Links Hall Performance Series: 1987-1990, 1987-1990

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 Link’s 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 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" see Related Materials

The archive is open to the public by appointment.

The bulk of the collection was acquired by ESS on in an audio VHS format. The collection was reformatted into three digial surrogate formats by ESS.

Sonia Yoon managed the organization of the collection and supervised the cataloging and digital preservation of the material. ESS interns Aaron (? [Get last name from Lou]) and Cesar Devila (did they also re-format the collection?) identified each recording by artist, date, location, duration, track listing and number. Links Hall intern, Virginia DePriest, provided database entry support to consolidate the transcribed identification reports Aaron and Devila initially transcribed and identified. Ryan Schultz and Katy Lynch provided technical programming support of database design and configuration.