Interview with Clive Robertson

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

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

First Group Interview - Aberystwyth Arts Festival 1968

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

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

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

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