What’s Welsh for Performance? An Oral History of Performance Art in Wales (1968-2008) :: (1) October 18, 2007; 6 pm - Janek Alexander, Geoff Moore, Mike Pearson :: (2) November 22, 2007; 6 pm - Richard Gough at The Foundry/ Y Ffowndri Aberystwyth) :: (3) January 24, 2008; 6 pm - Phil Babot, André Stitt, Simon Whitehead :: (1) and (3) at Space Workshop, Cardiff School of Art and Design, Howard Gardens, Cardiff CF24 0SP.

The contemporary performance art scene in Wales is one of the most active anywhere in the UK. Over the past few years a number of artist-run spaces and networks have developed which support this scene: trace: installaction artspace and tactileBOSCH (Cardiff), Coed Hills Rural Artspace (Cowbridge), ointment collective (Pembrokeshire), Real Institute (Llanrwst), Blaengar (Aberystwyth) and the Wales-wide Second Wednesday Group contribute to the current diversity and vibrancy of Welsh performance. If one aspect unites them, it is a shared concern with the place(s) of performance, its physical, geographic and social location.

(1) What is the relationship between performance art and experimental theatre? It has often been claimed that whilst in North America performance art grew out of painting and sculpture, in Britain artists aligned themselves more closely with alternative theatre and its radical traditions.In Wales, the borders between experimental theatre and performance art have indeed always been fluid. Here theatre artists have often embraced artistic strategies that are familiar from performance art, such as site-specificity, task-based physical action, the use of duration and a greater attention to the audience.

Three of the most important Wales-based experimental theatre artists of the last few decades, Janek Alexander, Geoff Moore and Mike Pearson, will be in conversation about their work, Cardiff’s performance scene in the 1970s and 1980s and their involvement in Chapter Arts Centre.

Janek Alexander worked as a performer and director with companies such as Diamond Age, before becoming theatre programmer for Chapter. He is now the Arts Centre’s director. Geoff Moore is artistic director of Moving Being, one of the first multimedia and interdisciplinary performance groups in the UK. Mike Pearson was a founding member of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre in the 1970s and Brith Gof in the 1980s, and still makes performance work with Pearson/ Brookes.

(2) The Aberystwyth-based Centre for Performance Research (CPR) celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2005. At its roots a theatre organisation devoted to training and the reflection of practice, the CPR organises workshops, festivals and symposia, publishes performance books and runs a multi-cultural performance resource centre. It was the Centre’s intercultural approach to theatre which from very early on brought it into contact with a more expansive notion of performance, and it has since brought international performance artists such as Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Rachel Rosenthal to Wales.

The CPR’s Artistic Director, Richard Gough, is a Professor in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He has dedicated the past thirty years to developing and exploring interdisciplinary, experimental performance work. He has curated numerous international performance projects and is general editor of the journal Performance Research.

Richard Gough will be in conversation about alternative approaches to teaching, archiving and publishing performance and on the role of internationalism for performance art in Wales.

(3) Three of Wales’s most prolific contemporary performance artists, Phil Babot, André Stitt and Simon Whitehead, will be in conversation about the contemporary performance art scene, the role of artist-run spaces and networks and the significance of place in performance.

As a creator of ‘live occurrences’, Phil Babot is affiliated with a number of artist-run spaces in Wales, including trace:, tactileBOSCH and Coed Hills. Belfast-born André Stitt is considered one of Europe’s formost performance artists. A professor at Cardiff School of Art, he founded trace: installaction artspace in 2000. Movement artist Simon Whitehead has developed a body of performance work based on pedestrian practices from his base in rural Wales. He is a founding member of ointment.