Track Marks: An Aesthetic Investigation into Tramway A Work in Progress By Gareth Vile The investigation appeared simple enough. Tramway was approaching its 20th year as gallery and performance space. Originally rescued from demolition by the restless theatrical provocateur Peter Brook in 1988, and subsequently the powerhouse of 1990’s City of Culture celebrations, Tramway had seen off changes in the political and cultural landscape, surviving two redesigns and promoted experimental work in an unfashionable Southside postcode. A little aesthetic archaeology, the casual application of critical theory, the collation of archives and programming lists: a clear picture of the venue’s history and identity would rapidly emerge. Preliminary soundings were unambiguous. Well-respected, yes – both internationally and very locally, although perhaps not across the city and into England. The glory days were agreed to have passed – even if they were variously located in 1988, 1990, 1994 and 1999 – and its reputation as architecture often surpassed the actual events that it had hosted. The arrival of the Scottish Ballet in 2009 was seen as a good thing, revitalising, expansive, and the café, along with the Hidden Gardens at the back of the building, had encouraged the local community to brave the austere entrance and adopt Tramway as their own. The task was to go beyond these impressions, to recreate the history of Tramway, to tease out the connections between the programmes and era, to seek out the underlying essence that expressed itself in this charmingly shabby and increasingly welcoming environment. For many Glaswegians, Tramway doesn’t just express a place on the map, but a certain sort of art. The nature of that art was the quarry.
Part 1 In deference to the current fad for statistical analysis as the foundation of knowledge – the best-selling non-fiction features economists explaining the mundane – the first stages involving pulling up lists of events and tabulating appearances, reviewing managerial structures and trawling archives for correspondences. The number crunching generated its own questions – which company has appeared at Tramway the most times? Did the programme wax or wane in certain years? Which exhibitions received the most press attention? Surprisingly, The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra holds the record for the most headline performances – a fact that seems to belie Tramway’s identity as cutting-edge, even if they were performing modern compositions. 1990 – the Year of the City of Culture – was by far the busiest, with most other years, even accounting for closures and the limited records, having more or less similar numbers of shows and exhibitions. And the 1995 exhibition, Trust, which featured a retrospective of important works that had influenced the nascent wave of Glaswegian neo-conceptualists, managed to be condemned from broadsheet to tabloid, generating a heated public debate, Conservative counsellors calling for a stop to arts’ funding and an award from the Prudential. The spreadsheets were converted into card-files and mind-maps, gradually covering the office walls and provoking their own interrogations. Did any performance genre dominate? Why
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Epithets o the Byre Auld ladies change At Scotmid Put them in the bone-dyke And gee to chib carryin weans The free bus trip An at Inveresk, lodge them Tyrants aw Hitler didny smoke Tito wi his pleasure stick Pinochet sooked a few How slick was Castro Wi his barrio sized cigar Wid it did explode Its barred at Guantanamo For health and safety Were Motherwell in Iran The Divine could pan an hang Wit’s this pookie-hat ken o the simple forni? He’s no holey He’s nae sexy genes He’s washed his hands too often Does he even look at it when he pees Does he smite it wi the Book For being the Beast in wobbly flesh Incarnate What turns him on? Obviously The thought o Oscar daein an 8 hour shift On the treadmill He’s God’s loose screw Aye, wid aw the churches hae Nae roofs Cardross’s bonny In its ruins Is it Art? Keep that daft cat aff In unsculpted park Let it haunch near swans No tooth itsel in Miralles’s palace A tawdry timorous beastie Bairns play on it None fear it It’s no the lion aff the flag fur sure Its mystery another blank-shot Frae the one-o’clock gun Boo! Its mystique as deep
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By Molly Maguire
