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A research project devoted to uncovering and archiving the history of Performance Art in Wales.
Prosiect ymchwil i ddadorchuddio ac archifo hanes Celf Perfformio yng Nghymru.
 If you have any information on performance in Wales that could be of use to the project, please get in touch!
Whether you are an artist who has made performance work in Wales, or an audience member who once witnessed a performance (voluntarily or involuntarily!), we would be pleased to hear from you.
Any material will be of interest - from actual pieces of documentation to vague memories of events caught out of the corner of one's eye.
mail@performance-wales.org
Cysylltwch â ni os oes gennych unrhyw wybodaeth am berfformio yng Nghymru a allai fod o ddefnydd i'r prosiect!
Efallai eich bod yn artist sydd wedi gwneud gwaith perfformio yng Nghymru, neu'n aelod o gynulleidfa a welodd berfformiad unwaith (o'ch gwirfodd neu'n anwirfoddol!). Pwy bynnag ydych chi, hoffem glywed gennych.
Bydd unrhyw ddeunydd o ddiddordeb - o ddogfennau gwreiddiol i atgofion amwys am ddigwyddiadau a welwyd o gornel y llygad.
Mae'r manylion cyswllt wedi'u rhestru dan 'Cyswllt' yma, neu gallwch anfon e-bost i'r cyfeiriad hwn: mail@performance-wales.org
Project Director Cyfarwyddwr Prosiect:
Heike Roms
Dept Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Aberystwyth University
Adran Astudiaethau Theatr, Ffilm a Theledu Prifysgol
Contact:
Dr Heike Roms
Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies
Adran Astudiaethau Theatr, Ffilm a Theledu Prifysgol
Aberystwyth University
Adeilad Parry-Williams Building
Aberystwyth SY23 3AJ,
UK
phone ffon: (+44) 1970 - 621911 (direct uniongyrchol) mail@performance-wales.org
Funded by Wedi ei drawsgronni gan:
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL (AHRC) (2009-2011)
(CYNGOR YMCHWIL Y CELFYDDYDAU A’R DYNIAETHAU) (2009-2011)
ARTS COUNCIL OF WALES (ACW) (2006-2008)
CYNGOR CELFYDDYDAU CYMRU (CCC) (2006-2008)
SIR DAVID HUGHES PARRY AWARD 2006, 2008
ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY RESEARCH FUND (2007)
Copyright © 2011 All Rights Reserved
Hawlfraint © 2011 Cedwir pob hawl |
What's Welsh for Performance? Beth yw 'performance' yn Gymraeg?
:15 events from 15 years: 1977
 
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Paul Davies
Welsh Not
1 - 6 August 1977
Wrexham
Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Wrecsam a'r Cylch 1977.
Staged as intervention into How the Past Perishes - How
the Future Becomes/ Fel y darfu'r gorffennol - fel y del y dyfodol - Performance Art Festival, Welsh Arts Council, Wrexham Eisteddfod
1977; curated by Caroline Tisdall with Timothy Emlyn Jones
[Photos: left: photographer unknown, © Paul Davies estate. right: © Lewis Allen]
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'The
timetable of the whole event and the nature of the performance was
nonetheless interrupted by an impromptu happening after Mario Merz
had completed his piece for piano, lazer beam, rose and coal sacks.
He moved towards Paul Davies who at that moment was holding something
like a railway sleeper above his head. On it were burnt the letters
'WN'('Welsh Not') which referred to the punishment for speaking
Welsh in school and enforced within living memory. As it happened
the chorus of the national anthem was coming through the loud speakers
and although Merz does not understand Welsh he gave out phonetic
improvisations as he moved around Davies. Paul Davies had already
had an argument with a middle-aged man who had emigrated from North
Wales to New Zealand and was now accusing the native artist of 'stirring
it up'. Though talk of Rota Rua, ice-cold beer, kiwis and All Blacks
made peace, the disruption added a new dimension. It showed too
that Davies possesses a power of feeling which he expressed both
symbolically and in argument and which was most relevant to the
Eisteddfod. He felt enough to be a kind of flagellant.
(Ivor Davies, 'The Welsh Arts Councils Performance
Pavilion at the National Eisteddfod', in Link 9, Autumn 1977)
1977:
Amid the amplified cultural bustle of the National Eisteddfod at
Rhosllannerchrugog Paul Davies stands, holding aloft a heavy wooden
railway sleeper into which are cut the letters W N (Welsh Not).
His unofficial performance intervenes in the controversial programme
of international performance art staged by the Welsh Arts Council.
The event symbolises the penalisation of Welsh in the past and its
continuing loss as a mother language to many Welsh people, including
him self. It signals his determination to take art practice into
the arena of politics. The wooden hunk is later to be carved into
the form of a love spoon.
"... what I did in fact do was attack the bloody Welsh Not
with an axe and turn it into a love spoon. The Welsh Not became
the Love Spoon, this is another ancient Welsh symbol and in a way
it's a progenitor of the Welsh Beca pieces which came out of these
sets of Eisteddfodau with my brother in discussions." (Paul
Davies in conversation with Ivor Davies, Link Sept/Oct 1986)
(Hourahane, Shelagh. 'A Continuing Presence: A Profile
of Paul Davies (1947-93)'. Planet. 130 (1998): 38.)
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For more information on the event and on its available documentation search our database.
Or listen to our oral history conversation about the event.
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