Performativa VI.

Jade Blackstock: Untitled

Performance

Performance Untitled brings earth, flowers, cotton sheets and metal into relation with the body. Through repetitive anticlockwise movements, the materials are layered, displaced and brought into coincidence. The performance questions what finding root means and does, staying with the materials as they transmit traces of personal and cultural memory. The body and materials become sites of listening, asking how we orient ourselves when histories, environments and bodies are constantly shifting within unequal conditions. Through movement, they reveal their own histories and ways of knowing.

Through live performance, Jade explores tensions between inner and outer worlds, using the body, materiality, and environment as sites of inquiry. Rooted in Black diasporic contexts, she considers how historical and cultural movements shape these relationships, focusing on ancestral traditions, myths, and materials as sources of resistance against systems of power and extraction. Her work engages with race, feminism, class, loss and continuity, with materials such as molasses, indigo, and tree branches recurring as co-performers.

Jade (b. Birmingham, UK, 1993) earned a BA in Fine Art Practice and Psychology from the University of Worcester and an MA in Contemporary Art Practice: Performance from the Royal College of Art. Her work has been shown internationally, including in SPILL Festival of Performance, Ipswich, Alchemy Film Festival, Hawick, Scotland, the National Museum of Modern Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea, and Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden. Jade is a recipient of the Royal College of Art Leverhulme scholarship award and the Franklin Furnace Performance Art Fund in New York City, USA.

Martin O’Brien: This Unending

Performance

The dead perform a séance for the living, but no one dares answer. Strange apparitions whisper to those who have taken their place. A hideous voice can be half heard calling out through the darkness. It sounds like nothing from this world. All those who hear it are frozen in terror. Does it speak to them? Again. Again. 

This Unending throws the audience into a strange otherworldly séance. O’Brien creates images of purgatory and strange uncanny afterlives to explore the conditions of human mortality, and the ways in which our lives are lived under the shadow of death. Using a mix of text and intense physical action, This Unending is a meditation on death, grief, and belief. It is a playful and profound staging of the impossibility of living forever, imagining a never ending process.

Martin O’Brien is an artist and zombie. He works across performance, writing and video art. His work uses long durational actions, short speculative texts and critical rants, and performance processes in order to explore death and dying, what it means to be born with a life shortening disease, and the philosophical implications of living longer than expected. Martin has cystic fibrosis and all of his work and writing draws upon this experience. He has shown work throughout the UK; Europe; USA; and Canada, and is well known for his solo performances and collaborations with the legendary LA artist and dominatrix Sheree Rose. His most recent works were at Tate Britain in 2025, The Southbank Centre in 2024, the ICA (London) in 2021, and as Writer in Residence at Whitechapel Gallery in 2023. He is winner of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts 2022. In 2018, the book ‘Survival of the Sickest: The Art of Martin O’Brien’ was published by Live Art Development Agency. His work has been featured on BBC radio and Sky Arts television, and as a double page spread in The Guardian. He is Reader in Live Art at Queen Mary University of London.

Vlasta Delimar: Towards Aging with Dignity (Prema dostojanstvu starenja),

Performance

"I am 70 years old. I strive to age well – to age positively and healthily, which involves a low risk of illness, physical functionality, active participation in social life, independence, and the ability to look after myself. Ageing is not a process of decline; rather, it means growth; it means expanding one’s own potential as we mature. However, ageing well depends on me, which is why I take responsibility for my own ageing. Apart from having my teeth treated, improving my eyesight with a good pair of glasses and having hip replacements fitted on both sides, I also ensure that my sex life continues to thrive. Modern gerontology endeavours in many ways to raise awareness of society’s rejection of both ageing and older people, and offers us a range of opportunities to improve our quality of life. Sexual activity is not strictly necessary in old age, but it is beneficial as it improves general physical and mental health.

I begin the performance wearing a white tulle dress. White is also the colour of death, towards which I am moving slowly and with dignity. On the table lie chocolate penises, which I unhurriedly cut up, grate and distribute to the audience. The chocolate penises lend the performance a humorous touch, creating a cheerful and relaxed atmosphere. Once the chocolate penises have been eaten, I put on an incontinence nappy. The nappy is intended to remind us of the potential discomforts of old age. It is ugly and arouses revulsion. That is why I invite the audience to have their photograph taken with me, so that we can overcome this unease together." - Vlasta Delimar

Vlasta Delimar was born in Zagreb in 1956. As one of Croatia’s most distinguished performance artists, she has been developing her artistic practice since the late 1970s. In 1986, she received the Seven SKOJ Secretaries’ Award. Right from the start, she has used her own body as a medium and a space for public expression. Through themes such as nudity, sexuality, relationships, motherhood, ageing and physical changes, she brings autobiographical experiences into the public sphere, raising questions about social expectations, intimacy, identity and individual freedom. Between 2005 and 2015, she directed the arts organisation ‘Moja zemlja Štaglinec’ [My Land, Štaglinec] and the International Performance Festival in Štaglinec near Koprivnica. She is a member of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU).

Vlasta Delimar consistently stresses her detachment from ideological, religious and political affiliations and advocates for human rights, individual freedom, respect for diversity and environmental awareness.