A note on: The EVP Sessions & The Black Dinner performance - November 14th 2015

The original EVP tour was a major turning point in my work with performance, being able to tour the UK with really wonderful artists like Hannah Silva and Ross Sutherland, and with the support of Nathan Jones and Tom Chivers (www.stevenjfowler.com/evp) When the opportunity to do a one off commission for the same project, at Shoreditch Town Hall, I had a clear thought to what I might do, melding both my original work for the project with a tradition I've had for three years now, being painted as a skeleton on or around the Mexican Day of the Dead. I first did so in Mexico City and try to do so every year in homage to my friends in Mexico, and because much of my work is about the symbology of death.

For this performance I was really lucky to have the amazingly generous artist and make up artist Amalie Russell paint my face professionally. I had then spent a few days covering a whole banquet of food in black paint and lacquer, and my performance, a fluxus meal of sorts, was to set the table and invite diners to join me. I waited outside the fire exit of the venue on a typically vapid Shoreditch saturday night and felt it appropriate to wait in the rain. The performance was accompanied by a track made in collaboration with the remarkable musician Alexander Kell, who did an incredible job mixing my reading of Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo, one of the authors I had discovered in Mexico.

"Electronic Voice Phenomena returns with a series of electrifying live sessions featuring the very best in hauntology, spoken word, glitch noise and performance. The EVP Sessions takes its inspiration from Konstantin Raudive’s notorious Breakthrough experiments of the 1970s, in which he divined voices-from-beyond in electronic noise. Enter the labyrinthine basement of Shoreditch Town Hall and experience a “mind-boggling”, “perplexingly good” avant-garde cabaret of human, ghostly and machine voices. http://www.electronicvoicephenomena.net/index.php/shoreditch-town-hall-london/"

Upcoming: Four events - aWwW / EVP / Globe Road / Soundings

Nov 13th: A World Without Words IV
Nov 14th: Electronic Voice Phenomena
Nov 15th: Globe Road Festival Walking Tour
Nov 18th: Soundings III

November Friday 13th - A World without Words IV at the Frontline Club: 7pm
The fourth event in the series exploring neuroscience, aphasia, the brain and language, this time at the incredible Frontline Club. With a talk by Professor Barry Smith and the screening of a series of anthropological short films from Vincent Moon. Curated by Lotje Sodderland, Thomas Duggan and I. http://www.frontlineclub.com/screening-and-discussion-a-world-without-words/

November Saturday 14th - EVP Sessions at Shoreditch Town Hall: 8pm
Electronic Voice Phenomena hits London once again, I'll be presenting a new commission in full skeleton embodiment, exploring disembodied voice and death http://shoreditchtownhall.com/theatre-performance/whats-on/event/theEVPsessions

November Sunday 15th - Globe Road walking tour for the Globe Road Festival: 11am
A Sunday morning stroll up Globe Road in the company of Gareth Evans, Elaine Mitchener and the Bohman brothers, all of whom will present brand new performance commissions related to the road itself, finishing with a reading in York Hall with Stephen Watts, Richard Scott and Jonathan Mann www.theenemiesproject.com/globeroad

November Wednesday 18th - Soundings III with Maja Jantar at St Johns on Bethnal Green: 7pm A collaboration with the incomparable Maja Jantar for a new sound poetry / avant-garde music performance as part of the Soundings project with Hubbub at Wellcome Collection responding to prompts from the Wellcome Library. St Johns on Bethnal Green, an early 19th-century church, is an amazing venue too. www.stevenjfowler.com/soundings

Upcoming: November 2015 - Events, Performances & Projects

My 'A Language Art' course runs on Monday nights throughout November with sesssions exploring the intersections of avant-garde poetry and modern art in the galleries of Tate Modern and in the Tate stores.

