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Welcome to SPILL’s digital library. Here you will find extracts from our in-house publications, you can browse previous SPILL Festival of Performance brochures, read interviews with artists, see press articles, and explore extensive reflective texts made by writers in response to festival themes and works in SPILL over the years.
IN-HOUSE PUBLICATIONS
On Time (2018) is a collection of critical, poetic and reflective texts responding to the curation of the 2018 edition of SPILL and its theme of Time. Edited by Diana Damian Martin and featuring contributions from a stellar line up of contributors, On Time acted as a companion for festival visitors and remote readers, and was deliberately created to also be of interest after the festival too.
Purchase a physical copy here
The Eden Reader (2020) is a book about vegetables, ideas and art. Created by Canadian artist Mary Catherine Newcomb, the artwork Eden was due to show in SPILL 2020, but was delayed due to Covid. The Eden Reader took its place as a way to reflect on this complex work. Sometimes poetic, sometimes frank, this collection of texts are written by adults, kids and teenagers.
Purchase a physical copy here
Think Tank Workbook (2014) asks what role live performance can play in starting conversations or building new communities? What does heritage mean? Is theatre still useful? What about artists grappling with the big stuff - can complex questions be asked, or answered, accessibly? This book is for artists, students, researchers, archivists and policy makers.
Purchase a physical copy here
On Agency (2010) is book of writing, thinking and conversations about SPILL, bringing together people involved in the first two festivals. Artists discussed in the book include: Romeo Castellucci, Julia Bardsley, Jan Fabre, Forced Entertainment, Needcompany, Robin Deacon, Ron Athey & Lee Adams, Gob Squad, Victoria, artists featured in the SPILL Tarot, and many more.
Purchase a physical copy here
PREVIOUS SPILL FESTIVAL BROCHURES
SPILL 2021 - ON MEMORY
SPILL 2018 - ON TIME
SPILL 2016 - EN MASSE
SPILL 2015 - ON SPIRIT
SPILL 2014 - ON SURRENDER
SPILL 2013 - ON CONTACT
SPILL 2012 - ON PROXIMITY
SPILL 2011 - ON INFECTION
SPILL 2007 - INAUGURAL EDITION
SPILL 2009 - On Agency did not have a brochure. The festival was promoted through a website, venue partners, and word of mouth.
The 2011 brochure shows Romeo Castellucci as presenting The Minister’s Black Veil. By the time of the festival, for artistic reasons, Romeo and team decided to present On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God instead.
SPILL Brochures 2007 - 2013 designed by Made In Earnest, 2014 - 2016 by Firebrand, and 2018 - 2021 by Come Hither. Our thanks to all of them.
SPILL WRITING
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, this brought writers together in 2007 and 2009 to write for a SPILL: Overspill blog. In 2011, Theron Schmidt then facilitated a Writer’s Bootcamp within the festival itself, bringing together a group of writer’s for shared reflections. Then in 2013, Diana Damian Martin became SPILL’s ongoing Writer in Residence and honed an established SPILL Writing programme spanning many years. Successive cohorts of SPILL Writers worked with Diana to experiment and explore writing in response to live art and performance, and writing as performance practice. Combined, the collected writing from across these years is extensive and is currently being archived. You can read selected extracts of SPILL Writing below - click on each year to access the texts. And for more, check out the SPILL: Overspill section elsewhere on this page.
“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
INTERVIEW
THE WEAVER: AN INTERVIEW WITH KIRA O’REILLY -SPILL’S FIRST THINKER-IN-RESIDENCE
In 2009 SPILL published On Agency, a book of writing, thinking and conversation on diverse topics raised across the first two festivals. Available online here for the first time, The Weaver is an interview with Kira from that book, conducted as a structured conversation by Robert Pacitti and Sheila Ghelani. Revisiting this text in 2021, prior to sharing here, Kira noted that she is an Irish artist, not an Anglo-Irish artist as the interview intro states, and that she prefers to be described as an artist rather than a performance maker. Enjoy.
