lost language + knives, forks and spoons
I had a couple of performances last week. On Tuesday at Alec Newman's most recent launch event for his Knives, forks and spoons press with Alec himself and a recorded Alex Davies and on Saturday at Kraak as part of the Lost Language exhibition. Saturday was the longer day. It opened with Louise Woodcock talking about curating the exhibition, the pieces of within it, and her own practice. After a break Graham Dunning and I delivered workshops, then following another break Helen Shanahan performed live painting over a film projected on a sheet. To end the day Graham, Gary Fisher and I performed in an improvising trio for around half an hour. Both events had relatively small audiences, although in the case of Kraak larger than I'd expected.
The Knives, forks and spoons launch took place at The Crescent on Salford Crescent. The evening started with a recording of Alex Davies reading the entirety of his Londonstone. My initial response was that while the poem is brilliant, probably the best piece performed on the night, the performance was a little stiff. However the friend who was with me felt it was possibly a little fast given the density of the poem, so it seems like Alex may actually have got the balance right. There are details in the poem that you will simply miss if you hear it rather than reading it on the page. Even on the page you'd expect to take several readings to begin to see how it works. So a more measured pace in the reading was probably the better idea, and even then risks periodically losing even the most attentive and able listeners.
Despite the relatively small size of the speakers on the CD player the reading was audible and clear. The quality of the recording was good too. Whether this will be made available at some point I don't know, although on the night Alec offered to make copies for anyone who wanted one, but with only ten people there it was never going to be a huge task. That was the only problem with the night - there were very few people there. Part of that may have been the poets. If someone like Simon Rennie with large local support had read there might have been more people. But to my tastes the virtual Alex Davies is always going to be preferable to the actual Simon Rennie - who was due to read but I think was double-booked.
If you weren't there you missed not only Alex Davies' Londonstone in full, but a good reading from Alec Newman which I'll come to shortly, the chance to read some poetry yourself, and an opportunity to quiz the poets. Well apart from Alex who wasn't there. Do try and get to the next event, Knives, forks and spoons is a really exciting endeavour with an ambitious programme. See Openned Zine #1 for an account of the almost accidental emergence of Knives, forks and spoons and how it passed from Richard Barrett to Alec Newman. Even if you're not interested in all of the poets on the press, or all the poets performing on any given night, there's almost certain to be something you like.
Anyway. Back to the performances. I was up next as it happens doing a noisy deconstruction of my own book North. I posted a recording of it a couple of days ago so you can have a listen and judge for yourself. We then had a poem from someone called Alison that centred on mutual misunderstanding between an adult daughter and her mother.
After a break (or possibly just before - the sequence of events gets a bit hazy now) Alec read a number of new poems as well as a selection from his book Earthworks. He remained seated in the group, which worked well. There was perhaps a little too much scene setting for each poem which raised potential questions. The obvious one being whether some of that explanation might have gone into the poem - which in many cases it has, only in such a compressed, allusive form you have to work to pull it out. This is not a problem, and perhaps the surface of Alec's poems is so finished, to the extent that they can seem a lot less dense than they actually are, that it is necessary to alert readers to the fact that the poems are more than what they seem. Irrespective, he's an engaging and intelligent reader, and pretty deadpan. Well worth catching if you have the chance.
The Knives, forks and spoons launch took place at The Crescent on Salford Crescent. The evening started with a recording of Alex Davies reading the entirety of his Londonstone. My initial response was that while the poem is brilliant, probably the best piece performed on the night, the performance was a little stiff. However the friend who was with me felt it was possibly a little fast given the density of the poem, so it seems like Alex may actually have got the balance right. There are details in the poem that you will simply miss if you hear it rather than reading it on the page. Even on the page you'd expect to take several readings to begin to see how it works. So a more measured pace in the reading was probably the better idea, and even then risks periodically losing even the most attentive and able listeners.
Despite the relatively small size of the speakers on the CD player the reading was audible and clear. The quality of the recording was good too. Whether this will be made available at some point I don't know, although on the night Alec offered to make copies for anyone who wanted one, but with only ten people there it was never going to be a huge task. That was the only problem with the night - there were very few people there. Part of that may have been the poets. If someone like Simon Rennie with large local support had read there might have been more people. But to my tastes the virtual Alex Davies is always going to be preferable to the actual Simon Rennie - who was due to read but I think was double-booked.
If you weren't there you missed not only Alex Davies' Londonstone in full, but a good reading from Alec Newman which I'll come to shortly, the chance to read some poetry yourself, and an opportunity to quiz the poets. Well apart from Alex who wasn't there. Do try and get to the next event, Knives, forks and spoons is a really exciting endeavour with an ambitious programme. See Openned Zine #1 for an account of the almost accidental emergence of Knives, forks and spoons and how it passed from Richard Barrett to Alec Newman. Even if you're not interested in all of the poets on the press, or all the poets performing on any given night, there's almost certain to be something you like.
Anyway. Back to the performances. I was up next as it happens doing a noisy deconstruction of my own book North. I posted a recording of it a couple of days ago so you can have a listen and judge for yourself. We then had a poem from someone called Alison that centred on mutual misunderstanding between an adult daughter and her mother.
After a break (or possibly just before - the sequence of events gets a bit hazy now) Alec read a number of new poems as well as a selection from his book Earthworks. He remained seated in the group, which worked well. There was perhaps a little too much scene setting for each poem which raised potential questions. The obvious one being whether some of that explanation might have gone into the poem - which in many cases it has, only in such a compressed, allusive form you have to work to pull it out. This is not a problem, and perhaps the surface of Alec's poems is so finished, to the extent that they can seem a lot less dense than they actually are, that it is necessary to alert readers to the fact that the poems are more than what they seem. Irrespective, he's an engaging and intelligent reader, and pretty deadpan. Well worth catching if you have the chance.