November Wednesday 4th - Pugilistica at Apiary Studios
A chance for me to launch my book Fights, in it's 2nd edition from Veer Books, alongside some amazing journalists, novelists, poets and art historians, all exploring the literature of boxing. www.theenemiesproject.com/pugilistica

November Thursday 5th - Mondo: global avant-garde poetry at Poetry School
A new course at the Poetry School, this time exploring avant-garde movements from Japan, Nigeria, Canada, Brazil and Syria / Iraq. Still a place or two left! Book here

November Friday 6th - Symposium: Pulling Together/Pulling Apart: Forces in Creative Collaboration, OVADA, Oxford
Thanks to artists Brook and Black, I'll have the chance to discuss collaboration at OVADA, alongside Tamarin Norwood and others http://www.ovada.org.uk/arkitektoniske-kramper/

November Saturday 7th - Nemici: an Italian Enemies project at the Rich Mix
A really ambitious Enemies project I'm curating with ten Italian artists and poets visiting London, each writing new collaborations with British poets. I'll be presenting a new work with Alessandro Burbank. Should be special www.theenemiesproject.com/nemici

November Friday 13th - A World without Words IV at the Frontline Club
The fourth event in the series curated by Lotje Sodderland, Thomas Duggan and myself, exploring neuroscience, aphasia, the brain and art, this time at the incredible Frontline Club. With a talk by Barry Smith and anthropological short films from Vincent Moon. http://www.frontlineclub.com/screening-and-discussion-a-world-without-words/

November Saturday 14th - EVP Sessions at Shoreditch Town Hall
Electronic Voice Phenomena hits London once again, I'll be presenting a new commission in full skeleton embodiment, exploring disembodied voice http://shoreditchtownhall.com/theatre-performance/whats-on/event/theEVPsessions

November Sunday 15th - Globe Road walking tour for the Globe Road Festival
Happy to be leading a Sunday morning stroll up Globe Road in the company of Gareth Evans, Elaine Mitchener and the Bohman brothers www.theenemiesproject.com/globeroad

November Wednesday 18th - Soundings III with Maja Jantar at St Johns on Bethnal Green
So excited to collaborate with the incredible Maja Jantar for a new performance as part of the Soundings project with Hubbub at Wellcome Collection responding to prompts from the Wellcome Library. St Johns on Bethnal Green is an amazing venue too. www.stevenjfowler.com/soundings

November Friday 20th - The European Camarade at Freeword Centre
A mini festival of European poetry in collaboration, so pleased to have the chance to curate this night and present a new collaboration with Endre Ruset. Some of these poets are doing the most exciting work in their nations, not to be missed www.theenemiesproject.com/europeancamarade

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a year since EVP : the full Electric Dada

The Electronic Voice Phenomena was a huge watershed in my performance art, one year ago, racing up and down the UK with Ross Sutherland, Hannah Silva and co, thanks to Nathan Jones & Tom Chivers. I was never happy with the videos taken from the tour, as they captured the first performances and fragments, when I hadnt found my grove. The best stuff in Manchester, London and Bournemouth, will never see the light of day. In its stead, these 5 pieces of stumbling mauling glory.http://www.electronicvoicephenomena.net/index.php/electric-dada/ SJ Fowler Act 1 Gateshead from Mercy on Vimeo.
SJ Fowler Act 2 London from Mercy on Vimeo.
SJ Fowler Act 3 Gateshead from Mercy on Vimeo.
SJ Fowler Act 4 London from Mercy on Vimeo. SJ Fowler Act 5 Gateshead from Mercy on Vimeo.

licking up the ash of Mary Shelley: EVP Bournemouth

A reunion on the south coast for the Electronic voice phenomena tour. In a derelict theatre built by mary shelley's son for her to watch her favourite plays from her specially built god's eye portico dumb waiter while ill and invalided. As part of the Bournemouth arts festival on the very southest of coasts, in Boscombe. An amazing space to perform in, crumbling and mysterious. I was utterly profane, rewriting my whole piece to be about Shelley and Frankenstein. I heard her voice while retching, I told the audience about the new technology and possibilities of galvanism and urged them not to fear death as their favourite body part might be resurrected, I sat in a couch before them while we screened the prologue to the Bride of Frankenstein. I even finished by doing my nut as normal but with the added twist of this time licking her ash, poured from an urn I 'found upstairs', from the stage floor. So good to see the brilliant Hannah Silva, Ross Sutherland and Tom Chivers again and to explore Boscombe beach in meditation before the performance. A privilege to be able to rework my acting chops, spread the avant intensity and travel with performance. 

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. 

