LADA Screens – A Film About Performance Magazine

This short documentary film maps Performance Magazine’s history and legacy by bringing together original editors, guest contributors and others connected to the magazine to reflect on it over 30 years on. It features contributions by Rob La Frenais, Lynn MacRitchie, Neil Bartlett, Marty St James Tracey Warr, Mary Lee Wolf and Gray Watson.

It is part of Performance Magazine Online a project by LADA and Rob La Frenais (founding editor).

About the project

Between 1979-1992 Performance Magazine documented an extraordinary period in the development of art in the UK. With its maverick and punk ethos Performance Magazine embodied an immensely active community of artists, writers and publics that crossed disciplines throughout the late 70s, 80s and the start of the 90s.

The magazine provided a vital platform for the awareness of new approaches to the making and experience of art by creating a critical context and space for discourse. Moving beyond Performance Art and conventional categorisations, Performance Magazine was instrumental in promoting cross-disciplinary and underground art and played an important role in triggering the development of Live Art as a terminology and field of creative practice. 

All sixty-six issues of Performance Magazine have been digitised and are accessible on this site for you to freely search, browse and read. A new film  by Hugo Glendinning and Alex Eisenberg maps the magazine’s history and legacy Commissioned features by Anne Bean, Hester Reeve, Lynn MacRitchie, Claire MacDonald and Nahum Mantra respond to the archive and the period when the magazine was published. These will be released between April and July 2017.

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To keep up to date about the project sign up to the LADA newsletter here and join the Performance Magazine Online Facebook page.

About LADA Screens

LADA Screens is a series of free, online screenings of seminal performance documentation, works to camera, short films/video and archival footage. It is part of Live Online, LADA’s dedicated space where you can watch short videos and films drawn from LADA’s Study Room or generated through our programmes and initiatives.

Each screening will be available to view for a limited time only, and will be launched with a live event at the White Building in Hackney Wick, London. Online art magazine, thisistomorrow will also feature the films on their website for the duration of the screenings.

LADA Screens is curated by the Live Art Development Agency (LADA). LADA is a 'Centre for Live Art': a knowledge centre, a production centre for programmes and publications, a research centre setting artists and ideas in motion, and an online centre for digital experimentation, representation and dissemination.

For more information about LADA Screens please contact Alex Eisenberg.