(2017) with the Permission of the Surviving Editors, Rob La Frenais and Gray Watson

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PERFORMANCEART OUTSIDE/INSITE PLACEMENTSIN ARTCOLLEGES NICK STEWART In association with Dartington College, Brighton Polytechnic , Trent Polytechnic and Newcastle Polytechnic the Arts Council is offering 4 PAUL BURWELL residencies for artists experienced in presenting Live work . JANUS SCEREK The successful applicants will be expected to work closely with students on the production of a DENNIS DRACUP new work. The residency will be documented and will contribute towards educational resource material on Performance Art. A fee of £1500 will DAVID GRIFFITHS be offered plus a sum of £500 for production costs.

For application forms and for further details contact presented by: Jeni Walwin, Arts Council of Great Britain, 105 Piccadilly, London W1V OAU The CollectiveGallery Closing date for applications 20 January 19~9. _#,. We welcome applications from all ~~ sections of the community irrespective of ~ 166HIGH STREET · EDINBURGH EH I I QS race, gender , sexual preference or A phone03 1-2201260 for details disability. ~...I. .

STEVE ROGERS (left and below) and MARK STEPHENS, pictured here died in Scarborough and London respectively as we went to press. Steve, as readers will know, was Editor of the magazine for the past two years and a regular correspondent since it started. Mark, Steve's partner was a mainstay, helping in his spare time with all aspects of production. The loss to the magazine and the art world, not to mention their friends and colleagues is immeasurable. A full appreciation will be published in the next issue.

e COVER PHOTOGRAPH e Station House Opera , A Split Second of Paradise, COPYRIGHT Ven ice Biennale, 1987 @ 1988 ISSN No. 0 144 5901 e CONTENTS PAGE: Rose Garrard . Casting Room Two ; th e Bride Stripp ed Bare 1987, Photo: De e Berridge Remount ed at the Air Ga llery London , until De cemb er 11

e Perform ance will be launch ed in a new format in Sprin g 1989 as a quarterl y journa l. Subscribers will be informed abo ut th e new arrangements sho rtl y . We ho pe regu lar reader s will appr eciate the new identity of the maga zin e, w hi ch we ha ve rea ched after careful research.

+ The GreatestShow on Earthis the unim aginativetitle of a new Afterlmageproduction takenfrom the festivalof alternativecircus held in Londonrecently. Presented by Judy Pascoe of CircusOz it includesCircus Senso, Lumiere & Son, Archaosfrom France,and The Sheny angAcrobatic Troupe from China. Broadcast: Channel4, December21, 10.15pm. t

ARTIN THEDARK + is the title of an influentialarticle by Thomas McEvilley,it is alsothe title of an exhibitionat ChisenhaleGallery, London organisedby HannahVowles and Glyn Banksof Art in Ruinsfame. There is to be no selectioncriteria and all entrantswho pay their £10 contribution will be included.All mediawelcome. Details: S.A.E. to EmmaDexter, ChisenhaleGallery, ChisenhaleRd, London EJ. Closingdate for submis sionsJanuary 10. t

This issue of Performance Magazine has been reproduced as part of Performance Magazine Online (2017) with the permission of the surviving Editors, Rob La Frenais and Gray Watson. Copyright remains with Performance Magazine and/or the original creators of the work. The project has been produced in association with the Live Art Development Agency. PERFORMANCE /? NEWS + Despite appearingon the JonathanRoss mag nonethelesshas a usefuldirectory section + Threateningto be the UK's largestever video showthe Frank Chickens are still alive and well on Londonfilm/ video workshopsand further event is Video Positive 1989.To be held in andhave a newChristmas show, Club Monkey at educationmedia courses and a fairlycomprehen Liverpoolfrom February 3rd to the26th Feb WatermansArts Centrein Londonuntil De sive listingssection. The currentissue also has this showcasefor UK, Europeanand American cember30, Details:01-568 1176. I pieceson Desktoptechnology, slash 'n' splat tapemakersoffers three weeks of commissioned ter movies and a basicguide to film theory. tapes,lectures, workshops and screeningswith + ThomasLisle has createdan intriguingnew Publishedby the BatterseaMedia Group in commissionedtapes, installationand video installationof slides and music for the City associationwith the Clapham-BatterseaAdult performanceand a "video-wall"centrepiece Museum,Stoke on Trent. FishOut of Water EducationInstitute. Insert is alsoon the lookout comprising52 monitors.(Donated by Samcom juxtaposesimages of fishagainst aphoristic texts for contributorsfor theirSpring issue. Costs 50p the "wall"is saidto be a state-of-the-artexample whichtogether develop themes of man out of andis availablefrom the MediaOffice, Clapham of "matrix" technology).Works to be shown step with his environment.Until January 8, BatterseaAEI, LatchmereRoad, SW11. (Tel 01- includenew piecesfrom StevePartridge with 1989.Details. 0782 202173. I 223-3681).I Inter Run, KateMeynell with Moonriseand a joint piecefrom Robertshaw/Jones titled Great VIDEONEWS + Quick rewind to October revealsa Ninth Britain.Other commissionsinclude TheseAre NationalVideo Festivalwhich, this year, in Bodies by LiverpoolsCloset Media Company, Compiledby Nik troducednew tapesfrom Stakker,Leigh Cox DesertIsland Dread from Mike Stubbs, Marion Houghton and the PictorialHeroes. Winner of this years UrchesDistant Drums andthe long awaited Har TVSStudent Prize was Greg Loftins rework vestFestival from AndrewStones. Der Go/emis the new video installationby ing of DonJuan - a videodrama set in Londons Withmany of theartists involved also running SimonBiggs. On showat TheShowroom until Docklands- while MikeJones and Simon workshopsin thecity Video Positive looks set to 23rdDecember the installationis describedas an Robertshawsjokey short, TaxidriverIll, an be one of most excitinginitiatives of 1989.De "illuminated Book of Hours created "inhouse"pisstake of GeorgeBarber's Taxid tailsor contactVideo Positive directat Merseyside through computerisedmeans" focusing on the riverII withjerkey referenceto the home-video Moviola,40B BluecoatChambers, School Lane, Jewishmyth of the 'clay-man'.Showing along aesthetic,was warmly received. Thumbs up too LiverpoolL1. I side Der Colonwill be SharonMorris photo forLeigh Cox's foyer installation with its bizar works, BetweenOurselves. re animal-peopleand cagedfaces. I Gallerytimes are Weds to Saturdayfrom 1 to 6. + VideoOn The Tube requires short videos - The Showroomis at 44 BonnerRoad, London E2 + Videofestis a Berlin-basedfestival of video of between30 and 60 secondsduration - for (Bet/ma/Green tube). Tel (01) 980-6636 for farther art and installationnow in its secondyear. The screening"between advens" on the London information.I organisers- Videokultur- are now calling TransportTelevision System at Leicester forsubmissions from tapemakers for work made Square.Works should have a strongvisual con + Stillin the East-EndDonald Rodney will be in 1987/88. Categoriesinclude "Art tapes and tent and shouldnot be subjectto any copyright at the ChisenhaleGallery from 18thJanuary 89 tapesabout art" and "Experimentalwork". restrictions- so forgetthe s-s-scratch.A small to February18th with new works- including They're alsoon the look out for videoinstalla fee will be paid to selectedsubmissions. Send video-featuringthe X-ray as both metaphor tions, performancesetc. The festival,largest of tapesto VideoOn The Tubeclo L VA, 23 Frith and material.The exhibitionfrom this young its kindin WestGerman, runs from 10thto 21st Street,London Wt V orphone Chris Meigh-Andrews blackmulti-media artist also includes an installa February.Deadlines for submissionof work or on01-733-2123 orKate Meynell on 01-359-6985. I tion work made from X-ray "bricks" dealing proposalsis: December31 for videotapes. Foran with the vulnerability of black-womenin their applicationform andjiirther information contact: own homes.Further information from Emma Dex VIDEOKULTUR, MedienoperativeBerlin, Pots + Publicationson video/filmarts currently ter on (01) 981-4518. The Galleryis at 64/68 damerStr. 96, D-100Berlin 30 orphone 030-262- availableinclude Picture This, a collectionof ChisenhaleRoad, Lo,1don W3. I 87-14.I essays/articles on media representation of the + New Tapesnow in distributionwith London arts editedby Phil Hayward, andMediamatic Video Access- formerlyLondon Video Arts + A Thoughtji1IGaze is the title to a packageof and IndependentMedia magazines. - includeMedusa by Kate Meynell,a George tapes from American video-supremoBill Withessays from Steve Bode - video col Snow compilation and Terry Flaxtons Worlds Viola. Put togetherby Jez Welshof the Film/ umn editor at City Limits - John Wyver, Apart.Meynells tape, producedunder the Ans VideoUmbrella the package includes the high producer to Channel Fours GhostsIn The Council/Eleventh Hour initiativeis particularly ly praisedAnthem and an 89 minutework, I Do Machineand State Of TheArt series, and the likes of strong here as the myth of Medusagets trans NotKnow What It Is I Am Like. Persistent themes GriseldaPollock Picture This is a book offering formed into a contemporarystory of bedsit in Violasart includelandscape, animalsand reli sometimely analysison the way televisionand broodingand tragi-comic bitterness,("Fuck and gion,elements of whichwere evident in a River film depict art. Recommended.(Published by run like all the rest of' em", commentsMedusa sideGallery retrospective of hiswork a couple of John Libbey1988- No pricegiven. Softback). on her mythiclover as she glaresat a mirror), months back which introducedhis ReasonsFor Watch out too for issues of Mediamatic, a while Snowsmini-epics The Assignation and Ma11 KnockingAt An EmptyHouse installation piece to glossy, stylish art'n'mediamag from Holland. Of TheCrowd take similar risks with stories from UK admirers.(A new pieceis expectedfrom Pastissues have featured long articles on boththe the pastas two EdgarAllen Poe texts are worked Violain the nearfuture afterthe artists sojourn to UK and European scene and presentation into richly textured imagery. Highly recom DeathValley earlier this year). throughoutis refreshinglyupmarket. Expensive mended. Tapehire details from LVA at 23 Frith Meanwhilethe VideoUmbrella has also just at £3 but well worth it. Thereare four issues a Street,London WI V orphone (01) 734-7410. (Also compileda selection of new Britishwork, titled year. Availableat most good art/gallerybook nowavailable is an updated additio,1 to L VA's 1987 Electric Eyes for touring. Presented in three sec shops. (UK distributorCentral Books 01-407- distributioncatalogue containi11gfull detailsand de tions, HeadsFull OJ Noise, The Home Front and 5447).Finally Independent Media continues its scriptions of tapes in wrrellfdistributio11. The A-4 BorderCrossi11gs, the programmefeatures work upward trend as the UK's only independent supplementcosts 50p). I madefrom 1985-88 includingtapes from Sven film/video/photographymag with a mix of re Harding,Liz Power andJohn Goff Further views, articlesand information.Published by + Insert is a new mediamagazine for Londoners informationon either~f thesetouring programmes DocumentaryVideo Associatesthe magazine with the current issuecovering Autumn88. A fromThe Film/Video Umbrella, 7 Denmark Street, costs£1 with subscriptiondetails availablefrom flimsyA-4 DesktopPublishing production the LondonWC2H or phone (01) 497-2236.I OVAon 0252-545505.I

Alphabetical entriesspan the world and the ages,from Shakespeare'sEngland to modern theatre in Brazil,Nigeria and Japan.The Guide covers the origins of theatrical traditions in ritual and festival, examinesfolk drama, street theatre, mummer playsand happenings,and describesand illustratesthe work of the world's foremost actors, directors and designers.

For students and teachers,directors, actors, designers,and, of course,theatre goers everywhere, The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre representsthe essentialreference book for all things dramatic.

1114pp . 310half-tones 0 521 26595 9 £25.00 net \~Cambridge ~Reference CambridgeUniversity Press The Edinburgh Building, ShaftesburyRoad, Cambridge CB22RU

Merseyside's International Video Festival 11·26 Feb The Video Event of the Decade

Tate, Bluecoat & Williamson Galleries

The Festival The Catalogue 42 monitor Videowall 64 pages of informed Installations discussion on the Newly commissioned work past, present and future Screenings of video art. Conference Invited International artists Full descriptions of works Including Videographies Daniel Reeves, Mineo Aayamaguchi, Kate Meynell, Articles by Cate Elwes, Judith Goddard, Steve Partridge, Cate Elwes, Jeremy Welsh , Marion Urch and Simon Robertshaw Mick Hartney , David Hall and others

Merseyside Moviola, 40b Bluecoat Chambers, School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX Tel 051-709 2663

Steve Rogers: Julian, how here you get into all sorts of trouble if /"•· ,r h:l§~ ve a very traditional idea about would you describe Station House you call it theatre. whafah actor was even if the content Opera. SR: Presumably that's because we was very different. It was certainly true J ul .ian Maynard have no idea of theatre other than a of T~tq arrierf. requency which was stiU Smith: Well it's theatre really. , purely literary one. fairly th~atri~I but they were SR: When you say theatre you JMS: I was deeply ignorant of beghming to approach the idea of just don't mean pJays? theatre when Station House started. I doing a job ;rather than pretending to JMS: No, I mean what we do find that quite an advantage really be a;inobster. really. because I think performance has its SR: Yes, and they had to use a SR: But who else is there that own skills but it doesn't have its own formal device to do that by coming on does that sort of work. inherited formulas for operating which at the beginning and taking a bow JMS: One of the more theatre certaiqly does. For anyone before they perform. It was like saying encouraging things about our career is starting working in theatre here, just in to the audience "Is this theatre or is that we're getting into the festivar order to get the work shown, you have this real?". circuits of E~rope which are basically to do it in a certain way. We weren't JMS: I suppose that's what theatre festivals and were performing particularly concerned about having it Station House has always done. I've with people like La Fura Deis Baus and shown anywhere because we weren't always thought of it as play acting the La La La world tour. thinking in those theatrical terms. really, playing at acting as much as But we've always found a problem When Station House started I was anythi!)g else. , in this country of being able to say completely unaware of people like SR ': Pretending to act? theatre without people having an idea Impact Theatre and Rational and IOU. JMS: Pretending to act. Yes. So of what it means, whereas in other Really there are two separate groups, I you're actually using a persona rather ·countries there is no problem about suppose there is some area of mutual than character. There is no consistent calling it theatre because it doesn't interest but they remain theatre in charac;ter running through. But it's not preclude the idea of performance, it's terms of th.eir approach to performing. just abody doing a job. That objective not such a prejudiced concept. Whereas The way they perform is still acting. iqea of performance doesn't really

exist. An audience always reads looks like a repository of furniture but you're doing it. And that's what tends something fictional into the less like a cute Agatha Christie sort of to happen if you tour it too much. performance however undramatic you thing . SR: When you start working on a are trying to be. And all those things SR: To me it looked like early show do you have fairly fixed ideas or like costume are always read as fiction sixties kitchen sink surrealism. are they only tentative ideas of what as much as anything else and I think you JMS: Set dressing of the worst you want to achieve. have to take all that on board. kind in a sense. A wardrobe there, a JMS: It varies. With Cuckoo we SR: That seems to be an carpet there, and you've your horribly started with a sort of programme of increasingly important aspect of the dowdy seaside bedsit land. And we things we were going to look at before work. A show like Cuckoofor instance, really wanted to escape that. But to we started work. But all those ideas you can understand why people might escape that ... well, we could have were thrown out right at the end. It's want to ask who are these people, gone for Swedish furniture or strange, because we started off working where do they come from, what's their something . on Cuckoo trying to hold back the time names. When you say about persona SR: It wouldn't have worked. when we would introduce objects. We rather than character there is in Cuckoo JMS: Even ifwe could have wanted to just do something about a kind of theatrical realism. afforded it. performance and we wanted to keep JMS: There isn't a structure to SR: You've just been to the heavy objects out. We had just Cuckoo. It's made up of sections and Switzerland with the show, does it come from doing Split Second of each section is made up of a specific resonate there in the same way? Paradise with tons of breeze blocks. We concern but they don't fit into an JM S : One of the technicians wanted to avoid that and we ended up overall pattern . The piece is put there swore he could get us some more with tons of furniture and apparatus . together out of lots of different just the same. I can't believe they have SR: Did Split Secondstart off with sections and the order of those sections tatty furniture in Switzerland. Maybe the breeze blocks right from the is as much to do with where people they do. beginning? happen to be on stage as any sense of SR: How many times do you JMS: Yes. Sometimes the best an overall continuit y. There is a sense perform in a year, it can't be that piece comes from a happy coincidence of linking but there is no continuity of many. of two ideas; one is to do with a material or an image and the other is some sort of conceptual idea about structure . That 's how Split Second of Paradise came about . We had already done a few workshops and one piece at the Bloomsbur y Theatr e with breeze blocks so we know there was something about breeze blocks that was interesting. But the conceptual ideas were about the creation of the world and Genesis and there's a structure that follows a sequence of comprehension about the physical world and how to manipu late it. It starts off with a building that's very wobbly and without foundation. In fact it's just like clothes that are built on people. There's a tower that's built NaturalDisasters on people's knees and then goes .to Acme Gallery, London quite gestural things and then goes to 1980 things that are quite planned like walls which need to be pre-planned to character. J M S: No, it's not that many at achieve their final form. That S R: Is it just that by using all. That is something we do think conceptual leap from ad hoe putting familiar furniture you actually set a about quite a bit. I think there things on top of one another to familiar scene, i.e. rooms in our own certainly is something in that. We are planning is actually quite an important homes. often not as good at performing the one in history. Originally there was a JMS: That's what we really had work as we would like to be, but at the lot of religion in that show but it all to fight against. We had real trouble same time one can get too good at it. got thrown out, except for God's when we first did that show because SR: Become A Performance. tirade at the beginning. we hadn't really understood what JMS: Yes. It depends very much SR: There was one image of you furnit ure means to an audience. It's not on what the show is and how falling, was that Satan's fall from like a breeze block or taken out of conceptual it is and how much about heaven. context by hanging it up in the air. It's pure performance it is. Not much of JMS: I don't know, it was all very evocative. You ju st take a our work is about virtuoso someone getting their comeuppance. random collection of furnit ure, performance. So we don't have to be That's just because things are double comp letely at random, and it's going doing it six nights a week to keep it edged and you get the backlash always. to look like a set. For the second up. We do have to rehearse a lot to get I built Jo up from a sitting position version of Cuckoowe decided to try it up to a standard. But we still have to into a falling position which was and minimise that by reducing the hold back from the point when all the vaguely based on the Sistine Chapel num ber of different types of furniture ideas that were behind the performance falling into hell image. Then I decided and multi plying those few types. So disappears and it's j ust about to build a tower and come to save him . we had a multipl e of wardrobes and of perform ing . I think that's when the Having engineered his fall I standard lamps and chairs. So it still performance dies. You forget why magnanimous ly come and save him.

