Guest Post by Dawn Willis : Bedding In, Bedding Out with Liz Crow – A tweet call and virtual participation information.

Some of you may already know that I am currently working with Liz Crow as her ‘tweetmeister’ in preparation and during her live event ‘Bedding In, Bedding Out’. We are hoping to build a diverse involved audience in time for the live event in which Liz will spend 48 hours in bed at Salisbury Arts. Some of that time will be spent in bedside conversation.

We have attempted to remove the barriers to involvement, clearly everyone can’t be there on the day! We are encouraging people to join the event via Social Media.

I am writing to ask if you could spare a moment to share the following links with anyone you feel would benefit from being involved, and with people who are interested in this subject.

If you are on twitter there’s a tweet you can ‘retweet’ –  https://twitter.com/RGPLizCrow/status/316110899238805504

Otherwise there’s a link here to all the information needed to participate virtually: http://www.roaring-girl.com/ and below is the official press release which I’d be grateful if you could pass on to contacts in the media.

BEDDING OUT CREATED AND PERFORMED BY LIZ CROW A 48-hour around-the-clock live performance by Liz Crow Part of the People Like You exhibition Salisbury Arts Centre & via social media 10 – 12 April 2013, starting 2.00pm BEDDING OUT emerges from the current welfare benefits overhaul, which threatens many with poverty and a propagandist campaign that has seen disability hate crime leap by 50%. Coinciding with the introduction of the Personal Independence Payment, which replaces Disability Living Allowance from 8 April 2013, it sees Liz taking her private bed-oriented life and placing it in the public arena for all to see over a 48-hour period. “I wear a public self that is energetic, dynamic and happening, but I am also ill and spend much of life in bed,“ explains artist-activist Liz Crow. “The private self is neither beautiful nor grownup. It does not win friends or accolades, and I conceal it carefully, but the benefits system demands a reversal – my private self paraded to justify support.“ As she contends with the contradictions of the benefits system, Liz explains: “For some months, I have lain low for fear of being penalised, but instead of letting fear determine who I am, I’d rather stare it in the face. Bedding Out is a performance in which I take my private self and make it public -something I have not done in over 30 years.“ “Since the public me is carefully constructed, this will be a kind of un-performing of my self. I want to make a twilight existence visible, but more than that, I want to show that what many people see as contradiction – what they describe as fraud – is only the complexity of real life. This is not a work of tragedy, but a work of in/visibility and complication; a chance to perform my self without façade.“ Members of the public will be invited to participate in ‘Bedside Conversations’ throughout the performance, gathering around the bed to talk about the work, its backdrop and its politics. BEDSIDE CONVERSATIONS: Free entry. Duration 40 minutes. Watch online at www.roaring-girl.com Wed 10 Apr – 2.00pm and 6.00pm – Online and Salisbury Arts Centre Thu 11 Apr – 12.00pm (Twitter) and 3.15pm – Online and Salisbury Arts Centre Fri 12 Apr – 10.15am – Online and Salisbury Arts Centre To attend Bedside Conversations in person, members of the public can sign up at the Salisbury Arts Centre website Phone: 01722 321744 Alternatively, users will be able watch online and participate via Twitter #beddingout. A BSL interpreter and live subtitles will be available for all Bedside Conversations. Wheelchair accessible venue. At a previous version of this performance, the artist was contacted by several individuals who were delighted that her work had helped make them and the issues they face more visible, but many expressed that they were too ill to attend in person. In response, this iteration Bedding Out will use social media to involve absent people virtually. ON TWITTER: Follow @RGPLizCrow and use the #beddingout hashtag to take part in the conversation. Join our Twitter-based Bedside Conversation on Thu 11 Apr at noon. BY TEXT: Anyone not on Twitter can text us: 07784 899514 and we can upload what they say to Twitter. Typing ‘MySecret’ before the message ensures that their message will be tweeted anonymously. VIA THE WEB: Bedding Out will be live streamed throughout the 48 hours at http://www.roaring-girl.com. Bedside Conversations will be live streamed with audio, BSL interpretation and live subtitles. Notes to Editors More information at: www.roaring-girl.com/productions/bedding-in-bedding-out To arrange an interview or request further information and images: Please contact Matthew on 01179 293335 or email matthew@coquo.co.uk   Venue Salisbury Arts Centre, Bedwin Street, SP1 3UT www.salisburyartscentre.co.uk / 01722 321744 Open 10.00am – 3.00pm And on the web throughout: www.roaring-girl.com. Artist Biography Liz Crow is an artist-activist working with performance, film, audio and text. She is drawn to drama, life stories and experimental work, and the potential of storytelling to trigger change. A former NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) fellow and founder of Roaring Girl Productions, Liz’s work has shown at London’s Tate Modern and the British Film Institute, as well as on television and at festivals internationally. Prior works include an appearance on the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square as part of sculptor Antony Gormley’s One and Other project. Liz’s provocative and controversial performance was part of a larger film-based installation, Resistance: which way the future?, that tours the UK and internationally. Roaring Girl Productions is a creative media projects company based in Bristol, founded by writer-director and activist Liz Crow. It undertakes media productions, training and associated projects, combining high quality creativity with practical activism. www.roaring-girl.com People Like You is a purposefully participatory new touring show of work by artists Sue Austin, Liz Crow and Gini that tackles the subjectivity and perceptions of disability, and the place of Disability Arts in the wider art sector. Through performance, film, sculpture and audience interaction, it explores commonalities of human experience and also conjures some very uncommon experiences of its own. Salisbury Arts Centre, 8 March – 12 April 2013. Bedding Out is funded by Arts Council England.