and so the text festival proper begins
You'll have to bear with me I'm afraid. Not being terribly bright it wasn't until earlier today that I realised the Bury Museum & Archives where the Signs of the Times exhibition for the Bury Text Festival opened with Geof Huth reading was the same building as the Bury Art Gallery where The Agency of Words exhibition also opened tonight. There was also too much across the pair of exhibitions for me to be able to formulate any kind of coherent response tonight. Instead I'll offer a few brief observations that I'll update tomorrow and expand on later - I hope.
Before the exhibitions opened I actually spent a lot of time looking a Robert Grenier's Nine Poems on the first floor landing area. What I like about these pieces is that the technique appears non-existent and they look like they'd be really easy to do your own version of. Until you actually try it for yourself. Now a pastiche would be fairly easy but what's the point in that?
Bullet points from The Agency of Words.
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Phil Davenport's Heart Shaped Pornography is not a totally new project to me but I like the way it insinuates itself in corners and unexpected places just when you think you've seen all that there is to it.
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Also discreet is Helmut Lemke's version of Tony Trehy's Entscheidungsproblem which appears to be the poem on a tape, wrapped as it happens on a fishing reel. Tony in fact blogged about this is you follow the link above.
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Geof Huth already blogged about Liz Collini's piece here, and it is a wonderful piece. From the blue of the wall to the control and detail of the piece itself which can be viewed from a distance or examined close to, and reveals a different experience either way.
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A contrasting piece, the name and creator of which both elude me at the moment, was a large hanging piece of old leaflets, letters and other documents, mostly relating to a writer's union. I liked the crudeness of the individual components of the piece, and I liked that since they appeared to be genuine documents, despite tape along the joins, there was a back to this piece which was not only different from the front but was largely ignored by people.
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Another piece whose creator and name I'll have to check later was a large hanging next to the one already mentioned, this time consisting of silicon lettering (apparently) on a plastic net. The words are more or less unreadable, but part of the enjoyment for me is trying to tease something out of it.
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I don't want to go through every exhibit. It seems as though the things that caught my attention were either really huge - like Liz Collini's piece and the two hangings, or smaller and more discreet, like Phil Davenport and Helmut Lemke's pieces. Also in this category is Ben Gwilliam's piece consisting of an effaced printed text on an acetate and an accompanying cassette player playing back what appears to be an endless loop of very faint sound, including conversation in the snippets that I heard. More than any other piece except Liz Collini's this attracted a lot of dedicated attention. With Liz's piece several people could study different aspects at once. With Ben's really only one person at a time could stand next to the recorder listening with one ear while the noise of the gallery comes in the other.
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Brutally cutting off anything else - including Patrick Fabian Panetta's Final Credits, which is exactly what it says and well worth a look - the other highlight for me was a small piece called Beckett Machine in which a small digital display mounted on what looked like a hand-assembled set of circuitry ran through the English text of Waiting for Godot.
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I say highlight, perhaps as exciting was meeting and talking briefly with Geof Huth and being introduced to his wife Nancy and briefly to Ron Silliman and Tom Konyves. Being a shy and reserved English type I'm sure I didn't come across as especially warm or friendly, but there you go. There was a much better turnout tonight, and I ended the evening with Tom Jenks and Alex Davies.
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But before the end of the night there was Signs of the Times and Geof Huth's reading, with help at one point from Ron Silliman. Now I really am tired, there's a lot on tomorrow, and I want to do justice to the exhibition and to Geof's reading - which I enjoyed immensely and which shed new light for me on his visual work - so I'll return to that tomorrow.
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and so... continued
Before I continue though take the time to check Geof Huth's epic post about yesterday, complete with photos. Also hurry for The Bury Poems this afternoon - I need to leave pretty soon to get there - and Ron Silliman and others in the evening.
Speaking of which, Ron's post yesterday drew attention to Tony Trehy's comment on Geof's cast of characters post, to remind people of other participants in the festival lest we ignore them favour of the bigger names. I've reproduced that and the comment before it below.
2 comments:
And so to Signs of the Times. I'd really like to have another look at this, there was really interesting mix of pieces. I especially enjoyed the old signs and the small groups of archived objects carrying text. Perhaps my favourite of which was a group of curatorial labels which appeared to be pretty old - I'm not sure how many museums would still use 'Oriental' as a classification. The reason I liked this was very simply for the fact of items that had been purely functional descriptors of artefacts becoming artefacts in themselves. There was a short film of some of Bob Cobbing's work varied by schoolchildren on the opposite side of that space which I enjoyed a lot. Again being simple soul I also liked that word varied. People often talk about 'variations' on a theme, but less often about a work having been varied. I shall have to use it in this way more often.
This basement space was surprisingly airy. It was also quite warm, on what had become a nice evening after some drab moments through the day. When Geof began his reading he had most of the large downstairs space to move about in. It was good to see someone else who takes their shoes off to perform, although he goes all the way and removes his socks too. The poems, both on the page and in reading were a genuine mix of approaches - and we were provided with a text of the poems read by Geof himself, although I chose not to try and follow on the page because I find that for me it distracts and detracts from the experience of listening to the poet.
I don't think I've seen a performance quite like Geof's before. I've seen people who read well, and I've seen people who perform well, as well as poets who have a relaxed presence. Geof had a genuinely warm and relaxed presence, and didn't seem to be especially precious about his poetry. I'm not quite sure how to define that having said it. I don't mean in the way he screwed up and discarded the individual pages he was reading from, that's something else. It was something in the attitude, in the way the poems were read, and certainly in the fact that he didn't feel the need to introduce the poems at great length. It was nice to see him using the space to move about while performing. I always think it's a great thing to do, despite the performance coaches I've encountered telling you it's a nervous affectation and you shouldn't do it.
The acoustics of the space seemed to be pretty good, but I'm sure it's also part of Geof's skill that he appeared not to need to project, and in fact was able to speak fairly quietly. And an additional treat in that Ron Silliman came forward to help with the reading from A Pair of Dice Will Never Abolish Chance, in response to and quoting from Paradise in Ron's The Alphabet. The reading lasted probably around 25 minutes and I then had another wander round the exhibitions before heading off for a quick drink in Bury.
I haven't had much chance to read through the text of the reading yet but what I have read is setting off little flashbulbs. I think ideas for sounds that I will make later on. I want to get back to the body a bit more in the sound work I'm making. But the important thing is yesterday was full of amazing experiences and art - and I get very excited about art - and there's more to come. The other thing I find very important is the chance to catch up with a lot of people either fleeting, at length, or repeatedly. The festival's had a very nice, welcoming atmosphere so far, which is always good for the perpetually tense like myself. It doesn't feel like the northwest that I grew up in - I had to move away to Cardiff to meet up with people who were genuinely warm and welcoming - and it's nice to find it here over the last couple of years.
If you can make it here for any of the events, please try to do so. If you can't then please try and make the effort to see the exhibitions and get hold of the associated publications. The Agency of Words is on until 18 July this year, Signs of the Times is on longer until 12 September this year, Catriona Glover's cast a moving body which I haven't experienced yet - at the Met - continues until 1 June this year.
Ron may be the star, but as far as I'm concerned Tony Lopez is right up there. If you get a chance to pick up copies of False memory and Covers I'm betting they won't disappoint. If you get to meet him tell him he has a big fan in SoCal USA.
Not forgetting Catriona Glover, Sarah Sanders, Anne Charnock, Liz Collini, Ben Gwilliam, Patrick Fabian Pannetta, Claus van Bebber, Carolyn Thompson, Nick Thurston, Hester Reeve (HRH.the)and Lisa Stansbie.