In the new Lighthouse magazine

Really pleased to feature in the special collaboration issue of Lighthouse magazine, thanks to Meirion Jordan, Angus Sinclair & co. My Estates of Westeros collaboration with the artist Ben Morris remains one of my very favourite works and in typical fashion, Lighthouse did an amazing job of rendering the visually complex work. A great magazine, one of the best in this country, supporting new writers as a mission, so pleased to be included

Buy it here : http://www.gatehousepress.com/
shop/anthologies/
lighthouse-issue-8/

the end of Kakania, for now...

In uploading the videos of the 4th and magisterial final act of the Kakania project I waded through all the Kakania webpages to change the tense from future to past. Not too sad a labour as I have stated so often, especially in the light of such an amazing final act, how satisfying the project now seems, how complete.

You can read all my past tenses here www.theenemiesproject.com/kakania

Kakania at the Austrian Cultural Forum - March 26th 2015

The end, for now. But as Kakania ended with war, perhaps our hopes should be too high. This incarnation of the time certainly ended with a beautiful, graceful, varied and dynamic evening of works in the appropriately resplendent salon-like surroundings of the Austrian Cultural Forum. A night for me personally to appreciate just how extraordinary the project has been, and how much this is owed to the generosity of the artists and the almost unheard of support, trust and enthusiasm of the Austrian Cultural Forum itself. Theodora Danek and her colleagues have been remarkable, and this was a night where I able to thank them.

The final event was not to be a culmination, it was, as each event has been, it's own entity, curated with it's own rhythm and feel, relative to the venue and artists. Yet, there was a natural build towards it. It was built on language works, poets, both new to Kakania and those who have acted as a sort of creative spine to the project, read - Stephen Emmerson so beautifully engaging with Rilke (his son is called Rainer), Colin Herd so brilliantly evoking Kokoschka, George Szirtes born to write about Schnitzler. These poets were complimented with some radically different mediums, Josh Alexander with his abstract film on Paul Wittgenstein, which when screened in the dark of that room genuinely moved me, Fabian Faltin with a conceptual performance on Otto Wagner which was utterly unforgettable and witty and energetic, and finally Ben Morris, a sound art beast, on Ernst Krenek. 

The point was to create a specific energy and experience throughout the evening that rested upon complimentary and responsive artforms, artworks and artists. And more than that to show how powerful the connection is in 21st century London to the iconoclasts of early 20th century Vienna. Each work spoke to the next, as together they were far more about the artists through the ghost voices of their Habsburg predecessors, than the details of the individual artworks themselves. It was like all of Kakania, unique, and warm hearted and brilliant.

Kakania IV at the Austrian Cultural Forum – March Thursday 26th 2015

The Kakania project closes its program for now with a grand event at the Austrian Cultural Forum, just off Hyde Park, in London. Four new commissions, and four new iterations of previous commissions blend poetry, avant-garde music, performance art and video art, all from contemporary artists and poets each responding in their own unique way to a figure of Habsburg Vienna around one century ago.

George Szirtes reads poems on Arthur Schnitzler
Ben Morris offers experimental music on Ernst Krenek
Joshua Alexander screens his video art on Paul Wittgenstein
Emily Berry reads poems on Sigmund Freud
Colin Herd reads poems on Oskar Kokoschka
Fabian Faltlin performs in response to Otto Wagner
Stephen Emmerson shares things in response to Rainer Maria Rilke
eff Hilson reads poems on Ludwig Wittgenstein

The event is completely free, but please do use this link to book your place
http://acflondon.org/literature-and-books/kakania-iv/

Both Kakania publications, the Kakania anthology with over 40 contributors, and Oberwildling: On the Life of Oskar Kokoschka by Colin Herd & I, will be available to buy at the event.

Once this phase of Kakania is complete, the remaining copies of the books will be available online and the anthology will have a special reading launch in June at the Hardy Tree gallery in Kings Cross, London.