As Saint Margo’s puddle. Boss Hog braw Cavalier Astride the weel-warst whim-ma-garry Better fly a Persian carpet Tae tour the Mill o Menie One trump he’s off Intae the crannie-wee wurl O his ain I.Q. he trots In other dunes it’s I.E.Ds Wi ‘Love frae Tehran’ Scribbled er them Can the Queen no lend him Wan o her larger prams To scoot aboot in No since Iron Duke Was cast by Steel Has sic equestrian near puked On his nag jiggle-jaggle Feart o a fa He’s bur-thistles for a saddle Oh naw! Jirk an jurble John-barley’s oot er the cobbles An Paddy-Power’s shut the book Auld mither tongue Aw yer blistering deprecations Hae been swapped For newspaper Englass Fu o asterisks Where real words go Yer an incontinent o sin Yer a riot o asbos Yer a fat pie dreamed o In lean days Yer a pompous bigot Studying yersel in the mirror But glossed by luck ur aw mirrors Yer the devil’s milk Yer the thick thighed school gulloot Dreamin o tits tae sook When he should be learnin Mandarin Yer the girl whose mascara runs The hairie in the alley after clubs oot Yer the wee boy runnin up an doon Up an doon Below the sick-room o yer granny. Injured squaddie’s
rap Bedfast Giro stuck Why not Why not Gloom doomed T.V.s on Perked up Fag’d oot Text fur luv Forget yer facebook Nae puss left Net invisible Gross couch potato Pedos allroads Feed us pills Bedfast Giro stuck Why not Why not Nation’s petrified o Weather forecast Mixed messages Shut us doon Nae context Cept fear itself Ecstasy’s illegal The afterstang That’s after pleasure In love wi death’s Sour kiss Fill the gap The bullet missed Who got slotted Remote control Callin up remote T.V.s on Perked up Fag’d oot
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Text fur luv Terry Talaban’s On the news Not much Saved for Hollywood Mission impossible To make the shops Where ma dope Where ma space Where ma public face Logo’d up Fitba shirt Last season Dons Got an appointment Wi disappointment Physio says A’ll run again Dreams enriched Wi nightglow sleepin tablets Doon wadis coffins float Basra in the wardrobe Ma white vest Poppy splattered Splashes o red Chiantishire A pray at a shrine Tae Chuck Norris Arnie Swivel-neck Rules the world Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Shove the spear o destiny Up ma jaksie The tank o resolve Let it rumble On the A9 the AK47 Hod on Hod on
Hod on Bedfast Giro stuck Why not Why not Plenty time tae think An surf Shit! Shit! A’ve supergrassed masel The eviction notice Is in the post Bedfast Giro stuck Why not Post-traumatic stress O some shit Afore the panel Different colours Ma contact lenses I’ll cite ma da The church The schoolin Ma first snog The beastin a took The dead wean Wi erms unglued The headless dog A prom-walk Bedfast The hermit gene Switched on Giro stuck Why not Why not Telly’s on Perk up Text for luv
were so few visual artists represented more than once? Did the fluctuations of nationality and genre reflect international trends in the arts, or were they expressions of idiosyncratic West Coast taste? At this point, the answers began to disintegrate. In spite of a clever colour-coding system, the boundaries between genre and media were blurring. Take video art. Traditionally part of the visual programme, it started sneaking into the performance category in the 1990s, acting in consort with contemporary dance or drama. 1993’s 24 Hour Psycho, the slowed-down, blownup revision of Hitchcock that propelled Douglas Gordon towards his Turner Prize and remains one of the gallery’s defining shows, was clearly visual art. But what about Bruce MacLean’s Urban Turban? Shown on a single day, like a mainstream film, it sits uneasily between exhibition and movie. A recent staging of Billy Cowie’s In the Flesh invited the audience to watch a projection of a dancer through 3-D glasses in a dark space, riding roughshod over clearly defined categories of dance and cinema with its mocking title. By the time that The National Review of Live Art transferred from The Arches in 2006, the constant reinvention of terminology and genre left the colour-coding in tatters. New descriptors – ‘self-harm’, ‘audience participation’, ‘incomprehensible rubbish’ and ‘moments of limpid beauty’ – were drafted in a desperate attempt to achieve some sort of coherence. The attitude of artists themselves did not help: not only did they deliberate refuse to define their pieces, they often retreated into subacademic jargon. This approach to language did, at least, clarify their decision to be performers or painters rather than critics or novelists: they write like celebrities moralise. It was decided to abandon the purely statistical approach, and switch to a softer angle. Artists were traced across the Internet, badgered and questioned. A new archive was conjured, from bad memories and state of the art MP3 recorders.
