European Literature Night Edinburgh videos

More to come from the various and ambitious readings that took place across the city of Edinburgh on May 14th, but a good selection can be found here http://www.theenemiesproject.com/eln 

Including Colin Herd & I's launch of the collaboration poetry book celebrating the life of Oskar Kokoschka - Oberwildling. 

Festina Lente - fun was had with Zuzana Husarova in Paris

An awesome performance I had in Paris with the amazing Zuzana Husarova. A whole new section of my website dedicated to Festina Lente now, as it was the 2nd year in a run I performed. http://www.stevenjfowler.com/festinalente

Festina Lente 2015 - March 7th : Societe de Curiosities 

"Festina Lente is an extraordinary sound poetry event series and festival curated by Martin Bakero in Paris. I've had the pleasure to perform there in both 2014 & 2015, and it has really been a pivotal space for me to develop my performance art & sound poetry, and to meet, and collaborate with, a real community of European sound poets, from Maja Jantar to Julien d'Abridgeon.  

For 2015, Festina Lente was held at the Societe de Curiosities on the Rue de Cligancourt, and I had the opportunity to finally perform as a duo with Zuzana Husarova. The result was one of my favourite works, entitled Ibunka, it was a fusion of sound poetry, improvised language and anti-dance. 

Zuzana is about what I am about. She is forward thinking, discerning, works incredibly hard to develop expertise while always being hungry to learn and grow, and go outside of her comfort zone. Moreover she is funny and humble and a joy to work with. We developed Ibunka conceptually and then, in person, reconstructed it completely, to draw upon my background in grappling martial arts in order to facilitate a physicality in performance that was never violent, never overbearing or threatening, or overemphasising my maleness over her femininity. This is so so hard to achieve, and I believe we did achieve it, creating something playful, playfighting, energetic but still serious and considered. Her technical brilliance underpinned the work, for its first act and I'm sure it'll be the first of many times we work together, in our collective TRYIE, hopefully all over Europe.

I spent a whole week in Paris around this work, in a city I always find inspiration in but am not directly inspired by. It's scene seems ossified to me, hard to penetrate and institutionally divided, like elements of the city itself. It drowns in its own history, theory, beauty and poise. A heartbeat for my personal understanding of the city over these last two visits has been Martin Bakero, the Chilean sound poetry pioneer who curates Festina Lente, the most interesting thing I've been a part of in Paris by some way." 

Kakania III - the videos

The third installment of Kakania was held in the legendary avant-garde hub the Horse Hospital right in the heart of Bloomsbury London. It featured some of the most interesting live artists from across the continent, including Joerg Zemmler, Caroline Bergvall, Martin Bakero and Damir Sodan. You can watch the videos from the performances here www.theenemiesproject.com/kakaniaevents

 

Kakania at the Horse Hospital - February 19th

Another extraordinary lineup of contemporary artists presenting new works responding to figures of Habsburg Vienna one century ago marks our third Kakania event, this time taking place at the iconic Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury, London. A host of artists I am very proud to present, coming from Vienna, Paris, Zagreb & elsewhere just for Kakania. Doors 7pm, for a 7.30 start.
 
Caroline Bergvall on Gustav Klimt
Martin Bakero on Arnold Schoenberg
Colin Herd on Oskar Kokoschka
Marcus Slease on Max Kurzweil
Damir Sodan on Gustav Mahler
Joerg Zemmler on Karl Kraus
Stephen Emmerson on Rainer Maria Rilke
 
Tickets, at £8, on the door, with info available here: http://www.thehorsehospital.com/now/kakania-iii/

More news soon on the launches of the Kakania anthology and Oberwilding: on the life of Oskar Kokoschka, both original publications made for the project, now in print and presented for the first time at the Freud Museum. As well as our last event on March 26th at the Austrian Cultural Forum, who must be thanked for their generous support of this project. www.kakania.co.uk / www.acflondon.org
 
I would also like to draw your attention to the awful news that the Horse Hospital, an endlessly innovative and generous home for avant garde artwork in London, for 20 years now, is in the process of being sold off. There is a campaign against this http://www.thehorsehospital.com/horse-hospital-to-be-sold/ Please support the HH in anyway you can.

my performance in a Parisienne circus for Festina Lente

I've read in Paris before, but I read, and I hope, relatively speaking, those days are temporarily coming to a close. Now is a time to read in public far less, and perform more. So this was an invitation I was grateful to receive from the amazing and intense Chilean poet Martin Bakero, who lives in Paris and curates the Festina Lente in the Circus Electrique, part of the Pantheon of Poets festival in the city. This was all sound poets and sonic artists, and as I've felt with the art writers of my generation in London who've influenced me so much, and are now friends (Pat Coyle, Holly Pester, Hannah Silva etc) this is a real community in Europe. After meeting Jorg Piringer and Heike Feidler last year, here I got to connect to Julien d'abrigeon and the wonderful Maja Jantar, whose performance was spellbinding and I learnt masses from just by watching. It's a privilege to be part of that community, if even peripherally, it is defined by exciting work, by real exploration and intensity and I feel very welcome by the people who seem to be defining it.

My performance piece, mort & homme, was an attempt to utilise mantra like repetition through different vocal ranges, beginning with something like murky song into ulluation and finishing with doom. That was to be contrasted against electronic chinese music, and then a conceptual element Ive wanted to do for awhile, book sawing. I don't really care if the result is a success, but it was a satisfying experience, as I had to go out of my comfort zone, and that's all I want to do at the moment. The piece was new, an experiment and a departure with the only goal that it didn't seem that way. I'm not interested in thinking about the quality of the work, just the experience of making it. I had a wonderful time. Video below. I also managed to snag some videos of some of the other amazing performances that made up the day, one of a series now set up in Paris over the next few years.
Maja Jantar & Martin Bakero https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rdM9zGA2hY