Launching in 2024, performingborders is thrilled to introduce a new network aimed at cultivating experimental writing practices happening in dialogue with performance and live art. This project aspires to create a nurturing environment for writers to meet and engage with performance contexts and notions and lived experiences of borders, providing connection, mentorship, and a publishing platform for developing practices. LAWN will foster creative and critical responses to performance that resonate with and respond to conversations happening on a local level whilst linking to transnational critical dialogue on performance, publishing, artwork, labour, and political action.
In this first pilot year, the project will begin by commissioning three local writers during and in collaboration with Fierce Festival in October 2024. These writers will be invited to engage with the festival’s performances, contributing to discussions and producing reflective, multidisciplinary writings. Two Scotland-based writers will be invited to join us for this strand of the programme, in collaboration with Take Me Somewhere festival.
Between 17 – 20 October, pb will facilitate daily gatherings to support and stimulate the creative processes for the writers at the Festival Hub. Come say hi if you see us!
Public Gathering
On Saturday 19 October between 11:30am and 12:30pm, we will host an open, public gathering and breakfast at the Festival Hub, where we invite audiences, peers and artists to join us in discussing the programme and the potential of a project developing critical experimental writing and performance.
Participating Writers
Rupinder Kaur Waraich (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist based in the West Midlands whose work encompasses poetry, writing, performance, and acting, with a focus on feminine narratives. Her practice delves into themes of the body, history, language, sexuality, and spirituality. Her debut poetry collection, Rooh (2018), was published by Verve Poetry Press, and she is now working on her second collection. Waraich’s poetry and writing have been featured in various magazines and journals.
Rupinder has extensive experience devising theatre for companies across the Midlands. Her one-woman show, Imperfect, Perfect Woman, showcased at the Wolverhampton Literature Festival, while her short film, The Two Artists—which she co-wrote and acted in—debuted at the UK Asian Film Festival in 2023. As a BBC New Creative, she created The Girls That Hide and Seek, a spoken word piece addressing gendered violence. She has also participated in artist residencies at JOYA Arte in Spain, Art House in Holland, and Preet Nagar in Panjab.
Her recent work integrates poetry, dance, and film, particularly in her performance art films Finding Kali and The Search. A 2023 DYCP grant enabled her to further explore movement, dance, and poetry. Driven by curiosity and dedication, Rupinder continues to explore and create at the intersection of writing, film, and theatre. WEBSITE: rupinderkw.com
Harmanpreet Randhawa is an artist working across sculpture, writing, drawing, installation and performance. Oscillating between the domestic and the sensual, their practice employs material-oriented and drawing-based approaches exploring the complexities of longing, belonging and desire through an autoethnographic lens.
In 2023, Harman was an artist-in-residence at Modern Art Oxford as part of its Boundary Encounters Programme. Their residency culminated in a performance work supported by the Grand Plan Fund presented at the gallery in May 2024. They have previously published in Art Review Oxford’s issues ‘Ecological Grief’ and ‘Precarity’ where they explored human and more-than-human connections and traced non-heteronormative arrangements in ethnic domestic spaces.
Recently, Harman has collaborated with friends and researchers from the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford to deliver a series of artmaking workshops and artist talks focused on rethinking human-nature relationships and geographical research through decolonial perspectives. Harman has also supported researcher Mattia Troiano with the implementation of a participatory drawing-based method to explore community values and inequities of access to and planning of urban green spaces in Oxford. INSTAGRAM: @h_a_r_m_a_n_art
Leah Hickey (b. 1996, Walsall, UK) is an artist led by heartache. Hickey uses English Romantic poetry and auto-fiction as a starting point for rhythmic verse, typographic painting and gravestones. The artist’s work is influenced by classical American cinematography, performative femininity, and Christian and Druidic ritual surrounding death. Hickey currently produces ‘Emotional Outbursts’, a ‘part-fact, part-fiction otherworld of love letters’ that merges free verse poetry and Early Modern English language with contextual research, which has manifested in print form. Hickey also co-directs Prayer Room, an artist-led gallery in Birmingham, UK, and recently founded Tentative Press. WEBSITE: leahhickey.com
These three will be joined by the following two writers from Glasgow, in collaboration with Take Me Somewhere.
Nelly Kelly (they/them) is a trans-butch and disabled playwright, dramaturg, performance maker and consultant. Their work uses humour, spectacle, and vulnerability to promote intersectional community connection and to invite its cis and abled audiences to more authentically connect with the contemporary lives of trans and disabled humans.
They are currently developing their next show, ‘The TransMission’, a playful piece of queer performance that positions the central character as the leader of the trans cult community, opening its doors to cis people for the first time. ‘The TransMission’ is created and performed by Nelly, produced by Sanctuary Queer Arts, commissioned by the Unlimited UK Open Award 2024, made possible thanks to funding from Creative Scotland and support from the National Theatre of Scotland. WEBSITE: nellykellytheatre.co.uk
HUSS is a queer Arab multidisciplinary artist based in Glasgow. Tackling personal and political themes, his discipline involves experimenting and combining elements such as installation, sculpture, visuals, poetry and audio to culminate in immersive performance and moving image pieces. Huss uses his work to raise issues facing the Arab world that lack acknowledgment in western society, especially topics of displacement, queer laws and how much it has always censored and endangered artists like himself. INSTAGRAM: @huss.ac
performingborders is a curatorial research-platform that explores the relations between Live Art and notions and lived experiences of intersectional and transnational borders. performingborders is a collectively run platform for artistic research and creation, focused on notions and lived experiences of intersectional borders through international live art and performance practices. Drawing from the knowledge shared by the contributors of the platform, performingborders has over the years created a digital and live tapestry of interconnected, transnational experiments through interviews, artist commissions, open calls, publications, residencies, workshops, conversations, events, newsletters, and performingbordersLIVE. All our work is freely accessible online. Co-run by Alessandra Cianetti, Xavier de Sousa and Anahí Saravia Herrera, in collaboration with guest curators, thinkers, artists, activists, partners and researchers.
LAWN is commissioned by performingborders, FIERCE Festival, Take Me Somewhere, and METAL Culture, and it is supported with funds by Arts Council England and Necessity Fund.
