'Cronies, Cliques and Lovers: Queer Friendship as Anti-Institutional Practice in UK Live Art Festivals'

Patey-Ferguson, Phoebe and James Holton, Simon (2025) 'Cronies, Cliques and Lovers: Queer Friendship as Anti-Institutional Practice in UK Live Art Festivals'. Contemporary Theatre Review, 34 (3). pp. 290-311.

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Abstract

In this article, we interrogate the impact of queer friendship on the organisational landscape of the UK Live Art sector. Using our own intimate insider perspectives, we examine two artist-led festivals: Buzzcut in Glasgow (2012-present) and Steakhouse Live in London (2014–2020).Influenced by Michel Foucault’s ‘Friendship as a Way of Life’, we contend that the queerness of these friendships extends beyond sexual identities, shaping the artistic, economic, cultural, and social dimensions of Live Art festivals. Queer friendships inform anti-professional and DIY approaches in Live Art and emerge as a vital counterforce to institutional norms, providing an essential resource to experimental art practitioners enduring the precarious conditions of economic austerity in the UK from 2010 onwards. Friendship-led organisational practice holds all the challenges of managing a complex relational world, navigating the balance between the ideals of exchange and equality and the lived reality of difference and inequality. The formation of cliques, which aim for inclusivity and cohesion while potentially fostering exclusion, underscores a paradox inherent in the nature and operation of friendship in these contexts. Our findings emphasise that addressing conflicts and structural inequalities in queer friendship is pivotal, acting as a catalyst for revealing, contesting, and changing exclusions and inequities. We conclude that investing in and supporting organisations founded on queer friendships can potentially foster radical, egalitarian, and politically potent modes of artistic collaboration in the face of normative cultural production and oppressive political circumstances.

Item Type:	Article
Depositing User:	Dr Jon Venn
Date Deposited:	01 Apr 2025 12:42
Last Modified:	01 Apr 2025 12:42
URI:	https://bruford.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/79

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