But then he got up and left me your own punishment. stranded upside down. It could be seen SR: So flying isn't necessarily a as a parable about power or pride. liberation. SR: So often with Split Secondso JMS: No, not in that case. At the many of the images fire a memory of end of Cuckooeveryone is stuck. Sarah another image from somewhere else, has nailed herself inside the wardrobe, painting in particular. Alison is nailed to the table and chairs, JMS: There are certain deliberate Bruce is nailed to the platform, Pascal things the Pieta looks like a pieta but a to the floor and I'm stuck up against lot of the images don't have any the pulley unable to move. In a sense conscious source. it's a resolution of the piece. SR: Many of the performances are SR: In Split Secondthere are also very demanding of the performers. events that could be seen as cruel. They ask the performers to take Piling bricks on the sleeping man, for physical risks and are quite tiring. Is instance. this important to the understanding of JMS: He does that to himself. the work or is that just a necessary It's very rare that anyone is overtly process for making the work. horrible to someone else, it's all sly and JMS: I'm not sure I agree with cunning. There's lots of games being you. I don't think every show is played. You can go to National dangerous. There is something about Theatre and see people being the struggle to achieve a fantasy and murdered ... then being defeated by the reality of SR: And it has very little effect, one's own apparatus. The whole thing the man piling bricks on himself has can be seen as a physical metaphor for much more effect than stage blood an imaginary construct. because he is actually doing it. SR: Is that why there's such an JMS: Yes, he is actually doing it emphasis in the work on verticality but he's also playing ... there's always and gravity. that uneasy difference between 'Is this JMS: Yes. The verticality came guy acting or is he actually doing originally from the fantasy of flight. something'. He's sort of representing But the sheer mechanics of keeping something. He's not doing a piece of someone off the ground, sustaining a performance art which involves fantasy, is really hard work. To stop bashing your head against a brick wall yourself crashing back to reality . until you fall unconscious. We've never That's why all the mechanics are seen taken anything to the point where and why they are quite low-tech. anyone's actually hurt , we never They're not illusion producing devices actually hurt ourselves except such as traditional theatre or film accidently. Pascal is actually singing would use. while he's doing that and piling on the SR: You can't see the wires? bricks extinguishes his ability to sing. JMS: If you can't see the wires in He's not actually in agony . .. just a our work then the point is lost. It is a minor discomfort. struggle. And it's bound to crash to the SR: Part of the essence of your ground as every fantasy is bound to work is the ambiguity of the images crash in the end. you create. Whilst Pascal is piling SR: Very often the shows are breeze blocks on himself he hasn't got quite cruel to the performers, or rather some special set of breeze blocks which the performers are cruel to themselves. are hollow in the middle or something In C11ckoo,for example, Pascal nails like they would if it was real theatre. himself to the floor. You're saying that it also isn't the JMS: Yes, but I think that's quite endurance work associated with a reasonable thing to do. While Pascal performance art. You're somewhere might or might not like doing that if it between the two and that is an becomes quite clearly something that ambiguous place to be. fits into the piece then you have to do JMS: It's where we want to be. it. We tend to try and balance things SR: Do you find that people out. So for every action there's a bring certain expectations ... reaction. Sometimes individuals don't JMS: We get people who are get their revenge. Pascal does end up disappointed with the level of violence nailed to the floor but in that piece we inflict on each other. We have no everyone ends up stuck in one way or intention of being as macho as Survival another. Even though I may end up in Research laboratory, etc which actually an elevated position (suspended above is extremely boring. everyone else) so I might look like I'm SR: So it doesn't bave a didactic above him and he's nailed down there, relationship with the world? I'm as stuck as anybody else. I've JMS: In a sense it comes straight nailed Bruce to the platform and his out of minimal work of the sixties and weight has taken me upwards but then seventies and so in that sense we are DrunkenMadness PHOTO I ROBIN HOLLAND I'm stuck there, and there's nothing I post-minimalist. That is where we BrooklynBridge, NYC can do about it. So in a sense you get have come from. I don't really think 1983

SR: And that they have freedom. JM.S: Within limits. We talk about and agree where and when the meetings take place. And what they will do between meetings; they can't just do what they like. SR: I often get a feeling at the end of a Station House show that, rather like Beckett plays, the only means of behaviour that is open to you is to repeat it all again. That the performers are somehow trapped inside the work. JM.S: We have done performances that are rather loose but I don't think that's true of other works. Something like Sex and Death ended on an image which by some means has been turned on its side so you are presented with a top view of the set rather than a side view. That's a resolved image on which to end and it's only when it sinks into the audiences head that that's what's been happening, in fact things have been happening for a while and things end up like that, it allows you to see it from a different point of view and that seems like a good way to finish. SR: But couldn't you revolve it through another ninety degrees, isn't that almost a part of the sense of it. JM.S: We've never been that A Split Secondof Paradise Acme Studios,London formalistic really. 1985 SR: But I mean you never actually leave the set, the performers are just stuck there at the end. And that about that phrase too much. There is a people the audience couldn't after the lights go out, if they come on sense that we deal with space in much understand that as a coherent body again we might find the performers in the same way as Glass and Reich dealt somehow. Because every performer is some more advanced stage. with time all those years ago. Also one performing all the time and there is no JM. S : In fact most of the of the things Station House was hierarchies of importance, we don't performers are stuck where they are. In originally involved with was the idea have spear carriers. And I think there Split Secondthree out of the five of liberating the whole area of vision. must be something about perception performers are actually stuck. It's like I wanted to produce something that that you cannot actually accommodate achieving a final image, you achieve had more the spatial qualities of a eight people all at once whereas with your final fantasy and the consequences painting, Italian painting like five you at least know there's five of that are for you to imagine. You Tinteretto and Tiepolo in particular, without having to count them but stop it when you can imagine what has who actually liberated the figure from eight is too many to do that with. to come next. In reality there is a the ground. In a sense you could SR: And all the performers whole process of disentangling yourself actually look at the corners and they perform independently don't they? from your predicament in a quite are as important as the centre and JM.S: We tend to use structures untheatrical sort of way which is sort that's certainly not true of the theatre. so that there are endless meetings of interesting as well because it's not a I suppose we still work with the between performers which are clean end. proscenium conventions and we do choreographed meetings but between SR: You say you have a resolved accept the grid up there and we do use those meetings everything is image at the end, but life isn't like the frame. So there's not a hierarchical improvised. You know you have to go that, is it? division of space on the stage. from A to B and there you will meet JM.S: Oh, I think it is, but it SR: But is the picture composed somebody and will do a rehearsed bit only lasts for a split second. Fantasies at all times? Are you using the and then move on. They are quite are terrific at resolving themselves into Cunningham idea of lots of little carefully rehearsed. perfect images for a split second and separate pictures but with Cunningham SR: Is the structure of the work then bang, it falls apart. But for the the picture is still always composed. primarily a pattern of meetings? purposes of a performance you cut it at JM.S: Recently we've been JM.S: That is one way of seeing that point and allow the falling apart working with a fairly small company it. There is room for developing a to take place in real time . As the of five people which is a number you performance on your own but you performers disentangle themselves. can take in at one glance unless they have to agree with other people when SR: Is that what the audience are are separated by a wide space. Split you are going to meet with them. It's intended to think about the personas Secondactually works much better on a inevitable, it's not very profound but it because they are not resolved, only wide stage so you have to turn your does assume that each performer is their relationship to each other and the head. But when we worked with eight equally important. materials they are using are resolved.

>< JMS: I don't think persona are ...C, there to be resolved. a: w SR: But they're more than just w... manipulators of objects, they do a.. actually have a life on stage. 0... JMS: Yes they do. We certainly 0 :,: resist characterisation, or continuity of "- narrative. So at any one point the relationship between person and object is as much emotional as physical. Partly because objectivity is impossible there's no such thing as a person just doing a thing. You can't just have a person picking up a teacup without doing it as a dancer or an actor pretending to be someone or you do it as a performance artist pretending to be themselves. That's why I find performance art so difficult to deal with because that question hasn't been resolved or even addressed. The only Sex andDeath way that can be resolved in London, 1982 performance art is to make their life their art. Which is something we have not done. SR: So your life isn't like that. I think we sometimes imagine you going off to your flat to saw up another wardrobe. But I find this whole question of the performers the most interesting. It reminds me of a TV programme I saw about a woman who has no short term memory but in every other respect she is perfectly healthy. The performers react to very mundane materials and objects as though they have not only never seen them before but have no idea what it is. JMS: We used to have an exercise based on that called the five second memory plus very long term things like language. Your response to J Piranesiin New York situations is always having to change. Brooklyn Bridge, NYC It's extremely difficult. , : 1988 SR: Is there a desire for an ' original innocence in that. That these people somehow are without sin because they have no memory they can hardly be guilty. JMS: Yes, maybe, I've never thought of it like that. Much more its been an idea of taking someone out of their context. We always struggle quite hard not to present things in a context. Although you have to always recognise your interdependence on everything around you, in a sense abstract exercises of that nature are quite good as a formal device to take you somewhere you might not have gone really. It takes you somewhere that your own prejudice would not have led you. That's what I thought was interesting about Theatre of Mistakes. It was very formally based but it ends up going somewhere that you didn't want to go. At the same time it didn't Scenes FromA New address itself to problems of what it Jericho looked like to an audience. The South Bank, London costume thing was never resolved 1984

·1

Cuckoo RiversideStudios, London 1988

because the problem of the persona was. have greed amongst objects. You can which was actually the case in pre never resolved. have the objects dealing with each revolutionary France. I'm not sure if I We are not interested in people other. this piece has a resolution either. At whose main interest is in performing. SR: Will the performers just one point we thought we might end up We are not interested in actors. We find become the servants of the objects. with a egalitarian, modernist, most of the members from art schools, JMS: You can deal with the Corbusien five little villas or through workshops mainly. We are relationship between the individual and something. But in fact I don't think going to be doing a much bigger piece the crowd or the state. And similarly anything is as simple as that. next year and we're going to have to between the individual breeze block SR: Yes that's a little too utopian audition really. I don't know how and the building. To what extent each for the 1980sreally. we're going to do that because if you of those agree with the other and JMS: We might get to the point audition you'll get performers. I don't where disagreements come. Performers where we have a Corbusien villa know how we're going to manage to at the lower end of the scale but then cropping up somewhere, but ·at the end get the right people. We need thirty they will come to agreements with I'm not sure. But it lasts nine days so five people. each other to plan and build structures. we'll see when we get there. At points SR: Is that for La Villette? So if you start with a plan you can there will be more working on it than JMS: Yes. carry on building something at others so there will be a production SR: Thirty-five people, you were enormous. So we are going to cycle. worried about working with eight investigate what happens when you SR: The French are more people. What is that show about? agree to work together. architecturally literate than we are so JMS: Well, in a way it's a SR: So it carries on where Split should be able to read it more easily. development from Split Secondof Secondleft off, which got to the point JMS: They're also more Paradisebut on a much larger scale, a of rationalism in your history of the intellectually literate . I scale that deals with building sized world. objects. I'm interested in what happens JMS: Well no, I think we have when people start building things that concurrent strands of rationalism and are bigger than themselves. What adhocism. Different ways of thinking happens when you build one structure about society either in large terms or on top of another structure. I don't small terms. Because it is for the know how it's going to work because French bi-cententary it is nominally 0 a: up to now it's been on a fairly human based on the image of the breaking 0 scale. This is a scale from breeze block down of the Bastille. It is this image of ...cc ...I size up to a house size. There's repression and wealth which is smashed w z something interesting about a big to pieces and those blocks are used to cc object made up oflots of little objects. build other things. So we will start 0 You can have a house transforming with a sort of palace, one image where .....0 itself into its own staircase so that the all the wealth resides. The 0 :I: ____ C_uc_ko_o,_1_98_8house doesn't exist any more. You can impoverished masses are homeless, 0..

WA-WA-WALT DISNEY MEETS Stories of the desire to replicate THE MECHANICAL BRIDE MA-MA-MAXHEADROOM people by other than the usual genetic The makers of pseudo-people (robots, IT IS RUMOURED that prior to Walt means are remarkably pervasive in automata etc) have traditionally been Disney's optimistic incarceration in human history, and this is surprising, men, both in this century and before. liquid nitrogen he recorded enough given the surplus of real ones, and the One might explain this in terms of footage of himself speaking to the relative ease of making them in the general patriarchal domination of all camera, that the frames could be usual way. Sci-fi writing and film has fields, but another attractive assembled into any collection of words. presented us with a full range of explanation is the idea of a The rumour continues that the permutations on this theme. A brief compensation for the lack of a womb. material is now transferred to video history and taxonomy of these efforts According to Feminist theory it is a disc and that Walt Disney now both in fiction and object fact, might characteristic of Patriarchal culture addresses board meetings from his icy include: that it attempts to totally control the repose. Galatea and Pinochio: the frustrated 'other'. Can we not see robot Fullfathom five thy father lies, craftsman and the benevolent god manufacture in this light as the of his bonesare coralmaja syndrome. creation of a totally controlled and Cglpingof him doth remain Golem and Homunculus: the artificial ('ideal') other? but hassuffered a sea change creation of an organic 'little man' The term Robot was coined by Kara) into somethingrich and strange. through appropriate mystical and Capek in his play R. U.R. (Rossums alchemical observances. UniversalRobots) in 1921.It comes from OF HOMUNCULI AND ANDROIDS The full blown mechanical automata: a Czech word meaning forced labour From Hero of Alexandria, via the and implies a lack of autonomy and One Saturday afternoon in late 1987I golden tree full of mechanical free will. His robots were not saw two programmes about robots on songbirds in the palace of Baghdad, to mechanical men but androids, TV, a movie and a sit-corn. The first the mechanical animals and people of machines that appeared human. concerned an archetypal metal and Vaucanson and Jaquet Drosz. More recently, with the advent of blinking lights robot which (albeit 'Probably the most famous automaton micro-electronics and sd-fi movie accidentally) attained human style of all time was Vaucanson's Canard effects have allowed the continued consciousness. In the second, two little (1738). This animal possessed a fidelity development of three more defining girls played the parts of the primitive in the imitation of organic functions categories: and more advanced versions of a little which surpassed any machine built to C3PO, a descendant of the girl girl robot. (The pantomime horse that time. Descriptions of the duck android in Fritz Langs' Metropolis, syndrome). The first had limited give it the ability of moving its body, illustrating what could be called the understanding of the world and flexing its wings so that all the feathers pantomime horse syndrome; mechanical sounding speech, the work in unison, quacking, drinking R2D2, the cute Dalek, out of 'lost in second was indistinguishable water, eating grain, excreting the space' by Dr Who. Thirdly, the from a 'real' little girl, a bit of a smart results - all in perfect mimicry of the 'superbrain'; aleck. living animal. Situated on a great Hal and Deep Thought, which The AI (artificial intelligence) debate pedestal which housed an imposing manifest human style intelligence, but has demonstrably hit popular culture, mechanism, Vaucanson's creation are more modern in that they do not the treatment was banal but its actually underwent some of the cruder defer to the naivete of simplistic significance is not. When the popular processes of digestion. The Canard was anthropomorphism. They incorporate media is able to present various models an attempt to produce more than the expert systems thinking and the lessons of machine intelligence, more or less outward features of an organism.' 1 of the Turing test, (see below). human like, the issue is a cultural Dr Franksenstein's monster occupies One must not neglect the wonderful reality. Visionary fiction is always a a crucial position here, firstly in that as Max Headroom. Most amusing about step ahead of fact, but when the fiction a union of the organic and the Max is that he is a fake. A rubber mask is discussing the emotional technological, he is a modern and some clever editing and characteristics of machine intelligences, homunculus, and the good doctor a colourizing. Fiction is again way ahead we can be assured that machine modern alchemist, but also because he of reality. But we want to love Max intelligence itself is an accepted reality. was written by a woman. because he's so human, he has wit, he