EVP Stockton

mad maxville, the place the students used to call mount doom in durham. actually an enjoyable day, a train over Yorkshire from Manchester to start, to Thornaby. Then it was explained to me what MadeinChelsea was, sonic interruption, a t=rex swipe into buildings, half the shops shut, like depression shut, tattoos on the back of a man's head in caffe nero. The Arc is a beautiful theatre, like a roman outpost for art. Wandering Stockton for hours and hours. I'd been before but why? I did many circles. Lots of charity shops. Bought a blue crocodile, a pig and a whoopie cushion. Listening to arvo part, a mistake, too many ideas for novels. The show itself was good, nerveless again, swishing, seemed to be easier now. Even the closer wasn't too hurtful and draining, but enough. A couple talked in the front row, I cane pointed them, adlibbed the most since Brighton. Premier fucking inn again, but a privilege even that. Second to last. Such fast passing, sad, learned too much.

EVP Manchester

Maybe the most involving performance, maybe. The Burgess foundation was an intense environment, inspiring for me http://www.anthonyburgess.org/ His spirit was about, I waited between sets in his library, filled with first editions, signed copies, weird books that must've been his. I sprinkled his ashes on stage. 1985. I felt quite warmed by the presence of friends in the audience, Holly Pester (who I beared, hoovered, retched and flicked), Tom Jenks, Scott Thurston - poets I respect, fun to show the stuff before them, and it was packed, and dark, and I felt stranglely nerveless beforehand, and so it did flow, lots of heavy pukkke. Exhaustion can relax, can afford funny rifts in a character. I returned the morning after, to buy some books, and I had a open, meditative afternoon waiting before, in central Manchester, confused and enlightened by its bleak newness and unfinishedness, like my performance and my piece. I worried I was a little too ebullient after, too loud and sharp in conversing etc...but our hotel was bizzarre, like the overlook, shining-esque, and that returned me to ground. 

Pictures from EVP in Liverpool

Pictures from EVP in Liverpool. The same site also published a review of the show, which was rightly glowing about Hannah Silva and Honor Favin, and included this snippet "The evening was compered by London-based poet SJ Fowler (main image), who through a series of vignettes attempted to channel a retching spiritualist's progressive decline into suicidal despair. While amusing, and Fowler has obvious talent and performance skills, it was impossible to banish images of Derek Acorah from my mind (albeit during his little documented laudanum phase), and although thematically relevant, we found it hard to understand how the piece contributed to the promised exploration." An amazing link, Acorah is the kind of underground avantgarde television personality whose authenticity I often have felt I am aping on this tour.
http://www.peterguy.merseyblogs.co.uk/2013/05/electronic-voice-phenomena-fea.html

EVP review on a younger theatre

http://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-electric-voice-phenomena/      Have you ever been to a séance? Have you ever been tempted to try to contact the other side? Have you ever felt the presence of some ethereal being? Or have you always been the sensible, cynical type that thinks all of that is rot? Well, either way, the boundary-pushing, ground-breaking and dimension-rattling cabaret that is Electronic Voice Phenomena will certainly make you question the beliefs you hold most dear. Electronic Voice Phenomena combines experimental technology, literature, music and performance in a show that focuses, quite bluntly, on death and the afterlife. The project is inspired by the notorious ‘Breakthrough’ experiments conducted by Konstantin Raudive in the 1970s, where he captured voices-from-beyond in electronic noise.
This show is unique. It is not easy, not always clear and certainly not easily comprehensible. But it is fascinating. The wordsmith SJ Fowler acts almost like a compere, being the through line, almost a reference point that keeps the audience anchored into the proceedings. This is very useful, and makes the show nicely coherent. He tells us that he is a conduit the spirits use to contact the living, flipping the perception that it is only the living that tries to contact the dead. He also introduces the idea of a kind of electronic empathy that the living can find with the dead. These are complex concepts that are gradually elaborated on........
........The show always comes back to SJ Fowler. He really stands out of the crowd as an extraordinary performer and poet. The climax of his show comes in a mind-blowing, deeply unsettling and ultimately haunting moment when he is overwhelmed by the bottled resentment he has in him and by the voices of the ghosts that are taking over his head.
It must be said that this show is an acquired taste. There are moments when the art is more about the artist than it is about the audience, and this can make it hard to find a way in. That said, the experimentation in this show is amazing to watch, and the way it deals with such a difficult subject in a head on way is commendable. The show makes the audience feel in a way that most theatre doesn’t. It accesses a fundamental, animalistic emotional response to the material that is hard to explain. And this kind of experiential theatre is incredibly rare. If Electronic Voice Phenomena comes to a theatre near you on its tour, don’t miss it.

