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The Arts Council of Great Britain in association with Sheffield City The Arts Council of Great Britain in association with North East· PolytechnicDepartment of Communication Arts is inviting London Polytechnic, Department of Fine Art, is inviting applications applications for a Video Fellowship . The Fellowship is worth £3,000 for a Video Bursary. The Bursary is worth £3,000 as a direct award as a direct award payable in three instalments . In addition, the payable by the Arts Council in three instalments. In addition NELP Department of Communication Arts will provide one days teaching will provide one days teaching per week over three terms totalling per week over three terms totalling thirty two weeks and paid at a thirty-two weeks and paid at the rate of approximately £75 per day. rate of approximately £70 per day. The recipient will work primarily The recipient will work primarily in video but with access to other in video but with access to other parts of the department-film , parts of the department-film, performance and photography. performance art, photography and sound. Equipment includes colour Equipment includes a colour camera studio, automatic editing suite U-Matic portapaks, colour studio facilities, automatic editing suite andcolour U-matic portapaks. and a black and white four camera studio . The Bursary'period The Bursary period commences 1st November 1983. commences 1st October 1983.

For full information and entry forms apply to : The Film Officer , Arts For full information and entry forms apply to : Film Officer, Arts Council of Great Britain, 105 Piccadilly, London W1V OAU . Tel. 01 Council of Great Britain, 105 Picadilly, London W1V OAU. Tel. 01 629 9495. 629 9495 Closing date for return of completed application forms : September Closing date for return of completed application forms : October 3rd 5th 1983. Students are not eligible . Open to residents in England 1983 . only . Students are not eligible . Open to residents in England only. Arts Council Arts Council OF GREAT B R I TA I N OF G RE AT BRIT A I N

Watch out for the following groups on tour this Autumn Oct 5-22 ENGLISH GAMELAN ORCHESTRA Tradition Javanese and New Western Music London, Leeds, Liverpool , Cardiff , Southampton, Wells, Norwich , Leicester, Lancaster, Manchester , Durham. Nov 2-9 MIKE GIBBS BAND British-American Line-up includes: Tony Coe, Jim Ogdren, Chris Pyne, Steve Swallow, Bob Moses, Mike Gibbs. London , Southampton, Manchester , Llantwit Major , Birmingham, Newcastle , Sheffield Nov 9-17 NASH ENSEMBLE Chamber Music by Prokofiev, Constance Lambert, Colin Matthews, Simon Bainbridge, Janacek London, Oxford , Hull, Coventry, Sheffield, Huddersfield Nov 30-Dec 6 EVIDENCE (GDR) & ISKRA 1903 (UK) Free improvisation from East and West London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Bristol. Dec7-15 WEST SQUARE ELECTRONIC MUSIC ENSEMBLE With HARRY SPARNAAY Bass clarinet Electro-acoustic music by Stephen Montague, Denis Smalley, Barry Anderson, Jonty Harrison London , Keele, Bristol, Manchester , Birmingham, Nottingham Leaflet giving full details from Contemporary Music Network , Arts Council of GB, 105 Picadilly, London W1V OAU Tel 01 6299495

Contemporary Music Network ArtsCouncil OF CREAT BRITAIN

LUM I ERE & SON present SENSELESS The company celebrates its 10th anniversary with a 'SONGS FOR SWINGING LOVERS' thriller opera 6 Sept - 25 Oct MARE NOSTRUM \ British Premiere of Kagel's operatic allegory DRILL HALL as part of MuslCA, the annual series of contemporary concerts • 2+ 3 Sept 19th AUGUST

Autumn at the ICA also features Dance, Music and a Fashion show with a difference plus the best of S 01-637 9521 British and international theatre . le.A LVA AT AIR All the breaking, rapping and scratching you've never seen in Weekly presentations of video performance + other WILD STYLE time-based media in the AIR Gallery Basement. For full starring Grandmaster Flash and Rock Steady Flashdance Crew programme details telephone LVA (734 7410) or AIR Gallery Opens 8 Septe mber (278 7791) . All events begin 7.30pm. Price £ 1/75p concessionary . AIR Gallery, 6-8 Rosebury Ave ., EC1. Basement entrance in INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS, THE MALL, LONDON SW1 01 930 3647 Laystall St. (Nearest tube Chancery Lane.) \Mtf;t.t,,DI INOTTINGHAMI 4 DAYSOF PERFORMANCE ART 1983 13-16OCTOBER featuring 4th PERFORMANCEART PLATFORM Selected by Mike Figges, Lynn MacRitchie and Bruce Maclean PLUS

MARY LONGFORD CHARLIE HOOKER JEZ WELSH ALEX MAVRO ZOE REDMAN BRITISH EVENTS ROBERTA GRAHAM Californian Performance and more ...

24-32 CARL TON STREET NOTTINGHAM Information (0602) 582636 Box Office (0602) 586100

PERFORMANCE ORGANISER Midland Group is seeking someone with an active knowledge of contemporary Performance to organise its ambitious programme of Theatre, Music, Dance, Performance Art and Literature. Closing date for applications is September 5th . For full details contact Liz Waters at Midland Group .

PREVIEW 4 Notting Hill Carn ivc1l PREVIEW 6 The Way Of How SPACES 7 Rochdale Art Gallery INTERVIEW 8 Joseph Beuys MUSIC SUPPLEMENT 12 The Regime of Noise : Residents, Warner Bras and performance, Yelle, Logorrhea (flexidisc) Michael Nyman, Regular Music FEATURE 22 The New American Woman REVIEWS 24 Bracknell Performance Festival, Tenkei , Serpentine, Radical Bingo. VIDEO 30 Video on TV, Mary Lucier PROFILE 31 Jan Fabre NITELIFE 32 Richard Layzell on Nightclubs LISTINGS 34

Cover design by Robert Carter SUBSIDISED BY THE Cover Photograph of Joseph Beuys by J. Littkemann , Arts Council from Victoria and Albert Museum catalogue, 1983. OF GREAT BR ITA IN

DURING THREEDAYS of hypnotic street costuming and revelry in the image of the without knowing it.' theatre, the Bacchanal and Mas players of masters' costume balls, became dosed This spirited event also has darker Carnival erupt on to the SUP,remestage of with the essence and flavour of the slaves' undertone s of the expression of the immi the streets of Notting Hiil, Ladbroke African past. grant and his place in an alien society. Grove and W estbourne Park; never be And so Trinidad carnival grew and Leslee Wills, founder of Lion Youth fore has hedonism been so fully embraced. grew, becoming intrinsic to the Trinida band: The origins of the Notting Hill carnival dian population. In London, carnival was 'The continuity of the band and the can be traced as far back as Columbus' resurrected during early days of West carnival is like an expression of coping 'discovery' of Trinidad in 1948. In the Indian immigration when a group of with the environment and being on top of chandeliered ballrooms of the French 'home sick' musicians based in the Col the situation in Britain. Carnival is tied to bourgeoisie, ( who had been encouraged to herne pub in Earls Court, looked back to our social emancipation-it is tied to us settle in Trinidad after 3 centuries of the traditions of home, finding solace, to this generation of West Indians and our Spanish rule) the more daring would identity and artistic expression in carnival feelings of how we are coming to terms indulge in masquerades and abandon celebrations. with integrating into this society.' during the period before Lent in the 'Carnival' , according to Ebony section In playing mas, a collective psyche Christian calendar. Hence it was a time for leader Danny Holer, 'is the best damn grabs at this opportunity to plunge head Carnival-to say farewell to the flesh party you have ever been to in your life'. long into the escapism of fantasy and role ( carne vale) or' as others interpret it, to Its purpose was never as a spectator playing. For weeks prior to Carnival the abstain from meat ( carnem le vare ). event, although now the by-standers far mas camps build and shape myths, sus The first carnival processions which outnumber the mas players. pend reality, and create an army of shook loose the refinery ap.d etiquette of 'Carnival is a thing where you may characters rooted from the past and the French settlers took shape with the leave home to walk peacefully on the draggedfrom the imagination. Carnival freedom of the slaves in 1883. in celebra pavement and admire the costumes, but it slowly seeps into our lives, and on the tion 'Ole Mas' was born as slaves wore is the type of thing which draws one in and morning of the Road March we are their masters ' clothes torn to shreds in in no time you find yourself doing just drowned in the explosion of its magic and ridicule. What before had simply been what's going on-you begin to dance mania.

Notting Hill Carnival

Nephertiti, proud Queen of the Egyp (scrubbed and dried in the sun), he shower of multi-coloured confetti is lav tians comes face to face with the dazzling painted the box, added grasses to it then ished as gifts on the River. 'Matrons and Sun King of El Dorado; Pink Unicorns made a skirt of coconut leaves, wrapped madonnas, who, the day before worried and Green Gazelles from Fantasy Island wire around his arms and strung several over specks of dust on their virginal white, prance amongst Mansa Musa's Guests at tin can lids and bones together, using now shriek in hysteria and abandon . Wet Regina's Feast; the blue Feathered Em animal charcoal for blackening .' me. Wet me. Pelvises tilted to catch press of Atlantis, the Fallen Angels of Minshall has since progressed into the precious colour, and soak it up ... When Paradise Lost 'jump-up' as 'Things with advanced realms of costume design and River has passed, the debris was colourful Wings' swoop amongst warring Amer wire-bending. His movement between the and colossal. The River people had soaked indian Indians. Each lives his portrayal. carnivals creates a constant flow and it up and spewed it forth'. 'He is no pretender, he is history reborn exchange of ideas. At Trinidad carnival Minshall was beckoning to the bands of or fantasy in the flesh.' '83 Minshall created a stir, and even the future, both in Trinidad and Notting Characters have traditionally been uproar amongst the judges when the 3000 Hill, and some say even highlighting the based on Carnivals from centuries past, strong 'Band of the People's Choice' bankruptcy of ideas in many bands. stemming originally from Trinidadian enacted a two-part epic on the Road Notting Hill is yet to see such an ambi mythology. Jab Jab, part clown part devil, March. It depicted human rivers, crea tious spectacle-held back not by lack of guardian of the stinging whip, his crony tures of the lagoon, the rape of the virgin imagination or foresight, but through Jab Molassi who daubs his body with stale Washerwoman, and his Frankenstein, the limited financial independence. molasses and threatens to soil the clothes giant mechanical Mancrab was unleashed. Forever changing under social direc of by-standers whose dues are not paid. it was a masterpiece in mobile street tion, yet dependable in its continuity, The captive dragon with lumbering walk, theatre; spectators rose from their seats Carnival has at its heart both careful bound in heavy chains. All reappear in the and clambered for viewing points to planning and spontaneity. It is loved as the Road March . glimpse at the bizarre creations of their play which requires no rehearsals; a free Bands have become associated with awesome designer. for all which, for one day at least has no particular themes. Race Today's Rene 'Babylon has indeed erupted and "de barriers of time or space, where charac gades use war conscious themes, orig River come down" ... reds, and greens terisation has no limit. inally inspired by the presence of the army and blues, and golden chartreuse , and a Isobel Appio and navy on the islands during slavery. Khaki camouflage and sailor suits, floats Notting Hill Carnival of tanks and army planes are all signifi cantly historical, yet tied to their own relaity. Lion Youth founded as an all woman Rastafarian band have maintained themes from African and Creole culture. 'Our band was originally based on the Lion Of Judah', explains Leslee Wills, 'Our themes are concentrated on Caribbe an influenced traditions and on the themes of our African forefathers . We depicted Zulu Land and the bush negroes of Surinam who thought they could fly back to Africa on wings made of leaves.' Our themes make up a chapter of a book-which is the history of the Carib bean as derived from Africa. We record living history from the parents and grand parents of people in the band' . Roman, Greek and Egyptian are eras which will be paraded in Carnival '83; other themes are still guarded by a wall of secrecy around the mas camps, but will finally be divulged at the unveiling cere mony of the Kings and Queens ( the most elaborate costumes to which the other sections provide a back drop) . Carnival may at its climax take flight into fantasy, but the problems of bureauc racy, organisation and finance are never far from sight. Costumes may cost any thing from £20 to £400, and increasingly work is being allocated to outside profes sionals, as the pressures of struggling for one's own financial survival get heavier. In spite of the leaning to small scale 'mass production' of costumes, the scope for idiosyncracy is never lost. It is the extra feather, glitter, some added jewellery, a whistle which becomes the distinguishing tatoo on the individuals's costume . He 'got a cardboard box and tall grasses from behind his house. Then with an old tin of silver paint, a couple of Xmas tree decorations and some dog bones,

