It Was Forty Years Ago Today

New Website

2011-06-18T20:18:00.004+01:00

Our new bilingual website is up and running - containing extracts from over 40 interviews with artists, administrators and audience members and access to a fully searchable database, documenting nearly 700 performance events created in Wales between 1965 and 1979: www.performance-wales.org

Website Launch

2011-06-15T09:06:00.001+01:00

We are very pleased to announce that the new website and database will be launched this Friday, 17th June at the Cyfrwng Conference in Cardiff. The website includes clips from the 40 solo, sited and group interviews that we've conducted over the past two years with artists, administrators, former art students, teachers and audience members. Our new, updated database can also be found on the website, with information on over 700 events in Wales between 1965 and 1979, including performances, concerts, interventions, teaching events and peformative protests. The database is fully searchable and contains images, memories and other traces of the work that we have discovered during the course of our research. Please take a look, and let us know if you have more information, or if it jogs any memories.

Finally, Heike and Rebecca would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the project, especially our interviewees who have been so generous with their time and sharing their archives with us - diolch yn fawr!

Coming towards a close

2011-02-21T16:41:00.000Z

Heike and Rebecca are coming towards to end of the project, winding down the research and focussing more on the outputs of the online, searchable database and the collection of interviews that will be deposited in various archives.

We will be releasing more information about this over the coming weeks, and also launching our new website.

We will also be presenting our findings at various conferences, including the Performance Studies International Conference in Utrecht at the end of May.

In the meantime, if you would like to contact us, please continue to email mail@performance-wales.org

Interview with Clive Robertson

2010-12-14T15:03:00.001Z

Rebecca and Heike met with Clive Robertson this week in London; Clive is an artist, critic and publisher, now based at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada.

After studying at Plymouth and Liverpool art colleges, Clive went to Cardiff College of Art in 1967, in part attracted by the new teaching approaches being pioneered by Tom Hudson and his colleagues. He recalled Robin Page, a Fluxus artist, coming to Cardiff to give his Action Lecture on War as part of the regular symposiums held by the college. Clive also talked about his own work, more information of which can be found on our database. Clive went on to complete at MFA at Reading University before moving to Canada and establishing the W.O.R.K.S.R.E.P.O.R.T. - more information on this can be found on Clive's webpage (click on the title to this blog entry above).

Interview with Cameron & Miller

2010-12-08T15:42:00.017Z

Heike and Rebecca travelled to a very cold, snowy Sheffield this week to meet with Shirley Cameron and Roland Miller. Cameron and Miller have performed together for over forty years, and during the early 1970s were based in Swansea. The photo here was taken during the Swansea One Week College of Art, which was attended by a number of our other contributors as art students, and a number of famous names including Jeff Nuttall, Marc Chaimowicz and Ken Campbell.

Heike has interviewed them before about their work as part of the 'What's Welsh For Performance' project. This time, we focussed on the networks of performers, venues and festivals that made up the 'scene' in Britain during the 1970s. Shirely and Roland were also kind enough to let us look through their archive of documents, photographs and ephemera.

Interview with Nigel Rolfe

2010-12-06T15:30:00.001Z

Nigel Rolfe is an artist based in Dublin, and a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art. He has been making performances and video art for over 30 years and in 1977 he was part of a group of international artists invited to take part in the Eisteddfod in Wrexham as part of the Welsh Art Council's programme How the Past Perishes, How the Future Becomes/ Fel y darfuÕr gorffennol - fel y del y dyfodol. Nigel created a piece called Towers that elicited a somewhat hostile reaction from some quarters of the press. He was later invited to re-perform the work at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff by the curator, David Briars.

Heike met with Nigel to discuss his work and his memories of the Eisteddfod, and of the performance scene at this time. For more information about Nigel's work, click on the heading to this blog entry. Further information can be found on our website - http://www.performance-wales-org/

Interview with Richard Frame

2010-11-27T15:02:00.000Z

Rebecca met with Richard Frame this week; Richard was a contemporary of Dave Stephens at Cardiff College of Art and collaborated with him on several conceptual pieces during his Foundation Year. He was also a member of the 'Myself and Others' group run by John Gingell and Di Setch.

Richard later went to study at Newport College of Art where he continued to use performance and conceptual ideas within his work - with some of his fellow students, he formed a group called The Gay Dogs, notable because none of them could play their instruments or sing - this was in 1973. He also performed as part of the Portsmouth Sinfonia in Newport and at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Interview with Keith Wood

2010-11-25T14:41:00.012Z

Keith Wood came to Cardiff College of Art in 1966, and began making performances as a student. Some of these were solo affairs, such as an explosion in the car park during one early experimentation, while others were done in collaboration with other students, including John Danvers. In a number of the interviews, Keith has been named as being very influential on his fellow students and others that he worked with later on.

After leaving college, Keith continued his interest performance, firstly with his own group, the Keith Wood Group, and later with Highway Shoes - Chapter's company in residence - before leaving for the USA, a regular theme in his later work. For more information on these, please see the database on our website, http://www.performance-wales.org/

Rebecca and Heike met with Keith to talk about his early interest in performance and its development, along with some of his productions, including The Nighthawk which starred Mike Pearson, and The Gospel According To Lenny, about Lenny Bruce.