Sarah Lester's article on Electric Dada

http://www.electronicvoicephenomena.net/index.php/the-voices-in-the-radio-sj-fowlers-electric-dada/ ....... click to read the full whack
As the centenary of Cabaret Voltaire looms ever closer, poet SJ Fowler has been adopting Dadaist methodologies as a way of questioning our own preconceived notions. Drawing on Dada’s own sense of terror and menace, Fowler’s “Electric Dada” asks the audience to consider what it might actually mean to make contact with the dead. Or, rather, what it might mean for the dead to contact us. Far from hearing the comforting voices of our dearly departed, Fowler conjures up a profoundly more painful and unsettling affair. “Death has a language”, he sinisterly declares onstage, then, without waiting for an invitation, continues: “I will give you that sound.”

As Dadaists superceded formal language to engage with subjects that could not be understood outside of the abstract or the absurd, Fowler’s own sound poetry urges the listener to make their own connections between word, sound and meaning.   Transcending a language concerning death that is overfamiliar to us, Fowler’s ritual-esque vocalisations evoke magical incantations and otherworldly seances in words from a language of his own invention.  Fragmentary phrases, fields of invented words can bypass the author’s own associations and trigger new ones in the listener – it’s a Dadaist technique that was deployed in an attempt to overcome the subjective (bourgeois) ego.

If art appeals to civilised sensibilities and genteel good manners, Dada is the opposite. Dada – anti-art – was intended to offend. The performance experiments at Cabaret Voltaire (and beyond) did not lend themselves to polite rounds of applause, rather they stood for a rigorous critique of prevalent systems. Even so, when Fowler outlines the specific details of an artist’s exemplary suicide case for the benefit of all those in the audience who have refrained from committing suicide “for fear of making a mess” there’s no riot exactly, but there’s more than a ripple of nervous laughter. Like the audience of Henning’s performance of Totentanz, we’re not quite sure how to react.

EVP Bristol

Time for the city again, so important, back so soon after the enemies, and the cube is a truly exquisite space. How could this not be in the shadow of something as immense as the night before? It was different rather than lesser. A space to truly test the 'new day new work'. The greenroom was an attic bricabrac holecave of joy for me to play in, dance in, while Outfit shellacked. We all felt homely in the space. I could've felt really exhausted, body jaded, and with the material at times, unable to call down the spirit of the shaman animus monster lock bodywar, but I just smoothed that sideways. The first signs of tour cosh, tiredings, but not really. Such a joy to be around everyone on this thing, so much gentle brilliance, brightness, intelligence, creativity. Nice to be collaborating with Ross too, at claw, bear wrestle, and flesh out ideas on trains instead of reading / writing. Weird monolithic, premier innn, i name checked it live, but no one was hooked on that. Not everything can rattle like a sword inside of a stick.

EVP London

Bethnal green road back + forth twice. Another day beginning before it really began. This is the show that means the most to me. It happened, certainly, and a breaking point, where I no longer have a clue how it is. Others are positive, so it is all positive. I committed to it. I felt the (in)famous frost where I was used to some rictus chuckle from elsewhere audiences, there was less. a lesson here, but it was pressure, so familiar the ground, and the expectation. quite big actually. a night waiting on stairs, feeling tremors and then letting loose, realising niceness was needed to really spear. i did spear. people in lifts, im told, saying they wanted to run, that it made them feel ill, afraid. I fell back on what I can do, to eat up that drop. I had plenty of use for the disdain early accrued. All tied together in the end, I think, more than before, it fused, my works across the night, all the work really. We hoped it would when it should and it did, I suppose, if I can be any judge of that, which I can't. The less I know of this stuff the better, for I cannot know. When it does not die in childhood we can seal it off, return to the next. But still, some weight and I ended up with pub threats and massive eviscerating expellation of the gullet. The pints of cold coffy, lukewarm strawbshake and oliveoilberrysmoothie did not see the light of day. Other things did. Slept in my own bed.

