text festival 2011 opening - review
Sat 7 May - Finally finished my review.
In fact it's rather fascinating having a huge blank in my memory when I know I was there and can remember so much else immediately around it.
Whatever it was he did he was followed by Helen White and Moniek Darge who used their voices in fascinating ways. Although they - like all the performers I saw on the day - were much more conservative than was expecting they were still very good.
In particular they used the dynamic of having two voices to great effect. For the most part they used words - although there were squeals and mutters and other non-linguistic utterances. Sometimes the voices were separate, sometimes overlapping, sometimes in harmony and at other times in discord.
I rather liked the piece with stones or tiles which they picked up and 'read' from. Mainly because it was well structured in the way it sped up and variously separated and brought together the voices.
I had not previously seen Márton Koppány perform either although I have come across his visual poetry frequently. He has several visual pieces in the festival at much larger scales than I'd seen previously, but which work brilliantly. I'll come to those in due course.
His performance was a little quiet and hard to follow, and from memory was from an interview. It was too detailed and honestly required more attention from me to follow it than I was able to give that morning. So it wouldn't really be fair for me to say too much about it.
I hope that there are recordings of both Márton Koppány and Marco Giovenale so that I can catch up with what they actually did and perhaps give an assessment at another time. In the meantime I'd highly recommend you visit the Festival and see Márton Koppány's visual poems.
I managed to miss both Sarah Sanders performance and the durational work performed by Helmut Lemke and Hans Specht - despite intending to see both. When Sarah performed I'd left the gallery to look at the other parts of the Festival.
In fact although I believe it was filmed - at least in part - I haven't seen anything more than a couple of photos from the performance yet.
These range from text in sewn samplers, printed text, hand inked glyphs and ascemic writing, one of my visual poem boxes, photographs and more.
The quality is variable - in terms of the strength of ideas, in the skill of execution, and in terms of negotiating the relationships between the visual, the textual and what the work might signify.
What's often clear is that many visual poets find it easy to hit a theme and essay variations on that, but less easy to progress beyond those limits.
I would say that Márton Koppány is one for whom this is not the case. His works are clearly going somewhere rather than round in circles. This is especially evident when they are scaled up rather than printed on small sheets of paper or viewed online. He has one large work hung in this space.
What's undeniable in this room as already mentioned is the sheer exuberance, imagination and energy at work. This abundance leads the works into vigorous dialogues with each other.
My highlights of the space - at the moment, as I suspect they'll change - are Márton Koppány's large piece hung from the ceiling, and the iPad app which you can use to play phonemes. But there is so much more than I can describe here or even remember.
SENTENCES
Three works in the first room here stand out for different reasons. The first and largest is the neon Extract: Northern Soul from the Ron Silliman poem. In his review Steven Waling captured exactly what I felt - in the context of the poem the phrase 'Poetry has been Bury, Bury good to me' is a nice line. It fits well with what surrounds it.
Extracted and blown up in scale it becomes flat, clunky, anodyne. It's a shame because Silliman is a very good poet and because there's an awful lot of art using neon text by visual artists. Sometimes - it has to be said - using text more interestingly than here.
In fact the second standout work here also uses neon. I didn't note down the artist but will find out when I return to have another look. In two separate clear cases are bleached tumbleweeds. Within each tumbleweed is a white neon text.
Except so far as I can tell they're neon ascemic texts, or fragments of actual letters. You find yourself circling the cases to look from different angles, mentally rotating the neons, and trying to decode what they might say.
They are cleverly allusive and make use of three-dimensional space, and of the human desire and ability to recognise patterns in a way the Silliman text simply can't.
GETTING THERE
I hope my account of the opening won't be too blurred by the fact that I'd had around three hours sleep the night before after partying into the morning at Islington Mill for Off With Their Heads.
That, combined with what was a long day and my failure to eat more than three meals in the previous three days meant I was absolutely knackered by the end of it.
But despite that I managed to get to Bury for the opening of the exhibitions and stay right through to the end of Sound and Dark at Met Arts in the evening without falling asleep. And then get up the following day for another marathon at Sounds From The Other City. But that's another blogpost.
Whatever. Anyway, I managed to meditate on the way in as I did for the workshops during the week. I find it pretty relaxing - especially since the squeals and roars of the trams are actually rather musical and beautiful if you listen in the right way. That helped.