Interview with Dek Leverton

2010-11-15T14:31:00.001Z

Rebecca met with Dek Leverton this week, a former member of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, and a founder of Pauper's Carnival. Pauper's Carnival was formed in Cardiff in the mid-1970s, with a core membership of Dek and former drama teacher Vanya Constant.

They produced new, unique performances at Chapter and also at a number of other sites and performance spaces in Wales, and have been mentioned by a number of our contributors as being memorable and beautifully crafted.

Dek is pictured (right) holding a photo of Clown Dances, from 1977. Pauper's Carnival collaborated with other groups, including Moving Being, Pip Simmons and Brith Gof.

Interview with Roger Ely

2010-10-25T14:47:00.001+01:00

We met with Roger Ely this week at his home in London. Roger studied at Leeds College of Art and was a contemporary of Dave Stephens. His tutors included John Darling and Jeff Nuttall, and Roger went on to become a key figure in the performance art scene as a writer, artist and programmer.

In 1977, along with Neil Butler, Roger put on the first Brighton Festival of Contemporary Arts, featuring the likes of Shirley Cameron, Roland Miller, Throbbing Gristle, IOU and many, many others. Then, in 1979 he was one of the founders of Primary Source magazine which sadly ended after 8 issues but is still a great read if you have the opportunity. Roger has also toured as an artist, including with Dave Stephens and Ian Hinchliffe as Matchbox Purveyors.

We hope to meet with Roger again before the end of the project, but would like to thank him for meeting with us and contributing to our research.

Conversation with Janek Alexander

2010-10-17T14:46:00.015+01:00

Heike was invited to chair a public conversation today with Janek Alexander, director of Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, about his performance work in the 1970s and 1980s. Janek was part of an extraordinarily vibrant and diverse performance scene, which included Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, Pauper's Carnival and Moving Being, all resident at Chapter in the 1970s.
Janek made an extraordinary debut in 1976 with Howard Hughes, a performance described by Mike Pearson as ‘a tour de force’. He went on to create ten more substantial pieces of work in a quest to develop a new form of minimalist "anti-theatre". Previously unseen video footage, rare audio recordings and contributions from former collaborators (Karen McGregor, Karen Lucas, Dave Perry and Paul Turner) and Alexander himself explored this unique body of work and the first decade of experimentation at Chapter.

More information: http://www.chapter.org/20742.html

Interview with Marty St James

2010-10-14T11:43:00.013+01:00

Marty St James on 'Mr & Mrs', HTV (1977) Image courtesy of Marty St James

We interviewed Marty St James, Professor of Fine Art at the University of Hertfordshire and former student of Cardiff College of Art at his London studio this week. Marty has been making performance work since his late teens, working with Ian Hinchliffe, Rob Con, Roland Miller and Shirley Cameron amongst many others.

At Cardiff, he made a number of pieces for the symposium that John Gingell ran in the Reardon Smith auditorium, and made an appearance on the HTV show 'Mr and Mrs' as part of his final year show. After graduating, he continued to produce conceptual and performance pieces around Wales, including his 'Morris 1000 Dancing' which visited a number of towns and villages, and 'I'll See You' which he presented at several art centres.

We would like to thank Marty for allowing us to interview him, and also for his help in identifying some of the images of his work that we have found in different archives.

Sited interview: Mike Pearson at Chapter

2010-10-11T12:15:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we travelled to Cardiff to interview Mike Pearson around the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff. This followed on from the series of sited interviews we did with Mike around Cardiff last November that included various spaces within Cardiff University, Llanover Hall and the Sherman Theatre.

Mike has been involved with Chapter since its inception 40 years ago, and was one of the first people to move into the building and produce work, firstly with Transitions, later with Cardiff Lab. He also witnessed many performances by a number of artists and groups including Nigel Rolfe, Pip Simmons and Moving Being.

We hope that this will be the first in a series of interviews around Chapter with people.

Thanks to Mike for his recollections and taking us on a tour of the building as he knew it, and to James Tyson and his colleagues at Chapter for making this possible.

Lectures and Presentations

2010-10-06T10:40:00.001+01:00

It's been a busy summer - we have been doing a number of presentations and lectures about the project at different events - here are some of them.
For a full list visit: http://www.performance-wales.org/english/events/lectures.htm

SYMPOSIUM PRESENTATION AND CHAIR (Heike): "Living Archives - Session with Rose English and Anne Bean"
Performing Idea symposium, part of Performance Matters, Goldsmiths University of London, Roehampton University and Live Art Development Agency, funded by an AHRC Research Grant, Whitechapel Gallery and Toynbee Studios, 6 October 2010. Details

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION (Heike): "Performance art (in) history: disconnecting traditions, connecting histories"
"TAPRA: History and Historiography Working Group", TaPRA THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE RESEARCH ASSOCIATION conference, Glamorgan University, Cardiff 9–11 September 2010. Details

PRESENTATION (Heike and Rebecca): What's Welsh for Performance?- Creating a record of performance art in Wales
"Documentation and the Cultural Record" session at Culture Colony-Y Wladfa Newydd launch day, 7 September 2010, Aberystwyth Arts Centre. More information and documentation; response

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION (Heike): "Teaching the Avant-garde - (Mis)Performing Pedagogies"
"MISperformance -an inverted approach to doing Performance Studies (international?) - PSi15 follow-up event" conference, Rijeka, Croatia 3–5 September 2010.

