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
a World without Words at Apiary Studios was wonderful
The premiere event of a World without Words was an extraordinary night, well over one hundred people crammed into Apiary Studios in Hackney to watch six presentations from neuroscientists and artists from around the world. What really emerged from a night of big ideas and great personal passion, was how much the unique format we had aimed to provide appealed to both the speakers and the audience. The presentations were not centred about the sharing of knowledge, but of personal passion, and experience, and how the former came through the latter. The event was not one of provocation but curiosity. Lotje Sodderland, Noah Hutton, Ben Ehrlich, Harry Man, Malinda McPherson and Nick Ryan all found their journey into the human brain and our ability to wield language in different ways - through pain and illness, through study and discipline, through travel and creativity, yet they all shared an open, inviting, discursive evening where everyone left with more than they had a few hours before. It was also, what I had already known, a real joy to share the curating with Thomas Duggan and Lotje, we all seem to compliment each other and the process couldn't have been more gratifying. Four more events to come this year... www.aworldwithoutwords.com
Baroque in Hackney - EVP & Enemies wraps up 2013
http://baroqueinhackney.com/2013/12/31/the-turn-of-the-year-darkness-light-art-enemies/ a poetry reportage / blogging phenomenon, Katy Evans-Bush's Baroque in Hackney has kindly mentioned my EVP performance at the rich mix in May 2013 and my book Enemies, and it's intro, in her end of year wrap up on what happened and what happened to her. Such a pleasure to get mention in such a widely read and esteemed put together, and she is kind enough to call back to when I was lung bedraggling into a bucket on stage in london, and really giving my whole whack to scare people up. That's me below, in my true form, my bear form.
The turn of the year: darkness, light, art, enemies
We keep doing it
The picture at the top represents a blog post I never wrote, back in the thick of things. It’s SJ Fowler, living Dada, on stage at Rich Mix in Bethnal Green, in an experimental mixed media spoken word show called Electronic Voice Phenomena. I was meant to review the show, which was brilliant and included a variety of pieces from people like Hannah Silva, Ross Sutherland, and others, but somehow got bogged down in the bog of life and – though I spent months feeling guilty and unfinished – never did. SJ Fowler was the compere, and came on in a different sort of persona each time. As the show went on his linking acts became more and more broken down, more and more unstable, more inaccessible, until – I think just after the break – he came on in this amazing bear suit and started reading in a stentorian chant. Symbolic communication only and WOW. It was a bit terrifying from below; you can see where I was. The show ended with Mr Fowler coming on and ranting in German, on and on, building in fury – and fury is the word – until he finally melted down and gave every realistic semblance of being violently sick into a bucket on the stage.
This isn’t sounding appealing, is it! I asked him afterwards what he’d been reciting, and he told me it was a recipe. Full of eggs. (There, that’s better.)
The show, produced by Penned in the Margins and Mercy, was brave and exhilarating. It poked around in the idea of what lies beyond, but left the beyond firmly in the beyond. Rather than the usual ghosts and gloating hints of the paranormal, it gave us shadows and fragments of meaning and perception. (What is ‘normal’, anyway?)
SJ Fowler has a book of collaborations put with Penned in the Margins, called Enemies. By ‘enemies’, he means those personal influences and interactions that spur us to action – I think – I mean, I think he means friends. He opens with a surprising epigraph:
We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only though our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.- Orson Welles
The introduction is a very satisfying essay in its own right, and among other things he asserts that poetry ‘lends itself to collaboration as language does to communication… in the shaping of every fragment of language there is a response taking place’.
Where does creation spring from? What was that voice? These may be my questions for 2014.
Happy New Year!
Here’s to 2014. Let’s do it this time.
the Synesthesia exhibition
My own personal trajectory working in collaboration, like so many things (perhaps sadly) comes, in some part, from the last five years I've spent working at the British Museum. Some of the most remarkable artists, and people, I've ever met work there (among some of the least remarkable) and inevitably, as people such as this become your friends, you work with them. Last night when I attended the private view of Gabrielle Cooper's wonderful Synesthesia exhibition at the Darnley gallery just off Mare st in Hackney, my work with Ben Morris and David Kelly was on display, alongside work by Robert Hitzeman, Francesca Marcaccio while Alexander Kell took photographs, and curators / artist like Siobhan Feeney, Mamiko Karusudani and others attended. Everyone has or had worked at the museum. Whatever must be said about working a dead end job for food moneys, it does produce art.
Gabrielle did an extraordinary job with the exhibition, she was so remarkably professional and the books in the boxe with David and Ben were hung beautifully. Ben and I's work was nailed to the wall, while my work with David was strung like leather floor to ceiling. Such a privilege to be part of an exhibition such as this, most especially because I write first and foremost and rarely get to it back and admire stuff on walls. Moreover, with David and Ben's achievements being so considerable with these pieces, I can hide behind their talent. The pictures here, again remarkable from Alexander Kell, are a proper testament to the exhibition.
