I began this blog during a sabbatical in 2009 and continued to write when I returned to teaching at the University of Brighton in January 2010. I discovered that blogging is useful to reflect on process and the site turns over time into a valuable archive.

The blog tracks activities of the International Screendance Network and developments of the new International Journal of Screendance. It also functions as a reflective space on current events and dialogues in the fields dance, performance and live art.

For further information on my work go to www.ckappenberg.info

The International Screendance Network now has its own blog at http://screendance.wordpress.com/

Information of further activities of the Network and its Journal can be found at http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/screendance You can email me

Timeline of Performance Art, by Alastair MacLennan

Q. How did you start to do performance?

A. In 1970, while teaching at Nova Scotia College of Art, I decided it was necessary to show a particular foundation student an ‘actual’ example of Surrealism. The following day I came to College and ‘performed’ a day’s teaching, AS a piece of Surrealism. At the end of the day I realized this had great potential for the Art of Performance, itself…and so my performance practice developed from there.

My practice was also substantially evolved by spending two years negotiating the koan (problem)… ‘How do you realize your true nature while art-making ?’… given me by a Rinzai Zen Master, to resolve, in the early 1970’s.

Also, though I love the traditional art forms, having been a student of painting, sculpture and printmaking, myself… since graduating from art college in 1968, I’ve always disapproved of how ‘cultural real-estate’ attitudes dominate the traditional art forms, in our exploitative, consumerist (art) world.

In performance art, I really appreciate how there’s no ‘separation’ between the performer, the art being performed, the process of performing… and the public’s direct experience of art being created… all in the same ‘time/space’, together, simultaneously.


Alastair MacLennan made his first (public) performance ‘OF OFF’ in 1970 at Nova Scotia College of Art, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. 

Sieben Sieben Sieben/ Sieve Sieve SievePerformance as part of Critical Pathways - a choreographic research group led by Rosemary ButcherSiobhan Davies Studios, London UK12th March 2013 I joined this group as I was interested to explore how my current performance material would develop in the context of a choreographic discourse and in a dance studio. I was curious as to the role of movement  in my current work, also what initiates the movement, and how the movement interfaces with time. Small questions. The work I do is more and more about time, working with tiny gestures that repeat again and again to become duration. And, like Upon the place beneath (2008), or Still life with Cabbage (2011), it is a choreography of sounds more than of movement, and translates into a visual performance of entropy.  

Sieben Sieben Sieben/ Sieve Sieve Sieve
Performance as part of Critical Pathways - a choreographic research group led by Rosemary Butcher
Siobhan Davies Studios, London UK
12th March 2013

I joined this group as I was interested to explore how my current performance material would develop in the context of a choreographic discourse and in a dance studio. I was curious as to the role of movement  in my current work, also what initiates the movement, and how the movement interfaces with time. Small questions.

The work I do is more and more about time, working with tiny gestures that repeat again and again to become duration. And, like Upon the place beneath (2008), or Still life with Cabbage (2011), it is a choreography of sounds more than of movement, and translates into a visual performance of entropy.