PRESENTATION (Heike and Rebecca):"'Welsh Not': Performing Wales in 1970s Performance Art"
"Theorizing Wales: Gender, Culture, Politics" conference, Swansea University, Gregynog 12–14 July 2010. Details

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION (Heike): Performing An Oral History of Performance Art in Wales
"[Record] [Create] Oral History in Art, Craft and Design (Oral History Society Annual Conference 2010)" conference,Victoria & Albert Museum London, 2+3 July 2010. Details
.....

Interview with Dave Stephens

2010-10-04T10:02:00.002+01:00

We travelled down to Brighton this week to meet with Dave Stephens at his home. Dave is originally from Cardiff, and studied for his Art Foundation at Cardiff College of Art before moving to Leeds College of Art for his degree.

At art college Dave began performing monologues on different subjects; sometimes confessional, sometimes provocative, he went on to tour the UK, Europe and North America. His final show was at the Central School of Art in 1985 and he has not performed since.

We would like to thank Dave for his generosity and hospitality, and for talking to us about his performance career. Also, we'd like to thank Matt Page for filming the interview for us.

Swansea Fringe Festival and Newport College of Art

2010-09-10T15:13:00.001+01:00

This week, Rebecca met with Robin Hall and David Hurn.

Robin came to Swansea to work with the Open Cast Theatre, and later worked for the Swansea Fringe Festival for several years during the 1980s. The festival brought many performers to the city, including the then-unknown comedians Paul Merton and Arthur Smith. He worked closely with the performance artist Rob Con who was also the festival administrator in its first year.

David is a member of Magnum, the photographers cooperative, and founded the photography course at Newport College of Art nearly forty years ago. He was also a colleague of the artist Keith Arnatt and taught Arnatt photography, and later curated an exhibition of Arnatt's work called 'I'm A Real Photographer'.

We would like to thank David and Robin for their time and contributing to our research.

Project featured on The Wire website

2010-08-11T12:32:00.001+01:00

The project has been included by Rhodri Davies on his Wire magazine portal link (click the title to this blog entry and if should take you straight there).

Rhodri is featured in the 'Invisible Jukebox' section of the new edition of the magazine, and an MP3 of his installation room harp at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle is available here: http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/4675/

Research trip to London and interview with Mo Tingey

2010-08-03T12:32:00.028+01:00

We spent much of the last week in London, visiting the archives at the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and listening to a number of oral history interviews held at the National Sound Archive at the British Library.

We also interviewed Mo Tingey for the project. Mo was one of the people who staged the Fluxus events at the Aberystwyth Arts Festival in 1968, along with Brian Lane - she was then known as Maurene Sandoe. Mo brought along to the interview some beautiful leaflets and boxes that she had made back in the 1960s, containing paper dolls, small boxes that made sounds, sound scores and stage directions. These were made in small numbers and sold to people, part of the idea about making art accessible and available to everyone.

We'd like to thank Mo for meeting with us and contributing to the project.

Group Interview 3 - Former Cardiff College of Art students

2010-07-09T13:37:00.009+01:00

This week we met with four former students from Cardiff College of Art, as Cardiff School of Art & Design was then known. We were fortunate to be allowed to hold the interview at UWIC's Howard Gardens campus, where they had studied during the late 1960s and 1970s with (amongst others) Tom Hudson and John Gingell. A tour of the building prompted lots of memories from their student days.

We would like to thank Prof André Stitt, Debbie Savage and Nicola Brown for their help in arranging for us to use Howard Gardens. We'd also like to thank our interviewees, Colin Ainsworth, Tim Diggles, Suzy Peters and Mike Shaw, for travelling to Cardiff, lending us material from their personal archives, and for their memories and stories.

Interview with Sally Roberts Jones

2010-07-01T09:01:00.001+01:00

Rebecca interviewed Sally Roberts Jones this week, about her memories of the Commonwealth Poetry Conference, which took place in Cardiff in 1965 as part of the Commonwealth Festival. Poets and writers that attended the conference included Clive James and Les Murray of Australia, Alexander Trocchi, Brian Patten, Adrian Henri and George Macbeth.

The Conference included a happening organised by Tom Hudson at Jackson Hall in Cardiff called 'Assembly Line' - this was possibly the first happening to take place in Wales, and among to participants was the American musician and composer Philip Corner. We would love to hear from anyone who remembers the poetry conference or took part in 'Assembly Line' - email mail@performance-wales.org

Rebecca and Heike would like to thank Sally Roberts Jones for her sharing her time and memories with us.

Interview with David Briers

2010-06-23T15:19:00.029+01:00

David Briers was the Visual Arts Organiser at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff between 1976 and 1984, responsible for programming the galleries. Rebecca went to interview David this week his interest in performance art, and his time at Chapter.