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Part 2 Of course, the best stories are off the record, apocryphal and unattributed. Like the time that a journalist reviewed a show from the press release, little realising that it had been cancelled. Or the rumours of a ghost-horse perpetuated by an early janitor and passed on by a later writer to unsuspecting and important American companies. Then there are the incidental details – David Sherry, who would stage Comfortably Being Alive in the smaller Project Room gallery, had been employed to paint a wall black, and then white, as part of a group exhibition a few years earlier by another artist. In the early years, artists were given studio space in exchange for helping out on the larger exhibitions. Minty Donald stagedesigned plays for Tramway 1 before hosting her own exhibition, years later, in Tramway 2. Most of the box-office and front of house staff lead double lives as sculptors, painters, art historians, script-writers or directors. Interviews with more established artists wavered between frustrating and inspiring. Some could barely remember Tramway, or were far too busy touring the world to answer questions about the venue that supported them in their early years. Others experienced Tramway as a watershed for their ambitions, a venue that opened up their eyes to the possibilities of space and scale. Barbara Kruger, already famous by the time her monumental videos dominated T2, was rumoured to have felt that her work had been enhanced by the setting, and the generous response of many Scottish companies, from Borderline through Cryptic to Vanishing Point emphasised their respect for both Tramway and the staff. Certain themes were emerging, although the expected connection between the visual and performance art programmes was not clear. Everybody was excited by the nature and condition of the building: some went wild for
the red wall built by Peter Brook in 1988, a wizened, solid structure that was consciously aged and still interacts with any production that is brave enough not to disguise it in cloth; others celebrated the tramlines that cover the floors, or the slightly shop-worn exposed brick. The rebuild of 2000 was variously mourned and praised, the recent adoption of the café and Hidden Gardens by locals and Buddhists was exalted. T2, the huge visual art space which possibly inspired Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, was either celebrated as a blank space or for its forceful character. One theme did recur, from artists, administrators, rival theatres and galleries, the visiting public and the cantankerous children playing minimalist rhythms on the café’s xylophones. Tramway was a safe place, a place to experiment, a place where uncommon behaviours are allowed free reign. They might fail – the best directors would admit their reservations about certain productions and the xylophone orchestra would be greeted by smacked bums as often as applause – but they were free to try. Names of the staff were rattled off with obvious affection and respect: Bob Palmer, Alexia Holt, Nicola Brown, Lorraine Wilson, Charles Esche, Steve Slater, Christabel Mathieson. As much as we may fantasise about the spirit of the place, or the influence of architecture, or muses hovering in attendance about the sanctuary, this sort of atmosphere can only be the product of people. After the records, after the interviews, we are directed back to the staff. Interlude The interrogations of the artists did confirm certain hunches suggested by the spreadsheets. The large range of visual artists – and the rare returns of a single artist for a second showing – was a product of the building’s civic backing. Public money could not support the career of an artist in the same way as it could a dance company. The myth that surrounded T2 – it did not promote Glaswegian artists – was only partially true but was also a function of the space’s size: only an ambitious or established exhibitor could hope to fill the walls or floor. A further myth – that it only showed difficult work – was banished by the comprehensive visual records of group and solo shows, which varied from the imposing – David Mach’s Here to Stay (1990) had the force of pagan ruins freshly discovered on a factory floor – to the amusing – Total Object Complete with Missing Parts 10 years
later appeared like a Buster Keaton movie reimagined as a series of conceptualist artefacts. Many works had an immediate and obvious appeal. On the performance side, the purported commitment to experimentation was only one strand of the programme: even recent years had seen Sufi Festivals, traditional Indian dance and script-based drama. Excluding 1990, which was one of the most comprehensive overviews of the performing arts in modern history, the venues’ reputation for the radical did not gather pace until the end of the century. The RSC visited, Theatre Babel put on versions of the Greek classics and the Scottish Early Music Consort enjoyed the exquisite acoustics of T1 until 1997. Melas jostled rock gigs. Diversity was the only constant. There was, however, a shared trajectory for many companies, especially Glaswegian ones. After a series of works at Tramway, they would remove to either the Citizens or the Tron – theatres with a more traditional performance space, and more mainstream reputations. Without condemning either theatre as inferior – the Citizens, in particular, has a deserved and strong association with its local community – they are both very different spaces, offering less danger and – possibly – larger audiences. Part 3 None of these strategies have revealed any essence. The Buddhists, gathered around the water feature for Wesak wryly lift their eyebrows from the depths of contemplation. Wily existentialists, working on a durational siteresponsive happening for The NRLA chuckle. They already knew that we were seeking the inexistent, using critical theories that had not yet been invented. In desperation, we rush around the country; spending nights in Bristol to check The Arnolfini, braving the East Coast for a peek at The Traverse or even London’s ICA or Tate Modern. But nothing is quite like Tramway. Time is running out. Desperate remedies are considered. We notice shifts in our conversations – a sister is berated for her lack of knowledge about Belgian Ballet. Jonathan Monk’s latest exhibition is greeted with sniggers of recognition and appreciation. We are ostracised at parties for waxing lyrical on the matter of devised rather than scripted drama and banned from art classes for insisting on the primacy of the creative act over the medium of expression.
