Alice Barrens is a performance-led multidisciplinary artist based in Edinburgh.
'In my work, things collide and connect and do not get resolved. My practice combines performance, moving image, writing, and diagrammatic drawing to explore themes of authority, humiliation, intimacy, labour, surveillance, and self-optimisation within contemporary life. I am interested in how people navigate systems of power, digital culture, addiction, endurance, and everyday masochistic behaviours under hypercapitalism. I use humour, discomfort, absurdity, and eroticism to provoke unexpected and conflicting emotional responses in the audience; I believe that is where critical reflection emerges. Research, personal experience, internet culture, and theory all feed into my process, which usually begins and ends with excessive overthinking.'
Bio
Strategies for Navigating Hostile Systems of Power, 2026 (installation view)
Strategies for Navigating Hostile Systems of Power is a mixed-media installation and performance project which explores communication, submission, and isolation as behavioural strategies for navigating contemporary power structures. The work draws from conspiracy culture, dolphin communication experiments, surveillance systems, and technological infrastructures. Through humour, discomfort, paranoia, and eroticism, it investigates how people attempt to remain functional within systems they may not fully comprehend.
Performance titles:
Strategy I: Communication (for Peter)
Strategy II: Submission (for Margaret)
Strategy III: Isolation (for John)
The Vanishing of Anadius, 2026
Performance + moving image work.
The Vanishing of Anadius follows two parallel systems of production: a Sim trained to become an artist, and an anonymous developer maintaining a pirated updater for The Sims 4. The Sim operates as a productive version of the artist performing progress, while the artist remains split between living and making. The live performance of drawing the diagram positions the artist’s body within the same system it describes.
I'll Be Here All Night, 2026
I’ll Be Here All Night operates across multiple registers of guilt, shame, and submission. The performance draws on deep-seated forms of self-blame, from patriarchal and religious conditioning to the psychological weight of being undeservedly punished. It engages with society’s fixation on the exploitation and suffering of young women, which many of us have internalised.
Popcorn for the End of the World, 2025
Popcorn for the End of the World was a durational performance examining the spectacle of punishment. The performer kneeled on popcorn kernels while audience members watched. They were invited to throw popcorn at the performer once they became bored. The work explored how passive viewing shifts into participation, and how pain and humiliation become normalised through repetition and consumption.
Diagrammatic work