has cynicism, and yet he has the achieved the goal. This test in fact, society. In our era that force has been database at his (digital) fingertips (viz would prove that the machine was focused on electronics and in his citing of instantaneous ratings). But more intelligent than the person, for it particular, logic electronics. he is not a synthetic man. We know his would have to mimic human error and Not only is this technology integral geneology, in true British BBC slowness at calculation. and integrated into every aspect of our tradition he is a Dalek, something that This test is telling in its lives, but it has generated about it a purports to be organic, preserved in anthropcentricity, the implication power structure, and also an immense electronics. (The Daleks in fact being that human intelligence is the social mythology. This mythology has contained BBC employees on epitome of possible intelligences, been the subject of examination in tricycles). As Dr Frankenstein's which belies its ultimate grounding in literature, cinema, and drama. Why is monster served as a focal point for the Christian theology. This test also it then that artists tend to avoid depersonalizing effects of the industrial implicitly asserts that consciousness is a engaging this major aspect of our revolution; As the robots in R.U.R., linear phenomenon, that degree of culture? Perhaps it threatens the artists' half man, half machine, provided a consciousness can be measured like a mode of production . Since WiJliam middle ground on which to focus an test of strength, the hammer and bell Morris made a claim for the 'craft' examination of the relationship game at old country fairs. But process, itself defined in opposition to between man and machines, so Max consciousness is demonstrably a vector the process of mechanical mass serves the same function with respect phenomenon and machine intelligence production, art practice has aligned to the digital. already far exceeds human ability in itself with this position. Only relatively some fields. This would seem no more recently with the multiples of Les THE TURING TEST difficult to accept than the fact that Levine and others, have artists In 1950, Alan Turing asserted that John likes cricket while Mary likes addressed the process of mass machine intelligence was possible and basketball, but to some, the idea that a production, but without major effect would be a reality by the year 2000.He machine might be better at some on the art market, which still clings also proposed what is now referred to aspects of 'intelligence' is intensely doggedly to the idea of the unique as the Turing Test to gauge whether threatening. precious object. Interestingly, writers the machine has reached human made a successful adjustment to the consciousness. It is the essence of THE AGE OF MECHANICAL condition of mass production centuries simplicity: connect a person and a REPRODUCTION ago. computer by teletype to a human Since the Industrial Revolution, But the rift goes deeper than this. In examiner. If the examiner cannot tell technological development has been a attempting to engage the science/ the difference after a series of questions (one might be tempted to say 'the') technology complex; (which is the on any subject, the computer has major force for change in Western territory of the dominant paradigm of our culture); the artist is presented with a powerful paradigm which is at odds with the artists conventional procedures. I have argued elsewhere2 that the roots of this difference can be traced to the realignment of science with commerce, c!ndaway from 'art' at the beginning of the industrial revolution, which led to 'art' (along with religion) defining itself in opposition to 'science' . This stance has led to the spectre of the losing battle for creationism and other articles of the faith, and (until recently) of the increasingly hard line positions of those arguing for rationality, and for non rationality. There is some indication that these positions are softening, as is indicated by J.D. Bolter, who himself is simultaneously a scholar of classical culture and a computer scientist, and argues against this split: 'My premise is that technology is as much a part of classical and western culture as philosophy and science and that these "high" and "lowly" expressions of culture are closely related. It makes sense to examine Plato and pottery togetherin order to understand the Greek World. Descartes and the mechanical clock together to understand Europe in the C17th + 18th. In the same way it makes sense to regard the computer as a technological paradigm for the science, the philosophy, even the art of the coming R2D2and C3POshare a generation. Perhaps from this premise joke we can establish a much needed

dialogue among scientists, engineers machine was unassailable. Yet to microelectronics became a consumer and humanists.' 3 It is certainly true that function in actuality, and artistically, it item with the introduction of the the Automatons ofVaucanson and had to be injected with imprecision transistor; saw exploration into the Jaquet-Orosz excited the imagination and irrationality. Then, perhaps, it relationship between logic technology of their time in a similar way that the could begin to live, in doubt and and art making with such landmarks as computer excites the popular indecision, as human beings do ... ' the CyberneticSerendipity exhibition, imagination today. They were to have (Significantly, here Burnham curated by Jasia Riechart; and the a direct effect on the thinking of la reinforces the old dualism, allowing publication of Jack Burnham's Beyond Mettrie as earlier clockwork inspired humans the qualities of 'imprecision ModernSculpture. the mechanistic notions of Descartes. and irrationalty'. Once again we define Cybernetics, the invention of The first attempt by artists to engage ourselves in terms of; in opposition to; mathematician Norbert Wiener, was the scientific/industrial complex was our technology)' ... Most revealing is concerned with communication that of the Futurists, but by and large the fact that Duchamp, according to between systems, and made no implicit they discussed it within the traditional Lebel, regarded himself as an distinction between organic-organic media, with Russolo standing as an "unfrocked artist" after his art became communication, electronic-electronic inovator among them. Bugatti, on the other hand, seemingly embraced the expostulations of Marinetti (after his baptism in industrial waste), so literally that he abandoned the gallery object completely and opted for motor car production. Although conventional wisdom centres the Kinetic art movement of the sixties on the idea of motion per se, I would suggest that its true focus was an attempt to circumscribe the condition of 'machineness'. Why did it take so long for the machine to be brought in from the cold? Perhaps because as the art object epitomises artifice; and the machine is a further level of synthesization (even the materials it is made from are themselves synthetic, artifice); the notion of machine art implied a 'second order' artification. The aesthetic of the machine had until that time been located outside 'fine art' in a category similar to that of craft or folk art.

BACHELOR MACHINES MarcelDuchamp Between these two only a few artists Chocolate GrinderNo. 1 addressed the condition of the 1913 machine, among them Duchamp and Picabia. As Jack Burnham reminds us, when Duchamp employed the bicycle centred around the Rotoreliefs. No or electronic-organic. This pioneering wheel in a readymade, it was not a longer dealing with the gentle work was confirmed by his cybernetic technologically nostalgist gesture, but illusionism of painting, nor even the diagnosis of the neurological condition state of the art technology. :'From a leverage of Dada's tools (irony, 'ataxia' as being a disruption of practical standpoint, the Readymade fallibility, and repetition), Duchamp feedback loops. One of the dictates of bicycle wheel was an apt choice. Only realized that he had placed himself on Cybernetics was that intelligence is not a few years before Duchamp's the brink of raw technology. Such a inherent in things, but is rather a value appropriation it had been mechanically situation demanded that one either we ascribe to systems that appear to perfected. The ball bearing mounted draw back or plunge into a rational operate in a way we can understand as axle and tension wire spokes made the world if impersonally controlled being directed to some purpose. bicycle wheel one of the lighest and effects. He chose to do the former.' 5 It is easy to be critical, twenty years most elegant devices then in common It is on the edge of this world of on, of the theoretical shortcomings of use ... The lightweight wheel, the impersonally controlled effects that we the CyberneticSerendipity exhibition. chain drive, the tubular frame once again find ourselves, only this Hampered by a complete lack of construction made the bicycle, along time we must not back away. To do so historical context the works of that with the automobile, revolutionary would be to relinquish any right to landmark event are characterized by an forms of personal transportation. '4 affect the development of arduous scientism and a mindset that Burnham later goes on to say: 'More contemporary technology, which is all found 'artness' in the more or less than any artist previously, Duchamp the more powerful for its ability to arbitrary translation/transduction of confronted the psychic and practical think. one phenomena into another (music difficulties of realizing a viable into image etc) and the utilisation of motorized art. A Kinetic art, ... OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM, chance operation. These operations somehow, presented a contradiction in AND THINKING MACHINES . . . were regulated by a rigid and simple terms. As a sculptural totem, the The late sixties; about the time that structure (algorithm) . There is

something in the conceptual mindset of these technicians-become-artists that """",_...... -., ...... smacks of a familiar unhealthy didacticism, characteristic of people attempting to justify art practice in terms of profit. Some of the essays read like marketing projects for scientific research: this device has potential application in psychological testing; or :'it represents the first steps towards developing a language of graphics in motion'. 6 In BeyondModern Sculpture Burnham embraces Cybernetic theory and builds around it a new model of art practice, which he develops in a later essay SystemsAesthetics. He argues that in-as much as mimesis has always been the concern of sculpture, from the caveman to early modernism, anthropormorphic robotry is the logical successor to that tradition in sculpture and argues that the automata of Vaucanson and Jaquet Drosz are significant predecessors of this trend. 'It is doubtful if non anthropomorphic sculpture can exist. Since the creation of the first non objective and Constructivist sculptures in the early part of the twentieth century, artists have consistently denied the anthropomorphic and mimetic content of their works. Each successive generation of nonobjective . .. sculptors has accused the previous generation of anthropomorphism ... What we will examine as Cyborg or FrancisPicalia post kinetic art is really the first A littlesolitude amidst the attempt to simulate the structure of life suns(A picturepainted to literally. Thus, sculpture seeks its own telland not to prove)1919 oblitaration by moving toward integration with the intelligent life forms it has always imitated.' 7 anthropomorphism; his vision of determines what part of the man will I would like to compare this sculpture had not the perspective of be imitated.' And later: 'The scientist statement with a description of the interactive games for the home or philosopher who work with . such Cybernetic project by Bolter : 'Wiener computer. Anthropomorphism is not electronic tools will think in different compared the new electron tubes to implicit in that 'integration'. To ways from those who have worked at neurons and wanted to subsume the juxtapose Burnham and Bolter again: ordinary desks with paper and pencil, study of both under one discipline. 'Without the advantages of cybernetics with stylus and parchment or with Wiener's outlook was clearly as much Tinguely has come closest to papyrus. He will choose different influenced by pre-electronic control "humanizing " the machine. A precise problems and be satisfied with devices (feedback loops in various definition of "human " is elusive. It is different solutions.' 10 machines) as by the digital computers not an extension of the Burnham seems not to allow that the just being built ... Those following anthropomorphic precision which relationship between people and the Wiener's approach spoke of creating characterizes the automata collection at environment they create is symbiotic . artificial brain cells and neural Neuchatel. Rather, to be "human" is to That one can and should 'humanize ' networks and allowing the machine to expose oneself through animal machines, but that people should not learn as a baby was presumed to do, vulnerability and fallibility. Standing mechanize. Whereas Bolter makes this .. . But the theory of neural networks, alone in a room, one of Tinguely's symbiotic adaption a basic premise. Of which was developed mathematically , metamechanical works appears nakedly course, as previously mentioned, there met with little or no practical success subject to the whims of the gods - is a grand social phobia towards this ... Specialists more or less gave up the like the standing male nudes of archaic possibility of mechanisation, and gave idea of building a machine which Greece, the kouroi.' 9 rise to the power of the Luddites, Dr would mirror the elements of the 'The artificial intelligence specialist is Frankenstein's monster et al; it was the human brain, they no longer not interested in imitating the whole same fear which brought Norbert demanded a literal correspondence man. The very reason he regards Wiener tumbling down from the between man and machine. '8 intelligence (rational problem solving) pinnacles of fame (shades of the As Wiener's vision of Cybernetics as fundamental is that such intelligence Inquisition) . was coloured by his training in the pre corresponds to the new and compelling My suspicion is that this all creeps up electronic electro-mechanical systems, qualities of electronic technology. on us while we're asleep anyway: who so Burnham is fixated on the idao of Today, as before, technology worries about our dependance on the

global computerised telephone technology is miniaturized, and network, or that because of pocket packaged in an inert material, the body calculators nobody can do mental acts as if the technology is not even arithmetic anymore? there', and earlier ' ... technology at this point is merely a tool in the WHITHER ART? process of post-evolutionary It seems timely to re-examine the development. ' 11 Kineticist programme, and the There is of course plenty of room for Cybernetic initiatives, in the light of art practice in all areas to function as a contemporary developments. polemical tool, and certainly these two The technology has progressed at artists do demonstrate a procedure for lightning speed, and its cultural actually utilising technological items in position has changed as rapidly. All the art production, whilst avoiding power of an Eniac with its rooms of technological fetishism. Two major vacuum tubes and relays is now mass distinctions are necessary here: Firstly, produced and hand held, the price has it is important to distinguish between miniaturized along with the size. Sci-fi an attitude to technology per se, and a dreams (and nightmares) like home strategy for utilisation of technology in computers and computer banking are art practice. Secondly, there is a now somewhat tedious facts of life. difference between devising new tools Sophisticated electronics now appears and ways of manipulating a new in consumer goods, digital watches are medium; and the work of producing disposable, free in the bottom of your artwork with those tools. This cornflakes. distinction is often ignored or glossed, With the advent of 'user friendliness' as it was in CyberneticSerendipity; and the technology is almost always a little the former is inadvertently lumped in black box, with 'in' and 'out' plugs and with the latter. variables to adjust. More or less Twenty years ago, pioneer electronic compatible user friendly units. It is no artist, James Seawright, offered a longer necessary, nor is it possible, to critique on art practice in a understand the mechanics of the device technological context. His words in order to use it. Nor are the remain as valid now as they were then: mechanics amenable to visual 'If you start with a conventional understanding as in the case of the definition or concept of an effect or Kinetic work. Whereas gears, pulleys phenomenon and design back from and levers have a certain accessible that towards the means necessary to get visual logic to them, the IC chip does it, all too often you end up with a not. We can experience the effects of machine or a device which produces the technology, but not its mechanics. effects. You may be able to distort or Gone are the days of the ham radio deform the thing into some structural operator winding his own coils, gone is or visual suggestion of sculpture, but the necessity to be a technician. The the integration of form and behaviour, arduous scientism of the Cybernetic if present, will be sheer accident. I do Serendipityexhibition is also no longer think it possible to consider the relevant. Electronics has moved out processes and principle of technology from the research labs into the as a medium for art just as validly as a amusement arcades. No longer sci-fi, it conventional artist might consider is now a consumer commodity. wood, stone, bronze, paint on canvas, Where are the models for art practice etc., and all the old precepts about in this realm? The first that comes to understanding the nature of the mind is that of Nam June Paik. His medium, etc., are just as true here.' 12 I strategy was to orchestrate the symbolic defeat of the technocracy by 1. Jack Burnham,'Beyond Modern transmuting its tools, defeating its Sculpture'George Brazilier 1968, image. (I refer to his magnetic p199. distortion works and others in similar 2. SimonPenny, 'New Territory. . .' interactive vein). On reflection, Art/ink Magazine,March 1988. although the political activism of 3. ].D. Bolter,'Turings Man', Pelican agitating for interactive and public 1986,xvi. access TV is laudable; Paiks procedure 4. BMS, p227. is remarkably shamanistic, reminiscent 5. BMS, p230. of sticking pins in voodoo dolls. 6. 'CyberneticSerendipity', a Studio Another approach is that of Stelarc, Internationalspecial issue, ed Jasia whose idea of the 'obsolete body' will Reichart,1968, p65. be familiar to readers of Eyeline. In an 7. BMS, p332. interview in the November issue he 8. TM, pp192-3. summed up his position in two 9. BMS, p245. statements: 'What's philosophically and 10. TM. p213. physiologically interesting for me is 11. EyelineMagazine, November 1987, that technology seems to be welcomed p8. by the body. In other words, if 12. BMS, p359.

Lastyear SIMON THORNE andPHILLIP MACKENZIE, collectively knownas Man Act, had an unexpected opportunitytowork with Richard Schechner. Thefollowing isan extract from the recordings theymade of thefive day experiment.