Among the artists that David invited to the centre was Nigel Rolfe, who had caused outrage in some areas of the press following his 'Towers' performance at the National Eisteddfod at Wrexham in 1977 (or as the Daily Mail put it, 'The Welsh art of paying an Irishman to demolish bricks with his head').

David invited Nigel Rolfe to do a performance of the 'Towers' piece, and also one called 'Treatment of Individual Parts' (see above and right - copyright Steve Benbow).

If you remember seeing this, or any other performance work in Wales during the 1960s and 1970s we would love to hear from you.

Heike and Rebecca would like to thank David Briers for his help with the project.

Presentation at the ICA's Live Weekends

2010-05-20T13:38:00.002+01:00

Heike will be presenting the project at the ICA's Live Weekends this weekend, together with artist Ivor Davies.

'What's Welsh for Performance?' Archiving the history of performance art in Wales 1965-2010 - featuring Ivor Davies in conversation with Heike Roms on Destruction in Art London / Edinburgh / Durham / Bristol / Swansea 1966-1969

22 May 2010 - 2.20-4.45pm, Lower Gallery, ICA Institute of Contemporary Art, The Mall - LondonSW1Y 5AH
Admission Free
As part of ICA's LIVE WEEKENDS: Futures and Pasts - curated by Tim Etchells
More information on the event here:
http://www.ica.org.uk/24606/Talks/Live-Weekends-Futures-and-Pasts.html

Interview with Isabel Hitchman

2010-05-06T15:39:00.013+01:00

Rebecca interviewed Isabel Hitchman today - Isabel worked at the Arts Council of Wales during the 1970s and was involved in the founding of the Oriel Gallery. Along with holding regular exhibitions, Oriel was also a book shop and, on occasion, provided a space for performance. This photo shows a performance by former Cardiff School of Art and Design students Marty St James and Anne Wilson, called 'Perfect Moments'.

We would like to thank Isabel for her hospitality and her time, and for helping with our research.

Interview with Wyndham Heycock - Barry Summer School

2010-04-30T14:13:00.005+01:00

Heike and Rebecca met Wyndham Heycock, co-director of Barry Summer School with the artist Leslie Moore, from 1962-1973. It was during this period that the school reached its peak, attracting artists and musicians from across the world to teach at Barry, including George Brecht, John Epstein, Roland Miller, Terry Setch, Harry Thubron, Ernest Zobole and jazz musicians including Larry Adler. We'd like to thank Wyndham Heycock, and his wife Sally, for their help with the project.

The photo below is of a group of students listening to Tom Hudson speak at the Summer School around 1965 (click on the photo to enlarge it); if you can identify any of the people in the picture, or you attended any of the art or music courses during the 1960s and early 1970s - please email us at mail@performance-wales.org

Future Presentation - London July 2010

2010-04-21T12:41:00.001+01:00

Heike will be presenting a paper based on her oral history work at the annual conference of the Oral History Society:

"Performing an Oral History of Performance Art in Wales" - "[Record] [Create] Oral History in Art, Craft and Design (Oral History Society Annual Conference 2010"
Victoria & Albert Museum London, 2+3 July 2010

Presentations - London April 2010

2010-04-17T18:07:00.000+01:00

Heike presented a paper based on her oral history work at a symposium in London this week:

An Oral History of Performance Art in Wales', at the "Oral History/Theatre History: Past - Present - Future" conference, Rose Bruford College London, 17 April 2010.
More information:http://www.str.org.uk/events/other/archive/oralhistory2010.shtml

Future Presentation - Theorising Wales Conference, July 2010

2010-04-14T14:10:00.001+01:00

Heike and Rebecca will be presenting a paper at the Theorising Wales conference, organised by Swansea University. The conference will be held at Gregynog Hall between 12th and 14th July.

The paper will consider the emergence of Wales and Welshness as concerns in visual art practice in the late 1970s, with particular reference to the practice of performance art & the National Eisteddfod of 1977.

Further details about the conference can be found here: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/CREW/Conferences/TheorisingWales/

Interviews with Joan Baker and Anne Gingell

2010-04-12T13:56:00.002+01:00

Rebecca met with Joan Baker and Anne Gingell today, to hear their memories of Cardiff College of Art from the 1960s and 1970s.

Joan Baker studied art at Cardiff, before going on to teach at other colleges including Bath. She returned to Cardiff and taught there for 38 years, working closely with Tom Hudson.

Anne Gingell moved to Cardiff in 1966 when her husband, John, took up a teaching post at the college. John Gingell was very interested in performance, and his ‘Alternative Studies’ course at the college laid the foundations for the establishment of the Third Area, later to become the Space Workshop.

We are still looking for former students from the college. If you took part in performances with John Gingell, or were one of the students experimenting with performance and sound in the early 1960s (or earlier!) then we would love to hear from you.

Thanks to Joan Baker and Anne Gingell for their support for the project.

Interview with Sybil Crouch, Taliesin

2010-04-09T11:35:00.024+01:00

Rebecca interviewed Sybil Crouch today, of Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea. Sybil was a student in Swansea and later went to work for West Wales Arts based in Carmarthen, taking charge of their art programmes. Part of our discussion was on the Swansea University Festival in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which included work by Gustav Metzger, Ivor Davies and Jeffrey Shaw. If you attended the festival or Pavilions in the Park or perhaps saw Shirley Cameron and Roland Miller as Cyclamen Cyclists in Swansea Docks then we would love to hear from you.

