Adrian Henri and Performance

Round-table discussion with Bryan Biggs (artistic director, the Bluecoat), Pete Brown (poet and musician), Mike Evans (writer, ex-Liverpool Scene), John Gorman (ex-Scaffold), Antony Hudek (curator, Raven Row Gallery, London), Mike McCartney (photographer, ex-Scaffold), Catherine Marcangeli (curator), Barry Miles (writer), Heike Roms (Professor in Performance Studies, University of Aberystwyth).

Discussion topics will include:

• The first happenings in Britain: Liverpool's cultural environment in the 1950s and 1960s, the emergence of a poetry scene and its links to Merseybeat and popular culture. The specificities of Henri's collaborative happenings in the early 1960s. Accessibility and the place of the audience
• Poetry and music: the importance of music in Henri's visual and poetic work, and in his multi-media events. Rock vs jazz as an accompaniment to poetry. The success of The Liverpool Scene on the alternative gig circuit
• Issues of provincialism centre/periphery: an art rooted in the local (Liverpool) yet internationally connected to Europe and to the US, sidestepping London
• Henri's seminal book Environments and Happenings / Total Art, 1974, as an alternative narrative in the histories of Performance Art.

This symposium will be followed by a book launch at the Bluecoat - all are welcome