Liveness: Creative work and presence in physical and digital spaces

Liveness is a day of discussion, talks and presentations by and with practitioners and academics on the value and practice of liveness.

21 April 2022

Since 2020, our ideas about how to conduct live work in the arts, and how it works best have changed dramatically. How vital is presence, and does it need to be physical? What gains can we achieve in shared digital presence? Does liveness require a return to presence, to more hybrid events or has the pandemic experience sharpened a sense of broadening what liveness and presence mean, and how they interact? Are we now finally in what Kim Cascone defined in 2002 as the post-digital – an era where the digital has infiltrated everything and so hybrid experience becomes the norm?Liveness features four discussion panels: one on live cinema, following on from Nottingham Contemporary’s multimedia Light After Dark festival (March 2022), one on live music, recording and streaming; a third panel thinks about shared communal experience established in mediated performance, from storytelling to religious practice, and a fourth thinks on the importance of process for artists’ work and how this can be communicated to/with viewers/attendees in galleries and online. This is a University of Nottingham Creative and Digital Research Group event, organised in collaboration with Niki Harman and Nottingham Contemporary and we hope that the interplay between artists, curators, practitioners and academics will stimulate not only reflection and inspiration but also possible collaboration.

Invited speaker: presented on the liveness within artistic research and its process.