performingborders is a collectively run, migrant-led platform for artistic research and creation, centred on notions and lived experiences of intersectional borders through live art and performance practices.
Created in 2016, performingborders is a knowledge-sharing platform created in dialogue with its contributors. From our live events programme performingbordersLIVE, annual multidisciplinary e-Journals, digital Pamphlets, Live Art Writers Network, performances to camera, interviews, residencies, series of research interviews and digital residencies, performingborders is a growing tapestry of interconnected, cross-border experiments all freely available on our website. To date, we have worked with over 200 contributors from all over the world.
performingborders focuses on Border Artists – migrant and diaspora practitioners, thinkers, writers, organisers whose lived experience is impacted by political, economic, juridical and/or geographic barriers; and people whose creative expression and freedom are restricted through racial, gendered, ableist and classist borders. Our work seeks to nourish these practices as well as design new spaces, networks and ways of working, informed by a deep understanding of systemic injustice. performingborders is a platform where artists, methods, and approaches can cross-pollinate, think together, and imagine new expansive ways of connecting through live art and performance.
The team operates horizontally, all members are allocated the same amount of pay and have a shared responsibility within the group. All knowledges and experiences are valued for the diversity of perspectives that they contribute to the group and how they nourish and inform our collective work.
We understand that we operate in an ecology where border-artists and live art practitioners face intersectional oppression and challenges in both their working and personal lives. performingborders works to create a caring and safe space that starts with fair pay, sustainable workloads, access to support and financial resources, curatorial support, transparency on deadlines and connection to performingborders’ network of partners, artists, and supporters. We work to address the power structures implicit in the arts sector and look to actively resist exploitative practices in how we engage with each other as curators/researchers and how we engage with artists. performingborders aims to humanise the work we do as cultural workers and acknowledges the intersectional structural oppressions that impact how we live.
In 2022, we established our Solidarity Pot, a dedicated portion of our budget exclusively supporting art workers’ rights. This fund provides one-year subsidised memberships to unions or workers’ organisations and contributes towards migration-related legal and administrative expenses for everyone contributing to performingborders’ platform and activities. We believe a more equitable and fair art sector begins with ensuring people have access to the support they need to feel empowered and informed about their rights, while also standing against the ongoing challenges posed by hostile environment policies targeting migrant artists.
This work is ongoing and we continue to learn with the knowledge that performingborders can change and has to be responsive to the needs of the humans and non-humans involved, allowing for different paces at different times.
Co-run by Alessandra Cianetti, Xavier de Sousa and Anahí Saravia Herrera, in collaboration with guest curators, thinkers, artists, activists and researchers.