Ghosts, Guest Hosts, Demons, Stewards: eight letters addressing artists’ un/belonging in publicly-funded arts in the UK (2020-24)
Paul is undertaking a PhD at the University of Roehampton and Sadler’s Wells Theatre, running from October 2020 to September 2024.
Emerging from and grounded in our collaborative practice, this project studies the relationships between freelance dance artists and institutions, particularly when ‘independent’ artists are invited into temporary positions of decision-making (e.g. as a ‘guest curator’). We use the term ‘hosting’ to think about the practical, ethical and aesthetic complexities of these relationships.
These practices of ‘guest hosting’ demand we reflect on how we understand our roles within organisations, particular those which have persisted across different generations. What are our permissions, responsibilities and limitations within these spaces? How do we make sense of all our in/formal efforts, investments and intimacies? How are each of us guests, and hosts?
Through anecdote, artistic practice and philosophical reflection, this project explore these questions through four figures: the Ghost, the Guest Host, the Demon, and the Steward. The thesis will be formed of eight open letters – addressed to different peers and collaborators – that stage different ways of making sense of this our complex and often frustrated feelings of belonging, agency, desire and need.
Within the spirit of transparency and hosting, we try to ensure that most of the materials – talks, essays, artworks, events – developed through this publicly-funded research are available on this page.
Paul also maintains a research blog, available here, through which he shares some of his current interests and thinking.
The Spider and the Crab: Ways of Being with Practice-as-Research
An essay co-written with Efrosini Protopapa, which details the ambivalent relationship many artist-scholars hold towards academia. The text moves through questions of responsibility, decolonisation and immaterial labour to consider some of the nuances of sustaining an misaligned relationship with the institution in which you work.
Published in the academic journal Dance Research, Volume 41, Issue 2: ‘Studies in Practice-Based Research’. December 2023.
Any Other Business
An exhibition taking place at Gasleak Mountain in Nottingham. A constellation of embroidery, sculptures, drawings and video address some of the tensions and nuances of holding institutional office.
Visit dedicated project page here. Read an interview with Pádraig Condron (co-director, Gasleak Mountain) about the exhibition here. October 2023.
We Move in Close Circles
A performance for people’s homes, that explores the fine arts of passive aggression, over-hosting and weaponised care. Made by Charizard with Sam Pardes and Orley Quick. Premiered in February 2023, touring Nottingham, Bristol and London in Summer 2023, and London in Winter 2023/24.
Full project page here.
Public Intimacies
A series of posters, addressing the permissions and fantasies of encounter within civic space.
First presented at Bidston Observatory (Liverpool, August 2022), and then later at ICA (London, June 2023) as part of the symposium How Do Institutions Choreograph Us?.
Read ’em and Weep
A performance evening organised with Chaos Magic in Nottingham, inviting poets and artists working with text to recite their work. June 2023.
Uninvited Guests
A lecture-performance for the an online conference organised by Primary and a-n. We consider four different figures – the Ghost, the Guest Host, the Demon, the Steward – through which individuals can understanding their sense of belonging within institutions. March 2023.
Full project page here. Video here, and transcript here.
Something “more creative”
A text thinking through the seductive promise of the figure of the artist as doing things ‘differently’. Presented at symposium on ‘Approaches to social transformation through the arts’, at Kingston University. March 2023.
Text here, and audio version available here. Photo by Jemima Yong.
Love to all lovers
A chapbook of poems, about gay male hookup culture, intimacy, hosting, and the transmission of history. Presented at Visceral Bodies (Kingston University, April 2023), Legacy of ’67 (Manchester, June 2023), and Rammel Club (Bonington gallery, Nottingham, November 2023).
Audio version of several texts here. Photo by Hamish MacPherson.
Autumn Term and Winter Term
A series of six monthly performance workshops, exploring how we can physically inhabit, accommodate ourselves within and repurpose institutional spaces. Organised as & with the houdini club, taking place at Nottingham Contemporary and Fabric. October ’22 to March ’23.
On working with Chris Goode
An archive of reflections on abuse and accountability within UK theatre and performance, with Lucy Ellinson, Xav de Sousa and Maddy Costa. Paul’s text addresses the structural conditions of freelance performance-making in the UK, and the risk of focussing on individual blame. October 2022.
Full archive here. Audio of Paul’s text available here.
How have we been working together?
A text written and shared at Bidston Observatory (Liverpool) on practices of group conversation, and interpersonal complexities of working with others. August 2022.
Text here. Audio version available here.
No Manifesto, after Yvonne Rainer
Some refusals for the contemporary artist-organiser-producer. May 2022.
Text here. Photo by Hamish MacPherson.
Some propositions for a Centre of Play (for Bahar Fattahi)
A short text articulating some of the impossibilities of hosting and instituting ‘play’. March 2022.
Text here.
On Late Harvest at One Thoresby Street
An essay published in New Critique, on the precarity, struggles and value of grassroots artist organisations. December 2021.
Text here. Photo by Adam Grainger.
Self-Possessed
A performance addressing the exhausting ethical demands we might make of ourselves in upholding our institutional and interpersonal responsibilities. Presented as part of Iniva’s Handle With Care programme (Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, November 2021) and the exhibition Intersectional Geologies (Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, January 2022).
Photo by Hamish MacPherson.
Off the record
A presentation on meetings, intimacy and note-taking. Event hosted by alys longley and pavleheidler, for Choreographic Research Aotearoa, Waipapa Taumata Rau (University of Auckland). November 2021.
Video presentation here. Transcript available here.
A Salon for Practice
An afternoon salon gathering fellow practice-as-research PhD students, as an experiment in developing academic forums that center the processes and needs of artistic research. Chisenhale Dance Space, London. October 2021.
To suture a wound open.
An essay for Metaphor as Metamorphosis. The text introduces a practice of embroidered wounds, to reflect on an ethics of engaging with others from a position of mutual woundedness. July 2021.
Text available here.
Every event is a red carpet event if you bring a red carpet to it
Performing as hosts for a hybrid online and in person event, launching an issue of the journal Theatre, Dance and Performance Training. Taking place as part of Independent Dance’s International Festival of Learning. Siobhan Davies Studios, London. July 2021.
In Agreement With…
A late-evening performance taking place in arts organisations, addressing the role and permissions of stakeholders who do not hold formal roles of office. Presented at Dance4 (Nottingham, July 2021) and Chisenhale Dance Space (London, February 2022).
Full project page here. Photo by Adam Grainger. Rachel Parry wrote a response here.
Protesting, transforming, sustaining
A presentation for Dance Research Matters, on protesting institutions, preserving institutions, and claims of decolonisation. C-DaRe, Coventry University. 27th May 2021.
Text here. Audio version available here.
Letters of Resignation
A choreography course commissioned by Siobhan Davies Studios, considering what it would mean to resign from a field in which you have no formal position. February – June 2021.
Full project page here. A digital zine, which gathered some of the commissioned materials, is available here. Image by My Dads Strip Club.
Demons
Linoprint series and text. 30 postal editions. December 2020.
Things fall apart
A talk on the metaphysics of institutions, organised protest, and the desire to hold things together. Presented at the On Transversality conference as part of the panel ‘Undoing the Institution’. December 2020.
Video presentation available here, full transcript here.
Charizard 