ARTISTS

That Live Action invites 12 artists each year is not consciously intended as a reference to the Apostles, but a number that we find appropriate to work with in the three day format used. Four artists presented each evening is the perfect number, whereas three are not enough and five just one too many. A perfect number for any audience member to intellectually and emotionally absorb the evenings performances without feeling saturated. But also a perfect number for each artist not to be drowned into anonymity or emotional amnesia.

For this 19th edition, Live Action has invited four artists from Sweden, Maria Q. Brising, Pernilla Eskilsson, Olof Persson and Mauritz Tistelö, each very different in their approach and artistic articulation, but all with a strong international potential through highly original, authentic and poetic expressions. Eskilsson with her blend of ritual, symbolism and personal narrative about the human condition, or Persson whose physicality and involvement with the audience challenge conventional perceptions in a hybrid combinations , while Tistelö as a poet-performer explores both the minimal and the monumental mind of a simple and unobtrusive pictorial action.

Live Action 19 features eight international guests such as Leena Kela, artistic director of the New Performance Turku Biennale and a renowned Finnish performance artist whose work explores the dialogue between corporeality and materiality, often playing with and questioning our relationship with everyday objects and phenomena. It also presents new discoveries such as the young and talented Timna Krenn from Austria, a recent graduate of the University of London Wimbledon, whose personal-political approach and articulation will undoubtedly find a strong resonance in the field. But also the renowned Indian artist Monali Meher, whose ritual and materially rooted poetic actions challenge our own perceptions of imagination.

This 19th edition also includes Siobhan Mullen, Lecturer in Fine Art at Ulster University and Artistic Director of the Belfast International Performance Art Festival, who is known for engaging audiences with visual-emotional experiences of existential depth. If further features Ireland's Nigel Rolfe, Professor Emeritus at the Royal College of Art in London and a legend in the field of performance art who began his career in the early 1970s alongside Ulay and Marina Abramovic, a true innovator and visually powerful explorer of the possible. Rolfe is also one of the most respected and important teachers in the field, with a refined and developed pedagogical skill and method.

Live Action has also invited Jiri Suruvka, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ostrava (Czech Republic) and director of the MALAMUT performance art festival, to bring joy and laughter to everyone with a humour so unique that it has to be experienced to be believed. From Barcelona comes Valentin Torrens, who explores the functioning of mass media and the politics of perception and its liberation as a source and limit of desire. Finally, from Copenhagen comes the co-founder and director of Live Art Denmark, the renowned and award-winning performance artist Henrik Vestergaard, whose interactive performances create spaces that blur the boundaries between performer and audience in a total exploration of new narratives, perceptions and reactions.