Introduction: The What, When and Where of Live Art

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Notes

 1. The earliest usage is probably RoseLee Goldberg, Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1978). The UK edition was published by Thames & Hudson in 1979.

 2. Rob La Frenais, ‘Editorial’, The Performance Magazine, 1 (June 1979), 3 (p. 3).

 3. Frank Dobson, MP, ‘Life under the Tories, Part One’, The Performance Magazine, 1 (June 1979), 21 (p. 21).

 4. See The Performance Magazine, 7 (1980), (p. 31).

 5. Rob La Frenais, ‘Live Art Has Its Day’, Performance Magazine, 14 (1981), 5–6.

 6. The Performance Magazine: The Regular Review of Live Art in the UK, 12 (1981). In October of 1982, ‘Regular’ was dropped from the subtitle.

 7. Rob La Frenais, unpublished correspondence with the author, Wednesday, 5 October 2011.

 8. Robert Ayers and Nikki Milican, ‘The Early Years’ (conversation), in National Review of Live Art: Archive 1979–2010, ed. by Dee Heddon, Jennie Klein and Nikki Milican (Glasgow: New Moves International, 2010), pp. 5–18 (p. 8).

 9. Robert Ayers, ‘Changing People's Lives’, in Live Art, ed. by Robert Ayers and David Butler (Sunderland: AN Press, 1991), pp. 9–13 (p. 9).

10. Amelia Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp. 22, 33.

11. Nick Kaye, ‘Introduction: Live Art: Definition and Documentation’, Contemporary Theatre Review, Special Issue: Live Art: Definition and Documentation, 2.2 (1994), 1–7 (p. 1).

12. Lois Keidan and Daniel Brine, ‘Live Art in London’, PAJ, 81 (2005), 74–82 (p. 74).

13. Beth Hoffmann, ‘Radicalism and the Theatre in Genealogies of Live Art’, Performance Research 14.1 (2009), 95–105 (pp. 101–02).

14. Jeni Walwyn, Tracey Warr and Gray Watson, Live Art Now (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1987).

15. Richard Layzell, ‘Beginnings in Britain’, Live Art, ed. by Ayers and Butler, pp. 25–28 (p. 26).

16. Jeni Walwyn ‘Performance Art in Britain, 1985–87’, Live Art Now, n. p.

17. Tracey Warr, ‘Introduction’, Live Art Now, n. p.

18. Walwyn, n. p.

19. Rose Garrard, ‘Lyon Performance Festival (review)’, Performance Magazine, 13 (September–October 1981), 30–31 (p. 30).

20. Ibid., p. 31.

21. Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 148.

22. Amelia Jones, ‘Live Art in Art History: A Paradox?’, in The Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies, ed. by Tracy C. Davis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 151–65 (p. 161).

23. Nick Kaye, ‘Live Art: Definition and Documentation’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 2.2 (1994), 1–7 (p. 1). Campbell's special issue was more general in range, and traced tendencies in Euro-American performance, with a particular emphasis on explorations of identity politics through the work of Franko B, Annie Sprinkle, Karen Finley, Orlan and others.

24. Henry M. Sayre The Object of Performance: The American Avant-Garde since 1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

25. Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (1991); Amelia Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject (1997); Kathy O'Dell, Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art and the 1970s (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Rebecca Schneider, The Explicit Body in Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1997).

26. Cited in Marilyn Butler, ‘Questioning the “Canon”’, in Literature in the Modern World: Critical Essays and Documents, ed. by Dennis Walder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 9–17 (p. 9).

27. Barry Miles, London Calling: A Countercultural History of London since 1945 (London: Atlantic Books, 2010), pp. 69–80, passim.

28. In a short text, the artist Richard Layzell also dates the earliest Performance Art in the UK to 1962, noting the importance of early visits by European artists on Gustav Metzger, John Latham, Stuart Brisley and David Medalla. He argues, however, that Harald Szeemann's seminal exhibition When Attitudes Become Forms (ICA, March 1969) was the crucial spur to the development of indigenous Performance Art practices. See Layzell, ‘Beginnings in Britain’, pp. 25–6.

29. Heike Roms and Rebecca Edwards, ‘Towards a Prehistory of Live Art in the UK’, this issue, p. 31.

30. Tracy C. Davis, ‘Introduction: The Pirouette, Detour, Revolution, Deflection, Deviation, Tack, and Yaw of the Performative Turn’, in The Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies, pp. 1–8 (p. 2).

31. O'Dell, Contract with the Skin, pp. 11–12.

32. See, for example, Adrian Heathfield, ‘Impress of Time’, in Out of Now: The Life Works of Tehching Hsieh, ed. Adrian Heathfield and Tehching Hsieh (Cambridge and London: MIT Press and Live Art Development Agency, 2011), pp. 11–60 (pp. 13–16).

33. Susan Melrose, ‘Please Please Me: “Empathy” and “Sympathy” in Critical Metapraxis’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 2.2 (1994), 73–83 (p. 77). Emphasis in original.

34. Ibid., p. 81.

35. Peggy Phelan, Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 12.