Emergency Index: Volume 3

Alex May’s Painting With Light performance at Tate Modern was featured in Emergency Index: Volume 3, a substantial publication that documents recent performance work through artists’ own accounts. For May, that inclusion matters because it places the piece inside a wider record of live and time-based practices rather than treating it only as a one-off event.

The publication is designed to capture performances that might otherwise disappear, and that makes it a strong fit for this work. Painting With Light depends on temporary arrangements of objects, projection, movement, and live decision-making, so its meaning is closely tied to duration and situation. Being documented in Emergency Index extends the life of that performance without reducing it to a simple still or promotional trace.

Within the wider practice, this kind of publication context is important because it shows how May’s work moves between live experience and archival form. The performance remains grounded in projection, material transformation, and the instability of the image, but here it also becomes part of a broader conversation about how ephemeral works are remembered, described, and carried forward.