50 Years of The Future

A history of the ICA is yet to be
written. Fifty years of the future has

a more modest ambition: to list some
of the riches that have been the ICAs
programme over the last 50 years.
While deliberately and inevitably
selective, the chronicle does try to
register the extraordinary range of
events and arts supported and
nurtured by the Institute since its
inception in 1947. It is complemented
by David Mellors account of the ICA,
orchestrated decade by decade,
which the author himself wanted to
call notes towards a partial history,
to register his own sense that it is
possible to construct the ICAs
complex history in a variety of ways.
Fifty years of the future is

published to coincide with the fiftieth
anniversary of the ICAs first-ever
exhibition, 40 Years of Modern Art,
which opened 9 February 1948.
It is dedicated to all who have
contributed to the Institutes life.
Like the Institute itself, Fifty
years of the future has been
a collaborative endeavour. Thanks
are due to Andrea Phillips, writer
and editor, for the initial research;
Mark Sinker and Jessica Hines for
all additional research; Markku
Salmi, Caroline Jones, Monique
Proudlove, Christopher Hewitt
and Kathy Battista for important
supplementary work. David Mellor,
Reader in Art History, University
of Sussex, has been both a fount
of information and a generous
collaborator.
Jennifer Booth of the Tate Gallery
Archive, which houses the ICAs
archive, and the staff of the Tate
Library have been very patient
with the Institutes requests
for information.
Mark Sinker was production editor
and sub-editor.
Designed by Esterson Lackersteen.
Printed by E G Bond.
This publication has been made
possible by grants from The Rayne
Foundation and Combined Arts
Department, Arts Council of
England.
Fifty years of the future

A chronicle of the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Roland Penrose and Picassos Les Demoiselles dAvignon
The forties
At the beginning, the office was in Fitzroy Street
and events were held in various locations. Ewan
Phillips was Director, Herbert Read Chairman,
Roland Penrose Vice Chairman. I worked as a
helper when the ICA went over to 17/18 Dover
Street. A year later, I was Public Relations Officer,
then Assistant Director, then Organising Director.
It was a stimulating time, the L-shaped room on the
first floor of Dover Street a centre where new ideas
were exchanged, where people argued until the
early hours and where, on occasion, the members
danced around the floor to a live band. I planned
the evening activities, discussed them with
Management Committee once a month, invited
speakers and spent much time on the telephone.
None of the speakers and performers was paid.
They were invited to supper in the gallery before
the evening activities. The menu was always the
same, a variety of salads. The library was a
euphemism for some books arranged on two
shelves behind glass sliding doors usually locked.
Most had been donated, and a list of this and other
donations was published regularly in the Bulletin.
Most exhibition openings and evenings were
orderly, but there were the occasional fights at the
bar, as well as visits from the police alerted either
by noise, or on one occasion by the unloading of
half a hundredweight of paper through the gallery
window on to the pavement, part of an evening
devoted to Jean Tinguely in 1959. During the
evening discussions someone in the audience
would almost certainly ask, What is art? If the
evening happened to be chaired by Lawrence
Alloway, the poor questioner would be treated
with such contempt that he or she would quietly
slide towards the door. Throughout my time at
the ICA this question was never answered.
The ICA was like a railway station. People passed
one another without realising that some would one
day be famous and some would change the face
of art beyond all recognition. But as with every
station, everyone was in a hurry. I left in 1970.
Dorothy Morland, Director 195167, Associate
Director 196770, as dictated to Jasia Reichardt
Not a museum
Sir Herbert Read, anarchist, poet, art critic and
art historian, had proposed for London a Museum
of Modern Art, based on New Yorks, as early
as 1938. The Institute of Contemporary Arts
developed out of the efforts of the artist Roland
Penrose, the patron and collector Peter Watson,
the gallerist E. L. T. Mesens and Read himself
(French avant-garde film-maker Jacques
Brunius was instrumental in changing its name).
By the 50s, the ICA had a role across a range of
media, providing in the heart of London, a centre
where the living arts of painting and sculpture,
of architecture and music, of theatre and film, can
meet and mutually inspire one another in open
collaboration with the public. Read further saw
the ICA as bringing into existence the arts of
the future. We would rather be thought of as a
laboratory than as a museum where a new
vision, a new consciousness is being evolved.
Groundbreaking exhibitions I: showing the modern
Historically, the Tate and other major national
institutions had neglected to inform the public
about Modernism. To remedy this, the ICAs first
exhibition (February/March 1948) was the UKs
first attempt to outline (in the words of the title)
40 Years of Modern Art. It included Matisse,
Bonnard, Picasso, Dali, Magritte and Kandinsky,
as well as British contemporaries Bacon, Paolozzi,
Pasmore and Hepworth. The venue signalled the
new approach to the arts: the basement of the
Academy Cinema in Oxford Street, rather than
an already sanctified art space. Through the next
decade art historians and artists such as Reyner
Banham and Richard Hamilton continued under
the ICAs auspices to retrieve the history of
Modernism, adding a revisionist spin with the
restoration of such lost moments and individuals
as Futurism and Marcel Duchamp.
Fifty years of the future . 3
1946
30 January
First postwar meeting of the Museum
of Modern Art Organising Committee
(which would form the Institute of
Contemporary Arts). The four prime
movers are: Herbert Read, anarchist,
poet, Modernist critic; Roland Penrose,
British Surrealist artist, associate in the
20s of Keynes and Roger Fry, whose
circle includes Braque, Derain, Ernst,
Breton, Picasso, Man Ray and
photographer Lee Miller; Peter Watson,
founder with Cyril Connolly, Stephen
Spender and Sonia Orwell of Horizon
magazine, an influential arts patron;
Eric C. Gregory, chairman of art
publishers Lund Humphries and the
Design Research Unit, director of the
Burlington Magazine, governor of
St Martins School of Art.
Other members of the committee
include: E. L. T. Mesens (Director of the
London Gallery), Jacques Brunius, G. M.
Hoellering (owner of Academy Cinema);
Frederick Ashton; Michel St Denis; Alex
Comfort; Geoffrey Grigson; Peter
Ustinov; J. M. Richards; Edward Clark;
Douglas Cooper; Robert Melville. (The
London Gallerys back room becomes
the ICAs first office; the Academy
Cinemas basement its first exhibition
space)
1947
The ICA is officially founded, and its
office moves from the London Gallery

to small offices in Charlotte Street
4 . Fifty years of the future
A forum for advanced architectural ideas

The potential for design and architecture
to have critical roles in shaping society was
to be an important issue on the ICAs agenda.
This began in September 1948, with a
symposium at the Royal Institute of British
Architects (RIBA), with Maxwell Fry, Patrick
Heron, F. E. McWilliam, J. M. Richards,
Graham Sutherland and Ernesto Rogers,
and talks critical of current trends in British
architecture.
June
The Times publishes a letter from Read,
appealing for funds. George Bernard
Shaw replies that money would be
better spent on hygiene, since hygiene,
not the arts, is responsible for
improvements in the nations wellbeing in the twentieth century
1948
February
Exhibition 40 Years of Modern Art: a
Selection from British Collections, the
ICAs first exhibition: Such is our ideal
not another museum, another bleak
exhibition gallery, another classical
building in which insulated and
classified specimens of a culture are
displayed for instruction, but an adult
play-centre, a workshop where work is
a joy, a source of vitality and daring
experiment. We may be mocked for our
naive idealism, but at least it will not
be possible to say that an expiring
civilisation perished without a creative
protest (Read)
March
Two concerts of contemporary
chamber music (Stravinsky, Berg,
Dallapiccola, Bush)
co-opt new members, including Henry

Moore and Graham Sutherland
The ICA and the Mars Group organise
a symposium on architecture
December
Exhibition 40,000 Years of Modern
Art, conceived by Read to show links
between modern art and non-Western
art from earlier periods, featuring
Picassos Les Demoiselles dAvignon
Members of the ICA in 1949 now include
Ove Arup, W. H. Auden, Clive Bell, Anton
Ehrenzweig, T. S. Eliot, Maxwell Fry,
Peggy Guggenheim, Hamish Hamilton,
Richard Hamilton, C. Day Lewis, Rose
Macaulay, Louis MacNeice, Henry
Moore, Alberto Moravia, Harold
Nicolson, Victor Pasmore, John
Rothenstein, Adrian Stokes, Dylan
Thomas, Arthur Waley
Discussion forum Is Art an Essential or
an Accessory to Society? With Julian
Huxley, A. J. Ayer, Misha Black
Music and talk On 12-note Music Today
1949
February
Lecture J. Isaacs, The Primitive Origins
of Modern Poetry
April
W. H. Auden reads his own work
March
Lecture Arnold Haskell, Ballet in
Television and Film
August
Ewan Phillips becomes the first Director
of the ICA, on a salary of 700 pa
October
Lecture A group of contemporary
Egyptian artists
September
The ICA Advisory Committee begins to
November
Concert the music of Ferruccio Busoni
40 Years of Modern Art, the ICAs first exhibition
Groundbreaking exhibitions II:

a global, ethnically diverse context for Modern Art. . .
The second ICA show (December 1948/January
1949), 40,000 Years of Modern Art juxtaposed
artefacts from tribal and non-Western countries
with such Modernist works as Picassos Les
Demoiselles dAvignon. Read was particularly
committed to internationalist perspectives in the
arts, and in the spring of 1949 performances of
Indian music were given for members, at the
Victoria and Albert Museum.
The fifties
My chief memory is of being such an isolated
minority; beleaguered, attacked by everybody; we
had very few friends. The tabloid press seemed to
feel it was its duty to attack anything we were doing.
In some ways it was a very painful time, but it was
exciting too. One really felt one was pioneering.
Toni del Renzio worked on the Exhibitions
Committee throughout the 50s
The ICA members room in the mid-50s
Image and culture

The promise to concentrate on the interaction of
different art forms becomes an important strand
of ICA practice: the first show of the 50s, opened
by T. S. Eliot, takes James Joyce as exemplary
modernist and looks at his impact on culture (the
poster and catalogue are designed by Richard
Hamilton). The ICA is also one of the first public
gallery spaces to exhibit photography. After the
initial photographic show, there follows a series of
important photo-installation exhibitions through
the first half of the 50s, a new genre of imageculture exhibitions specific to the building. These
employ a large public scale then more associated
with popular commercial and trade fairs, together
with montage formats. Even abstract art is recast
as a reflexive environmental spectacle in some late
50s ICA installations, such as An Exhibit (August
1957) by Hamilton, Pasmore and Lawrence Alloway
and Place (September 1959), with its Situationistinspired outlook.
Music and modernism
By 1954 John Berger could accuse the ICA of being
no more than a jazz club. That autumn a series of
historical introductory lectures to jazz (in Harlem,
in New Orleans) runs alongside talks on cole
de Paris art, with critic David Sylvester taking a
prominent part. Under the auspices of composer
Elisabeth Lutyens and sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi,
jazz becomes a key part of ICA cultural life. Frank
Cordell, the ICAs Independent Group member,
worked for the jazz/pop music industry, and by 1957
Melody Maker, the jazzmans own newspaper,
was taking advertisements in the monthly Bulletin.
The London Contemporary Music Centre (founded

1919) amalgamates with the ICA: now known as
the Music Section, it is run by an autonomous
committee re-elected every year (chaired at
different times by William Glock and Iain Hamilton).
It promotes monthly concerts round London,
rigorously High Modernist, with the music of
Schnberg, Webern, Stockhausen and Boulez
regularly featured. The pinnacle of High Modernist
celebration also comes in 1957, with Stravinskys
75th birthday concert at the Royal Festival Hall:
after this, the Music Sections activity took a lower,
more haphazardly advertised profile.
Against political repression. . . and towards free expression
Against the background of the Cold War, an
international competition is hosted by the ICA for
a sculpture memorialising The Unknown Political
Prisoner (January 1953). The competition is
financed anonymously (by John Hay Whitney)
from the US, unwittingly tangling the ICA in US
Cold War cultural policy (the winner, announced
in March 1953, is Reg Butler). This same January,
Toni del Renzio arranges an exhibition of Abstract
Expressionist painting from European and North
American artists, including Jackson Pollock. This
is the first showing in the UK of what will become
one of the most important post-war art styles.
The birth of pop culture theory
With its affirmation of photo-generated imagery,
including exhibitions of such photographers as
Henri Cartier-Bresson (February 1952) and Werner
Bischof (February 1955), as well as debates about
meaning in Hollywood films (early 1955), horror
comics (January 1955), fashion, and television as
cultural form (Autumn and Winter 19556), the
ICA lays foundations for a serious critical and
theoretical approach to pop culture. Lawrence
Alloway (Assistant Director from 1955), is the
motor for this tendency, with individuals connected
to the Independent Group of the ICA, including
Reyner and Mary Banham, Paolozzi, del Renzio,
William Turnbull, Nigel Henderson and the
Smithsons. The culmination of this tendency is the

exhibition This is Tomorrow (August 1956) at the
Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Transgressive cinema
The experimental US director Kenneth Anger,
a pioneer of underground cinema and a huge
influence on hippie and queer culture, presents
three films to ICA members (February 1955). The
notorious Situationist film Hurlements en faveur
de Sade, with its long blank sequences and claim
that The art of the future will be the overturning
of situations, or nothing, had been banned after
riots in Paris. After its first UK screening (May
1957), Guy Debord, director and Situationist leader,
is chased over the rooftops of Dover Street.
International perspectives
Roland Penrose championed the inheritors and
revisionists of the pre-war School of Paris and
Surrealism. A strength of the ICA in the 50s and
60s and into the 70s, was his access to eminent
European figures from the heroic age of
Modernism, such as Picasso, Max Ernst and Man
Ray, all of whom had ICA exhibitions through his
intervention. He also enabled the showing of the
work of such internationalist artists as the Chilean
Matta (January 1951) and the Caribbean Wilfredo
Lam (April 1952).
Extreme performances: technology and the method
Improvisational practices dominate 50s art, and
are reshaping theatre. Visits, exhibitions and
1950
During the 50s, membership will
grow from 400 to 1400
demonstrations by the more performance-oriented

practitioners of Action Painting are a constant:
these include the French artists Mathieu (July
1956) and Yves Klein (June 1957), and a legendary
demonstration by the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely
of his meta-matic parodies of the technological
production of art (November 1959) from a machine
operated by two cyclists, where artwork on endless
reams of paper cascades out of the Dover Street
gallery onto the pavement. This is one of the first
Happenings to take place in London, and prefigures
the encroaching decade. The ICAs commitment
to live theatre is less intensive (though vanguard
works by Sartre, Genet, Ionesco and Beckett are
staged, read or discussed, and the ICA affiliates
in 1955 with the Group Theatre and the Pegasus
Theatre Society). In the arena of experimental
theatre, Charles Marowitz holds a workshop, The
Method in Action, introducing such techniques
to London (November 1957).
Talking points
Discussions and debates exploring all the above
are staged most months, and much interest is
shown in fashionable branches in science, including
psychology, sociology, semiotics, topology,
cybernetics, communications theory and games
theory. American writer/critic Dwight MacDonald
offers a Theory of Mass Culture (December 1956)
that probably doesnt appeal to the Independent
Group: Is the cultural lite of the avant-garde being
homogenised by Mass Culture? Have the Lords of
Kitsch destroyed autochthonous Folk Art?
Freud, Isabel Lambert, Peter Lanyon,

Robert Adams, Reg Butler, F. E. McWilliam
Forum The Strange Case of Abstract Art
(chair: Herbert Read)
The ICA begins showing films at the
French Institute: members vote for

what they want to see
17/18 Dover Street, Piccadilly. The

building is refurbished by Jane Drew
and Maxwell Fry, with artists Neil
Morris, Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel
Henderson helping design the interior
January
Forum A Comparison between
Television and Film
April
Three discussions on contemporary music
Music and Ballet (chair: Constant
Lambert); Music and Opera (chair: The Rt.
Hon. the Earl of Harewood); Music and
Film (chair: Alan Rawsthorne)
March
Exhibition LondonParis: Trends in Art,
with Hans Hartung, Jean Bazaine,
Andr Bloc, Francis Bacon, Lucian
May
After three years of nomadic life, using
July
20 different spaces across London, the
Exhibition Symbolic Realism in American
ICA acquires a suite of first-floor rooms at Painting, opened by Sir Osbert Sitwell
June
Exhibition James Joyce: His Life and
Work. First exhibition in Dover Street, a
collection of Joyce memorabilia, with
readings, talks, settings of his poems
and BBC radio broadcasts
October
Discussion Radio and the Poet
December
Exhibition 1950: Aspects of British Art.
This official opening exhibition of the
ICA at Dover Street includes works by
Michael Ayrton, Sandra Blow, Edward
Burra, Lynn Chadwick, Prunella Clough,
Alan Davie, Richard Hamilton, Barbara
Hepworth, Patrick Heron, Anthony Hill,
Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben
Nicholson, Eduardo Paolozzi, Victor
Pasmore, John Piper, Graham
Sutherland, William Turnbull.
Discussion Understanding
Contemporary Music (about the BBC
Series Music in Our Time)
1951
ICA Advisory Committee recruits new
members, including John Rothenstein

and Peggy Ashcroft
Dorothy Morland becomes the
second Director of the ICA
Expansion of the ICAs programme
leads to the founding of a TV Study
Group (which advises that children will
need educating to persuade them to
watch television), an Architectural
Study Group, a Young Composers slot,
and a Platform for Poets
January
Exhibition Matta
February
Exhibition Humphrey Jennings:
Paintings 19071950
March
Exhibition Paintings from Haiti
Young composers Phyllis Tate
Talk Mercedes Mackay, The Indigenous
Music of Nigeria
April
Exhibition Graham Sutherland 19281951
TV study group meeting
May
Exhibition Twentieth Century Poetry
Young composers Arnold Cooke
June
Readings of contemporary American poetry
Frost, Aiken, Crane, Tate, Lowell, Penn
Warren, McLeish, Eliot, cummings
1952
Moving the ICA to the Festival of
Britain site on South Bank is discussed

