Published: five poems on Britain leaving Europe on 3am magazine

I love extinction if it’s me first
he stupid animals
get together
all the time
for gatherings.
Some even to mark the absence
of one of them
from the gathering.
Suspicious of the prolific
but otherwise
warm blooded pretending
that that blood cannot leave that which
currently contains it,
no matter what.
Might be true, we say.

 

Reading at Five Years Gallery, up on the 6th floor

A lovely afternoon spent on the 6th floor of an office block just overlooking regents canal next to Broadway Market thanks to the invitation of Clover Peake and Giovanna Coppola, to read at the Five Years Gallery at their series Parole Parole, alongside some wonderful poets. This is exactly the kind of reading I love to be a part of – legitimate and genuine, original and careful, supportive and considered. I heard some poets new to me, and performed an exchange of my Estates of Westeros poems to the group, asking everyone to read with me. I was still fragile after being a bit unwell and the experience undoubtedly repaired me somewhat. Loads of beautiful pictures here http://www.fiveyears.org.uk/archive2/pages/206/Reading_Groups/Programme/24.html

Upcoming events / exhibitions / publications

Some upcoming events, publications, exhibitions, including the launch of my new poetry collection with Test Centre (June 3rd) and a performance at Tate Modern (July 18th), plus a few things that’ve happened in 2015.

May 2nd – Celebrating Jackson MacLow’s Light poems, reading at the Wellcome collection. 

May 8th – Feinde: Austrian Enemies, collaborating with Jorg Piringer at the Rich Mix.

May 13th - reading at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, for an event discussing Henri Gaudier-Brzeska’s relief The Wrestlers, drawing on my work for the Tate.

May 14th - for UNESCO’s European Literature Night Edinburgh, I’ll be launching my collaborative poetry collection,Oberwildling: on the life of Oskar Kokoschka, with Colin Herd, at the Sutton Gallery.

May 15th –a reading at Little Sparta, the garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay.

May 17th – a reading at Five Years Gallery, for the ‘How to write’ project 

May 18th – a reading at Cog Arts, Dalston

May 19th to 27th I’ll be reading in Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, Bangor & Aberystwyth in Wales, as part of the Enemies project: Gelynion, collaborating with Joe Dunthorne, Nia Davies, Zoe Skoulding & co 

May 29th – Reading at the Hay-on-Wye festival to close Gelynion in Wales.

June 3rd - I’ll be launching my new poetry collection {Enthusiasm} published by Test centre on June 3rd in London. 

June 5th – Gelynion in London, at the Rich Mix Arts Centre.

June 6th – Stoke Newington Literature Festival, reading with Iain Sinclair & Tom Chivers for Test Centre.

June 6th - My solo exhibition, Mahu, opens on June 6th at the Hardy Tree Gallery in Kings X. 10 events follow in the 3 week run.

June 11th - a reading at the Garden Museum, London, for my residency with J&L Gibbons Landscape Architects

June 21st – Reading at the Berlin Poesiefestival.

July 18th – a performance & discussion at the Tate Modern 

A recent interview on Sabotage Reviews, by Will Barrett, a comprehensive discussion of the purpose behind my work. http://sabotagereviews.com/2015/03/10/its-all-one-enormous-blancmange-an-interview-with-s-j-fowler/

In February I attended the Salzburg Global Seminar for a program called the Neuroscience of Art: what are the sources of Creativity & Innovation? A report http://www.stevenjfowler.com/salzburgglobal

I attended the International Literature Showcase in Norwich, produced by the Writer’s Centre and the British Council, speaking on a panel about technology & literature. My writeup here.

Since January I’ve been in part-time residence at the Hubbub at the Wellcome Collection, which is exploring the nature of rest through neuroscience, social science & aesthetics. 

I performed with Zuzana Husarova for the Parisian sound poetry festival Festina Lente in February.

I attended the Lettretage conference in Berlin, in January, giving a presentation which describes the history and purpose of the Enemies project.

I now have a page on the Poetry Archive

I launched my collaborative book 1000 proverbs with Tom Jenks, at a Liverpool Camarade event, published by Knives, forks & spoons press.

For Wrogowie: Polish Enemies, I performed with Milosz Biedrzycki, celebrating the work of Tomaz Salamun

For Enemigos: Mexican Enemies, I collaborated with Amanda de la Garza, via video.

I read at the Whitechapel Gallery with Chris McCabe, for Stateland, curated by Gareth Evans.

Fourfold, a press in Glasgow, published my collaboration with Ross Sutherland, nick-e Melville, Ryan Van Winkle & Colin Herd: the Auld Fold.

The new Penned in the Margins 2015 programme features details on my first play, a scratch of which is scheduled for October.

Test Centre magazine : issue 5

http://testcentre.org.uk/product/test-centre-five/ well pleased to be inside this. my poems wait for you towards the end. they are the end, the buttress, the bookmark, six of them, from my upcoming book {Enthusiasm} which Test Centre are kind enough to be publishing.

The fifth issue of our fiction and poetry magazine, with new work by Test Centre regulars and an exciting selection of contributions from writers published by Test Centre for the first time.

