Turning 40: 40 turns. Walking & friendship

Marking the occasion of her 40th birthday, Deirdre Heddon invited 40 people to take her on a walk of their choice. These varied occasions of walking prompted reflection on what it is to walk with others. In ’40 Walks’, Heddon explores the histories and discourses attached to walking in company, as opposed to walking alone; the sorts of companionship walking allows and call forths; the ways in which different walks structure different sorts of being together – the side by side, the stepping into another’s footsteps, the mutual pauses, the out of step. ’40 Walks’ considers how walking and the practicing of friendship are related; how walking and friendship travel together. Citing examples and writings from the nineteenth century to the present, ‘40 Walks’ explores what it is to walk with. Heddon proposes companionable walking as an instance of Jean-Luc Nancy’s ‘being-singular-plural’ rather than Emmanual Levinas’ face-to-face encounter with alterity. Heddon finds walking an appropriate vehicle for creating, sustaining, maintaining – and in some instances - testing friendship. Through walking, one exercises friendship, providing a grounding and a materialising. Companionable walks are proposed here as collaborative practices in which instances of out-of-step, to borrow from Deleuze and Gauttari, also allow for generous negotiation and a co-authorship between (at least) two. The walks gifted to Heddon for her 40th birthday are revealed as acts of generosity that provide creative ground for the collaborative cultivation of friendscapes

Glory box: Tim Miller's autobiography of the future

Performance artist Tim Miller has been making autobiographical work for more than twenty years. Dee Heddon explores Miller's recent show, Glory Box (2001), arguing that, both in his practice and his use of his own life stories, he is attempting not only to connect with but to energize his audiences, transforming them into activist spectators. One tactic Miller employs in Glory Box is futurity – performing an autobiography that he has not yet lived. This future is one that Miller compels us collectively to rewrite, inviting us to change his potential life and life-story in the process. Dee Heddon argues that Miller's commitment to and faith in the transformative potential of live performance enacts a resistance to those pejorative terms too easily thrown at autobiographical performance: Miller may work from his 'self', but his work is far from solipsistic, egotistic, or narcissistic

What's in a name?

A personal reflection on Live Ar

What's in a name?

An exploration of the use of autobiography in the work of Annie Sprinkle and Bobby Baker

Personal performance: the resistant confessions of Bobby Baker

An analysis of the confessional performances of performance artist, Bobby Baker, in particular 'Box Story'

Walk this way

A contribution to ANTI Festival's 10th Annivesary Catalogue, which offers a reflection of walking art works shown at the 2009 festival in Kuopio

A visitor's guide to Glasgay

A history of Glasgay!, Glasgow's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender arts festival, drawn from interviews with the festival's producers

Distance dramaturgy

A correspondence and conversation between Dee Heddon and Alex Kelly. How do you tell a life? Throughout much of 2004 and into 2005 Dee Heddon and Alex Kelly corresponded by email: about auto/biographical performance, auto/biographical literature, Lad Lit, reading, writing, story telling and Third Angel’s performance making processes. This discussion was one strand of the making process of Third Angel’s performance The Lad Lit Project; a dramaturgy at a distance. Responding to research prompts from Alex – reading lists, notebook quotes, research and rehearsal room reports – Dee intervened with questions, provocations, opinions, suggestions for devising exercises. The personal, practical and theoretical intertwined. These interventions had a significant effect on the process and final show, helping Alex to move the work from a theatrical quoting of the Lad Lit genre, to become a performance work that is both autobiographical and about autobiography. For the creation of this text Dee and Alex return to their original correspondence, teasing out the significant strands and key exchanges, reflecting on carrying out dramaturgy at a distance, and discussing the impact of this process on the final performance. A document of quoted archive material (emails, notebook extracts) and discussion after the event

From talking to silence: a confessional journey

This article provides an account of work created by Adrian Howells over the duration of his AHRC Creative Fellowship. Howells provides a creator's perspective; Heddon, a spectator's perspective. Both chart the shift from confessional performances anchored around speech, to the use of silence as a way to engage intimate connections between performer and audience