If you wish to jog your memory try our database, which contains over 2000 entries of performance art events in Wales and is available through the project’s website at http://www.performance-wales.org/

Thanks Sybil for sharing your memories with us.

Presentations in Glasgow and Liverpool

2010-03-26T18:42:00.003Z

Heike gave two presentations on the project over the past week.

Heike contributed to a roundtable on Remembering Performance as part of the 30-anniversary edition of the National Review of Live Art Festival in Glasgow. Other participants included Claire MacDonald, Richard Layzell, Fiona Wright and Paul Clarke.

Sunday 21 March 2010, 11am -1pm at The Arches in Glasgow.

Further details are available at:

http://www.newmoves.co.uk/event-list-2010-national-review-of-live-art/40-national-review-of-live-art/697-remembering-performance-panel-discussion

Heike presented a paper on her research into the development of performance art at Cardiff School of Art in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the Sculpture & Performance Conference, organised by the Henry Moore Foundation and the Tate Liverpool.
Friday 26 March 2010, 2pm at Tate Liverpool.
Further details are available at:http://www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk/hmi/research/research-events/sculpture-performance

For future presentations visit http://www.performance-wales.org/english/events/lectures.htm

Interview with Glyn Jones

2010-03-05T11:42:00.003Z

Glyn Jones was the Head of the School of Fine Art at Cardiff College of Art between 1972 and 1999. Born in the Rhondda, he studied at Cardiff in the 1950s, before going to the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Glyn has exhibited widely and is a member of the 56 Group.

We spoke to him about his career as a teacher and artist, and also about the development of Cardiff College of Art and of performance art in the college with the establishment of the so-called "Third Area" and later the "Space Workshop".

If you were a student during this period, we would love to hear from you; please email mail@performance-wales.org

We'd like to thank Glyn for his support, and for sharing his memories with us.

Anti-bodies/Zoo Reunion

2010-03-04T11:22:00.005Z

We are continuing the work on John Gingell's archive and this week interviewed three of his collaborators from the early 1970s. John Danvers, Charles Garrad and Ken Hickman were all members of the Zoo Group, an artists' cooperative co-founded by Gingell in the early 1970s.

John, Charles and Ken travelled down to Cardiff, to John Gingell's former home, to meet with us. Along with talking about the Zoo Group work, Charles and John were students at Cardiff College of Art during the time that 'Alternative Studies' was being established, which went on to become the Third Area/Space Workshop.

The three were also members of the group 'Anti-bodies', which produced work around Europe in the early 1970s.

The interview summary will be available online on our website at some point soon.

We'd like to thank John, Charles and Ken, and also the Gingell family for their time and support and for contributing to the research.

Next, we hope to meet with more former students from Cardiff who were involved in performance work during this time. If you would like more information about this, please email us at mail@performance-wales.org

Ian Breakwell exhibition in Derby - Unword (Swansea 1970)

2010-02-13T12:42:00.009Z

The QUAD in Derby currently shows a retrospective of the late British artist Ian Breakwell.
Breakwell presented a number of performance pieces in Wales in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including UNWORD 4 at the Swansea University Arts Festival in 1970. A film documentation of the seminal UNWORD series, made with film-maker Mike Leggett, is on show at the QUAD.

Ian Breakwell: The Elusive State of Happiness
QUAD Gallery, Corridors and Digital Screens
13th February 2010 – 18th April 2010
http://www.derbyquad.co.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/ian-breakwell

For information on UNWORD 4 go to:
http://www.performance-wales.org/english/archive/1970/1970.htm

Interview with Christine Kinsey, co-founder of Chapter Arts Centre

2010-02-05T13:32:00.002Z

Christine Kinsey, along with Mik Flood and Bryan Jones, founded Chapter in Cardiff over forty years ago. Chapter has become an important site in Cardiff for the arts, and one of Christine's (many) roles was in programming the gallery spaces, along with renovating the building, working behind the bar, designing publicity, managing the administration and a host of other jobs.

Rebecca has been to interview Christine this week about the founding of Chapter and the early years, the arts scene in Cardiff at the time, and the experimental work that flourished in Chapter.

Thanks to Christine for her time and sharing her memories. A transcript summary will be posted on the project website in the near future.

First Group Interview - Aberystwyth Arts Festival 1968

2010-01-25T10:29:00.003Z

We held our first group interview last weekend with five former Aberystywyth University students who had been on the organising committee or attended Aberystwyth Arts Festival in 1968. The '68 festival brought Fluxus to Aberystwyth with a three-day happening organised by Brian Lane, Rainbow Day and the First Dream Machine. It included a concert of experimental electronic music, poetry events and a Fluxclinic, where particpants had their body-parts weighed, measured the capacity of their mouth and were tested for x-ray vision.

The amount of material on the festival that the group has kept was wonderful, including original leaflets from Brian Lane's 'Leaflet Concert', responses to requests to be patron of the festival (including Cecil Day Lewis, Raymond Williams and Jennie Lee), letters from Brian Lane and lots of posters. Topics covered in our conversation, apart from the Arts Festival itself, included art and politics, the 1960s underground scene, the student revolt of 1968 and links between the anarchist movement and Welsh-language activism at the time.