IN THE AUTUMN of 1987Man Act PHILLIP place. It's been a very specific project was touring in America. We were MACKENZIE: It's the to create a piece of work from a simple playing Miraclesand at the same time first time I've worked with a man of a collision of experience, without we were casting around for material different generation, with anybody of a conceptualising it in any sense. that was to become RadioSing Sing. different generation. R.S.: In 1972I went to New There was one gig we were RICHARD Guinea. I'm a great collector. Not particularly looking forward to. Not a SCHECHNER: Do you because I like to collect, but because I gig really - we were going to spend like working with a younger person? feel for me or somebody else some of ten days in the country about twenty P .M. :I just imagined for some this memory might prove useful. So I miles out of Philadelphia, at the reason it would be very different and collected a lot of things - slides, tapes Yellow Springs Institute. We had could be a bit difficult. and so on, and nothing ever happened accepted the invitation to participate in R. S.: Difficult - in what way? to these things. Then you called and a residency and had asked if while we P. M. : Because I guess I imagine said you were in a tent in New Guinea were there we could meet someone. what it would be like if I worked with and this was your new piece. I just said Who would we like to meet? We had my father. I imagine older people to be I'll bring this stuff. The pressure's off only read his books and seen pictures more stuck - this is the way it's done, for finishing something, therefore we of his work but we wanted to meet or this is the way I've always done it played and the play has been good. Richard Schechner. and I don't see why I should change P. M.: The only place we could We imagined we would probably sit now. start from was what we did on the and talk for two or three days with this R. S.: I've been in different floor. man who had all the information about situations but never this one. I've been R. S.: I think it would have been theatre, and then perhaps we'd talk in many situations where the focus of a dishonest thing to explore the new in about our new show and then perhaps the pyramid has been on me - that's the amount of time given while it's we'd do a bit of work on it. His work what it means to be a director or an quite an honest thing, out of these with the Performance Group makes author and I have to come up with albums, your pieces, my work to see him something of a grandfather something or at least I think I have to what information came out. It's epic, (excuse the expression) in experimental come up with something. Here it was it's from birth to death, it's a joke - theatre. We imagined this meeting not that way. Here we're just three of but it's a true joke. would be some kind of holy process. In us and none was the leader and things S. T. : And its means are very fact it did not turn out to be holy at slipped back and forth. I felt very straightforward and simple - I like all. released from having to give all the that. He agreed to come for five days with answers. After all there are two other R. S.: Yes, I like that too. I don't one condition - whatever we did, he guys - they can give the answers. feel from either of you any kind of wanted to perform. He arrived with SIMON THORNE: phoniness, just playfulness, which is notebooks, tapes and slides, recordings I remember the way we managed to good. In the west it's one of the from New Guinea and from the birth introduce ourselves to each other over endangered species - adult play. But of his son. In five days we made a a series of bizarre telephone in certain cultures play and work are performance together. Everything conversations, trying to grasp what the same word in which the work of went into a big pot, we stirred it your work is. Then meeting here and the gods is also sacred play. In around and threw it out again. It was the ways we have chosen to introduce Hinduism it's called Lila, Ramlila is much less sacred - which is not to say ourselves here, by performing the the sport or play of Rama. At the level that it was disrespectful, it wasn't that work we have and you by inviting us of meaning it can be very profound - at all, just that it was much freer, into your snapshot album. Then using but at the level of experience it's much less pressured and perhaps more that initial meeting as the source delightful. In other words what makes playful than we could have imagined. material for the play that has taken humans most extraordinary is our

This issue of Performance Magazine has been reproduced as part of Performance Magazine Online (2017) with the permission of the surviving Editors, Rob La Frenais and Gray Watson. Copyright remains with Performance Magazine and/or the original creators of the work. The project has been produced in association with the Live Art Development Agency. P E R F O R M A N C E I 21 ability not only to play, but to play in do enjoy very much your sense of generosity. I get the feeling here our playing, to be aware of our precision and I enjoy that also in the there's a greater possibility to be playing. Obviously other primates play people that I in a certain sense had generous. I think that's something we but you feel they get lost in their play some effect on - Spalding Gray, and address ourselves to more and more as or they are just their play; they become Liz LeCompte and people like that performers; how generous one is with pure play. We do that, but also we who also move towards a great deal of an audience. Sometimes I feel that become reflexive - we see ourselves precision even though the surface may perhaps it's about learning how to keep seeing ourselves. If there's a mystery be broken in many places. that precision but also to give more. there's a mystery beyond trying to be S. T. : I think the background that R. S.: Well, I guess for me that mysterious. If there's a ritual there's a we're coming out of maybe has pure formalism suffers from the same ritual beyond trying to be become very formalist in its sense of thing as the proscenium theatre and santimonious and if there's a deep precision and so the techniques of this pure naturalism. Pure naturalism and meaning it's beyond trying to look for kind of theatre exist purely for pure formalism share the fact that the deep meanings. themselves. Ultimately this produces a audience doesn't exist and doesn't need P. M.: I would like to say what very sterile piece of work. to exist. And popular entertainment, you have introduced into our work is R. S . : Right . I think that all ages whether it's good or bad, in other much broader paintstrokes, perhaps are like waves - they come and they words whether it's a television more playful, freer, a bit less self go. I think this particular wave of evangelist or wrestling or whether it's conscious. That's what your flavour is formalism that arose in the mid 70's a good piece of art, or what have you, whereas we have a tendancy towards and continues - I think it's passing. I demands a kind of interaction with its something much finer, enclosed, think people are needful of two other spectators. That's a dangerous art elegant. things: One - content . They want to because you can be extremely S. T.: Also, I'd say a healthy know not only that a piece looks good exploitative or you can be extremely irreverence. I think that's probably but what does it refer to. Signifier is pandering or you can enter into an something we have offstage out of fine but what does it signify? And actual relationship in which both performance - the way we view the secondly: as a teacher I always come parties can grow and develop. That to work we are making - but in terms of me is where ritual dramas in other the construction of work, probably cultures and our own work, especially because we are still learning the process if we're involved in live performan ce, for ourselves we have a slightly 'I don't think can make some real headway, where a reverential attitude to what we present. number of small groups can be a kind R. S. : This is interesting because art is about of popular entertainment and have real people who read me or have a sense of centering. I relationships with real audiences, real me from the late 60's and mid 70's, people. especially second hand, extract its think its about S. T. : A lot of work in Europe at seriousness, but miss its the moment has become very self demystification . decenterin_g. I reflexive in one sense. P .M.: But it is very hard to don't thin}{ its R. S. : Well, that's true here also. I articulate that aspect of the work when just feel a stirring, a breaking out. I you record it in photographs and on about finding think one of the interesting things we paper. have done is this; what I would call R. S. : It is harder to, because the personality inter-textu ality, in a certain sense irreverence as it were, or what I call but brushing against the text. If you think, the trickster, because I'm a trickster, is • • we have New Guinea, we have an essence, therefore it evaporates. recogn1s1ng personal life, we have prior theatrical Essence, meaning like a perfume. You pieces that you've composed, we have can only smell it at its moment of multiple our own interaction s for these days existence. A tragedy is a tragedy for which are very real immediate things. ever. A joke is not a joke unless it's in personalities.' And that these texts which were not the telling. meant to be together do go togeth er, S. T. : Working in Europe with a that I find extremel y important and very particular set of traditions and into contact with young people. Being interesting because I do feel that, role models, and then coming to a teacher is like being a printing press. slowly but surely, in addition to the America where the work speaks of You constantly print and the paper individual impulses we have, and in American culture - American culture keeps changing. If you are a good addition to specific cultures, we have a seems to have a certain irreverent teacher you're going to change what's not unhealthy world communication atti tude, a looseness which is not there on the printing wheel. You can let the network. That's why I am hopeful in Europe. Europe is much more self paper press back on you. But at least about the co-existence of the personal, conscious in that sense. We are able to the paper is basically the same age. I the ethnic and the pan-global. I think come here and share basic techniques passed through a period in which that artists have to investigate those of working vocabulary and they are people were basically passive. They relations without blurring them, but not sacrosanct. wanted to take care of themselves only. using them together; not surrendering R. S. : But what I like about your They were frightened, they were to an absent authorit y as if you use work is your precision. In other words withdrawn. Now people are perking somebody else's play text or musical we should't confuse looseness with up and they are a little more restless. text, not being playful in arranging either do as we damm well please or They make more demands and I feel these three levels: the ethnic and then lack of precision. It's more like the that goes along with increased above it the pan-glob al and underneath crack in the mirror which refracts a meaning. They want to know not only it the extremel y personal, and letting different reflection, but is still a crack. how to do it but what am I doing it the spectator see that you're being You have to know how to crack the for, why am I doing this? playful with them. mirror or where to crack the mirror. I P. M.: I guess it's got to do with S . T. : The ethnic is a very

difficult element to work with - to very confident about your place to be think that's very nourishing - to be use it honestly. able to laugh. You can be serious and conscious of that and make more R. S . : Correct, but the ethnic is alert but laughter undercuts your connections to that and to turn that also our own ethnic. In that sense alertness, and it's an extremely visual soil, constantly turn that soil. Australian, American, Jewish, British, reaction. Sobbing is also another one, JOHN CLAUSER: we are already displaced to a certain but it's easier to make people laugh (Director, Yellow Springs Institute) It's degree - placed and displaced. Even than sob - I imagine few tragedies are that underlying humming of the here we're sitting out in this able to do that. vernacular, I think. countryside but it's nobody's home. In I want it really clear, when I talk R. S.: That's a great phrase - the other words it is itself another about popular entertainments I don't underlying humming of the displacement which allows for this mean some of the imitations that vernacular. interaction and we're of course people do - cheap circus acts, people P .M.: It's such a pleasure to ambivalent about it. I'll tell you a coming out and juggling, people who have that sound of laughter come from demystifying thing. I don't think art is are just not any good at what you can an audience because you realise we're about centering. I thinks it is about see street performers and circus in the same place. decentering. I don't think it is about performers do very well. I'm talking R. S.: And playing. Because one finding the personality but recognising about the deep popular entertainments of the meanings of the word play is multiple personalities. of a culture. In American culture we're like you say the fishline has play in it. Let's talk for a moment about the talking about sports, we're talking It means it can go this way or that slight discomfort you suggest about pornography, we're talking way, it's not established exactly, it's a 'It fascinates me that there is a big to-do about pornography but you can go to any small southern town, you can go to the video shop and you'll find a little corner where you'll have all these tapes. I assume that the same people who listen to the fundamentalists are also renting these tapes ... they are big business.'

European audiences feel with the idea about certain kinds of images on little bit unpredictable. To play means of entertainment. television and we're talking about the I know what's coming next but not S . T. : I think we are talking obsession with trials, whether they entirely. about a very particular kind of work. happen to be in newspapers, divorce S. T. : But also I think the sense P.M.: Oursortofworkis courts, this court, that court, and so of play comes down to a trust in the dubbed Third Theatre or experimental on. I'm not talking about the high class performance, the text of the theatre. In this sort of theatre in popular entertaiments. Circus and performance you have to hand. [And Europe you don't often see something cabaret are not the ongoing popular in that sense, when we talked about that makes you laugh. The intention of entertaiments. It fascinates me that looseness, that the precision is the work, is quite serious and therefore there is a big to-do ab~ut pornography maintained]. The rigour is maintained, the work is quite serious. You see but you can go to any small southern and inside that I trust it's enough to something perhaps that will make you town, you can go to the video shop throw the whole lot against the wall think, you see something that's very and you'll find a little corner where and see how it bounces back. apocalyptic or quite black, or you'll have all these tapes. I assume R. S.: It's a disciplined looseness. something that's extremely precise and that the same people who listen to the It's what a master sportsman has, what well disciplined, but boring. fundamentalists are also renting these the master athlete has. Julius Irving, a S. T.: What we are talking about tapes - they are big business. Ethically basketball player he was so good, and is a European avant-garde at the and morally I may have quarrels, but he was so precise in his moves, slow moment that has become very self I'm fascinated by what people do when motion or fast motion, they were conscious, very self-obsessed, designed they are given the individual freedom fabulous because the ball would go in. and humourless - I think ultimately, to do it. The state doesn't force them He'd be an asshole if he did all that desperately humourless. to do it. It's how they pass their time. stuff and the ball would never go in. R.S.: You know, that word What are the under-the-soil links The capper of it is if he makes a basket humourless is an interesting word, between that and high art or doing this, then it's sensational. because the medieval meaning of experimental art? It seems to me that P .M.: That's why Ivan Lend! is course is different feelings. You mean high art as it exists in the established such a boring tennis player, because he at the colloquial level no laughter, but theatres and galleries in a certain sense has no sense of play, inside that iron you end finally with something that's is detached. It has its own tradition. will. I don't know who does. I miss dried up - the humours are also moist But experimental art for a long time John McEnroe. At least he could throw and they're the source of feelings. has fed on and crossed over with these a tantrum. Think how defenceless is a person who popular entertainments. Sometimes the R.S.: And when he was playing is laughing. They're expelling air connections may be underneath . It's regularly he was a pretty good player. quickly - you can't see too well, simply that people may be supported you're doubled over. You have to be doing one in order to do the other. I •

NICKKAYE onthe use of extremes inperformance.

"Like the plague, theatreis a crisis vocabulary, actions that sometimes so we come to glimpse our authentic resolvedby death or cure. The plagueis threaten to break down the aesthetic selves and rediscover our relationship a superiordisease because it is an frame altogether. with the world: absolutecrisis after which there is Katia Tsiakma's description of 'To kill means to penetrate, open a nothingleft exceptdeath or drastic Hermann Nitsch's 48th Action (1975) breach with violence in the world purification. .. theatreaction is as demonstrates this point: that surrounds us, and establish a beneficialas the plague, impellingus to 'At the sound of loud music deep relationship with it. '4 see ourselvesas we are, making the Nitsch, like an ancient priest, gives masksfall and divulgingour world'slies, orders for the beginning of the It follows that the extreme nature of aimlessness,meanness, and even two action: a slaughtered lamb is brought his performances act as a necessary facedness.It shakesoff stifling material on stage and is fastened head down as stimulant to a contact with these dullnesswhich even overcomesthe if crucified; it is gradually violent impulses and so to 'a profound senses'clearest testimony, and disembowelled while its blood and catharsis' 5 as these impulses are vented: collectivelyreveals their darkpowers and moist innards fall on a white, freshly hiddenstrength to men, urgingthem to ' ... it is just this excess, in its washed cloth. In the course of the most complete representation, which take a nobler,more heroicstand in the performance ... innards and buckets face of destiny than they wouldhave provokes at the end and with an of blood are repeatedly poured onto impressive lucidity, the real catharsis. asrnmedwithout it." (Antonin Artaud)1 a nude man and woman and This is the most dramatic moment of manipulated over them. On the ill the action. A profound sense of In many of its aspects performance art treated bodies of the nudes other repulsion pervades everywhere and at deals with extremes. Since the early liquids and solid objects mingle with first charges the spectator negatively, 1960s, performances by European and viscera, while the drained corpse of but at the same time it acts subtlely then American artists have matched a the animal hangs sarcastically above within the spectacle: the instincts are rejection of conventional aesthetic them. The apparent climax of the appeased, they sublimate themselves, values and definitions with a ritual consists of a total identification they are dulled. '6 of man and animal, when the human questioning and even violation of It is as if Nitsch wishes to restore the social and moral taboos. The beings - like the lambs - are 2 painful element of actual violence to disturbing nature of performances by crucified dripping with blood'. the theatrical event . So he rejects 'the the 'Vienna Actionists' since 1960as While a ritual establishes a ground on typical fiction used in the classic well as the Body Artists who came to which a sacrifice becomes necessary theatre' 7 in favour of blood rituals prominence in the early 1970sare two and meaningful, while the dramatic employing the warm blood and viscera major examples of a tendency that ritual, the imitation of an action, frees of freshly slaughtered animals, which frequently reasserts itself. It is a kind of an audience from moral culpability for he believes may induce a deeper work often characterised by a the stage action, Nitsch presents a response. Arguably, though, Nitsch's commitment to performing intensely deliberate violation of moral and social very pursuit of excess reveals a personal, painful or bloody acts taboos on far less certain ground. Like fundamental misunderstanding of the transformed into public rituals, Chris Burden's crawl half-naked across nature of the cathartic response. enactments that often seem to trip the a car park strewn with glass Through Indeed, it is precisely the removal of line between sacrifice and self the Night Softly 1973 or his crucifixion, the morbid and painful element from indulgence. nailed through the palms, to the rear of the stage action that permits the The particular qualities of these a Volkswagen Trans-fixed 1974 or Vito spectator to find a deeper engagement performances and the strong reaction Acconci's masturbation beneath a and a more profound emotional they provoke owe much to their gallery floor as he whispers to his experience. formal nature. Repeatedly, in stepping audience Seedbed1972, the shocking In his commentary on Aristotle's into performance, artists have come to nature of Nitsch's activity may PoeticsS.H. Butcher emphasises consider a direct action to be overwhelm an audience's ability or precisely this point, stating that undertaken in respect of the audience desire to sustain the aesthetic frame. rather than the construction of a Nitsch's intention, though, seems to 'Tragic fear, though it may send an dramatic fiction. The resulting be to provoke just such a crisis. His inward shudder through the blood, emphasis on enactment rather than theme is that of violently breaking does not paralyse the mind or stun imitation has shaped the language of through appearances, of penetrating the sense as does the direct vision of performance art and has served to superficial morality and behaviour, some impending calamity . And the distinguish it from other theatrical arousing and revealing in the spectator reason is that this fear, unlike the genres. Yet at the same time this essential and animalistic impulses. As fear of common reality, is based on emphasis has also permitted highly he forces us to recognise our 'thirst for the imaginative unity with another's ambiguous actions to enter into its the experience of killing'3, he argues, life. The spectator is lifted out of

