Glocal Intermissions

50 years of Performance art in Ireland

Glocal intermissions : 50 Years of Performance Art in Ireland Belfast |1975-2025

This autumn, Belfast becomes the stage for a landmark symposium honouring five decades of performance art across Ireland. Glocal Intermission : 50 Years of Performance Art in Ireland brings together artists, curators, scholars, and cultural workers to reflect on the radical, ephemeral, and transformative power of live art.

Hosted in Belfast , the symposium will feature keynote presentations, Exhibitions, archival screenings, participatory and solo performances, and panel discussions that trace the lineage of performance art from its early provocations to its contemporary, socially engaged forms. From Alastair MacLennan’s duration all works with students of Belfast School of art from 1975 to the site-responsive practices shaping today’s cultural landscape, this event celebrates performance as a tool of resistance, enquiry and embodiment. Reaching from Belfast to a global network of performance art opportunities. Transforming lives as it goes.

The programme invites attendees to explore the intersections of body, place, and memory—re framing performance art not only as spectacle, but as a living archive of Ireland’s evolving identity. Highlights include:

• Keynote by Emeritus Professor Alistair Maclennahan reflecting on his 50 years of experience.

• Live interventions by Bbeyond artists

• A walking tour of Belfast’s peace lines as performative thresholds

• Archival displays and poetic responses to seminal works

• Solo Performance by Bbeyond new commission artist Madison Agnew

• 50 year anniversary group performance Unity Walk

• Intergenerational knowledge share

• Performance art and mental health what is the intersection?

• Opportunities to learn about and share memories of performance art in Ireland

• Feed into 50 years of Performance art exhibition at Belfast School of Art

This symposium is supported by:

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast City Council, Belfast School of Art and Bbeyond

Booking & Info: Tickets available via for further enquiries, contact: Bbeyond@europe.com

What to expect

Keynote speakers

•         Alastair MacLennan

Emeritus Professor of Belfast School of art. Alastair MacLennan is a Scottish artist primarily known for his performance work, although his work embraces drawing, sculpture and installation. He established his distinctive form of performance art in the early 1970s and has performed and exhibited extensively since then, individually and collaboratively on an international stage link to profile on Bbeyond website

•         Brian Connolly

Brian Connolly was born in Ballymoney Co. Antrim in 1961 and was awarded an M.A. in Fine Art at the University of Ulster in 1985. He has been working as a professional artist ever since. As an artist much of Connolly’s past work has evolved out of a series of dialogues with the specifics of place, location, context, or site. He has created Interventions, Performance Art Works, Install-actions, & Installations, in a wide range of places both locally and Internationally, these include: Churches, Monasteries, Castles, City Streets, Squares or Alleyways, Market Places, Parks, a River Source, Beach, Funeral Parlour, as well as Art Galleries & Museums.

•         Brian Patterson

Brian Patterson was administrator and co-ordinator of projects for Bbeyond until his sabbatical in 2021, Patterson has been one of the motivational forces behind setting up Bbeyond in 2001.  Patterson previously, worked with Flax art Studios (1998 -2003) organising their International Residency Programme, and Catalyst Arts, (1996-1998), an artist-run organisation, to promote innovative and experimental working practices. He graduated 1992 from Ulster University and has taken part in numerous group exhibitions, mainly with installation work. In 2001, he contributed to Routes, a project set up to promote the work of the transport union in keeping sectarianism out of the work place in Northern Ireland.

•         Bronagh Lawson

Bronagh Lawson is a socially and spiritually engaged artist, writer, curator. With a focus on art as a key transformation lever in the on going transformation of our traumatised society. Her recent performance art work at the Conflict Textiles Symposium at Ulster University and Performance Art Bergen in 2025 her piece ‘Honouring the women’ was based on a performance to be done at the death of a women’s co-coalition member. Lawson stood as candidate for the Peace forum for the NI Women’s Co-alition in 1998.

