Liz Crow is a UK-based artist-activist working in performance, film, audio and text, with work shown at Tate Modern and Washington DC’s Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, as well as on the Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth, the Thames foreshore, and through social media. She is founder of Roaring Girl Productions (www.roaring-girl.com), a former NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) fellow, and has a practice-led PhD in methodologies of activism and ways of extending activist influence.
Works include the touring film installation Resistance: which way the future? which explored Aktion-T4, the Nazi programme of mass-murder that targeted disabled people, reflecting on what this history means for us now; an accompanying performance, Resistance on the Plinth, staged on the Fourth Plinth as part of sculptor Anthony Gormley's One & Other project, seated on her wheelchair wearing full Nazi regalia to draw attention to the 70th anniversary of Aktion-T4; Bedding Out, a 48-hour livestreamed durational performance responding to the UK government’s benefits overhaul, in which she took to her bed in a gallery, holding bedside conversations with members of the public about the issues raised by the work; and Figures, a mass-sculptural durational performance that made visible the human cost of the UK government’s austerity programme and urged action against it.
Liz has recently begun work on A Change in the Climate, a series of performance actions in natural spaces exploring the complex interweave of climate change and disability. Stills from the first two performance actions, with accompanying texts, will form part of the DaDaFest 2024 programme.
Liz’s moving image installation Resistance: which way the future? featured in DaDaFest 2009, where it won the Liverpool Daily Post Arts Award, Best Small Exhibition, 2009.
In September 1939, the Nazis instituted their first official programme of mass murder. Known as Aktion-T4, it targeted disabled people and became the blueprint for the Final Solution to wipe out Jews, gay people, gypsies and other social groups. Chronicling the journey from 1939 to today, the installation shows how disabled people still experience those historical values as a daily threat, where hate crime, over 340,000 disabled people living in institutions, and a race to assisted suicide daily challenge the worth of disabled people’s lives and their right to exist.
Resistance: which way the future? incorporated historical drama and contemporary conversations, touring from 2010-14 to key cities in the UK, Dublin and Washington DC’s Kennedy Center.
Image credits
Photo of Liz: Matthew Fessey/Roaring Girl Productions
Poster for Resistance: Kevin Clifford/Tim Lee/Roaring Girl Productions