Blast Theory

Daniel Brine

Daniel Brine is Associate Director of the Live Art Development Agency.  Based in London, the Live Art Development Agency is one of the key organisations for the support and development of Live Art and performance practices in the UK, working to create new frameworks, contexts and strategies in which to produce, promote, document, critique, and champion the concept of performance.

Performance projects curated by Lois Keidan and Daniel Brine at the Agency include: Live Culture, Tate Modern, 2003; Variety Acts, De La Warr Pavillion, 2005; Performing Rights London QMUL 2006, Vienna Tanzquartier 2007 and Glasgow NRLA 2008.  They have also curated symposia at venues as diverse as Soho Theatre, Whitechapel Art Gallery and Arnolfini. Agency edited publications include Exposures, 2002, China Live, 2005 and Programme Notes, 2007 (www.thisisLiveArt.co.uk).

Prior to joining the Live Art Development Agency, Brine worked with the Australia Council and Arts Council England, and was co-director of the NOW Festival 2000.

Sara Dauncey

Sara is an accountant by training, a finance and business manager by practice.

In joining the Blast Theory Board, she brings many years experience in working in the public and private sectors, in both large and small organisations. In recent years her work has been based in Brighton. She was Head of finance and operations for the Arts Council South East and since October 2006 she took up the appointment as head of finance at the Brighton Dome and Festival.

Her previous experience includes working at Sotheby’s International auctioneers based at their East of Atlantic head quarters in Bond St. London; working for an international airline, where she completed her accountancy training and qualifications and numerous freelance and project assignments across a broad range of businesses.

Her work experience covers not just finance and accounting but all areas of business management and she has particular knowledge of governance issues.

Sara is committed to the development of the cultural offering for both audiences and artists in the city and a keen advocate for the arts generally. She is delighted to be joining the board of Blast Theory and hopes to see the company develop its own unique body of work in the coming years.

When she’s not working you might find her jogging along the seafront in an attempt to keep sufficiently fit to undertake the odd mountain trekking holiday.

Celia Davies

Celia Davies originally studied Illustration at the University of Brighton and Arts Management at the University of Sussex. Since then Celia has gained over 10 years experience of working in the arts including live performance and gallery education, building particular expertise in gallery based curated projects.

Since 2002, Celia has been Head of Exhibitions at the De La Warr Pavilion, devising a diverse and cross disciplinary programme of contemporary solo and group exhibitions and major new commissions of work, profiling both international and regionally based artists.

Celia has been editor and contributing writer for several visual art publications including editor of the monograph series on contemporary British Photographers published by Photoworks and Steidl. She lives in Sussex.

Matt Adams

Matt Adams' first passion was theatre from the age of 13 as an actor and director. Acting credits include The Ghost Of Oxford Street directed by Malcolm McLaren for Channel 4. He studied English Literature at University College London and co-founded Blast Theory in 1991 with a group of friends who worked at the Renoir Cinema in Bloomsbury.

Matt co-curated the Screen series of video works for Live Culture at Tate Modern in 2003 and curated the Games and War season at the ICA in London in 2003. He has taught widely on performance, new media and interdisciplinary practice at institutions such as the Royal College of Art and Pace University in New York. He has contributed to research by Ofcom, the Technology Strategy Board and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and has co-authored over a dozen papers with the University of Nottingham.

Matt has presented at conferences such as Hot Docs documentary film festival in Toronto; Banff Television Conference; Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre; The Future of War: Aesthetics, Politics, Technologies in New York; Dutch Electronic Art Festival in Rotterdam; dLux Media Arts festival in Sydney; The Creative City in Taipei.

He has written essays for "Art & D: Artistic Research and Development", "Live 5: My Perfect Theatre" and Vodafone's Receiver magazine. He is a Visiting Professor at the Central School of Speech and Drama and is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Exeter.

Ju Row Farr

Ju Row Farr is one of the founder members of Blast Theory.

She trained to be a dancer until she was 20, then went to Canterbury College of Art to do a BTEC and Goldsmith’s to do a degree in fine art and textiles.

She has taught and mentored extensively around the work of the Blast Theory, most notably a module in devising at Demontfort University, Leceister and mentoring artists in Australia and the UK. In 2000 she was one of seven live artists involved in the Legacy Project – based at Arnolfini and Prema.  In 2001 she received a Live Art Development Agency bursary for professional development. During the same year she was commissioned by the Robert Pacitti Company to make Ease a short video work.
In 2006 she took part in a creative cross disciplinary lab called Concepting Pervasive Multi-User Applications organised by Sagasnet.

Ju Row Farr has sat on panels including for the Combined Arts Fund at the Arts Council and Shooting Live Artists. She is currently a board member on the Robert Pacitti Company board and is a parent governor at a school in Brighton.

Dicky Eton

Having spent ten years in corporate banking, Dicky re-trained as an actor from which he developed an interest in experimental theatre & performance. His first job with Blast Theory found him buying a limousine with his credit card from which he hasn’t looked back (or been paid).

Dicky splits his time between Manchester, his hometown, and a canal boat in London. A regular performer/ deviser with Pacitti Company, he is also part of the Duckie collective acting as Administrative Producer/ Performance Co-ordinator.

Sheila Ghelani

Sheila originally trained in contemporary dance, and worked as a choreographer, dancer and teacher for several years before making the crossover into Live Art/Performance in 1999.

Her solo practice addresses ideas that stem from notions of mixing and ‘being mixed’ and attempts to engage with words and ideas that she finds difficult like mule, mongrel, half-caste, monster, the in-between. Informed by her own experience of being mixed heritage (half Indian and half English), she is interested in hybridity, crossings, blood, skins, skinning, carefully controlled experiments, well-oiled machinery, colour, genetics and love.

Sheila also works collaboratively and as well being a Blast Theory Associate Artist is a longstanding member of Pacitti Company. She has toured and performed nationally and internationally for both companies and regularly lead artists’ workshops for Pacitti Company in the UK, and abroad. She also teaches in other contexts and has taught and lectured at various spaces, centres and universities in the UK.

Julianne Pierce

Julianne Pierce is an Australian curator, writer and producer specialising in digital and media arts. In September 2007 she relocated to the UK to take up the position of Executive Producer with Blast Theory. She has worked in the Australian arts and digital media sector for over twenty years and from 2000 to 2005 was the Executive Director of ANAT (Australian Network for Art and Technology). She has curated several events and exhibitions including Primavera, the annual exhibition of emerging Australian artists for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in 2003 and the Artists’ Week program for the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 2006 and 2008. Julianne is a founding member of the influential computer artist group VNS Matrix, who exhibited widely in Australia and internationally from 1991 - 1997. She is also a regular contributor to magazines and journals including Realtime, Artlink and Photofile and in 2006/2007 was guest commentator on new media and screen culture for ABC Radio arts program ‘The Deep End’.

Dan Lamont

Dan has over 10 years experience in various different areas of administration. He worked for Guardian Newspapers and later for Guardian Unlimited managing all the internet advertising for the UK's most popular online newspaper. He has managed the administration for a firm of software engineers based in Sussex.

Currently Dan is responsible for administering all aspects of Blast Theory's financial systems, managing large budgets from IPerG and DTI, core funding from Arts Council England, project funds, income and expenditure for touring and export.