•         Christoph Gillen

Christoff Gillen has worked in performance, installation site and time based art for the past 20 years. He studied sculpture at the University of Ulster, Belfast graduating with a BA (hons) in 1998 and following this he undertook a MA in 'Art & Public' University of Ulster, Belfast in 2009. Gillen feels that performance art allows a freedom of experimentation. His work is cathartic challenging the viewer to engage in personal, political, religious and social forms of dialogue. His actions are a commentary on themes relating to Northern Ireland and contemporary cultural politics.

•         Deej Fabryc

Deej Fabyc is Australian, but was born in London, spending their early childhood in England and Ireland before travelling to Australia aboard the P&O Arcadia to start secondary school. They completed their BFA at Southern Cross University and gained an MFA from the University of New South Wales Art and Design school. They are based in Ireland since March 2020 Fabyc works with performance, installation, photography and video. Their work has for many years addressed the psychological dimensions of the personal and political experience of trauma.

•         Emma Brennan

Emma Brennan (She/Her) is an interdisciplinary artist who works predominantly in performative practices which include multi-media installation, moving image and collaborative processes. Originally from Dublin, she is now based In Belfast. Brennan is a former Co-Director and Chairperson of Catalyst Arts and a current studio member of Flax Art Studios Belfast. She has recently been chosen as one of the BBeyond performance collective’s new commissioned artists of 2021 to present a new work to be shown as part of the Cathedral Arts Festival. Brennan was also invited to perform as part of the Belfast International Festival of Performance Art in 2021.

•         Dr Emma Campbell

Emma's practice-based PhD addressed socially engaged practice, largely photography, as an activist tool for abortion rights. Emma is a member of the 11-strong 2021 Turner Prize winning Array Collective and has exhibited internationally as Array and solo. Emma is co-convenor of Alliance for Choice, the largest abortion rights organisation in Northern Ireland and is a Trustee for Abortion Support Network, Board Member for Outburst Queer Arts and member of Reclaim the Agenda and Women's Policy Group. Emma's current research brings creative methodologies to law and social policy and continues collaborative socially engaged practices as part of Array.

•         Dr Eleni Koliopoulou

Eleni Kolliopoulou is a visual artist interested mainly in the intersection between Performativity and Philosophy. Initially Kolliopoulou trained as a painter, her research was concentrated in the abstract relation between elements as colour, lines, and shapes.  From the very start her strongest interest was the movement occurring in the surface and stimulating the spatial awareness of the perceiver. In March 2020 Kolliopoulou was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy for her practice-based research in Arts hosted by Ulster University. The research was focusing to psychophysical aspects of Butoh and its potential to enrich immersion in installation art.

•         James King

James King grew up in Larne, Co. Antrim and has lived in Derry for forty years. Since retiring from his post as Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Ulster in 2004 King has developed his career as performance artist and sound poet; and until the onset of the Covid pandemic maintained his practice of working creatively with vulnerable groups in the community.King has been practising performance in various forms and genres for over forty- five years and lectured in Community Drama for thirty of these. During the past fifteen years King has been expanding his performance art practice; ranging from short, open mic word-play entertainments to substantial durational events.

•         Madison Agnew

Madison Agnew is a multi-discipline artist, integrating both painting and performance art to develop work which centres on the body, and its relationship to natural elements such as water and land. Agnew’s work also touches on the interplay between these natural forces and interpersonal feelings.  Agnew works with painting and performance concurrently, to fabricate a non-representational way to paint and perform using conceptual ideas surrounding memories and feelings of being around these natural elements. The Irish Coast, particularly the North and West Coast of Ireland, are a strong focal point within Agnew’s work. 

•         Noelle McAlinden

Noelle is passionate about the power of the arts to transform communities, supporting Cultural Tourism, Economic Regeneration, Health and Wellbeing and Peace and Reconciliation. Noelle has taken early retirement from The Education Authority in Northern Ireland  and was formally involved in Derry  City of Culture and Derry Learning City. She is an ambassador for positive mental and emotional wellbeing, dedicated to the prevention of suicide, and a member of Ohana ZERO suicide. Noelle is a TEDx speaker.  Noelle is a recipient of the Sir Ken Robinson Individual Award and a Hope ambassador and founder member of Hope, Healing and Growth.

