#clause28

By Conal McStravick

Neil Bartlett (b. 1958) arrived in London in the early 1980s. As an actor, writer and playwright he was instrumental in the queer, post-punk scene. In 1988, queer lives past and present forged A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep for stage, the novel WHO WAS THAT MAN: A Present for Mr. Oscar Wilde, and a one-off collaboration with Stuart Marshall. Stuart and Neil conceived Pedagogue as an improvised agitprop video which tapped Neil's forthcoming residency at Newcastle Polytechnic to ‘cock a snook’ at Section 28 and the repressive homophobic attitudes of the Thatcher Government and right-wing press of AIDS crisis Britain. It brought students, teachers and artists together in a deliberately transgressive and irreverent tour de force that subverted fear and hypocrisy. Forming production company Gloria that same year, he served at Artistic Director of the Lyric Hammersmith from 1994 to 2004. He has translated and directed a host of works for the stage and continues to challenge and amuse audiences.

I interviewed Neil in August 2015 to ask him, how he met Stuart Marshall, how they came to make Pedagogue, the process of working together and the life of Pedagogue since its making.

-- CM

Neil: People's image of the plague years, whether you lived through them and you're remembering them or if you're a beautiful young thing, the imagery of those years is grim and horrible and therefore people are very surprised that there's this thing that is completely fucking rude and ridiculous and funny.

Conal: That's an important word in terms of AIDS crisis response – the ridiculous.

Neil: Yeah, the whole situation was ridiculous. It was ridiculous in the true existential sense of the word. So how I met Stuart, how I remember meeting Stuart was a grouping, an organisation, a very tiny one called Positively Healthy, this bunch of guys who were trying to find non-medical, alternative solutions to stop people's immune systems crashing. 

Sometimes it felt like it happened so quickly. You turned around and there you were in the wards of St. Mary's Paddington, dealing with all the medical horrors again. The leading light of it was called Cas Mann. I certainly didn't know Stuart's work when I met him. It wasn't like- “Oh, you're Stuart Marshall, the filmmaker..” I was in the performance and theatre world, I'd written my first book by then. So I was aware of things queer and cultural but I didn't know Stuart or his work. And we didn't know each other... I remember going to a Positively Heathy jumble sale and I remember Stuart and his partner Royston were there and I was there with my then partner Chris and also my current partner James and so that very particular gay thing where sexual relationships and social relationships and activist relationships are all in a big heap and muddled up and that's both glorious and when you look back at it at a distance of time- you go: “So how actually did I meet..? Who did I meet in a club and have sex with? Who did I meet at an activist meeting? Who did I just meet because somebody's boyfriend knew somebody's boyfriend?” All of those things.

Conal: You'd achieved a certain visibility by this stage. Stuart was in the relatively niche video art world, wasn't he?

Neil: Yeah, he was very much in that world. I was in performance and... Certainly I'd published my first book and maybe my first novel at that point, I can't remember. So Stuart would probably have seen my work.  You'd have to look at the chronology to work out where Pedagogue comes in the dating of things...

Conal: 1988.

Neil: ...So I think its just after or just before I've done the first performances of A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep during the first run at Battersea. The Arts Council had advertised for an artist in residence at what was then Newcastle Polytechnic. Its now part of University of Northumbria. I got myself a one term position as Artist-in-Residence teaching the first year Fine Art undergraduates and I made a piece of work with the students and we made a large-scale performance piece involving all the students in a derelict warehouse downtown in Newcastle. The piece was called Don't Look at Me Like That! And it was about the politics of looking- a large scale performance piece in big derelict warehouses. I was heading up to Newcastle , or I think I'd already gone to Newcastle, and Stuart contacted me and he said as I remember it: “I've got some money to make a short video piece. I've got some money but it will be very small scale and something I need to make quickly because there's a time limit on the grant. Do you have any ideas? Shall we do something together..?” I said, “I'm up in Newcastle teaching at the Polytechnic why don't you come up and we'll do something maybe with my students and let's do something about Clause 28...” Clause 28 was in full flow right at this point. It was in the news. I'd been involved in a series of meetings at the Drill Hall which were campaigning against Clause 28 and it took a very specific form where we got together and we tried to get all sorts of luminaries in the arts to sign letters of protest. I remember we took out an advert in City Limits and I think probably in TimeOut as well saying: “We the undersigned want to protest Clause 28 (it's a really bad idea)...” We tried to get everyone who we knew, there were a bunch of people who called the meeting in the Drill Hall, to sign up to this letter. It would be very interesting if you could track down those adverts to see if Stuart was one of the people who signed it, cause I guess he would have been. And I remember that it was a big deal- who was going to sign it and who wouldn't because there were a lot of people who have since come out of the closet who at that time were very firmly in the closet... And the question of who would out their name to it and who wouldn't. 

