Art & Dyschronia
Drawing of Paul Davies by Bob Dickinson
I’ve just recorded an interview with Matt Hale from Art Monthly for their monthly podcast. It concerns my latest article in the magazine, which is entitled Art and Dyschronia, and is out now in Art Monthly #452, December 2021-January 2022. You can listen to the podcast on the Art Monthly website here.
Just to explain: Dyschronia is a Greek word that describes a world in which our sense of time has been messed up – right now, for instance, by the way so many people are compelled to work zero-hours contracts, or have to do night-work. We know from reliable medical sources, like neuroscientist Russell Foster, that interfering with our circadian rhythms is bad for human health. But what about other aspects of time: the past and the future, for instance? It strikes me that governments that use culture wars to create a mythical version of history, or societies that threaten “deep time” by creating a climate crisis, are also producing a dyschronia.
In my article, I’ve looked at the work of several artists, including the duo, Prinz Gholam, whose performances take place in places or sites of historical or archaeological significance. Also, I try to interpret the 2017 film, Rey, a strange, psychedelic exploration of the delusional side of colonialism, by experimental director, Niles Atallah. I’ve also explored the work of German artist Susanne Kriemann whose long-term project, Pechblende, focuses on the impact of uranium mining on the landscape, plant, and animal life of a region that used to be part of the GDR. I discuss too the theatre pieces of Argentinian writer/director Lola Arias. But I’ve also mentioned BECA – a group of artists, from Wales, about which, in the interview, I tell a story that I couldn’t fit into the article. I want to reveal a bit more detail here.
This story concerns a man called Paul Davies who was one of my lecturers at Northwich School of Art during the 1970s, when I was on the foundation course. Paul was physically very big and also very loud. He lived in North Wales, apparently in a caravan. He had strong opinions on stuff. I remember one morning, a Monday, we were in a session with Paul and he asked us what we’d done at the weekend. And I hadn’t done very much, except watching an old, late-night film, called The Snakepit, made in 1948 - which was about a woman (played by Olivia de Havilland) who wakes up one morning in a secure hospital for the mentally ill, and she can’t remember how she got there. “FUCKING GREAT FILM,” Paul shouted, “YOU SHOULD ALL HAVE WATCHED THE FUCKING SNAKEPIT!” And afterwards I thought, has the plot of this film got any connection with being in an art school? Is everybody crazy? Is that what he’s getting at?
Maybe, although the woman in the film has an extremely distressing time discovering the truth about why she’s where she is. For Paul, there could have been more to it – other layers - because he had his own art practice, about which we knew nothing. And in 1977, after I’d left, he did something – a piece of performance art, at that year’s Eisteddfod, that changed the Welsh art scene for good. That year, at Wrexham, there was a special Welsh Arts Council pavilion for international artists – but none from Wales had been invited. So, Paul, who was working there as a steward, made a dramatic intervention, by holding up above his head, for as long as he could support it, a wooden railway sleeper, into which he’d carved the letters W.N. At which point, consternation ensued. Anyone with any knowledge of Welsh history knew that speaking the Welsh language had been made illegal during the nineteenth century, and if, as a child, you were overheard speaking Welsh at school, you would be made to wear a piece of wood around your neck with those letters W.N., which stood for “Welsh Not”, written on it. So, this performance launched an art group, known as BECA, which politicised art in Wales. In some way, BECA was inspired by some of the ideas of Fluxus, and Italian arte povera - their work was done simply, quickly, and it had humour and immediacy. At some point, I’d like to write more about some of the other artists involved, but for now, I’ll stick with Paul. Because Paul died young, still in his 40s, of a heart attack. Even then, at Northwich, nobody knew anything about him and BECA. Was he keeping it secret, for some reason?
Last year, at Storiel Gallery, Bangor, there was a retrospective show relating to Paul’s work and that of his brother Peter, also a member of BECA, who’s still alive and working. It was called BECA Rising and on Storiel’s website, you can see the photo of the 1977 Welsh Not performance, which also appears in my Art Monthly article. But also, the real, physical, wooden object was there - because after the intervention, Paul carved it into a giant Welsh love spoon, resembling the sort of thing tourists buy to remind them of a holiday in Wales - with the letters W.N. still clearly visible, and painted black, like a warning.