, an experiment in working with an audience, a way of moving your body, a series of sounds you’re excited by, an unexpected activation of the space, an interruption of tradition, guttural words that want to explode out of you, a re-performance of a forgotten idea and anything else that might look/feel/taste like Live Art.

And we also welcome more unorthodox ‘performances’ - presentations, performative lectures, readings, projections etc.

We cherish passion, risk and failure. We celebrate indecency, aberration and formal corruption or mutation. We cheer for purity and impurity.”

Artists

Please note this is a low-low-tech project. We have microphones and can play sound. There are some lights. A single projector. We cannot facilitate performances with complex tech needs, lots of cues etc. 

Live Art Club is a community orientated space for artists to try out  new ideas. It is an unpaid context. However, we do have funds to support you to access the event - see below.

Artists can:

1. Sign up for a slot in advance through a google form. These are allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis and we will never turn an artist away (unless we are at capacity or the work would clearly be better suited to another more traditional context). Slots are 15 minutes.

>Sign up here

2. Turn up on the day - remaining performance slots will be allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis. It is OK to come as an audience member and then to be filled by the spirit of performance and decide to do something.

3. Anyone - artists and audiences - can participate, though it is totally fine to just watch. We welcome voyeurs and we’re sure someone will appreciate your opinion.

If google forms don’t work for you please email us at LiveArtClubLdn@gmail.com to talk through your performance.

WHO

Live Art Club is run by queers. Live Art Club is hosted and administrated by Kane Stonestreet, in dialogue with Rachel Gammon, Nicol Parkinson, Phoebe Patey-Ferguson, Joseph Morgan Schofield and An*dre Neely.

The project is supported by VSSL studio and with public funds by Arts Council England.

WHEN

Live Art Club will take place on the first day of the month.

Check VSSL’s events page for upcoming dates:
>  Next Live Art Club

ACCESS

VSSL is a wheelchair accessible venue, with step free access found via Tidemill Way, a wide door, and accessible toilets.

We take a social model approach to provide inclusion and will help to facilitate other access needs (such as sign language or audio description) if you email or message us in advance to arrange this.

We have a travel fund so if you need financial support for travel in order to participate, get in touch and we will try our best to help out.

We are always looking to make Live Art Club accessible, and welcome any suggestions on how we might do this.

>LiveArtClubLdn@gmail.com

FACET is an innovative nine-month project, presented by VSSL Studio in partnership with Arts Council England, designed to centre and elevate queer people and art. From May 2023 to January 2024, VSSL Studio will collaborate with five contemporary visual artists to co-produce a series of five exhibitions, exploring the ever-evolving and myriad spectrum of contemporary queer expression. Featuring exhibitions from: Alicia Radage + Benjamin Sebastian, June Lam, Rocio Boliver and Marcin Gawin - as well as a dynamic group exhibition. Each showcase will offer an immersive experience that celebrates queer culture through an expansive range of mediums.


As part of FACET, VSSL Studio will facilitate bespoke mentoring packages for lead artists, providing them with valuable opportunities to develop their skills and network with industry professionals. Lead artists will also act as guest curators; hosting a range of events that will complement the exhibitions, including workshops, artist talks, film screenings, and performances. These events aim to encourage visitors to engage with the artwork on a deeper level and promote meaningful conversations around queer culture, while acting as a portal into the non-homogeneity of expanded queer communities, allowing for multifaceted readings of contemporary queer experiences.

Queer art has historically defied traditional boundaries and categories, often using interdisciplinary approaches that challenge established norms and conventions. It is an art form that speaks to and from queer experiences and their’ communities - by exploring themes of identity, gender, sexuality and the intersections between them.

Finally, it is VSSL Studio’s aim to create a supportive and inclusive environment surrounding the FACET programme, that fosters collaboration and strengthens the connective tissues between learning, making, curating and exhibition. VSSL Studio will provide a 4-month studio bursary to a young, queer visual artist - as well as - paid internships for two young, queer people living in Lewisham.

Join us on this exciting journey as we celebrate, centre & elevate queer artists, communities and their continued contributions to contemporary art and the cultural fabric of the U.K.