proud to present Feinde: an Austrian Enemies project

I’m proud to present one of the most ambitious international Enemies projects yet, Feinde. Over four events in two cities and a two week exhibition in the heart of London, we will present the best of the brilliantly innovative contemporary Austrian poetry scene through new collaborations with their British counterparts. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/feinde 

The four remarkable Austrian poets coming to the UK - Ann Cotten, Jörg Piringer, Max Höfler & Esther Strauss - are a powerful representation of one of Europe’s great avant-garde traditions, from linguistic innovation to sound poetry, from concrete poetry to conceptualism & performance. Feinde is generously supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum. 

Feinde at the Rich Mix Arts Centre: Main Space - May Friday 8th: 7.30pm
35 - 47 Bethnal Green Road : E1 6LA - Free entry http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/feinde--the-enemies-project-austria/ 

The premiere performance event of the Feinde project. Taking place in the main space of the Rich Mix Arts Centre, this event will showcase eight brand new collaborations from the best of 21st European avant-garde poetics, including the collaborations between the four visiting Austrian poets & their core collaborative counterparts, & other brilliant London based artists & poets. It will be a unique night of performance and poetry. Featuring:

Jörg Piringer & I
Ann Cotten & Prudence Chamberlain
James Wilkes & Esther Strauss
Max Höfler & Robert Herbert McClean
Tim Atkins & Jeff Hilson
Philip Terry & James Davies
Erica Scourti & Mira Mattar
Jonathan Bohman & Adam Bohman 

The Feinde exhibition: a new concrete poetry 
May 1st to 14th 2015 at the Hardy Tree Gallery, Kings Cross, London
119 Pancras Road. London, UK. NW1 1UN www.theenemiesproject.com/feindeexhibition

This two week exhibition celebrates the visual poetry of the Feinde: Austrian Enemies project, with over 20 artists exhibiting poetry that explores the conceptual, the concrete and the material.

Calling back to the great tradition of postwar British and Austrian concrete poetry, so defining of that medium, this exhibition of 21st century poets brings together over 30 artworks from concrete poetry pioneers like Viennese-based Anatol Knotek and London’s Victoria Bean.

The exhibitions includes works from: Anatol Knotek, Victoria Bean, Jen Calleja, Simon Barraclough, Ben Borek, Sophie Collins, Tim Atkins, Ollie Evans, Adam Bohman, Jeff Hilson, Fabian Macpherson, Peter Jaeger, mjb, Jörg Piringer, Prudence Chamberlain & Ann Cotten, Esther Strauss, Robert Herbert McClean & Max Hofler. 

Special view / Poetry reading: May Sunday 10th  7pm - 9.30pm Free entry 
There will be a special view of the exhibition, with readings from British based poets and artists, and those visiting from Austria, including Cristine Brache, Emma Hammond, Simon Pomery, Ollie Evans, Prudence Chamberlain, mjb, Jörg Piringer, Ann Cotten, Esther Strauss & Robert Herbert McClean. 

May Tuesday 12th - Feinde at the Austrian Cultural Forum: 7pm 
Free Entry http://www.acflondon.org/literature-and-books/enemies-feinde

The final performance in London for the Feinde project will take place in the beautiful environs of the Austrian Cultural Forum itself, just off Hyde Park. This evening will allow the visiting poets to present their work with solo readings and performances alongside another host of London based poets. 

Featuring Rebecca Perry, Eley Williams, Jen Calleja, Jörg Piringer, Max Höfler, Ann Cotten, Esther Strauss, James Wilkes, Robert Herbert McClean & Prudence Chamberlain.

Feinde at Unesco European Literature Night Edinburgh - May 14th 

The European Literature Night 2014 is being co-curated by the Enemies project and acting as the grand finale of the Feinde project, the four Austrian visiting poets will travel to Edinburgh to present their solo works and brand new collaborations at the evenings closing show at Summerhall. More details on the specific times and location of the ELN program can be found here: www.theenemiesproject.com/eln

Some of the poets involved in Feinde will also read at Ian Hamilton Finlay's famous Little Sparta poetry garden on May 15th. www.theenemiesproject.com/littlesparta More information on European Literature Night and Little Sparta coming soon.

performing with Townley & Bradby & co at The Minories, Colchester - April 11th 2015

Wonderful to be involved in a staged reading of a family dinner time refracted through an avant garde music score, for the closing date of the Townley and Bradby exhibition at The Minories in Colchester on April 11th. I'll be alongside great artists I've never worked with before too, Vicki Weitz, Rebecca Hall, Isabella Martin and Jamie Wilkes (who I have worked with a lot, and who is responsible for me getting to meet such brilliant artists).