himself. He becomes one with the I'm moving the candle around in the face of the stress and the impossible tragic sufferer, and through him front of my body. The camera is goal that will relieve it. Yet this is a with humanity at large.' 8 fixed, the candle shows up parts of 'break down' that has come with The point is that the most profound my body against the dark; I'm seen Acconci's 'exhaustion,' his personal catharsis is an aesthetic experience. To from the waist up. As I bring the submission and arrival at a state where seek to reinstate the painful element candle to my breast, the camera he has 'fallen to bits' under the within the stage action and so threaten zooms in: the camera remains still as exertion, under the pressure of the audience's aesthetic engagement is I use the candle to burn the hair off attempting to 'adapt.' to risk simply stepping back into a each breast and then, once my chest Acconci's interest in such work lies 'common reality' and so 'paralysing is hairless, I pull each breast in a in the emotional consequences of his the mind and stunning the sense.' futile attempt to develop a woman's continuing activity as it is pushed to an 11 The problems that appear to be breast.' extreme. In his notes on Hand and inherent within Nitsch's work, Acconci's 'essay' AdaptationStudies MouthAcconci draws attention to his however, have been addressed directly describes the personal consequences of 'Exhaustion - the more I do it, by many performance artists. And it is such performances and makes clear the the worse I get - adaptation here clear that such work frequently strikes structure and effect of his actions. The can only mean that I'd have to be a careful balance, turning the "threat" action that takes him toward the goal; able to swallow my hand - pushing to the spectator into a central point of the forcing of his hand into his mouth, into myself results in pulling myself power in the work. the burning of the hair; is a 'stress apart.' 12 Nitsch's need to attack the 'mask,' to agent.' It is as a response to the 'stress As Acconci pushes himself to his break through a kind of alienation by agent ' that the performance emerges limits, so he 'reveals' himself to the using extreme methods has been and is carried forward; the initial viewer. By forcing himself into a paralleled in much European and 'alarm reaction,' a 'groping for physical and emotional loss of control, American work, despite philosophical direction,' is overcome through a allowing his 'personal self to emerge. and formal differences. Artists such as conscious 'adaptation' to the stress, a He notes that, Chris Burden, Vito Acconci, Barry moving toward the goal and Le Va, Marina Abromovic, Gina Pane determination to succeed as far as ' ... what interested me about have presented intense and painful possible. This in itself, though, leads to imposing stress on myself was that performances in which they are driven the 'break down' of the performance in this was a way that I could work to a point of physical and psychological crisis. Here, frequently, the actions of the artist challenge the Adaptation Studies, by Vito Acconci formal relationship between performer and spectator, deliberately undermining the viewer's ability to remain at a distance from the aesthetic object. In exploring these processes, though, this work does not simply attempt to destroy the viewer's formal separation, but rather seeks to heighten an awareness of the extreme difficulty of contact itself. Vito Acconci's performances of the early 1970sdirectly address these tensions. Hand and Mouth, recorded on ADAPTATIO N STAGE: film in 1970, is described by Acconci as development of t he mos t a ppropr i ate ch ann el of consisting of r esi s tance -- re a ctio n i s sp a ti a l l y conce n tr a ted 'Pushing my hand into my mouth until I choke and am forced to release my hand - continuing the STRESS action for the duration of the film. '9 AGENT \ While in Conversions1, first released and documented as a 'photo-piece' in October 1970and later filmed, Acconci attempted to 'change his sex,' to mould himself into the appearance of a woman by 'Putting a naked flame to my

breasts; burning the hair off. Pulling .ALA.R1tREACTION: aux ili a r y ~ at my breasts, trying to develop mechani sms mobili z ed - no ~aJ" . spe ci f ic syste m dev elope d female breasts.' 10 to cope wi th t he t as k at Q, ha nd -- re acti on spre a ds to I A ) In Vito Acconci,A Retrospective: 1969- div er se re gions (PI"" \J.... ' 'r 1980Acconci described the resulting film: jJ l~~~j-1-~ ~~ ..... 'Conversions 1 (Light/Reflection/ r.1~~o'\ \J<,s+lw Self-Control). The screen is dark; there's a moving light; gradually its tl-11,oIt 'i#-J.<'°:' apparent that the light is a candle, w 1Mr ~ ,..:-r,O"f' ,~ ~

myself into exhaustion stages, in down and revelation of self. Acconci, and many of his other words to get myself out of Such performances participate in a contemporaries, performance involved control, that I would be more broader stream of work to be found first of all negotiation with the viewer. vulnerable to a viewer, more open to within the various forms of The rapid changes in the work of many a viewer.' 13 performance art since the 1950s.Many Body Artists from confrontational performances of the late 1960sto These performances seek to provoke of the Happenings, in combining 'installation ' and object-based work of a literal crisis in the body and mind of 'found' and made objects, pre the mid-1970s reflected the difficulties the artist. In doing so Acconci offers determined and accidental activities in that such 'interactional' performance himself up to the viewer, as if natural and city environments presented. In the case of Acconci his sacrificing himself in a desperate deliberately undermined the physical work radically changed as he sought attempt to make contact. Yet these and conceptual integrit y of the art the most appropriate ways of drawing actions are highly ambiguous. work. Presenting the viewer with a the viewer into an active contact. Acconci's physical and psychological confusing, all-enveloping plethora of For Artaud, Theatreof Cruelty,the break down 'for' the viewer is also an events, such work deliberately necessity of extreme methods, the need imposition of responsibility, a direct undermined his ability to sustain the to provoke crisis, never meant a simple assault on the viewer. At the same time aesthetic frame. Similarly, George physical destruction . His vision was as he makes this assault, however, Brecht, whose work reflected much of firmly rooted in the poetic and the Acconci firmly distances himself from the spirit and many of the facets of metaphysical, from which his theatre his audience. Hand and Mouthand Fluxus, sought a 'borderline art,' where was to draw its power. In his writings Conversions1 are recorded on film . So definitions of art and life became on Theatre and Cruelty he states Acconci emphasises his own isolation, ambiguous, and the viewer unsure unequivocally that the audience's inability to act, their about his relationship with that which voyuerism. Acconci opens himself to he meets. ' . .. we believe there are living the viewer and yet refuses him access, The danger of presentations such as powers in what is called poetry, and and finally the performance establishes Nitsch's is that in attempting to that the picture of a crime presented a tension between the formal provoke a crisis, the performer may in the right stage conditions is relationship between viewer and simply overstep the mark, ignoring something infinitely more dangerous performer and Acconci's frustrated those tensions and relationships out of to the mind than if the same crime challenge to that separation, his break which such work draws its power . For were committed in life. ' 14

1. A. Artaud, 'Theatreand the Plague,' The Theatre and Its Double (London1977) pp7-22. Quote p.22. 2. K. Tsiakma, 'HermannNitsch: A ModernRitual,' Studio International , July/ August 1976, pp13-15.Quote p.13. 3. L. Inga-Pin, Performances(P adua 1978)p.19. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. L. Vergine,II Corpo Come Linguaggio (Milan 1974). 7. Ibid. 8. S.H. Butcher(Ed.), Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (New York 1951)p.266. 9. V. Acconci,'Adaptation Studies,'R. Kostalanetz, Essaying Essays: Alternative Forms of Exposition (New York 1975)pp190-195. Quote p.194. 10. From Acconci's unpublished notesto Conversions 1 (collection of Museum of Modern Art, New York). 11. J.R. Kirshner,Vito Acconci: A Y'~ VJ< Retrospective: 1969-1980(Chicago EJGlAUSTION STAGE: breakdown ~ '· 1i; • Ill" 1980)p.15. of the mos t appropri a te \ \J \T 12. V. Acconci,Adaptation Studies, R. ~:~e:_~v~~a~~!o!~~!!~ \~ , \ . Kostalanetz op.cit. channels eventually break {vf. .ft, , A.. \A_ 13. M. Kunz, 'Interview with Vito down r V"' '"' ' '~'\ l Vito Acconci Acconci,'V. Acconci & Kunstmuseum AdaptationStudies Luzern, Vito Acconci (Luzern 1978). Published in Essaying ~~~~:/ 14. A. Artaud, 'Theatre and Crnelty,' Essays:Ed. Richard \o~ Kostelanetz.Out of The Theatre and Its Doubl e (~.s ~~v (London 1977)pp64-67. Quote p.65. London Press, 1975 t '\t '(

TINA WEYMOUTH is half-French, an P .C.: It can't be easy for Ziggy, with it is the Haitian variety, which of admiral's daughter who is a founder he's got a tough act to follow. I mean course everyone tells you to be very member of the Talking Heads and some people see him practically as the careful of. We sampled some voodoo Tom Tom Club, and recently son of God. drums which we used for the Don't Say produced with her husband Chris T. "W. : I think he's coping. But No single. Frantz (a general's son, and Talking he never had a choice really. It chose P. C.: As I understand it, each Heads drummer) the Ziggy Marley LP him. But he's for real. He reads the drum pattern relates to a particular god ConsciousParty. According to Jerome Bible the whole time, and sees or saint, and you have to watch which Davis in his Talking Heads biography everything in terms of Biblical ones you use. "the combination of Byrne's creativity prophecies. From the outside it seems T. "W.: I think it was OK, it was and Weymouth's very American go that he suddenly jumped from being a from a benign sacrifice. It was the sort getter tenacity fueled an extraordinary child to a man at 16 which is like a of ritual anyone can see, whereas you entity. Weymouth and her husband tribal thing. He commands a lot of or I wouldn't get to see the really gave Byrne a practical vehicle through personal power. He's very gentle, but underground stuff. The benign side has which to work. It seems very likely he just has to say something and (she an ethical moral code, but then there's that if David Byrne had never met clicks her fingers) it gets done. He the darker side too ... them, no one would know who David doesn't believe in sex before marriage P. C.: Have you come across the Byrne was". There's an element of and he's looking for the right woman work of Robert Farris Thompson? (Hip truth in all that, a fairly common to be his spouse, he's going to choose ethnomusicologist/art historian - attitude, although the general focus on very carefully. And he has that latest book FlashOf The Spirit). Byrne has tended to downplay Tina political naivity of his whole family, T. "W. :David knows him. I was Weymouth's vital musical contribution which is just how he perceives things. buying a book of his the other day and to the Talking Heads. P. C. : As well as being a reggae the girl next to me in the queue said Ed Bicknell, who promoted the first fan in the seventies, you must have that he was her teacher at Yale, and a Talking Heads shows in Europe in 1977 been following the development of the very good teacher. I love what he's supporting the Ramones said he quite rap. WordyRappinghood (1980) must done pointing out the ways that liked the music but what really have been one of the earliest big rap African culture has influenced so many intrigued him was their appearance, hits. things in the US. For example, anyone particularly the fact that they all had T. "W.: Kurtis Blow was a big who collects early Americana has these long necks. Tina Weymouth doesn't hero of ours and Chris was playing quilts invented by Africans. Very actually have a remarkably long neck, drums with him on TheseAre The intricate with lots of borders to fool although probably above average. Tina Breakswhich hit big. Then someone the bad spirits. Its like the Chinese Weymouth is sitting in the notoriously played Grandmaster Flash 'Genius Of tradition of Feng Shui where the rock'n'roll hotel the Portobello having Love' at about the time he was doing houses have crooked paths, so that the a late breakfast after playing with the 'The Message' and suggested he rap on spirits can't come at you in straight Tom Tom Club at a small London it, although it was a slower groove lines. club, the Borderline , the night before. than most rap. But we've always gone P. C. : It reminds me of reading Some reggae music drifts over the in for slower grooves for some reason in a Dr Who annual that the only way hotel's P.A. system. with the Tom Tom Club. Rap took to avoid Daleks exterminating you is Pet:er Culshavv: I was over from punk as the 'street' music - running from them Zig-Zag because curious that you and Chris (Frantz) I still think they've got to find the best their antennae can't move very fast. A were chosen to produce Ziggy Marley's way to present it live, playing samples friend of mine's father is a Hong Kong ConsciousParty LP. You didn't seem live and so on. banker, and they have to have the Feng the most obvious choice. P. C. : Perhaps the slower Shui man in once a month - if Tina "Weymout:h: Alex grooves was the climate. After all you something like the clock isn't in the Sadkin was going to do it - he'd were recording in the Bahamas ... right position over the door it has to worked with the Waiters, Grace Jones, T. "W.: That might well have had be moved, or the bank clerks walk out. Thomson Twins and others but he was something to do with it. The heat. I T. "W.: When we bought our killed in the Bahamas by a jeep mean look at the way people dance in house we had a priest bless it, and a overturning, which was . . . unlucky. Europe, throwing themselves about. In Feng Shui master come in . .. I was Virgin knew we were friends with Sly somewhere like Brazil it's much slower trying to cover every area. My mother and Robbie and we'd worked with the and slinkier. brought us up in a combination of Jamaican producer Steven Stanley on P. C. : Talking of which, I superstition and science. She was a WordyRappinghood. Virgin knew we understand David Byrne is currentl y medical student , very empirical, but wouldn't whitewash the project but making a film in Brazil. she lived in a house in Brittany which they' d still probabl y get something T. "W.: He flew out yesterday. was haunted . Even Chris, who is a which could 'compete internationally'. He's making a little documentary sceptic says absolutely that ghosts and A still from the video Plus we'd been giant fans of the about the dance and music of Brazilian spirits live there. My great grandfather promo for Tom Tom Waiters since the early 70s. voodoo. The only encounters I've had wrote a book Les LegendsDe La Morta Club's single

famous French book about the social pattern-painting, conceptual art the public, whereas Robert Wilson supernatural. or whatever is much more solitary. stands in the lobby at The CIVIL WarS P. C.: Are you a post-feminist? P. C.: There had been quite a few yelling at people who try and leave T. W. : I suppose I must be, stories about friction within the 'Why are you leaving?' he shouts at probably. Put it this way. I've never Talking Heads (e.g. Rolling Stone's them . believed men have a particularly easier Are the TalkingHeads Byrned Out?) - a P. C.: To an outsider it seems the time than women. current rumour has it that you and New York art crowd is quite an P.C.: The new Tom Tom Club David have signed an agreement not to incestuous network. I don't mean that LP BoomBoom Chi BoomBoom, despite be rude about each other in public. in a derogatory way. But there's a the title seems in general to be darker T. W.: I've never felt anything group of people who seem to support than your previous LPs, and that seems but love for David, he's an old friend each other and work together - to be a move away from dance music and partner for many years and I Spalding Gray works with Jonathan to a more guitar-based 'indie' sound. respect him. But for a time when Demme who works with Laurie T. W.: People say if you've David was going off working on things Anderson and Talking Heads, David found a formula like why change it? it did seem like we were the good Byrne works with Robert Wilson who It's like when Coca Cola tried to support players who'd been put on works with Philip Glass and so on. change their recipe people said it's not hold. It was terribly frustrating, What's quite impressive apart from the real thing anymore. But we can't because we didn't feel like making anything else is that somehow they all work like that, we may lose some of films and David wanted us involved have found a way to deal with the our audience, but we'll gain others. In with them. For him it was right, but contemporary corporate monsters of the US there's a view that you should not for us, it was a whole big other the record companies, press, film stick to your musical tradition. It business, it just wasn't in our hearts. In companies and still produce interesting seems more open here - you get white a way, he felt rather abandoned by the work. soul singers who don't think twice rest of us. But we feel protective T. W. : As far as the press goes, I about all that. We've always tended to towards what he does, just as he think you just have to lay it on the crash various things together and see supported us when people said the line. There are some people who are what happens, like with the NakedLP. Tom Tom Club was just the Talking good at manipulating the press, but Stick musicians together and you speak Heads silly, goofy little sister. often it doesn't work, the press get a common language. It certainly didn't P. C.: You didn't fancy working even. You just have to see the press as a feel like on Nakedwe were raiding with Robert Wilson, for example? little barometer of public opinion, other cultures, it was more organic. It's T. W.: I didn't want to get although eventually the public makes hard enough to write a song, and involved with that at all. There's a its own decision based on its own things always change as you record distancing thing that goes on his work. desires. But it's true there is a feeling them. It wasn't a predetermined thing We introduced David to Robert of artists ganging together to try to whether the Tom Tom Club's new LP Wilson. After EinsteinOn The Beach retain freedom for the arts in the same came out as dance or rock music. there was a potential there for way a group of journalists might get P.C.: Presumably with David performance art/theatre to catch on together and demand freedom of the doing his films and the big project massively with the public. In fact, it press. It's really just a group of people with Robert Wilson (Due to hit seemed that Philip Glass was the one who want to say that nothing is dead London as part of LIFT next year) who seemed to need the feedback from while people are living. I there are no plans for the Talking Heads to tour? T. W.: What happened to the Talking Heads was that we used to be a band that played clubs, but if we came over now we'd have to play Wembley to 30,000-40,000people which is anathema. Bands like U2 don't seem to have a problem playing big stadiums, but to us it became spiritually dry, there was a danger of being absorbed by the corporate money machine . Perhaps it was our art school training, but we wanted to individuate as artists as well as having the collective group. P. C. : Maybe there's some advantages of the Talking Heads not touring in that it keeps the mystique of the group intact as opposed to some bands who flog themselves to death. T. W.: Also it's a fantastic opportunity for the Tom Tom Club playing these small places, because the way people react to what you do changes it. On big stages there's more a sense of something finished, we are the authorities and you are going to listen, whereas smaller places are much more of an education, there's a sense of participation, of the public moulding the creation. It's part of the whole

This yearsNational Review of Live Art openedup an old debatebetween theatre and fine art. MARKGAYNOR, himself a participantin the Review,puts the questioninto a wider context.