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. PREVIEW The Way Of H ow There are few exercises more exasparating goaded into motion by the influence of the and dubious than those attempts to describe in music. There are no static forms, stasis, in objectiveterms the nature of subjectivepercep The Way of How' is a certain death . tual experience. None the less, we engage in In discussing the aims of their work, these activities frequently and always with Duykers went on to say, 'The work is less than a hundred per cent certainty that trying to create something which is not any degree of understanding has been yet here. In the West there is this tradition achieved :George Coates. of the migration of discontents, the fron Already something of a legend in West tier spirit if you like, and this has led Coast performance circles, George perhaps to a harder more independe nt Coates' The Way Of How is arriving in exploration of understanding. Britain this month as part of the LIFT 'I see our work as essentially ahistorical. festival. Having seen performed at the I have worked in traditional thea tre and I Oakland Auditorium, California, last suppose that you could say that my year, I can fully appreciate the signifi influences are classical and based on the cance of the above words and consequent concentions of character actors, directors ly feel discouraged from even attempting and the cause and effect princip les of an objective description of the work. artificial time. But what I am trying to do However, I was recently able to meet the is to take the stuff from the classical world performance's singer John Duykers on and create a new context for it. I want to the way back from a run of the show in dispose of those silly librettos of opera, but Copenhagen. Duykers told me how Coa hang onto the incredible techniques of the tes's performance works evolved. singers and ballet dancers. I want to 'The first thing that George said was that preserve the heroic way in which they deal he'd like to start without any precon with gravity, in spite of the pomposity of ceived ideas. so we began by entering those silly stories. space and simply entering a space and 'The trilogy that we are currently watching each others gestures and move wqorkng on,of which ' The Way of How is ments. After a while we began to elaborate only the first part, is not a narrative. on what we found and started using props There is no story. In The way of How four and other materials. We would make individuals come together, there are terri foraging expeditions to second-hand torial battles, alliances are made and stores and came up with a whole lot of broken. In Are Are , the second show, things: saw-blades, golf-club covers, PVC there are no individuals, no traditional pipe and garbage-bags. We would always battles of people against people, but only try and use things that were not immedi the struggle of a group against the forces ately identifiable, so we would use the gold of gravity culminating int hei final victory club covers but not the golf clubs. when they actually achieve lift-off at the 'On any given day one of us would The Way of How end . In 'See Hear', the final work in the arrive early and start doing something trilogy, the perormers affect a re-entry with the materials, so there would be art', because all these terms have baggage into the world and a sixteen-piece cham something there to stimulate us and then lables attached to them and what we do ber ensemble becomes the central basically we would just play. Sometimes doesn't really fit any of those tags. We character. nothing would go on and we could spend don't really fit into the twentieth -century 'We are trying to create a theatre which two or three hours getting bored, but we concept of anything . We had this idea that is not dependent upon strife where there would always give ourselves enough time we would create a whole new category of are only winners and losers, but a drama of to get through that boredom. art called 'See Hear' so instead of going to beauty and without violence where the 'Paul Dresher, the musician and com a 'happening' we would go to a 'See hear' only struggle is towards the perfect poser was there all the time constantly not a concert, a play or a ballet, but a 'See performance, which in concert must al experimenting and improvising. Paul Hear', for it is this term which describes ways be a collective effort . used to play with a band called The most aptly what we do'. 'The principal aim of our work is to take Touchstones which had shows of Off-Off One of the most remarkable features of the insitution of an evening concert, Broadway, he has studied Javanese and The Way of How is that it seeks to explore a which does not traditionally accept re African music so he is very much a hybrid. common ground with its audience, in sponsibility· for any visual reality, and On stage he works a tape-loop processor, spite of the abstract nature of the role it create for that a proper relationship this enables him to record and play back evokes. It is the ordinary which is made betrween sound and vision . Just what can while he performs. He does not compose extraordinary but through a visible and be done with those music stands and that as he goes along. It's all set. It's not like entirely accessible process . This 'demysti fixed dull house-lighting . The music is jazz performance in that sense, although fication' of the creative act extends the clearly very important, but there is a need he will sometimes improvise on a theme sense of play to the audience and creates a to enhance the experience of sounds with for a few bars. strong bond between the actors explora visual gestures before we can raise the 'The other aspects of the design of the tions and the audience 's excitment at their standards of concert practice and achieve show, the set and the lighting, we had to discoveries . a necessary re-association of the senses. superimpose afterwards. Ideally, though, The essence of the show is simply For anyone seeking a more definitive we want to develop every aspect of the contained in a shaping and re-shaping of account of The Way of How, it's going to production simultaneously . In spite of the atmospheres, of changing moods which be necessary to see it. It will be at the problems, however, it is still a col manifest thesmselves through the music, Bloomsbury Theatre, London, for two laborative process in the largest sense. the lighting and the images created by the weeks this August . (See LIFT listings this 'There are problems with calling what performers. These are constantly chang issue). we do 'opera', 'theatre' or 'performance ing, shifting, shrinking and expanding, Gub Neal

ROCHDALE ART GALLERY is oversha performance pieces interspersed with dis dowed by a monstrous turreted chateau cussion of the work, both activities ener known as Rochadale Town Hall. This gized by the personalities of the perform monument to all that is solid and unyield ers. 'This is real time, we are dealing with ing in mill towns and industrial landscapes experience including our own, our aim is was coveted by Hitler as a prospective contact with other people'-St . James. English base. These days a black glass Private Moments having recently tower looms over the Gothic spires, toured America, a preoccupation with the accomodating an overspill of officialdom tens.ion between celluloid fiction and that not even Hitler would have dreamed mundane reality must have suddenly of. seemed very pertinent, because the artists Hardly the setting one would expect for literally stepped off a plane from Los a radical art gallery that has just hosted Angeles into downtown Rochdale. Britain's first Fellowship in Performance 'What is this thing-theatre or art?' Art . Since Jill Morgan and Bev Bytheway asked a man from the gloom of the studio. took over two years ago, Victorian land Perhaps not what they ask in LA .'Well it's scapes have given way to contemporary not one I want to resolve verbally' painting, sculpture and performance art, expalined Marty St.James. 'It's like saying usually related to Rochdale's community is it ice-skating ?-Why bracket things but also of national interest-Rochdale as into theatre, cabaret, art, sculpture. We the only gallery outside London and are interested in the triangle between Edinburgh to host Laurie Anderson's Anne and me and you'. recent exhibition. Rochdale succeeds in In Rochdale, any qualms on the part of being loyal to its demands as a provincial town hall committees as to the value of gallery without being provincial in the contemporary experimental work is coun derogatory sense. teracted by the obviously keen public Jill Morgan defined their policies as response. A policy of artifacts as invest accessibility and education. They favour ments on walls has shifted to an unquanti installation work, and encourage artists to fiable value : that of resident artists creat be around and talk about their work. 'I ing a live dialogue with their audience. would like to see the relationship between The artifacts themselves become the first artists and galleries becoming closer', stage in a chain of communication with commented Jill Morgan. 'We don 't want the community, and the artist is seen as a to bring in the artist cold and plonk him in The Performance Art Show necessary intermediary link. a studio space. Galleries should take on . action. Images, sounds and words coalesce 'A G~llery like this has to work in a more of the fight of establishing the into possibilities wich are evolved before cetain cdntext, alongside a government relationship between the artist and audi our eyes. Careful annunciation and pre policy' concluded Jill Morgan. Though at ence, as much as the artist does himself' . cise use of objects and stylised gestures present the Council are very supportive of Not all artists want to .stand up and impart a formal structure to the develop the progressive policy towards new work explain themselves . Creating a studio ment of ideas. There is a sense of deja vu, that is establishing Rochdale Art Gallery space for performance art has provided a partly because the work deliberately as one of national interest. solution. 'We were interested in perform draws on the audience's associative 'Rochdale is controlled by predomi ance to widen the range of the gallery, and memories to inform the work-memories nantly male Methodist powers and moral to provide a centre for performance art in of both reality and fiction or film-since restraint' . But this ethic also involves a the North-West.' A spin-off is Rochdale Wilson and St. James are particularly strong civic pride in the Gallery , which Performance Collective--'a sort of press concerned with everyday reality. has been positive for jill and Bev ure group on gallery awareness in the Their work in the gallery comprised , Members of the Council are close to the area'-who perform in the Manchester paintings, photographs, and several man publi c in a town like this, and they come to area, although there are pitifully few iefesto-like texts . Walking through two the Gallery and the preview s. venues available to them. light, open rooms of this exhibition you How much can a gallery like this have a In June, Rochdale Gallery mounted a reach the performance space-a white radical effect on its community? Certain month of Performance-visits from the studio dimly lit, with rows of chairs facing ly, the audience at the Performance Day Basement Group, Roberta Graham, a video screen and five white plinths, on were a complete mixture of students, Charlie Hooker, an informal introductor y which a bowl of vividly painted fruit, a townspeople · and local schoolchildren. talk by Jill Morgan and Bev Bytheway, wine bottle and glasses, a vase of black 'We are getting an audience of young, and The Performance Art Show -t he ,u ses, a gold cane and a gold chair had disaffected youth now' , observed Jill. ' It culmination of Anne Wilson and Marty been formally arranged. The hot colours began last year, and the Laurie Anderson St. James ' residency and fellowship . poised against the cool interior with an exhibition helped to break down bar Jill Morgan : 'Performance artists in imminent sense of celebration made me riers-it involved the audience, without troduce another way of working, they 'd feel we were about to witness a Spanish patronizing them . The adage of childre n demonstrate the possibilities.' wedding. He wore the suit of a youthful being the audience of the future is In this respect it is particularly appro Hitchcock and she wore a little black particularly important to recognize here, priate that Wilson and St . James took on number, and they introduced themselves where the generation gap is strong and the the fellowship. Their performances are politely . older generation tend to put children off structured in such a way that the audience After this the atmosphere relaxed into a the idea of art'. is witnessing the creative process in direct dialogue with the audience, Charlotte Keatley

Joseph Beuys, the veteran performance artist who became a politician, co-founder of Germany's Green Party, has been lately turning his attentions toward Britain. As well he might. An unusually listened-to voice of sanity in Europe today, he arrived this month, lecturing across the country, with a major retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum In anticipa tion of this, Performance Magazine spoke to him recently at his Dusseldorf home.

Lynn MacRitchie : I first saw your work in 19 70 in Edinburgh. Party system. Some of the Greens never wanted to become part Joseph Beuys: Strategy Get Arts ... of an official party and now they are on the way to becoming an Since then it seems as if the kinds of performances you were doing official political party. I myself follow radically another line of have changed. Have those live performances, very long, complex development from the group which is sitting in Parliament. But, events, been superseded by your lecturing and your political we will see. If they become a real official political party then involvement now, ten years later? another movement will appear because a lot of people are no I think those actions I did from the beginning of the 60s until longer content with a political party system. The ecological 1975 had, from their own nature, to change. Their own movement in West Germany is relatively far developed in principles contained concepts of action. They had to come into comparison to England for example where there is nothing. contact with some real undertakings to bring about the From our point of view that is absurd. consequences. If I had continued with such actions nobody One of the problems we all have when we are concerned with would have understood them. After such actions in the 60s there politics, with ideas and thinking about the future is the problem of were always long discussions, very controversial dialogue. This language. For example, Margaret Thatcher in her political speeches had to change into real undertakings. In the late 60s I founded talks again and again about freedom and individual rights which of the German Students Party and the Organisation for Direct course are the same things that you talk about and that I would talk Democracy evolved. In 1971 I founded the Free International about when discussing politics. But what she means is entirely University, and one of the consequences of this was becoming a different. We are using the same words but the things we mean are co-founder of the Green Party . So now the character of the very different. action has completely changed. The meaning of the action The thing is, we have movements such as the Green political becomes the reality that complex enterprises are built up and party which we have had since the 60s. It was already clear then that communities work towards such ideas. It has become a vital that the real goal of traditional Conservative Parties was freedom element of the discussion in West Germany. We have for free enterprise. Freedom to maintain the capitalistic system. discussions on the next level of social order, on anthropology, on They don't mean the freedom of the people . It is clear that all the spirit, on freedom, on democratic problems and most this speaking ex cathedra is a lie. A lie in comparison with the idea important on the economic order in highly developed societies: of freedom. The free market exploits humankind's labour. It's a this is all the result of the actions I started at the beginning of the kind of trick . Everybody knows this. They support the rich to 60s which ended in actions of the character of those you saw in make more investment and make the rich richer. That's what Edinburgh in '75. These have radically changed. Now the they understand by the freedom-free enterprise. enterprise is working practically, being involved in ecological When Thatcher talks about freedom of course she never mentions work like planting trees-the 7000 oaks in Kassel-and the other things like free enterprise. She talks in a much more global way for action I started last week in Hamburg, which could be one of the example, thinking about the Falklands War. Those were the words biggest ecological enterprises. So one of the things is 'doing she used to get people to support her in that. It was shocking to be in things in the moment', with no long discussion because the England and to see that there was no way that the people on the Left ecological situation needs direct activity and on the other hand could oppose her. such actions carry the forms of the next stage of social order . One People on the Left are as weak as the people on the Right side is a compressed theoretical formulation, a dialogue on the they belong to the same system , so we have no hope in people on economy and what is traditionally called the culture; and on the the Left. This was already clear when the Green Party started its other side is real practical work in which a lot of people are activities but now they 're in danger of splitting their power into involved and employed . a Leftist thinking organ. Some members of the Green Party are What is your project in Hamburg? Hamburg is a very big port now hoping to go over to the Left. I am proposing to my and the River Elb comes to the sea there. There is an opposing stream in the Green Party in our daily discussions that aglomeration of heavy industry and the eco-system is so polluted there is no reason to despair about its potential. that every day they have to dredge slime out of the river . This Is your hope then ( since you have mentioned despair) that society lies like big fields of heavily polluted earth, with heavy metals can be changed through the actions of individuals in the sort of like cadmium : they have asked us to start a pilot programme on ecologicalwork you've been doing? Do you think that if enough people this big problem . They've called in the Free International see that as important and join in that alone can affect the political University which may mean that they trust us more than all the body as it is constituted now? official scientific discussion. Millions invested in research, It can only be done by single people but the single people have people talking and analysing but nothing being done. The other to be millions. It is impossible to develop from one point. There -side of the action is developing the constellation of ideas of the is also distrust of people who are developing their influence too social order. highly-there is an anti-authoritarian element in the Greens What about the involvement of the Green Party with the and in the progressive movements-but only the changing of Parl iamentary system? What effect do you think that's going to individuals can change the social structure. That is the only have? possibilit y. And as soon as enough single people have changed Yes, there is a danger and difficulty for the Green Party in the their understanding then the change will come, it has to come.

Everybody knows, even the rulers know it deep inside, that the systems are completely bankrupt. They only rule through tricks. Reagan, for example, serves American interests at the cost of all the people in the world. Now he tries to revitalise the US economy at the cost of every European country. It's all tricks, all power tricks. I think a lot of people already realise that but I think they also feel quite helpless in the face of the weaponry that Reagan and Thatcher control. The Green Party wants to move towards a position of disarmament. In England recently we've had the Greenham Common Women, but despite an enormous amount of popular support they have not infienced Government policy at all. It will grow. The influence will be there. Again it is a process---everything depends on the conciousness of a single people . Political systems which are basically bankrupt, but still flood the world with nonsense, depend on people's egotistical behaviour. It's very easy to get this with a little bit pf a promise of money, for instance. If we speak of the most stupid class in the world, that is, the peasants, if you promise them a little bit of Demonstration of students against the dismissal of Beuys, Dusseldor f, 1973. money they will betray anything . They will eradicate forests, rivers, lakes as soon as they see money. They will support poorer and the rich get richer. The idea of potitics is completely everyone who is promising them money. They are no longer wrong. Politics is the play of power and money therefore I never interested in ecology . This is why political parties like the use the idea of politics. I use only the idea of the new form of Conservatives have success. They do the most simple thing. social order. I speak about form and Gestalt. We don't need They appeal on the egotistic level. So as long as people are political parties to shape the social form of the future. The more egotistical there will be no possibility of ever overcoming the that people move away from primitive materialism they will see system. We will see what opposition there will be to the nuclear that the true quality of their living standards grows in the installations we are facing in Germany in the near future and transformation of society but the majority of people still pin then we will see what will happen in the Netherlands and in their hope on more money. Belgium where these things are also planned to be installed. As Some of the people who saw most quickly the problems you are long as people are not free they connect the problem of nuclear describing with the Left were women because most of the women who weapons with their monetary interests and they are told that were the iniators of the Women's Movement had been in left there is a big danger to freedom from the Soviet Union and it is groupingsof one kind or another. Do you see the Women's Movement all a lie. It is all not real. We have to face the almost hopeless as important to the change that we're discussing? situation of the people. Yes. The women's problem is a very important problem. But But people are understandably concerned about money and work it must develop one step further. The problem of the woman will because they have nothing else. If you're poor there's no other way of only change with change in the social order. It is of no value just getting food . And it's hard to think about higher things when you're to be a woman, just as it is of no value just to be a man. Sex worrying about feeding your baby. description is not a human evaluation, only a reality. We need But they must understand that in such a system the poor get the liberation of women, but justice for women goes together with emancipation from the old social system. From_the actio.n Titus/lphigenia, Exper imenta 3, 1969. One of the problems is time. If you 're involved in politics and the Women's Movement you're involved in it because you think things are wrong, you want things to cha,ke. People work very hard and commit themselves and change doesn't come and then you have the problem of despair, don't you? Never . I never have a problem with despair because I try to work on the logic of the thing itself, moving radically away from the idea of politics. Then you can see every day a kind of success. If I were to have told people in 1970 when I was doing performances like you saw in Edinburgh and I founded the organisation for Direct Democracy that this grouping would in ten years be in Government they would have laughed at me and called me an idiot. To say that from this kind of action a social change could come, they would have called me irrational and an optimist. But since I work radically and logically on the truth of psychological change, working 44 people's self determination first towards changing the social body, I can at least give the proof that there has been some success. To the point that there is now a controlling group sitting in the Federal Parliament of Berlin. Now I want to get together all the people who are in government in a free forum in Europe, a kind of academy outside of the daily realities of politics, a kind of university to discuss the next social stage in Europe and Asia. We have to use a lot of different strategies to bring this thing into reality because it has to be reality within the next 20 years or that's it. If it isn't there's going to be a fantastic crisis . It seems to me that you're most unusual as a person because you have followed through the implications of what you do. The art work you did led you to see that it was necessary to change the actions you were taking . Most people don't do that. Politicians,for example, are politicians and they follow their party line. It's similarly so with a lot of artists. They don't see their artwork as having any socialfunction. This is obviously going to be a problem when y ou meet Thatcher

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. INTERVIEW because there is a thread ~f truth through what you do and politicians understanding of capital. Capital will no longer be seen as don't have that truth. money, but will change into justice, leading to an ability Most people are very traditional. Artists too can be traditional economy not a money economy. This will overcome the private and reactionary. It makes no sense to speak about freedom for capitalistic system and the communistic system because both artists, for their understanding of freedom can be nothing less these systems are the same. On one side you have the ownership than their own licence. Some artists think only of their own of the means of the production in the hands of a few, and in the personal success, but for me this is nothing whatever to do with Eastern block the ownership lies with the politburo, the state. art: it is counter to creativity and the evolving of humankind's The ownership of the means of production is all the same. From abilities. When I was involved with my students in all my years this point of view the communistic revolution was a very of teaching I used to say that without being deeply involved in conservative step, even some stages behind the capitalist order, the problems of the whole world it is impossible to make a because there too the freedom of the people is completely painting. You might have superficial success in the art world but eradicated. you will not have a deep-rooted understanding of art and it will Even nowadays there are pl,aces where pockets of older forms of be no use for the people. Art is the only remaining possibility for societies still exist. Can you think of an example amongst them which humankind . In order to unfold the rotten character of the old has a more just or free social order? and create the new shape of society, only art makes sense, but it Sure, there are some pockets of older behaviour but they're all must be a wider understanding of art and not the traditional dying. As soon as they come in touch with Western culture they understanding of art . Some people cannot easily change their are completely helpless because their old structures and traditional views of what makes modern art and what art would traditions are breaking down. They're more or less all decadent. be in a wider social context . Everybody's creativity, in every What does exist and what I can give proof of is the alternative workplace, in every enterprise. They do not have the power of models that people have tried. William Morris in England did thought to think through the higher energy of art. For me, not meet with success but he was right to study all he tried to do. there's a big difference between modern art, which belongs to a Ivan Illich in South America didn't meet with general success tradition, and anthropological art. but demonstrated .a lot of new principles about the state of a In your lecture in Cambridge you were talking about' old art' and future culture. That's what I think- all that's old is completely by old art I assume you mean traditional art, bourgeois art from the decadent. Khomeni, for example, who's trying to bring back 16th to the 19th century. again the old authoritarian principles of the religion of the past, Yes, but also Egyptian art, Greek art and every art from the the rule of priests which immediately links with a kind of past . fanatacism. People are so much influenced by their own So what's the difference between the art of the past and dependency that they cannot even find the point at which their 'anthropological art'? own freedom starts. Most people are educated in schools which Every great art of the past was indoctrinated by a kind of are no more than the extension of the power of the state. People leadership. It was given to people. It was not built upon freedom. are not educated anthropologically, they are not educated It was the aggrandisement of a small group of intellectuals built through art and creativity. They're educated to fulfil! some on the slavery of the majority of people. Inspired by leaders, it function within the capitalistic system. didn't come from the people. Egyptian art wasn't even about life The notion of anthropology then is a very complex one because on earth, it was canonised and mediated through priests. Now what you're actually saying is that the cohesion of old societies is with the appearance of freedom during the period of Modern art something that we would now have to relearn. Our system has been so very individual concepts did appear and everybody can see there dynamic it has destroyed the older systems with which it has come in is no more collective culture. The Baroque style was the last contact. What you were talking about was trying to rediscover those collective style in Catholic countries . After that every concept of older values in a conscious way. art was an individual concept . Every modern artist carried the Yes, it's very important to say 'in a conscious way' because character of a different culture. From the beginning of the last this means that we cannot go back. It's right to use the concept century in France, from Impressionism when painting was no of cohesion but we must understand that this concept depends longer used to imitate things, it became a kind of inner culture . on trivial behaviour, on blood. There are rules for everybody in This shows the appearance of freedom in art. Freedom is a such communities. We can no longer have this kind of cohesion. reality now. It was already a kind of reality when Marx was The big contradiction is that the Western world, which goes writing but Marx did not see clearly-he never criticised the against people's freedom in its forms of production, is none the constellation of capital. He exactly followed the concept of less based on a certain kind of freedom. Aristotle had already capital as money . The vulgarisation of the understanding of begun an analysis of nature--there is a natural science implied in Marx led to the concept of culture as a superstructure. This is his philosophy. The struggle has always been around the idea of completely the reverse of the only possibility of coming into real humankind's self determination and there are many contradic revolutionary power, which is of individuals as carriers of self tions in this. The appearance of Galileo, for example, was a very determination and creativity . People are carriers of ideas in progressive step. The Renaissance, the French Revolution, the spirit. As soon as this becomes clear then there will be a change of industrial revolutions even, was a very progressive step but it led to the slavery of the proletariat. But you cannot overcome the Blackboard in his office in the Andreastrasse, 1971 damage done by this stream of development by going back to older cultures. In a collective system or in tribal behaviour the free individual is unthinkable. This is very difficult to understand for those people who are trying to start anew with the idea of collectives because they mix up with the idea of collectivism the idea that it is only human to do things with other people. They cannot distinguish between what collectiv ism means in older cultures and what it means in modern cultures. We need a radical metamorphosis of the ideas of the past. The idea of art in the past is completely different from the idea of art now. Art now has to mean a wider thing . Every metamorphosis is related to the idea of freedom. Democracy can only generate from freedom. Democracy alone leads to a kind of mob culture, making everything equal with no regard for quality. Bringing democracy and freedom together with the economy into one radical system-that will lead to a kind of revolution.

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. INTERVIEW One of the problems within our society is the gap between the economy and culture. In a more simple society the gap between the productive group, the people who produce food, and what is done in terms of dancing and singing is much closer. One of the problems in our society is that people don't know how to get food. That connection has completely gone. But it will not lead to success if you go back to the kind of culture like the aborigines where the women are looking for plants in the ground and in the evening the men have a corroborree. This makes no sense for us, for our lives. Our people _want to have their own lives, to produce something. In tribal behaviour, the people seemingly care for others. They care for the continuity of their tribe. But one tribe will attack another tribe. So in the.older culture this becomes an extension of the egotisticai personality into a group egotism. This is also used now of family behaviour. This is my family but my neighbour is my enemy . The tribe looks as though it cares for others but they care only for their own blood. It is their blood culture. They fear others and remain unfree but in our social constellation no one is able to take care of all his needs. I would have no biography to speak ofif I'd had to make my own shoes and plant potatoes and make my shirts and make this watch. We all take of the ability of other people. We are all takers receiving of the dignity of other people and therefore we have the duty to give our ability to others. Everyone is dependent on the care of others-this giving and taking is the elementary social structure, but the power of money and the state is destroying the elementary social context of taking and giving, of co-operation. Some ecologists mistaken ly try to go back to self-sufficiency systems-they go far away to somewhere like Norway and try to make their own farms then they switch on the light and they are dependent on people who are working in Hamburg. They play records and they are using things which are produced in Japan. It is impossible to go out of Honey Pump at the Work Place 1977 this world. To try to do so is again a kind of egotistical behaviour. At the moment any kind of challenge to the overall political system private persons who thought of themselves as special, who is going to be full of contmdictions and its also going to be slightly tended to divide humankind into able people and unable experimental . Do you see art as it's practised now as having a useful people. He himself was always able! role to play in this experimental testing process? But art also played a specific social role, didn't it ... at least since Yes. Art is a very important thing . It is around art that the the 19th century. Artists are perceived as being slightly outside. They discussion has to start about changing the social order because do these strange things that other people don't have the opportunity to no other principle exists any more. It's no longer possible, for do, thus taking away the creative principle that you were talking instance, to develop the discussion from the idea of democracy. about. Because if everyone was doing these things then the social order As soon as people try to discuss the social order from the idea of would break down. democracy, they work against the idea of freedom. The idea and The systems of work which came down from the French understanding of art is the clearest symbol for the idea of Revolution and through the Industrial Revolution divided the freedom. The element of art is the only point in the social people into privileged and non privileged and the artist was one discussion which still has a lot of revolutionary elements. It no of the most privileged. The artist was so completely outside most longer makes sense to start the problem from economics or from people's view that they didn't take any interest in him. Our law and democracy. The only organic point from which to culture is not carried by the idea of art, it's carried by the idea of consider the possibility of change and evolutionary develop the economy. Art is outside, just like it was in Egypt and when ments and finally a revolution of the social order is from art. the economy is regulated then we will have another high culture. When I speak of art I mean the possibilities still embedded in But for this we have to change the economic system. Politics is this field, sleeping, dreaming undetected. If I look for art on the already completely dependent on the economy, politicians are culture pages of the daily newspapers I find it completely anti slaves of the economic powers. We say in Germany 'Straw progressive, completely traditional and belonging to the Men'-they are brought to power by the interests of high capitalistic and communistic repression of the world. My idea of finance, not their own merit. We have to change this economy art is anthropological art. Not modern art. Some modern artists from a money economy to a people economy. If we don't have asked for change, like Mondrian and Picasso-they were succeed there will be an explosion. pushing towards change, they were pacifists opposed to war. What you're asking people to do is become responsible, to behave Many important artists have guided the consciousness of the like decent human beings. But there are going to be people prepared to world with their visions of the future but they didn't develop a stop them doing that. methodology. My understanding of anthropological art is where If there is opposition from the state then support for the everyone is seen as an artist. We have to look for an artist in every movement grows. And if it continues to grow then Govern human being. The idea of art is the most comprehensive one for ments will have great difficulty in opposing it. The beginning of the spiritual understanding which must be developed in all success of the Greens' election campaign was when the police human production. The idea of art is the science of freedom in were too brutal with people protesting against the installation of the world and contains the problem of creativity. No other idea nuclear plant. It doesn't have to be a complete philosophy, there is available any more. No other entrance is possible. are many methods available and many abilities. It's a kind of You think that art still has a certain amount of credibility for network. This is what I think but I don't believe it. Believing people? · means nothing. Believing is a kind of hope and when I look No. We have to bring back its credibility. The majority of round there is no hope. When you see the situation there is no people have enough reason not to believe in art because hope. If you're hoping you are making a metaphysical point. I traditional art didn't care for contact with people in other don't believe in hope. I see possibilities: you have to be active, working conditions and artists have become too much like and then you see everyday a possibility. 0

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. MUSIC SUPPLEMENT 'A Picaresque Tale of Small, Black, Furry Nice Guys' WHO ARE THE RESIDENT?S Nobody the Residents are not so quaint as to satisfying the audience's demand for a knows. We do know that; there are four of idealistically believe that they are going to total entertainment without ever being them; they make records full of strange change the world through this little arrogant and meritricious as most rock noises and danceable rhythms; they romance . Rather the Mole show is far shows are, and without being anachronis came from San Francisco; they are part of more a description of the Residents own tically parochial as it so easily could have Ralph Records along with Snakefinger response to being musicians in the 80s. been. You couldn't sit there in innocent and Tuxedomoon. But we don't know The Residents have produced more wonder or in cynical reproach point the who they are. They have no names, they than a dozen records and become a known finger at how much it must all have cost. are never photographed out of their quantity in the rock world and yet they However , and it must be a big however, eyeball head disguises and they never give have really have succeeded in remaining by producing the 'internal controversy' of interviews. Are they aliens from outer outsiders. By keeping their personal iden the narrator accusing the Residents of space, are they mad extremist empiricists, tities secret they hope to protect them selling out, the Residents raised the or just a bunch of lads with a highly selves and their work from manipulative quesion of 'How can you expect your pose marketable gimmick? pressures of rock world notoriety. They to be believed when you are up there on The Residents' whole show is a simple wish to remain outsiders and not succumb the stage of the Hammersmith Odeon picaresque tale of small black furry nice to a slavish dependence on the whims of before 1500 fans who have each paid £4 to guys who are forced by the destruction of fashion and the demands of record com get in, on a big European tour? ' And then their homeland to go into exile in the land panies and managers. did not answer the question . As if by of the 'Chubbs'. The Chubbs are a race of They are themselves the Moles, flushed drawing attention to it themselves it smiling, well-fed affluent, Thatcherite into the open by the destruction of the somehow excuses it. realists who offer the Moles a new home in underground in the new realism of the 70s I am no die-hard who still believes that exchange for their slavish acceptance of and 80s. They too have a choice of this is an important issue any more. the Chubbs authority. The tale is told in acceptance into the 'Real' world if they What's more, everything that I know of comic strip fashion illustrated with a will obey and be exploited but they their music, their record company Ralph changing series of large graphic paintings rejected this option and preserved their Records, and the sincerity of feeling, the and cut-outs manipulated and animated privacy and freedom by disguising them good humouredness, and, despite the by dancing Moles. A loquacious narrator selves like guerrilla freedom fighters. disguise the communication of their nice delivers a 'personal' voice over, including Their music with its emphasis on found guy personalities in the Mole show, is irreverent comments on the quality of the sounds, home- made instruments, and a convincingly genuine, but I suspect that performance and relevance of the imag reliance on simple rhythms, is a kind of greater forces than they can control are at ery. All this illustrates the music of the expressionism which is decidedly anti work here. It was no easy matter for Residents who are visible in silhouette rockist. It is anti-slick, anti the current example, for this magazine to get tickets to only behind a screen at the rear of the fashion for clean sounding synth-music, review the show. The audience themselves stage. and above all, anti the rock virtuoso at the end of the show imposed a rock The message of the exploited outcast is celebrity. convention on them by demanding an given a reality within the performance The appearance of this show was simi encore and shouting requests for their itself when the narrator objects within the larly low-tech, with hand-painted screens favourite numbers, which the Residents performance itself when the narrator which, although cartoon-like illustra reluctantly complied with. To attempt a objects to the use of violence, a twist in the tions, were expressionistic and evocative. large European tour of major large-scale plot he was not expecting. He turns on the The lighting and the changing of scenes rock venues and still maintain your free Residents, accusing them of sensational was all simple by-hand stuff, giving the dom, privacy and integrity is courageous ism in the interest of achieving rock whole show a kind of intimate, down but perhaps a little naive. 'I'll take a T stardom and wealth. He is quickly re home, local pub feel that defies the scale of shirt and an I LOVE THE RESIDENTS moved, gagged and bound into a wheel the Hammersmith Odeon without ever bumper sticker please! chair, wheeled centre stage as helpless feeling ostentatiously nostalgic and slick. Steve Rogers victim. The protective screen is removed It worked. The Mole show succeeded in and the Residents, concealed in Walk down frocks of rag coats and miner's helmets, move slowly forward pushing their instruments on wheels, as close as the audince get to guessing their true identit, for the finale with a guest 'appear ance' by Snakefinger. Despite the rather disingenous pre sentation, such as the depiction of Snake finger as a mutual friend of the performers and audience alike (he isn't that well known) the Residents are quite serious and genuine in what they are attempting to achieve. The use of rock music as a medium for political rhetoric is now almost a sine qua non for acceptability and

'Total war has become information war, it is ed. This quality is important within a ed. Such a confrontation would have beingfought now . . .' -Genesis P-Orridge, culture where the flow of money is denied the 'control' state of these exami Research 4/5 1982. strongly equated with the flow of images, nations and removed the artist from the 'Being signed to Warner Brothers in the where the supply of information is regu elitist status in which such experiments United States, that's really exciting you lated with these considerations. Money is could be carried out. If, to give an know? -Dieter Meir. nothing if it can't put on a show, and example, Documenta 7 represented for 'Could a tall-story teller from the mid insolvency is now defined by the (un many people last year a bankruptcy of west standing in front of giant flickering thinkable) acknowledgement that the theory and practice, it has as much to do images persuade us that we are no longer in rube is no longer paying attention. As a with what had preceeded it and less with Kansas anymore? Or is she just telling us the final gift, the artists'readiness to involve what was actually occurring during that truth .. . that we really are in Kansas whether themselves in the business negotiations show. It was a manifestation that was very we like it or not' - PERFORMANCE 23, and sales campaigns required to sell the much measured against the past and not 'Laurie Anderson, Con Artist or Cultural product legitimizes the principles upon the present . Heroine?' which the record and film companies have There are of course other, more specific When the above review of Laurie been operating for years. New, more factors. Performance art, as a practice, Anderson's United States I-IV closed with efficient images are presented through old established the autonomy of individual that disquieting image of her audience as strategies. artists and granted them an arena which Frank L. Baum's small-town rubes taken However, there are two sides to any existed outside the gallery world. It also in by a huckstering showman from Oz, it exchange, and if the communication in required the use of new and ultimately touched upon a nervous and disturbing dustries are now regaining power over capital-intensive machinery as the disci condition. In collaborations between the markets whose sophistication and levels of pline of performance expanded and estab artist and the major record label, what acceptance have undoubtedly altered over lished itself . This posed problems of forces are actually being brought to bear? the past decade, then the artist is in turn supply and demand, problems for which a What is going on? What are we actually granted a considerable amelioration in company like Warner Brothers had im supporting by consuming the resultant circumstances . Through collaboration mediate solutions. Finally, the interven products? The cross-over or exchange with the major record companies, post tion of big business removed mounting between the art-world, pop culture and modernism can see its relationship to mass criticism of how well radical theories big business does not take place in a society in commercial, pragmatic terms adapt themselves to artistic practice. vacuum, and ultimately we have to ac rather than aesthetic or ideological ones . There was simply no room for them any knowledge that they are all participating Involvement with the social body is now more. in the real business of mass-communica direct and intimate rather than discursive In light of the above, the work of Laurie tion; the industrialization of the image although, inevitably, that involvement Anderson, Pyschic TV and Yello over the under corporate control. The work of maintains its elitist condition . Western past 18 months demand consideration in artists like Laurie Anderson, Pyschic TV 'Art Capital' has bankrupted itself be some detail. Y ello will be dealt with and-to a lesser extent-Yello, represents cause it has fundamentally refused to separately, but it is worth noting here how an extraordinarily complete grasp of the exercise whatever power it has. In the much they have in common with Ander technology behind the records, films and intellectual and political isolationism of son and PTV . All three have moved, along videos currently passing amongst us. At its the conceptual art practised in the 70s various paths, onto a major label ( each most proficient, their work has the seam there existed a social impotence in which tied to Warner Brothers in one capacit y or less complexity of the most convincing, issues of power, knowledge or the func another via the growth in independent all-embracing spectacle: eyes, ears and tion of image and language were rigorous labels in the late 70s. All three seem minds are engaged, occupied and divert- ly examined but never directly confront- convinced of the short-comings of their

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. NUSIC SUPPLEMENT The Condi1ion of Bankrup1cy 2. Welcome Back To Kansas were very popular at the time. Inevitably LP only goes some of the way towards these themes finally emerged as a consid paying off. Boris Blank understands the Suddenly the press officer at Stiff Records eration of 'the artist's role in society' : the business well and probably has a better is on the phone asking if PERFORMANCE point at which such solipsism and sterility grasp of record production than most. He MAGAZINEis interested in doing a feature become pure onanism. Meier's work does is capable of responding to the pressure of on Yello. An interview can be arranged, not differ much from any of the other creating the techno-pop product : an and copies of their latest LP, along with series of pointless acts, repeated gestures, elaborate confection built up from differ press kits and photos will be with us absurdities and non-events which charac ent recording and composition proccesses . within 48 hours . I agree to the proposal terize this particular apsect of perform However his work is greatly restricted by more out of curiosity than excitment . The ance art. Meier himself sees no essential being forced into a standard 45-rpm mainstream pop press had already ex break between these earlier activities and format in which the limit of four and half pressed its delight in Yello's pop /perform his involvment with Yello. He sees himself minutes running time is hardly ever ance dabbling, and I was fascinated by the primarily as a writer who has moved from exceeded. Consequently many interesting manner in which Stiff took the whole one set of linguistic activities to a new one ideas are never developed and are instead project seriously enough to solicit some as lyricist and spokesman for a techno-pop cut to fit the piece's short duration, kind of approval from 'more obscure outfit. Actually the real continuity lies in making each song sound surprisingly like magazines like yours ... ha ha, you know his continued obsession with the limits another . Unfortunately, the other thing what I mean?' I think I knew what he and excesses of the 'artist's role in society.' that doesn't vary from song to song is meant. Whether he is sorting piles of metal Dieter Meier's embarrassingly poor deliv Sitting in reception at Stiff a few weeks objects in a Zurich public square or ery of what must be the most appalling set later, waiting to conduct the interview, arguing for some new kind of commercial of lyrics a mature human adult ever put the picture I had of Y ello by then was of a heroism from artists in the pop press, that his name to. light-weight colourful disco outfit who obsession remains constant. When I first heard them , I though had two things going very hard against Taken at face value it threatens to Meier's texts were a parody of pop them: the first was Stiffs promotional overwhelm Yello with an intellectual banalities taken to some post-Devo ex campaign and the other was the overbear framework which their actual products treme. However, his own description of ing presence of their front-man, Dieter can never support. Examined more closely them as'scenarios' designed to create Meier. it reveals a dangerous naivety, drawing as pictures which interact with Boris Stiff have always been associated with it does upon role models which are socially Blanks's 'sound painting' showed that I the kind of sales pitches which Colonel and historically inappropriate to the was not only wrong but also far too Parker would have applauded. Their use times. As a result the discussion of how charitable . My impression of Boris was of balloons, stickers, badges, giveaway commercial conditions influence artistic also at variance with Meier's. Someone I comics, cardboard instore displays, pic production quickly degenerates into ab took to be a competent, aware recording ture discs etc. have forced the pace in the surdity when the examples drawn upon by professional was now presented to me as agressive marketing of recent pop prod Meier are Mozart, Shakespeare, Moliere an untutored primitive artist working uct . In the case of Yello, they came up and Houdini. The discussion becomes an directly onto 24-track tape. This view was with the most classic piece of 80s tack I absolute non-issue when the best he can taken to annoying extremes once the issue have seen so far : a car bumper sticker with concretely offer to back up his arguments was raised (by Meier) of Yello recordings the legend 'I love Yello' upon it in which is an eccentric press bio, and the music being original and individual works of art: the word 'love' is replaced by a large red and lyrical trivialities of Yello's You gotta 'You cannot ask Boris to repeat what he valentine. This device has been used and Say Yes. does. That is like asking an artist who has re-used by car salesmen, newspapers, done a good drawing to repeat what he has tourist boards, religious cults and T-shirt just done' . I cannot seriously believe that manufacturers to the point of overload. Dreaming in the Studio anyone would; most of us being aware to This simple black, white and red design some degree of how the work of art exists clashed violently with the black and gold Boris Blank, the creator with Carlos Peron in the age of mechanical reproduction. tasteful smears which constitute the sleeve of Yello's music responds happily to the Just who is the untutored primitive and poster art for the actual Yello LP. In description of him by another journalist as around here? fact the whole packaging and presentation some kind of experimental scientist. He of Yello's You Gotta Say Yes to Another agrees with it, going on to define himself Bank Music Excess is one confused mass of stark as 'an egomaniac ' locked away in his contrasts, contradictions, conflicts of in recording studio. His overall attitude Dieter says he likes talking to leftists, terest and lapses in thinking. Many of towards making music is summarised by because he can measure his anarchism these aberrations are not the fault of an him as being one of a small boy dreaming against them' .- Face interview, March enthusiastic if heavy-handed record com of exotic countries which remain forever 1983.' pany misunderstanding their product but out ' of reach . He seems fully aware of how 'If I become just another fucked-up are actually centred upon the thoughts, these images all relate to .a condition of mu sician working for a big record com actions and opinions of Dieter Meier . isolation and withdrawal, something pan y, it will not be the fault of the record Meier, supposedly Yello's strongest which is in stark constrast to the aggres company '- Dieter Meier , Camden Pal sales point, has a substantial career behind sive visibility which Yello claim for them ace, May 1983. him as performance artist working in selves. He also acknowledges that these are Apparently Yello were not responsible European and American galleries during both faces of the same coin : the freedom for the 'Swiss Bank Corporation' logo the late 60s and throughout the 70s. Much to experiment found in withdrawal is which appears on the back of the LP of his work focusses upon the conceptual defined in economic terms . To bu ild their sleeve, something which embarrasses bricolage with themes, of money, lan own 24-track studio in Switzerland , Yello them and makes me wonder how much guage, information and meaning which had to raise a lot of credit which the new actual control they can exercise over their

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. NUSIC SUPPLEMENT Michael Nyman IN THEPAST MONTH the music of Michael itive structures, yet rich in humour and Nyman has been twice broadcast by theatre is quite deliberately an ironic Channel 4. In this way Nyman's music is comment on the similarly long and r.epe reaching huge audiences and yet he tive yet totally humourless and mechani remains one of the least praised and least cally rigid works of Glass and Reich. understood composers in Britain today. The kind of cataloguing of musical Throughout the ten years he has been styles that is so clear in the Masterwork is writing music, he has consistently been an important key to Nyman's imagina rejected by the music establishment as tion. Many other works are also overtly 'trivial' . Even the serious music press musical catalogues, such as the Bird List, whilst being intrigued and supportive has Melody List, Plotting for the Shopkeeper and never been able to come to terms with the In Re Don Giovannia , based on the music. Yet despite all this Nyman has catalogue area from Mozart's Don Giov established himself as an important figure vanni. Nyman is writing musical equiv with an enthusiastic, loyal and growing alents of a familiar techniques in absurdist audience . and satirical literature of making lists. Nyman seems to almost enjoy and even Lists are often used to find in the to pursue this kind of controversial and ordinary and banal a surprising and precarious position. Before starting writ disconcertingly unfamiliar poetry. In Ny ing music he was well known as a music man's music a bizarre collection of musi critic . As music editor for the Spectator, as cal items are listed to give new life and a regular contributor to Studio Interna meaning to music we thought we already tional and as the author of an excellent knew. It also, and more importantly survey on experimental music Cage & rejects any notion of causal, historical Beyond he was the most audible and obvious influence of Riley and Glass, lacks development of music in favour of a articulate proponent of the radical new the spark of rhythmic and hypnotic musical contiguity. Nyman's music re music from across the Atlantic and of the beauty which characterises the work of flects our fragmented world where all small group of young British the Americans . It is tempting to detect a music, past and present, western and non experimenters . feeling that even in the writing of Decay western, are readily available to us and it It was perhaps partly a love of contro Music Nyman was already dissatisfied by shows us how they can all co-exist without versy that persuaded him to give up the the mechanical forms it employs . It was denying the uniqueness of each. Yet such surely more secure job of being a respected soon after this demonstration of his a condition is necesarily absurd, we music critic and historian, even if he did mastery of manipulation of rhythmic cannot fully enter into any culture other support radical music, to become himself structures that he started to explore a than our own, and without running the a creator of radical music . His more reconciliation of these learnt lessons with risk of exploiting 'primitive' cultures. cynical critics have accused him of meri his own witty and eclectic musical If Nyman rejects any single perspective triciously seeking notoriety through his imagination . on musical culture, he also has no single non-conformity and his various collabo His distinctive sound first appeared unified response to this absurdity. His rations and alliances with many of the best with the formation of the Campiello Band multi-perspective responses range from known experimental artists in other me to play incidental music for the opening nostalgia to violence. Much of the recent dia . He has written scores for the films of production of the National Theatre in music for The Draughtsman's Contract has Peter Greenaway. He has collaborated 1976. Despite the practical and financial a nostalgic longing for a bygone, golden with Bruce Maclean, David Cunningham difficultie s of working with a nine-piece age when culture was harmonious and of Flying Lizards, Brian Eno (whom amplified band it has proved to be the Man's place at the centre of the universe Nyman advised on the Obscure Records perfect vehicle for the development of his was unquestioned. The Draughtsmans series) and Philip Glass. It certainly reads writing. The eccentric line up of electric Contract exposes the myth of this har like a who 's who of fashionable avant guitar and bass, sax, clarinet, french horn, mony and shows the exploitation of the gardists of the past decade. trombone, tuba, banjo, recorder, rebec, innocent by the intelligent and so the Nyman 's journalistic career culminated violin and piano gives him a range of nostalgia is tempered by a sense of unease. with the Studio Vista publication of Cage sounds and musical references that no This unease sometimes explodes in violent & Beyond . This involvement with the existing ensemble could provide. rage as in Two Violins or Bird List Song new music had already expanded beyond Much of Nyman 's music since the where the fragmentation is seen as an journalism to include performing with the formation of the band follows a similar opportunity for tyranical domination . In Scratch Orchestra, and the Portsmouth pattern . Take a familiar sounding melody Bird List the names of birds are screamed Sinfonia, (a piece of avant garde history or theme and rework it in as many styles as at the same pitch. The names become shrouded in legend) and to helping Brian possible, sometimes layering them on top distorted and unrecognisable as they are Eno select the Obscure records . His of each other, sometimes juxtaposing fitted into the tyrannical rhythms. Ny compositions which date from this time htem in surprising and witty combina man's latest work for the TV drama Nellys clearly reflect the then current interest in tions . For example, the Masterwork , version is a perfect accompaniment to a the systemic works of the American recently revised for solo piano, takes a tale of schizophrenic alienation an anec minimal school of Riley, Reich and Glass. series of eight chords, with associated dote of the fragmentation becoming too These early works were of a severely melodies and themes, and puts it through much . mechanical kind, and almost indistin a whole catalogue of music historical In his pluralist range of reactions to the guishable from the music of many other treatments . At times it sounds like Purcell, fragmentation Nyman seems curiously young composers. Nymans first recorded at others like 50s beat music . During the English. The nostalgia, the wit and humor work, Decay Musi c , is an uninspired piece course of the 45 minute piece there are in the face of imminent destruction, the of systemic writing. Nyman was perform more than half a dozen such treatments . perception of the absurd comedy of the ing as a member of the Philip Glass This juxtaposition of styles, whilst unde modern world, and outbursts of violent ensemble, and had been a strang support niably witty, is more than mere fancy rage remind me of the English satirical er of his work, but Decay Music despite the footwork. This long work based on repet- traditions of Pope and Swift. It is no mere

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. NUSIC SUPPLEMENT whim that Nyman's current project is an constantly added to by constant His ability to examine his own music opera based on the absurdist classic 'Tris reinterpretiition. without any overriding theroetical preju tam Shandy'. Nyman's music follows all these tenets . dice, his refusal to attempt any definition Nyman is often referred to as a 'sys The manipulation of rhythmic structres of the music, is one of his greatest tems' composer or sometimes a 'cros underlying his work was learnt from Glass strengths and makes him a willing and sover' composer. He is clearly not a who iri turn learnt it from studying non easy collaborator with other artists, which 'systems' composer in the Glass mould. If western, non-harmonic, polyphonic mu is a natural feature of the post-modern by 'crossover' is meant an attempt to sic. Whereas Nyman's harmonies are spirit . reconcile 'high art' with 'popular culture' drawn from the history of modern West I make no apolgies for this homage to then for Nyman that is only part of the ern music from Purcell, to Webern, to the work of Michael Nyman . He is a brave story. He is not content to hypnotically Cole Porter and Donna Summer . Latterly and brilliant composer who has pursued a repeat pretty phrases and play it like disco he even seems to have abandoned the unique vision with very little support as some of his so-called colleagues. To use pursuit of a structural goal. The music from the timid bodies whose job it should an over-used term, Nyman adheres doesn't need to build to a final crescendo be to help develop his kind of talent. When quite instinctively to the theory and spirit and instead just starts and stops as the the Arts Council commissioned him to of 'post-modernism' . occassion demands . In that way it is akin write a piece for the Contemporary Music Post-modernism is a reaction against to Gamelan which is music in stasis. Network tour of Hoeketus it did so causal and linear theories of time, life and Finally Nyman clearly demonstrates the reluctantly and made no attempt to dis art. It argues that all cultural contribu 'text' over the 'work'. He treats his own guise its regret for having done so. The tions are valuable and viable whether they music, along with all music, as 'texts' Hoeketus piece was not his best but it is are modern or pre-modern, high or low available for interpretation and will hap sad that he should be judged in this way tech, frivolous or profound. It rejects the pily take a piece of his own, which may when it is with his own band that he so notion of the finished 'work of art' in already be a reworking from Mozart, and obviously needs to work . favour of the unfinished 'text' which is re-submit it as a source for a new piece. Steve Rogers Rea ular Nusllc AT THE END OF REGULARMusic's last ren (Psychic TV), Charles Hayward Idyllic Rhythms, Purcell Manoeuvres, intense set at the Cockpit, London, I (This Heat) and Maria Lamburn (Vir Music For Film, and The Third Dream all reflected on one concrete certainty of the ginia Astley's violinist). Jon Parry's pieces illustrate that the essence of this music evening. In the process of reaching out Neapolitan Sixth parts 1 & 3 are short: the which spans so many sources is to do with towards a definition of Regular Music's first a closely repetitive keyboard melody communication rather than narcissism, output, one thing it most certainly wasn't and the second, contrastingly, a furious complementation not digressive improvi was what the name suggests-identifiable hurtling of the full ensemble ( two saxes, a sation, melodic fusion and reconciled style or form. Anyway, the ensemble's is a tuba, viola, violin, two keyboards, drums argument rather than dissonant fury with suspicious name dangled as a carrot to and guitar) into a race of pitch and speed; edges left sharp or unresolved. catch you unaware, to subvert your tastes, where horns lead, percussion underlies In all these pieces Regular Music have your expectations, your sensibilities . This their dominance, and keyboards hold the kept improvisation to a minimum-bre is exactly what they proceeded to do in an melody, locking restraints around the vity is the criterion-avoiding the extra aural crescendo consisting of 6 pieces strings' shrill pirouettes. The horns and vagence of the jazz solo, or the clearly knitted together by Jeremy Peyton-Jones strings reach the zenith of their spiralling defined compositional structure of classi and Jon Parry from a complex, colourful combat and the piano signals the end . cal music. Each section of each piece is no fabric of influences; modern, classical, What is lacking in this piece is the more than three minutes long, borrowing jazz & rock rhythms coupled to an avant interlocking humourous conversations a minimalism from pop and encapsulating garde mould of composition. between keyboards, strings and horns, in this short form complex dialogues The music is a narrative of tension and which I found to be the innovative core of which teasingly communicate. reconciliation, rough and smooth sur Peyton Jones' compositions and Regular Charles Ledesma faces, empty spaces and sounds colliding Music's singular idiomatic framework . then cunningly trapped into collusion . Regular Music This is perhaps what you might hopefully hear but so often don"1: from ambitious 'new' music: music which lays a tantalis ing yet little developed trail of eclectic influence. Regular Music use influences not for inspiration but more as markers, as constraints on structure. Their exchanges are never without purpose and yet main tain the fluid originality which must define the avant garde. Amid their influ ences, the classical leanings of the Ameri can school of composition-Steve Reich, John Cage and Philip Glass-come through. So does the post-modern harmo melodic jazz of Anthony Braxton and the Air ensemble, and the softer side of new wave' s loosening of rock's stranglehold on rhythm . Regular Music's personnel reflect these various influences: the systems music background of Peyton Jones, Geoff War-

nothing to vary the routine. pair of shoulders with neck back the lead of of Lyon and Fenley through The one thing that does stick from stretched, two muscular thighs seen ta body-building but she does use her own watching Fenley in performance is her pering down towards the ankles, and so body as the subject/raw material for her physical appearance. Her attention to on. This is a body tuned to peak condition creative work. Dressing up and playing a exercise really has affected the shape of and recorded with every attention to gallery of parts, Sherman creates fantasy her body and her back is a ripple of sensual sleekness ( a particular character film stills with herself always playing solo muscles. She cultivates this for a further istic of Mapplethorpe's photography as lead. In each colour photograph she deliberate purpose: 'I have an athlete's are the images of bondage). However in projects hereself into a new role; the tired rather than a dancer's body and I want to these fragmented, fetishistic close-ups, daily pausing for a rest while mopping the keep it that way. Looking · at muscles on Lyon's body also appears disarmingly floor ; the agonized teenageer waiting for stage is a very sensual experience, much asexual. The leg could equally well belong the phone to ring; the American girl in a more sensual than looking at an anorexic to a man when seen in isolation and the haunting, deserted city; the glamorous ballet dancer'. classic hand-grip pose to display biceps Hollywood star . Every image suggests a It is in this respect that Fenley has and chest used by muscle-men seems further aspect of womanhood while real affinities with the female body builder strangely incongruous on a bare breasted and mythological merge. It is extraordi Lisa Lyon who describes her own muscu woman. Between them, Lyon and Map nary to see how the same person can be lar body as 'neither masculine nor femi plethorpe are deliberately flouting con made to look so different by a change of nine but feline'. In the remarkable collec ventional ideas of ~xual _ stereotypes. costume and a varied context. As with tion of photographs by Mapplethorpe, Apart from being photographed, Lyon Fenley and Lyon, the sensuality inherent Lyon's body is seen in a gamut of poses, sees hei' act of body building to be a ritual in the situations is exploited and not clothes and guises from traditional nude and the enactment of that ritual, art. Like covert. The American woman is hatching to fashion model. In some of the most Fenley, the way to perpetuate her chosen from the minimalist shell of feminism in a extraordinary of these, certain limbs or art form is to keep to a gruelling routine strikingly novel way. parts of the torso are seen in isolation : a traditionally associated withe male world. Anna Moszynska · leg with pointed foot turned skywards, a Cindy Sherman does not actually follow _L~saLyon RobertMapplethorpe

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. REVIEWS Bracknell Fes1iYal of Performance: Two Views AT THEEXPENSE of sounding naive, there esy . . . I have nothing at all. I feel awful ery presents a problem. Meanings, are of was a generous atmosphere at the Park . most of the time.' For the rest, he course, not absolute. But I feel that Anne Specific reasons seemed to be, the variety produced an epic barrage of sound from a Bean and Paul Burwell come close to of available spaces within the old house typically elaborate drumset. During this, rejecting the importance of general cur and grounds, the length of time spent Anne Bean went through a complex series rent references, in favour of less easily together by performers and audience, a of ritual actions-to which the drumming defined, chance resonances. A vibrator flexible programme allowing for im- sounds were an active, essential part, not connotes sexual use/activity for me--not promptus; above all the sheer number accompaniment. the buzzing of a bee. over 30--of performances. She's an insect, receiving honey into Richard Layzell's Zangst contained the Beyond physical influences, there was her mouth from a reluctantly pouring most direct political engagement of work I generosity of another kind too. It was a funnel. She smears it onto her hair, her saw. Adopting a cabaret-compere identity feeling of accessibility, borne of the arms, goes behind a glass window, holds he attacks, from within and with delicate, impulsive, intuitive, sensual basis of much up a black and yellow striped cloth, a scarcely veiled behemence, notions of of the work. If there was a gap, it was vibrator. She 's a trapped bee. And from collective, consumerist accord without didacticism, obviously-stated politics, here we were treated to one of the many which the Sun would collapse, and Terry formalism . But whatever the reason- spectacular moments of the festival . Two Wogan would cease to be the most popular intentional avoidance or a reflection of the bags of minute squares of coloured crepe man in Britain. 'state-of-art-now'-Bracknell emerged paper--orange , yellow, turquoise, were His method is spoken language; 'We all vital, affirmative. released onto the blades of an electric fan. want a video, don't we?'; gesture--from Anne Bean and Paul Burwell's work fits A cloud of colour exploded-we all thumbs-up signs to queasily insane facial precisely that bound of impulse, sensi - gasped . The paper squares settle , pollen movements; and video--constant, frag tivity to environment , objects, and mean- sticking to Anne's bee-body. But there 's a mented reflection of on-stage reality. The ing oblique-unconscious . They say: terrible , 'victimness' about it all, fuelled effect is startling, scaring. The laughter 'Our work . .. is a sharing, a slice of life for me by uncomfortably powerful reson uneasy . At first, the repetition of 'are you intersecting with what is encountered on ances of sexual domination . The dripping with me?' sits skillfully between send-up the way and at the time' . Familiarity with honey as sperm, gagging her. And the and the feeling that he may be being each other's working methods, and an text, poignant, adding to the sense of serious. But the venue, a crowded lunch acute mutual awareness of mood and helpnessness : 'All social insects , if placed time bar in dead conservative Bracknell, timing meant that their untitled , unre - in isolation die, usually within two hours , stifled ambiguity. The question shifts into hearsed performance in the small cellar even through other circumstances may be the here-and-now . Yes we do want a bar on the Friday night appeared smooth , perfect .' video, a sec~nd car. Is someone going to controlled, perfectly wrought . Slides alternate images of her , of in - hit him? Then there's the newspaper, Dressed in a kind of Roman arm y arm y sects. She cuts herself with a switchblade, 'real news' . 'I'm not a bitch' (says Joan officer pastiche, Paul Burwell entered the draws blood. The performance was unfor Collins). 'I'm not a bitch' . He reads stage, then discarded helmet and cloak, gettable . But total abandonment to such eventually, the story . Things are less confessing: 'I have no message , no proph - intuitively gathered and presented imag - comfortable . The idiocy is the reality. Confronted with it, laughter changes to High point of the festival was Silvia C. Ziranek's banquet. In numb panic . her true role as La Cookiste Superba, astonished diners b Carol de Vaughan's dance-piece Mem linked as course after course arrived, each accompanied by a ory Portrait was pitched at an altogether quieter level, although carefully con segment of the Ziranek performance repertoire. A strict trolled speech and gesture were essential linkage of menu to event meant that this was no idle thematic components. She is fascinated by the gesture. As a team of professional caterers slaved to duplicate relationship between words, word-frag and disseminate her strictest culinary demands to 200 guests, ments, the ways they can inspire move ment-as well as how that movement can we all Ate Art. feed itself without the 'distraction' of music . And if the sound-tape was verbally complex, there was a lucidity about the whole piece suggesting that an instinctive, automatic response to the stream of parts was appropriate, rather than a conscious analysis of detail. Memory portrait is an assemblage of diaphanous particles which choose to dance around a set of focal points or features which surface according to an overall interior design '. I was strong

ly reminded of the recent photomat ~ .:"' portrait work of Susan Hiller. In a more 0 :E. specifically personal way-related to a .] time-based body involvement-De 0 Vaughan is operating, convincingly, in "' the same area : the ordering of memory, the role of automatic response to verbal and visual fragments . Nigel Pollitt

Paul Burwell and Ann Bean It has been my experience that Jong, furniture seemed to take on almost a life of truly successful performance; that it does drawn-out events of this kind can seldom its own. Howell himself , in a Jong, not totally rely on a conversance with a sustain the impetus necessary to gain a technical and succinct explanation of the specific kind of language in order to be truly successful 'festival' atmosphere . methods used to create the piece likens it enjoyed or understood. Performance events that is. My exper to performance cubism . The objects are Susan Carpenter, by contrast, pre ience of Bracknell was limited to one day, moved in order to present different planes sented what I felt was an eminently however, so remains one-sided and prob to a fixed point ( the audience). The superficial performance . Moving Struc ably a little unfair. Many of my criticisms objects are presented from every angle. tures consisted of a collection of coloured arise from general observations,of such This composition of multi-faceted move fluorescent painted wooden structures boringly practical issues as the lack of ments does not demand the distortion of placed in various positions around a catering facilities during the Jong after reality required by painting, because it darkened room . The performers, con noon of no less than five performances on comprises the very elements painting spicuous in their black-clothed 'invisibil the trot. I would also question the validity seeks to create by illusion. In this sense it is ity' tied rows of long fluorescent painted of some of the programming, however, as much more successful. sticks to their waists and shoulders and the overall feeling gained from the day What I liked about this piece was its whirled round the room. the effect of a was that much of the work seemed to be timelessness . It does not rely on cultural or luminous coloured kaleidoscope was pret tired restatements of ideas initiated twen social phenomena specific to the moment, ty but hardly spectacular. The various ty years ago. Why in addition, was the or even the decade, but had a universal wooden structures were then activated, gallery turned over to a single reconstruc quality which made it approachable and and a large heavy metal wheel, heavily tion of an old performance by Dennis very enjoyable, on many different levels, disguised in black, and onto which were Masi, when it could have formed the focal from that of pure entertainment to that of attached various luminously painted point of an examination of new perform intellectual analysis. This is the secret of shapes in a whei::l formation, was rolled ance work by younger artists, and for Boris Gerrets round the floor. The presence of so many documentation, of which there is much children seemed appropriate. Ooh! aah! that is interesting, which cannot usually was all one could say really. The shapes be displayed in venues hosting one-off were pleasing to the eye; it was rather like events? There were moments of great watching an army of large fluorescent enjoyment however . By far the most grasshoppers, but not so much fun. outstanding piece of the day was Anthony Stephen Taylor Woodrow and the two Howells Table Moves . The same critic other members of Club Boring provided sism I would apply to much of the work the best entertainment of the day, terror repetition of old pieces or old ideas to a ising various small children in the gardens tiny audience mainly consisting of other at lunchtime (nothing else was happen performance artists and crmcs and ing). sewn together in black suits with friends-applies here , but the quality of gold painted hair and black faces, their the piece over-rode all my misgivings. A only way of moving was to jump simulta collection of everyday furniture and ob neously, a kind of bizarre six-legged jects is systematically turned through an monster silent and menacing, unsmiling, angle of ninety degrees by a performer, on quite ferocious really, jumping with some the axis of the centre of the performance force towards the unsuspecting families space, so that the initial set-up presented on the lawn, causing much suspicion to the audience is re-examined and re consternation then tears. For me it apper presented to show all possible aspects . aed to be a day out for refugees from the The piece was beautifully performed . sixties generation, wandering about in What began as a logical, systematic series stark contrast to the local Bracknell estate of movements developed into a seemingly families. A distinct Jack of anyone over six anarchic, complex and surprising vari and under thirty was the most depressing ation on the theme, as the 'floor' of the thing of all. piece was shown. During the stage the Chrissy Iles

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. REVIEWS The wacer s cacion whole spectrum of colours, lines, textures and lighting techniques which could easi ly have been exploited, and which wo1,1ld have greatly enhanced the raw physical power of the performance. It was almost as if some unconscious assumption had been made which equated a universe deprived of language with one drained of colour and vibrancy. Furthermore this kind of muffled greyness has been driven into the ground by over-use in the past three decades or so. The music -two passages on tape endlessly repeated-had a definite detrimental effect. Even where their use seemed to work, it still seemed superfluous-why, when you have actors working as hard and determinedly as these, bring in music to project emotional forces which are already in full play on stage? The highly structured nature of the musical excerpts also jarred with the flow of actions and gestures-absolute silence would have been preferable . If you · are Tenkei ~· the ICA going for extremes, there should be no To CREATE A THEATRE in which silence stark beauty. The prolonged and system half-measures. exists 'as a means of expression' raises key matic use of slow motion has a number of On a much more positive level, whhat questions of reduction and exclusion . In effects, both immediate and accumulat the Theatre Tenkeigekijyo has established imposing silence upon performance, what ive. What is at first unnerving, gradually in relation to a silent theatre is a new kind is removed? In a brief biographical note · becomes familiar, so much so that many of proscenium arch, one which has strong on the Theatre Tenkei Gekijo this basic members of the audience were noticibly affinities with the perspectives and per definition of their work is supplemented : shaken when leaving the theatre, by the ceptual boundaries of Rennaisance paint their performances 'investigate the sig- now feverish pace of 'normal' life outside. ing. The kind of dynamics which this nificance of silence as a means of perceiv- This reduced speed gave even the simplest brings into operation is well illustrated by ing the reality of language in a society gesture a presence which seemed to fill the a stunning ensemble sequence utilizing overloaded with verbal information'. Si- silent stage, something enhanced by the about eight or nine performers (it was lence, which has always denoted some strange unpredictability which slow mo impossible to say exactly how many, so impossible physical absolute, is clearly tion gives to any event. It was virtually dense and complex were the various defined within The Water Station as an impossible to know how any one course of actions on stage) where the visual space abstract, rarified-almost artificial---con- action would turn out, and this was was very carefully delineated. Within the dition: a conceptual state in which all heavily exploited: a determined action frame of the stage the many simultaneous words, all speech acts have been erased. would slowly dissolve into vacillation or actions guided the spectator's eye through For the entire 140 minutes of the play's an abrupt chartge of direction, a smile the group of people from . one striking duration, not one word is spoken between became a snarl, and what began as a blow detail to another. The audience's reaction the twenty or more characters who pass to the face ended up as a caress . Drawing was fixed and worked upon throughout. It across the stage. This absence is strongly upon some of the resources which this appeared as if nothing was missing even felt, not as a lack or deficiency, but by the technique produced, individual members though it was physically impossible to take strength of those things which replace of the company created some extraordi in the whole of the space. This was language in the tremendous austerity of nary and powerful performances. Kazumi balanced by the fact that all the characters this production. Kobari's chillingly ambiguous depiction seemed in turn to be responding to some The Water Station takes place on a of a mentally disturbed woman continual huge apocalyptic event happening off raised platform upon which a broken iron ly shifted between extreme states of sanity stage but which only they could see. They faucet releases a continual trickle of water, and delirium, Seiko Kitamura managed a stared horrified, screamed, or tried to look throughout the performance, into Ysmall silent scream which had her entire body away as this stark invisible event unfolded open pool. At one side of the platform convulsed in painfully slow spasms while outside the frame of the space. The there is a dark ramp for each of the her face was put through a sequence of tensions between these two states of members of the cast to make their en- contortions which lasted well over five perception-the audience's and the per trance and a similar ramp opposite at the minutes. These two examples are worth former's-coupled with the different other side of the stage for their exit . The mentioning (although it should be stated ways in which the eye is allowed to work only other permanent feature of the set is that the entire company is excellent, suggests the real basis for a silent theatre. an enormous mountain of old, battered without exception) because they repre Here, the power of the regard-its inten shoes which rises up at the back of the sent individual instances where a genuine sity and its passivity-is not there to platform. A series of travellers-some- theatre 0f silence existed, something replace language or to cover up an absence times alone and sometimes in gro ups- which is not always apparent in the overall of any kind . it doesn't represent a reduc moves across the stage, stopping by the conception and execution of this piece. At tion either-it is a pure discipline and one faucet to drink, wash, fight, make love or times it showed a lack of coherence and that the Theatre Tenkei Gekijyo, given just rest. Each action and every facial rigour, both of which are important in a their obvious strengths as performers, expression used by the performers is work intent on pushing performance to could easily use to build upon . Their next slowed down to a point where movement such extremes. For example, the overall London presentation could be really is sometimes almost imperceptible but in drabness of the set, the grubby destitute something. which each gesture or movement has a nature of the characters denied the work a Ken Hollings

structured framework. All three artists If Dick Jewell explores the effect of the features are presented to us in a deal with messages from the media. Dick media images on the individual, Brian cinematic way, to form a kind of narra Jewell's work involves a collaging of McCann expresses the inability of the tive, but of objectified , totally opposite to cultural fragments rearranged to present individual who seeks to change his condi that used by Winckle or Chadwick. Simi new meaning and to expose the falseness tions to break away. McCann's work is larly the urban romanticism implied could of the images as used in their original concerned with the presentation of social not be more different to the romaticism of context. It comments on the intrusion of tyupes, made at once sinister and comic by Graham's work. On walking round the stereotypes into our society, and on the his use of the irreverent and improvisa corner the set is exposed, and the illusion gap they create between personal fantasies tional elements of the 'New Sculpture'. is shattered, much as daydreams are. and the public expectations . The images he produces are disconcert The contrast between the two ap In It's a Thin Line Between Love and ing, in the way that all images of power are proaches to social and cultural issues in Hate conventionalism is turned on its when given comic exaggeration. Like this show underlines what has become a head by a collage of women brandishing Jewell, McCann uses reassembled frag general division between the traditional guns grouped together communicating a ments to create new, often completely method of detached observation , the be feeling of solidarity which is far from the reversed statements, in this case about the lief in the reduction of experience into original intentions of the magazine images human condition and social types . quantifiable boundaries to gain clarity of when individually photographed. The Charles Garrad's installation is more meaning, and the conscious placing of the unusual image of women in poses of atmospheric and romantic than the work self back into the work, acknowledging aggression and violence also questions of the other two artists, but is stillobjective responsibility, and extending the parame accepted male role-playing usually associ in its approach. His concerns are with the teters wh ich constrict the creati ve expres ated with such situations. way cinematic culture affects the way we sion of the self. The use of mixed media In The Box , Jewell uses the media of perceive the world, specifically how probably provides the clearest expression television in exposing its visual insensitiv imagination and memory are evoked in of these two polarities-the intuit ive ver ity by covering a wall with life-sized cinematic terms. He explores this by the sus the analytical. It is to the credit of the photographed TV stills. The unreality of use of various props and devices con conscientious approach of John Roberts, these images, usually instantaneous but structed in a tableau which the spectator is critic and selector of this year's Summer here trapped and fixed, becomes appar only allowed to observe through a peep Show 1, that we have a major exhibition of ent, and the numbing effect of the TV, hole in the wall. In Cinema we see a bleak such work in the context of such public which Jewell compares to watching flames hotel room whose atmosphere evokes the accessibility, one of London 's most estab in a fire, or a magnet, renders us passive in memories of any hotel room . It is a lishment galleries. its grip. collection of fragments of interiors. But Chrissie Iles

Helen Chadwick Roberta Graham

IT MAY SEEM that the past few months ' which you (poor viewer) don't really Worse than that, its supposed presenta television has been obliterated by silly understand . . . Mercifully, and not tions of what can be done with video season specials, Wimbledon and the Elec surprisingly, Channel 4's definition is a equipment which leap into the future tion. In the case of the latter that might little more mature. They define by the (and remember that this is authoritative) just be some kind of omen. But way back nature of production; so television is proved, at best, to be only the kind of in May there was a little flurry of something made by television companies, thing that would accompany a rock con independent video broadcasting. Too late video by video producers, and film by film cert, and, at worst, the kind of amusing to catch the last issue, it deserves a directors. Of course, all three eventually games people were playing with Sony mention here. become television, but the nature of the portapaks back in the early 70s. It failed to For ten days the discriminating viewer equipment used to produce each does lead take any account of any innovative video was bombarded with announcements for to a marked qualitative difference, just as in the last ten years-and you suspect this or that video programme to the extent the approach toworkingwith each leads to that is because they didn't know it existed. that you couldn't help wondering whethr a radically different type of content. If the BBC are capable of learning a BBC2 and Channel 4 had got together and BBC2's Arena blockbuster special on lesson, maybe they should consider this; decided that it was time they had a video video was so unremittingly bad that it video is a medium which lends itself to mini-festival. Not that they seem to share seems perverse to deride it further. Taking mmaking statements of great personal a view of video, which is interesting if only (it claimed) as its theme the effects the clarity. It can be produced by a no more because of the authoratitive definitions video revolution (what?) would have on megalithic organisation than a pirate radio television gives for anything it touches. our lives in the future, and with more than station, or a neighbourhood printshop . If The innocent viewer could be forgiven a hint of 'will video take over the world' they are able to remember this it would for a spot of confusion-after all a video's (yawn), it was in fact only a survey of the spare us being presented with a hotch something you record the tennis on while way video is already used, with a hint of potch of poor broadcasting masquerading you're watching the cricket, er ... or is it some obvious technological develop as video . But maybe I've got their defini film you hire from a shop for three quid a ments. Its gloating interest in Jap~nese tion of video wrong-it couldn't perhaps night? In the BBC2 dictionary that, or love hotels-where lovers leave with a mean something they produce which is rather those, are something like what video-tape record of their cavorting , gives too bad to call television, could it? video means, though, of course, it's all to some indication of the level of the Pete Shelton do with frightfully clever technology progmme . Nary Luc•er, NY

My INITIAL IMPRESSION of NY art in of advanced technology. Diffused light and slow dissolves suggest general and video in p~rticular is of rank A similar enterprise in paint would have the imprecise workings of memory, the commercialism and ,inflated American , been dismissed as retrogressive . This past recreated with a vague sense of regret. self-esteem parading in brash neo-expres might turn out to be the great advantage Images sharpen as the scene shifts from sionist paintings or hi-tech videotapes of video-you can re-work age-old themes America to France. Rooftops, fields, flow that happily reproduce the banalities of without freaking the novelty art ers, brooks bathed in sunlight, lovingly popular culture. Irony is reduced to merchants. recorded and set to ambient sound that locker-room humour, machismo trum Mary Lucier's installation consists of 2 Earl Howard periodically sunthesises into pets from 20 foot canvasses and desperate tapes showing alternately on 7 different highly visual interpretations of the land ly intricate special effects compensating sized monitors arranged in an arc across a scape. And finally, Monet 's garden at for the necessity of working on the small white wall. The time-based, gestural Giverny . Here the familiar views of paths screen. However, while a lot of NY art is aspect of this configuration is often reiter and water-lillies are re-worked in slow superficial and market-orientated, a sub ated as the two tapes diverge into differnt motion, the images breaking up into stantial group of artists continue to pro views of the same subject and then impressionistic mosaics. duce interesting work in spite of current synchronise once again, re-drawing the Mary Lucier's video is technically trends. Mary Lucier is one of those artists . arc. A sense of movement, of shifting from faultless and unlike many of her compatri Her video installation at the Whitney one place, one state to another is a central ots, her use of special effects is never Biennale re-introduces old-fashioned theme of the video imagery. The work gratuitious . The perfection of her imagery painterly concerns with form, and a poetic begins with exploratory sequences in a at times leans the work towards travelogue search for spiritual significance in the Victorian house in Ohio. The camera, · and the dangers of sentimentality-but beauty of landscape . hand-held, pans across heavy furniture the integration of form and content, the The NY art press, no less starved of and sunlit windows; the image periodical musical precision of her video-compo genuine content than their gallery-goir.g ly bleaches out in direct light. (In earlier sition and the far-reaching implications of readership, joined in a hymn of praise to work, Mary Lucier has literally burnt her themes make this installation one of Ohio at Giverny. What made this commu light into the camera tube creating perma the most satisfying works I have seen in nal sigh of relief possible was the presence nent traces in transient video images) . New York. - Catherine Elwes

EIGHT HOURSIS a long time for a perform gets colder and colder with more and more concrete bunker and this underground ance. Not the longest though-that record business.' retreat, cast in perpetual night and re still rests with Ken Campbell and his Fabre's company is drawn from all lieved only by candle or 100 watt bulb, twenty four hour production of The Warp walks of life and the first month of becomes a stamping ground for a group of . But whereas stunt, gimmick and sensa rehearsal was spent on discussion of people frustrated in their experience of tion are part of Campbell's stock-in-trade, personal experiences and outlooks because each other and of the sensual world. To Jan Fabre's This Is Theatre As It Was To as he says, 'first the human values, then tell 'the story of the loneliness of a single Be Expected And Forseen' has a serious, the formal values'. These 'ethics' of the soul' is the aim of Jannis Kounelliss ' even sober basis for it's demanding time group 's findings were then built into the performance tableau and Fabre is close scale. 'aesthetics' of a scenario which Fabre had indeed to his mentor. For two weekends in May, Fabre's written one and a half years previously So what exactly were these stories? company of eight performed continuously around images drawn from the work of Obviously a lot happens in eight hours but between 2 and 10pm, casting their piece Kounellis, Marcel Broodhaers and Robert here are three of the episodes from this around the rigours and rhythms of the Longo . modernist melodrama : eight hour working day. 'Work fascinates The mis-en-scene is self-explanatory . If Enter five performers , shuffling and me, I can watch it all day!'-so the old you've no cash, you can't afford a lot. with their eyes masked with black tape . joke goes. With this performance, you got Hence the setting is minimum-a simple the y each have a budgie on a string which precisely that opportunity. But not many cloth backdrop, a dozen chairs-with the flaps furiously. A sense of cacophony and people jumped at the chance. Despite only untoward items being an armoury of protest . Electronic music whirrs in the good previews in the London listings butcher's hooks hanging from the ceiling. background. The budgies are released and magazines and a hefty imprimatur from The performers are barefoot and dre sse.d hop cheerfully around the floor. The Ritsaert ten Cate, artistic director of the in jumble sale shirts and trouser s. But . performers, are blinded , isolated, impo Mickery Theatre ('Jan Fabre's This Is would it have been any different had tent. They remo ve their shirts and track Theatre ... should be as important to the funding been available? It's doubtful. the budgies relying only on their hearing. 1980s as Robert Wilson's Deafman Glance This 'poor' setting is a perfect match for Finally, the y recapture the budgies by was to the 1970s.') the ICA auditorium the company's findings. lightly dropping their shirts over them. was only ever patchily filled. Caution, 'We are a generation without affection ' Fourteen long sausage-like plastic bags conservatism, possibly even a doubt that a says Fabre and this implicit toughness of milk are brought in one by one and show could be sustained over such a appears a hallmark as the company soldier hung in a circle from the hooks. Six are period, all conspired to keep even the on through the demands of the piece. bitten through so that the contents splash cognoscenti away. A pity because Jan Their energy flows out turning on one over the floor. Six performers stand Fabre will definitely be taking a place hand into aggression railing at bourgeois outlined by the flicker of a Super 8 alongside Laurie Anderson as one of the niceties and cultural monopolies and on projector. Sinking to their knees , they acknowledged instigators of the decade. the other into a striving to find a breathing laboriously lick the floor clean, an task 'The good performance artists are still space for their own psyches, a taming of which has at least one performer gagging also visual artists', he says, 'But for me, this energy to capture it as fuel for mental in distaste . making theatre had a social basis. I was self-sufficiency . But themes are not so A man and a woman, both naked to the doing well in the art world but I was much preponderant as a mentali ty, an waist, run on the spot. As the y gasp and always dealing with older people . It was attitude. As the hours tick by, the simple sweat, the y repeat phra ses drawn from the intere sting but I lost my own generation . I actions choreographed around human trivia of everyday living . believe in making theatre in friendship ability to act under stress and privation, Man: Masturbation , nein keine zeit, whereas the art world on a particular level takes on the appearance of a cabaret for a I>

Brighton August 21-27 :Insideout End Of The World by Ian Until August 6 Rational Theatre Zap Club Productions in 'Binoculars' Bourn , The Extent Of Three in Rococco . Info: (0273) 506471 which ' ...takes two lives and Bells by Steve Hawley, Audio August 9-August : Cardiff Continuing with highly varied scrutinises aspects of these Mutant by Auto Awac, Image Laboratory Theatre in The programme of performance, through binoculars. The Is Virus by Dalibor Martinis. Wedding and The Heart of the cabaret, music etc . Details focussing of childhood The sources for these tapes Mirror (LIFT event, see unavailable : phone above no. encyclopedias of information include video games, pocket listing) words an language---women and calcula tors , digital watches, August 16-21 : Music Machines Bristol men-fantasies, games and Arnolfini television and video technolog y by Martin Riches : Installation rituals-the banal becomes the itself. and music performances. Info: (0272) 299191 bizarre ."<) Until September 3 : David August 23-28 : Actual 83 festival August 21-September JO :Red Almeida Theatre Humphre y: One person show of Info (01) 226 7432 ( see our back page ad for full Shift Theatre Company in 'T he details) now in its fourth year, coneptual jewellery. August 14 EMAS Electronic Duchess of Malfi' and 'X extends its range to other Dance Panorama : Musice: Simon Waters, Equals Murder'. Gothic horror, performance-related areas of September 22-24 Second Stride 'murder, madne ss and the Alejanro Vinao, Hugh Davie s, Then from October 1 Richard Attree . improvisation including voice, struggle for personal identity . dance, poetr y, performance art . performances by :Dance Tales, August 22-September 2 : August 15-29 : Jozef Van Den Lisa Kraus, Sue MacLennan Berg. LIFT event. Particularly interesting to not is Trickster Theatre Company in the inclusion of poet Brion and Dancers, Tara Rajkumar, 'Mantu' a 'myth of an Chisenhale Project Gysin, and Dutch performance Gamelan, & David Gordon imaginary race, following the Pick-up Company . Info 901) 981 6617 artist Moniek Toebosch . Mantu's story from birth to Regular Wednesday night In the cinematheque there is a Music : final self-destruction, set in a performances . season ofBeatnik films ( August October 6 Alterations chameleon-like world of huge October 9 Uroboros August 21- 27 : The 'Skills' of 4-8 ) includingAnthon y Balch/ articulated fans, strange larval Performance : Workshop led by William Burrough s' Cut Ups ad shapes and reptilian creatures, Berkshire Paul Burwell. An investigation Towers Open Fire . Video and related through acrobatics, South Hill Park into the skills we use in show ings include Framed mime, dance, martial Info: (0344) 27272 performance, and how to Youth's Revenge Of The sequences, percussion and No details available. Phone develop, extend and apply them . Teenage Perverts ( August 9 ) above no. design . and Mitchell Kreigman' s Can't Cardiff London Drill Hall Stop Dancing, Heart to Heart, Info (01) 637 8270 Chapter Arts Air Gallery (London Video Someone's Hiding in My August 9-21 Sistren Theatre Apartment,The Marshall Info : (0222) 396061 Arts) Info (01) 734 7410 Collective . (See LIFT listing) Klugman Show .( August 16) No details available . Phone Until August 5 Once upon the August 8-21 At LIFT Festival Coming in October : Lumiere above no. Idea of Two : An installation by centre the Drill Hall , late night Noel Harding. and Son's lo.ng-planned cabaret including The Joeys, Performance opera : Senseless. Edinburgh August 11 Doobie Eylath : Natural Theatre, Peter Wear Edinburgh Fringe Recent video tapes including and Justin Case, Tabule, Info: (031) 226 2878 Fauvrite, Shallow Throat, 4,000 Theatre De La Complicite, London Musicians The Edinburgh Fringe run s Great American Abstracts, Desperate Men , The Kosh , Collective from Augu st 21-September JO Square Dance . Brian Patten and Roger Info ( 0 I) 722 0456 and many theatrical August 18 : The Triptych McGough etc. etc. Regular performances of performance companies can be Ballet, performance by Stephen improvised and experimental seen among the hundreds of Taylor Woodrow with the ICA mu sic, dance, performance, productions. We've listed those Kreutzer Quintet . Info (OJ) 930 3647 films & wild activity. Club-Club who sent us a press release in August 25 : Videotapes : Space Until September 4 : Exhibition Nigh t most Thursdays, concerts time. Invaders by Judith Barry, The by Bruce Mclean. organised by members most

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August 15 New Town School, and music on a nightly Middlesborough. occurence. Dear Performance Magazine, August 16 Endevour School, August 1 : The Centre, Adelaide I would like to disclaim the remark Stockton. August 18-19 Central St. London WC2 attributed to me in my review of Notting August 5 : Unit One, Uxbridge. Park. Wisbech. hAm Feminist Arts Group's perfor August 26 Ford Adventure August 11 : Brunel University, Playground, Sunderland. Uxbridge. mances at the Midland Group ( September 5-6 Prospect House, PERFORMANCE 24 ) : 'Some performance Matchbox Purveyors Farnwoth, Bolton. art (by men) uses techniques of threat, Info (01} 422 9653 September 8-9 Bryn Alyn unease, dominance, violence and embar Brass Tacks, by Ian Hinchliffe. Community School, Wrexham. 'A situation in the trap of life in rassment to make its point.' 1884-1984: Residency at societies dumping The erratic editing has totally trans Canklowe Estate, Rotherham, ground ...exploring the worlds formed my original comment into a August 29-September 3 worst hangover, Hinchliffe blanket criticism of male performance Horse and Bamboo writes off his potentials in a artists. It should have read as follows; Info (6642) 070682 Walter Mitty like inspiration. If 'Some performance art (by men? Think This summer Horse and you can hang a piece of meat on about it) uses techniques of threat', etc. Bamboo make their longest a hook, why not a carrot ...or a etc . I intended to provoke thoughtful journey ever, a three hundred man?' consideration of certain modes of expres mile horse drawn journey from August 4-13 East Anglian venues (Phone for details) sion, which we have all experienced, that St. Andrews to Darlington, (in my opinion) are more frequently performing their new show, Special Events and Daymare Dognap: characteristic of male artists but which are Needles in a Candle Flame, by no means unknown in women's work including 'the tricks of the early August 19-21 Midsummer cinema, a legend from ancient Dream Fair, Norfolk. . From the review it appears that I am China, and some very unusual August 26-28 East London CND allocating the above-mentioned traits to musical instruments,' Canal Event (to be confirmed). men only and, by implication, absolving at the following places on the Natural Theatre Company women from them. I would consider such way: Info (0225) 310154 a gross genralization not only fooiish but (Phone for exact details) Outdoor environmental theatre. dangerously narrow-minded, seeming to August 6-8 : Alnwick district. August 8-13 : LIFT events be informed by an ultra-separatist femi August 11-12 : Ashington, around London. nism to which I most certainly do not Nothumberland. August 1-21 : Great British Bike August 17-22 : Saltwell Park, subscribe. Ride. ( See PERFORMANCE19 for I would be grateful if you would print Gateshead. description of last years events. August 24-26 : Bede Gallery, this, since I do not want my name Jarrow. IF YOU WANT YOUR associated with the separatist 'All men September 5-20 : Cleveland area. PERFORMANCE LISTED aremindless aggressive misogynists and I Septemeber 23-29 : Darlington HERE IN THE NEXT hate to be in the same room as one' politics Arts Centre. ISSUE PLEASE SEND of radical feminism. WRITTEN COPY TO US Ann Collis The London Ghosts AT 14 PETO PLACE Info ( 01 ) 895 3443 LONDONNWl The Village of the Night, words BY SEPTEMBER 15. PERFORMANCE Performance Magazine isn't staying in Rates: One six-issue subscription £6.50 the shops long these day, and if you're (individuals) £11.00 (Libraries, slow you might find yourself without institutions and overseas.) the latest copy. They are expensive to Send this form to: Performance z produce, and we can't afford to throw Magazine Subscription Department, N them around town. Why not guarantee Theatre Despatch, 31 Shelton St. your regular copy by subscribing? You'll London WC2. A" get the Review of Live Art regularly every two months and be in the know I'm convinced! Send me six issues of the(.!l~ about the most important events before magazine starting with the next one. anyone else has even had a chance to (tick) A" see it. You'll also be supporting us ... with I missed the last six! Send me those as ~ advertising and sales barely covering our well. (tick) ~ costs, your cheque will be part of the daily miracle that keeps us alive!

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Fridays and Saturdays . Phone 'Stinking Nomadic Camp of the Mirror is a new work which for Me) . (Kenya and UK) their ansaphone for details. Palm Room Fresco' before the 'asserts the hidden history of Special LIFT production by hulk is returned to the depths in female myth throught the ages, Ngugi wa Thiong'o which Oval House a ballet of the elements, and far from Ishtar to Joan of Arc . 'relies entirely on music, song , Info ( O1) 735 2786 off the final 'Metamorphosis of Adam 's first wife, Lilith, left No detail s available . Phone dance mime and visual effects to the Ship of Fools' is glimpsed. <) him when he insisted on violent above number dramatise a history of the George Coates Performance supremacy. Must man 's colonial labour laws during the Riverside Studios Works (US) in The Way of inhumanity to woman be '30s ...a celebration of traditiona l Info : (01) 741 3354 How : Weeks 1 & 2 at the perpetuated endlessly? Can a African cultural forms injected September 6-11 : Nastassia Bloomsbury Theatre . See balance of energies be with contemporary content ...a (adapted from Dostoyevsky 's Preview this issue. restored ? '. study of organised repressin and The Idiot) directed byAndrzej Naya Theatre (India) in Sistren Theatre Collective in the development of organised Wadja ( !) and designed by Bahadur Kalarin: Weeks 1 & 2 (Jamaica) in QPH : Weeks 1 & resistance. Krystyna Zachwatowicz. at the Lyric, Hammersmith . 2 at the Drill Hall . 'Sistren 's September 13-0 ctober 2 : ' ... It's pop art using the theatre is energetic, fast-paced LIFT also has a wide-ranging Grillparzer 's Medea, directed vocabulary of natural fun' Peter and humourous, yet never loses programme of outdoor events, by Barney Simon . Brook. Unfolds the Oedipal its analytical purpose . Their taking place in Covent Garden September 28 : Silvia C. Ziranek tragedy of a winemaker and a work gives voice to the Piazza, Trafalgar Square, NT in Chez Z (She Said) . New son who kill his father and experience of povert y without terrace, Barbican Terrace and work by Ziranek, essential marries 126 women before ever submitting to a feeling of Paternoster square. Week 1: occasion . realising the only woman he can powerlessness .' Natural Theatre Company , 2 love is his mother . A IVT: International Visual Reel Company , Zippo and co., Theatre Space combination of folk forms and Theatre (France) in La Boule: Pookiesnackenburger, Sistren Info (01) 836 2035 contemporary ideas results in a Week 1 at the Lyric Studio . and Tabule. Week 2: Teatro The temporarily spaceless space visually explosive, energetic and La Compagnia del Titeres La Tartana, Theatre de is continuing it 's regular original style. Collettivo in Hamlet , Macbeth, la Complicite, Jozef Van Den outdoor festival of outdoor Natsu Nakajima (Japan) in Henry IV : Weeks 1 & 2 at Berg, Cardiff Laboratory performance, with over sixty Niwa (The Garden) Buto Riverside Studios . Theatre . groups and artists taking part. Dance : Week 2 at the Lyric La Theatre de la Marmaille Also LIFT workshops, forum s, Phone for details. Studio. She describes Niwa as 'a (Canada) in Taller Than Tear s exhibitionsand festival centre forgotten garden, very small & L'Umiak : Week 1 at entertainment at the Drill Hall and very Japanese, this is the Battersea Arts Centre, Week 2 ( See separate listing.) garden of my memory , my at Jackson 's Lane Comuunity Liverpool childhood ...! created this work Centre. Bluecoat Gallery to see my own life, I placed JozefVan Den Berg Info ( 051) 709 5297 myself as a woman sitting in the (Holland) in Mother and the Until August 6 Sound garden, looking at it grow old Fool & Message from One-Eye : Sculptures by Max Eastley. and fade away. Week 2 at the Almeida Theatre . August 5 : Whirled Music Cardiff Laboratory Theatre Tabule Theatre (Sierra Max Eastley, Steve Beresford , (Wales) in The Wedding and Leone) in Bohboh Lef (Boy , Be Paul Burwell, David Toop. The Heart of the Mirror : Careful!), Week 1 Battersea Weeks 1 &2, ICA . See last issue Arts Centre, Week 2 Manchester The month of August is (Spaces) for description of the Bloomsbury Theatre . PAT (various venues) dominated, in London, by the Lab 's work. The Heart of The Maitu Njugira (Mother Sing Info ( 061 ) 224 0020 LIFT '83 festival , an exciting Green Room performance space mixture of international avant opening soon. No details garde, musical and theatrical available at present . performance . Our guide to the two weeks ( August 8-21 ) of Newcastle LIFT '83 lists the main Basement Group performances , the week no. and Info ( 0632) 614527 the venue . For further details On holiday . Instead, place our phone (01) 637 9521. free flexidisc produced by them on your Dansette and close your Urban Sax (France) : eyes. Opening event in Covent Garden Piazza ( August 7) Nottingham Previewed last issue, 30 radio Midland Group controlled saxophonists slowly Info ( 0602) 582636/7 invade the area playing in Autumn Performance Season unison . A highly spectacular opens September 29 with The Shona People of Zimbabwe : 'experiment in acoustical town planning' -unmissable . Mbira Music . Forthcoming events: People Wc!fare State International <) Show, '4 Days of Performance (England) in The Raising of Art' , TNT, Dance Umbrella the Titanic : Weeks 1 & 2 events, Festival of Visual Regent 's Canal Lock . Combines 'symbolic pantomime and Theatre and more . technological spectacle with son Rochdale et lumiere . A real market with Rochdale Art Gallery performers ', buskers and ranters Dates unconfirmed. Phone for precede the raising of the 100 details . foot wreck-reconstucted by Tim Hunkin by cranes and Touring hydraulic devices. Performances Action Space Mobile recreating life and decor aboard Info ( 07 42) 643593 the Titanic in April 1912 are Residency with special revealed in huge 30 foot production of TheTempest at containers, ferried in by fork Garston Adventure Playground , !ift. Tableallx inclqde Liverpool. August 8-13 the 'Floating Pool of the Society of Victorian Time J?rowned Gamblers' and the Travel :