When I got in I went for a hot chocolate at a coffee place near the station that I'd used through the week. Mainly because I hadn't been able to eat earlier and I thought it might stand in for breakfast. What? It had cream and marshmallows - well four or five Flumps - in it.
And then I was ready for the opening. I spent time looking round the Wonder Rooms and Sentences exhibitions in the Museum and Art Gallery before the opening performances took place.
The two exhibitions are hung in different ways. Wonder Rooms is dense with often small visual works, many of which are obviously hand made. There's an exuberance, a sense of play and lack of seriousness about this exhibition. In some ways it's my favourite bit of the festival and I may well end up spending most time there.
Sentences is much more sparsely hung with works on the whole that are a lot larger. There are some pieces I don't find all that successful, but several I like a lot. The works here felt generally more familiar, more conventional.
I'll expand on these initial thoughts shortly.
PERFORMANCES
Before that I'll have a quick look at the opening performances. At least as far as I'm able. Although I can remember standing there, and can recall details of Tony Trehy's introduction, I have not a single memory of Marco Giovenale's performance.
Edit 18 May 2011: A couple of days ago Marco left a link in the comments. The link takes you to an entry on his site slowforward, which in turn links you to the text he read. I can dimly remember the numbering, but the rest of it remains unfamiliar. It's well worth reading though.
This doesn't worry me. Given how busy I'd been for a couple of weeks, the amount of people I've met and talked to, the lack of sleep and poor eating that week, and the amount of partying before and after the Text Festival opening it's amazing I remember as much as I do.
In fact it's rather fascinating having a huge blank in my memory when I know I was there and can remember so much else immediately around it.
Whatever it was he did he was followed by Helen White and Moniek Darge who used their voices in fascinating ways. Although they - like all the performers I saw on the day - were much more conservative than was expecting they were still very good.
In particular they used the dynamic of having two voices to great effect. For the most part they used words - although there were squeals and mutters and other non-linguistic utterances. Sometimes the voices were separate, sometimes overlapping, sometimes in harmony and at other times in discord.
I rather liked the piece with stones or tiles which they picked up and 'read' from. Mainly because it was well structured in the way it sped up and variously separated and brought together the voices.
If I had one major misgiving about the performance it was the tendency of both performers to act out certain emotions - especially where no words were being used.
Personally if it's possible to tell from the tone what emotion is being conveyed then I don't see the point of underscoring it with body-language and expressions. Unless of course you're subverting it by physically doing something different.
Both performers had good vocal ranges and clearly worked well together. I hadn't seen either perform previously.
I had not previously seen Márton Koppány perform either although I have come across his visual poetry frequently. He has several visual pieces in the festival at much larger scales than I'd seen previously, but which work brilliantly. I'll come to those in due course.
His performance was a little quiet and hard to follow, and from memory was from an interview. It was too detailed and honestly required more attention from me to follow it than I was able to give that morning. So it wouldn't really be fair for me to say too much about it.
I hope that there are recordings of both Márton Koppány and Marco Giovenale so that I can catch up with what they actually did and perhaps give an assessment at another time. In the meantime I'd highly recommend you visit the Festival and see Márton Koppány's visual poems.
I managed to miss both Sarah Sanders performance and the durational work performed by Helmut Lemke and Hans Specht - despite intending to see both. When Sarah performed I'd left the gallery to look at the other parts of the Festival.
In fact although I believe it was filmed - at least in part - I haven't seen anything more than a couple of photos from the performance yet.
I'm not quite sure where in the gallery Helmut and Hans performed but I suspect it may have been in - or on the way down to - the archives. If so I missed it simply because I didn't check out the Tradestamps exhibition down there. Otherwise I can't account for missing them. I did return to the gallery before meeting with the Feral Choir for the afternoon performance.
WONDER ROOMS
Wonder Rooms is a densely packed space broken up and made smaller by a central module also covered in work. According to the list of artists there are around 80 works from 21 artists on two walls - not counting other works around the space.
These range from text in sewn samplers, printed text, hand inked glyphs and ascemic writing, one of my visual poem boxes, photographs and more.
The quality is variable - in terms of the strength of ideas, in the skill of execution, and in terms of negotiating the relationships between the visual, the textual and what the work might signify.
What's often clear is that many visual poets find it easy to hit a theme and essay variations on that, but less easy to progress beyond those limits.