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Ditching the archives, Tramway is studied in the present moment. Of course, the present moment, contaminated by our study of the past, is not typical. A new gallery, T5, has installed large windows into the front of the building and given natural light and three white walls – almost a traditional exhibition space. New offices have appeared upstairs – with carpets and a generous meeting room. Scottish Ballet are building their new headquarters. The Hidden Garden, a recent addition but now attracting new audiences, has settled into daily use. The Gamelan has moved out but independent dance companies are moving into fresh studios. Areas are roped off, then exposed – painted, new, vibrant. With a sigh, I realise that there is one option remaining. I sit down in the café and relate my memories. Tam Dean Burn on a big car in what appears to be a rave. An unadventurous retelling of the life of Christ that is dull even when Jesus hits the psychedelics. The last 15 minutes of Les Ballets C de La B’s VSPRS, when the jerky repetitions of the dancers begins to send me into an ecstatic trance. A vicious argument with an ex-lover in the Tree Library. Watching Maurice Doherty’s projection of a goldfish bowl balanced on a rotating washing machine, and realising that the slow process towards the fish’s shattering death was a perfect metaphor for my career as a teacher. Dancers wearing breeze-blocks on their feet and stamping brutally close to vulnerable toes. Airworld, an oddly programmed slice of history that was given the surreal aura of modern art simply by its location. Kruger’s huge video screens and dissembling conversations. Being guided through the streets to the train station by a lonely artist from Bristol. Realising that Trust, a group show that caused controversy was merely a well-chosen selection of highly influential artists, or that the Rosemary Trockel retrospective embodied the tensions for maturing avant-garde artists between respectability and challenge. Discovering the yoghurt drink in the café. An achingly long and predictable experiment in sound being enlivened by the sudden arrival of two monsters from a child’s picture book. The Tiger Lilies terrifying me so much that I ran all the way home, looking over my shoulder to check that I was not being pursued by a transvestite accordionist castrato. I remember terrible nonsense redeemed by a glance at the walls, the heating system or the arrangement of
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the lighting. I remember the darkness at the end of Myth and wishing that the moment would last forever, willing the applause never to begin. I lay the memories out on the table. I can only see change. Epilogue The enquiry continues: interviews are collated, perspectives are measured, yellowing reviews are annotated and compared to glossy brochures. The staff, who have been almost ignored so far, are moving into sharper focus, and the arcane manoeuvres of council politics can be detected in the various shifts of use. These are matters for further discussion. In brief, the original quest had revealed itself to be impossible. No single vision of Tramway could exist, no fundamental activity or style could encompass even a single year’s worth of events, which can range from retrospectives of New York Aids Polemic through to the mixed bill of the Ashley Page’s revitalised Scottish Ballet. At the end, only platitudes remain: Tramway is Protean. Tramway continues to evolve. An absurdist cliché: the only constant is change. However, into each performance, in every exhibition, on cloudy afternoons spent watching children run across the fresh lawns and late night gigs by the legends of post-rock, Tramway imbues its distinctive quality. It is a glorious frame: sometimes intrusive, re-interpreting the experience, other times discreet and distant. It can kill productions stone dead, leaving the artists dwarfed by the scale. It can allow remarkably complex reconfigurations of the very idea of the gallery or the stage. No theatre is really a neutral space, but Tramway makes no effort to hide its partiality.
Images by kind permission of Minty Donald