We are now adding all this material to the database and working on a transcript summary of the interview, all of which we hope to make available soon.

Thanks to Bob, Ian, John, Jonathan and Steve for returning to Aberystwyth and for sharing your memories, and for organising it all back in 1968.

Finishing theme one and moving on...

2010-01-15T13:32:00.001Z

The first theme of the project, performance and pedagogy, is nearly complete (well, the collection part at least). Beck is putting the final touches to the database having processed the huge amount of material we collected from John Gingell's archive - over 1800 images! Hopefully, we'll update the online database this month, and this material will be available on the website. It includes many performances that we didn't know about before, along with photos and information about all manner of work carried out by John Gingell with his students and the ZOO group during the late 1960s and early 1970s. We're indebted to John's family for giving us access to the archive, and for their help in piecing things together. Thank you!

And on to theme two... We're now going to be looking at networks, internationalism and student politics, and are beginning by holding a small reunion in Aberystwyth next Saturday. We have invited a few former students who were involved in the Arts Festival in 1968 and are looking forward to hearing their memories of the events.

If anyone else has any information about, or attended, the festival, please get in touch with Beck and Heike at mail@performance-wales.org

Lecture in Leipzig

2009-12-13T23:33:00.001Z

Heike presented a lecture, entitled Eventful Evidence: Between Memory and Archive, as part of the ARCHIV/PRAXIS Arbeitstagung Conference, Tanzarchiv und Universität Leipzig, 10–13 December 2009.

For future presentations visit http://www.performance-wales.org/english/events/lectures.htm

The Gingell archive - continued

2009-12-07T15:25:00.000Z

In the past week, we've finished working through John Gingell's archive, collecting the final few photos and scans of documents and also going through a huge number of negatives of performances, mainly from the early 1970s. Now, Rebecca is going to begin contacting Zoo Group members to arrange a reunion. If you were a member of the Zoo Group and you'd like to be a part of this, please get in touch.

We have also been given a TV documentary from 1975 on Llanover Hall, which includes some wonderful footage of John Gingell building his tower beside the hall, and talking about the ideas behind it. The tower was unfortunately pulled down and replaced by a car park. The picture here shows Mike Pearson marking where the original tower stood, long gone, but not forgotten.

Sited Interview: Mike Pearson in Cardiff

2009-11-27T18:17:00.004Z

View IWFYAT-Site-1 in a larger map

We organised our first Sited Interview today with Mike Pearson. Mike took us back to a number of performance sites in Cardiff that were active in the late 1960s to the mid-1970s and spoke about his memories of works that he saw or performed there. These included the lecture theatre in the former Arts Block of Cardiff University, now the Law Building (where the Pip Simmons Group once performed); the School of Engineering (where Geoffrey Axworthy programmed a season of experimental theatre work in the early 1970s); the former Casson Theatre; Llanover Hall in Canton, home to numerous workshops and summer schools; and the Sherman Theatre, which opened in 1973 with a special performance by Welfare State. Among the sites that have since disappeared is the shop in Queen Street (now buried under the Capitol Shopping Centre) where Christine Kinsey and Bryan Jones organised art events in 1969, prior to opening Chapter.

Full video documentation of the site visits with Mike will be available soon.

Barry Summer School

2009-11-26T23:39:00.008Z

Heike and Rebecca met up with Eira Moore today in her house in Barry for cake and a chat about the legendary Barry Summer School. Eira's late husband, Leslie Moore, was Vice-Principal of the School during its most important period in the 1960s and 1970s. Then, the Barry Summer School was a place where tutors such as Tom Hudson, George Brecht, Robin Page, John Epstein and many others pioneered new approaches to art education. Eira herself, who trained in movement with Rudolf Laban, taught at the School for a couple of years.
If you were a student or teacher at Barry Summer School, please get in touch with the project!

Tom Hudson at the Barry Summer School 1965, introducing a programme of happenings.

Research Seminar at York St John University

2009-11-23T23:01:00.001Z

Heike presented a research seminar, entitled 'Performance (in) History – Archives, Memories and Re-enactments', at York St John University on the 23 November 2009.

Research Seminar at Surrey University

2009-11-20T22:57:00.000Z

Heike presented a Research Seminar, entitled 'Eventful Evidence: Performance Historiographies', at the Department of Dance, Film and Theatre at Surrey University on the 20 November 2009.

John Gingell's collection of papers and documents

2009-10-31T16:41:00.001Z

We've been working on John Gingell's archive in Cardiff. Gingell taught at Cardiff College of Art (now Cardiff School of Art and Design) from the mid-1960s. He co-founded the 'Space Workshop' or 'Third Area' at the College, from which many performance and time-based artists emerged over the years. He was also a member of the Zoo Group, which created collaborative performance events in the early 1970s.

The archive is fascinating, with hundreds of photos of performances, along with scripts, notes, cast lists and the odd prop. We hope to add all of this into our database soon and then post it on the website.