I would say that Márton Koppány is one for whom this is not the case. His works are clearly going somewhere rather than round in circles. This is especially evident when they are scaled up rather than printed on small sheets of paper or viewed online. He has one large work hung in this space.
What's undeniable in this room as already mentioned is the sheer exuberance, imagination and energy at work. This abundance leads the works into vigorous dialogues with each other.
My highlights of the space - at the moment, as I suspect they'll change - are Márton Koppány's large piece hung from the ceiling, and the iPad app which you can use to play phonemes. But there is so much more than I can describe here or even remember.
SENTENCES
Three works in the first room here stand out for different reasons. The first and largest is the neon Extract: Northern Soul from the Ron Silliman poem. In his review Steven Waling captured exactly what I felt - in the context of the poem the phrase 'Poetry has been Bury, Bury good to me' is a nice line. It fits well with what surrounds it.
Extracted and blown up in scale it becomes flat, clunky, anodyne. It's a shame because Silliman is a very good poet and because there's an awful lot of art using neon text by visual artists. Sometimes - it has to be said - using text more interestingly than here.
In fact the second standout work here also uses neon. I didn't note down the artist but will find out when I return to have another look. In two separate clear cases are bleached tumbleweeds. Within each tumbleweed is a white neon text.
Except so far as I can tell they're neon ascemic texts, or fragments of actual letters. You find yourself circling the cases to look from different angles, mentally rotating the neons, and trying to decode what they might say.
They are cleverly allusive and make use of three-dimensional space, and of the human desire and ability to recognise patterns in a way the Silliman text simply can't.
Edit 7 May: Tony Trehy has provided this link which tells me the works are by Shezad Dawood. They use actual scripts - just ones that being an ignorant monoglot I can't read or apparently recognise when I see them. Thanks to Tony, and apologies to Shezad for getting it wrong.
While the tumbleweed and neon is visually more convincing than Northern Soul Tony Lopez' piece nearby is textually more convincing. It is a screen displaying text in a format that resembles airport departure boards with letters that flick over. And indeed after a sentence has stayed long enough to be read the letters flick over - with the appropriate sound effects - to reveal a new sentence.
Edit - further works in sentences not previously covered: In adjoining rooms but presumably also part of Sentences were three installations I enjoyed for different reasons. The first is a wall entirely hung with reflex horn speakers through which a recording of Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate is played. The volume has been turned down so that while it's audible it isn't overwhelming.
Because the playback is mono it's possible to listen to individual speakers, then to step back and listen to the whole array without missing anything.
But the experience is more than just the sound, it's the visual effect of at least a couple of dozen reflex horn speakers in various sizes - some of which are quite battered looking, some of which are very dusty - filling an entire wall of the gallery. There's something pleasingly old-fashioned about the speakers, while their arrangement is dynamic and satisfying.
There's also a laptop on a small table displaying the text as it's spoken with a single reflex horn next to it.
In the next space is an installation based around Christian Bok's Xenotext. The text of the poem to be implanted into the DNA of an extremophile bacterium, a model of the protein it will produce in response which will form a second comprehensible poem, and the text of that second poem.
The model of the protein is really quite beautiful and wonderfully complicated even before you think about the scale at which the real thing exists.
In a sense there's not a lot to see here. The model protein of course, and the poems. But if you don't know the background to the Xenotext project you might be inclined to pass by. And if you don't know about the project I'd recommend doing a search and finding out about it. From memory UbuWeb has a good range of information on it for starters.
On the far side of the space is a cabinet of objects with headphones hung around the outside. This is an installation by Holly Pester. I really like it but at the same time confess to being a litle torn. The objects and sounds from the Museums collections are wonderful, well chosen, and do enter a dialogue with each other. But sometimes it feels a little inert.
I'm not quite sure why this is - especially since I like the installation very much. It may simply be that there are not a huge amount of objects to look at and that if you work round the case - in whatever order - listening through all the audio you perhaps temporarily exhaust the visual possibilities. In which case it may be better to visit the installation in short bursts at different times.
Another possibility is that the installation is successful in drawing connections between the recordings and the objects to the point where you start making your own mental cut-up of it, and are then disappointed that the installation isn't what you've imagined.
But despite this criticism and speculation I think it is a successful and interesting part of the exhibition - hence spending so long discussing it.
I plan to visit on 14 May and I'll post my thoughts then.
