Antoinette Burchill

Artist, writer, performer. Provocateur. Inspired by the fool, I make mischief that is playful – defiant, teasing and delivered with a dry wit and humour, and often in the form of pranks. The pranks and performances I create instigate dialogues, which are disruptive and imaginatively delinquent. I use a strategy of beguiling discomfort to construct public spheres with publics. Satire, awkwardness and exaggeration are tools I instigate to maintain that discomfort. This enables the work I create to permeate, rather than to confront; and seeks to blur the boundaries between activism and everyday life. In this context, mischievous pranks have the potential to reveal positions of political and/or hegemonic power, and to satirically propose alternatives. My practice develops the position of agonism as taken by Chantal Mouffe, and considers democracy, dissent and the public sphere, not as abstract and theoretical positions, but one that are visceral, tangible, embodied, (pace Lefebvre and Benjamin) encountered, experienced and performed. Ph.D Candidate, School of the Arts, Loughborough University My research title is Mischief: performance, participation and dissent