ARTISTS

Since its start Live Action have showcased some of the most experimental, daring and provocative performance artists from around the world. More than 150 rtists from over 35 countries have participated in the festival since its inception.

It should be stated that Live Action’s principal selective criteria is artistic quality, and this years edition is no exception. Through its diverse artistic content, an interested audience and an ability to attract the most influential international artists, Live Action has developed a profile that sets its mark.

This years edition is characterized by an empowering group of artist who are all vehement defenders of the freedom of speech and opposed to its opposite, hate speech. Todays skewed society shows how essential an event like Live Action actually is, as a model, and a symbol, and why not a reminder of how important art is for a free and open society.

Like the American feminist and performance pioneer Martha Wilson who for Live Action 14 with a killing humour visualizes the Trump regime’s absolutely best qualities. Or the New York artist Dread Scott who’s work the US President George W Bush in 1989 in a historic statement called ”disgraceful” and which the US Senate condemned and finally banned.

The Polish artist duo Ewa Rybska and Wladyslaw Kazmierczak have always stood up for freedom of expression, even when the iron curtains ice cold surveillance was a living reality. They belong to performance art's absolute cutting edge but were in 2010 hit by a politically motivated arrest warrant in Poland. Which prohibited them for over 9 years to leave the UK where they live. When the arrest warrant was lifted as a result of international protests just a few months ago, Live Action saw it as its duty to immediately invite them to Gothenburg. Actions have signification, in practice and symbolically.

An artist who, in her everyday life, lives with occupation, apartheid and a general oppression is the Palestinian Raeda Saadeh who is based and works in Jerusalem. An artist whose ability to represent the aesthetics of resistance is as poetic as inspiring. In this year's fourteenth edition, we will also see works by three returnees to Live Action, whose experienced, intellectual and experimental attitudes keeps them artistically alive. The anarchist of hum Valentin Torrens (Spain), the Duchamp and Debord expert Loïc Connanski (France) and the outspoken conceptualist Roi Vaara (Finland). Three stars from the avant-garde universe with an undeniable integrity.

This  14th edition's only Swedish artist Grebnellaw does not really come from any country, but is a cosmic seed that was sown in the spring to give life to new creatures, forms, plants, animals and humans. We are also very pleased to announce that we for the first time will showcase an Iranian artist, Shirin Abedinirad, who will participate in Live Action 14, after three weeks of VISA limbo. She was first refused VISA by the Swedish Embassy in Tehran, we appealed to the Migration court who overruled the Embassy's decision. So yes the sanctions will not have any effect on Live Action this year. We are pleased that justice was done,