FEWREADERS CAN have failed to noticethat Theatrebut rather to facilitate a debatein which Tosay that barriers have been broken and that the8th National Review of LiveArt has recently thesocial structure that informs the difference everythinginthe garden is glorious is like saying takenplace. Whatpeople may not hear about is canbe demystified. The refusal to acknowledge equalityhas been achieved, wehave a woman thedifference of opinionexpressed inthe Plat a differenceis the refusalto acknowledgethe PrimeMinister, nowit istime to go back to pretty formDiscussion, the Platform presumably a hot socialstructure. Difference is notan inherent frocksand nest building. Itsimply is not true and bedof newactivity and an indication ofthings to quality.Just as feminismnow commonly dis (probably)counter-productive. come.It wasobserved that artists and people cussesfemale identity as a socialconstruct and Thedebate would seem to hingeon whether froma theatricalbackground formed, socially at notas innate femininity, somust 'Live Artists' be or not liveart is the domainof an exclusive least,different groups. A simple question 'Could preparedto discusstheir identityin a wider groupand what could possibly beconstructive youapply to the Theatre Dept. for funding?' was socialcontext and not just in termsof what they aboutmaking such a distinction. Withouta answeredby an unproblematic'Yes'. Only do.Our activities do not take place in a vacuum. strong,identifiable edifice of its own, andthe once,and very late in thedebate, didanyone raisethe subjectof video. Unfortunately,the debatedegenerated into the forming of defen sivestances and attitudes, exemplifying Steve Rogers' comment:'Performance art often gets accused, wrongly, of beingelitist ... It sur roundsitself with what is actuallya protective bearingof introspection, or privatecodes and signals, whichis invariablyinterpreted by out sidersas arrogance.'* Thesestances were not in themselvesquestioned. Having taken the opportunityto developthis debateprivately I wouldlike to takethis opportunity to developit publicly. Myown contribution was to statethat the mostproductive aspect of showingsuch diverseworks was to pointup the differences. Thiswas not a qualitativestatement. The points alreadyraised are evidenceto the fact that differencesdo existand are, perhaps, more evidentand pertinent than ever before; for it's hardlya newargument. At therisk of marginalis ingVideo, for mypresent purposes I shall res trictmyself to the 'Fine Art' vs 'Theatre' debate. Whetherit goesone way or anotheris less importantthan not remaining ina no-man's land where, inthe present climate of ever increasing cutbacks, thepredominant ideology of painting couldexclude performance as belongingto Theatreor Theatreexclude experiment as be longingto the visual arts. Anybodywho has tried to raisesupport from their local Regional Arts Associationunderstands the difficulties ofbeing a half-breed. Thetitle 'Review of LiveArt' losesthe double meaningof the word 'live' thatis presentin the sub-titleof this magazine'Live Art Now'and simplyreplaces the connotationsof the word 'performance' withanother word for thesame thing, effectivelyreducing the clarion call for a wayof lifeto thedescription of an event.The descriptionof an eventrarely does more than scratchthe surfacepatina. Just because two thingslook the same it doesn't meanthey are the same, or vice versa.The recognitionof ls it art or theatre?Euan differenceis not,as canbe misconstrued,in Sutherland,Third Eye orderto establisha hierarchyi.e. FineArt over Centre, October 1988

unlikelihoodof one appearing in theimmediate audienceismade up of exactly the same people littleor noexperience of otherforms of theatri future, performancemust align itself with an a differentset of preconceptionsand expecta calityi.e. the gallery exhibition, one is presented existingone or risk being squeezedout tionsis broughtto bearon the observations of withthe question 'What is the difference?' when altogether.Might I suggestthat the alignment differentcultural products. In theworld of art, theonly perceived difference istitle. Thisis then be notso muchwith artists as withart, for the ratherthan the stylistic variations of individual furthercomplicated byattracting new practition followingreason. In orderto securethe future artists, the realinnovations have been in the ersfrom this new audience who become stylish an educatedaudience must be developedas meansof exhibition; the modern phenomena of exponentsof the boldnew art, with its air of wellas educatedpractitioners. Theearlier that the temporaryexhibition, group exhibition as seriousnessafforded art but not 'fringe' theatre. educationbegins the better. Art is at the core of conceptand the subsequent importance of the Thismay seem like a crassover simplification of theNational Curriculum after the education Re catalogueas document, and perhaps most fun eventsthat took place over a longperiod of time formBill, but Drama is not.This is lamentable damentalthe fact that most people experience but, inkeeping with our times, theturn over gets becauseDrama has hitherto been used to great artthrough reproduction of on form or another quickerwith the intermediatesteps being left effectas a crosscurriculum activity, an educa ratherthan directconfrontation. Another in out,namely a realconcept of audience.I find tionaltool, and not just the production of school novationis thesubstitution ofa realexperience somewhatoffensive 'What does it matter?' asa plays. Aswe witness the decline in population in placeof a secondhand or representedone. responseto the questionof difference, offen dueto the'Pill Generation', withthe emphasis LiveArt. Thisis the kindof conditioningthat siveto thequestioner -the audience. It might ontraining and financial self sufficiency, we will predeterminesthe spectators expectations for notbe the end of the world, artnever is, butthe seea parallelreduction in theopportunities for experiencinganart work where ever it maybe. questionwould not be askedif it didn't matter. Dramain education. Alarmist as this may seem Theseconditions also have their effect on the Perhapsthen, onedefinition of liveart is an thereis nothinglike planningfor the future. productionof art works. art thattakes into account and tries to under Consequently,some educationalists are turn Wherethe confusion has arisen, I believe, is standthe contextualrelationship between the ingto 'performanceart' as aneducational tool in the incorporationof theatrical skills into the artistand the spectator through the exposition legitimisedby its inclusion inthe fine arts. This is 'staging' of a realexperience for an audience of actualexperience. Insteadof beinga purist, a wonderfulopportunity on which to build.If live unableor unwillingto think of the gallery exhibi restrictivedefinition of liveart this in fact opens art wasseen to takeon the kindof rolethat tionas itselfa formof theatricality;the public upthe options for live art to beanything but not dramahas played, I believe,we will see not only exhibitionof actionscarried out in private. The foranything to belive art. Wehaven't comethat a greaterunderstanding of a disciplineand masteryand exposition of techniqueand skill far yet. thereforedevelopment, but a realintegration of hadlong since ceased to be a prerequisiteofthe As aneducational tool, underthe above de creativity, notjust a boldstatement that differ painterand sculptor but not so for the live perfor finition,live art would be a meansof developing encesdon't/shouldn't exist.But if it is in educa mer.Interest quickly wains when the ability to understandingof the social context of different tionthat the future of thisarea lies then it must enthral!is absent.This demand for performing disciplinesinconjunction with the acquisition of be discoveredexactly what it is that can be skillsparallels the returnto traditionalvalues skillsand training. taught.A disciplinewould have to be defined. elsewhere; professionalism, entertainment Thisis only one contribution, fromone side of Thisdiscipline may be discovered by discussing value, narrative, figurationand painting gener thefence, to a debatethat will continue. I am whatconstitutes the area or conversely, what ally,and of courseearning a living. In short, a constantlybeing asked 'What exactly is per constitutesthe difference. A commonremark is shiftto theright, conservatism. Asthe acquisi formanceart?' or 'What'sthe differencebe whatdoes it matteras longas it is good. ThisI tion of theseskills develop in conjunctionwith tweenperformance art and fringe theatre?' or, findof littleuse as they only objective criteria for technicalfacilities, we see an increasingde moreoffensively, 'What'sthe differencebe judgementcan be effectiveness, doesit work. pendenceon the establishedtheatre space. tweenperformance art and bad dance?' These Tojudge effectiveness one has to understand Complicatedbythe bureaucratic constraints on arequestions that will not go away and cannot the aims. Whatare the aims of 'Performance suchplaces the shift in emphasis has a corres beanswered properly when there is no sense of Art?' pondingshift in audienceperception and ex cohesion. Itsso difficult to talk about something Theaim of allarts are surely communication pectation. This shift may well take place within whenthere is no consensus on what that some with an audience. Art is communicablelan thespectator but also opens up the possibility thingis. I guage,albeit eclectic and/or personal,and not for the actual spectatorto change. The merelytherapeutic, self(indulgent) expression. broadeningofaudience inthis way is not in itself *PerformanceNews Supplement to the special In orderto makeeffective communication, to a badthing but by attracting an audiencewith Edge'88 edition. makeoneself understood, onehas to under standthe means of perceptionas wellas pro duction. A greatdeal of emphasishas already beenlaid, in vis. arts, onproduction -process vs product.Some would say that this is where theidentity of performancelies; in the rejection of the saleableproduct, where the processis theproduct. In fact, muchof the most renowned livework has come in theform of finishedpro duct i.e. the show.Indeed, processhas not beenthe exclusive provenance of live art; wit nessthe work of Pollack, Serra, Longetc. The useof processcan be said to beto draw atten tion to the meansof productionand thereby disturbthe common perception of whatconsti tutesthe work. The words process and produc tioncan be interpreted as construction which it turncan be read as practise or working method. Wecan now see the emphasis on the practition erand not on the perceiver. Assuch, thedefini tionof performanceasa workin processis not aloneadequate as it ignoresthe perceiver, the otherhalf essentialfor communicationand almostcertainly present in the form of audience. The essentialdifference between 'art' and JolmJordan, Third Eye 'theatre'is theperception or ratherpreconcep Centre, October 1988 tionof this audience. Theact of lookingat art is verydifferent to lookingat theatre.Even if the

PeterZegveld RobertoTaroni TheGalley Portraitde L'artiste et1 Salti111ba11q11e SlaughterhouseGallery, September 14/15 Flaxman Gallery, September15

Nigel Rolfe UlrikeRosenbach TinaKeane Shooti11g- Shiui11g ill theHouse of Woine11 TheDiver KingswayPrinceton College, September16 GrandPriory Church, September17 Ironmonger Row Swimming Baths, September 24-25

CaroleeSchneemann AlistairMaclennan CarlesSantos CatSca11 BledEdge A,~a11c/1111/a,A,~a11ch11lla-Gallac 8, Northburgh St, September 17 Kinsway PrincetonCollege, September 19-23 Finsbury Town Hall, September 22

DerekKreckler, Adrienne Gaha, Sarah Miller MarcelleVan Bemmel TinaKeane ToldBy A11Idiot Pee,,eewally TheDiver Flaxman Gallery, September 20-21 FlaxmanGallery, September23-24 Ironmonger Row Swimming Baths, September24-25

-ntalart biennale, tookplace inthe Clerkenwell the25th of September . .stated.)

VeraFrenkel Ian Breakwell TlieB11si11ess of Fr(~hte11ed Desires The Auditorium (or tlteMaki11,~ of a pomoirapher) 8, BerrySt, September13-2:i Air Gallery,September 13-1:i

StuartBrisley HelenChadwick Bourgeois.\1a1111ers - Bmte Forcemid Bloody Ig11ora11ce BloodHyphe11 8, Northburgh St, September13-2:i WoodbridgeChapel, September 13-25

PaulWong RoseGarrard MonaHatoum Self Wi11di11~ Ow O(Li11c Re#ertiow011 Value 8, Northburgh St, S;ptembcr 13 SlaughterhouseGa llery. September13-2:i 8, Northb~rgh St, September13-25

DenisMasi SilviaZiranek JerzyBeres Sm·,·11 AfoltaClake,,u•e/1 aud a Couple of Cardis (u1Hitledper{

THISYEARS ANNUAL festival New Work New al ina similarway were refused by the museum workshave been so successful is becausethe castle'88 in associationwith Edge'88, orga services.Subsequent attempts by outside locationshave been so good',adding 'I think nisedby the Newcastle based arts-organisation groups such as the'Newcastle Women Artists artistsrespond very positively to siteswhich ProjectsUK has once again maintained its im andCritics', groupto initiatea seriesof talks by theyhave to workat'. portanceas a nationalevent established by manyof the visitingwomen artists were un It is thisapproach under-pinning the entire previousyears to presentexciting original com favourablydealt with by themuseum services organisationofthis years festival extending the missionsfrom not only established artists but andhindered also by the new 'profit-orientation' refreshinginitiative set by Edge '88, whichhigh artistswhose pieces here marked their first policiesof the RegionalArts Association. lightsa moreinvigorating criteria by whichto publiccommission. Althoughthrough the supportof ProjectsUK, present large-scaleperformance festivals. Thefourteen events presented over the past onetalk by PaulineCummins was organised. Obviouslythis poses a morechallenging con five weekssaw an impressivearray of both Thelack of educationalsupport saw the unfor textby which to viewand understand the work internationaland nationallyrenowned artists tunatewaste of a potentialbonus to contextual whichalso allows the presentation ofmore con suchas Ulrike Rosenbach, Rose Garrard, Zbig isethe festival and thereby open this work to a troversialthemes and issue based subject mat niewWarpechowski, Carolee Schneeman and wideraudience. However this was more than ter lesssubject to the potentialof beingcom AlistairMaclennan most of whosework had compensatedfor by thesecond crucial differ promisedor recuperated within institutionalised been newly commissionedfor Edge '88, encewith previous festivals which had relied on structures. althoughMaclennan produced a new piece moretraditional institutionalised support sys Thefinal difference characterising this years specificallyfor NewWork Newcastle. The re temssuch as theLaing art-gallery. Insteadall festivalwas the increased proportion ofwomen mainingsix newlycommissioned pieces were the live-actionevents and installationswere artistswork (regardless of anyequal opportun producedby Pauline Cummins, Fran Cottel, Liz basedat locationsaround the city centre or the itycriteria) which constituted nine out of the total Ridealwhilst for LouiseWilson, Kathy Lockey Tyneand Wear region. fourteenevents, marking an increasein pre andAlexa Wright this marked their first public Inpart this could account for the festival being viousyears which was this proportion around piecehaving all leftcollege only a yearago. morefirmly located in Newcastle unlike last year halfof the seasonstotal events. Althoughan NewWork Newcastle; Edge '88 can be dis whichsaw the festival later tour Manchester and interestingfeature this need not suggest a wide tinguishedfrom the previous festivals in roughly Bradford. Althoughthis year saw a greater spreadsimilarity in issueor themeto bearticu threeways. One difference was the lack of any emphasison installationwork (roughly half the latedsolely from a feministperspective. Instead educationalprogramme unlike last year which festival)which logistically would have proved onecommon tendancy saw these works articu hadseen, for example,workshops for sixth difficultto tourwhilst also being more suited to latedfrom a personalisedperspective to either formerson performance art, all being supported non-institutionalisedsites. AsJon Bewley, pro draw directlyon personalexperiences, or bythe Tyne and Wear Museum Services. This ject organiserat ProjectsUK cited this differ throughthe useof the artistsown image, or AlexaWright, Imagesof yearapparently invitations todevelop the festiv- enceas crucial,stating, 'The reason why the throughthe collective collaboration ofa groupof Women women. Theperformance Images of Woinen,by Ale xa Wrightexplored the disparitybetween the realityof womensperception of their own appearancesand those desired images as pro jectedand maintained by the mass media and _ societyitself through the group collaboration of adolescentlocal girls own experiences. The location, a richlydecorated reception room of brightred carpetand over-stated floral print decorat theRoyal Station Hotel was ideal for the introductorysequence of a fashionshow, whichbegan an intensely-pitched performance packedwith memorable images and sequences whichcleverly synchronised live-action with a video.Pleasure in theform of blackhumour i.e. ironyand satire in particular marked the under lyingstrategy of thispiece. A goodexample of thisoccurred in thesequence which saw thiw groupadopt the same robotic like posewhilst receiving'essential' beautytreatment to then paradearound the floor in wigsand false nails only to assumea fixed'alluring' pose.The unrealityof thisprocess was foregrounded by thesoundtrack of eachgirl giving a listof per sonalgrievances over their appearance such as 'My bodyis disproportionate... lumpsand bumpsall overthe place... I shouldn't be botheredby it butI am'. Thisironic juxtaposition