Formation of the Young Group, later
July
Exhibition Growth and Form, organised
by Richard Hamilton, opened by Le
Corbusier. This showed close-up photos
of, for example, Mathematical Form,
Astronomical Form, Atomic Particle
Traces, Crystal Structure, Crystal
Growth, Forces and Stresses. It is based
on DArcy Thompsons book On Growth
and Form
The ICA organises a discussion at the
Imperial Institute: The Significance of
the Exhibition of Traditional Sculpture
from the Colonies
August
Exhibition Ten Decades: A Review of
British Taste 18511951
Lecture J. B. Bronowski, The Shapes of
Science in the Arts
September
Exhibition London: an Adventure in
Town Planning
Music Schnberg, a tribute by Sir
William Walton and Alan Rawsthorne
October
Exhibition Picasso: Drawings and
Watercolours since 1893, an exhibition
in honour of the artists 70th birthday
Young composers First performance of
Malcolm Arnolds String Quartet #1
November
Talk Steve Race, Jazz 1951 (with records)
Theatre Jean Paul Sartre, The Flies
December
First ICA fundraising Picture Fair:
artists and patrons donate works.
Buyers, chosen by raffle, could walk
away with an Ernst, a Nicholson or even
a Picasso drawing
Film Screening at the French Institute of
La montagne est verte, a portrayal of
the abolition of slavery in Martinique
known as the Independent Group, with

Reyner Banham as Secretary. At its first
meeting Eduardo Paolozzi feeds
coloured images taken from American
magazine advertising through an
epidiascope. This is the birth of Pop Art
January
Exhibition Young Sculptors, with
Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler,
Elizabeth Frink, Eduardo Paolozzi,
William Turnbull
Middle East Poetry Anthology British poets
who have served in the Middle East
Play reading Lawrence Durrell, Sappho
February
Exhibition Henri Cartier-Bresson
Theatre UBU ROI (Alfred Jarry)
At Home George Melly and his trio
April
Exhibition Wilfredo Lam: Paintings
Lecture Arthur Klein, Contemporary
American Theatre
May
Exhibition Drawings by Steinberg
Music The Harpsichord in
Contemporary Music
At Home An Evening of Squaredancing
for Experts and Beginners
June
Exhibition Tomorrows Furniture
July
Exhibition Recent Trends in Realist
Painting, with Francis Bacon, Balthus,
Bernard Buffet, William Coldstream,
Lucian Freud, Alberto Giacometti,
Andr Masson
Reading Angus Wilson, from his works
September
Exhibitions Kokoschka Drawings and
Graphic Art; Feliks Topolski: Eyelevel
on Japan
October
Exhibition Young Painters, with Michael
Andrews, Harold Cohen, Alfred Daniels,
Victor Willing, Alan Reynolds, Barbara
Braithwaite, Richard Hamilton, Edward
Middleditch. Selection committee:
John Berger, Roland Penrose, Toni del
Renzio, David Sylvester, Peter Watson
Film Screenings of 16mm films transfer
to the ICA gallery from the French
Institute
Theatre First Stage Society and ICA
stage the first UK production of Genets
Les Bonnes at the Mercury Theatre
Lecture Marie Seton on Eisenstein, with
extracts
Poetry Reading Poetry by Marxists
November
Music William Walton, Edith Sitwell et al
perform Facade
Lecture Charles Madge, Sociology and
Poetry
December
Discussion Is Music a Moral and Social
Force? (chair: Lady Mayer)
LectureDavid Sylvester on Francis Bacon
1953
January
International Sculpture Competition The
Unknown Political Prisoner
Exhibition Opposing Forces, the first
British exhibition of the Abstract
Expressionists, with Sam Francis, JeanPaul Riopelle and Jackson Pollock
Lecture Geology and Art, by Jacquetta
Hawkes
Discussion The Hallfield Housing
Scheme, an Estate in Paddington
(chair: J. M. Richards). ICA members
visit the site beforehand
April
Exhibition Le Corbusier
Poetry Laurie Lee and Norman Cameron
read from their own work
May
Exhibition Henry Moore Drawings
19281953: Figures in Space
Music Peter Pears and Mewton Wood,
first performances of song cycles by
Alan Bush, Alan Rawsthorne, Matyas
Seiber, Wilfred Mellers
September
Exhibition Parallel of Life and Art.
Organised by Nigel Henderson,
Eduardo Paolozzi, Alison and Peter
Smithson, who will be referred to as the
New Brutalists. The show includes
photos of architecture, graffiti, medical
shots and high-speed sports shots
November
Exhibition Intimate Life of Paul Klee:
Drawings and Watercolours 19081940
December
Exhibition Indian Modern Painting
1954
ICA members can become associate
members of the British Film Institute
January
Film programme (French Institute)
Leonardo da Vinci: The Tragic Pursuit
of Perfection (Enrico Fulchignoni)
Film Figures in a Landscape (Dudley
Shaw-Ashton, BFI, 1953)
Jazz Monthly jazz group instituted
(chair: Elisabeth Lutyens; committee:
Mike Butcher, Sam Kaner, Eduardo
Paolozzi)
secretary general of the British InterPlanetary Society)

May
Exhibition Georges Braque
Discussion On Malrauxs The Voices of
Silence, with Ernst Gombrich, Nigel
Henderson, Lawrence Alloway, Stephen
Spender
Theatre Pegasus Theatre Society, The
Changeling by Thomas Middleton,
produced by Tony Richardson
July
Exhibition Fahr El-Nissa-Zeid, recent
Paintings
September
Lectures on Jazz with David Stevens on
Louis Armstrong (chair: Lawrence
Alloway) and Ken Colyer on New
Orleans (chair: Alexis Krner)
October
Lecture Man Ray, Painting of the Future
and the Future of Painting
Music Recital at Mahatma Gandhi Hall
includes Extensions 3 (Morton
Feldman), Water Music (John Cage)
November
The ICA issues a television
questionnaire, including this question
(to those who have a set): How often do
you look at a TV programme? Almost
every day? At least once a week? At
least once a month? Less than once a
month? Never?
Poetry reading Arthur Rimbaud
centenary
1955
Lawrence Alloway becomes Assistant
Director of the ICA

February
Music Pierre Schaeffer, Musique
concrte
March
Exhibition Wonder and Horror of the
Human Head
Lecture They Hate Modern Art or
Patterns of Philistine Power, Alfred
Barr Jnr, Director of the Museum of
Modern Art, New York
February
Play Reading Brecht, Mother Courage
March
Exhibition Victor Pasmore: Paintings
and Constructions 19441954
Discussion Literature, Censorship and
Pornography, with Malcolm
Muggeridge, editor of Punch
Lecture Lawrence Alloway on Science
Fiction (chair: Arthur C. Clarke,
January
Exhibition Francis Bacon;
Work and Teamwork: Architecture
symposium on Walter Gropius with
E. Maxwell Fry, Nikolaus Pevsner, John
McHale and Reyner Banham
Talks John Huntley, The Place of Music
in the Modern Film; Horror Comics
February
Exhibitions India, Hong Kong, IndoChina, Korea, Japan: 100 photographs
by Werner Bischof
Discussion Francis Bacon, with Lawrence
Alloway, Anton Ehrenzweig, Victor
Willing, Eric Newton
Film UK premiere of Kenneth Anger
films: Puce Moment; Eaux dArtifice;
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome
Lecture The Psycho-pathology of
Reaction in the Arts. Herbert Read
Seminar Post War American Memories,
Carl Foreman, scriptwriter of High Noon
(chair: Lawrence Alloway)
March
Exhibition Jean Dubuffet
Seminar Recent American Movies in
Europe
Film A Communications Primer (Charles
Eames); premiere of Invocation, with
paintings by Francis Bacon and the
voice of Aleister Crowley
April
Lecture Lawrence Alloway, The Movies
as a Mass Medium
May
Exhibition Mark Tobey: Paintings
June
Exhibition Twentieth Century Paintings
from English Collectors
Dance Recital Srimathi Shanta Rao,
Indias greatest classical dancer
July
Exhibition Man, Machine and Motion: an
Iconography of Speed and Space,
curated by Richard Hamilton
Lecture Metal in Motion: the Popular
Iconology of the Automobile, Reyner
Banham
September
Exhibition Gerald Wilde
October
Discussion Mass Communications (first
of a series) on fashion and fashion
magazines, with Lawrence Alloway and
Toni del Renzio
November
Exhibition Aspects of Schizophrenic Art
Discussion Peter Halls current
production of Becketts first play
Waiting for Godot, with Hall, Toni del
Renzio, David Sylvester
1956
Death of ICA co-founder Peter
Watson in April
January
Lectures Two, to coincide with Tate
exhibition Fifty Years of American Art.
Recent Abstract Painting in America
(Meyer Shapiro); Realism Re-examined
(Ben Shahn)
Discussions The Audience as Consumer:
Independent Television and Audience
Research; Kitchen Interiors; Landscape
and the Art of Landscape
February
Exhibition Willi Baumeister Memorial
Exhibition
Lectures Reyner Banham, Revaluation:
Futurism; Adrian Stokes, The Prime
Influence of Buildings on the Graphic
Arts
March
Seminar Herbert Read, Suzanne Langer
Talk Bruce Turner, Is Jazz Negro music?
Architecture Discussion The New
Brutalism, with Toni del Renzio, Ronald
Jenkins
April
Exhibition Roberto Burle Marxe: Avant
Gardener, Brazilian Landscapes,
Architecture and Gardens
Music Honegger, Nono, Hindemith, Virgil
Thomson and others at the Concert
Hall, Broadcasting House; Schnberg,
Wilfred Mellers, Elisabeth Lutyens,
Malcolm Williamson and Olivier
Messiaen at the Royal Festival Hall
Film The ICA Film Society temporarily
suspends activity. New ICA sponsor
Shell organise an ICA showing of film as
an instrument of communication, at
ShellMex House, Strand
Theatre First UK public reading of new
plays by Ionesco, The Bald Prima Donna
and The Motor Show
June
Discussion Freud and the Arts with
Lawrence Alloway, Adrian Stokes,
G. S. Fraser
Discussion Mass Communications IV:
Billy Graham as a Mass Communicator
September
Exhibition American Cartoons from the
New Yorker
Talk Colin Wilson, The Future of Writing
October
Exhibition Picasso Himself
Lecture Dr Peter Scott, Gangs and
Delinquent Groups of London: The ICA
believes that all aspects of urban
culture are of interest to our members
Talk Andrew D. Booth on The present
status of machine translation
November
Talk Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler: Picasso
Discussion Posthumous reappraisal of
Jackson Pollocks legacy, with Victor
Willing, Lawrence Alloway
Music Music in Documentary Film at the
French Institute
December
Music first UK performance of
Stravinskys Canticum Sacrum at St.
Martin-in-the-Fields, in the composers
presence
Symposium Trends in Contemporary
Theatre, with Christopher Logue on
Brecht and Donald Watson (translator
of Ionesco) on French theatre
Poetry Allen Tate on Reflections on
American Poetry 19001955
1957
January
Exhibition STATEMENTS: A Review of
British Abstract Art in 1956
Lecture Dr S. Vajda, The Theory of
Games
Symposium Jonathan Miller attempts to
define aspects of the thought of the
younger generation
February
Roger Coleman is appointed to the ICA
Exhibitions Committee
Talk Toni del Renzio dissects the fashion

industry using games theory
April
Exhibition Karel Appel
Discussion L. L. White onThe History
of the Idea of the Unconscious before
Freud (chair: Arthur Koestler)
May
Exhibition Olivetti Design
Film Hurlements en faveur de Sade
(Guy Debord, 1952)
Talk Dwight MacDonald, A Theory of
Mass Culture
June
Exhibition Wols: Paintings
Music Stravinskys 75th birthday
concert, Royal Festival Hall
July
Exhibition Leon Golub: New Paintings
August
Exhibitions an Exhibit (Pasmore, Alloway,
Hamilton): I wanted to
make the exhibition into an artform
in its own right an exhibition about
an exhibition (Hamilton); Aboriginal
Art of Australia
September
Exhibition William Turnbull: New
Sculpture and Paintings
October
Exhibition Paintings by Chimpanzees,
curated by Dr Desmond Morris, Royal
Zoological Society
Lecture Dr Desmond Morris, Paintings
by Species Other than Human, and
their Relationship to Human Art
middlebrow taste as an arena of

competition between top and Pop
1958
January
Exhibition Five Young Painters, with
Richard Smith, William Green, Peter
Blake
Discussion Television, New Medium
New Writers (chair: Tom Maschler)
February
Exhibition Roger Hilton: Paintings
195357
Poets Young Poets, Burns Singer, Dan
Moraes, Peter Redgrove, Quentin
Stevenson
March
Exhibition Pictures from the E.J. Power
Collection, including works by
De Kooning, Dubuffet, Kline, Pollock,
Rothko, Still, Tpies
Discussion Design: Packaging with
Lawrence Alloway, F. H. K. Henrion
April
Exhibition Asger Jorn
Communications The Motivation of
Culture, with Cedric Price, Bill Cowburn
Talk Marc Wilkinson, Electronic music
and the Use of the Electronic Music
Studio
May
Talk DrJ. P. Dewsbury, The Cult of the
Neurotic Hero: is Theatre Becoming
Indistinguishable from Psychiatrists
Casebooks?
June
Lecture Buckminster Fuller, Man plus
July
Reading British Caribbean Writers,
Stuart Hall, George Lamming, V. S.
Naipaul, Samuel Selvon
November
Exhibition Eight American Artists
Performance Workshop The Method in
Action
September
Exhibition Brassai: Language of the
Walls Parisian Graffiti
December
Discussion The Trapeze and the Human
Pyramid (Reyner Banham), on
November
Exhibition Three Collagists: E. L. T.
Mesens, John McHale, Gwyther Irwin
December
Architecture Hulme Chadwick,
Americans in Shopping Centres; Ian
McCallum, Americas Crystal Palaces
New Glass Office and Apartment
Buildings
1959
Death in February of ICA co-founder
Peter (E. C.) Gregory

February
Exhibition Le Corbusier
March
Symposium Le Corbusier Exhibition, with
the Architectural Association, with
Reyner Banham, Peter de Francia,
Peter Smithson
Talk Richard Rumbold, Zen and
Contemporary Life
April
Exhibitions Man Ray Retrospective;
The Developing Process
Film Art Films 2, four films by Frank
Avray Wilson: Art in an Atomic Age;
Adventure in Abstract; Experiments in
Abstract; The Story of Art.
Talk J. D. Bernal, The Platonic Solids in
Art
June
Exhibition Adolph Gottlieb: Paintings
19441959
Poetry Kenneth Rexroth reads his own
poems, and plays recordings of US
poetry and jazz
September
Exhibition Place: Environmental
Exhibition by Robyn Denny, Ralph
Rumney, Richard Smith
October
Talk Lawrence Alloway, Whatever
Happened to the Avant Garde? Notes
on the Edge of the 60s
November
Event Jean Tinguely demonstrates his
new meta-matic painting-sculptures
Detail from Richard Hamiltons poster for the June 1950 James Joyce exhibition
March
Exhibition Lost Wax: Metal Casting on
the Guinea Coast
The sixties
Building in progress for the new ICA at 12 Carlton House Terrace
Two principal changes occurred while I worked at

the ICA. At the beginning, most people involved in
the arts knew one another. It was more like a club.
Among the staff, there were no specialists: the
planning of visual arts, literature, cinema, lectures,
plays everything but music was all done by the
same people. In due course, improvisation was
replaced by organisation, a council, a Management
Committee, advisors, specialists. Everybody asked
the question, What should be the role of the ICA?
People believed if they found the answer to this one
question, the ICAs financial problems would be
resolved. Nobody realised then that its role was not
to have a role, to be a weathervane. Otherwise we
might not find out what is in the air.
Jasia Reichardt was Assistant Director 196471
Joy and play on the technological path to the visionary
In 1960, in July/August and December respectively,
Hungarian Nicholas Schffer and Brion Gysin
inaugurate a decade of technologically generated
art, including light projections, kinetic, cybernetic
and computer-originated. Painter Gysin,
experimenter with vision, montage and electronic
music and colleague of William Burroughs,
produces a sound-and-light display as he paints;
Schffer exhibits his spatio-dynamic cybernetic
sculpture and lumino-dynamic projections with
music. But the ICAs most important contribution
in this area will be Jasia Reichardts curation of
Cybernetic Serendipity, three years in gestation.
The exhibition and surrounding events are
described as exploring and demonstrating
relationships between technology and creativity...
to show the links between the random systems
employed by artists, composers and poets, and
those involved in the use of cybernetic devices.
A utopian spirit is at play: from 1965 on, the light
and sound Happenings of Mark Boyle and Joan
Hills, staged at the ICA, have about them something
resembling the high hopes of contemporary
psychedelia. When the ICA relocates to 12 Carlton
House Terrace in The Mall, in 1968, the opening
party features Boyles and Hills Sensual
Laboratory, a powerful reminder of Herbert Reads

prescription for the Institute as a place forging
a new and visionary consciousness.
The arrival of pop painting and the swansong of Surrealism
Though the theorisation of Pop Culture had been
established at the ICA in the 50s, Pop painting
is launched at the ICA in the early 60s with a
pioneering series of exhibitions: Peter Blake
(January 1960); Howard Hodgkin and Allen Jones
in Two Young Figurative Painters (February 1962);
David Hockney as one of Four Young Artists (July
1962) and Richard Smith (October 1962). Penroses
Surrealising sensibility had kept alive a certain
form of figuration during the period of the Abstract
Expressionist and Hard Edge consensus which
had been promoted at the ICA during Alloways
stewardship of exhibitions. The relocated ICA opens
in 1968 to The Obsessive Image, which sutures
together Warhol, Hockney and Roy Lichtenstein
with the mature and late work of Ernst, Picasso and
Mir. This more inclusive and less style-based
thematisation lays the ground for the return to
critical figuration in the 70s and 80s.
Music: new departures
Though the Music Section is still active, organising
modernist classical concerts, its presence within
the ICAs mainstream is reduced to a stump (in
November 1967, an advert appears in the Bulletin,
the Music Section making a sad plea for the
loan/gift of a tape-recorder). Apart from Saturday
dances (At Home with the Buddy Kaye Quartette),
jazz can now be heard every Wednesday night, the
listings to be found in The New Statesman, under
the auspices of Francis Newton, Eric Hobsbawms
pseudonym. Poet Michael Horovitz launches Live
New Departures in November 1960; this becomes
a regular monthly event at which such beat poets
as Burroughs and Gregory Corso perform with
UK jazz mainstreamers (Ronnie Scott) and the
fledgling avant-garde (Joe Harriott; Cornelius
Cardew). Cardew, formerly Stockhausens assistant
195860, will pass through many musical and
political phases prior to his early death in 1982:

