DIY Workshop: Lucky Pierre Free University (2014)

DIY is an opportunity for artists working in Live Art to conceive and run unusual training and professional development projects for other artists. In 2014 LADA supported 23 projects in collaboration with 23 national partner organisations across the UK and Ireland. AND was delighted to work with Chicago based collective Lucky Pierre on Lucky Pierre Free University.

We are living in a time of both unprecedented technological wonder and the alarming consequences of unchecked “growth.” Natural, industrial and economic disasters threaten the patterns of ordinary life. How can artists respond to and work against despair amid evidence of ongoing economic, environmental, and social fragility? Are we the relief workers of the new collapse?

Co-opting the “free” on-line course model of corporatised higher education, Lucky Pierre as L.P.F.U  led the workshop: “The Sky Is Falling. The Money’s All Gone.” Over a period of 8 weeks, L.P.F.U facilitators and participants worked to create responses to themes of environmental and economic fragility.

Participants responded to a series of weekly prompts. These short assignments generated material (performance, writing, video, music, visuals, etc.) that informed and offered new processes and methods for furthering participants’ individual practices post-workshop.

At the conclusion of the shared study period, the workshop group developed individual and/or collaborative projects inspired by the collective research.

The artist:
Lucky Pierre, based in Chicago, is a collaborative group working in performance, writing, and visual forms. Lucky Pierre creates structures for engagement with various publics to explore complex issues and ideas (political, aesthetic, social) in ways that accommodate a wide range of experience, styles and approaches. Recent projects include “I Hate America/I Love America” a 10-hour event occurring simultaneously in London and Chicago; “What We Don’t Talk About: 13-hour Conversation on the War in Afghanistan” in which invited artists, scholars, activists, friends, and strangers worked to create a conversation about America’s longest war; and “America/n” a 12-hour piece about the US Constitution presented US presidential election day 2012 and followed by a publication “America/n (the book)” released on presidential inauguration day 2013. Ongoing projects include “Final Meals” in which we prepare and videotape volunteers eating the final meal of a Texas death row inmate, and “Actions for Chicago Torture Justice,” in which we work with volunteers to create performative actions addressing the history of police torture in Chicago and the use of torture worldwide. Lucky Pierre’s work has been presented in Chicago, New York, London, Detroit, Budapest, Portland and Hamburg.

DIY 11 is a Live Art Development Agency (LADA) initiative, this specific opportunity was developed in partnership with Abandon Normal Devices and supported by Create Ireland.