Performance Magazine Online

Co-curated by Rob La Frenais and Alex Eisenberg
Produced by LADA, 2017

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 categorisation 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.

Rob La Frenais (founding editor 1979 – 1987) collaborated with Live Art Development Agency (LADA) and Alex Eisenberg to develop the project – Performance Magazine Online.

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 (below) by Hugo Glendinning and Alex Eisenberg maps the magazine’s history and legacy Commissioned FEATURES by Anne Bean, Hester Reeve, Lynn MacRitchie, Diana Damian Martin, Claire MacDonald and Nahum Mantra respond to the archive and the period when the magazine was published.

LADA’s Study Room houses the complete collection of Performance Magazine.

Read Archives, Hindsight, and Change by Diana Damian Martin for blog salon ‘Stages of Resistance’

Launch events in Hull and London

Performance Magazine Online was launched with two public events: in Hull on 25 March 2017, as part of the Re-ROOTed Festival and at the British Library in London on 27 April 2017. LADA also hosted a STUDY DAY and workshop with Something Other (Mary Paterson, Maddy Costa and Diana Damian) looking at Live Art, writing and digital publishing on 25 April 2017.