A new online resource that features a database of performance art events in Wales between 1965 and 1979 has been launched by researchers at Aberystwyth University. Further to the launch the project has just won the inaugural David Bradby TaPRA Award for Research in International Theatre and Performance, awarded for outstanding research in any area of Theatre and Performance Studies.
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) the website, which was created by a team from the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Aberystwyth University, www.performance-wales.org (“It was forty years ago today...” Locating the Early History of Performance in Wales 1965-1979”), features events such as ‘Happenings’ in Cardiff in 1965, ‘Fluxus’ in Aberystwyth in 1968, ‘Destruction in Art’ in Swansea in 1969, improvised music in Anglesey in 1970 and performance art at the Wrexham Eisteddfod in 1977.
The team studied some of the major developments in international artistic experimentation during the latter half of the twentieth century as they touched a vibrant but comparatively marginal cultural context: that of Wales between 1965 and 1979.
Dr Heike Roms, a senior lecturer at the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, and research assistant, Dr Rebecca Edwards, spent two years consulting a wide range of archival sources.
Dr Roms said: “We researched items from a broad range of sources from the collections of the National Library of Wales to the Tate Archive in London and numerous private collections in addition to interviewing key protagonists of this history.”
The project makes freely available to other researchers the outcomes of this research, including: a fully searchable online database of performance art events in Wales 1965-1979 which currently details nearly 700 events created over the span of fifteen years.
It also indexes the current location of available documentation on these events. In addition, the project produced over 40 oral history recordings and transcripts, which will be deposited in key archives.
Dr Roms continues: “The hope is that the information will be used to gain a better insight into the manner in which performance art, as an artistic movement of international reach, and its affiliated networks and institutions emerged and developed within specific local cultural contexts, in Wales, the UK and beyond.”
The Theatre and Performance Research Association TaPRA is the main research association for the field in the UK and the award will be presented at the TaPRA 2011 Conference at the University of Kingston on 7–9 September, 2011
Project website:
http://www.performance-wales.org/
Project blog:
http://itwasfortyyearsagotoday.blogspot.com/
ENDS
For further information, please contact:
Jake Gilmore – + 44 (0) 1793 41 6021, j.gilmore@ahrc.ac.uk
Editors Notes:
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Each year the AHRC provides approximately £100 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes hundreds of research awards ranging from individual fellowships to major collaborative projects as well as over 1,100 studentship awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.
“It was forty years ago today...” Locating the Early History of Performance in Wales 1965-1979”: This major research project has charted the emergence and development in Wales of those time-based, neo-avant-garde art practices we have come to associate with the catchall term ‘performance art’. It begins this history in 1965, when the first-ever Welsh ‘Happening’ was staged in the capital city Cardiff, and goes on to track its numerous manifestations across many different events at many different sites. It ends the history in 1979, when considerable shifts in the aesthetics, discourses and infrastructures that had defined the wider scene in Britain up to that point began to occur (eventually leading to the coinage of a new term, ‘live art’).
The project has compiled information on nearly 650 performance events made in Wales during the period. Works by well-known international artists - including Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys and Jean-Jacques Lebel - feature in this history alongside those of Welsh artists Ivor Davies, Paul Davies and Robert Conybear and of artists like Marty St James, Shirley Cameron and Roland Miller, who settled in Wales for a substantial period in their careers. The team spent two years (2009-2011) undertaking extensive research in over 55 archives and private collections (including the Tate Archive, the National Arts Education Archive, the V&A and the National Library of Wales), digitizing more than 4,500 documents in the process. This was complemented by forty oral history conversations with artists, administrators and audience members.