We rehearsed together recently (pic above, check out my green socks), and it was a wonderful experience, a really cohesive, warm spirited and generous exploration of sound, voice and collaboration, all the mode of the artists trying to mediate expression through their direct experience, that is family life and the ebullience of kiddies around the dinner table. It should be great, please come along on April 11th at 2pm http://www.colchester.ac.uk/art/minories/exhibitions/townley-and-bradby-everything-all-once-all-time & you can read more about Townley & Bradby here http://www.axisweb.org/p/townleyandbradby/

the Being Human festival in the Hub at the Wellcome collection

I had a great time this past tuesday afternoon, nov 18th, in the new Hub space at the Wellcome Trust. http://www.wellcomecollection.org/what-we-do/residents They were hosting a drop in station with seven different interactive stations as part of the Being Human festival http://beinghumanfestival.org/ and I was invited to have a place, called Martial States of Rest, that was essentially a discursive exercise in things I'm interested in that connect the martial arts, my art projects and neuroscience, exploring in this conversation with visitors, alongside a few small demonstrations. It connects with my residency in the Hub, on and off, for the two years of the project, with an intensive period of residence January 2015 to March 2015. After this few hours, I cannot wait to be in this remarkable space and project for much of time come 2015. It is an amazing place filled with equally amazing people. (the picture here shows me throwing a rear naked choke on Jamie Wilkes, which was fun)


The atmosphere of energy and generosity really permeated through the day, I had a wonderful time exchanging ideas with the public, the fellow Hub participants and the Wellcome staff, really grappling with ideas around active states of rest under physical duress, whether neural pathways and behaviors of rest are effected by genetic predisposition, habitual training or active mindful engagement. The conversations were extremely wide ranging and intense, and in the midst I tried to tie this into my life's training in the martial arts, using the technique of the choke to express ideas around psychological / physiological states of relaxation and resistance, and the use of active states of rest in daily life. A really lovely day and a wonderful precursor to much of the work I hope to engage in with the Hub and the Wellcome Trust, all the stations were fascinating, covering issues around sleep, employment, voice, language and more. 

All we need is rest - Nov 18th for the Hubbub at the Wellcome centre

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/events/all-we-need-rest Very happy to be part of the Being Human festival in my very first event related to the Hub residency at the Wellcome trust, where I will be hovering around for the next two years and in intense residence from January through to April. This event will be a drop in session from 12 noon to 2pm at the wellcome trust Hub space itself, near Euston. I'll be there with Patrick Coyle and James Wilkes doing some martial arts demos and performances.
"What does 'rest' mean to you? When, where and how do you rest? Rest can seem hard to find, whether in relation to our exhausted bodies, our racing minds or the hectic city of London. Should we slow down, or should we embrace intense activity? What effects do each of these states have on the health of our bodies and minds? How have people at other times and in other places thought about and practised rest?
Join Hubbub, an interdisciplinary research team, at the start of their two-year investigation into rest and its opposites. The new Hub space at Wellcome Collection will be specially opened to the public for a free, drop-in lunchtime session. Try out interactive demonstrations in poetry, neuroscience and the history of medicine, and hear mini-talks on state-of-the-art research into rest. Find out more about the experiments in the arts, humanities and sciences that Hubbub will be running over the next two years and how you might get involved.
The Hub is a pioneering location for creative work that explores what happens when medicine and health intersect with the arts, humanities and social sciences. Its first residents are Hubbub, an interdisciplinary team investigating the dynamics of rest and its opposites, as they operate in mental health, neuroscience, the arts and the everyday."

Crossing Voices - a Venice diary

Crossing Voices is the kind of project I will always want to be a part of. A project that was so resonant to experience, it’s ruined others by comparison and informed me massively on how I want to develop my own stuff. I got to spend nearly a week in Venice, learning from and sharing with 5 brilliant poets, a remarkable curator, working toward genuinely innovative work, in the shadow of a Venetian venice, well away from the Disneyland city I had experienced before. Just a privilege from the first moment to the last. http://crossingvoices.weebly.com/

Crossing Voices is the child of Alessandro Mistrorigo, who is part of the faculty at the University in Venice, and who had connected with James Wilkes in the UK, and being part of the collective Mopha with Jamie, and Emma Bennett, who also attended, I found myself invited to be part of the program. The format had six of us, three Brits and three Italians, spending three days together in the Cultural Flow Zone (!) workplace connected to the library of the University, which was pretty much on the water in Venice, developing six brand new pieces of collaborative work, each led by one of us, and involving the other five of us. These six pieces would be performed back to back at a night in the University.

