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33.
THE ARTS LABS NEWSLETTER (London: BIT Information Service, October 1969-August 1971). 17 issues (all published)
+ Lab Mag #1 (Beckenham: Growth Print Project, October 1970), a one-off supplement to the Arts Labs Newsletter. Foolscap. Staple-bound wrps., each 14pp.-60pp. (occasional inserts). Various paperstocks and printing techniques, from mimeograph to screenprint. Published monthly (last issue delayed by several months).
Produced by Nicholas Albery, the Newsletter was intended as a means of communication between the various regional Arts Labs and similar workshop-type groups throughout the country, and as a discussion forum, a platform for new ideas, a directory of the people involved and a listing of their activities. Contributions were submitted by the Arts Labs themselves, often on stencils ready for duplicating. The first ten issues were produced by Albery at BIT, 141 Westbourne Park Road, London W11, the eleventh issue was “strung together” by Nick Godwin in Bromley, and from the following issue the newsletter was edited by Chaz Lippeatt and published by the Growth Print Project in Beckenham, though still managed by Albery.
The Newsletters reported on the proliferation of Labs throughout the country (its first issue recorded as many as 54), printed news of upcoming events (“Labian Tit-Bits”), and provided their addresses (among them Hounslow [run by Dave Cousins of The Strawbs], Northampton [Alan Moore], and Beckenham [“contact David Bowie at 460 6489”]). It also featured lists of “Pop-Groups prepared to go round Arts Labs for expenses” (including Hawkwind) and quoted David Bowie: “These days everybody does what they want when they want. The puppet theatre is doing very well - we helped them get a van and told them to get on with it.” There are mentions of his Folk Club at the Three Tuns (“Host is David Bowie. Very turned-on atmosphere”), and a low-res photograph of him performing appears in the sixth issue (March 1970).
“Interface, IRAT’s new communications package… portable video equipment lent by John and Yoko Lennon” at Liverpool festival (organised by Keith Albarn) is reported on, and the “Women’s Weekend” at Ruskin College, Oxford (ie. the first National Women’s Liberation Conference) and JG Ballard’s first exhibition of ‘Crashed Cars’ at the New Arts Lab are both announced, together with a myriad of other events, exhibitions, festivals and underground film shows.
The Newsletter also printed the transcript from an evening with RD Laing at the Cambridge Arts Lab, as well as “The Alternative Society”, an essay by Dr. Robin Farquharson, Allen Ginsberg’s text, “Consciousness & Practical Action” (reprinted from Joseph Berke’s book, “Counter Culture”; also Miles’s unpublished essay, “The Rebirth of Joy: The Arts Laboratory”, which the publisher cut from Berke’s book), a 3pp. text on drug dealers by Timothy Leary, and “Arts Lab: A Fortress and Haven for Adult Games”, Jim Haynes’s explanation of “how the Drury Lane Arts Lab came and went”.
Within two years of its first appearance the Newsletter was also on the way out. The final issue prints an obituary for “the Slabsletter”, with blame attributed to BIT for prioritising Bitman and the recent paucity of contributions from regional Labs, many of which were struggling to survive. In the same issue’s “exchange page of people with something to give or something to gain”, COUM, who “specialize in musical decomposition”, advertised their services: “Very visual. Non-musicians playing wonderful assortment of instruments and sound generators… Price £37 upwards - but very negotiable to certain areas of the ‘scene’… We in it for the fun...”. It's probable that while developing his COUM Transmissions project, Genesis P-Orridge, previously a member of Transmedia Explorations (an offshoot of the Exploding Galaxy) and heavily influenced by Gerald Fitzgerald, was also influenced by the Arts Labs’ experiments in ‘art-and-life-style’.
Final page detached from staples of both the third and fourth issues, with small front cover corner losses to the latter (“BIT Reference Copy Pleased to Stay in Office” written in ink along top edge); some pencil marginalia to two pages of seventh issue; slight wear to front cover of ninth issue; o/w all issues Very Good plus, at least.
The Arts Labs Newsletter, started by “Nicholas at BIT”, for whom communication was “his main scene”, exemplified the use of different printing techniques in its approach to the cross-disciplinary, countercultural networking that both Albery and the short-lived Arts Lab movement sought to promote. Previously exhibited at November Books in London in 2016, this is the only complete set known to this cataloguer, with none located online in institutional holdings.