many of these (AMM, Scratch Orchestra) find
expression at the ICA down the years. The
Wednesday night sessions are discontinued from
summer 1964, but for a year the Mike Westbrook
Band takes up a semi-regular slot and will provide
personnel and direction for much of the UK music
avant-garde in the 70s.
Metaphors of destruction and liberation
Influenced by Fluxus, the Happening becomes a
regular occurrence at the ICA, with such events as
Robin Pages Guitar Piece (1964) and Mark Boyles
and Joan Hills The Event (May 1965). The Violence
in Contemporary Art programme (FebMarch
1964), with its associated talks and films and the
London-wide Destruction in Art Symposium
(DIAS, September 1966), align the ICA with more
performative and transgressive forms. At the
latter Wolf Vostell gives an Action Lecture; John
Lathams Film is a theatrical event; while Yoko
Ono, Cornelius Cardew and Mark Boyle all take part.
Hermann Nitschs Abreaktionspiel, involving the
ritual mutilation of a lambs carcass, leads to
a police raid: DIAS secretary Gustav Metzger and
co-ordinator John Starkey (who is ICA Exhibitions
Director) are fined 100.
Cultural radicalism and politics
The influence of Situationist politics is marked at
the ICA, particularly as turned towards urbanism:
Ralph Rumney, co-producer of Place (August 1959)
had been the sole English signatory to the First
Situationist Manifesto, while Maurice Wyckaert
made a Declaration in the name of the 4th
Conference of International Situationism
(September 1960) with Guy Debord. In the far
more radicalised politics of the late 60s, situationist
revolutionism breaks out on a much wider stage.
Inspired by the student revolts in France, art
colleges are occupied by students and staff in
the spring and summer of 1968, and new director
Michael Kustow holds Hornsey Strikes Again, a
continuous open forum involving students from
Hornsey, members of the public and guests; and a
total use of the gallery space in a project designed
to expose and expand the nature and idea of their
Educational Revolution as it evolves. Part teach-
in, part documentation centre, part performed

politics, this anticipates the political-symbolic
performances of the early part of the 70s,
particularly those of Joseph Beuys.
A new urban spectacle
Taking forward the experiments with installations
and images characterising ICA exhibitions in the
50s, the Archigram group of architects and critics,
co-ordinated by future ICA director Peter Cook,
organise Living City (June 1963). This too is a
utopian project; an ecstatic, hallucinatory
exhibition of metropolitan signs and consumer
iconography around a once-and-future London.
Five years later (June 1968), the ICA organises
its Midsummer High, a free festival spilling over
into Londons streets and parks: What more can
we say about this mad midsummer weekend? A
contribution to Londons community life. A blatant
attempt to demoralise British youth. The first real
break-through in open-air entertainment in this
country. A large-scale anti-boredom device. The
ICA spreading its net. An attempt to bridge the
credibility gap between a world capital and 32
provincial towns. From whatever vantage point you
view it, this giant rave is a Good Thing and not to be
missed. You can sample it for 6/-, have it for 20/and live through it for 35/-. Various things will
never be the same again.
The underground everywhere
The new waves in British and French cinema in
the late 50s and early 60s were on the whole not
substantially represented at the ICA, though that is
not the case with the more experimental wing of US
cinema: P. Adams Sitneys International Exposition
of the New American Cinema is screened in June
1965, with underground work by Stan Brakhage,
Kenneth Anger, Robert Breer, Stan VanDerBeek
and Jonas Mekas. Concrete poet and ICA stalwart
Bob Cobbing is among those inspired to establish
the London Film-Makers Collective the following
year: critic Raymond Durgnat introduces a festival
of its works, An Underground Movie Trip
(September 1967). But its only in 1968, with the
move to the Mall, that the ICA gets its own cinema
space for the first time, programmed by Hercules
Bellville. In the hectic months of that legendary
spring and summer, Jean-Luc Godards Week End

refused a BBFC certificate and thus shown only
to members is screened (in London making
One Plus One, Godard is scheduled to discuss it
with members, but never shows), as is Emile de
Antonios In the Year of the Pig, rarely seen but
(in Bellvilles words) arguably the finest
documentary about US involvement in Vietnam.
The de-materialisation of art
The new Conceptual art practices of
1960
January
Lecture Glorious Technicolor,
Breathtaking CinemaScope and
Stereophonic Sound (Hamilton)
Symposium on the novel Olivia Manning,
Dan Jacobson, Peter Vansittart (chair:
Karl Miller)
March
Exhibition West Coast Hard-Edge
April
Exhibition Mattia Moreni
Poetry Reading Surrealist poetry (Arp,
Breton, Char, Eluard, Paz, Prvert,
Tzara)
June
Poetry Reading Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes,
Alan Brownjohn, from their work
July
Exhibition Nicholas Schffer:
Spatiodynamic, Cybernetic,
Luminodynamic Sculpture
August
Exhibition Peter Hobbs and Robert Laws
September
Flying visit to Bruges to see The Century
of the Flemish Painters (return flight
6.10.0). Smallish ICA art trips, to
locales nearby and overseas, were a
regular feature of the early 60s
October
Exhibition Mysterious Signs: Imaginative
Responses to the Visual Aspects of the
documentation and growing interests in ecology

are visible in the climactic exhibitions of 1969:
When Attitudes Become Form (August September
1969) and Mark Boyles and Joan Hills exercise in
geography and the random, Journey to the Centre
of the Earth (July 1969). The former, a survey of
nascent Conceptualism, had been first organised in
Berne, but Charles Harrison, member of the English
Art and Language group, recurates the show to
include such British representatives as Victor
Burgin and Bruce McLean.
Signs and Devices of Written

Language, with De Chirico, Malevich,
Kandinsky, Arp, Ernst
1961
Lawrence Alloway resigns as ICA
Programme Director
January
Exhibition Haller and Hollegha
February
Exhibition Peter Stround and Peter
Clough
Lectures (Images Of Tomorrow), with
Lawrence Alloway, On a Planet with
You (Tomorrow as Sociology); John
McHale, The Plastic Parthenon
March
Talks Basil Davidson, Is There an African
Personality? (chair: Neal Ascherson);
Rhoda Kellog, The Scribbling and
Painting of Children (this US
Educationalist supervises several San
Francisco nursery schools and has a
unique collection of child art)
April
Exhibition Nigel Henderson
BBC Television Centre visit (first 25 to
apply for tickets): to be shown all
important departments, including
scenic design
May
Exhibition William Copley
Music Yvonne Loriod plays Olivier
Messiaen, Catalogue dOiseaux (piano)
Visit to Russia (Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev) all-
inclusive 138.15.0, three meals a day

Art and film Programme for Noise, work
by John Latham
Film The American Machiavelli and the
Motivational Film, screening Patterns
of Power (Fielder Cook), an underexhibited masterpiece of the late
American Film of Ideas school
September
Max Ernst party Fund-raising with the
Surrealist himself in attendance
October
Exhibition Picasso is 80
November
Commemorative evening C. J. Jung (chair:
Herbert Read)
Visit Elstree (max: ten people)
Notice The Saturday dance is
discontinued this month after
increasingly poor attendance (it is later
reinstated on a monthly basis)
Film Screening of commercials,
cartoons and scientific films (courtesy
ShellMex Ltd)
1962
January
Exhibition Modern Argentine Painting
and Sculpture
Experimental films IUA Congress
Buildings; Desist Film (Brakhage); The
Lead Shoes; Dom
Talks Design: A Reconnaissance
Design and the Body Arts. 1. Transistor
Radios. 2. Car Controls 3. Chairs
February
Exhibition Two Young Figurative
Painters: Howard Hodgkin and Allen
Jones
Film and Music 1. Music and the Silent
Film. 2. Problems of Sound in Film
March
Exhibition Prizewinners of the John
Moores Exhibition
Film Animated films from Bauhaus to
1962, with John Halas of Halas and
Batchelor
Theatre discussion The Absorbed
Revolution. Have Ken Tynan et al won
respectability at the cost of their edge?
May
Exhibition Sidney Nolan: Early Work
193747
Discussion Does the Present High
Standard of Window Display Design
Extend our Definitions of Fine Art?
June
Exhibition Atelier 17, S. W. Hayter
(19271962)
Poetry some of the poets published by X
Quarterly Review read their poetry
July
Exhibition Four Young Artists: Maurice
Agis, John Rowstead, David Hockney,
Peter Phillips
Talk The Architect as World Planner
October
Exhibition Richard Smith: Recent
Paintings
Talk The Paradox of the Primitive
Influence on Art (with special reference
to the Congress of African Art and
Culture held recently in Salisbury,
Southern Rhodesia)
November
Film Trailer (Robert Freeman, Richard
Smith)
Talk Supermarket USA, Cedric Price on
his recent impressions of everyday
America
December
Exhibition Adami and Romagnoli:
Paintings
1963
January
Exhibition Two Painters from Africa:
Malangatana and Salahi
February
Exhibition Anthony Hill and Gillian Wise:
Relief Structures
Discussion The Africans Image of
Themselves, with Ali Mazrui, John
Mbiti, J. Reindorf, Lewis Nkosi
April
Talk Raymond Durgnat,The Art of
Scaring You to Death
June
Exhibition The Living City
Lecture Marshall McLuhan, Changing
Modes of Perception since TV
August
Exhibition Peter Startup, Sculpture
Discussion Situation Comedy on
Television (first of a series organised by
the Television Viewers Council)
November
The Terry Hamilton Memorial Lecture
is inaugurated in memory of Richard
Hamiltons wife Terry, who died in a car
accident earlier in the year. The first,
The Atavism of the Short-Distance
Minicyclist, is by Reyner Banham
1964
January
Discussion Aspects of Violence with Alex
Comfort, Dr Anthony Storr, Sir Herbert
Read, Ernest Gellner
Three talks on violence R. D. Laing,
Violence and Love; Francis Huxley,
Violence in Tribal Societies; Paul
Mayersberg, Violence in Films
February
Exhibition Violence in Contemporary Art
Talk Raymond Durgnat, Screen Violence
and Sades Integral Man
Film Films of Action and Violence in
Painting, Pollock, Bacon, Karel Appel
April
Exhibition Picabia
May
Exhibition Ad Reinhardt
June
Film International Exposition of the New
American Cinema; African Writers of
Today, filmed in interview, including
Amos Tutuola and Chinua Achebe
August
Lecture Professor Arthur Jores, The
Psychological Aspects of Death
November
Music Caribbean music society
December
Music Experimental music, Morton
Feldman, John Cage, LaMonte Young,
Frederick Rzewksi, Cornelius Cardew
1965
January
Exhibition Arshile Gorky Drawings
Film Two Swamp Dwellers, film of Wole
Soyinkas play
February
Ekistics World Population and the
dwellings crisis, with J. R. James (chief
planner of the Ministry of Housing)
April
Lecture Dom Sylvester Houdard,TypoAbstracts or Typewriter Art, Machine
poetry and poetry-machines
Film Start of a monthly series: Drages
au poivre (with Belmondo); Substitute
and Cow on the Frontier (Yugoslavian
cartoons); Labyrinth (savage Polish
cartoon)
May
Lecture Hankoku Hidai, Japanese
calligraphy
Happening first of three organised by Mark
Boyle, ex-associate of Allan Kaprow
June
Exhibition Antoni Tpies
Lecture Withdrawal, David Chapman on
his experiences as an inmate of a mental
asylum (with slides)
Poetry and jazz Live New Departures,
with Allen Ginsberg
October
Exhibition Between Poetry and Painting
Poetry Reading Sound poetry by Bob
Cobbing and Barry Cole
December
Design Can you read it? Discussion of
the validity of criteria used in assessing
legibility of type-faces
Music Forum with Karlheinz
Stockhausen
Poetry Is Pamela McFrain Cleese
Americas Greatest Poet? Readings
and discussion
1966
A lease for a new ICA location in
Carlton House Terrace on The Mall is

secured with the help of Jennie Lee
(Britains first Minister for the Arts),
Lord Goodman (Harold Wilsons
solicitor and Chairman of the Arts
Council) and then-Labour-MP Robert
Maxwell (who says to Jane Drew, I quite
like you. You are a one-track woman. If
you are prepared to walk up and down
the Embankment with me until the
House votes at two oclock in the
morning, I will introduce you to Healey)
January
Exhibition Traffic Signs and Signals by
Winfred Gaul
Poetry Pomes (anyone welcome to read,
courtesy BBC Light Programme and
Brian Epstein)
Architecture Le Corbusier, slides of
aspects of his work, followed by
a look-in
February
Exhibition Anonima Group
March
Exhibition Dubuffet Drawings
Discussion Design for Music Why Dont
Instruments Change Their Shape?
Lecture John Russell Taylor, Cinema,
Mandarin and Pop, the first Norton
Lectures
April
Lectures Toni del Renzio, The Western
made in Italy; William Cowburn, Popular
housing
May
Event The Resplendent Kaleidoscope, a
celebration of faith dedicated to the
Clear Light an evening of collage:
group exerimentation in CREATIVE
LISTENING splendiferous music,
insense [sic], projections, exhibitions,
plays and poems
June
A major portion of the cost of
relocating the ICA in The Mall is raised
from generous donations by artists.
Two auctions are held in the same year.
The first ICA auction at Sothebys raises
119,350.00
Lecture R. D. Laing, The Experience of
LSD
March
Discussion The Unstable Environment
the Use of Pneumatics in Art and the
Environment
Poetry The Liverpool Scene, Adrian
Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten
April
Art and music Peter Schmidt on a
painters use of sound: tapes and
improvisation
August
Poetry readings Louis and Allen Ginsberg
(father and son)
September
Film An Underground Movie Trip
September
The Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS)
September in London will erupt with a
non-stop [sic] of Happenings,
expendable environments, films, music,
events, demonstrations and
exhibitions. International Times
accuses the Symposium of being
riddled with fear and bad planning
December
Film Peter Kubelkas films are screened
for the first time in Britain at the ICA
ICA move-out party, December 8, with
psychedelic stroboscopic light
projections by Mark Boyle, music by
The Soft Machine
November
Music An evening with Morton Feldman
Terry Hamilton Memorial Lecture R. B. Kitaj,
Go and Get Killed Comrade We Need a
Byron in the Movement
From a theatre background (including
1967
Formerly Head of Mammals at the
Royal Zoological Society, Dr Desmond

Morris becomes Director (Picassos
response: Quelle bonne ide). When
his book The Naked Ape is a bestseller,
he leaves the ICA
Lord Goodman launches an appeal
for anonymous donations, raising
1,500 each from 40 such donors
Generous donations are received
from the Norton Family, the Penroses
and Max Rayne
January
Exhibition Picasso and Concrete
Music The Pink Floyd
Lecture Dr Edmund Leach, Culture and
Nature in the thought of Levi Strauss
1968
a giant political puppetshow in
Trafalgar Square for CND), Michael
Kustow, 28, is appointed Director
The ICA opens its new premises on
The Mall
A Royal premire of Cabaret at the
Palace Theatre raises 4,500
Yoko Ono holds a benefit screening
for the ICA of Film # 4 (in Taking the
Bottoms of 365 Saints of Our Time)
Jonathan Miller is employed to
generate ideas
Sir Herbert Read dies
Membership will soar, from 3,000 to
10,000 as students are encouraged to
become members, the average age
dropping by at least 20 years
April
Talk An afternoon with Buckminster
Fuller, who will think out loud with the
audience about his current
preoccupations
Exhibition The Obsessive Image
19601968, with work by Picasso,
Moore, Bacon, Ernst, Magritte, Mir,
Warhol, Hockney, Cesar, Klein,

Rauschenberg and Lichtenstein
from the Experimental Music Studio of

Illinois (Lejaren Hiller, Herbert Brun)
Theatre The People Show, Walter (Jeff

Nuttall)
May
Discussion Destructive Environment? on
issues raised by The Obsessive Image,
with Jonathan Miller, Edward Lucie
Smith, Richard Hamilton, George Melly,
Robyn Denny, Anthony Storr
Film The ICAs first purpose-designed
cinema opens with a premiere of
Herostratus (Don Levy, with Helen
Mirren): The story of a young man who
sells his own suicide to an advertising
agency
Music Sounds of Discovery: three
experiments in indeterminacy, live
electronics and improvisation. Death
Chant (LaMonte Young) and In C (Terry
Riley), played by the Cornelius Cardew
Ensemble; Spacecraft by Musica
Elettronica Viva; Christian Wolff
September
Talks M. W. Thring, Robots in the Service
of Man; Gordon Pask, Comment on Joy
and Innovation; A. Q. Morton, The
Computer as an Aid to Literary Studies;
Pietro Grossi, The Computer in Music
August
Exhibition When Attitudes Become
Form. Includes works by Carl Andre,
Joseph Beuys, Victor Burgin, Hans
Haacke, Eva Hesse, Yves Klein, Joseph
Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, David
Medalla, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman,
Claes Oldenburg, Robert Ryman,
Richard Serra, Lawrence Weiner,
curated by Harald Szeemann, coordinated in London by Charles
Harrison of Art & Language:
Noticeable in this exhibition is the
absolute freedom in the use of
materials, as well as the concern for the
physical and chemical properties of the
work itself
Music Spontaneous Music Ensemble
play the first of a series of weekly
concerts
Theatre Black Sun Light Group perform
The Assassination Weapon, J. G.
Ballards trans-media search for reality
June 29/30
Event Midsummer High. Saturday:
Morning Raga (Ustad Imrat Khan at the
ICA) followed by Hyde Park Free! (The
Pink Floyd and Tyrannosaurus Rex free
in Hyde Park) and back in the evening
to the ICA (Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band,
The Nice, Juniors Eyes, Plastic Dream
Machine, Films, Occasions, Poets,
Filth.). Sunday: Evening Raga (Ustad
Imrat Khan at the ICA)
July
Event Hornsey Strikes Again
Film Week End (Jean-Luc Godard)
Music The New New Music. Panel
discussion on works by Cage, Babbitt,
Pousseur, Foss, Oliveros, Lucier, Ashley,
Kagel, Wolff, Reich, Ichyanagi
August
Exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity, a
major international exhibition exploring
and demonstrating relationships
between the arts and technology
Music Music composed with and played
by computer, taped computer music
December
The ICA Bulletin is briefly replaced by
an events sheet and The Magazine of
the Institute of Contemporary Arts,
editor Michael Kustow, designer George
Mayhew
Exhibitions Fluorescent
Chrysanthemums; first exhibition in
Europe of contemporary Japanese
sculpture, miniatures, graphics, posters,
new music, films
1969
February
Harry Kissin becomes Chairman of
the ICA, Roland Penrose President
Music The Nice, Van der Graaf
Generator. Progressive pop in an
experimental setting
March
Music All-day performance of Cornelius
Cardews Schooltime Compositions
April
Exhibition Spectrum: The Diversity of
the Photograph 500 photographers
reveal women around the world
MayJuly
Exhibition Mark Boyle: Journey to the
Surface of the Earth, a trans-media
environment in film, sound, light,
painting [sic] and sculpture.
July
Exhibition Young and Fantastic
Music Yes
Talk Ephemerides II, Tom Phillips, with
slides on his treated book A Humument
September
Theatre Grotowskis Laboratory
Company perform The Constant Prince
and Apokalipsis cum Figuris.
October
Exhibition John Heartfield:
Photomontages. Preparations for this
retrospective made while Heartfield
was still alive, in 1967: his own notes
compare Japans 1937 invasion of
Manchuria with the US campaign of
extermination against the Vietnamese
people
Music start of new season of monthly
concerts Integrales (Varse), Chemins
II (Berio), Folkloria (Vinko Globokar)
Theatre TOC, Inter-Actions permanent
experimental theatre company (and the
UKs first such), The Pit
November
Exhibition Play Orbit. An exhibition of
toys and games made by 105 UK artists
Music monthly concert includes music
by Berio, Maxwell Davis, Stockhausen
Cybernetic Serendipity, August 1968, photo: Robert Whitaker
June
Talk Arturo Schwarz on the work of
Marcel Duchamp, in his presence
First Herbert Read Memorial Lecture given
by Max Bill
October
Talk Professor Lionel Penrose, Emeritus
Professor of Human Genetics,
Automatic Mechanical Self-replication
The seventies
Aaargh! A celebration of Comics, December 1970, detail
I joined the ICA in 1974. Edward Heath had given

the ICA 10,000 a year for four years, to organise
manifestations of European culture as Britain
entered the EEC. Nobody else spoke German and
I was given the job of organising a month-long
series of exhibitions, lectures and concerts,
devoted to Germany, that November. This gave me
the opportunity to bring Joseph Beuys to London
for the very first time. Throughout the exhibition
(Art into Society, Society into Art), Beuys arrived at
12pm and stayed each day until 8pm, in permanent
discussion with the general public. The German
exhibition had caused immense political storms
in Germany, including debates in the German
parliament.
Norman Rosenthal, Curator in the 70s
The thing Im most proud of is starting the Fashion
Forum, which ran for two years, spotlighting British
designers. In 1976 this included Vivienne Westwood
and Malcolm McLaren, then embroiled in an
obscenity charge (a T-shirt they were selling in their
shop Sex featured a cowboy exposing himself): a
man had been arrested walking down the street
wearing it, and Vivienne and Malcolm appeared in
court. Malcolm persuaded me to be a character
witness, and in return they then attended a Fashion
Forum evening, devoted to Fetishism. But though
I didnt know it, while we discussed the relative
merits of rubber suits, Malcolm got Johnny Rotten
to set off the fire alarms. And when yellow-rubbersuited Firemen began piling into the building, the
Fashion Forum participants thought it another
cutting edge display by the ICA. Malcolm was keen
for The Sex Pistols to play one of their first gigs at
the ICA. But it wasnt then licensed, and I had to
turn him down, missing the chance to premiere
that world-famous rock band.
Ted Polhemus, ICA programmer in the 70s
Theatres of politics
Political art is transformed in the new climate of
industrial and social unrest. The documentation
processes of conceptual art are given a vivid
political point in Conrad Atkinsons two ICA

exhibitions, Strike at Brannans (May 1972) and
Alienation Programme Project (April 1974). Plays
put on at the new ICA Theatre emphasise radical
political experiences from around the globe, such
as David Hares account of Chinese Communism in
practice, Fanshen (1975), or John Hoylands and
Jon Chadwicks epic of the 1974 Miners Strike, The
Nine Days and Saltley Gates (Summer 1976). (The
scripted live performance, little seen at the ICA in
the 60s, gradually re-establishes itself alongside
improvisation as a significant artistic presence.)
Culture itself unionises: in September 1972, the
newly formed Artists Union begins monthly
meetings at the ICA (300 of Britains 12,000
practising artists will join). Gustav Metzger, pioneer
of Auto-Destructive performances in the 50s and
60s, is prominent in the Union; he also mounts a
powerful exhibition examining the semiotics of
managerial power in Executive Profile (November
1972). Other groups arising from ICA events
mentioned in the listings include All Change (the
transport reform group), Women in Media and the
Environmental Writers Group. The ICA staff is
briefly infiltrated by militant leftists, and curator
Norman Rosenthal is beaten up.
The German connection
In the 50s the USA held a special place in ICA
circles as the epitome of modern culture in terms
of art, cinema and theatre; in the 70s, Germany
attains similar mythical status as a place where
the issues of contemporary art are being resolved.
While Britain lurches into the crisis of the Winter
of Discontent, Germanys catastrophic past and
memories of its flourishing 20s modernist culture
are celebrated in Berlin: a Critical View, Ugly
Realism, 20s/70s (November 1978). Drawings
by Joseph Beuys had been shown earlier in the
decade, as had the important exhibition Art into
Society: Society into Art: Seven German Artists,
curated by Norman Rosenthal, including Hans
Haacke, Metzger and Beuys (November 1974).
The re-examination of Germanys cultural history
is the centrepiece in Hans-Jrgen Syberbergs

Hitler, a Film from Germany, shown as part of
a season of the directors films (1976).
Race and representation
Like the politics of gender and sexuality, the
cultural politics of ethnicity and race emerge as
key concerns at the ICA in the 70s (continuing to
the present). The anthropologically based and
Commonwealth-based presentation of Third
World art in the 50s, emerging from the context
of London as a colonial centre, has evaporated, and
militant counter-representation seizes theatre and
cinema. In January 1973, Horace Ov and Lindsay
Barrett produce the theatre piece Blackblast, a
review of violent moments in the repression of
Africans, complete with a ceremonial whipping
and a re-enactment of a slave-auction. Britannia
Waives the Rules: Empire and Resistance
programmes a series of films disrupting
established British attitudes to race. It includes
Don Letts Reggae Film, Mau Mau and Blacks
Britannia (August 1979).
A womans identity
The second great wave of twentieth-century
feminism comes as the decade begins, rendering
western cultures habitual representations of
women suspect. As a result, it becomes necessary
to run extensive debate and lectures on Sexism
in the Arts alongside the Allen Jones exhibition
(July August 1978). Women as Artists, a
series of lectures by critics Lisa Tickner, Judith
Williamson, Jo Spence and Eva Figes lays the
foundations of feminist art writing in Britain.
The assault on patriarchal attitudes and prejudices
often takes the form of new and mixed media
presentations: a significant early example of this,
using projection and film formats, is the innovative
theatre of Midge Mackenzies Me Tarzan You Jane
(April 1970). Its comic narrative is matched by
performance artist Bobby Baker in her Portrait
of the Artist as a Housewife (June 1977).
The body in question
The human body is rediscovered, and throughout
the 70s it is identified at the ICA as a battleground
for the contending forces of gender, class, sexuality
and race. The essential body is given priority in

Jonathan Benthalls and Ted Polhemus series
of lectures and events The Body as a Medium of
Expression (September 1972): Both within and
outside the arts, there is growing speculation that
the patterns of western culture may have become
over-conditioned by the resources of verbal
language at the expense of other, perhaps more
fundamental, methods of expression and
communication. As a pendant to this series,
Janet Street Porter organises a multi-media
performance, The Body Show (November 1972).
The nurturing female body is central to what
becomes thanks to a sensationalising press
one of the most contentious ICA exhibitions, Mary
Kellys Post-Partum Document (September 1976),
a serious investigation of social conditioning of
mother and child into their sexual roles. From 1976,
Queer and gay identities are dramatised in the
ICA Theatre by the Gay Sweatshop troupe.
Moral panics: performance at the limit of abjection
A scandal round Prostitution (October 1976),
an exhibition with performances by COUM
Transmissions Genesis P. Orridge, Cosey Fanny
Tutti and Sleazy Christopherson (later to form
industrial noise group Throbbing Gristle) following
on from Post-Partum Document precipitates
a flood of hate mail. All this profoundly unsettles
the funding and management of the ICA. The
perception that disgusting and transgressive
behaviour at the ICA is being funded by the Arts
Council of Great Britain the soiled sanitary
napkins and babies nappies in Kellys show, the
tampons in Prostitution coincides with another
major moral panic: the explosive appearance of
Punk. Coum Transmissions only stays up four
days, the moral backlash is so violent.
Music: in good company
In January 1970, guitarist Derek Bailey and
saxophone player Evan Parker play an improvised
music show under the rubric Company: returning to
the ICA regularly into the 80s, this will become one
of improvised musics major annual events, without
ever losing its intimate flavour, bringing together
many of the worlds great improvising names
(Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, Han Bennink,
Misha Mengelberg, Leo Smith, Johnny Dyani). The

attempt to make the ICA a centre for Progressive
Rock in the late 60s had fallen foul of this genres
vulgarisation and consequent massive popularity:
as a venue, the ICA was just too small. But it
remains throughout the 70s a home to the New
New music, the school of post-John Cage
experimentalism that ranged from extreme Fluxustype conceptualism to the increasingly polite
minimalism of Steve Reich.
1970
Peter Cook of Archigram is appointed
Director of the ICA
Jasia Reichardt programmes the
ICAs first series of talks on linguistics,
to record attendances
March
Exhibition Picasso: 347 Engravings
Film Actuality Films season, including
Terry Whitmore for Example (Bill
Brodie), about a black Vietnam war
deserter, and Women Talking (Midge
Mackenzie); films on Picasso by Edward
Quinn, Nellie Caplan, Jean Desvilles
Talks Peter Porter on Auden; Alan
Brownjohn on Larkin
April
Discussion Octavio Paz, Charles
Tomlinson and Michael Hamburger on
translating work from Holderlin to
Enzensburger
Multi-media film-based investigation Midge
Mackenzie looks at womens roles in Me
Tarzan You Jane
Music Music Improvisation Company,
with Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Hugh
Davies, Jamie Muir
Talk John Golding and Sir Roland
Penrose on Picasso
June
Lecture Alan Watts, Man and the
Universe as One, on Zen Buddhism and
the Esalen Institute
Exhibition Vibrating World deals with the
visible effects of sound as matter: An
ordinary soap bubble is vibrated and
the original sphere begins to change
shape as rhythmic pulsations gather
strength within its surface. As the
Kids lib
The late 60s was committed to rediscovering
the child inside the adult, as an important strand
of ICA programming: an early example being
Inter-Actions Professor R. L. Doggs Human Flee
Circus (January 1972), an afternoon-long piece
staged daily, and free, to any child who brings
a painting or similar. Monthly programming
directed at children continues throughout the
70s and 80s.
frequency changes, the bubble

becomes a versatile pulsating
polyhedron, its movement and
geometry constantly changing
Reading Michael S. Harper, black US
poet, from Dear John, Dear Coltrane
Lecture Rhythmic Organisation of Cells
and Embryos by Dr Brian Goodwin
Performance Claes Oldenburg,
Documents of the Ray Gun Theatre
196265 (film, monologue, slides.
music)
July
Exhibition Contemporary African Art
Slide show Peter Mayer, 3000 Years of
Visual Poetry
Reading Tennessee Williams reads his
own work
August
Exhibition British Sculpture out of the
60s, with King, Turnbull and Caro
September
Lectures Ecology in Theory and
Practice: Mary Douglas, anthropologist,
Human Ideas of Pollution; Raymond
Williams, Mans Ideas of Nature
Art Films season: Richard Hamilton
(James Scott); Link (Derek Boshier);
Vertical (David Hall); Soft Orange
(Robert Graham and Antony
Donaldson); Duncan Grant at
Charleston (Christopher Mason)
November
ICA Oriental Programme begins, a series
on Moghul culture (architecture, poetry,
music)
Exhibition Issigonis, drawings of the UK
industrial designer of the Morris Minor
and the Mini
December
Exhibitions Richard Smith; Mark Boyle;
AAARGH! A Celebration of Comics
1971
Stephen Spender and W. H. Auden
launch the new ICA year of events

January
Theatre Bristow, based on Frank
Dickens Evening Standard cartoon
strip character
Talk Jean-Marie Benoist on The
Linguistic Art of the Comic-Strip
Film Concerts by Jimi Hendrix, The Pink
Floyd, Incredible String Band
February
Exhibition Dieter Roth: Piccadilly Series
19631970
Science British Society for Social
Responsiblity in Science begins
monthly meetings, with Professor Imre
Lakatos and Dr Jerry Ravetz on
Science and anti-science
March
Exhibition Electric Theatre, 25 Artists
working with Light and Space
Film Reggae (Horace Ov), Kanal, Ashes
and Diamonds (Wajda), Pather
Panchali, World of Apu (Satyajit Ray)
Music The Steve Reich Ensemble
Discussion Solzhenitsyn as writer
Talk Nathan Silver on Consumer Power
in the Design Supermarket
May
Lecture first of four evenings with Jorge
Luis Borges
June
Lecture A. Alvarez, Art and Suicide
Oriental Programme Sufism
October
Exhibition Picasso in London
Lecture Dada or the meaning of chaos:
Richard Huelsenbeck reports on his life
November
Event The World of Islam is the first
major festival about the Muslim world
to be held in the West
Talk Richard Rogers, Plans for the
Plateau Beaubourg Centre in Paris
(postponed until January)
December
Exhibition Eugene Atget
1972
January
Film The Switchboard Operator,
Innocence Unprotected (Makavejev)
Talk Into the Videosphere, an enquiry
into the implications of video-cassettes
Music Stockhausen, Mixtur, conducted
by Pierre Boulez at The Roundhouse.
(Three lectures by Stockhausen at the
ICA are postponed until February)
Performance Inter-Action, Professor R. L.
Doggs Human Flee Circus
February
Installation By environmental housing
group PSSHAK (Primary Systems
Support Housing/Assembly Kits)
Exhibition William Messer and Andrew
Lanyon, photography
Theatre UK premiere Rainer Werner
Fassbinder, Pre-Paradise Sorry Now
March
Talks (Limits of Human Nature series):
Raymond Williams, Social Darwinism in
Social Theory and Imaginative
Literature; Wole Soyinka
April
Exhibition City Sculpture Project
Film Dynamite Chicken (Pintoff); Robert
Having His Nipple Pierced (Daley) with
Robert Mapplethorpe; Magic Lantern, a
screening of Kenneth Angers entire
oeuvre
Talks Social Aspects of the Law, Roger

Rideout on the role of the law in
guaranteeing workers and employees
rights; Julia Kristeva on the linguistic
problem of subjectivity; Cornelius
Cardew on politics and on the Scratch
Orchestra, his orchestra of nonmusicians founded with Michael
Parsons and Howard Skempton in 1969
(in 1971 a Scratch Orchestra concert
was banned by Newcastle Civic Centre)
Discussion The Truth about Cinema
Verit, with Roger Graef, Tony Garnett
and Colin Young
May
Exhibitions Conrad Atkinson,
documenting the social structure of a
strike at a small provincial factory, with
tapes, photography, film and video; US
Posters of Protest 19661971
Discussion Beuys pro and con
Film Sculptor David Halls Vertical (1969,
one of the first artists films funded by
the Arts Council); 7 TV Pieces;
Timecheck
Talk Is the Rock and Roll Lyric Getting
Anywhere? (Clive James)
Lecture John Cage and David Tudor, to
coincide with Cages sixtieth birthday
concert in London
Architectural Forum Paul Oliver and Nick
Houghton discuss Peruvian Barridas,
squatter settlements
June
Talk The Nomadic Alternative (Bruce
Chatwin)
Architectural Forum Travel Without
Traffic Feet First. Objections to
motorways existing or threatened have
spawned many groups protesting
against individual projects
All-day workshops with Encounter Groups
Run by Qaesitor, including Microlab, a
Gestalt demonstration and a
Psychodrama demonstration
July
Exhibition Graham Metson: Western
Tantric
Members Forum Jasia Reichardt
experiments with a new kind of lecture
in the form of a story with pictures,
without deeper meaning, on Warhol
and things as they are
August
Exhibition Remember Bangladesh?
September
The ICA calendar and news-sheet is
reformulated as a magazine, called
ICAsm (from a seventeenth-century
Greek-derived word Icasm meaning a
figurative expression)
The Body as a Medium of Expression to
explore mans other resources of
communication gesture, movement,
signals, non-verbal sounds by means
of both logocentric lectures and
participatory events
Lecture Ted Polhemus, Social Bodies
Theatre Roy Hart, Theatre of the Cry
Film The Body in Cinema, includes The
Body (Roy Battersby)
Exhibition Shona Sculptors from Africa
(opening delayed by dock strike)
October
Dance Robert Solomon of the London
School of Contemporary Dance leads
Dance for Pedestrians workshops: you
are creating dance-movements all the
time: jay-walking, pressing lift-buttons,
typing, swivelling your swivel-chair.
Lectures Body as a Medium of
Expression series: Paralinguistics; The
Body as Social Metaphor; Body Politics;
Animal and Human Communications;
Imaginary Bodies; Movement and
Form; lecture/demonstration by
National Theatre of the Deaf; Towards
a Dancing World; Witchdoctoring, Zar
and Voodoo in relation to modern
psychiatric movements
November
Exhibitions Geoffrey Teasdale, Glynn
Williams, David Medalla, John Dugger,
Gustav Metzger; Gustav Metzgers
Executive Profile, an analysis in depth
of the image of society projected by the
City Pages of the establishment
newspapers
Lectures Body as a Medium of
Expression series: Race, Skin and
Bones as Culture; The Image of God, or
Two Yards of Skin
The Body Show staged byJanet Street
Porter, designed by Piers Gough. In a
mirrored hall, the public participate in
the use of body toys, including scents,
make-up and fluorescent body-paints

(supplied by Mary Quant, Beauty
Without Cruelty and other sponsors)
Film Lonesome Cowboys, My Hustler,
Bike Boy (Warhol)
1973
Ted Little becomes Director
January
Alienation season: films (including
Claude Faraldos Themroc and Mike
Leighs Bleak Moments) and
discussions; also Lenny Bruce without
Tears (Fred Baker)
Film Borowczyks The Theatre of Mr.
and Mrs. Kabal combines live action
and animation; Zwartjes season (Fan,
Toilet, Living, Spare Bedroom, Seats
Two, Amanuensis); Melvin Van Peebles
Watermelon Man
Theatre Blackblast, ritual black theatre
with music and dance
Exhibition Cheer Up: Its Archigram. In
the radical architectural group are Ron
Herron, Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Mike
Webb, Dennis Crompton, David Green
Talk Morton Feldman, with a concert at
St. John Smith Square
March (French month)
Lectures Jacques Derrida; Michel
Foucault
April
Exhibition Ernst Neivestny, lithographs
by the USSR Sculptor
Film Sympathy for the Devil
May
Exhibition Navajo Blankets
June
Music Alvien Lucier, electronic and
environmental music, including
Hyberb/Vifarb
Poetry Poetry International, including
Ginsberg and Auden
Film Chinese Sundays includes Hong
Kong Action films
July
Exhibition Works for the Museo de la
Solidaridad Chile
August
Exhibition Home Sweet Home, an
exhibition of LCC/GLC Housing
Music Derek Bailey, Han Bennink
Theatre Steven Berkoff and London
Theatre Group perform Zoo Story
(Edward Albee); Miss Julie (Strindberg)
Lecture Malcolm Muggeridge, The Great
Liberal Death Wish
Film The Apparition Theatre of New
York (Ken Jacobs)
October
Exhibitions Tom Phillips: A Humument;
Illusion in Science, Nature and Art
Lecture Ted Polhemus on Fashion &
Anti-Fashion
1974
February
Music RPO gives open rehearsals and
performances of 20th Century works at
the ICA (including Goehr, Bliss and
Richard Rodney Bennett)
March
Exhibition Basically, white, White art
from Malevich to the present
Talk Fritjof Capra, Modern physics and
Eastern philosophy
April
Alienation season, including films
(Themroc again) and talks from
Raymond Williams and Huw Beynon
Exhibition Conrad Aitkinson
Theatre Dick Deterred, a satire by
David Edgar on Watergate, based
on Richard III
July
Music Brotherhood of Breath (South
African jazz, featuring Chris McGregor)
September
Exhibitions Architecture without
Architects; Mathematics for the
Majority
Symposium Politics and Modern Dance
November (German Month)
Exhibition Art into Society Society into
Art (includes Joseph Beuys, Gustav
Metzger, Hans Haacke)
Discussion Townplanning (Hans G.

Helms, former collaborator of Cage,
Stockhausen)
1975
ICA SF75 Season, devoted to all
aspects of science fiction

January
Exhibitions Bernd and Hilla Becher;
Visions of the Future, Science Fiction
exhibition
Talks Professor John Taylor, Scientific
Thought in Fiction and Fact; Ursula
LeGuin, Science Fiction and Mrs Brown
Ten film discussions on Science Fiction,
devised and chaired by Philip Strick
February
Talk Alvin Toffler on Future Shock and
Global Revolution
Theatre RSC in Babies Grow Old (Mike
Leigh)
March
Exhibitions Jo Feller, photographs;
Richard Allen, Visual Systems
Talk An Evening with Stan Lee
(originator of Marvel Comix)
April
Exhibition Man Ray
Music Celebration of Erik Satie
Dance Dance Theatre Commune,
Constant Change
Theatre Joint Stock, Fanshen (David
Hare), which wins The Guardian Award
for Best New Play
Film Antonio das Muertes
June
Exhibition Jimmy Boyle Sculptures
Film Super-8 programme, including
works by Derek Jarman, Robin Wall
July
Exhibition Marcel Broodthaers
Dance Diane Rothenberg, Nikki Cole
August
Exhibition Eugene Smith Minamata
Performance John Bull
September
Exhibition Mario Merz; Art & Language
at the ICA
Greek Season (till December)
November
Music Greek composers, including
Iannis Xenakis, Nikos Skalkottos
December
Exhibition Problems in the City
1976
January
Exhibitions Max Ernst; Audre Cadere
Film Festival of Expanded Theatre, work
outside conventional cinema
Performance Trevor Wishart, Machine, an
electronically preserved dream
Theatre Gay Sweatshops first ICA
season (attack the complacent
acceptance of gays and hets alike of
the second class imposed, like
stigmata, on homosexuals and the
limited tolerance extended to gays by
self-styled liberals); Steven Berkoff,
Metamorphosis; Fall of the House of
Usher
February
Poetry Festival of Ulster Poetry
Talk Trevor Griffiths
April
Exhibitions Lawrence Weiner; Gavin
Jantjes; Wind and Water (Feng Shui);
Megalithic Sites
One Woman Show Sally Potter
May
Exhibition John Murphy
One Woman Show Rose English
June
Exhibition Douglas Huebler
One Man Show Harry Kipper
Film Louis Malle; films on India
August
Exhibition Dan Graham
September
Exhibitions Mary Kelly: Post-Partum
Document; Images of an Era, the
American Poster 194575
October
Exhibition Coum Transmissions present
PROSTITUTION
November
Exhibition David Tremlett
December
Music The Progressive Cultural
Association (a Maoist grouping), play
Songs for Our Society (John Tilbruy),
Five Anti-Fascist Songs (Dave Smith),
Four Folk Songs fom NSheni and
Revolutionary Songs (Yin ChengTsung), followed by discussion
September
Yoga at the ICA
Exhibition Peter Kennard
Theatre Gay Sweatshop, As Time Goes
By
October
Music Tony Oxley, Evan Parker, Philip
Wachsmann, Company (Bailey, Parker,
Leo Smith, Johnny Dynni)
Talk The Future of London Below
Ground, by Ellis Hillman of the GLC,
chairman of the London Subterranean
Survey Association
Bill McAllister becomes Director
November
Exhibition Selling Dreams, British and
American Film Posters, 18901976
Dance Moving Being, Complex Oedipus
January
Exhibition Malevich; Unofficial Art from
the Soviet Union
Dance Umbrella 78 inaugurates the
1977
February
Exhibition Richard Hamilton, Dieter Roth
March
Discussion Censorship and control
Theatre Joint Stock, A Thought in Three
Parts
April
Theatre The Art and Company, Letters
from K and Story
Talk David Allen, Zero the Hero, the
Octave Doctors and Planet Gong
May
Music Company Week (Bailey, Parker,
Lacy, Braxton, Lol Coxhill et al)
June
Performance Portrait of the Artist as a
Housewife, Bobby Baker
July
Music Spontaneous Music Ensemble;
Derek Baileys Company; Mike
Westbrook Brass Band
August
Theatre Tembu Theatre Company,
Sherry Wine, Blood Knot (Athol Fugard)
1978
yearly London dance festival: this year
with Remy Charlip and Sara Rudner
January
Lecture An evening with Frederick
Douglass
February
Debate The State of British Art
Theatre Het Werkteater, Youve Got to
Live and Scared to Death
March
Exhibition James Collins: The man who
watched the world
April
Talk Polanyis Poetry, the aesthetic
theory of Polish philosopher Michael
Polanyi
Film Take It Like a Man, Maam
(Elisabeth Rygard)
May
Seminar Lucy Lippard on Feminism and
the Visual Arts
Music Company Week (Bailey, Misha
Mengelberg, Leo Smith, Terry Day et al)
Talk Michael Druks on Ambiguous
Definitions
June
Exhibition Andy Warhol: Athletes
(Warhol: Theyre the new movie stars;

more intelligent and more beautiful
than movie stars, as great as rock stars;
they are bigger than rock stars)
Performance An Art Supermarket, Bobby
Baker
July
Exhibition Allen Jones: Graphics
195878
August
Exhibition Whos Who: A Tribute by the
Fans. Who fan memorabilia
Discussion Sexism in the arts
Theatre Richard OBrien, Disaster; Hull
Truck Theatre Company, The Great
Caper
Film Punk in London documentary
(Wolfgang Bld)
September
Exhibition Eileen Lawrence
Theatre Shared Experience, Science
Fictions (improvised works)
Film Une partie de plaisir (Chabrol)
October
Exhibition Glen Onwin: the recovery of
dissolved substances
November
Exhibition Berlin: A Critical View Ugly
Realism 20s/70s
Music Toyah celebrates Guy Fawkes
Film FTA (Jane Fonda)
Theatre Heathcote Williams The
Immortalist
1979
January
Exhibition Photography as Art: Art as
Photography
Theatre The Warp: an epic cycle of 10
plays, Neil Oram with Ken Campbell and
Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool
February
Exhibition New Contemporaries
Music Giancinto Scelsi; Plastic Platypus
Theatre Teendreams, David Edgar and
Susan Todd (of Monstrous Regiment)
March
Exhibitions Amikam Toren; Shelagh
Wakeley; Peter Cannon; Alabama 40

Years on
Music Hanns Eisler; Alvin Lucier
Reading: Yevgeny Yevtushenko
April
Exhibitions Kandinsky: The Art of the
Invisible; Christos Running Fence
Theatre Socialist Theatre Season, Foco
Novo, The Nine Days and Saltley Gates;
The Womens Theatre Group, Work to
Role; The Monstrous Regiment, SCUM:
Death, Destruction and Dirty Washing;
Brian Phelan, Article Five
May
Exhibitions Denis Masi: Tableaux; Adolf
Wlfli
Discussion Peasantry today. Speakers:
John Berger, Eric Hobsbawm, Raymond
Williams
Theatre Ken Campbell and the Science
Fiction Theatre of Liverpool, The HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas
Adams)
Theatre The Lovely and Talented

Theatre Band, The Wild Boys (William
Burroughs); Snoo Wilson, The Beast
November
Talks J. G. Ballard; James Baldwin
Music Support the Irish People, Peoples
Liberation Music play historical Irish
songs, Irish instrumental music, new
songs about the situation; AngloAmerican Music at the ICA (works by
Mario Davidovsky, Jonathan Harvey,
Stanley Haynes, developer of Bell Labs
breathrough Musics V computer
programme; Fred Rzewski; SEM
Ensemble (Jackson Mac Low and Phill
Niblock); Petr Kotick
Theatre Snoo Wilson, Flaming Bodies
July
Multi-media spectacle Taller Amsterdam,
Cronus II
Theatre Best in Contemporary British
Theatre, including Steve Grant, Marx &
Sparks; Lumiere & Son, Dogs; The Hot
Peaches, The Divas of Sheridan Square;
Black Theatre of Brixton, Dark Days,
Light Nights (Jamal Ali amusingly pits
Black Power against Cock Power)
Exhibition Paul Neagu: Sculpture
August
Exhibition Japanese Photography Today
and its Origins
Music Company Week
September
Exhibitions Braco Dimitrijevic:
Photographs and Installations; Images
of an Era; Don McCullin: The
Palestinians
October
Exhibition Tim Pages Nam
Music Option Band play three days of
non-stop music, including works by Luc
Ferrari, David Bedford, George Crumb,
Hugh Davies, Gerald Finzi, Brian
Ferneyhaugh, Iannis Xenakis
The eighties
Laurie Anderson presides over the post-modern 80s at the ICA
Politics and memorials

The abrasive turbulence of the politicised art
of the 70s was giving way to more allusive and
melancholy forms. Rita Donaghs and Richard
Hamiltons A Cellular Maze (April 1984) movingly
represents human and architectural traces of the
internment camp in the North of Ireland. In August
1985 Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko makes
extraordinary interventions in the night-time
metropolitan fabric by projecting slides of
subversive imagery long-distance, onto memorials
and buildings nearby the ICA, including a Nazi
swastika onto the pediment of the South African
Embassy and a US Cruise missile onto Nelsons
Column. 18 Oktober 1977, Gerhard Richters
ambitious photo-based attempt to paint the
traumas of recent German history and the agonies
of terrorism and the state, exhibits only months
before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
disintegration of the Soviet empire (August 1989)
after the Russian installation artist Ilya Kabakovs
The Untalented Artist and Other Characters earlier
the same year (February 1989).
The empire of theory
Although Julia Kristeva had spoken at the ICA
as early as 1971, as had various Parisian scholars
and critics during March 1973s French Month,
including Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault,
the full impact of the revolution in French thought
and philosophical thinking wrought by these and
others (Roland Barthes, Jean-Franois Lyotard) is
not registered at the ICA until the mid-80s, when
artists and performers across a wide range of
media begin to find it of vital concern. Barthes
dies in 1980, but it is Foucaults death in 1984
that is the focus for the French Legacies series
of lectures and seminars (November December
1984). The ICA catalyst is Lisa Appignanesi,
organiser of the major two-day conference A
question of Post-Modernity (May 1985) at which
Lyotard re-announces for the benefit of a UK
audience the death of the author and of
universal structures of thought.
The coming of age of photography as the

post-structuralist art
Though a return to painting marks the early 80s,
younger artists in London and New York turn to
photography to produce complex works influenced
by post-structuralism and associated critical
theory. The Five Photographers exhibition
(February 1981) draws together the students of
Victor Burgin: Karen Knorr, Olivier Richon, Andrew
Cameron, Mitra Tarbizan and Mark Lewis. In
Richard Princes appropriationist Re-Photography
show (May June 1983), advertising photographs
take on a ghostly, vampiric afterlife, while Jeff Wall
uses gigantic colour transparencies to compose
allegories of contemporary social life (May June
1984). London first sees Robert Mapplethorpes
portrayals of lites and Queer sub-cultures at the
ICA (November December 1983).
New York renaissance
New York is producing much of the most
effective and energetic fine art and video, new
music and performance of today: since its
founding, the ICA had maintained an emphasis on
European modernism though in the late 50s
Lawrence Alloway had been crucial in bringing the
rise of Abstract Expressionism and Hard Edge in
painting to the notice of a London art public.
Similarly, in the early 80s, Exhibitions Director
Iwona Blaswick is alert to the emergence of new
directions from the USA, in this case a figurative
but deconstructive art from New York. The ICA:
NY season (October 1982) comprises not only
Keith Harings graffiti art and Cindy Shermans
photographs in the Urban Kisses exhibition, but
also the new music and performance art of Laurie
Anderson and the manic comedy of Eric Bogosian.
A thin black line
The twin concerns of a more ethnically
representative art and the status of women artists
are advanced by young artist and curator Lubaina
Himid when she organises The Thin Black Line
exhibition (October 1985). This comprises
installations as well as a large gallery display by

Afro-Caribbean and Asian women artists at an
early point in their career, including Sonia Boyce,
Maud Sulter, Ingrid Pollard, Brenda Agard and
Himid herself. This work ironically undermines
powerfully embedded political assumptions,
through orienting itself towards issues of race and
culture as when Himid short-circuits Picassos
primitivism by re-appropriating it into a racially
self-reflexive art. The discussion in May 1986,
The Struggle for Black Arts in Britain, chaired
by Kwesi Owusu, hints in name at least at a more
confrontational racial politics more usually
associated with the early 70s (or indeed the
early 90s), and not often broached at the ICA.
The triumph of women artists
The 80s sees the presence at the ICA of a diversity
of women artists and performers. In late 1980 a
rich sequence of exhibitions consolidates the nowsalient position of feminist art in the cultural
landscape: Sarah Kent curates Womens Images
of Men (October 1980); Lucy Lippards Issue:
Socia Strategies by Women Artists (November
December 1980) and About Time Video,
Performance and Installation by 21 Women Artists
(October 1980), showing Susan Hiller, Roberta
Graham, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Rose Gerrard and Bobby
Baker. These exhibitions are complemented by a
landmark conference, Questions on Womens Art
(November 1980). Many of the new wave of theorybased US artists at the ICA in the 80s are women
who have found new formats for their critiques,
such as Jenny Holzers electronic digital signage
of (April 1983; December 1988) or Barbara Krugers
declamatory photo-text pieces, We Wont Play
Nature to Your Culture (November 1983). This
last coincides with a conference on Desire at
which Julia Kristeva, Marina Warner and Mary
Kelly all speak. Two high points of conceptually
sophisticated deconstructive photographic work
addressing questions of gender and sexuality
are Difference (September 1985) and Helen
Chadwicks installation Of Mutability (May 1986).
The birth of the C inematheque
During the 70s, certain underground and art
directors met with approval (Anger, Fellini, Warhol,
Satyajit Ray), and classic rock movies (Pink

Floyd, Hendrix) were often shown, but perhaps
reflecting a decade where cinemas dynamism was
to be found in the Hollywood mainstream (and the
high-street movie theatres) the ICA Cinema did
not enjoy the profile it was to establish later. The
establishment of the Cinematheque in 1981 is a
crucial turning point. The first Cinematheque
programme is The Art Film: Documentary and
Documentation (which includes documentaries
on Hockney, Kitaj, Hamilton and Oldenburg). The
second is a groundbreaking season of Super-8
films, by John Maybury and Ceryth Wyn Evans. In
November 1981, a pioneering conference is held
How Can You Take Film Seriously? in which both
television and cinema are discussed comparatively.
In January 1984, New Yorks Electronic Arts
Intermix combines with the ICA to present
videoworks by Bill Viola, Nam June Paik and others.
Asian cinema
A one-off ICA Chinese Festival in 1973 had flirted,
fashionably, with Maoism. Far more substantially,
the ICA from the 1980s is the focus of a genuinely
coherent examination of Asian moviemaking,
under the auspices of several cinema directors,
and advisor and programmer Tony Rayns. The
screening of Chen Kaiges Yellow Earth in 1986
is seminal in establishing the visibility and
seriousness of Chinese film for British audiences.
ICA Cinema extends its activities to begin
acquiring and distributing films.
Weeks of rock
Though jazz, improvised music and avant-garde
composition all continued to feature regularly
(with the yearly Actual festivals, and the musICA
concerts), the key innovation of the 80s was a
response to punk, the Rock Week, which occurred
several times a year to showcase new groups not
yet signed to major labels and little seen in the
capital: The Associates, The Au Pairs, Josef K,
Orange Juice, Cabaret Voltaire, Haircut 100,
Aztec Camera, The Smiths, the Cocteau Twins,
Prefab Sprout, Bronski Beat, Billy Bragg and
Sonic Youth were among those featured early
in their respective careers. German noise-group
Einstrzende Neubaten, famous for their use
of industrial machinery as instrumentation, used

road drills to dig up the ICA stage, intending, they
claimed, to drill through to the tunnels which
connect Buckingham Palace to Downing Street:
they caused much damage, and a large bill legend
says was never paid. After videos by Public Image
Ltd, Suicide and Brian Eno featured at an ICA avantgarde film festival in 1981, a yearly show of the best,
most innovative and most bizarre promos was
instituted at the Cinematheque. Ugly Actions,
programmed by the NMEs Dessa Fox in 1985 6,
showed work from The Residents, Crass, Mark
Pauline, Cabaret Voltaire, Talking Heads and Devo.
Live arts from margins to mainstream
For a time, GLC funding allows a Live Arts ecology
to flourish London-wide. Dance Umbrella, started
in 1978, will continue to use the ICA as one of its
1980
January
Dance Dance Umbrella 80
February
Exhibition Without Walls: part of A Sense
of Ireland: John Aiken, James Coleman,
Felim Egan, Brian King, Ciaran Lennon,
Alanna OKelly, Michael OSullivan,
Nigel Rolfe, Noel Sheridan
Talk The Future of a Different Past,
seminars on Irish contemporary politics
Theatre Science Fiction Theatre of
Liverpool (director Ken Campbell),
Flann OBrien, The Third Man
March
Talks Margaret Atwood; Dora Russell
April
Exhibition Robert Frank, selections of
photographs
Theatre Martin Duncan and David Ultz,
Merrie Prancks, opera/ballet/
pantomime (not for the faint of heart)
Theatre Pip Simmons Theatre Group,
Towards a Nuclear Future
Talk Professor Bernard Williams and his
committee on The Obscenity
Film British Independent Film-making
(Peter Greenaway, Sally Potter, Jenni
Whitman)
venues into the 90s, LIFT and the London

Mime Festival following suit. From Monstrous
Regiments upfront politics (Shakespeares
Sister, December 1980) to Jan Fabres
monumental absurdism (This Is Theatre Like
It Was to Be Expected and Foreseen, May 1983),
the ICA fosters diverse approaches. In less monied
times, thrift smiles more on solo performance-art
work (Laurie Booth, Eurishima, June 1986) and
aggressively chaotic spectacle (Fura dels Baus,
November 1985), but the ICAs role in nurturing
performers at early, often radical stages of their
development remains crucial: Neil Bartlett and
Theatre de Complicit (More Bigger Snacks Now,
September 1985) will (separately) rewire the 90s
theatre mainstream, while People Show alumnus
Mike Figgis (Redheugh, January 1981) storms
Hollywood.
Japanese season includes industrial

design and posters
May
Talks Marilyn French; Joseph Heller;
Alvin Toffler
June
Theatre Writers Guild, Vaclav Havel,
Protest
July
Exhibition Feliks Topolski, Chronicles
19301980
Theatre The People Show No. 79
Talk Peter Fuller, Art and
Psychoanalysis
August
Exhibitions Roland Penrose; Artemisia:
12 painters interpret the theme of
Judith and Holofernes by Artemisia
Gentileschi; Jenny Okun: Photographs
September
Theatre Circus Lumire (David Gale)
Music Rock Week (including Toyah)
Talk Mark E. Smith on the music
industrys hard-sell attitude
October
Exhibitions Womens Images of Men, 35
women artists; About Time Video,
Performance and Installation by 21

Women Artists
Theatre People Show Cabaret, Andy
Smith and Sail-Joia
Music Impetus magazine benefit with
Robert Fripp and Keith Tippett
Talks Adrienne Rich on her new book On
Lies Secrets and Silence; Womens
Own: Seminars, on womens film,
women in television
November
Conference Questions on Womens Art
Theatre Moving Being, Body Politic
Event Dale Spender on Man-Made
Language
December
Theatre Monstrous Regiment,
Shakespeares Sister
Music Westbrook Brass Band, Bright as
Fire, interpretation of Blakes poetry
1981
The ICA Cinematheque opens in April
January
Exhibitions Hannah Collins and Ron
Haselden. Drawings 197980; Glen
Baxter: Drawings and Watercolours,
1970 1980
Music Rock Week (Caberet Voltaire,
Orange Juice, Blue Orchids)

Theatre Theatre not Plays, theatre
projects from Holland, Belgium and
Britain; Mike Figgis, Redheugh
February
Exhibition Five Photographers: Andrew
Cameron, Karen Knorr, Mark Lewis,
Olivier Richon, Mitra Tarbizan
Film screenings of Henry Jagloms
Sitting Ducks; A Safe Place; Tracks
March
Exhibition A Continuing Process: The
New Creativity in British Art Education
19551965
April
Exhibition Stuart Brisley
Talks Shirley Williams: Politics is for
People; Salman Rushdie discusses
Midnights Children with Marina Warner
Cinematheque The Art Film:
Documentary and Documentation
Theatre Tom McGrath, 1-2-3, his Pork
Cycle of Misery Plays
May
Music Derek Bailey and Company
June
Exhibitions Objects and Sculpture.
Richard Deacon, Antony Gormley,
Anish Kapoor and Peter Randall-Page;
Edward Allington, Jean-Luc Vilmouth,
Bill Woodrow, Margaret Organ
Performance Love Bites (Chris Hawes);
Ella (Herbert Achternbusch); Women in
Theatre (discussion: Fidelis Morgan,
Julie Holledge, Micheline Wandor)
Cinematheque New Romantic Cinema or
A Certain Sensibility, John Maybury
and Ceryth Wyn Evans present their
Super-8 films
Discussion The Poet as Historical
Witness
July
Exhibitions Peter Kennard: Images for
Disarmament; Future communities,
seven architects; Cover versions,
recent record covers
Film Jon Jost season
Cinematheque Peter Greenaway, Chris
Monger, Elisabeth Kozmian-Ledward
August
Theatre The London International
Festival of Theatre (LIFT), Theatr
Provisorium (Poland); Het Werkteater
(Holland); Cuatroblas (Peru). LIFT
Forum: Reviewing the Visual towards
a new critical language. Michael
Coveney, John Fox, Hilary Westlake
Conference Nukespeak, the Politics of
Nuclear Disarmament, with James
Cameron, Michael Tracy, Guy Brett and
Peter Kennard
September
Exhibitions New American Colour
Photography; The Disgusting Spectacle
and Other Machines, Tim Hunkins
inventions
Theatre Lucky Strike, a Hrant Alianak
feature; the Womens Theatre Group,
New Anatomies by Timberlake
Wertenbaker
October
Exhibition Jonathan Borofsky,
installation
Discussion Old Mistresses: Women, Art
and Ideology, Rozsika Parker, Griselda
Pollock
Film Germany is Hard to See, Alexander
Kluge retrospective (with The Patriot)
Performance Dance Umbrella 81 includes:
Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, Junko
Kikuchi, Ian Spink Group, Rosemary
Butcher Dance Company, Molissa
Fenley, Laurie Booth
Cinematheque Chantal Akerman and
Babette Mangolte
November
Exhibitions Conrad Atkinson: At the
Heart of the Matter; Art Pop Japan
(young Japanese artists)
Cinematheque talks How Can You Take
Film Seriously?; The Britishness of
British Cinema; Television: Cinemas
Vampire; British Film: Industry or
Culture?; Getting the Picture; Getting
the Boot
Film Unpacking Seven Films.
Introducing Alternative Cinema with a
small-scale exhibition and talks:
Mothlight (Brakhage); Return to
Reason (Man Ray); Colour Box (Lye);
Zorns Lemma (Hollis Frampton);
Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren); News
from Home (Chantal Akerman); Man

with a Movie Camera (Vertov). Videos
are also screened, including work by
Public Image Ltd and Brian Eno)
December
Performance War Crimes, Tim Albery
Theatre Moving Being, Brecht in 1984
Film 3-D spectacular, including Arch
Obolers The Bubble
Cinematheque Tibet: a Buddhist Trilogy.
Graham Coleman and David Lascelles
Music Rock Week (Haircut 100)
1982
January
Exhibition Art and the Sea,
performances by the Phantom
Captain, Paul Burwell, Marty St James
Theatre London Mime Festival 1982:
Pantomim usitaten II (Germany); Pepe
(Czechoslovakia)
Film Glad to be Gay season includes UK
premiere of Taxi zum Klo (Frank
Ripploh, West Germany, 1980)
February
Exhibition Kthe Kollwitz: The Graphic
Works
Conference Art and Architecture with
Kenneth Frampton, Joseph Rykwert,
Charles Jencks, Kate Linker, Theo
Crosby, Eduardo Paolozzi
Theatre Joint Stock Theatre, Real Time;
Pam Gems, The Treat
Music Arditti Quartet perform Carter,
Ferneyhough and Nono
Film Roger Graef and Charles Stewart
on their television documentary Police
March
Exhibition Eureka! Artists from Australia
Talks Caryl Phillips; Kazuo Ishiguro
Film British premiere of Impostors
(Mark Rappaport, 1979)
May
Exhibition New Contemporaries
Theatre Kitschnsynch, women in music,
comedy and cabaret; Monstrous
Regiment, premiere of The Execution
(Melissa Murray)
Talks Clive Sinclair, Angela Carter, Dale
Spender, Anna Coote, Caryl Churchill,
Michelene Wandor, Pat Barker
Cinematheque opening of the first

comprehensive public-access library of
videos in UK
June
Exhibition Zoos
Performance Laurie Anderson
Poynter (sculptor), Orders of

Obedience
Exhibition Graphic Rap New wave
graphics
Cinematheque 60s Television, drama,
documentaries, comedy, soaps
1983
July
Exhibitions Orientation: Indian Popular
Culture; Leon Golub
Film Bombay Spectacular, season of
popular Indian films from 40s to 70s
Theatre People Show 87, comedy,
acrobatics and music
Cinematheque David Cronenberg
January
Exhibition Aldo Rossi
Theatre Impact Theatre, Useful Vices
Talk The Effect of the Falklands War on
Language, Anthony Barnett, Angela
Carter
Music Rock Week (Everything But The
Girl, Frank Chickens)
August
Film The Colour of Pomegranates
(Paradjanov)
Music Rock Week, The Joy of Mooching,
exploring the good-time feel of the Big
Band Era
Cinematheque rock videos
February
Theatre Secret Gardens, theatre, design,
dance and music
Performance Laurie Anderson
Talks Kurt Vonnegut; Max Frisch
Film new project of weekend lunchtime
screenings of new films from abroad,
including The Games of the Countess
Dolingen of Gratz (Catherine Binet)
September
Exhibition Glenn Sujo histories
Event Good News, Bad News, a series of
discussions on the making of news
Theatre premiere of Mike Figgis Slow
Fade
Talks Tony Benn; John Arden; John
Berger; Graham Swift; Susan George
Event Inside Television, programmemakers discuss the medium
Cinematheque Stephen Dwoskin
October
New York Season
Exhibitions Urban Kisses: Mike Glier,
Keith Haring, Judy Rifka, Robert Longo,
John Ahearn, Cindy Sherman, Ken
Goodman; Laurie Anderson Artworks
Performance Eric Bogosian, Rhys
Chatham, Peter Gordon
Talks New York Writers, Elizabeth
Hardwick, Grace Paley, Susan Sontag;
New York Video; New York Cable TV
Inside Television series: Well Brian!,
sport on television
In Conversation Margaret Atwood with
Fay Weldon
December
Theatre Rational Theatre/Malcolm
April
Exhibitions Mary Miss; Jenny Holzer
May
Exhibitions Art and Architecture: Model
Futures; Re-Photography, Richard
Prince
Theatre Jan Fabre, This is Theatre Like It
Was to Be Expected and Foreseen
Event the ICA Herbert Read Memorial
Lecture, Melina Mercouri on
Democracy and Culture
Discussion series Dreamstreets, Aspects
of Popular Culture with Stuart Hall,
David Widgery, Angela McRobbie
June
Talks Norman Mailer, Terry Eagleton,
Gabriel Josipovici, Michele Roberts
Conference Television and the Arts, with
Joan Bakewell, Melvyn Bragg, Mike
Dibb, Michael Kustow, Brian Wenham,
John Wyver, Alan Yentob
July
Music WOMAD at the ICA, music and
dance from 14 countries
Talks Zo Fairbairns; Fleur Adcock
Exhibitions Bruce McLean at the ICA;

Graven Images, Kate Whiteford
paintings and drawings
Film British premiere of Sisters: or the
Balance of Happiness (Margarethe von
Trotta, 1979)
Cinematheque The 11th Hour, screenings
and day conference on independent
film and video; Larry Cohen season
August
Event Consuming Visions: exhibitions,
talks and screenings on advertising
Music Music machines, Martin Richies
Film Hitchcock, Dial M for Murder, in 3D
October
Theatre Performing Clothes, eight
young fashion designers, 12 dancers
and a set designer, sponsored by
Chelsea Girl
Dance Dance Umbrella 83, Micha
Bergese, Laurie Booth, Mary Fulkerson,
Sue MacLennan
Music Rock Week (Cocteau Twins, The
Smiths)
November
Event Desire, with Julia Kristeva, Mary
Kelly, Marina Warner, Elizabeth Wilson
Exhibitions Barbara Kruger; Robert
Mapplethorpe
Theatre Impact Theatre, A Place in
Europe
1984
ICA Founder Sir Roland Penrose dies,
23 April
In November, the ICA starts cohosting the London Film Festival
January
Film Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (Henry
Jaglom)
Cinematheque ICA and Electronic Arts
Intermix (New York) present videos by
Nam June Paik, Bill Viola and others
Theatre Thtre de lAtelier, My Foot, My
Tutor (Peter Handke); Theatre Ion, The
Sleep of Reason
Music Rock Week (Billy Bragg)
February
Cinematheque Derek Jarman: Film and
video, major retrospective, including an
exhibition of his paintings; Ghost Dance

(Ken McMullen)
March
Event William Morris Today: the idea of
an artist, craftsman and social
revolutionary, major exhibition,
seminars, theatre production, film and
new book. Presentations by Sheila
Rowbotham, Raphael Samuel,
Raymond Williams and Tony Benn
Theatre Steve Shill, Face Down
International Conference Culture and the
State
In conversation Germaine Greer
April
Exhibition Richard Hamilton and Rita
Donagh: A Cellular Maze
Theatre Hesitate and Demonstrate,
Shangri La
May
Exhibition Jeff Wall: Transparencies
Debates Peter Fuller and Roger Scruton
Cultural Values; Richard Dawkins, The
Selfish Gene; Ken Livingstone, The GLC
Film King of Comedy (Scorsese)
Cinematheque Where the Buffalo Roam
(Art Linson)
June
Special Event Salon of 1984, New Film
and video artists
Conference They Shoot Writers, Dont
They? On censorship
Theatre Mike Figgis and Flash Theatre
Gerard Philippe de St Denis, Animals of
the City
Film The King and Mr Bird, animated
fantasy (Grimault, Prvert)
Cinematheque Peter Gidal: films 196783;
Visionary Film, classics from the
American Avant-Garde, 196880
July
Exhibitions Nightlife, Graham Crowley;
Circus Logic, John Maybury
Cinematheque Beat of the Street, street
culture and music movies
Video The Alternative Miss World
(Andrew Logan)
August
Exhibition Snap, Razzle and Pop, Pop
photography 19551983
September
Exhibition Rose Gerrard: Between
ourselves
Theatre The 1982 Theatre Company,
Pornography, a spectacle created and
performed by four gay men
Cinematheque Stories of the Eye, The
Corruption of Desire
Video John Cage, Philip Glass
October
Film UK premiere run, Andrei Rublev
(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
Theatre Hidden Grin, Parasite
Structures (with Denis Masi)
Music Rock Week, John Peel is putting
the fun back into being pretentious
Fashion Performing Clothes includes
Paul Smith, English Eccentrics
November
Exhibition John Hilliard, Julia Wood,
Denis Masi
Discussion French Legacies, three
seminars on French Theory
Conference Crossing the Channel: the
Franco-British Trade in Ideas, with
Jacques Derrida, Michel Chaillou
December
Exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat
Theatre Impact Theatre, The Carrier
Frequency
Music Rock Week (Jesus & Mary Chain)
Film Thats Not All Folks! A Celebration
of Hollywoods Finest Animation
1985
Talk What do Men Want?, Michael

Ignatieff, Jeffrey Weeks, Jacqueline
Rose
Film Vigil, UK premiere (Ward); Return
of the Repressed, Surrealism in cinema
March
Exhibition Stuart Brisley
Film Dr Jekyll (Walesia Borowczyk,
uncut version)
Music Rock Week (Sonic Youth)
April
Exhibition Julian Opie
May
Conference The Question of PostModernity, with Jean-Francois Lyotard
Exhibition Frank Stella; Eric Fischl
Performance Laurie Booth
June
Film Suburbia (Penelope Spheeris)
Discussions and films The Gay Sensibility
in the Arts
July
Exhibition Frank Stella Works 198285
and New Graphics
Theatre Lulu Unchained, by Kathy Acker
In Conversation Isabel Allende
Cinematheque Volker Schlondorf
August
Exhibition Krzysztof Wodiczko,
projections on the Duke of York Steps,
Nelsons Column, South Africa House
Rock Week Max Headroom patronises
the Arts (Pet Shop Boys)
Synchronisation of the Senses,
retrospective of New Romantic Super-8

film is held at the ICA
January
Theatre Pip Simmons Theatre, In the
Penal Colony; Theatre de Complicit, A
Minute Too Late
Music Rock Week (The Pogues)
Cinematheque What do Men Want?,
including City of Women (Fellini)
Talk Black Women Write
In Conversation Kathy Acker; Alison
Lowrie
February
Exhibition Tim Head
September
Exhibition Difference: on Sexuality and
Representation; Les Levine
Theatre Wipe that Smile!, international
season of visionary humour, including
Eric Bogosian, Drinking in America,
Theatre de Complicit, More Bigger
Snacks Now, directed by Neil Bartlett
Talk a new series begins, Talking
Psychoanalysis, Dr Charles Rycroft in
conversation with Dr Anthony Storr
Discussions six discussions and
ethnographic films on Issues in
Anthropology begin with Anthropology
in the City and Feminist Anthropology
October
Exhibition Richard Tuttle; The Thin Black
Line
Dance Dance Umbrella, Seventh
International Festival
In Conversation Angela Carter, Lorna Sage
November
Performance La Fura dels Baus; La La La
Human Steps
Discussion to coincide with Second
Turner Prize, debate on the jurys
criteria, with Alan Bowness, Max Gordon,
Peter Fuller
Film The Boys Next Door (Spheeris)
December
Exhibitions James Coleman; Adolf Loos
Theatre Mozart, The Magic Flute, directed
by Neil Bartlett
Talk Tom Phillips with Peter Greenaway
1986
February
Theatre Jan Fabre, The Power of
Theatrical Madness
March
Fashion Abolition in Style, a clothing
spectacular to celebrate the
independent designers who flourished
under the GLCs vigorous administration
Conference Dismantling Truth: Objectivity
and Science, Richard Rorty, Ann Karpf,
Alan Ryan, Colin MacCabe, Hilary
Lawson and others
Film AK (Chris Marker), on
Kurosawa and the making of Ran;
Hong Kong Underground films
July
Exhibition Colin Selfs Colin Selfs
Music The Lounge Lizards; The Kronos
Quartet play LaMonte Young, Mel
Graves, Jin Hi Kim, Kevin Volans
Film Yellow Earth, UK premiere (Chen
Kaige)
September
Identikit, season dealing with identity
and the sense of self
Exhibition The Mirror and the Lamp
Performance La La La Human Steps,
Human Sex
October
Exhibitions Susan Hiller; Sol Lewitt: Wall
Drawings
Cinematheque Alchemists of the Surreal,
the Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer
Theatre Michael Nyman, The Man Who
Mistook His Wife for a Hat
December
Performance Theatre de Complicit, A
Minute Too Late, Please Please Please
Talk Michael Powell and Chris
Peachment; Vikram Seth
Event Growing Up with Auntie 50
years of BBC Television
1987
February
Performance Forced Entertainment
Theatre co-operative, (Let the Water
Run its Course) To the Sea that Made
the Promise
March
Exhibition Nancy Spero
Cinematheque Raymond Durgnat
presents 40 Years of the Royal Film
Performance, his selection of 24
May
Exhibitions Helen Chadwick; Michael Peel; oppositional films, from Peeping Tom
Bill Culbert
to Riddles of the Sphinx
Discussion The Struggle for Black Arts in Film Fatherland (Loach); The Holy
Britain, with Kwesi Owusu
Innocents (Mario Camus)
In Conversation Ray Bradbury
May
Exhibition Olaf Metzal, Gerd Rohling, Ina
June
Barthss, Thomas Wachweger
Performance Laurie Booth, Euroshima
Discussions German Reconstructions,
Cinematheque Six Nix Hicks Pix, Six New
British Film-makers
encounters between German writers,
historians, architects, philosophers and
April
Exhibition Victor Burgin
critics, and British counterparts

