THEATRE Performance art has always had a trace: Installaction Artspace considerable presence in Wales. Phil Babot, an artist who has been living in Wales since Debra Savage 1981, believes that Cardiff is ‘the strongest centre of performance art outside of London’. The opening of trace in 2000 Away from Cardiff’s city centre on a with a performance by Alistair Maclennon terraced lined street in Adamsdown, the coincided with an overall shift in power black door of 26 Moria Place is initially within the Welsh performance community. unremarkable. Only the small brass plate The bi-annual Cardiff Art in Time (CAT) engraved with the word trace provides a Festival was coming to an end, and a clue that there is something unusual about number of artist-led initiatives were this particular house, a house that is home beginning to spring up across the country. to a small but internationally renowned The result of these two simultaneous performance space. changes led to the development of what Since its conception by curator and Babot and theatre programmer James Tyson cohabitee Andre Stitt, trace: Installaction refer to as ‘performance hubs’, including Artspace has developed a life of its own. Ointment in West Wales, Coed Hills in St trace’s front room has attracted Hilary, tactileBOSH in Llandaff, and performance artists from around the world, Chapter Arts Centre and trace in Cardiff. including names like Jimmie Durham, Eve They have become a network of initiatives Dent, Stuart Brisley, Irma Optimist and that work primarily in conjunction with Valentin Torrens, and as trace reaches the each other, linked by the formation of end of its fifth season, it has already become Second Wednesday, a forum dedicated to a main focus for performance art in Cardiff. providing a critical discourse for Welsh Jeffrey Bird, Holy Ghost, 2004 (photograph by Phil Babot, courtesy trace gallery) 82 performance and live arts. The overall effect does what you make and what is left change is to produce a varied artistic landscape, and transform over two or three weeks, and enhancing the position of performance in perhaps become an exhibition?’ Wales. As Stitt explains, ‘it is really The first challenge for the artist is to important for a healthy creative culture to create a piece of work to take place in a have many different strands’. small room under the gaze of an audience. trace’s own role in this network has The second challenge comes from Stitt mainly been defined through Stitt’s own himself, who encourages a durational artist practice. Time spent squatting in London to produce a performance that lasts one during the 1980s, for example, provoked an hour, for example. This approach, along interest in the distinction between the with the mix of artists who have performed private and public, the domestic and in trace, has resulted in a diverse use of a artistic. ‘Because of how I’ve always lived,’ very ordinary white room. Fore Mien he tells me, ‘art has taken place in a transformed the space into a golfing range, domestic situation.’ The decision to with John G. Boehme driving 600 golf balls establish an artspace in his home was into an aluminium-clad wall. James Cobb therefore a natural progression of this & Bob Dog Catlin’s Our Children created a interest: the front room, intended as a live sonic backdrop for a series of studio, became a temporary, then manipulated prints depicting images of permanent exhibition space. tattooed children. More recently, the room Similarly, Stitt’s practice as a was split in two to create a tarpaulin performance artist and his involvement in a swimming pool by the High Heel Sisters‚ number of peripheral art activities has led Art Holes. The final challenge comes from to a distancing from the traditional art the requirement that each performance market. Along with other artist-led produces an exhibition by leaving behind a initiatives, trace feeds into notions of residue, or trace. promoting artists‚ autonomy and networks, These notions all feed into the debate allowing artists to develop away from the surrounding performance and live art, pressures of a more consumer-led market. engaging with issues such as how to ‘Performance art is ephemeral – it is approach or document the work: ‘trace is a constantly changing and shifting, and that’s way of making exchanges and keeping that why dominant culture has a lot of problems dialogue going, that idea of art as meeting, with performance art, because it can’t be that the meetings continue,’ says Stitt. In defined and in a sense, whoever is making trace, this can be as practical as a meeting the piece defines what it is they’re making between artist and curator in order to in the time they are making it. That can secure a show and discuss the performance often be confusing to people who want an space, or between the artist and audience, outcome or end product,’ Stitt says. with the relaxed atmosphere of the pre- and In trace, the work produced focuses post-performance gathering in the kitchen partly on how it will contribute to a wider facilitating conversations. The biggest dialogue. In general, as performances tend meeting, of course, takes place between the to occur as part of an event or festival, it can artist/audience and the work. The open and be difficult to focus on one particular work, experimental air of trace enables a head-on 83 or view it in relation to itself rather than the interaction with ideas and concepts, both work by which it is framed. trace, however, on the night and as the exhibition of trace highlights the work of one artist, and materials develop over time. challenges that artist to experiment with his The final stage of meeting takes place on or her practice. In other words, Stitt asks: an international level. This has taken the ‘How would it be if you took this artist and form of projects and exchanges such as the placed them in another context?’ and ‘How 2003/2004 RHWNT with Le Lieu, High Heel Sisters, Art Holes, 2005 (photograph by Phil Babot, courtesy trace gallery) Centre en Art Actuel in Québec, 2004’s in developing a performance dialogue Dadao Live Art Festival in China and the within Wales and on the international presentation of a season of Chinese live art circuit, a dialogue which is being written later this year, as well as more local into the very fabric of the house. According collaborations with events such as Chapter to Stitt, ‘there are layers of traces behind the Arts Centre’s Experimentica festivals and paint, there’s drawings and text on the wall, 2002’s ‘Something for the Weekend’ at the floors have been painted and painted so Gregynog, Newtown. This is taken further you get a scabby floor with all this residue by research, publications and trace: annex, underneath it.’ In other words, trace will an occasional series of events that takes continue to be a living space and document place outside of trace’s usual programme. As of all the transitions that have occurred James Tyson says, this hive of activity has within its walls. earned trace the reputation of being ‘a sharp 84 reflection on the international world of performance art’ and is ‘unique and to be trace will be ending its fifth season with much valued in both gallery and an installation evening featuring Cosey performance situations’. Fanni Tutti on 28th May. For more Over the next five years, trace will no information visit www.tracegallery.org doubt change and develop. The directions it will take are unclear, but it will maintain its sense of experimentation and play a part Debra Savage is a freelance journalist based in Cardiff. was The Motorcycle Diaries). She has Latino America travelled widely, and has studied and danced in varying idioms such as hip hop Aparna Sharma and tango. Though contemporary dance is her preferred artistic vocabulary, she also incorporates various textual influences – literature, poetry, music and theatre – in order to extend the boundaries of her work. Aparna Sharma reflects on her participation Aside from the dynamics of movement, she in a three-week workshop earlier this year is deeply engaged with improvisation and run by Argentinean choreographer, Andrea composition. Commanding a sinuous ease Servera, at Chapter Arts Centre as part of with the body, Andrea seeks any interaction their Latino America season. that involves what she calls the ‘play of difference’. So her workshop invited a varied group of artists who work in dance, On a hazy winter morning, amidst the performance, music and, in my case, film. clutter of a cosy café, Andrea and I sit to talk. Influenced as I am by the secular ancient Far away from the textures and smells of Indian discourses of spiritualism and yoga, habitats familiar to us, we grapple with the the medium of film has been for me the weather. And also, in a sense, with the most intense source for meditative environment we are in. Andrea can barely introversion, which I have translated into speak English. I cannot speak any Spanish. A experimental films and video work. It was translator sits between us, and we soon my current academic focus on cross- realise words are failing us (and the translator cultural encounters and the dynamics of too). But our conversation is resilient: this is movement within the moving image that how it has evolved during the course of the initally took me to Andrea’s workshop, three weeks that we spent working together. though I have to confess that, besides some Dance and movement were the vocabulary occasional and simple lessons in classical for me and the dozen other artists who Indian dance while at school in India, I attended a residency led by Argentinian have never really felt equipped or sought dancer and choreographer, Andrea Servera, expression in this medium.