Tramway 1998: the programme came as small as a suit jacket’s pocket and proclaimed in beige, in brackets, HIT AND RUN. A small brown photograph of a travel-case was the only other clue.
This season ran from 23 January until the 28 March. Mysterious: these were the days before the National Review of Live Art had settled in the stables and spaces, so the programme was mostly generated in-house. There was the usual mixture: GSA staged a fashion show, plenty of dance, plus a few real pearls- a double bill from Third Angel and an exhibition of Ulay/Abramovitch. Primary inspection of the bill suggests no reason for the title.
The programme didn’t give any clues. The first entry describes the Ulay/Abramovic exhibition. Along the bottom of the page it warned about male and female nudity. Next to that, they thanked the sponsors.
This is one of the first exhibitions that I heard about (didn’t see- I was in Stoke at the time, dreaming of another life) that took my breath away. It was really important. True, it was only a series of images from their collaborations- they had split up, both artistically and emotionally a decade earlier- but Ulay and Abramovic remain two critically important performers. By herself, Abramovic has a body of work that has helped to define Live Art. Nudity, the threat of death, the breakdown of the boundary between performer and artist: she did it all. When she teamed up with Ulay, she made their relationship an extended artwork- even down to the spectacular break-up on the Great Wall of China.
I was lucky enough to stumble upon an interview with Ulay from about the time of their last work together: they were about to walk across China from opposite ends and meet in the middle, kiss and depart. Apart from Ulay’s surprising defence of modernism- he accused post-modernism of disrespecting the past- the most striking feature was Ulay’s desire to expunge the emotions from this piece. He was acting like it was just another project when, as the video footage shows, it was a gruelling personal adventure that exposed his deepest anxieties and feeings.
Anyway, it is debatable whether this show was part of the Hit and Run concept: it was way cool and all, but the next pages introduce the Hit and Run “skirmish”.
“Tramway undertakes a skirmish into the world of British performance theatre and plans to ambush you with a few surprises.”
I don’t really wish to get into the language too much, apart from noting that the old hit and run theme is a military metaphor, not the car-crash one, continued here with ‘skirmish’ and ‘ambush’. But check out this phrase: “performance theatre’. In two words, I sense the whole awkwardness that these works have defining themselves. Performance Theatre must be tautological somewhere, surely?
“Gearing up for another year on the sharp end of the cutting edge, Tramway takes no prisoners and makes no excuses for the roller coaster ride of the senses it has in store for you. You’ll find Tramway a complex and intriguing mix of visual and live art, with crossovers and coups at every turn. Expect the unexpected and still be surprised at what you find.”
I am not sure, however, that the language is entirely inclusive enough: take no prisoners? The sharp end of the cutting edge? Hell, I’m in.
First act up is Becky Edmunds. I am hoping to talk to her quite soon, so I am not going to say anything about this piece just yet. Later on, Third Angel- and I am calling them this week.