Released in a limited edition of 250 copies, the magazine is A4 and stapled, with cover artwork by A. Selby and H. Dunnell.

Contributors: Sophie Collins, Rachael Allen, Harry Burke, Sam Riviere, Declan Ryan, Patrick Sykes, MC Hyland, Russell Walker, Thurston Moore, Tom Clark, Mark Prince, MacGillivray, Damian Le Bas, Sophie Sleigh-Johnson, Paul Buck, Iain Sinclair, Chris McCabe, Tom Chivers, SJ Fowler.

£8 + p&p. A4. Stab-stapled. 44pp. 250 copies. Cover: A. Selby and H. Dunnell, Untitled, 2014. Printed on Risograph by Studio Operative. Designed by Traven T. Croves.

performing the striking of light & sound for Syndrome: Liverpool

http://www.syn-dro.me/syndrome-2-1-choros-21st-24th-august/ Such a privilege to work with Nathan Jones again on his remarkable Syndrome project in Liverpool, and creating a piece of work which will be one of the most innovative and intensive pieces of performance art that I've ever undertaken. Again it calls back to my martial arts practise, but this time, in collaboration with two remarkable technologists, the performance of shadow boxing, or kata, is in a light and sound receptive cell, a space in which every move I undertake is responded to, not only in colour and light, but in sound, both specific to the space into which I move and to the depth also. It is complex, better seen than explained, and I'm lucky to have a small residency with Syndrome with which to develop it before the big performance on Thursday August 21st, at 5.30pm at Kitchen 24. 

Syndrome 2.1: Choros // 21st – 24th AUGUST

A room-as-instrument devised by artist Jamie Gledhill with sound artist Stefan Kazassoglou, using an array of computers attached to X-box Kinect devices. This project brings together popularly available motion capture technology with 3D audio set up into a unique experiential and performative artwork.
The work will allow for the dynamics and speed of a users movement within the space form a live illustrative mapping on the walls, and for sound to be literally ‘thrown’ across the 3D space by a performer – and members of the public as active participators in their own performative moment with the work.
The CHOROS installation will be open for playing and viewing from 10 – 4pm on 22nd – 24th August. Entering the space, the movements of your limbs will be traced by light and sound across a 3D axis using projections and an ambisonic speaker array. Entry is free for all, and suitable for all ages.
A launch event will feature a brand new movement work by SJ Fowler in which he explores the ritual and violence of martial arts:
The Book of Five Rings by SJ FOWLER
The Book of Five Rings is an unforgettable exploration of physicality and martial spirituality through cutting edge avant garde theatre and performance. And while each Ring will be decidedly different, each a unique, responsive production to its subject, as a whole, they will form an unforgettable tale of a universal human expression, battle without violence, war without war.
no. 1: Pugilistica UK / US (western boxing)
A conceptual performance exploring the sport of Boxing. SJ Fowler takes the audience through a boxing workout with a different, shadow boxing with a complex, cutting edge technological rig, so that each movement has a responsive light and sound reaction. An exhausting, explosive performance of light and sound
The work will then be available to view from 21st – 24th August.
Booking recommended and encouraged for groups.

Cordite: a feature on collaboration for the Australian Journal

Cordite is one big publication out of Oz, and I was delighted to be asked to put something wide together for a special issue on collaboration. I adapted some words on collaboration itself, as it is as part of my practise and tied this into five excerpts from brand new, never before seen collaborations. They are all works I'm really excited to share, all part of a continuation of my work with others since the publication of Enemies. I'll be blogposting excerpts from these works one by one, but for now.

 Here's the full issue: http://cordite.org.au/content/poetry/collaboration/

 Here's the link to my article: http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/in-collaboration/

& from that "These five collaborations are no more or less representative of my overall collaborative output than any other five I could’ve chosen. Rather, I choose them, as I do my collaborators, because of a sense of who these people are and the creative and social energy they have exchanged with me. I write this in fact on a tour of the Scottish islands, writing new collaborations every day, to be read in the evenings, to small audiences on Orkney and Shetland. The collaborative process is ever in flux for me now, and so these five works also seem new to me, as though they were written this morning too.
Yet the work with Tom Jenks, ‘1000 proverbs’, was built over a year period or more – and readied by rapidly batted back and forth email – for publication as a separate book with Knives Forks and Spoons Press. Too, ‘40 feet’, is a poem where David Berridge and I tried to embrace the failure of encapsulation, writing 40 poems that were about themselves, over a 40 day period. ‘Samurai’, with Andrew Spragg, is new … begun this year and currently growing poem by poem as we both research a randomly chosen topic and warp it through our shared poetics. ‘La dominate’ was written and rendered artistically by Ariadne Radi Cor in Venice – both of us part of a collaborative project with a university there – as part of a project called Crossing Voices, one expertly curated by Alessandro Mistrorigo and James Wilkes. And ‘Oil’, with William Letford, was written for reading, for this current tour, and read in Aberdeen, Scotland on 15 July, 2014, after an exchange of stanzas lasting a few weeks. Our processes produce the content, and that’s where the joy is, in making sure a process is the thing of it all.
To date I’ve engaged in over 100 collaborations..."