Talk Luce Irigaray
June
Exhibition Comic Iconoclasm, the
influence on fine art of the comic
Performance Laurie Booth and Toby
Sedgwick, Mercurial Status
Film Home of the Brave (Laurie
Anderson)
Music Punjabi pop and the Bhangra Beat
July
Theatre Ethyl Eicherlberger, King Leer;
Theatre Repere, The Dragons Trilogy,
directed by Robert LePage
Film Why Waltz When You Can
RocknRoll, a history of rocknroll
through the movies; The Horse Thief
(Tian Zhuangzhuang)
August
Talk Adam Mars-Jones with Edmund
White
September
Cinematheque Basis Film: German
Women Film-makers; The Black
Cannon Incident (Huang Jianxin)
October
Exhibition Jean Luc Vilmouth, New
Sculpture and Installation
Performance Graeme Miller, Dungeness:
The Desert in the Garden, an ICA
commission
Film Dim Sum, Chan Is Missing (Wayne
Wang)
Discussion Science, Technology and
Cultural Power, Robert Young, coeditor of Science as Culture, talks with
Ludmilla Jordanova and Michael
Chanan (chair: Judith Williamson)
November
Exhibitions Arnulf Rainer; Franz-Xaver
Messerschmidt
Dance Dance Umbrella 87, Max
Vanrunxt
Theatre Annie Griffin, Almost
Persuaded: a one-woman tour de
force about country songs and the lives
of the women that sing them Dont
bring your kids. Dont bring your
husband, either
Film Spalding Gray in Swimming to
December
Performance Total Abuse, by Gerry
Sadowitz
Film The Best of 1987 (with Jarman,
Lynch, Greenaway, Stone, Spike Lee)
1988
January
Exhibition Tony Bevan 19801987
Theatre 10th London International Mime
Festival, Theatre de la Mandragore,
LEtrange Mr Knight; Wissel Theatre
company, Patagonian Night
February
Theatre Gary Stevens, Different Ghosts
Cinematheque Black Film in British
Cinema, with films by Horace Ov, Isaac
Julien, Donn Letts, John Akomfrah
Film King Lear (Godard)
March
Conference The cultural impact of AIDS
Exhibitions Mineo Aayamaguchi and
Graham Young video installations;
Fischli and Weiss film, photographs
Film The Big Parade (Chen Kaige)
April
Exhibitions Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri;
Imants Tillers
June
Exhibition Another Objectivity: Robert
Adams, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Hannah
Collins, John Coplans, Gnther Forg,
Jean-Louis Garnell, Craigie Horsfield,
Suzanne Lafont, Thomas Struth,
Patrick Tosani
July
Exhibitions Stephen Taylor Woodrow:
Going By-byes; The Living Furniture
August
Exhibitions Metropolis: New British
Architecture and the City: Ron Arad,
BransonCoates, Future Systems, Zaha
Hadid, John Pawson and Claudio
Silvestrin, Daniel Weil, Gerard Taylor
October
Exhibitions Rosemarie Trockel;
Katharina Fritsch
Film Alice (Jan Svankmajer)
Talks Body Invaders: Panic Sex in
America, Arthur Kroker with Angela
McRobbie; Freaky Deaky, Elmore
Leonard with Richard Rayner
November
Performance Dance Umbrella 88, DV8
Theatre Lady Audleys Secret: a
melodrama, by Gloria, a production
company formed by Neil Bartlett, Annie
Griffin, Leah Hausman, Nicholas
Bloomfield and Luke Williams
Music Third Festival of Free Music Sound
Concentration with TTT, including
Butch Morris, Louis Moholo, Connie
Bauer, Peter Kowald
Cinematheque Animation back with a
vengeance
Talks Jean Baudrillard on America; Felix
Guattari on Subjectivity
August
Exhibition Gerhard Richter: 18. Oktober
1977
September
Talk Moving Images into the Future,
Benjamin Woolley, John Wyver
October
Exhibition Meret Oppenheim:
Retrospective
November
Debate On the recently announced
fatwa against Salman Rushdie, with
Hanif Kureishi, Shabbir Akhtar, Philip
Dodd
December
Exhibitions Jenny Holzer: Signs/Under a
rock; Hannah Collins: New Works
Performance Roy Hutchins performs
Heathcote Williams poem Whale
Nation
Cinematheque Bad Girls!, a season of
wicked women in some of the darkest
melodramas ever made, from
Pandoras Box to Body Heat
Talk Jenny Holzer with Judith
Williamson
1989
February
Exhibition Ilya Kabakov: The Untalented
Artist and Other Characters
Performance Forced Entertainment
Talk Salman Rushdie (cancelled by
reason of the Ayatollahs fatwa)
May
Exhibition Glenys Johnson: Seven Cities
and Recent Paintings
Performance Wim Vandekybus
June
Exhibition The Situationist International,
with discussions (Greil Marcus, Jamie
Reid, others)
Rock Week 1981, detail: design by John Stalin
Cambodia (Jonathan Demme)

Talks J. G. Ballard with Clive Barker;
Gore Vidal
The nineties
Detail from poster for Suture (Scott McGehee & David Siegel)
The future is wired

Digital technologys accelerated delivery of imagery
becomes a central concern, with theoreticians and
cultural-studies specialists contributing to a series
of discussions and events, Towards the Aesthetics
of the Future, starting with the Culture, Technology
and Creativity conference (April 1991). Increased
consumer use of the World Wide Web and the
advent of interactive CD Roms are examined at
such forums as Hedgehogs and Megabytes (April
1993), the emergent field being defined by artists
like Keith Piper and commentators like John Wyver.
In October 1994, Director Mik Flood announces
an unprecedented gesture of sponsorship from
electronics giant Toshiba, the first primary
sponsorship of an arts organisation in Britain.
As well as positive portents of a wired future,
the ICA examines reservations and fears with
Technophobia (April 1995) while such performance
artists as Stelarc and Bruce Gilchrist (Totally Wired,
May 1996) begin to imagine the impact upon the
evolution of the human body of the forthcoming
period of unprecedented technological change.
In November 1997, in partnership with Sun
Microsystems, new Director Philip Dodd opens
a major digital New Media Centre, with a
subsequent series of artists in residence.
Asian cinema continued
The sensuous and sometimes violent working
through of their history by Chinese film-makers
continues to be explored. To complement such
established favourites as fifth generation
directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige , other
seasons feature the younger outlaw film-makers,
such as Zhang Yuan, director of Beijing Bastards
(February 1995) and cinema from Hong Kong and
Taiwan. Japan also continues to be a source of
important cinematic initiatives at the ICA, including
the Japanese animation season, Manga! Manga!
Manga! (October 1992), and the cult cyberpunk
Tetsuo films of Shinya Tsukamoto (October 1992).
Most recently, the commitment to Asian cinema
(including Wong Kar Wais Chungking Express)
has been complemented by an interest in Iranian

cinema (for example, that of Abbas Kiarostami).
New Queer cinema
Besides hosting the Biennial Festival of
Independent Film and Video, in a decade when
the independent film festival has led once again
to a revivification of the Hollywood mainstream,
the ICA becomes an outlet for the gay and Queer
current challenging the norms of this mainstream,
but also of the established cinematic avant-garde.
In September 1990, Epsteins and Friedmans
Common Threads, Stories from the Quilt
mordantly portrays a community under siege by
AIDS; within two years, the anticipated suppression
of sexual dissent has instead flowered into a wideranging, innovative and deeply incorrect micromovement in cinema. Young, cheeky and daring,
The New Queer Cinema is screened at Tongues
Untied (May 1991), then wrangled over in
September 1992.
Mutant bodies
Many artists, performance-oriented or digital, try
to exceed the limits of the human body in this last
decade of the twentieth century. An originator of
this extreme form is Hermann Nitsch (November
1997), the Viennese Actionist artist whose work
had led to police intervention at the ICA in 1966.
Seduced and Abandoned (March 1994) drew
together those who seek to escape the body
through virtual and electronic means, yet the
main development the ICA tracks is towards
actual physical modification of the body across all
boundaries of consensual form and gender: Orlans
performance This is My Body, This is My Software
(April 1996) deals with radical transformative
surgery. Bare Essentials 93: Gender Mayhem
(June 1993) showcases the mutation of gendered
identity through a performance format, and other
exponents of this deliberately excessive form of
expression cluster round the mid-90s. Fakir Musafa
lectures on the theme of the body as a living
canvas and living clay to sculpt (November 1995)
and Franko B inaugurates a series of actions called

Mama, I Cant Sing (from November 1995 to April
1996).
Critical borders
Nearly 50 years after the ICA had presented
40,000 Years of Modern Art, artists subjected
to colonialising cultural experience refer to
themselves as primitives only ironically. One
such is native Australian Jimmie Durham, who
styles himself a Post Modern Primitive in a
complex world of old imperial, colonial and
diasporic systems. His exhibition Original Re-runs
(December 1993) stares into this abyss of cultural
differences. Painter Chri Samba examines social
transformations and tensions in Zaire, and the
challenges thrown up in terms of development
in Africa (May 1991). The advent in London of the
new commissioning agency INIVA (Institute of
International Visual Arts) results in the discussions
Talking Loudly, Saying Something (April 1995),
investigating support and infrastructures for artists
of colour. Marrying electronic technologies, such as
video-conferencing and the Net, to the issue of an
internationalist perspective in the arts, Digital Slam
(April 1995) takes the leap of making Black culture
interactive. Steve McQueens and Isaac Juliens
film and video work features at the festival
commemorating Frantz Fanons vital contribution
to post-colonial art and culture (May 1995).
Abject scenes
Grotesque, pathetic and oriented towards the
failing and definitely unheroic body, one of the
dominant visual styles of the 90s across Europe
1990
Mik Flood (from Chapter Arts and
Watermans) becomes Director

ICA Booksale and Sothebys Auction,
to benefit the ICA
Tilda Swinton curates the first ICA
Biennial of Independent Film and Video
and North America is the abject. Use Me, Bruce

Naumans retrospective of body parts, in graphics,
installations and video (December 1991) is
influential on the emerging Goldsmiths-based
YBA. It is displayed at the same time as Damien
Hirsts first showing in a public space, at the ICA.
Abjection as an attitude, as well as a style of
representation is examined at the conference
Last Breath: Death, Mourning and Melancholy
(December 1994). Robert Gobers conjurations
against sexual and racial purity (September 1990)
precede Mark Wallingers depictions of the
dispossessed and excluded of Londons streets,
Capital (May 1991). A certain embarrassed and
collapsed figuration, mixed with moments of
horror, marks the artists participating in True
Stories (September 1992) and is also reflected in
the live work of young British artists such as Robert
Pacitti (June 1994), while the frontiers of bodily
mutation are reached with the Chapman Brothers
sculpture installations Chapmanworld (May 1996).
With the anthology exhibition Belladonna (January
1997) a Gothic sensibility has been traced for
sectors of contemporary art.
Bad Girls
A polemic embroidering of grievance around
gender and sexual warfare is explicit in the large
portmanteau exhibition Bad Girls (October 1993),
with Sue Williams, Nicole Eisenman, Nan Goldin and
Helen Chadwick. The show is bolstered by a Riot
Girl workshop, Grrl Style Revolution (December
1993). The jubilatory Damn Fine Art: New Art by
Lesbians (December 1996) extends the claims of
sub-cultural female desire even further.
January
Exhibition British Telecom New
Contemporaries
Performance Laurie Booth, Well-known
worlds
Rushdie Lecture Is Nothing Sacred?,
literature and sacred cinema; Candy
Mountain, Robert Frank, Rudy Wurlitzer
February
Exhibition The Independent Group:
Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of
Plenty
Mortal Signs and Metaphors, a fringe

season on taboo, sexuality, death,
viruses, myths, technology, landscapes
Discussion Going Green
May
Performance La Loca, The Mayan,
Adventures on the Isle of Adolescence
Film Cold Feet (Dornhelm)
East European Forum with Miroslav Holub,
Ivan Klima and others
June
Exhibitions Cildo Meireles; Murals from
South Africa
Cinematheque Piccadilly Film and Video
Festival, including John Maybury and
Jean-Luc Godard
July
Exhibitions William Wegman:
Retrospective; Alex Katz: Recent
Paintings
Conference The Debt to Other Musics
Event Zalabaza South African festival,
music, dance, poetry and debate
August
Film The Killer (John Woo)
Event The Man Who Used to be R. D.
Laing, a commemorative season
Performance The Cholmondeleys, Flesh

and Blood
Talk Richard Hamilton
September
Exhibition The Status of Sculpture,
Robert Gober, Patty Martori, Tishan
Hsu, Jennifer Bolande, Nancy Shaver,
Candy Noland
Talks Ariel Dorfman reading Death and
the Maiden; Gary Indiana on his first
novel Horse Crazy; Jeanette Winterson
Film Common Threads, Stories from the
Quilt, a documentary on love, fear and
the politics of AIDS, by Robert Epstein
and Jeffrey Friedman; Young Japanese
Cinema Festival; Sacred and Profane,
the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini
April
Exhibitions Colin McCahon: The
Language of Practical Religion; Jiri
Kolar: The End of Words
Dance Performance sans etiquette: Five
Women Choreographers
Film Dust in the Wind, UK premiere (Hou
Hsiao-Hsien)
Cinematheque Film and Video Umbrella,
November
Exhibition Possible Worlds: Sculpture
from Europe: Juan Muoz, Thomas
Schtte, Franz West, Miroslaw Balka,
Jean-Marc Bustamante, Asta Grting,
Stephan Balkenhol
Theatre Augusto Boal, Theatre of the
Oppressed
Talk Ernesto Laclau with Stuart Hall
1991
January
Exhibition Lawrence Weiner: Spheres of
Influence
Film Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo)
Cinematheque Electronic Diaries, new
videos by Lynn Hershman
Talk Dario Fo
February
Performance Moving Target Theatre
Company, Brezhnevs Children
Film Future Nightmares season
Cinematheque The Image in Crisis season
includes work by Bill Viola and JeanLuc Godard
Discussion Raymond Bellour with John
Wyver
East European Forum Hungarian Season
includes Pter Esterhzy, Pter Ndas,
Josef Skvorecky
Philosophical Forum Tradition and
Dialogue: The Politics of Communities,
Kant and Lyotard: Enlightenment and
Tradition, The Liberal Community,
Heideggers Politics
March
Exhibition Art & Language: Hostage
Paintings 19871991
Theatre Double-bill of one act plays
written by Sam Shepard with Joseph
Chaikin
Film Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou)
Cinematheque The Image in Crisis season
includes work by Nam June Paik, and
Philippe Grandieux and Thierry Kuntzel
Discussion Elaine Showalter (Sexual
Anarchy) with Jennifer Birkett, Lisa
Tickner, Sheila Jeffreys, Jeffrey Weeks
East European Forum Yugoslav Season
April
Performance Death, Delirium and Desire
(Jean-Frderic Messier)
Film The Best of British Animation
season includes work by Nick Park;
Ju Dou (Zhang Yimou, Yang Fengliang)
Cinematheque Towards the Aesthetics of
the Future
Conference Culture, Technology and
Creativity
May
Exhibition Chri Samba: Retrospective
Performance Sex War (Medea); Marina &