• f • f I •

' ' I l LouiseWilson, Warm Seas of soundtrackand live-actionwas not only events,I did feel that by the end of the day and green-grey, offeringa directassociation with humorousbut also demonstrated the obvious yetanother chance to talk on the walk back, this themud preserved remains of thebog people. 'doublebind' womanoften find themselves inby eventwas successful in providingwomen the Whilstthe glazes in blacksand blues slashed beingtrapped between the reality of their actual opportunityto meetup and share common ex acrossthese faces seemedreminiscent of appearanceand the desireto emulatemore periences. woundsor scars acquired by victims from burns idealisedimages ('I just want to lookbetter than Bycontrast Unearthed, byPauline Cummins or violence. Thewhitened head and shoulder I do, I justwant to lookbeautiful'). Although the poseda moretraditional relationship between self-portraitswith mud-darkened hands obscur finalsequence when we saw the bride literally 'the artist'and 'audience'. Dressedin black ing the facialfeatures again posed a visual tearher own idealised image apart offered a traditionalIrish clothes suggesting mourning, metaphorof a culturalidentity obscured. Whilst grimlydramatic conclusion to suchincessant PaulineCummins sat to the left of a largescreen the lushgreen rural settings into whichthe contradictions. infront of which the audience gathered to watch maskswere displayed may have seemed overly Anotherproject which depended on the col andbe drawn into the well-structured, enthrall romanticisedyet this also posed the notionof laborationof a groupof somefifty women this ing,yet disturbing narrative set to someequally somepagan pre-Christian spirituality as part of timea one-offunrehearsed event was A Meet hauntingslide images and soundtrack. This Irishtraditional culture as evidenced inthe con ingOutside Time by FranCottel. The artist felt locationof a largeempty low-ceilinged dar cludingnarrative. A dream-likestream of imag thata womenonly group would benefit most kenedspace at Riversideestablished a scenar erytapped this hidden reality of pastIrish his fromher aim to ' .. . enacta ritualsymbolic of a io of bleaknessand apprehension further rein tory, peoplesand culture,of ghosts-in-the senseof common tireless humanity .. .',in con forcedby the night-timestormy weather out machine', risingup to pose an unresolved situa trastto ' .. . a short-termpolitical materialist side. In this way PaulineCummins offered a tion'They've beenthrough it all before.It's all expediency' by whichwomen in particularare very personalimpression of the conflictsin beforeus'. too oftenassociated. The group,myself in NorthernIreland and the struggle to realiseand AgainLouise Wilson in her installation Warm cludedtravelled from Newcastle city centre to a articulatesome form of culturalidentity. As in Seas,also referred to 'Big' politicalissues i.e. moorlandpart of NorthumberlandNational Park theintroduction Pauline Cummins announced thenuclear power industry but in combination nearHexham. Through my own experience, I 'Irish?Me? I'm not Irish .. .' questioningyet also withspecific feminist debates surrounding the felt the smallergroups into which we all dis mockingas spokenin Irishtones. A seriesof appropriationof madness/hysteria with bandedto followone of threeroutes to later disturbingnarrative images effectively evoked femininity/womenin certainvisual discourses rejoinon the moorlandsite was one of the thedeep sense of emotionaltrauma and vio throughthe personalisedmeans of usingher highlightsof theevent. This offered a meansto lencepart of the Irish 'situation' produced ownimage. These visual discourses were refer symbolically'leave-behind' untenable aspects througha range of devicessuch as an redto throughthe two mainsources of self of twentiethcentury life writtenon coloured apparentlyinane joke querying'What's a referentialimagery contained in a vastwater stakesalong the way but also a chanceto talk hedgehog', producingthe reply,'It's thehood tankwhich dominated the dimly lit warehouse witheveryone in theparticular group. By con ... overthe head ... witha bulletthrough it'. A spaceof Ousebornworkshops. The first in the trastthe large communal meeting proved slight similar emotionaldramatic charge was formof a lifesizemonochrome image of the ly awkwardon occasionsin maintainingthe achievedwhen in outlining the 'keening' a yellto artistwearing a surgicalgown directly addres momentumof the suggestedevents e.g. ex alertresidents in catholiccommunities ofterror singthe viewer which was screen-printed onto a changingcoloured scarves aimed to encourage istinvaders Pauline Cummins emulated this call flimsyfabric sheet pinned down beneath the moremixing but within such a largegroup, this of 'MURDERER'with gut wrenching effect. The waterby missile-shapedlead weights inferring seemedmore impersonal, although everyone slideimages complemented the narrative per obvious 'phallic' connotations. This was participatedin the communal meal. fectlythrough the two sourcesof claymasks obviouslythe 'mad-woman' astypified in much AlthoughI have my reservations ofthe overall andself-portraits. The raquo-fired clay masks laternineteenth century psychiatric photogra effectivenessof such large participation-based retained the pre-kiln colour of the clay as a deep phye.g. Charcots work. Thisalso conflated the

secondvisual discourse again capitalised upon ~ caredisplayed small oval resin-coated plastic in fine-artpainting of thesame period i.e. the :3 bagspiled beneath the trolley bed which offered Pre-Raphaelitepainter Millais's paintingof ~ a directreference to femalegenitalia. This Opheliathe 'mad-woman' drowningbeneath ~ poseda disturbingcontrast with one of the real thewater. Thesecond source of imagesin the ~ objectsused in the piece, a man's razor, placed formof a rapidsuccession of colourslides pro- ::s nearby,a smallbut brutal reminder that this was jectedover the screen-printalso tapped this u3 a womensward in a quiteliterally phallocentric visualdiscourse. The artist adopted the same :c: maledominated medical system. The feminist pose, thistime in a ruralsetting whilst sporting a subject-matterwas reinforced in thepresenta bunchof flowers, therebydrawing more directly tionof the workas KathyLockey apparently on the Opheliapainting by Millais. Whilstone tappedearlier 70's feministart-approaches to 'narrative' posedthe related Ophelia theme of counterdominant sculpture by usingmaterials sexualviolation seen from the presence of an ofa transient, ephemearalnature as in this case anonymousboiler-suited man. Theseslides plastercasts of realobjects. drewthe sinister connection between femininity In viewof theseoften disparate themes in andmadness with the mass-media tendency to sucha selectednumber of artists work, it isclear describeconcern over the present-day nuclear thatthis years festival has staked an important industryas a formof 'neurotichysteria'. Slide moveaway from depending on more traditional textsdrew this analogy, albeitambiguously in institutionalisedsupport systems. Future referencessuch as 'mother-atom' and'fission eventscan only be furtherreinforced by sus daughter'. Whilstvarious details in the dar tainedmedia attention which can serve to en kenedwarehouse such as the gothicround couragenew artists work which both benefits arched, blueU.V.A. lit frameoffered a visually fromand regularly offers the unexpected high Kathy Lockey, Silences seductiveimage only to be made more insidious lightsof thisfestival. • whenone learned this was part of thepublicity logodesigned for Sellarfield. Overall, LouiseWilson's workwas an ambi tiouspiece which successfully addressed the U'J obviousproblematic built into the 'representa z _, tion of women' too oftenpresented as the _, 0 'Other', throughthe metaphorical use of repre '-' w sentationsof 'mad-women'. > w > Anotherpowerful work was Kathy Lackeys U'J Silences.The site chosen skilfully conflated two

importantthemes; the domestic sphere of social 0 >- 0 life and present-dayinstitutionalised medical :c: system,by being based in a domesticbuilding Cl. (a Georgianterrace) within the grounds of the RoyalVictoria Infirmary. Yet the senseof domesticinformality anticipated by such an en vironmentwas immediately denied on entering thebuilding as a signindicated 'Wait in room numberOne until it is yourturn to enterroom numbertwo', therebydemonstrating an institu tionalisedsystem to order and control individual behaviour. Althougheveryone entering im mediatelycomplied with these instructions ex emplifyingone main concern of this installation howin a widercontext forms of authorityand controlare too often upheld without question. Spendingonly a few momentsin the waiting roomwhich proved 'too much' interms of visual detailwhich seemed to spillout of the available space, coupledwith a multi-layeredsoundtrack detailingaspects of womens lives and assumed rolesI thenentered the second room ('Only one personat ayone lime in this room'). Theentire spacewas dominated by four largecubicles whichcontained and ordered the presentation ofdifferent settings referring to eitherthe public spherein the formof a hospitalward or to differentaspects of lifetypically associated with womeni.e. baby-feedinggear = mother/ housewife. Thesubdued lighting and complete silenceconferred a meditativeand tranquil atmosphere. Theapparent beauty of thisen vironmentwas undermined to exposea more AlexaWright, Images of sinisterelement when focusing on details. For Women examplethe first cubicleof westernmedical

again.The set is twoflats joined to makethe Furtherto theseabberations we see various cornerof a room,a doorin one of them,a surrealintrusions into the world, They're intro windowin theother. Beneath the window is a duced,or at leastexcused, narratively. When two seatersofa. Variousdetails support the the mancracks his world cracks too. Michael fiction; a pictureon one of the walls, a 'phoneon getspossessed by the spirit of hisfather, who thefloor, light flooding through the window as an demandsthey play some cricket. 'Dad ... Dad, unseenfan moves its net curtain and the bran notnow .. .' hepleads 'There isn't room.' Later chesthat lie outside. Shillslips behind the drapes that frame the set A Fine Film of Ashes, Earlierpieces, likeDark Water Closing and andreturns to sit onthe sofa, glumand naked GreenRoom, Manchester. FaceDown, used American locations for the excepta hugedunce's cap. Moreevents like samereasons that Jacobeanrevenge play thisfollow, cut up and into the naturalism. Most REVIEW Reviewedby wrightsused Spain; ina far-awayland the issue resonantis theimage that marks the climax of of what'splausible or realcan be sidestepped thepiece; Michael squatted on the floor of the TIMETCHELLS and madnessor romancepushed to an ex darkenedroom trailing his fingers in a poolof treme.An America built out of yearsof cinema, waterthat removal of thefloorboards has re painting,and rumour turned these pieces into vealed.These images find echoes in the text but LEAVINGIMPACT AFTER The Carrier Fre littlemyths, not descriptions of ourworld but are neverrealistically explained, instead they quency, SteveShill has taken his workin a timelesspearls outside of it. workwith the narrativematerial to makea different,perhaps almost opposite direction. Becauseit's setin contemporarysurburban hauntingpicture of a manwhose world and CarrierFrequency was a kind of explosion, Englandthe newshow has to workharder, to perceptionof himsefis in crisis. takingactions out of context,showing not the achievethis same mythic quality, but there's no Asa by-productofthese surreal images we're detailbut a pictureof our exaggerated hearts. It questionthat it managesit in the end. So how is madeto reassess what's gone before. Shill's tall wentafter the essence of ourworld by ignoring thisachieved and to whateffect? framefills the tiny set like a puppettheatre, he it'ssurface. Bycontrast Steve has taken small Theform Steve Shill has developed places looksalmost as estrangedfrom it as he does anddetailed fictional worlds and virtually im momentsor scenesfrom fictional time in front of fromhis character.He's one of thoseperfor plodedthem. In hisshows banal realities open us,one after the other, divided by blackouts, like mers,like Jack Nicholson, who seem to create upendlessly, notjust to revealstrange images shotsin a film. Thefirst shot in A FineFilm of fluidquotation marks and brackets round them or events,but to embracethem. Indeed, the Ashesis of Michael,pressed hard against the selves,so they're by turns distant from and then moststriking and successful thing about A Fine doorand relating some childhood incident. In completeyinvolved in theircharacters. It's a Filmof Ashes,created with Graeme Miller, is thesecond shot the room is empty,late after gooddevice, and one whichA FineFilm of howit mutatescinematic naturalism to makea noonsunlight spills through the curtains. In the Ashesuses well because as the actor goes from newtheatrical poetry: easily readable since it third Michaelenters, carryingthe box of his distanceto involvementthe audience is pulled hasboth feet in the 'real'world of events, but father's ashes.He sits on the sofa, head in his alongbehind; laughingand then biting one's lip. equallyrooted in ideas about time, and dreams, hands.In the fourth shot it's night-time and the Backedby GraemeMiller's soundtapethe andmemory. man's on his handsand knees,banging the actualand the psychologicalelements of the Shill's fourpieces have shown lone or paired floorboardswith a hammer. In thefifth he's at narrativeare held in a kindof perfectsuspen charactersmore or less pinned to the corners of the door,talking to himself,aiming the odd sion. Thereare disappointments; someof the their rooms, workingor narratingtheir way remarkto thebox of ashes. textis clumsyand references to things such as throughthe events of thepast, as present time Inthe end it's the pace within and the relative 'thelocal Asda' feellike they're trying a bithard. slipsaway like a timelapse film. Inthe new show durationof these shots, aswell as their content, I wantedMichael and his world to be pushed anestate agent, Michael,returns from his dad's thatcreates the tone and meaning of the piece. furthertoo, there was a sensethat once at the funeralcarrying a boxfull of ashesand a bottle Althoughall the shotsare naturalisticunto watersidethere was nothing left to do.But de of sherry.Sat in thefather's househe talks to themselvesthey're notin sequentialorder. As spitethese things it's an excellent crystalisation theashes, reminiscing, complainingand regret thepieces goes on we're moreaware of these toSteve Shill's work since Impact, unique, com ting, asa seriesof phone calls mark his increas gentleloops and irregularities, though the basic plexand articulate, likea seriesof photographs ing isolationfrom the outsideworld, andthe flowof thenarrative, andof time, remainsun of an Englandthat doesn't exist... holding lightsfade from morningto nightand back checked. humour, sadnessand warmth in its hands. I ff '

SteveShill, A FineFilm of Ashes

relationshipbetween the two menbecomes Singthere is someawareness of the found strainedas they journey further and further into natureof the narrative, but I wantedto besurer thejungle. Geoffrey Mortimer wants to search thatthe piece knew about, and was dealing with forgold and to exploit the natives that they meet, it'srelationship to Conrad, Kipling,Herzog and whilstStanley Crumb apparently wants to leave Coppolaas much as it was dealing with its ideas thenatives unmolested and to geton with his aboutits own fictional world. research. Thisapparent lack of self-consciousnessin Thismoral antagonism crystalises when the contentwas reflected inthe theatrical construc RadioSing Sing, Leadmill, bearersdesert and leave the two men stranded tionof the piece which moved between time and in thejungle. locationa bit to carelessly. In onebreath the REVIEW SheffieldNov 88 Myfirst feeling was one of pleasure at seeing characterswould be addressing the audience Reviewedby ManAct continue to addressthe theme of male directlyand in thenext they'd be 'in the junge' friendshipswhich has always been the basis of talkingto oneanother as thoughthey had no TIMETCHELLS theirwork. It wasvery rewarding, to see them ideathey were now being, or hadever been, hereas two such skilled and confident perfor observed.The psychologicalgear changes mers,handling pace and character with the real necessaryfor both audience and performers in controland understanding that only comes with thesetransitions was sometimes very distanc INRADIO SING SING Simon Thorne and Philip yearsof ensemblework. ing, andresulted in a senseof confusion which Mackenzierepresent the characters ofGeoffrey RadioSing Sing was directed by Steve Shill wasfrustrating rather than engaging. Mortimer,a pragmatic Australian gold prospec and,like his ownrecent work, it exploresa Suchconfusion was heightened bya certain torand Stanley Crumb, a British Scientist intent simplestory. To some extent it usesthe journey lackof clarity in the space. Althoughthe charac ona journeyinto the Papua New Guinean in ofthe two men into the .interior as a metaphorfor terswere clearly in the process of re-telling their terior. a journeyby the west towards its own political ownstory for themselves, I was never entirely Thespace is beautifullylit, the floor painted andpsychological inhumanity. It's a powerful surewhere, in fictional time or space they were likeblack and white tiles, the men dressed in motifwith significantcontemporary implica meantto beas this happened. blackdinner suits and ties. Here,in a varietyof tions,but it's territory that's been well charted Despitereservations about Radio Sing Sing's stylesthey recount a past tense narrative about andI foundMan Act's handling of it, although lackof self-awarness I did find it quitesuccess theirjourney together; sometimes addressing discreet,rather straight faced. In A FineFilm of ful on a smaller,human level. The endlessly theaudience, sometimes using dialogue from Ashes(reviewed elsewhere in thisissue) Shill mutatingfoxtrot dances were very comical and thepast, and sometimes using more abstract combinedatiny modernist narrative, believed in dialogueand movement sections were done movementsection involving dance and large andcared for, with a verypleasurable sense withan exemplarydetail and sensitivity that bundlesof sticks. thatat a certainlevel the whole thing was func enlivenedand made resonant even the simplest In the storywhich is retoldbefore us the tioningas an ironicquotation. In RadioSing material.•

