Live performance series 2016 – 2024

Best Ofs are a performance methodology taking inspiration from the concept of greatest hits compilation albums by music megastars. A meta series cannibalising the so called best moments of past performances, remixing and adapting them into new material for each new setting as an irreverent yet desperate exercise in self-canonisation. In this continuous edit, only presenting the ‘best of’, the performances play on the construction of identity through contemporary means, assuming the exaggerated emotions and faux-perfectionism of performance avatars. Glitches appear in the polished choreographed surface as fatigue breaks through and performed sorrow is shown up to be hollow.

Performances created and performed by STASIS (Wet Mess, Isabel Palmstierna, Paloma Proudfoot and Aniela Piasecka –  lead artist)

Best Of performances have been shown at SWG3 for Glasgow International, UK; Jupiter Artland for Jupiter Rising at Edinburgh Art Festival curated by Lindsey Mendick; Cruising Utopia curated by Nora-Swantje Almes and Bergen Kunsthall, Norway;  ‘L’Académie des Mutantes’ curated by Cédric Fauq at CAPC Bordeaux, France; ‘Close Encounters: Attitudes of the Unruly’ curated by Cédric Fauq at Den Frie Udstilling Copenhagen with Dansehallerne, Denmark; ‘Full English’ curated by DATEAGLE at Platform Southwark, London, UK; ‘A Vague Anxiety’ curated by Poi Marr at IMMA, Dublin, Ireland; ‘Machiavellian Mary’ curated by Lucy Ayliffe and Phoebe McElhatton at Kingsgate Workshops, London, UK; Aldeburgh Festival, UK; and Embassy x Hutt Collective at Primary, Nottingham, UK