If you were one of John Gingell's students, or part of the Zoo Group, then we'd love to hear from you. Please email mail@performance-wales.org

Oral History Training

2009-10-29T23:06:00.000Z

Heike took part in the Digitisation and Digital Editing: An Introduction for Oral Historians training at the British Library in London today. More information on the course is available here: http://www.ohs.org.uk/training/digitisation.php

Conference Presentation in Lithuania

2009-10-22T23:16:00.002+01:00

Heike presented 'Performing the History of Performance: Re-enacting 1960s performance art' at the The Past is Still to Change: Performing History from 1945 to the Present International Conference, which took place at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania, from the 21 - 23 October 2009. The paper discussed Heike's 're-do' of the Aberystwyth Fluxconcert 1968. More information on the Fluxconcert is available here: http://www.performance-wales.org/english/events/AberystwythInFlux.htm

Third phase of the project

2009-10-01T12:55:00.001+01:00

The third phase of the project (1 October 2009 - 31 March 2010) intends to:
- undertake a series of archival visits
- undertake a number of oral history interviews
All data from the research will be entered into the project's database and transcriptions from the interviews will be made available online in due course.

Photo from a happening in Cardiff in the mid-1960s. If you have any information on this event please get in touch!

National Arts Education Archive - Tom Hudson

2009-09-27T11:42:00.007+01:00

Heike and Rebecca spent two days at the National Arts Education Archive at Bretton Hall, in Yorkshire. Bretton Hall used to be part of the University of Leeds, specialising in music, art, drama and teacher training courses in the main. It's been closed for a few years now, and the campus is an eerie place; it looks like a normal university, but all signs of life have disappeared.
We were there to look through the Tom Hudson collection. Hudson was an artist, but is better known as an art educator. He was appointed as head of Cardiff College of Art in 1964, and introduced courses that emphasised the creative process, and innovative ways of approaching art. It was during his time in charge that the ‘Third Space’ for performance art or time-based art was established.

The collection contained lots of exciting finds, including colour slides of performances, and films of colour experiments, in which students were dressed and painted in greens and purples, then filmed walking through Cardiff. We hope to be able to make some of this available in the future on our database.

There has been some uncertainty over the future of the archive. Bretton Hall is now being turned into a luxury hotel and conference centre. Fortunately, several institutions have agreed to jointly run the archive, and the collection will remain intact.

Workshop presentation in Bristol

2009-09-25T23:27:00.007+01:00

Heike presented Oral Histories of Performance and ran a workshop on using oral histories to document performance work at the Digital Documentation and Performance training event, hosted by JISC Digital Media and the University of Bristol Drama Department in Bristol on the 23 – 25 September 2009.

(Detail of Becoming-snail performance by Paul Hurley, which was being documented through various means by the workshop participants– Photo: Sara Popowa)

The event consisted of three one-day enquiries into the topics of creating, managing and delivering digital documentation of performance work, which mixed presentations with hands-on practical workshops. More information on the event can be found here: http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/training/digital-performance-seminars/

Symposium presentation in Newcastle

2009-09-05T23:50:00.001+01:00

Heike presented 'An Oral History of Performance Art in Wales' at the NOTES on a Return symposium, which took place at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the 4 and 5 September 2009.

Project Steering Committee

2009-09-02T15:37:00.000+01:00

We're pleased to announce that our steering committee has been appointed, and we will hold our first meeting on September 2nd in Chapter, Cardiff. The members of the committee are drawn from a variety of backgrounds, including art history, performance studies, archival expertise and practising artists. They are:

Mr David Alston, Arts Council, Arts Council of Wales
Dr Ivor Davies, Artist
Prof Sioned Davies, Chair of Welsh, Cardiff University
Mr Arwel Jones, Director of Public Services, National Library of Wales
Prof Adrian Kear, Head of School of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Aberystwyth
Prof Mike Pearson, Professor of Performance Studies, Aberystwyth University
Dr Dorothy Rowe, Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of Bristol
Prof André Stitt, Centre for Fine Art Research, CSAD, UWIC

Heike and Rebecca are very pleased that they have agreed to join the project, and we look forward to working with them.

Research Themes

2009-07-02T13:03:00.002+01:00

The project will be focussing its research primarily around the following themes:

1. Performance and Pedagogy - the emergence of performance art in the context of new approaches to art education at Cardiff College of Art, Newport School of Art, the Barry Summer School etc in the 1960s. Of special interest here is the work of Tom Hudson and John Gingell at Cardiff.

2. Networks, Internationalism and Student Politics - the role of student-run university art festivals in Swansea, Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Bangor in the late 1960s

3. New Infrastructures – the emergence of art centres at Cardiff (Chapter and Sherman), Aberystwyth and Swansea (Taliesin) and their role in the development of performance art in the early 1970s

4. British Performance Art between Theatre and Art in the early-mid 1970s. This will include a closer look at the work of Shirley Cameron, Roland Miller, Rob Con, Ian Hinchcliffe, Welfare State and others.

5. Performance Cymraeg - the emergence of Welsh identity as a theme in performance art in the late 1970s, including a discussion of the influence of the performance art pavilion at the Wrexham Eisteddfod 1977 and the work of Paul Davies.

If you have information to offer on any of these themes or the events mentioned we would be pleased to hear from you!

Research Assistant starts today!