EVP Brighton

One of the nicest walks of my life, strolling of the Laines to Kemptown with my shamanic cloak on my left shoulder. Friday evening and 100s see me, only a few notice, and they speak to me, with warmth. I love your coat, sweetie, I get in Kemptown. A car of girls, on their way out makeup, beep and then stop when I smile and ask me what it is. When I tell them, they are impressed, but seemingly not surprised. ub40 back to back on my shuffle. earth dies screaming and don't break my heart. powerful throwbacks. i listen to the full songs, more than once, which is rare with my impatience.you shoot me down in flames / You put me down a lot / But I'm giving you my heart / Go on take it / Please be careful not to break it / Just remember it's the only one I've got / It's the only one I've The expected perished at the basement, but it was a joyful experience, a stop between points in terms of my work, but the Pit in the Basement is that, and the intimacy welcomed a lot of adlibs. Apparently I've done the Brighton fringe and the Great Escape festival now. I was gentler, more responsive. I came here, Brighton, to recover after a big car crash, have family I love in the city too. A place that has been generous to me. Despite what people (cynical people, like me maybe) might think of as a veneer of falseness, it is a genuine place. I went with things for the performance, and things went with me. Had 2 grubbs vegiburgers. Holiday. The hotel was beautiful too. 

EVP Liverpool

Saint Georges Hall is a ridiculous place to look out from, into an audience. My mum tells me her dad used to take her there every saturday morning, this must have been in the mid 50s. More time in a city my family is rooted in but I never returned to until doing things with art / performance. The view from the green room is immense. A day of dressing room with Outfit, http://www.everynightidressupasyou.
com/main.php who are as intelligent, down to earth, brilliant a group of creative individuals self-coerced into a collective as I've met. I feel removed from the procedural responsibilities of such an undertaking. We consider the balcony for a thing. Still really scared for this one. Honor Gavin plays, really impressive  http://honorgavin.tumblr.com/ The whole tour lineup is a huge act of skill on the part of the producers, the acts are so radically different but wholly communicative, and they do speak across each other. The gore, a silhouette fudge, but it's fine. Colin Herd was kind enough to mail me, he saw Gateshead, was very kind about it, respect his opinion, helps to hear. Leaving Liverpool, staying at a hotel I've stayed at before. Threats in late nite tesco. I am as confused as I believe the audience were, which is a tremendous alienation achievement. I lay on the stage long after, bespattered, as they snapped pictures of me, and filtered out. The view was beautiful. See below.

EVP Gateshead

Groups of men in tight t-shirts, and I say men, those in their 40s, stared at me aggressively because I was wearing light blue trousers. The Baltic is a wonderful gallery. To play at the Sage is an achievement for me http://thesagegateshead.org/ We passed Durham on the train up, where I went to study, and haven't been back since. Three years of my life between Durham, Newcastle, Middlesborough, Stockton, Sunderland, Hartlepool, Chester-le-street. The train journey becomes the centre of what I aim to take in, the company of others, the experiential focus which allows me to put my own experience first, to appreciate the opportunity at all possible moments, to utilise the unique and challenging nature of the performance and its demands, and the company of those demands, to put the audience second, in order to benefit them. Met http://www.hetainpatel.com/ for the first time, a deeply generous and warm presence.

How to write the month spent writing my piece, the month rehearsing it, the unexpected but welcome discomfort at essentially having to confidently perform a touring acting theatre piece on a national tour to major venues with a few months notice never having done so before. How does that affect my private aesthetic experience, permanently, in the face of the inexorable contradiction between the intense engagement of performance and the dreary low of inevitable dissatisfaction? Doesn't matter. Lots of tiny changes made, shavings, prepared the Ash, the Animus, the call, the musicality and imagery. New shoes on, cut my feet to ribbons. The show went well, looking up, into the bowl. I'm told, repeatedly, the first one is the hardest. Is it? Hotels begin. The room sits in the middle of a pool, friday night in Newcastle.

Shaman electrique - a poem for the tour as it is being toured - #EVP

Shamans were once essential for the survival and wellbeing of Arctic communities. Are we not of a similar climate now, that such a necessity has arisen? Shamans are men or women who have the particular ability to communicate with other-than-human-persons. These may be, for example, animals, for example, BEARS, or the personified forces of disease, or weather. Shamans are especially important in ensuring that animals continue to give themselves as gifts to hunters. Without a shaman to intercede and negotiate with these powers, a human community is vulnerable to disease and starvation, even self-inflicted death. I bought myself a gift to reward myself for being so good, it is a gift I am giving to you. Latex nurse. French maid. Lingerie. For your body is not needed, rushing out into the unknown, out of the human world 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Skeleton_Bear_(in_shamanic_transformation)_-_label_-_De_Young_Museum.jpg