Adrian Slatcher then gave a brief preview of his Knives, forks and spoons collection Extracts from Levona, which he'll launch in an event in the Northern Quarter on 8 May. There certainly seems to be a lot going on in the poems and I will buy a copy very soon. That was followed by me doing a gentler deconstruction of North. In fact really I was responding more to the space, the people, the evening, and available materials. It was an improvised illustration of the techniques used in the book really. But you can listen to it yourself and see if that stands up at all. Finally Alec read further from his collection, though sadly I failed to record that set. And that was the end of the evening.
So to Saturday. It began a little later than planned, and initially only with one person who wasn't in some way involved with the exhibition in attendance. Louise Woodcock spoke about the inspiration for the exhibition in Julia Kristeva's Powers of Horror, how the ideas there relate to her own art practice, and how they work out through the exhibition. It was filmed, so hopefully it will be made available at some point in the future. It was an illuminating and interesting talk. By the end a couple more people had arrived, and decided to stay. Perhaps most interesting, and most closely related to the practices and processes of the artists featured, was the notion of disgust at the products of our bodies. Not that there is much use of bodily products, but there are found materials, domestic situations, forms and spaces reminiscent of bodies.
Earlier I was intending to question whether Kristeva's concepts could have been replaced by notions of hauntology or the hypnagogic, both prevalent in music. I don't think they could have been though. To me both these sets of ideas suggest something more evasive, illusory, even dreamlike. The works in Lost Language on the whole feel sharper edged. Not necessarily more resolved or even as aesthetically polished, but certainly more willing to confront themselves, less nostalgic and self-deceptive.
There was a break following the talk - which I'll link to if and when it becomes available - and then I delivered a workshop on sound poetry. Obviously you'd have to ask someone who attended how it really went, but from my perspective it seemed to go pretty well. I started by giving a fairly brief skeletal outline of the history and techniques from Marinetti, through Schwitters to Cobbing, Chopin and the present day. I then provided microcassette recorders to create their own pieces of sound poetry - which everyone managed with an impressive degree of success. Never mind my blethering, I think that's the real measure of whether the session worked or not.
After that Graham Dunning gave a perhaps more immediately satisfying workshop in preparing records. That is modifying them in such a way that the actual tracks on the vinyl are disrupted by interesting sonic (and physical) textures. In practical terms that can mean glue, plastic, tape, scratches, sandpaper, or a range of other assaults to the record's surface [see also Christian Marclay - and just imagine how revolutionary it might have been if instead of smashing guitars Pete Townsend saw Gustav Metzger and decided to chop records in quarters and glue them back together in different orders]. After only a very brief demonstration of what some of these modifications might sound like we were let loose on a box of records with the contents of a toolbox. It's immensely satisfying and gives an instantaneous result - although often the ideas that are most fun are not that sonically interesting - Lou's teacake-modified record being a case in point.
After all that fun there was another break before Helen Shanahan performed by painting over footage filmed in Dungeness. This is not the completed Dungeness film reviewed recently, but some of the footage from that film. The film was projected on a white sheet at one end of the space. Gary provided the minimal soundtrack with his hand made kalimba, ingeniously placed on his amplified floorboard to boost the volume. Helen stood behind the sheet and painted over the image with black paint. She started with words that she then erased by painting through. The paint was much more liquid and prone to dripping than a previous occasion when she performed in a similar way at the Late Night Live Art events in December. It also bled through the sheet more quickly giving a very different kind of sensation.
I think that speed of emergence, the uncontrolled dripping, the obsessive working over of some sections of the image, and the more complete effacing of the projected image in many places helped to make this a much more emotional performance. Whatever the reason I found it a great deal more upsetting than the December performance. Again, I believe it was filmed, so it may emerge at some point, and you can make up your own mind.
Finally Graham, Gary and I performed in an improvising trio for about half an hour. While it's not the first time I've improvised in public by any means, it was the first time I'd ever improvised with others. It was a curious experience, having to constantly flick your attention between you're doing and what the other improvisors are doing. Mostly I tried to match textures in a vague kind of way. On the whole I felt it went reasonably well. The only aspect I was unhappy with was when I came in with my no-input mixing desk at much too high a volume. Toward the end I succumbed to my performance tendencies and looped the mic being rubbed not just on the floor, but on my feet, clothes, head, chest and back. It's a wonder I managed to avoid shoving it down the inside of my pants. Graham and Gary of course were in full control all the time, which is just as well really. They work extremely well together and it can be hard to pull the contributions of one apart from the other.
I think I learned things about all the pieces in the exhibition, and even something about the individual practices of the participating artists that I didn't know before during the day. To me that seems like a success. Louise really deserves massive credit for curating and promoting the event, and for the ultimate success of both the exhibition and the day of workshops and performances. She's done so without being paid, with a lot of obstacles, and while holding down a full-time job. Now that's impressive. And if you're not impressed, give it a go. I dare you. You have until Friday to see the exhibition. It's open between 11am and 5pm, it's free to enter but I'd urge you hand over the £4 for a programme. And if you're in work, pull a duvet day. You've done it to have sex before, you've done it because you were hungover, now you can do it to see some art.
No excuses. Take a day off work this week, get down to Kraak behind Hula Bar off Stevenson Square, then come back here and leave a comment to tell me what you thought.
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