Firstly the visitors who had come with the express intent of seeing the permanent exhibits make their way around the space as intended, occasionally baffled by what might seem to be meaningless or amateurish intrusions into the narrative.
Those visitors to the Fusiliers Museum are probably less confronted as the works are more hidden.
Secondly the visitors who have come for the Text Festival pick their way through the larger exhibits to find hidden or easily ignored works, but never quite sure they've found everything.
Text Festival visitors probably have the richest experience at the Transport Museum. Not so much because of the Text Festival exhibits but more because the space is so text rich to begin with. Hand-painted lettering, old-fashioned signs and publications, functional text and more can be found on every surface.
Edit: Completing the review - almost: My first thought about the exhibition at the Fusiliers Museum is that I'm generally uncomfortable with all things military. I found simply going round the exhibition an experience I wasn't entirely happy about.
Perhaps fortunately I was behind a group of people who were there for the permanent exhibits and stopped regularly to photograph objects with the effect of slowing me down. This forced me to be a little more attentive and meant that I probably picked up on more of the Text Festival works than I otherwise would have first time round. I did miss pieces though - and I'm sure that even now I haven't seen everything.
The works as already discussed are very well concealed - for instance visual pieces hidden on the reverse of folders of information - and most appear not to have information cards posted nearby to alert you to their presence.
While less textually compelling than the Transport Museum show there are nonetheless some interesting bits of text and handwriting within the permanent exhibits. Despite my dislike of large parts of the main collection - which seems to be arranged in a fairly uninspiring and literal sort of way - I went round the space twice picking up on new things each time.
A MAP OF YOU @ TRANSPORT MUSEUM
While the tumbleweed and neon is visually more convincing than Northern Soul Tony Lopez' piece nearby is textually more convincing. It is a screen displaying text in a format that resembles airport departure boards with letters that flick over. And indeed after a sentence has stayed long enough to be read the letters flick over - with the appropriate sound effects - to reveal a new sentence.
Although the piece is fascinating I didn't stay long enough to work out whether it presents a whole text in a sequential manner or whether it 'randomly' presents sections of the text in a shifting order.
Edit - further works in sentences not previously covered: In adjoining rooms but presumably also part of Sentences were three installations I enjoyed for different reasons. The first is a wall entirely hung with reflex horn speakers through which a recording of Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate is played. The volume has been turned down so that while it's audible it isn't overwhelming.
Because the playback is mono it's possible to listen to individual speakers, then to step back and listen to the whole array without missing anything.
But the experience is more than just the sound, it's the visual effect of at least a couple of dozen reflex horn speakers in various sizes - some of which are quite battered looking, some of which are very dusty - filling an entire wall of the gallery. There's something pleasingly old-fashioned about the speakers, while their arrangement is dynamic and satisfying.
There's also a laptop on a small table displaying the text as it's spoken with a single reflex horn next to it.
In the next space is an installation based around Christian Bok's Xenotext. The text of the poem to be implanted into the DNA of an extremophile bacterium, a model of the protein it will produce in response which will form a second comprehensible poem, and the text of that second poem.
The model of the protein is really quite beautiful and wonderfully complicated even before you think about the scale at which the real thing exists.
In a sense there's not a lot to see here. The model protein of course, and the poems. But if you don't know the background to the Xenotext project you might be inclined to pass by. And if you don't know about the project I'd recommend doing a search and finding out about it. From memory UbuWeb has a good range of information on it for starters.
On the far side of the space is a cabinet of objects with headphones hung around the outside. This is an installation by Holly Pester. I really like it but at the same time confess to being a litle torn. The objects and sounds from the Museums collections are wonderful, well chosen, and do enter a dialogue with each other. But sometimes it feels a little inert.
I'm not quite sure why this is - especially since I like the installation very much. It may simply be that there are not a huge amount of objects to look at and that if you work round the case - in whatever order - listening through all the audio you perhaps temporarily exhaust the visual possibilities. In which case it may be better to visit the installation in short bursts at different times.
Another possibility is that the installation is successful in drawing connections between the recordings and the objects to the point where you start making your own mental cut-up of it, and are then disappointed that the installation isn't what you've imagined.
But despite this criticism and speculation I think it is a successful and interesting part of the exhibition - hence spending so long discussing it.
TRADESTAMPS
I haven't yet seen this bit of the Festival - although Geof Huth has written about part of it.