Lee (Forced Entertainment Theatre Cooperative)
Film British Gothic season
Cinematheque Now You See It: Lesbian
and Gay Independent Cinema. Tongues
Untied
Talks ICA Psychoanalytic Forum,
Nationalism, Racism and the Other,
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Robert
Young; Censored Theatre Project,
Karim Alrawi, Crossing the Water
June
Performance Station House Opera, Black
Works
July
Performance LIFT at the ICA includes A
Midsummer Nights Dream (on
Highbury Fields), The Damned Lovely,
Neglected English Monuments, and
Mayhew and Edmunds & Company, The
Devine Ecstasy of Destruction, Pants
Democracy; Nancy Reilly, Assume the
Position
August
Film Circus Boys (Kazo Hayushi); 1971
(Ken McMullen)
October
Exhibitions Craigie Horsfield; Bethan
Huws
December
Exhibitions Bruce Nauman: Use Me;
Damien Hirst: Internal Affairs (his first
solo exhibition in a public gallery)
Cinematheque Over Dead Bodies, the
films of leading gay film-maker Stuart
Marshall
1992
January
Film Life on a String (Chen Kaige)
Music Kwatz, Cn-Y-Graig, Slate Voices
February
Exhibition Ian Hamilton Finlay:
Instruments of Revolution
Music the complete works of Ruth
Crawford Seeger
Talk Greil Marcus with Jon Savage on
Elvis Dead or Alive
March
Film Tony Rayns presents Chinas
Unseen Cinema; Tibet, a Lost Nation
Talk Christo on his art, with slides
October
Performance Dogs in Honey, Aliens 4;
Forced Entertainment, Emanuelle
Enchanted
Film Manga! Manga! Manga! Japanese
animation season
Cinematheque Tetsuo: The Iron Man
(Shinya Tsukamoto)
April
Exhibitions Callum Innes; Toshikatsu
Endo
Performance Graeme Miller and Steve
Shill, The Year They Changed the Wires
Talks Andres Serrano and Simon Watney; November
Performance The Cholmondeleys, Walkie
Backlash Against Feminism, Susan
Faludi and Susie Orbach
Talkie
Film Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (Shinya
Tsukamoto)
May
Cinematheque Arrows of Desire, the
Conference Cross Dressing and Cultural
Anxiety
Second ICA Biennial of Independent
Film and Video, curated by Peter Wollen
Music Frederick Rzewski; Tim Brady
June
Exhibition Mike Kelley, Works 19791991
Theatre Blast Theory, Chemical Wedding December
Exhibition Jean Nouvel
Dance Yolande Snaith
Talks Camille Paglia on Sexual Personae; Music Capricorn, recent pieces by
Dennis Cooper; Toni Morrison
Mauricio Kagel
Film Film and Video Umbrella,
July
Computer World
Exhibitions Genevive Cadieux; Anya
Performance Station House Opera, The
Gallaccio; Lee Miller
Oracle
Film New directions in US avant-garde
Talks Cornelius Castoriadis; Hans
cinema 198191; Excess and Agony: the
Magnus Enzensberger
Films of Fassbinder
Conference Preaching to the Perverted:
Are Fetishistic Practices Politically
Radical?
Institution of the Dick award, for the
most provocative, innovative and
subversive short film
August
Theatre Meg Stuart, Disfigure Study
Film Ju Dou (Zhang Yimou, Yang
February
Fengliang), Raise the Red Lantern
Exhibition New Contemporaries, with
Tacita Dean, Parmindar Kaur, Siobhan
(Zhang Yimou)
Davies
Film Season, Passionate Habits: Women
September
Exhibition True Stories, Larry Johnson,
and Religion
Karen Kilimnik, Raymond Pettibon, Jim
Shaw, Jack Pierson
March
Performance Polish performance in the
Event The Wire presents The Modern
90s, Akademia Ruchu, Everyday Life
Musiquarium, music, film, debates
after the Great Revolution II, Theatre of Film Wittgenstein (Jarman)
the Eighth Day, No Mans Land; Rachel
Cinematheque Tilda Swinton: a Tribute
Rosenthal, Filename: Futurfax
Conference on New Queer Cinema
April
International Writers Forum News from the Exhibition Mary Kelly: Gloria Patri
Middle East, talks and discussions, with
Music Lontano: vote for women, music
Mohammed Chouky, Nawal El-Sadaawi,
by women composers
Edward Said
In Conversation Michael Ondaatje
1993
May
Exhibition The Airmail Paintings of
Eugenio Dittborn 19841992
Performance Annie Griffin in How to Act
Better
Film British Animation Week; Paris Is
Burning (Jenny Livingstone)
Music The Haienda at the ICA
Conference Multiple Personality and
Child Abuse
June
Exhibition Real Time, Rirkrit Tiravanija,
Gabriel Orozco, Andrea Zittel, Lincoln
Tobier
Film Vacas (Julio Medem)
Music Vinyl Requiem, an elegy to the
vinyl era by Philip Jeck and Lol Sargent
Performance Gender Mayhem, a season
of movement-based performance
July
Exhibition Marlene Dumas
Theatre Ron Vawter, Roy Cohn/Jack
Smith
Music The 4AD label celebrates its
thirteenth birthday, featuring Kristin
Hersh, The Breeders, Pale Saints
Talks Hlne Cixous; Simon LeVay; Julie
Dash
September
Music London Musicians Collective
present Ben Neills ITSOFOMO (In the
Shadow of Forward Motion)
Performance Holly Hughes Sins of
Omission/Snatches; Tim Miller, My
Queer Body; Bitch! Dyke! Faghag!
Whore! Penny Arcade, Sex and
Censorship Show
Talk Slavoj Zizek
October
Exhibition Bad Girls: Nicole Eisenman,
Sue Williams, Rachel Evans, Nan Goldin,
Dorothy Cross, Helen Chadwick
Film Bad Girls, controversial and
politically incorrect film and
videomakers, including Sadie Bening,
Annie Sprinkle
Music Riot Grrrls including Bikini Kill,
Huggy Bear, Voodoo Queens
Dance Dance Umbrella 93, featuring Mal
Pelo, Annamirl van der Pluijm
November
Film Violent Cop (Takeshi Kitano)
Talk From Roots to Routes: the Politics
of Black Culture, Paul Gilroy, Homi
Bhabha
Performance Ronald Fraser-Munro, Hey
Up, Oswald
Poets on Poets Seamus Heaney, Jo
Shapcott
December
Exhibitions Jimmie Durham; Fiona Rae
Performance Forkbeard Fantasy, The
Brittonioni Brothers in The India
Rubber Zoom Lens
1994
Toshiba becomes Primary Sponsor of
the ICA, and in partnership with it, the

ICA creates a new annual commission,
Art and Innovation
From April, the ICAs Electronic
Lounge features Scanner and others on
the first Tuesday of every month
January
Film Surviving Desire, three films by Hal
Hartley; Calendar (Atom Egoyan)
Talks Richard Sennett, Disfiguring the
Flesh, Barbara Kruger, Will Self, Hal
Hartley
February
Event A Present for William Burroughs,
films, recordings, talks etcetra on his
eightieth birthday
Film The Blue Kite (Tian
Zhuangzhuang)
Music Black not Black, a long weekend
of British Black Music
Talk Homi Bhabha, Location of Culture
March
Event Seduced and Abandoned, the
Body in the Virtual World, Rosi Bradotti,
Orlan, Benjamin Woolley
Exhibition Pepe Espaliu
Theatre Two Spanish artists, Rosa
Sanchez and Konic Theatre in Sanctus,
the Profaned Body and Albert Vidal in
The Monks of Chaos Worship the Bull
Film Branded to Thrill, the delirious
cinema of Suzuki Seijun
Cinematheque Bad Girls
Talks Mark E. Smith with Michael
Bracewell; Buckets of Tongues: New

Scottish Writing, with AL Kennedy,
Duncan McLean, Irvine Welsh
April
Event Intellectuals and the New Media,
one of the first Webcasts: on-line
discussion with the US, and the first ICA
web page, John Wyver, Sadie Plant
Film Sonatine (Takeshi Kitano)
Talk Excavating the House, Panel
discussion on public art and the unease
provoked by contemporary art, after
Rachel Whitereads House
May
Theatre Gay Sweatshop In Your Face
Film The Puppet Master (Hou HsiaoHsien); Documents of Buddhist Tibet;
Derek Jarman, a Celebration
June
Exhibition Charles Ray
Event Bang out of Order, festival
protesting the Criminal Justice Bill in
support of the Right to Party
Film London (Patrick Keiller); Death of a
Nation: the Timor Conspiracy (Pilger,
Munro)
Performance Robert Pacitti, He Was a
Scary Baby
Talks Sarajevo Saga, Haris Pasovic and
Almir Kenovic discuss the future of
their city; Pet Love: Why Should Love
End Where Fur Begins? Midas Dekkas
on bestiality in myth and history
July
Film Fassbinder season, including 15hour TV work Berlin Alexanderplatz;
Boiling Point (Takeshi Kitano)
Performance Ask the Angels, radical
performance from LA, including Ron
Athey, 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life and The
Hittite Empire, The Punic Wars
Talks Mario Vargas Llosa; Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick; The Queer Atlantic
September
Exhibition Stan Douglas
Film Bosna! (Bernard-Henri Levy); Faust
(Svankmajer)
Performance More Respect, radical Black
artists including Ronald Fraser Munro,
Chila Kumari Nurman, Pamela Sneed
Talk Sapphire on Scar Tissue: the

Polemics of Sexual Violence,
October
Exhibition Mise en Scene: Claude Cahun,
Tacita Dean, Virginia Nimarkoh
Event Terminal Futures: digital
subversion, interactive multi-media
presentations, DIY media, radical
techno-theory
Film Seoul Stirring, Five Korean
directors
Discussion Dialogues with Mad Women?
Women Make Movies: Debra
Zimmerman, Pratibha Parmar, Karen
Alexander, Bev Zalcock, Helen De Witt
(chair: Lizzie Francke)
November
Music LMC presents 25 Years From
Scratch, the Scratch Orchestra with
Christian Wolff, John Tilbury
Performance Nieuw Eccentrics, Dutch
and Flemish performance, including Pat
van Hemelrijk and the Alibi Collective in
Manuel the Creator and TG Stan in The
Importance of Being Ernest; Acts of
Faith, with Robert Pacitti, Geek, Gary
Carter, Muster
Talk Will Selfs Grey Area
December
The Institute of Cultural Anxiety
Music The Smith Quartet play Elliott
Sharp and Ralph Shapey
1995
January
Performance Gary Stevens, Sampler
February
Film Season, The Beijing Bastards, an
outlaw new generation of Chinese filmmakers; Suture (Scott McGehee, David
Siegel)
Cinematheque Eye and Ear, season of
music promos and documentaries
March
Exhibitions Abigail Lane; Luc Tuymans
Discussions Whos Afraid of Conceptual
Art; Ethics and Politics in the wake of
Heidegger
Whore
Event Fireball Alternative Miss World
1995, Andrew Logan, Richard OBrien
July
Exhibition Gabriel Orozco
Film Hustler White (Bruce LaBruce)
December
Exhibitions Siobhn Hapaska; John
Currin
Film A Close Shave (Nick Park)
Performance Ron Athey, Deliverance;
Forced Entertainment, Speak
Bitterness
August
New Media Curatour is an ICA Website
that gives curated tours across the
Internet (tour one by Peter Maloney,
Tom Corby on VRML)
1996
May
Exhibition Mirage: Enigmas of Race,
Difference and Desire. Isaac Julien,
Sonia Boyce, Eddie George and Trevor
Mathison, Steve McQueen, Marc
Latamie, Glenn Ligon, Rene Green,
Lyle Ashton Harris
January
Music BBC Radio 3s Hear and Now
presents works by Charles Wuorinen,
James Tenney, Richard Barrett,
Jonathan Harvey and Michael Finnissy
on his fiftieth birthday
Film The Kingdom (Lars von Trier)
June
Conference 40 Acres and a Microchip,
black cyberspace discussion, with
Harry Allen, Samuel Delany, Stuart Hall,
Arthur Jafa, Vernon Reid, Tricia Rose
and many others
Film Ermo (Zhou Xiaowen)
Performance London International
Festival of Theatre at the ICA, with Gary
Stevens, Xi Ju Che Jian Theatre, Coco
Fusco and Guillermo Gmez-Pea and
William Yang
Talk Sorbjit Samra, Hysterical Asian
March
Exhibition Pandaemonium, Michael
Curran, Jaki Irvine, Keith Tyson, Mark
Wallinger, Gillian Wearing
Film Realms of the Senses, Festival of
New Japanese film
September
Exhibition Gary Hume
Film Chungking Express (Wong Kar Wai)
Theatre Karen Finley, A Certain Level of
Denial; The Offset, The Mint Tea Rooms
Talks John Berger; Maxine Hong
Kingston; Carlos Fuentes; Karen Finley
November
New Media The ICA website goes online,
at http://www.illumin.co.uk/ica/
Film Institute Benjamenta (Brothers
Quay); Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar
Wai)
Cinematheque No Skin off My Ass, Super
8 1/2 (Bruce LaBruce)
Performance Fakir Musafa, Beyond Pain,
My 50 Years of Body Play; Franko B,
Mama, I Cant Sing; Annie Sprinkle, My
Body Is a Temple for a Multimedia
April
Performance Orlan, This Is My Body, This
Is My Software and Woman with
Head, Woman without Head
May
Conference Reconsidering the
Postmodern
Exhibition Chapmanworld, first ICA
exhibition with its own Website
Event Consent is No Crime, countdown
on Spanner in association with ICA and
Liberty: discussion with a view to
getting the law on S/M sex changed
Performance Totally Wired, Science,
Technology and the Human Form, with
Stelarc, Franco B, Bruce Gilchrist,
Jonny Bradley
June
Talks Jonas Mekas; Hans Haacke; Laura
Mulvey
Film Maborosi (Hirokuzi Koreeda )
Cinematheque Deep Screen Diving,
screen-based multi-media projects with
opportunities for interaction
September
Film Fallen Angels (Wong Kar Wai)
Cinematheque Rossellini season
October
Event The Incident, talks, films,
installations related to inexplicable
phenomena, with Terence McKenna,
Anne Bean, James Turrell
Film Human Rights Watch International
Festival; Nico Icon
Conference Bond. James Bond, with Jay
McInerney, Umberto Eco, Honor
Blackman
November
Exhibition Vija Celmins
Film Gabbeh (Makhmalbaf)
Cinematheque The Best of Dick
December
Theatre Forced Entertainment,
Showtime; Franko B, Im Not Your Baby
Film Zoom Lens, Ballard tribute season
Cinematheque Yasujiro Ozu (190363)
Event Are You Wired and Wonderful?
British DIY computer experiments
1997
Fiftieth Anniversary of founding of
ICA
Philip Dodd, writer, broadcaster and
curator, becomes Director in April

New Media Centre, in partnership
with Sun Microsystems, opens in
November, enabling the ICA to support
artists who wish to experiment with
digital technologies
January
Exhibition Belladonna
Film Robinson in Space (Keiller)
Performance The Divine, David Goes
Backstage in Bethelehem
Detail from poster for Bad Girls October 1993
April
Film What You See Is What You Get,
Third ICA Biennial Festival of
Independent Film and Video, curated by
John Wyver; Les Silences du palais
(Moufida Tlatli)
Event Digital Slam presents Digital
Diaspora, Paul Gilroy and Greg Tate
host a transatlantic video conference
on black culture and technology
Conference Technophobia, with Andrew
Ross, Arthur and Marie Louise Kroker,
Manuel De Landa
February
Cinematheque Diverse Practices, a
reassessment of British video art
Performance Coco Fusco and Nao
Bustamanta, Stuff
March
Film Conspirators of Pleasure
(Svankmajer); Irma Vep (Assayas)
Cinematheque Technopia, the latest and
best work in new technology
April
Exhibition Billy Name Factoryfotos
196368
Performance Ronald Fraser-Munro,
Cyberschwartze
May
Performance Fortune Cookies, a season
of new work from the Chinese diaspora,
in the build-up to the handover of Hong
Kong
Talks Thierry Lenain on simian
art and Desmond Morris 1957
exhibition Paintings by Chimpanzees;
Jean Baudrillard (webcast, with
online discussion and questions);
Judith Butler
Cinematheque Intimate Exposures, best
new young video, Sam Taylor-Wood,
Gillian Wearing, Damien Hirst
June
50th Anniversary Auction by Sothebys
at the Savoy Hotel
Film The Twisted Path of Love,
Japanese roman porno film season;
Isaac Julien
July
Performance I Dream of Morrissey, the
first gay and lesbian Morrissey
convention
Exhibition Assuming Positions
Cinematheque Zhang Yimou season
Event The Event, Tracey Emin, Georgina
Starr, Gillian Wearing
Talk Parallel Space: the Geography of
Virtual Worlds
August
Events Bollywood Bazaar: film, music
and performance in Victoria
Embankment Gardens to mark the
50th Anniversary of Indian
Independence;
The Smiths is Dead, with the Still Ills
September
New Media Curatour II, by Jake Tilson:
Colour: Color
October
Exhibition Primitive Streak: Fashion
meets Science, an exhibition of
garments by Helen Storey and Dr Kate
Storey; Made in Italy
Film Gallivant (Ktting); Made in Italy,
short Italian season; Human Rights
Watch International Festival
Cinematheque The Raw and the Cooked,
Fourth ICA Biennial of Film and Video,
curated by B. Ruby Rich
Talks AL Kennedy; Gore Vidal; Renata
Salecl with Hlne Cixous
November
New Media New Media Centre opens:
presentations include Audio Rom and
Alembic
Talks Mona Hatoum; Hermann Nitsch
Music LMC present Zwischenspeil
(Interplay), a collaboration featuring
Richard Barrett, Tim Hodgkinson, Matt
Wand, Chris Culter, Fred Frith, Thomas
Kner and others
Event Violence and the Arts with
Michael Haneke, Jenny Diski and
Gordon Burn
December
Cinematheque Fritz Lang season
Event The Recurring Technicolor
Dream, a thirtieth anniversary
celebration (featuring films, DJs, live
music and talks) of the event which
raised funds at the Alexandra Palace in
1967 for International Times, after the
government shut it down
Talks Slavoj Zizek; Mark Dion

50 Years of The Future

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What was the ICA's original purpose?

What was the ICA's original purpose?

What challenges did the ICA face in its early years?

What challenges did the ICA face in its early years?

A history of the ICA is yet to be

written. Fifty years of the future has

Fifty years of the future is

Fifty years of the future

Roland Penrose and Picassos Les Demoiselles dAvignon

Fifty years of the future . 3

office moves from the London Gallery

4 . Fifty years of the future

A forum for advanced architectural ideas

co-opt new members, including Henry

40 Years of Modern Art, the ICAs first exhibition

Groundbreaking exhibitions II:

The ICA members room in the mid-50s

Image and culture

The London Contemporary Music Centre (founded

Fifty years of the future . 7

Smithsons. The culmination of this tendency is the

grow from 400 to 1400

demonstrations by the more performance-oriented

Freud, Isabel Lambert, Peter Lanyon,

The ICA begins showing films at the

French Institute: members vote for

17/18 Dover Street, Piccadilly. The

8 . Fifty years of the future

members, including John Rothenstein

Britain site on South Bank is discussed

known as the Independent Group, with

Fifty years of the future . 9

secretary general of the British InterPlanetary Society)

Director of the ICA

10 . Fifty years of the future

Fifty years of the future . 11

Talk Toni del Renzio dissects the fashion

middlebrow taste as an arena of

12 . Fifty years of the future

Peter (E. C.) Gregory

Building in progress for the new ICA at 12 Carlton House Terrace

Two principal changes occurred while I worked at

Laboratory, a powerful reminder of Herbert Reads

Fifty years of the future . 15

political phases prior to his early death in 1982:

16 . Fifty years of the future

in, part documentation centre, part performed

spring and summer, Jean-Luc Godards Week End

documentation and growing interests in ecology

Signs and Devices of Written

inclusive 138.15.0, three meals a day

Fifty years of the future . 17

18 . Fifty years of the future

Carlton House Terrace on The Mall is

From a theatre background (including

Royal Zoological Society, Dr Desmond

Fifty years of the future . 19

Warhol, Hockney, Cesar, Klein,