Mess as Live Art Methodology

This presentation explores mess and messiness as categorisations for work that might be productively evasive, inconvenient, or illegible, that is, disruptive to institutionalising structures for Live Art and experimental practices. Over the past decade, ‘mess’ as a methodology of performance and Live Art has been used to characterise a range of processes, including: experiences of navigating institutional and creative spaces, particularly when accompanied by violence and a denial of agency; the transferral of figurative experiences of pain from one body to another; and messiness as a protective tool for trans and gender variant bodies. In relation to the tangible outcomes of Live Art, this presentation takes up the physical, material, and political messiness of Live Art and asks: Who is mess for? Who makes it? Who cleans it up? Who attends to it, nurtures, and fosters it? How is it funded and archived? What might readings of messiness in performance reveal about the taste structures, economics, and ‘uses’ of Live Art within institutional frameworks?