Joshua Sofaer works across boundaries, borders and disciplines to create artworks that engage with all levels of society. In cultural institutions or on the street, for art galleries or personal homes, staged as operas or cast as golden sculptures, Sofaer's work weaves with and through social fabric to consider the ideas that hold us together.
Co-published with the Live Art Development Agency, this lavishly illustrated volume is the first in-depth study of the artist's work, featuring discussions with producers and participants, documentary images and a new photographic essay, interviews with the artist himself, and thirteen commissioned essays by scholars, curators and artists from the perspectives of performance studies, archaeology and opera criticism. With a mixture of intellect, humour and striking design, Joshua Sofaer: Performance | Objects | Participation analyses the artist's oeuvre in the contexts of liveness, visual art and participatory practices. It explores the binding aesthetics of his approach as a model for contemporary practice, and it considers the impact of his work on audiences, institutions and pedagogy, as well as on fine art and performance ecologies as a whole.
Where Are You From? Or Originally - Joshua Sofaer
Introduction: Nobody Nose: Joshua Sofaer - Mary Paterson and Roberta Mock
Window Dresser - Stacy Makishi interviews Joshua Sofaer
Artist and Star - Joshua Sofaer
Joshua Sofaer's Grammar of the Body - Roberta Mock
No Show: Personal Evidence in Public Space, Or The Artist is in Withdrawal - Sibylle Peters
Teacher's Pet - Lois Keidan
Documentation (of a Near Death Experience) - Robin Deacon
Back to the Artwork of the Future: Transformation, Emotion, and Participation in the Opera-related Works of Joshua Sofaer - Daniel Somerville
Make Happy Those Who Are Near, and Those Who Are Far Will Come - Yu-Ying Kung, Yuan-Liang An and Yu-Chin Hsiao, with Joshua Sofaer
Value, Labour, and Presence in the Live Gallery - Nadia Abdelaziz
Sibling Disciplines: Objects, Archaeology, and the Art of Joshua Sofaer - Joanna Sofaer
Trashing the Institution: Disruption and Democratisation at the Science Museum - Sarah Harvey
Un-Thinking The Rubbish Collection: From Plastics to Plasticity - Carl Lavery
Naming: Joshua Sofaer's Dramaturgies of Interference in Public Space - Konstantina Georgelou
Performing Workshops at Home - Stuart Andrews
Small Actions, Everyday Encounters: Permission and the Possibility of Change in Gold Nose of a Green Finger - Maddy Costa
Keep It Opening: Joshua Sofaer's Use of Language - Mary Paterson
Afterword: Hilarious Hooters and Curious Conks - Simon Gould
Selected Artworks by Joshua Sofaer
Contributors
Index
