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Fluxus in Aberystwyth 1968They say that if you can remember the '60s you weren't there…
We are looking for Aberystwyth residents and students of 1968 who
have memories of a 3 day art event that took place at the Parish
Hall (now the Castle Theatre) in November of that year. It was called Miss Rainbow Day, Brian Lane and the First
Dream Machine and was organised by the Guild of Students
(including John Osborne, Bob Marsland, Steve Mills) as part of the
annual Aberystwyth Arts Festival. It featured a 12-hour concert of electronic music, the first Fluxclinic,
a session of total theatre, a session of minimal theatre and a Fluxus
Concert. White Balloon Event, Darkness Pieces, Leaflet
Concert and Panic Dances were some of the highlights… If you have any memories of these events, or know somebody who
does, please get in touch!
REVIEW [...] This was to have been a series of “happenings,”
unleashed by The First Dream Machine, a disarmingly normal combo
headed by Brian Lane, charismatic ex-printer’s proof-reader,
and propped by an attractively gaunt, girl-child called Rainbow
Day, who, Brian casually announced, exists simply to interpret his
ideas, and who was nothing before he built her early this year. On the subjet of fire poetry, the town council had
reservations. There was a suggestion that a seafront landlord might
fire an unwanted property and claim insurance on the ground that
the damage was done by a stray incendiary couplet. But permission
to use the beach was granted, with a proviso that the organisers
took out an insurance indemnity for the entire sea front, or that
the recital should be executed in non-combustible materials. But,
as Brian said, noncombustible fire poetry is not calculated to pull
in the multitudes. So the fire poetry was off. The marathon concert ran most of its course, and
offered works by Stockhausen, Pierre Henry, and Adrian Nutbeem,
to name but a few. There was a live performance of ‘The Book
of the Silent Rainbow”, a suite of seven phonic poems and their
combinations for four voices and three tape-recorders with the silent
voice of O. For those who don’t know this work, it helps to
realise that the script originates from the measurements taken horizontally
and vertically from the seven pixieglass poems designed by Gian
Roberto Comini, to name but another. Which was naming one too many
for the assembled students of Aber, many of whom had missed the
overture in favour of a couple of bottles of Newcastle Brown. The next day, Brian, Rainbow Day, and the entire
Machine were thinking about going home. Somebody was organising
a petition saying they were a con, and an imperious Telewele producer
had the performers all cooperating while he gave a brief commentary
on the Fluxusclinic. In Welsh. When the film was in the can, he
explained with a cheery Welsh smile that he had just told his bilingual
audience that the performance was more or less a con. Somebody told
him that they thought he was a con, too. In English. Brian clapped
his hand to his forehead at the thought of nonaudience events, and
I volunteered to be the first person to be Fluxusclinicked, just
to cheer them up. The Flux Concert was a real success. At one point
Brian, who must have proof-read “Trilby” at some time,
stood before three Dream Mechanics, including his Rainbow Day, and
raised both hands like the Messiah. The girls smiled according to
the height at which he held his hands. He lowered them and they
stopped, like an orchestra of laughs. Later he Svengalied the lot
of us, standing on a balcony with a floodlight playing in our faces
where we were enclosed by screens. He showered down leaflets of
instructions. War Game. “The pectures you are about to see
are silent. You have been provided with materials to make a sound
track. Fluxus bids you fight well. God is on your side.”
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