Dr Lena Šimić is Liverpool-based transnational performance maker, local politician, activist, pedagogue and scholar researching contemporary performance and the maternal as well as arts responses to the climate crisis. Reader in Drama at Edge Hill University. Lena was a co-organiser of the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home between 2008 and 2018. Together with Emily Underwood-Lee, she ran the AHRC funded Performance and the Maternal project with a number of outputs including Manifesto for Maternal Performance (Art) 2016! (2017). Her short play, Three Conversations in collaboration with her sons, Neal and Sid, was commissioned for Climate Change Theatre Action in 2019. She has recently collaborated with James Marriott, Platform, on an audio play Three Sisters: A Story from the Climate Future (Big Light, 2023).

James Marriott works as part of Platform, which since 1983 has combined art, activism, education and research. He is co-creator a wide range of projects from performance to download-opera, from film to non-fiction books. These include And While London Burns (2007), The Oil Road (Verso 2012), Crude Britannia (Pluto 2021) and The Oil Machine (BBC 2021).

Bunker Talks

This event is part of Bunker Talks. Bunker Talks invite artists and researchers to talk about who they are and what they do. Curated by the Performance Research Group at Manchester School of Art, Bunker Talks explore geopolitical, ecological or economic concerns. The talks create space for critical encounters, presentations, provocation and dialogue.

Originally conceived in the pandemic to explore how artists, writers, curators and researchers continued to make and share their work, live Bunker Talks now take place at The Salutation every month. Since 2020, over 150 talks have been hosted by Art & Performance Researchers and colleagues from across the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. All talks are recorded, edited, captioned and then archived to create an online catalogue, capturing how artists, makers and curators think about the world today. Find previous talks here: