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. c8 !CACINEMATHEQUE programme ~ opens 9 April with ~ JamesScott's Midland Group Arts Centre ~ 'CHANCE,HISTORY, ART.,,' Second Annual c::i plus a Scott retrospective/ @ an examinationof art docu­ mentation & film-makers. PERFORMANCE g Discussion: telephone for full details. ART PLATFORM - JUNE6TH & 7TH 1981 ~ To 14 March The Midland Group Nottingham is to hold 8 THEPHANTOM CAPTAIN presents 'WAKE-ATHON' its ·second Performance Art Platform, a two ~ 117- 28 March day event - the first day offering the [!!l LUMIERE& SON present 'BLOODPUDDING' opportunity of public performance in a leading national venue, to individuals and 25 IAn !CA/ SHEFFIELDCRUCIBLE co-production groups living in England who have recently ~ 'SAFEHOUSES' Devised & directed by become involved in Performance Art - the cC TimFywell & John Chapman31 Morch-18 April second day a symposiumon Performance Art () A TRAVERSETHEATRE PRODUCTION today, with talks from leading British - '1-2-3' A trilogy by TomMcGrath Performance Artists. Applications to perform within the event !:21;:_A~p:r:ll::_:9:M:a:y::::::;::::::::::::::::J may be considered only from artists who ~ A"etvCt7/lhJfllll,,-tlri« I'll/ To 8 March have not received public subsidy. Students ~ National Stud~nt Exhibition, Including are ineligible to take part. c::!] performance/fl Im/ Installation. For further information and application Opening21 April details contact the Platform Co-ordinator, I~ STUARTBRISLEY; new performance The Midland Group, 24-32 Carlton Street, and Installation. Plus a documentary Nottingham NGl lNN (0602) 582636. ()c .,_re;.;,t.;.;ro;.;s~pe;.;c;.;,t,;,.1v;,,;e.. o·f-pe ..r.,f o.r,.ma_n_c_e ..w.o.rk_. ____ 111111111~.. - TheMall London SW1 BoxOffice 930 3647 Closing date for a~li¾;lications 8th May 1981 54 Lenningtonova I 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. The Performance Magazine. 10 Fleet Rd. London NW3 2QS. 01-485 7476 Editor Rob La Frenais Review Editor Luke Dixon Design Editor Chloe Nevett Associate Editors Pete Shelton Marguerite McLaughlin Bruce Bayley Lyn MacRitchie EDITORIAL 4 Contributors Andrea Hill John Roberts NATURAL DISASTERS 6 Neil Hornick Tom Castle Ian Hinchcliffe Charles Hustwick CAMERON AND MILLER INTERVIEW 9 Paul Burwell Typesetting Blue Lotus CHRIS BURDEN 13 Printing Calverts North Star Press Ltd i VIDEO AT AIR 15 I Guest Contributors t--------------------- 1 Hugh Stodda rt Liz Stoll s _A_S_E_N_S_E_O_F_B_E_L_G_I_U_M_1_9______ _ David Illich 1 _j Sy lvia Ziranek Phil Hyde Paul Lyons BOOKS 20 Joyce Agee (cover photo) PERFORMED MUSIC 21 -- - L E TT E R s-- REVIEWS 23 Hi - I have only just seen your No 7 issue and would like to point out two errors in the Cage/Cunningham stuff - one factual, one LI STINGS 27 conjectural! Firstly - I guess Cage (p. 7) was 1I -- 1 referring to an Alison Knowles event assisted by Jackson McLow and Philip Comer , (all at i some time associated with Fluxus and Dick Higgins' Something Else Press ). Comer is a composer and musician who has worked in a large range of contexts, and McLow is a poet whose work involving choice, aleatory method etc is as important to developments in the '60s as Cage . McLow collaborated both with the Judson groups (both the poets and the dance theatres ) and with the Living Theatre in their 14th St. loft days. His poems for dance 'The Pronouns ' have been choreographed by Meredith Monk (as well as others. ) Secondly - Ref. Yvonne Rainer (p. 10). It is more probable that the eclecticmember of the Judson 'Group' was Steve Paxton. (We have just finished 30 hours of video material on the Judson Dance Theatre, and contemp­ orary opinion seem to bear this out. ) Paxton has always developed movements/styles with a , wide base of reference - often provoking and moving on. (I'm not sure that the 'seeds of contact ' were visible in the early stuff.) Yvonne, however,'has maintained an entirely cogent direction from early work (Trio A) through to her current film-making .) I think this is clear in her own writings and in the Nova Scotia book - certainly she most clearly defined the parameters of that com­ bination of unstressed movement with 'mini­ malism ' which has been the foundation (in America ) of what is now called Post-Modem Dance. Thank you . Tony Carruthers Dance Division, Bennington College, Vermont, USA. Copyright@1981 ISSN No 0144-5901. The Performanc e Magazine receives assistanc e from the Arts Council of Great Britain. 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. EDITORIAL The Working C) Atmosphere Cl) :::J co "'X .-+ Under Threat. --.Cl) Ten issues on, at the end of our second year of publishing, point out that there have been no cuts, merely reallocation of many events and opinions have thrown into sharp relief the resources, and proudly point to a list of clients who have got debate concerning the nature of the work we provide posi­ 'increased subsidy'. This is quite correct. But the psycho­ tive evidence for, Performance. Artistically the debate has logical reason for the misnaming points to the actual involved both visual artists engaging in live actions and economic shift in areas funded. Although the list of have­ theatre companies breaking down barriers with non­ nots include some established big spenders, such as the narrative forms. It concerns whether the two should be media-battered Prospect Company, and the haves include treated with the same criteria from the point of view of criti­ fringe and experimental work (the ICA, Lumiere and Son, cism and documentation. Our standpoint in this matter is Galactic Smallholdings) it is clear that the bulk of the often challenged. Are we, by treating the two as strange, money saved has gone towards the huge allocation for the but equal bedfellows in our pages, simply homogenising for established, safe, prestigious, areas. Twenty-one million the sake of harmonising our community of interest? Our pounds for the Royal Opera and ballet, the ENO , NT, and answer seems to be that visual artists (not even always live RSC. In the visual arts the funds for individual artists are artists) unconsciously, deliberately, or defiantly use being cut with a shift to more 'visible' clients like galleries. · theatrical and narrative forms to convey meaning. And that . As John Willett, author, critic, (and chairman of one of the theatre companies experimenting with visual forms having cut companies) put it: 'It would have been better if we could been forced into isolation from the main theatre community believe that the money saved on existing, possibly unwor­ by the challenging nature of their work unwittingly find thy clients would all go to new and promising ventures . But themselves being evaluated by art-world standards. We this is not what is happening.' There is a real feeling that, certainly do not intend to become the 'property' of one despite some cosmetic rearrangement, a whole area of sector or another. activity has been cut. Economically the deb~te has just started hotting up, and It is wrong, therefore to describe those concerned about is likely to get a lot hotter before the year is out. It has im­ recent events as 'opponents of the cuts'. Some,like Willett, plications for the whole strata of arts funding, out of which saw a paring down of clients, particularly of revenue funded we represent the innovatory core. Because our area has ones, as being overdue. But the Arts Council's manner ·of been so affected, it is impossible not to discuss at some doing the deed has raised a number of awkward questions. length the issues raised. It is also difficult to remain com­ The one being asked most is, why, with so much capital, so pletely aloof given that some of the working atmosphere out many jobs, and lifetimes of work at stake was not there of which the Performance Magazine has arisen is genuinely some notice given, some chance to make arrangements for under threat. the future . The Arts Council say that it would have caused As is well known, at the end of last year forty-one Arts unnecessary distress if all the clients being considered for Council clients were told that no subsidy would be available withdrawal had been told, and that as no-one likes being cut for them this year. Sin,e that stark announcement there the pressure to reconsider would be intolerable. The com­ have been various developments that are likely to alter panies retort that the arbitrary nature of the decision was the face of arts subsidy in Britain, some intended by the designed specifically to stifle debate. But if either was the Arts Council and some not. Significant events have been: case, why now? Everyone knew that the Arts Council has the forming of a pressure group, Arts Fightback, to act for the power to do these things, and . this power could and the interests of the ex-clients and to campaign for greater should be questioned, so why wait until it is finally accountability on the part of the Arts Council; an unprece­ exercised? dented flow of loaded statements from the Chairman and The reason is the atmosphere of confidence that previous Secretary-General of the Arts Council implying the creation years surrounded the Arts Council and its panels.