among my unpublished mss there are 3 descriptions of their performances -- for the record, here they are with minimal editing --- so far I've only keyboarded 1 -- the others will follow:
PETER ROCHE/LINDA BUIS PERFORMANCES - 3 D E S C R I P T I O N S B Y T O N Y G R E E N - 1981 & 1982 - PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED
1
PETER ROCHE AND LINDA BUIS PERFORMANCE Grafton Rd Arts Centre 4/11/81
Entering in the first room Peter was on the eighth rung of a ladder with wide-spaced rings that reached to the beams of the ceiling, not in the centre but over to the far side of the room a bit, but with him right at the top, his head up against the ceiling. It was dark except for the lights coming in from the vestibule through the open door. He was chanting ng in long breaths with short pauses between. He kept this up all the time for about an hour and a half, through or over the sounds of traffic outside, which gradually diminished as the performance went on, beginning at 11 p.m. and finishing at a bout 12.3o. He was up the ladder, uncomfortably perched, chanting. She was in the lower room on a mattress, under a single blanket, apparently asleep, throughout, with the big side door open, so that the streetlights illuminated the room, casting shadows on the wall opposite the door. His chanting was still quite audible. An audience of perhaps twenty people walked in and through the spaces and sat on the stairs between the two rooms or leaned against the walls. They were mostly silent, though there were occasional whispered conversations. The chanting went on and one wondered whether there was to be anything else, a second part to the performance, as there had been several times in their pieces, e.g. Real Pictures, Barry Lett Galleries. Would he come down the ladder and need space in the room or rooms. Would she wake up and get up and they perform something else so to speak. The chanting itself wobbled in pitch and it seemed he kept it steady only when he could hear the pitch of the voice coinciding with the pitch of the resonance of the space, when at least one overtone was quite audible. Then the room resonated and his voice was, as it were, tuned to it, and the audience could relax from the tension felt when he strayed from the pitch, or was searching for it, couldn’t find it. The performance went on with him straining away at his chanting, and she sleeping, until his position up the ladder and compression of his abdomen, as he folded up more and more on his perch, took him to the point where he was retching, stopping for a while then continuing for a little longer. Finally, he stopped and began the difficult descent. His circulation was badly affected by his position and he had to struggle to get his legs going again so that he could pull himself through the rungs at the top to get down. In the middle of his very slow and tense efforts to do that, Martin Cane cam in with two lively dogs, greeted a friend and broke the tense attention on Peter’s rather dangerous descent. He came down and that was that. The dogs woke Linda, licked her face and so on.
2.
PETER & LINDA AT THE MUSEUM 3/3/82
At 3.15 we went up to the Museum to see what Peter & Linda were doing. I took a bend too fast & Judi felt sick. It was a hot day & bright. Walk down enfilade of square-headed doorways into darkening spaces from main hall -- through a Maori carved doorway mounted over the doorway of the building -- arrive at very dark space. Just visible shapes of people in white overalls one sitting propped against a pillar the other lying, feet by a pillar – diagonally opposite across the space. There’s a metronome ticking in the light falling on the floor through a crack between black screens – shining reflection off polished floor. Windows are covered with white boards over yellow curtains and not much light gets in just a glimmer. The cover of the metronome lies on the floor – hard to see, Wystan & I both go over to look. Judi’s going round the room making notes. Suddenly the light goes on. Is this a switch we’ve turned on or a time-switch? And Linda sits up. Peter moves about. ‘Sorry’ says voice of attendant switches it off again. Soon after Peter & Linda get up, the piece is over, ruined by the light going on. We talk with them getting information about what’s been going on. He’s had to rewind the metronome & replace it on the end of the light beam several times. They don’t know what time it is. Linda thinks it’s 2 and it’s actually 4. They’re both feeling stiff, she talks about forgetting her body and drifting into ½ asleep stats – hypnagogic I say. The light spoiled it, broke concentration. Phil Dadson has been in, others? The room was meant to be free for their use but the attendants & others working there kept coming through in spite of a notice put up at either entrance.