Also in situe at Kakania IV will be books from the imitable Pushkin Press, who have generously supported the Kakania project and who publish some of the finest authors of the era we are emploring. http://pushkinpress.com/kakania/

Thanks too to Theodora Danek, Elisabeth Kögler and the team at the Austrian Cultural Forum and all those who’ve helped make the project so special. www.kakania.co.uk

Wildermenn exhibition at the House Gallery, Peckham

the premiere exhibition of the Wildermenn collective, beginning December 18th and closing just before Xmas, will take place at the House gallery in Peckham, London. http://www.house-gallery.co.uk/ Wildermenn combines visual art, poetry, sonic art and sculpture into one wholly collaborative art collective about urban transhumance.  http://wildermenn.weebly.com/  https://twitter.com/wilder_menn The exhibition is curated by Gabrielle Cooper.
about Wildermenn: transhumance in the city, animalisms across four art mediums, wholly collective, fundamentally collaborative - the Wildermenn produce artworks that subvert and celebrate the rituals and rites which are essentially linked to that which is forgotten in the sprawl - fertility, procreativity, seasons, elements, creatureliness and death. Anthropomorphic modernist folk practise from cultures now unknown find form in sculpture, noise, performance, fragmented poetry and mud paint. about the exhibition: Wilder is a decomposing cathogan sculpture piece, which has been wholly  constructed from the beach detritus that litters the banks of Thames and is the  common quarry of mudlarking. A beast, the Wilder is a rotting, half animal, half vessel, castrated and jawheavy - assaulting the eyes, ears and nose, the mansize figure is a grotesque vision of what the city and it's river has spewed up realised in it's skeletal, lackadaisical glory.

A special view and performance evening will take place on Thursday 19th, doors opening at 7.30pm, entrance is free. It will be an unforgettable evening of organic mush and destruction. Please come along, a poster attached.

Gilles de Rais / Estates of Westeros exhibition at the Rich Mix Art Centre Gallery Cafe!

an Enemies exhibition
Gilles de Rais / The Estates of Westeros
David Kelly / Ben Morris / SJ Fowler
Tuesday October 22nd - Sunday 26th
in the Rich Mix Arts Centre Café Gallery http://www.richmix.org.uk/venues/spaces/cafe-gallery/
 
The Enemies project presents poetry & avant-garde illustration exhibited in the unique ‘bearpit’ café gallery of the Rich Mix Arts Centre. Two exchanges between poet & artist aim to break ground in the collaborative relationship between text, image and form, as published portable exhibitions, or books in boxes, are wallhung and ceiling strung. / Gilles de Rais – an interchangeable narrative reflection on the life and legend of Gilles de Rais – this fusion of avant garde poetry and modernist line drawing aims to satirise and subvert the manner in which the monstrous myth surrounding such de Rais is echoed in our own time by Jimmy Saville. This is the disjunctive folklore of idiot's resounding through the ages, from 15th century France to 21st century Britain. / The Estates of Westeros is where avant garde poetry meets avant garde illustration. Whether perception or reality, housing estates are environments of occlusion, claustrophobia and damage, and poetry about them has a responsibility to reflect this complexity and intensity in its tone and form. The Estates of Westeros is a meditation on this living space through the universe of George RR Martin's Game of Thrones, and where Gilles de Rais explores the absurdity of mythmaking in that which once was real, the Estates ... explores the grinding realism at the heart of the fantastical. / Both books can be purchased for £9 direct from Like This Press: http://www.likethispress.co.uk/publications/sjfowlerandbenmorris
http://www.likethispress.co.uk/publications/sjfowleranddavidkelly
 
A special viewing of the exhibition will take place on October Wednesday 23rd at 8pm. The event is free to attend and features:- Eirikur Orn Norddahl, one of the most amazing poetical performers in Europe, award winning novelist / sound poet. Here’s what he did last time he visited London http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P4beEsNIcQ (Preview)  He will be reading from his new publication. / Ondrej Buddeus, a pivotal part of the post-millenial new generation of Czech poets, a brilliant young poet joining us from Prague, http://bodyliterature.com/2013/06/25/ondrej-buddeus-2/ / There will also be the launch of my collaboration with the photographer Matteo X. Patocchi. http://www.matteopatocchi.com/ ‘Twins born Triplets’ is a unique poetry object, a fusion of experimental portrait photography and typographically innovative poetry (about Russia, Putin, Khlebnikov, Pussy Riot – an excerpt read here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-b8KL8StMU ) printed as a newspaper in a limited edition.
 
