On a bright spring evening in Dublin, it is still possible to stumble into a room where something is not quite finished; where the edges of a work remain visible, where an artist is circling an idea rather than presenting it. These are increasingly rare conditions. The contemporary arts ecosystem, with its emphasis on deliverables and deadlines, tends to reward resolution over uncertainty. Yet, uncertainty is the site where the most vital work begins.
I have been thinking about this more and more. I founded Live Collision in 2009, after returning to Ireland from London, where I had spent time inside institutions that took artistic risk seriously, centralising practice over end products. What struck me then, and continues to shape my thinking now, is how much of that risk depends on process: on time, on space, on the freedom to experiment without the immediate pressure of output.
Fifteen editions on, Live Collision finds itself at an inflection point. For this milestone year, we are shifting to a biennial model, alternating between a large-scale international festival and something more in-progress, more intimate. This year marks the first iteration of the latter: Live Collision Salon.
The word “salon” is deliberate. It gestures toward a space of gathering, exchange, and work in progress. The Salon is not a festival in the traditional sense. It does not offer a neat programme of finished pieces. Instead, it invites audiences into proximity with process – to witness, and sometimes participate in, the unfolding of work that is still in formation.
This shift responds directly to the conditions artists are working within. Time is compressed; resources are stretched; the personal stakes of expression feel increasingly high. For artists whose practices fall outside dominant frameworks, those pressures can be particularly acute. The Salon is an attempt to create a context where labour is visible, experimentation is valued, and uncertainty is not immediately resolved.
Across several locations in Dublin city, the programme unfolds less as a sequence than as a landscape. One anchor point is the return of Pan Pan, whose work has long occupied a distinctive place in Irish performance. Their piece, drawn from The First Bad Man, takes the form of an extended encounter with a book – revisited and re-performed over time. In the repetition, meaning begins to shift; the act of revisiting the novel becomes a kind of performance in itself.
If Pan Pan’s work circles around repetition, Sonia Hughes’s contribution leans into accumulation. Her project, Lady Marmalade, is in its research phase. At its centre is a group of women forming a band, learning to play a single song over and over. The framework is loose, but within it Hughes traces something more elusive: the relationship between collective expression, emotional release and finding a path of resistance. The emphasis here is not on outcome, although the show will materialise, but on the conditions that make something possible.
Elsewhere, the Salon turns to listening. The Listening Room draws on a lineage that stretches from Tokyo’s jazz kissas to contemporary sound art practices. The premise is straightforward: a space designed for attention. A guest DJ, joined by a small group of selectors, shapes an evolving sonic environment. Tracks are not simply played but placed; transitions are allowed to linger. The audience is invited to sit with duration – to notice shifts in tone, in texture, in mood. In a cultural moment defined by speed and distraction, the act of listening, sustained and collective, begins to take on a different weight.
What connects these works is not a shared aesthetic but a shared orientation toward process. They are propositions – sometimes fragile, sometimes assertive, often unresolved. The rigour is there, but it is directed toward exploration rather than closure.
For me, this represents a necessary recalibration. Curating live art now requires a reconsideration of what it means to support artists; not only in terms of funding or visibility, but in terms of generating time, care, and context. The biennial model is one response to that challenge. By allowing a year for development and a year for presentation, it creates a rhythm that can accommodate both the slow work of making and the more public act of showing.
There is a risk in this. Audiences accustomed to conventional formats may find the Salon disorienting. The absence of clear beginnings and endings, the emphasis on process over product, can unsettle expectations. But that, too, is part of the proposition. Live art has always existed outside of the mainstream, and its value often lies in its refusal to conform.
As I think about the future of Live Collision, I return to the idea of the festival not as a fixed entity but as a set of conditions – a way of bringing people together around questions that do not yet have answers. The Salon is one articulation of that idea: an experiment in shifting attention away from outcomes and toward process, and in doing so, opening up new possibilities for artists and audiences alike.
-Lynnette Moran, Founding Festival Director at Live Collision
Information
Live Collision Salon
Dates: 1st to 3rd May 2026
Venue: Dublin City Centre, various locations
Tickets: Selection of ticketed and private events. All events and ticketing information can be found at livecollision.com
Programme: Discover the full programme, including all participating artists and events, at livecollision.com