And then Stuart came up on the train to Newcastle.

Conal: Stuart previously taught in Newcastle, did you know that?

Neil: I don't remember that.

Conal: The mid-to-late 1970s he was teaching at Newcastle.

Neil: He must have told me that but I don't remember that. Stuart came up to Newcastle and he came to dinner in the house where I was staying. A couple of my students had a spare room in their house and I was staying there. We sat on the floor in the living room and we sketched out what we were going to do. I mean, literally on the back of an envelope or of a piece of paper: I was going to be interviewed by an off-camera voice and I was going to deny that I was homosexual. I was going to keep saying, “No, I'm not a homosexual, I'm not a homosexual”. Whereas at the same time I would totally clearly be a homosexual because I was wearing what I wore at the time- which was...

Conal: It's a really good look, I have to say.

Neil: Thank you! Which was kind of all-purpose... There was a pub called The LA in Shoreditch which is now sadly gone which was my big hangout in the 80s. And if you went to The LA- that's what everybody wore. You wore boots, you wore 501s, you wore a leather jacket and you smoked Marlboro. Trust me that's just what everybody wore... There's another video of mine... It's not That's What Friends Are For, that was made for Channel 4 and which you should watch- it's part of this world... I think it's more or less at this time. There was a third work that I made for Channel 4 …? That's How Strong My Love Is! Stuart appeared in this one... He's part of a crowd of extras and every single person is wearing the same outfit. We were all wearing jeans and a leather jacket. I remember I just said to everyone- “Oh bring your usual clothes...” and everyone turned up in jeans and a leather jacket. So that's how ubiquitous that look was. I wore quite a lot of make up at that time, usually by day. I'd take it off at night if I was going out cruising. But I generally wore a bit of slap in the day. I was very out with my students because of that look because of that conversation... The other idea that we had was that the students would do some interviews at the end of the film and they would all say the same thing, they would all say- “Since I worked with Neil I've become a homosexual...” Cause that was the big thing about Clause 28... If homosexuals were employed as teachers, they would turn all of their students gay. That was the basic premise of Clause 28. There was a very specific wording in the clause which prohibited any employee of local government promoting homosexuality. You were prohibited from teaching homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. So because I was partly employed by the arts council, part of the funding for my residency as an artist in residence at Newcastle Polytechnic was coming from the Polytechnic. Simply by being an out homosexual with my students I was technically in breach of Clause 28. That was the whole idea of the film- let's do something that's clearly illegal. So then the next morning, before Stuart got there I'd explained to the students that this was the idea, roughly, and were they up for it. They all thought- How fantastic! What a laugh... And because the piece that I was working on with them was about the politics of looking and what happens when people look at a work of art and who looks at a work of art and particularly feminist ideas about how looking operates, all of that was feeding into the idea... You can see all of those ideas in Pedagogue. About being looked at. It was a great project. I thought: This is good; the students are going to meet a good artist and understand how it works... The film itself was made the next morning. I hired a room. I got a room in the Polytechnic. We didn't tell anyone what we were doing, because that would have been stupid, they might have stopped us. And I remember we had to do it very quickly cause there was a technical problem about the power point in the room. It didn't work, or something... So we lost about an hour getting the camera to work... And then all that was scripted was the contents of my briefcase. I'd decided what was going in my briefcase. I just picked up things that were in my room. None of that was bought or anything.

Stuart and I had written the list of questions that Stuart was going to ask. And we filmed it in an hour, an hour and a half. So none of the scripts for the film was written apart from Stuart's questions. I think there was one other person there or possibly two... Possibly someone doing sound. Those must have been people Stuart brought with him or he knew from Newcastle and we shot the whole thing and each of my students sat in front of the camera in turn and improvised a story and then Stuart took it all away and edited it. I don't remember being involved in the edit, because I was in Newcastle finishing off my residency. I think he took it home and edited it entirely and so all questions in terms of how it reached its final shape. You know when the camera is just roaming around looking at me, looking at the bits of my body, that's very Stuart I think, that's very much the trademark- the very bald, almost blank use of the camera. Now the camera's looking at this, now the camera's looking at that, now the camera's looking at this with a voice over.

Conal: What was the life of Pedagogue after it was made?

Neil: At some point in its history after Stuart died London Video Arts supervised and controlled hiring and licensing it, and now its in the care of LUX and its completely administered by them. Once a year I get a royalties statement saying this is who has hired it, this is who's shown it. And now of course all of that happens in a different context because you don't have to hire it, because like everything else, you can actually find it online. If people want to pirate it they can. I figure in general, I earn some money from it, but if people need to pirate it then that's OK. Someone wrote to me via e-mail. It was shown this year or last year at an underground queer arts festival in Cyprus. It was the first ever. I got a very sweet letter from this guy who decided, I'm young, I'm queer, I live in a small town in Cyprus so I'm going to have an arts festival. Its totally illegal, if people find out we'll get beaten up. He didn't actually contact to ask my permission. He wrote to say I think Pedagogue is really great and we're going to show it.

Conal: Good. I'm glad he didn't ask your permission. (Laughs)

Neil: I wrote back saying, that's lovely, thank you for asking, go ahead. And now its having a whole new lease of life in the Wellcome Collection, where its being seen by thousands of people on a daily basis. For a little guerilla artwork that was written in an hour and shot in an hour and a half. I think its done rather well, I'm very pleased for it.

Conal: Absolutely, I guess like you said it hit on a few things. The expedience of that as a response to a very difficult set of circumstances, and this irreverence, a direct challenge to those very  conservative, very prescribed set of legislations....  Just to ask one final question, if I may...? In your experience and in terms of your development in the arts- seeing how performance relates to queer modes of address and this sense of bringing people together- how has something like the politics or the political space of theatre or screenings or exhibition-making changed ?

Neil: Oh God! It's changed, its changed totally. I mean I can only talk about my own experience but there was a very clear sense of inside and outside so the theatrical establishment even though it was dominated largely by gay men who were in very powerful positions, particularly in the national institutions. The RSC, the Royal Court, the National Theatre, the opera companies, they were all full of gay men both as administrators and as Directors. There was little possibility that angry oppositional, creative queer art could flourish in those institutions.So very simply we all found alternative spaces to work. Now it seems inconceivable that Michael Clark had to leave The Royal Ballet to do what he wanted to do. You know, now he would be choreographing for The Royal. And in my own case it seems inconceivable the way that Derek Jarman had to fight for funding to make any of his films or his pieces, as I was instrumental in getting Derek Jarman to come and make an installation in Glasgow for the National Review of Live Art.

Conal: Ah, yes...

Neil: And I remember people being at the gallery and threatening to call the police. Papers coming round.

Conal This is at the Third Eye Centre, Glasgow?

Neil: Yes. The level of attack on gay people and gay voices in the arts. Sometimes people would say to me: “Well, why did you decide to go into site specific performance?” And again its really, really easy. No one was gonna give me a theatre to do what I wanted to or what I was doing in the middle of the 1980s. So I found people who would put my work on, in derelict warehouses and then there was The Drill Hall, there was the Oval House there were pockets of queer space and we worked in those pockets as much as we could. But if you wanted to get bigger or noisier, so you know Michael Clark's work at Sadler's Wells, that was all independently produced. He produced all of those. Artists were finding different ways to get their work produced and there were incredibly creative alliances... I mean equally now its impossible to imagine the idea of OUT on Tuesday on Channel 4.

Conal: Yes.