SPILL WRITING

• (2007 - 2021)

 Critical writing • SPILL Think Tank  • Contextual • Archival

Since the creation of SPILL in 2007, the development of new critical writers and writing has been a distinct, responsive and dynamic strand of the festival. Growing out of a writing scheme delivered by the Live Art Development Agency, the first wave of SPILL Writing was initially independent of the festival. Led by Rachel Lois Clapham and Mary Paterson, it brought writers together in 2007 and 2009 to write for the SPILL: Overspill blog.

In 2011, Theron Schmidt facilitated a Writer’s Bootcamp within the festival itself, bringing together a group of writers for shared reflection. Then, in 2012, Diana Damian Martin became SPILL’s ongoing Writer in Residence, developing and sustaining an established SPILL Writing programme that continued for nine years. Successive cohorts of SPILL Writers worked with Diana to experiment with and explore writing in response to live art and performance, as well as writing as performance practice. Taken together, the writing produced across these years is an extensive and cherished addition to the SPILL archive.

‘Whilst encountering and considering the politics of critical writing about performance in the context of the festival, SPILL Writers explore relationships to collectivity, the body and radicality through their writing, in dialogue with the works, the festival and wider artistic, cultural and political contexts. The process also involves regular meetings and workshops, provocations and challenges to their own practice, and explorations of the process of writing itself.’

- Diana Damian Martin