Adrian Heathfield writes on, curates and creates performance.
Biography
Adrian Heathfield writes on, curates and creates performance. He is the author of Out of Now, a monograph on the artist Tehching Hsieh, editor of four books (Things That Go through Your Mind When Falling, Ally, Live: Art and Performance and Small Acts) and co-editor of the collections Perform, Repeat, Record and Shattered Anatomies. His numerous essays on contemporary art have been translated into ten languages.
Heathfield’s exhibition, Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999, co-curated with Humberto Moro, is currently showing at Dia Beacon. He co-curated the Live Culture events at Tate Modern, London (2003) and a number of other performance and durational events in European cities over the last twenty-five years. He was curator of Doing Time, the Taiwan Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), a curatorial adviser and attaché for the 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016) and an artistic director with the collective freethought of the 2016 Bergen Assembly, Norway. His curations of performance and discursive events have also been seen at Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney; Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; Serpentine Gallery, London; Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taipei; Tanzquartier, Vienna; Hebbel Theatre, Berlin; and Kaaitheater, Brussels.
Heathfield conducted the three-year European Union funded creative research project Curating the Ephemeral (2014–2016) on immaterial art and museum practices. He was co-director of Performance Matters, a four-year AHRC funded research project on the cultural value of performance (2009–2013).
Heathfield has worked with many artists and thinkers on critical and creative collaborations including documentary films, performance-lectures, dramaturgy, writing and workshop projects. Frequent collaborators have included Marina Abramović, Janine Antoni, Jonathan Burrows, Hélène Cixous, Tim Etchells, Forced Entertainment, Hugo Glendinning, Goat Island, Anna Halprin, Tehching Hsieh, Alphonso Lingis, Alastair MacLennan, William Pope.L and Hahn Rowe.
A former President of Performance Studies international (2004–2007), he was Professor of Visual Cultures (2023–2024) at Goldsmiths, University of London and is currently Emeritus Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at the University of Roehampton, London. He works as a consultant for museums internationally, including for Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
All images appear courtesy of their authors or copyright holders and should not be reproduced without permission.
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