Sited Interview: Mike Pearson in Cardiff

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We organised our first Sited Interview today with Mike Pearson. Mike took us back to a number of performance sites in Cardiff that were active in the late 1960s to the mid-1970s and spoke about his memories of works that he saw or performed there. These included the lecture theatre in the former Arts Block of Cardiff University, now the Law Building (where the Pip Simmons Group once performed); the School of Engineering (where Geoffrey Axworthy programmed a season of experimental theatre work in the early 1970s); the former Casson Theatre; Llanover Hall in Canton, home to numerous workshops and summer schools; and the Sherman Theatre, which opened in 1973 with a special performance by Welfare State. Among the sites that have since disappeared is the shop in Queen Street (now buried under the Capitol Shopping Centre) where Christine Kinsey and Bryan Jones organised art events in 1969, prior to opening Chapter.

Full video documentation of the site visits with Mike will be available soon.

Barry Summer School

Heike and Rebecca met up with Eira Moore today in her house in Barry for cake and a chat about the legendary Barry Summer School. Eira's late husband, Leslie Moore, was Vice-Principal of the School during its most important period in the 1960s and 1970s. Then, the Barry Summer School was a place where tutors such as Tom Hudson, George Brecht, Robin Page, John Epstein and many others pioneered new approaches to art education. Eira herself, who trained in movement with Rudolf Laban, taught at the School for a couple of years.
If you were a student or teacher at Barry Summer School, please get in touch with the project!

Tom Hudson at the Barry Summer School 1965, introducing a programme of happenings.

Research Seminar at York St John University

Heike presented a research seminar, entitled 'Performance (in) History – Archives, Memories and Re-enactments', at York St John University on the 23 November 2009.

Research Seminar at Surrey University

Heike presented a Research Seminar, entitled 'Eventful Evidence: Performance Historiographies', at the Department of Dance, Film and Theatre at Surrey University on the 20 November 2009.

John Gingell's collection of papers and documents

We've been working on John Gingell's archive in Cardiff.  Gingell taught at Cardiff College of Art (now Cardiff School of Art and Design) from the mid-1960s. He co-founded the 'Space Workshop' or 'Third Area' at the College, from which many performance and time-based artists emerged over the years. He was also a member of the Zoo Group, which created collaborative performance events in the early 1970s.

The archive is fascinating, with hundreds of photos of performances, along with scripts, notes, cast lists and the odd prop.  We hope to add all of this into our database soon and then post it on the website.

If you were one of John Gingell's students, or part of the Zoo Group, then we'd love to hear from you.  Please email mail@performance-wales.org

Oral History Training

Heike took part in the Digitisation and Digital Editing: An Introduction for Oral Historians training at the British Library in London today. More information on the course is available here: http://www.ohs.org.uk/training/digitisation.php

Conference Presentation in Lithuania

Heike presented 'Performing the History of Performance: Re-enacting 1960s performance art' at the The Past is Still to Change: Performing History from 1945 to the Present International Conference, which took place at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania, from the 21 - 23 October 2009. The paper discussed Heike's 're-do' of the Aberystwyth Fluxconcert 1968. More information on the Fluxconcert is available here: http://www.performance-wales.org/english/events/AberystwythInFlux.htm

Third phase of the project

The third phase of the project (1 October 2009 - 31 March 2010) intends to:
- undertake a series of archival visits
- undertake a number of oral history interviews
All data from the research will be entered into the project's database and transcriptions from the interviews will be made available online in due course.

Photo from a happening in Cardiff in the mid-1960s. If you have any information on this event please get in touch!

National Arts Education Archive - Tom Hudson

Heike and Rebecca spent two days at the National Arts Education Archive at Bretton Hall, in Yorkshire. Bretton Hall used to be part of the University of Leeds, specialising in music, art, drama and teacher training courses in the main. It's been closed for a few years now, and the campus is an eerie place; it looks like a normal university, but all signs of life have disappeared.
We were there to look through the Tom Hudson collection. Hudson was an artist, but is better known as an art educator. He was appointed as head of Cardiff College of Art in 1964, and introduced courses that emphasised the creative process, and innovative ways of approaching art. It was during his time in charge that the ‘Third Space’ for performance art or time-based art was established.

The collection contained lots of exciting finds, including colour slides of performances, and films of colour experiments, in which students were dressed and painted in greens and purples, then filmed walking through Cardiff. We hope to be able to make some of this available in the future on our database.

There has been some uncertainty over the future of the archive. Bretton Hall is now being turned into a luxury hotel and conference centre. Fortunately, several institutions have agreed to jointly run the archive, and the collection will remain intact.

Workshop presentation in Bristol

Heike presented Oral Histories of Performance and ran a workshop on using oral histories to document performance work at the Digital Documentation and Performance training event, hosted by JISC Digital Media and the University of Bristol Drama Department in Bristol on the 23 – 25 September 2009.

 

(Detail of Becoming-snail performance by Paul Hurley, which was being documented through various means by the workshop participants– Photo: Sara Popowa)

The event consisted of three one-day enquiries into the topics of creating, managing and delivering digital documentation of performance work, which mixed presentations with hands-on practical workshops. More information on the event can be found here: http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/training/digital-performance-seminars/