Kira O’Reilly - photo: Richard J. Anderson
SPILL: OVERSPILL
In 2007, as part of Live Art UK’s Writing From Live Art, Rachel Lois Clapham and Mary Paterson wrote responses to the first SPILL Festival. For 2009 Mary and Rachel Lois, collaborating as Open Dialogues, created an expanded SPILL: Overspill as an independent blog. A tailor-made critical writing programme, designed by Open Dialogues and produced in association with SPILL - the writing programme was located at the heart of the festival, to explore the event of criticism in relation to performance. The aim of SPILL: Overspill was to respond critically to the work shown, and to create a realtime discursive context for SPILL: one that spilt out of the usual confines of a festival to a diverse UK and international audience. Open Dialogues works from a position of reciprocity with art and artists in which criticism or critical writing is an intellectual encounter between writing and art. It is writing on, for, about, and as art. SPILL: Overspill texts were produced within this methodology and were independent of the festival. SPILL thanks Open Dialogues and each of the contributing writers for allowing us to share SPILL: Overspill texts here.
VIRAL VOICES
External links to a small selection of features, reviews and interviews over the years about SPILL Festival.
Volatile work for incendiary ends - Editorial in RealTime Magazine, 2007 Read it
The big spill: a fitting climax - Feature in RealTime Magazine, 2007 - by Rachel Lois Clapham Read it
Experimental Theatre to SPILL into the Mainstream - Feature in The Guardian, 2009 - by Lyn Gardner Read it
Firestarter - Feature in Total Theatre, 2009 - By Andrew Haydon Read it
SPILL Festival: cutting-edge, crackpot theatre - Feature in The Guardian, 2009 - Read it
Challenging Elitism - Feature in Aesthetica Magazine, 2009 - by Pauline Bache Read it
A golden age of British experimental theatre - Feature, Guardian Theatre Blog, 2009 - by Lyn Gardner Read it
Confronting Expectation at London’s SPILL Festival - Feature for Dance Theatre Journal, 2010 - by Theron Schmidt Read it
On Infection - Feature in Total Theatre, 2011 - by Tom Wilson Read it
SPILL Festival 2011 - Interview with Robert Pacitti in Dazed Digital, 2011 - by Susanna Davies-Crook Read It
Romeo Castellucci: Christ … what is that smell? - Feature in The Guardian, 2011 - by John O'Mahony Read it
SPILL Festival - Feature in Total Theatre Magazine, 2012 - by Vicki Weitz Read it
On SPILL Festival, sustainability and curation as strategy - Feature in Exeunt Magazine, 2012 - by Bojana Jankovic Read it
Robert Pacitti talks to Run Riot about SPILL - Interview in Run Riot, 2012 - by Jamie McLaren Read it
The Body in Question: Do you want me to touch you? - Reviews in RealTime Magazine, 2013 - by Madeleine Hodge Read it
The Body in Question: Breaching the body - Reviews in RealTime Magazine, 2013 - byJulie Vulcan Read it
The Body in Question: Gender, genitalia & the old hand-in-hand - Reviews in RealTime Magazine, 2013 - by Cat Jones Read It
SPILL Festival - Reviews in Aesthetica Magazine, 2013 - by Frances Cooper Read it
Things To Do: SPILL Festival - Feature in the Ipswich Star, 2014 - by Wayne Savage Read it
Riotously entertaining with plenty of surprises - SPILL Festival review in The Guardian, 2014 - by Lyn Gardner Read it
Reflections on performance, writing and form - SPILL writing in Exeunt Magazine, 2015 - by Diana Damian Martin Read it
SPILL Festival: Tomb, The Privileged, Inextinguishable Fire - Reviews in Exeunt Magazine, 2015 - by Nisha Ramayya Read it
SPILL Festival: I Made Some Low Inquiries / Tyburnia - Reviews in Exeunt Magazine, 2015 - by Nisha Ramayya Read it
SPILL Festival of Performance: On Spirit - Interview in Beautiful Bizarre, 2015 - by Danai Molocha Read it
Illness and Disability in Radical Performance Practices - Feature in Disability Arts Online, 2016 - by Colin Hambrook Read it
Viewfinder commissions Martin O’Brien to work with SPILL Festival - Blog in Disability Arts Online, 2016 - by Trish Wheatley Read it
SPILL opens with Clarion Call - Feature in East Anglian Daily Times, 2018 - by Andrew Clarke Read it
SPILL Festival Ipswich Highlights - Reviews in Theatre Bubble, 2018 - by Zelly Lisanework Read it
SPILL Festival 2018 - A mushrooming community - Feature in Exeunt Magazine, 2018 - by Ava Wong Davies Read it