To make this work was an extraordinary achievement on Alessandro’s part, to choose the right people, to make sure the context of their experience together was conducive to the work, to emphasise the process and shape the direction. It was an amazingly energising experience to be part of, the works were so exploratory and there really was the space to workshop things, take things into new directions, and all of us were together in risking that. Such a rare thing, to have the time and space to really collaborate. The Italian poets were all young, humble, eccentric and authentic – Alessandro Burbank, a gentle bear like presence who would descend on the group as quickly as he would disappear, a true Venetian, who mediated the city for us. Andrea Leonessa, immensely open, intense, technologically considered and genuinely innovative. Ariadne Radi Cor – a poet, but also a live writer, a penwoman, a gentle, visual presence.

We arrived straight into a reading in a gallery on Guidecca, or Judgment Island, getting a full whack of the really interesting local poets, who read with video or music accompaniment, and seemed really open to the more conceptual, avant garde work we were presenting. Emma did a beautiful birdsong performance, and Jamie, his wonderful delayed feedback strokeout work. I did some new performative stuff from Fights, I thought it was a bit naff in the end, punching the air, stuttering, but I wanted to try it. We were introduced to each other through this reading, the group was exposed to each other before we would spend three days in close quarters, in a room, having to trust each other, push each other, before a looming performative deadline.

The first day we shared the concepts we had prepared before the meeting, ideas that were reasoned but not fully formed, and the complimentary nature of the directions we wanted to go in was immediately apparent. I wanted to use the project to try something to do with song, with choral multivocal techniques that use multiplicity to mediate atonality, something Im interested in because I cant sing. I used a lot of musical references to introduce, sacred harp singing, Calabrian fishing work songs, Swans. Emma developed a piece based on repetition, and unfamiliar languages, that evolved live into a brilliant Chinese whispers circle, where we would race around our hexagon, mauling words and phrases as they passed from mouth to mouth. James had brought some amazing visual materials, acetate and inks, and gave us the chance to create collaboration asemic and calligraphic works. These were developed and then read as scores by us in pairs, Cobbing esque, reading abstraction as noise. Andrea designed a program that read his voice, awkwardly, and read into his computer while playing a flight simulator, leaving James, Emma and I to live interpret the bastardised text that would scroll out after he spoke. Ariadne used his full range of skills to actually shoot and edit a beautiful short film over the 3 days, and Alessandro created a really complex psychogeographical live skype performance with Greek chorus accompaniment, half translations, security camera streaming and live google searches. Hard to explain.

The works developed over hours and hours, but over our breakfasts and our evening meals as much as in the workshop. We were treated to local treatment, masses of seafood, black spaghetti, long walks through the city, live translations, Venetian wit and hospitality. The entirety of the experience was genuinely absorbing, and for me, a week back from an equally overwhelming experience in Iraq, in which time I contracted norovirus and was in fever blindness, I felt like everything was somehow more immediate for feeling so ethereal. Venice has that about it, when you can get it without feeling utterly outside. The company of the people made it, channelled so carefully by the gentility and intelligence of James and Alessandro.

I loved the experience of the performance itself, really rare to feel collaboration as truly collective. The audience seemed to feel that, that they were invited to become a further extension of what had become a miniature, fleeting community of artists. The war of it brought us into friendships too, having to balance so many elements creatively and performatively, and to step outside of our normal zones. The final night, like the others, was spent around a food filled table, talking, until late, until we got the boat home. Sad to leave it behind, but I am sure it won’t be the last note of a remarkable thing. I’m very lucky I was a small part of it.

Enemies: mini-lecture poetics

There is a profound, calming and inspiring core of poets and writers active in London right now. There is no way to see the current scene as anything but expansive and exciting. The hope with this event was that the form, which was intended as non-academic, personal and informal, would showcase the people behind the poetry and allow a wider audience access to discussions which were fascinating but also gentle in their direction and scope. So it proved to be, with the audience sat on the floor around Tim Atkins, Peter, Jaeger, James Wilkes and Marcus Slease in turn. The feeling afterward was one of real community, and that was well appreciated when it really seemed, because the Voice art event was so spectacular and memorable, that there might be a quiet shadow over things.