Performance and Death Symposium

Part of Sick! Festival, this symposium examines works that explore death, dying and grief. Artists whose practices span performance, visual art and film will join clinical practitioners and academics to reflect on the responsibility that artists may or may not bear to the human subjects of their performances, those who participate in its creation and the audiences who experience the finished works.

The symposium explores the proposition that, as the boundaries between performance practices and other art-forms break down, it is often the demands and sensitivities of subject matter that shape artistic practice. For many interdisciplinary artists and performance-makers, consideration of subject takes precedence over art form, in the way that a work is conceived, developed and presented to audiences. In particular, the process of engaging with subject matter that is emotionally challenging has itself become a creative practice incorporating approaches to aesthetics, research, participation and presentation.

Artists and academics presenting and discussing their work at the event included: Mats Staub (Interdisciplinary digital artist) Prof. Mahesh Nirmalan (Manchester Royal infirmary’s Critical Care Unit) Steven Eastwood (Documentary Film Maker) Dr Richard Talbot and Dr. Sheila McCormick (University of Salford) Leo Burtin and Ali Wilson (Performance Makers) and members of the theatre companies Ridiculusmus and Quarantine.

The symposium will also include an opportunity to experience and participate in Sheila McCormick’s ‘Death, Dinner and Performance’ project, a performance event that places the taboo subjects of death and dying around the dinner table for discussion.

Lunch/tea/coffee is included in the ticket.

Admission: £25/£10