Peter Roche, Linda Buis at RKS ART 23/6/82 Performance Work
[lightly edited transcription of my 1982 notes]
Judi and I hurried to get there on time. On our invitation there was a clockface stamped in blue. The hands were put in in orange marker. There must be some reason for not putting the time in print, doing each invitation by hand. They are probably not identical then, we guessed. We even thought of a performance with everyone arriving at different times and no more than that, the audience’s performance in response to the invitations.
We made it with about a minute to spare. We had the choice of any of the black plastic seats. We put our cushions on the two at the left end of the front row. The seats were arranged on a diagonal in the room, facing th broad single doorway from the little front gallery into the large space of the inner gallery. This had recently been arranged by Billy Apple with Rodney Kirk Smith and Anne Livingstone, the dealers. I had forgotten that Peter had asked me about chairs at RKS ART, and I had brought a cushion, preparing to sit on the floor as on other performance nights there.
Peter and Linda came out of the loo, at the very back of the gallery, and passing us Peter spoke briefly to us, something he doesn’t usually go in for until after a piece is done.
He and Linda stood side by side in the broad doorway, Peter on the left, as we looked at it, Linda on the right. He faced into the room, she faced the other way looking into the little gallery and the head of the stairs and the way in from the street. At 7.27 we were the first to arrive and Anne came in too, and sat down, as part of the audience. Peter and Linda were dressed in white shirts and white trousers. His white sneakers were rather yellowish. He wore a dark tie, perhaps black, with light spots on it, hanging to just below his waist. She had her hair in a pony-tail, a thick shortish braid. He had his hands in his pockets. His sleeves were buttoned at the wrists. Hers were rolled up to just below the elbow and the tail of her shirt hung out.
They did not move, except for Linda’s occasional cough, and shifting her left leg. He stared at a point on the carpet it seemed some way ahead of him. It seemed a long time that the three of us sat there, while the two of them stood.
About 7.45 some more people arrived and slowly the place filled for about an hour with single arrivals or people in twos and sometimes more. Everyone that came in had to pass Peter and Linda. This meant looking past them to see the audience round to the left, with a spotlight in their eyes. And then sidling past Peter, usually. Christine Hellyar, unusually, went past Linda’s side. They were not about to give away their position, largely blocking, blockading the way in and the way out. You could not very well ask them to move so that, you audience could get into the audience space, defined by the chairs. You had to turn and sidle past. When you had done that Peter would call out “How are you”. Some responded with a turn back to him and a “Good” or “Fine” or somesuch. Others didn’t answer, and then Linda did, though not very loud, as if the question had been put to her anyway. He always did get some reasonable response then. And the difficulty was were you supposed to talk with the static silent performers in their strategic position in the doorway, with the light on them, standing not sitting. Rob Giles tried to talk with Peter, answering when it was someone else asked how he was. And going out saying something to Peter, like “thanks” or something and getting no reply. So those of us inside watched this ceremony of entry and greeting and response. Then all around there was a clear desire of anyone there to talk with their neighbour, or the friend or lover that had come with them. This was all in whispers, much of it comment, for Judi and Wystan and me of asking what was going on, what they were doing, what we were doing, as Wystan said later, their performance had got the audience looking at its own behaviour. As usual there was a lot of tension, of expectation, and a long wait with little action, certainly no entertainment, only the fascination of becoming an insider in the audience, going the]rough the door and becoming initiates watching other initiates being initiated like themselves. Once in you were in, and to go out had to make up some appropriate behaviour to cope with the fact of being so close, so much in someone else’s space. Wystan arrived nearly last, about 8.10, as far as I can remember. Judi and I were the only ones to attend the whole performance. Ours was the longest wait, and we did it quite well, though Judi went out ot the loo in Victoria Street carpark and came back. I was alone in not experiencing, but only watching the others. We enjoyed it. We chattered and felt happy.
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