mighthave been Tchaikovsky. Theseare all womenwhose sex is not theirown. The mostaccessible personality amidstthem all: the Artist'sModel who is timelessand endlessly recurrent, whose lov l~MIIIJllffllllf ers are endlessand endlesslycreative, whosemanhood is unquestionablebecause A MagdalenaProject The nub of the dramathat Nominatiae theypermit her to baskin the reflectedgla Filiaeplays out is the processof naming mourof anartistic ideal. How does she earn production,Chapter Arts itself.Rage at the mechanicismsat work in herliving? She specialises in suicideposes. Centre. namingthe girl child.Rage at the rootsof Theothers have not even come close to the women'soppression. Rage not at the instinctfor survivalthat his woman's self Reviewedby SIMON pragmaticpracticalities of a woman'sexist deprecationdisplays. Their masochistic re THORNE. encebut at the root sourcesdefining her creationof someof the morelurid repre creativeimpulse. The MagdalenaProject sentationsof womenhooddrawn from the has set itself the task of excavatinglan iconographyof westernart is all the more guage.Laudible in the declareddangerous distressing. searchfor an originality but here perhaps not At this pointI amforced to acknowledge daringenough. Here the originalstill mas thatunder the directionof SophiaKalinska HEREWE HAVE a productionby the Mag queradesin hersecond hand clothes. And the workis culturallyspecific almost to the dalena Project.An internationalcast of perhapsthat is the point. point of being hermetic.It is wholly womendedicated to the excavationand Thereis a frustratinglack of the specific Eurocentricin itsversion of arthistory. More celebrationof a woman's languagein here.The drama of a painterhaunted by the specificallyit is Polish. Again,given Ms theatre. Andyet for me the most memorable ghostsof hercreative blocks as shestrug Kalinska's associationwith Tadeusz Kantor, imageis a sterileone. A whitecircle painted glesto redefinean all-embracingimage of I suspectdepths of autobiographythat I am onthe floor and a carouselof womendanc her womanhoodis curiouslyundramatic. not partyto. Herproclaimed celebration of ingaround it. Their dance is a celebrationbut Theobsessive neuroses of thewomen who thedenomic woman strikes me as nostalgic. of what?Their own hysteria? Six women; a inhabither images are given their poignancy The performancestyle drawson a well painterand her paintedsubjects who have by their setting.They are Pre Raphaelite, understoodstyle of expressionistphysical steppeddown from their canvasses to circle they are Lorca'swomen and they are commitment.And yet all of the madonnas, endlesslyand mechanically.Six women Freud'swomen. In the quest for a biological virgins,brides, whores, widows, angelsand whoseendless circular wailing is a mournful essentialismthey are perhaps most strongly deposedsaviours portray an overwhelming indictmentof the imagesthat havesnared Jung's women. At any rate they are sadness;the sight of mothersand daughters them. The imagesthemselves are all the nineteenthcentury women, products of a herdedtogether, meekly lobotomised, their moreterrifying for theircliche and their de persistent Romantic imgination. The hystericalrage hysterectomised and steril vastatinglack of potency.And so the circle carouselrides along to a persistentvalse ised. remainsunbroken. tristewhich I amsure I recognised. I thinkit Nonew celebration ofwild women here. I

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0 l o :r 0..

Manact,Radio Sing Sing

IT WOULDBE hard to imagineany circumst ancein whichputting a nakedfemale go-go dancerat thefront of thestage as a gratuitous decorationwould be acceptable. TheButthole Surfersdid just this and more. Thewhole performance, largely of material fromtheir current Hairway to Stevenrecord, was at the veryleast an exercisein cultural disorientationand transgression. Theyplay at Thisis alsothe environmentmost frequently BrixtonAcademy, London very highvolumes with an emphasison the usedas the backgroundto the wholeTexas bassso thatyour whole body vibrates. They Chainsawgenre, whetherit be the self Reviewedby playin virtualdarkness, the only light coming consciouslyarty Deliverance or thecomic strip STEVEROGERS fromthe two 16mm film projectors on which they videonasty, The Hills Have Eyes. Thesduthern showed,side by side,a documentaryof a sex statesof Americahave produced a large body changeoperation, a grandprix car raceand of art, invarious media which shows the results episodesof CharliesAngels, backwards and of constraininghuman passion, stimulated thecreation of a pastoralmood in order that the upsidedown. Theirlyrics concentrate on sexual beyondendurance by the swelteringclimate, violation, whenit inevitablycomes, is all the andhomo::idal maniacs, satanism,mental and withinthe rigid and intolerantcode of strict moretransgressive. The overtuse of these physicaldeformity, andanything that can still protestantbelief. kindsof b-moviecliches makes it clearthat retainany hint of taboo.Add to thatthe naked TheTexas Chainsaw movie genre is only one countrymusic, and the TexasChainsaw Mas dancerand the result is a violentdisruption of particularlyvisible part of thisoutput, another sacreare not so muchthe form as the content, anysensitivities. wouldbe the literary tradition that includes Ten the very subjectof their songs. Whenthey It wouldbe far too easy to writethe Butthole nesseeWilliams, Eudora Welty and Richard appearto celebratesexual violence within the Surfersoff as nothingmore than the rock and Ford, anotheris thegreat body of whiteblues familythey are in factmaking a powerfuland roll equivalentto TheTexas Chainsaw Mas countrymusic itself with its emphasison ironicassault on the movies and popular music sacre.Certainly they appeal to a metropolitan domesticand familialorder threatenedby whichcelebrates such violence. Bytaking the audienceof adrenalinaddicts, and certainly powerfuland uncontrollableemotions. All of clichesto theirmost violent extremes they are theyexploit the cull/mass appeal of beingnas theseshare a commonassertion that such frus makingus aware of howimmune we have be tierthan anyone else. Nastinesscan however, trationcoupled with geographical isolation, and cometo imagesof violenceand transgression as JohnWaters and Divineproved, be both oftenwith social deprivation, results in a hatred andalso just how bland and ineffectual popular comicand subversive, forthe Buttholes are, like of humanitywhich can explode into madness musichas become. Whatthis music achieves, Waters,motivated by a simple, moralrage. andviolence. andit is nomean achievement, isto stimulate a Themusic itself is a collageof a numberof TheButthole Surfers are a partof this body of feelingof moralrage, andyou can dance to it as recognisablepopular musical styles the most work.Their lyrics usually follow a familiarvein of well.e prominentand telling of whichis countryand countrysongs but with the maritalbreakup westernwhich is neververy far awayeven in beingtaken to themost nightmarish lengths of theirmost chaotically anti-musical 'songs'. This sexualand physical violence, TammyWynette givesthe music a feelthat locates it unequivoc trappedin thatnotorious house on ElmStreet. ablyin the rural music of the midwest and south. Thecollage techniques used frequently rely on

mailingservant Phoebe (Leah Hausman), tragedyfrom Robert Audley in his unspeak she thrives in sensuality and self ableand ambiguous attraction for hisheter possession.She characterises a conviction osexual friend(old schoolchum, George GLORIA and thus a credibilitywhich outstrips her Talboys, firsthusband of ourheroine, played antagonists. by LukeWilliams). ie thetorment of a pros LadyAudley's Secret The showis celebratoryof melodrama cribedlove which must be hidden, evenfrom (camp?), and I wonderif this mightbe a its object, withinthe assumed"nobility" of Reviewedby pitfall. The programmeoffers a technical someVictorian concept of theplatonic ideal. PIPPACORNER. definitionof thegenre to whichthe produc PoorAudley dedicates himself first to the tionadheres, but this dc,as not take account hopelesstask of replacinga supposedly REVIEW of the modernconnotations which relegate deadwife in George's affections, nextto the I FOUNDTHIS show extremely seductive: theform to an intellectual fourth division. I felt simpletask of uncoveringthe mysteryof entertaining;beautifully designed and meti thatthere was an unhelpful tension between George's affections, andnext to thesimple culouslystaged; agreeablylurid, glossyand theirown crucial commentary atthe heart of taskof uncoveringthe mystery of George's sensual;accompanied to perfection by Nico thework and the inarticulacy of suchsensa own supposeddeath, an activitywhich las Bloomfield'sscore which gives the im tionalexpression. I had the uneasyaware allowshim to ventmisogynist spleen. [While pressionof an easyextemporisation from nessthat somewhere along the line I was it makesa kindof sensefor one man to play Victorianmelodies. Annie Griffin, as Lady missingthe point. But then as LadyAudley both Talboysand Marks(Phoebe's hus Audley,is, as always,entrancing. Her por herselfrepeatedly asserts: "it cantake years band), it was a pragmaticrather than a trayalof a womanplaying that most uncom to understandmusic." dramatic decision, notentirely happy within fortableof parts, a lady,is delicatein detail Thecomplex relationship between the two a plotalready rife with coincidence.] andpowerfully concentrated. womendoes well from this formal contradic Theplot balances individual crisis against In factI beganto wonderif I wasn't being tion.One woman lifts herselfto powerby the demandsof an overridingmoral and offeredsomething of a soloperformance. In shrewdlyswapping her first husbandfor a socialprincipal. Unusually it is the women this confusing,hostile environment where betterone, but getscaught out in the pro whoprovide the selfishalternative, instead nothingis quite as it shouldbe, I wason Lady cess, whilethe other gives away the result of the model of the self-sacrificingangel in Audley'sside right from the start. I didn't care ingupturn in her power by marrying her brute the house. The womentake their needs abouther past,or who she mightkill to of a cousin.The falseness of theirparticular seriously,no matterhow subversive.The protectit, I wasunder her spell. Her loneli maid/mistressrelationship, that mutual de men clasp their inadequate moral nessand social discomfort, as wellas her pendencebond betweenthe blackmailer monochrometo their breasts, determinedto determinationto conquerweakness and and the blackmailed, createsa changing dothe right thing, as highlightedin theclos coverher tracks, are foregounded so effec mapof pathetic,compassionate and despic ingdenouncements. However, the pieceis tivelyin thefirst half of theshow that when ii able behaviourin whichone basicrule is not simply oppositional.It is consistently falls to her self-righteousnephew Robert understood: everywoman for herself, upto a thrownfrom its historicalaxis bythe disrup Audley(Neil Bartlett), to moveupstage and point. tionof theillusion, with performers breaking investigateher sinister behaviour, hehasn't The relationshipbetween the two men out intocontemporary aphorisms. The work gota hope. Asthe shadow of suspicionfalls somehowgets lost along the way, andI felt is setwithin theparenthesis ofan altogether acrossher, literallyas well as figuratively, this was a missedopportunity within the differentLady Audley, unspecifically mod shestill shines. Equally, asshe is systemati piece. Thereis anair of homosexualprocliv ern.And all the while ii is thismusic which is callystripped of the trappingsof her new ity, with all the uncertainand clandestine so hardto understandwhich will havethe foundclass, wealth and power by her black- moveswhich that implies.I wantedmore lastword. I

w... w 3: z"' w :,: 0. ...w "' Annie Griffinand Neil Bartlett in LadyAudley's ...0 0 Secret :z: c..

White's brief intersectionswith his fellow thesemoments are very rare. In a perform traveller's lives,their stories:"I ask you ancethat relieslargely on reportsof other Tony,a sailormarrying a girlcalled Mayday, peoplefor comiceffect or, occasionally,to TONYWHITE it hadto be a bloody disaster." Therewas not makea politicalpoint, thereis a necessary a greatdeal about the two cities,just the collusionwith the audiencein whichwe all tractsin between.He gaveus jokes,half haveto agreethat the described'other' is BullringShopping jokes,no-jokes: all withinthe implicit'joke' amusing, wrong, freakish.Otherwise, the Centre,Birmingham. frameworkof his absurdjourneying. This game doesn't work. Now and again, it ~ shouldhave been made more clear some seemedthat White was forcing this effect too :: · Reviewedby Roy how,so thatthe passers-bylured to listen glibly, deployinga sort of sarkycabaret ~ Bayfield. couldhave at leastsome idea why they were smugnesswhich I do notfeel he needs. He z beingregaled with these mundanely fasci sayshe is tryingto losehis 'Mr NiceGuy' ~ natingsnippets. Whiteseems to havebeen image:surely an impossibletask. quite'lucky' in thenumber of eccentricpas At theBullring, he hadto confronta vast, ~ DOESANYONE EVER come away from a sengersusing that particular stretchof bustling two-tiershopping centre, armed ~ ~ trainjourney without an anecdote to tell? The permanentway, rangingfrom the lad who only with his denimsuit, microphoneand tapeof 'Trainsand Boatsand Planes'. In Tony White nutcasewho insists on conversingwith you wasbeing sent to LemingtonSpa by his firm Strangers on a Train for 200 miles... that awfulfamily sitting on a coursein howto losehis Sunderland Sheffield, by contrast, hewas hidden away --"------opposite... whathappened when the Mill accent, to "Theman who was sitting alone in anunfinished part of a similar edifice, out wallfans got on? Tony White's Strangers on with14 empty cans of lagerin frontof him: I of rangeof passers-by:a too-perfect replica a Trainis an anthologyof suchtales, com sat downand introducedmyself: no re of an art space. Althoughthe secondper- piledafter making several dozen train jour sponse." formancewas more polished and focussed, neys betweenSheffield and Birmingham Thething is, wasit 14empty cans, or was the foolhardyconfrontation of the Bullring oneweek in July. it just10, or 6? I suspectthe former. Indeed, performancewas more of anevent; it some- He wascommissioned to undertakethis at timesit seemedthat White was sticking howhad more of that'performance art' stuff Quixotictravel-performance bythe Inter City tooclosely to a 'documentary' form, whena in it. 88 Festival.The product of thisimaginative bitmore playfulness with relative truth could His fallibledemonstration, wordsrising briefwas his simplestand strongest piece havefreed the piecemore. intothe processedair, madea memorable yet, performedat theBullring shopping cen Tony White's performancepersona is contrastwith the oppressive kaleidoscope of tre, Birminghamand the OrchardCentre, open, engaging, andsomewhat vulnerable. signs, the late-80smarketing mall and all Sheffield. Duringthe worst moments, it canbe a bitlike thatit assumesabout the people within it. A In a pieceabout communication (as in waitingfor a stammererto finisha word bit morethan a rag-bagof anecdotes,it travel, as in language) we heardabout whenyou already know what the word is, but seemedto invokehuman possibility. I

lion, andin returnoffers no new insightsor challengesto its existing readings. Similarly, in the children's experimental THEATREONA STRING theatre piece, Dreamworld, the traditional fairytale structure dominates at thecost of BrightonFestival. Reviewed controlsthe performance to the point of sim innovation.The evil are undoubtedly wicked, plificationand strangulation. Ratherthan although theycan be thesource of funand by ARIANEKOEK. layerupon layer of meaning, eachchalleng laughtertoo, as embodiedby the squirming ing the otherand forcingthe audienceto witchand her cronies, thecavorting crows. confronttheir own prejudices and expecta Andthe good, as embodiedby the prince 'THEATREON A STRING' thisyear headed tions, BalletMacabre reduces the audience andthe Apple Maiden are sugary sweet and BrightonFestival's lack-lustre performance to beingcosy spectators of thespectacle of whiterthan white cardboard characters. sectionwith two productionsalso shown at ArturoUi's riseand fall. Thereis no attemptto challengeexisting this year's Glasgow Mayfest: Ballet Whatoriginality there is, is in the riotous ideology. Thewitch, writhing herbody, rep Macabre,based on BertoldtBrecht's lrre combinationof mime, ballet, farce, music resentsa sexualityforbidden in the moral sistableRise of ArturoUi, andthe children's hall andcircus routines which conveythis worldof the fairy tale, and mustbe des production, Dreamworld. spectacle, withvery little dialogue. troyed. TheApple Maiden on the contrary ThisCzechoslovakian company, founded But by usingthe frameworkof a play, barelymoves, andglides through the action in 1965 by studentsfrom the Janacek whicharguably is partof theinherited West showingthe restraintand reserveof the Academyof FineArts, Brno, is dedicatedto erncollective consciousness, alltension, im goodwoman in her restrictive body lan creating an explorative,improvisatory pactand inventiveness is lost. guage. theatrefor youngperformers, directorsand Whenthe figureof the cleanermoves Such reactionismis doublydisappointing producers. The name, Theatreon a String forwardand confidentiallywhispers to the in a companywhich is oneof thevery few to reflectsthe playfulness of theirtheatre: who audience'Don't believeanything you see. work withchildren, andfor them, in theex iscontrolling whom and pulling the strings It's onlya spectacle,' weare witnessing the perimentalarena. thetheatre or theaudience? Or is theques familiarBrechtian theatrical device of aliena The problemwith Theatreon a String's tionirrelevant, in a theatrewhich in form and tion. productionsis that both accept moral contentseeks to exposethe falsity of such WhereasBrecht's fable worked in conven frameworkswhich restrict the company's im boundaries? tionaltheatre as an explosive and innovative agination. Weare witnessing a new designer WithBallet Macabre, Theatreon a String political parodyof the MoralityPlay, in 'performanceart', payinglip serviceto the seemsto havelost some of its exploratory Theatreon a String's performancepiece it multiplicityof artforms 'performance art en impetus. TheBrechtian parable, aboutthe has limitedimpact. The companytakes compasses, whilst safelystaying in the puppetdictator and the corruption of power, Brecht'sfable totally on board without ques- boundariesof theknown and acceptable. I

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