Performing Pleasure

Performing Pleasure 20115

Dublin Live Art Festival 2015 (DLAF15) Livestock- Performing Pleasure at MART Gallery Rathmines – 25 July 2015

Curated by: Francis Fay and Eleanor Lawler

Featuring: Helena Walsh, Fergus Byrne, Laura O’Connor, Tara Carroll, Luke O’Meara, Luke Byrne

For Dublin Live Art Festival 2015 Livestock- Performing Pleasure is curated by Francis Fay and Eleanor Lawler working closely with Dr. Helena Walsh.

This evening of live art questions desire and pleasure in terms of how we are all sexual beings and the ways religion or societal norms attempt to deny / control this. It questions the posing of sexual practices / pleasures as ‘primitive’ and ‘animalistic’, alongside issues of sexual violence. Focusing on issues of ‘privilege’, ‘power’ and ‘pleasure’ – the event opens up a discussion on the privileging of certain sexual desires and the policing / rejection of others in accordance to dominant societal norms. The theme ‘Performing Pleasure’ further considers how performance can be positively empowering and subvert dominant norms that seek to rigidly police and contain sexuality.