Last Minute Live Art (LMLA): Bill Aitchison and Gao Shuyi
In this dialogue, Last Minute Live Arts’s Gao Shuyi and Bill Aitchison explore what it means to be radical in making performance art in China and the UK – Bill speaking from their location in Zuhai, China, and Gao from their perspective in London, UK.
Last Minute Live Art (LMLA) is an artist-led group that has been putting on art events in China since 2018. LMLA quickly became the main promoter of Live Art in Nanjing, a city of over 10 million people, and has put on events and workshops in other cities such as Shanghai, Xiamen and Shenzhen, too. These have taken place in galleries, museums and nightclubs, in parks, apartments and abandoned buildings, on the street and online. They often feature emerging artists experimenting with performance for the first time. LMLA was launched and named by creating an international festival in just three weeks and has gone on to push boundaries and occupy public space with such events as the sprawling Lobster Festival, the abrasive group piece The Return of the Repressed (Aranya) and an online performance during the pandemic that connected performers in three continents (CUHK).
Gao Shuyi is an interdisciplinary performance artist and producer who has organized and promoted the majority of LMLA events. She is a graduate of Nanjing University and has a MA Performance Making from Goldsmiths, London.
Bill Aitchison is a performance artist and acts as curator and artistic mentor of the group. He has presented his work in galleries, theatres and festivals in Europe, Asia, America, Australia and The Middle East and his artworks are held in both private and museum collections. He holds a practice-based PhD from Goldsmiths and is a graduate of Ecole de Mime Corporel Dramatique. He is Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance at BNU / HKBU United International College, Zhuhai, China.