Please join us for the crescendo week of the Enemies project year one on

Enemies at the Hardy Tree closing night

Thanks to the 40 + poets & artists who performed / exhibited over the two weeks. Thanks to the over 200 people who came to the events all told, the others who came to view the work in the gallery. It was a very special few weeks in the rarest of London weather, and the second week rounded off an immense enterprise all told. Thanks to Amalie Russell, Cameron Maxwell, David Kelly, Catherine Carncross and the many others who gave of their time to help it on. Tamarin Norwood http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtE2sBTai1A
Sandeep Parmar & James Byrne http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUhLczT7Wl4
James Davies (& Tom Jenks) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUyGoEE94UQ

Everybody's people

I performed twice for the Voice art night. An epic experience for me hard to put it into concise sentences of any cogent value...newness, consistently attempting to find discomfort in the growth of new work and collaborators and practises has led to some of the most creatively profound experiences this year. It was a farewell to Ben - a friend who had given so much to me - a new world's poetry - a reluctant educator  - a moment he passed over to me something significant just before he leaves for China. and on top, to do this in tandem with dylan nyoukis - a true pioneer, a batwing sound artist, and for us to achieve real moments of synthesis fused was amazing, quite emotional. All I can say is that it felt overwhelming to be a part of a creative moment harrowing love happening live in a room full of very generous warm spirited people. It was also great fucking fun and shall not be quickly forgotten. Another Muay Thai poem, where 666... was attempting to be attritional and meditative this was intended as amusing energetic and explosive and still retain the sense of authenticity of practise amidst the silliness so vibrantly Central to old school sound poetry practise. Chris page again is a fine friend to help 

EVP Norwich

Strange it may be but Norwich is a poetry monsterland. The amount of good poets it has produced, through uea, and its cushy environs, of my generation, is really impressive / unnerving. A fine place for the last show (?) The town was Norfolk festivalled – quaint, yokelfest, saw morris dancing. The arts / writers centre is such a beautiful venue and lovely people throughout its tunnels, had some lovely exchanges with those people, and ate their food. Everyone on the tour seemed very balanced, calm, happy with what we’d done, still growing into those ideas, still critical, but neither nostalgic or overwrought. No worn out sentiment about the benemothian undertaking of EVP, which has been great and for me personally a success for all the challenges it posed were new, and I sucked in loads from those conflicts. Good to know..., consistently, adapting each night – learning all the time from my tour peers, the venues, the space, the techs, the producers, the work, the memorising, the acting, maybe even the audience (though still in general I believe what I always did – balls at them) Probably the end of this character too, a last dada hurrah for the retch acorah shaman bear host spine birdkiller.
To the show. This the end, may 25th, a date I have eyed some some suspicion for a few months, but it arrives First bits were a tiny bit wonky – I blame the conservative audience, gentility folk in the crowd. Norfolk arts festival. Then on in, pretty good. A good bear, my favourite of the Zamyatin story, the dragon. A nice going for it at the end came natural. Some spit up lung butter bedraggles, some fear, & I finished after hard ZIMZALLA BIM BIM BADA ZALADU ZALADIM by screaming ILL MISS YOU, ILL MISS YOU SO MUCH. A lot of warmth and respect for those involved. Started out without much ‘acted’ performed. Wrote whole 45 minute theatre piece. 2 month notice, national tour, sage, st georges hall rich mix, burgess centre …. 8 shows, 37 appearances. Went well. 

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.