the other room 22 - counting backwards 5 reviewed
Variety.
Doubling and divergence.
Juxtavoices have an audience participation piece.
I didn't see Mullholland Drive when it came out. Although I did see Inland Empire at the cinema. When I saw Mullholland Drive I was very high. They are in some ways the same movie but also very dissimilar.
There were several new faces at The Other Room. It's good to see the series still attracting new people. It was also good to see a group of younger writers doing something distinctively of the present.
I will use the phrase 'new faces' once more.
Things will change.
Jow Lindsay (Joseph Walton) and Posie Rider. I became aware of their work through Richard Barrett. I've still read less of either even through the multitude of Jow's pseudonyms than I'd like.
They read together. Posie behind the mic Jow to one side. There was an interesting performance dynamic. A back and forth that linked the two performers but didn't exclude the audience. I was kind of reminded of some MCs I've seen.
Performance is a linking thread of Mullholland Drive and Inland Empire. Characters try on different roles. Acting that is deliberately stilted. Acting that may be more naturalistic when the character is supposedly acting than when they are supposedly just walking around in the everyday world. Dialogue that is consciously bland - that might be sourced, cut and pasted from several daytime soaps.
The language of Jow and Posie stronger than you would expect from daytime soaps.
I was going to say something else about performance but I've forgotten. Have I forgotten?
Counting Backwards 3 in October last year Stephen Emmerson performed. Mick Beck and Sonic Pleasure also performed at that event.
The absence of affect the absence of music the sense of the camera as an eye as your eye make the films disquieting even when nothing much seems to happen. This is different perhaps more conventionally related to horror cinema than to the existential dread I feel from Tarkovsky. Which is not to devalue Lynch.
Lindsay and Rider use language that might sound similar to the language of an older generation of writers but for a different purpose. Their relationship to the world is different.
Juxtavoices come at text and non-text from a different angle than poets. It is both text and texture. Sculptural almost as much as musical.
But this is The Other Room 22 with Stephen Emmerson, Jow Lindsay and Posie Rider
The performances of Jow Lindsay and Posie Rider, and Stephen Emmerson seemed if not considered (in the passive, abstract, intellectual sense) then at least thought about rather than just happening. They draw from performance traditions other than just poetry while avoiding romantic rock n roll self pleasuring self mythologising. And on the other hand avoiding crowd pleasing poetry slam gestures.
Another night. Everything was shuttering and shaking. I felt sick. My proprioceptive sense was completely fucked. I couldn't find my feet. The choice was to crawl to the toilet and maybe not be sick but feel awful or to try and walk only half aware of my feet and risk falling or being sick before I got there.
Mick Beck returned to Fuel for Counting Backwards 5. Not solo but part of Juxtavoices.
I felt Stephen Emmerson's performance at The Other Room was better than at Counting Backwards. There was a different more liberated energy and sense of purpose. He was good at Counting Backwards. Just better at The Other Room.
Jow Lindsay tapped his foot silently through his and Posie's performance. It wasn't only tapping. It matched with - provided - the rhythm of the performance. It was an almost invisible structuring principle.
A crucial moment in Mullholland Drive is when Betty and Rita sleep together. Strange things have already happened but from here the movie changes or perhaps becomes the same. Scenes replay in different configurations. Events we expect don't quite happen or play in different ways. Threads another film might resolve or play with for a while longer are simply dropped.
Permutation.
Or perhaps the film can best be understood through the prism of Buddhism. Our perceptions of rebirths confused by our habitual belief in irreducible self. And our association of self to a particular physical incarnation.
Stephen Emmerson's structuring principles seem to be less visible although he has a back and forth motion especially noticeable during the louder moments. But this is more an externalisation of some internal energies.
You'll notice - you may have noticed across the last three years of reviews I'm more comfortable writing about performance and overall impressions than about poetry or language. I can't explain why this is. It perturbs me. Maybe I'm better with sensation than with thought.
Earlier when I wrote about how I encountered both Jow Lindsay and Posie Rider through Richard Barrett I planned to explain our respective approaches to poetry and performance by saying 'he does the reading, I do the flouncing'. It's probably true.
Stephen Emmerson. Except for the first piece he performed his set without assistance. This gave him a problem of dynamic that Lindsay and Rider didn't have. When it's just you it's harder to give variety to your performance. He managed it by sometimes exploding forwards. Using vehemence and volume. At other times slowing becoming quieter.
Counting Backwards 5 with Philip Davenport, James Davies, Juxtavoices and Helen Shanahan. As an organiser I have an interest in saying how great the evening was so I'll try to be brief.
The first part was quiet in a dark corner.
Actually, can I just interrupt proceedings to say Leonard Cohen's made me cry three or four times in the course of writing this? His music that is. He's not stood here picking on me or anything. I'm easily moved by relatively conventional things too. Okay, you can get back to the review now.
Even allowing for the 20 or so members of Juxtavoices Counting Backwards was well attended. There were a number of new faces. Admittedly a lot that I know but new to Counting Backwards.
The first part was quiet in a dark corner. A screen cobbled together from random bits bought earlier in the day at B&Q and a local discount store. Both James and Helen were projecting work and the corner was the only place dark enough and visible enough to the whole space to make projection practical.
James' projections acted like a reading partner. Sometimes echoing or nearly echoing what he read at other times contradicting it or standing in some other relationship or non-relationship to it.
Perhaps a little like the dialogue denuded of any affective cues or meaning that periodically emerges in Mullholland Drive and Inland Empire.
One piece purely existed as a projection. A series of grids with text outside the grid and patterns of single dots in some of the cells of the grids. All the grids being the same. Some text was read over a blank screen.
Last mention of this. The high when I watched Mullholland Drive. The earlier high that fucked my proprioception. Ketamine.
Helen essayed another variation of a performance she's developed across more than a year. The core is a film (of Dungeness in this case) projected onto a sheet over which Helen paints in ink.
In this iteration from behind the sheet as she painted vertical and horizontal lines across the image plane Helen described photographs. 'I'm looking at a photograph…' Whether or not the photos are real is not especially relevant. Like her abandonments project this performance is about relationships, memory and loss.
But of course something so personal isn't just moving to see but demanding to carry out.
Juxtavoices took over the space with their sound and performance. Their audience participation piece involved the group moving out into the space among the audience engaging directly with individuals before coming back together. The sound was more dispersed and more enveloping.
Finally Philip Davenport had been an ambient presence all evening. Two of his spreadsheet poems were on the walls. One in an obvious location the other in a darker alcove. Text from the poem he read was also written on helium balloons in the space.
The poem seemed to draw from transcripts relating to torture and to the life of Michael Jackson. As Phil has mentioned the spreadsheets relate to the ways in which we assign value to things. Whether moral, financial, aesthetic, personal. It is perhaps an appropriate medium to be working with at present.
Although Phil wasn't present for the Manchester Artists' Bonfire his work would have fitted well with the ethos of the event.
I love the colliding of different approaches and mediums that Counting Backwards can bring about. For me the intention has always been to collide different scenes and sensibilities.
It's very different from The Other Room - one of the events along with the currently defunct Salford Concerts Series that inspired its creation. The Other Room is much more about the text as the primary focus. That's a great strength.
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