Links Hall Archive

The Links Hill Studio Archive contains recordings of over 135 events of spoken word, performance, and music that took place at Chicago's Link's Hall, a multi-disciplinary project space founded in 1978 by Bob Eisen, Carol Bobrow, and Charlie Vernon. In 1985, Links Hall artistic director Michael Zerang initiated the The Links Hall Performance Series, a curated series that expanded Links Hall programming of dance and movement to include contemporary and experimental music, traditional ethnic folk music, literary readings, and performance art. The Performance Series was initiated to provide artists a consistent performance venue dedicated to the exhibition and dissemination of diverse artistic genres. Through the inception of the Performance Series, Links Hall provided Chicago audiences a series of events to experience the creative output of emerging musical, literary, and performance artists. Although the Performance Series began in 1985, unattended recordings created by Michael Zerang in a VHS audio format began in 1987. These recordings form the bulk of CAA's Links Hall Performance Series archive. In 1989, Jim de Jong became took over Zerang's role as artistic director. The collection reflects Zerang's extensive holdings of recorded material from unattended recordings that began in 1987.

The diverse collection of recordings mirrors the artistic mission of the Performance Series as a forum for experimental exhibition and exchange. The extensive nature of the collection is indebted to its creator Michael Zerang, who remained the artistic director of the Performance series from its inception in 1985 until 1989. In CAA's holdings, the collection includes early literary recordings of Gerald Nicosia and David Sedaris, to the poetry of Clark Coolidge; the music of Perry Venson, Jeff Abell, Nga Jiiwa, and Derek Bailey; percussion improvisations by Thurman Barker and Andrew Cyrille; and international sound sessions from the Caribbean and the Middle East. Additional artists include: Eugene Chadbourne, Christian Marclay, Kahil El Zabar, Ray McNiece, Sandra Binion, and Andrei Codrescu.By browsing through the finding aid, one will discover the breadth of the recordings included in the archive. The collection also includes original program schedules.

The collection is filed chronologically as the Performance Series was recorded beginning in 1987. Unique accession numbers were assigned according to individual performances as first recorded on original sound videocassete. Therefore, accession number reflects the original VHS tape the individual performance was recorded on. For example LH1(a) refers to Links Hall VHS tape number one, performance one (a) and so forth. Track listings referred to as "Contents" were retrieved from digital surrogates that were identified by Experimental Sound Studio and Links Hall interns. Titles of performances and related notes were retrieved from original published material related to the "Performance Series".