Image/design (c) Open Dialogues and Jeremy Bechtel
What we do:
> Work with festivals, galleries and artists
> Create critical writing and education programmes
> Publish writing online and in print
> Create new platforms to debate contemporary art
> Foster critical communities
Since launching in June 08 with our experimental
writing programme Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin, Open Dialogues has
continued to explore critical writing and debate on live art through a variety
of collaborative projects in the UK and Internationally. We have acted as
mentors for Live Connections, developed a collaborative
flash publication project for Performance Saga, presented our embedded critical
model at the Limoncello Punctuation Programme and
We are currently working with a range of artists, writers and
organisations to place critical writing at the heart of artistic production: Critical Communities, a dialogue and publication project with
new work practitioners in London and Yorkshire, produced in association with New
Work Network; Inside Performance, a serialised writing project for Dance Theatre Journal; Overspill, a writing collaboration located inside
the Spill Festival of Performance; a writing residency with the Live Art Development Agency and New Life Copenhagen;
a participatory art project as part of the UN Conference on climate change, in
association with Wooloo Productions.
The Open Dialogues blog is where Open Dialogues profiles
new writers and posts news, reviews, interviews and essays relating to the
practice of critical writing and contemporary live art.
About Us
Mary Paterson and Rachel Lois Clapham are the Directors of Open Dialogues. They were both writers with Live Art UK’s Writing From Live Art, 2006-2008, and have been published extensively in the UK and abroad. Together, they have developed blogs, education programmes, critical writing workshops, peer critiques, flash publications and open forums with The National Review of Live Art (Scotland 07 and 08), SPILL (London 07), Artsadmin (London 07), Vital (Manchester 07). They were both recently awarded an Arts Council England grant to become Writing Live Fellows for the Performa 07 International Biennial of Performance Art in New York.
Selected Bibliographies
Rachel Lois Clapham
Inside Performance Dance
Theatre Journal (UK) throughout 2009
A Performance Saga Riff Art Art Art (UK) 2009
Carlos Amorales and Rachel Lois Clapham Performa 07 Biennial Catalogue
(US) 09
Incommunicado FM Site Gallery Platform Commisssion (UK) 2008
Responsible Criticism AN Magazine (UK) October 2008
Pulse Live Art Almanac (UK) 2008
Marcus Young and Rachel Lois Clapham Vital Catalogue (UK) 2008
Mary Paterson
Marcia Farquhar Its Not
Hard (UK) 2008
History in the Making Total Theatre (UK)
2008
Life Exchange Real Time Arts (Australia) April 2008
Christian Jankowski and Pablo Bronstein Real Time Arts (Australia) March
2008
A Performa Diary Fringe Report (UK) November 2007
Name In Lights www.nameinlights.com April 2007
Writing from Live Art: an Editorial Debate A-N Magazine April 2007