•         Dr Noreen Giffney

Dr Noreen Giffney is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and the Joint Editor-in-Chief (with Emmanuelle Smith) of New Associations psychoanalytic magazine (British Psychoanalytic Council). She is the author of the book, The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic(Routledge 2021), and the author and/or editor of additional articles and books on psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies, and the arts, culture and mental health. She is a member of the development team (led by Jill Bennett) for World Comes Alive (fEEL Lab 2025), the first VR experience underpinned by psychoanalytic thinking. Noreen is currently making an animated short film (with illustrator, Allen Fatimaharan) about the psychological nourishment provided by cultural objects. She lectures and conducts research at Ulster University, Belfast.

•         Dr Pamela Whittaker

Pamela trained as an art therapist in Vancouver and has worked in Canada, Malaysia and Ireland. She is interested in contemporary art and creative health, art therapy in museums and galleries, environmental art therapy, the walking studio, and ecologies of care. She is a member of the Irish Association of Creative Arts Therapists and the British Association of Art Therapists and registered with the Health and Care Professions Council. She is also the first Practice Based Researcher in Residence at the Void Arts Centre in Derry funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Impact Accelerator Account. The focus of her research will be The Nature of Life: Gardens as Art and The Walking Studio, both methods of engagement within civic society that focus on environmental activism and pride of place.

•         Rainer Pagel

Rainer Pagel was born in 1948, he lives and works in Belfast. Pagel’s art practice developed from the 1970’s in Hamburg and Belfast, very much under the influence of Bazon Brock, Max Bense and Joseph Beuys while in Germany, and Alastair MacLennan, Adrian Hall, Tony Hill and Dr Slavka Sverakova in Northern Ireland.  After taking part on the invitation of Joseph Beuys in the Northern Ireland workshop in the Documenta 6, Kassel, Germany in 1977, Pagel became a co-founder of Art and Research Exchange in Belfast, and was very actively involved in establishing 22 Lombard Street in Belfast as an important art venue and centre for new and innovative art in Northern Ireland.

•         Dr Sandra Johnston

Sandra Johnston has been active internationally as an artist since 1992 in the field of site-responsive enquiry into ‘contested spaces’ working predominantly through performance art and video/audio installations. Johnston has held several teaching and research posts since 2002, including an AHRC Research Fellowship at the University of Ulster, Belfast, investigating issues of ‘trauma of place’. In 2007 she was the Ré Soupault Guest Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar. Between 2012-2021 she was joint-lead on the BxNU MFA programme at Northumbria University, England. Additionally, she has been committed long-term to exploring collaborative processes of improvisation, facilitating workshop encounters, alongside engaging with the development and sustainability of creative networks.

•         Siobhan Mullan

Siobhán Mullen (Belfast, N Ireland) is a visual artist, born in Belfast, N. Ireland, 1972. Her interdisciplinary practice spans performance, experimental video/sound work and sculpture. Active since the mid 90’s, she has shown her work at International festivals throughout the UK, Europe, North/South America and New Zealand. In her live performative work she uses conscious and unconscious actions through her body/practice to consider the authenticity and instability of given moments in live time using the body as a lived but also constructed, fluid site of dwelling, risk and vulnerability. Recent thoughts reflect on the junctures of motherhood, feminism and disability.

•         Zara Lyness

Zara Lyness has an integrated approach to her practice, combining sculpture, ceramics, mark making and live processes in her work. Concepts of perception and memory are embedded in her practice, using gesture and objects, that reflect her interest in relationships and identity. She engages the viewer through recognition, recollection and connection. By focusing on the ‘small things’ that knit together she questions the foundations that lead to how we understand who we are.