2009-07-01T12:18:00.000+01:00

We are very pleased to welcome Dr Rebecca Edwards to the project! For a little background information on Rebecca's previous work see the blog entry on the 15 May.

Second phase of the project

2009-07-01T12:11:00.001+01:00

The second phase of the project (1 July 2009 - 30 September 2009) will be devoted to:
- inducting and training the new Research Assistant
- arranging archive visits and interviews
- organising existing materials and updating the project database
- undertaking research in various archives, primarily in the National Library of Wales

American Fluxus artist Philip Corner participating in the Assembly Line happening, organised by Tom Hudson, Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre in Cardiff, September 1965. © Tom Hudson estate

Guest lecture in Frankfurt

2009-06-30T23:21:00.003+01:00

Heike presented a guest lecture, entitled 'Performing the History of Performance: Re-enacting 1960s Performance Art', at the Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft of the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe- Universität Frankfurt today (30 June 2009). Heike was invited by Professor Hans-Thies Lehmann.

A scene from the Aberystwyth Fluxconcert 1968–2008 'redo', organised by Heike in November 2009 in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the original event. More information available at: http://www.performance-wales.org/english/events/AberystwythInFlux.htm

re-launch website and database

2009-06-30T12:07:00.007+01:00

The project website has received a bit of an overhaul - the new version is launched today:
http://www.performance-wales.org/

We have also updated the project database - the new version will become publicly available online at a later date. For the time being, the previous version of the database is still online at: http://www.performance-wales.org/english/archive/database.htm

Research Assistant appointed

2009-05-15T11:56:00.001+01:00

We are pleased to announce that we have appointed Dr Rebecca Edwards to the post of Post-Doctoral Research Assistant on the project. Rebecca conducted her doctoral research into the English-language Welsh music scene of the 1990s at the History Department at Swansea University under the supervision of Prof. Chris Williams. She was awarded her PhD in 2008 for her thesis ‘To show from where we came; Cool Cymru, pop and identity in Wales in the 1990s'.

Presentation in Aberystwyth

2009-05-12T12:27:00.002+01:00

Heike contributed a short presentation, entitled 'The Gift of the Archive', to the Out of the Box and Dusted Down: Foraging and Findings – A collective event to welcome Honorary Departmental Fellow Barbara Cavanagh and to introduce the International Theatre Collection as an active TFTS resource. The event was organised by Dr Amy Staniforth on behalf of the Centre for Performance Research at Aberystwyth University on 12 May 2009. Some of the papers from this event are published here:
http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/3284

Conference presentation in Cardiff

2009-05-08T12:32:00.000+01:00

Heike presented 'The "What's Welsh for performance?"' archive at a panel on 'Archives as Media of Communication' at the Cyfrwng conference 2009, hosted by the BBC Wales on the 7 and 8 May 2009 in Cardiff. More information on the conference is available here: http://www.cyfrwng.com/e/conference/index.shtml

Discussion Chair in Aberystwyth

2009-04-28T12:35:00.005+01:00

Heike chaired a discussion with curator Bruce Haines in Aberystwyth today (28 April 2009). The event was organised by Axis as part of their Café Artistique series in collaboration with Showroom and Aberystwyth Arts Centre. Venue was Y Consti on Aberystwyth's Constitution Hill. Bruce is the curator of the 2009 'Wales at the Venice Biennale' exhibition with John Cale, and Bruce and Heike had worked together in February when Heike interviewed Cale for the exhibition catalogue.
Full documentation of the discussion can be downloaded from: http://www.axisweb.org/atATCL.aspx?AID=2385

Job advert: Post-doc Research Assistant

2009-04-03T11:53:00.001+01:00

The project is looking to appoint a full-time AHRC Funded Post-Doctoral Research Assistant at £30,594 - £35,469 per annum for 21 months (Start date: 1 July 2009) - for full job details see:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/media/TF.09.02%20Ext.pdf

First phase of the project

2009-04-02T11:46:00.001+01:00

The first phase of the research project (1 April - 30 June 2009) will be devoted to:
- planning the project
- selecting interviewees
- locating material
- advertising, interviewing and appointing the Research Assistant
- setting up and / or updating the project's website and database

AHRC

2009-04-01T11:10:00.000+01:00

'"It was forty years ago today": Locating the early history of performance art in Wales 1965–1979' is funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Grant.
Each year the AHRC provides funding from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from archaeology and English literature to design and dance. Only applications of the highest quality and excellence are funded and the range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK. For further information on the AHRC, please see their website www.ahrc.ac.uk.

Project Start

2009-04-01T11:04:00.008+01:00

Dr Heike Roms has been awarded a large research grant (worth £165,779) by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The grant will support a two-year research project, entitled “'It was forty years ago today…': Locating the Early History of Performance Art in Wales 1965-1979”. The project will examine how performance art histories are constructed, paying particular attention to the development of the art form in the context of Wales. It builds on Heike's long-term research into the history of performance art in Wales (www.performance-wales.org).

Start date of the project is today, 1 April 2009.

For more information on the research project visit:

http://www.performance-wales.org/english/oralhistory/phase2/index.htm

This blog will track the progress of the project. Please visit regularly for updates.