In this episode of Live and Now, Steve talks with collaborative performance maker, performer and teacher, Karen Christopher. For the last decade or so, Karen’s practice has focused on creating a series of duet performances devoted to re-examining the collaborative performance-making process. This work follows – and perhaps emerges from – some twenty years as a core member of the Chicago-based collaborative performance group Goat Island, who disbanded in 2009 after creation of their ninth and final work, a piece called The Last Maker.

In this excerpt from a longer interview recorded for the Live Art in Scotland project, we explore the Goat Island Summer school (originally staged at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts) as one thread of the company’s longstanding relationship with Scotland – and the significance of making space to explore new forms of individual and creative expression, beyond the typical expectations that surround the development of new work.

Contexts and documents:

Karen’s ongoing work as Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects
Goat Island Performance Group
Entanglements of Two: A Series of Duets, a book edited by Karen Christopher & Mary Paterson. Available to order from available from Unbound and Intellect Books.
Fractured & Entangled, a recording of the book’s online launch event featuring contributions from Karen Christopher, Tara Fatehi Irani, Mary Paterson, David Williams, Eirini Kartsaki/Joe Kelleher and Jemima Yong.
The introduction to Goat Island’s Goat Island’s Schoolbook 2, published in 2002: ‘Goat Island performance work is a series of responses: to the exercises we give ourselves, to our surroundings, to the events of the world, but mostly, to each other’.
The Glasgow Miracle: Material Towards Alternative Histories. www.glasgowmiraclearchives.org

Live and Now: Karen Christopher