Performance Cleaner

Imprint: Sideways Books
Extent: 72pp.
Published: June 2019
Size: 14 x 21.6 cm
ISBN: 978-1-907766-12-1
List Price: £7.50

Tags: Zap Club; the Zap; Brighton; Argleton; Roy Bayfield; mythogeography; Sideways Books

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A Sideways Book

Performance Cleaner
Zap Club 1984-86

Roy Bayfield

For decades the Zap hosted ground-breaking artistic events in Brighton and beyond, starting with its radical performance nights in the 1980s.

For two years in the early days, Roy Bayfield (later to become a noted walker, mythogeographer, performance artist and university administrator) made an art out of his job as cleaner at the club. Here he offers us an “eclectic sweep-up of everything that was left lying around”.

“In the early years of the Zap, Roy Bayfield was not only part of the furniture – he moved it, cleaned it and ensured that after each chaotic evening the Zap survived to welcome its constant programme of art entertainment and whimsical transgression. Roy exemplified the spirit of the Zap, transforming the apparently menial task of cleaning into performance art. His affectionate memoir captures the moment.”
Neil Butler, Artistic Director, UZ Arts & Founding Director, the Zap”

"A wonderful evocation of the Zap Club and its people which, among many other things, beautifully captures a particularly exciting period in the history of British performance art. Poetic in its rendering of day-to-day behind the scenes moments and rituals, it conjures the atmosphere of a significant venue at a very special time in its history, looking to the past for thoughts of how we might manifest a vibrant art-filled present and future."
Dr Cathy Butterworth, Arts Manager, Edge Hill University

"The Zap Club was louche, sexual, irreverent, salty. It was both cool and uncool at the same time – Schrödinger’s cool.

It transformed spaces – not into privatised territory, parcelled-up ownership, places piped with franchised generic signification – but into spaces enterable by virtually anyone, sometimes literally everyone.

There was physical, businesslike dedication to making myths. Even mythology leaves a mess. So I cleaned it up, so it could get messy again.

The mess, the chaos – whatever you call afterleavings, surplus material, leakiness, mistakes, remnants – was a necessary and gorgeously hideous part of the art. Areas of the walls always dripped, no matter what anyone did.

All of this was a long time ago. It exists as a mess of collective memories, a long pile like the beach, pebbles drifting along the shoreline, their substance slowly diminishing, turning into something else."

About the author

Readership:

On one level, Performance Cleaner is a memoir for people who knew the Zap club at the time; on another, it's a handbook for anyone who wants to make art out of an unpromising job.

Related titles:

See Triarchy Press titles in
Mythogeography & Walking

See Roy Bayfield's book Desire Paths