I plan to visit on 14 May and I'll post my thoughts then.
REQUIEM @ FUSILIERS MUSEUM
Before I talk about this exhibition in particular I want to talk about a general observation that holds true for both this and the exhibition at the Transport Museum.
In particular on the opening day there was a curious dynamic of two mutually almost uncomprehending groups of visitors interacting with the spaces, the works, and each other in completely different ways.
Firstly the visitors who had come with the express intent of seeing the permanent exhibits make their way around the space as intended, occasionally baffled by what might seem to be meaningless or amateurish intrusions into the narrative.
Those visitors to the Fusiliers Museum are probably less confronted as the works are more hidden.
Secondly the visitors who have come for the Text Festival pick their way through the larger exhibits to find hidden or easily ignored works, but never quite sure they've found everything.
Text Festival visitors probably have the richest experience at the Transport Museum. Not so much because of the Text Festival exhibits but more because the space is so text rich to begin with. Hand-painted lettering, old-fashioned signs and publications, functional text and more can be found on every surface.
Edit: Completing the review - almost: My first thought about the exhibition at the Fusiliers Museum is that I'm generally uncomfortable with all things military. I found simply going round the exhibition an experience I wasn't entirely happy about.
Perhaps fortunately I was behind a group of people who were there for the permanent exhibits and stopped regularly to photograph objects with the effect of slowing me down. This forced me to be a little more attentive and meant that I probably picked up on more of the Text Festival works than I otherwise would have first time round. I did miss pieces though - and I'm sure that even now I haven't seen everything.
The works as already discussed are very well concealed - for instance visual pieces hidden on the reverse of folders of information - and most appear not to have information cards posted nearby to alert you to their presence.
While less textually compelling than the Transport Museum show there are nonetheless some interesting bits of text and handwriting within the permanent exhibits. Despite my dislike of large parts of the main collection - which seems to be arranged in a fairly uninspiring and literal sort of way - I went round the space twice picking up on new things each time.
A MAP OF YOU @ TRANSPORT MUSEUM
I was much happier at the Transport Museum. This may in part be because I have work and had already spent time there. The museum is also much more spacious and text-rich than the Fusiliers.
A Map of You takes its name from an Arthur + Martha project in which postcards of Manchester have been transformed to carry homeless people's experiences of the city. They also form an important part of the exhibition appearing in the windows of trams and buses in the museum without being differentiated from the other exhibits. Without being noticably any different from any other exhibits.
At the opening I managed to be in the space when Ben Davies took one of his breaks from his durational performance creating collages and had a chat with him. He was using found boards from skips nearby to create the collages on - at least one of which had hand painted text on it.
The collages are created by picking a book blindfold, tearing out pages and tearing those up into smaller pieces. These are then placed in a bag and shaken up. Then they're pulled out of the bag and arranged on the board blindfold before being fixed in place. I'm not sure whether they've subsequently gone on display - it would be good if they have.
I think within the Transport Museum on the opening day - although he wasn't talking to people while creating the collages - Ben probably got more attention than any other element of the Text Festival.
Louise Woodcock also has collage work derived from books in the museum with which I'm much more familiar. Derived from what remains after her Eating Words performance and similar to the piece created and photographed for the recent The Other Room anthology she has three assemblages of fragments from books on a large blue-grey board.
Some of the bits of pages have holes cut in them where words have been removed - revealing images or text on the bits of pages below. The board itself is faded and slightly dirty - enhancing the feel of the pieces.
Philip Davenport has sections of spreadsheet poems - necessarily increased in size on massive sheets of paper on a couple of flatbed vehicles. In at least one case the urge to jump on to the back of the truck and start physically interacting with the work is almost overwhelming.
It's also this museum where my visual poem boxes have been arranged in one of the train carriages and in the coal box of a model train.
Márton Koppány has a couple of large pieces here. One (still) in the upper rear window of a bus like those advertising posters readable from outside but through which pasengers can see - and one consisting of different parentheses printed on a large perspex sheet within a railway carriage. Because the perspex reflects light it's difficult to view it as a whole - and even when you do it's tricky to ignore your own reflection. I think this adds something to the experience.
I'd only seen Márton's work online or printed on small sheets of paper previously - and it was surprising to see how well the pieces worked transformed in this way.
There is much more in A Map of You - I haven't even mentioned the Robert Grenier pieces yet. I'd especially recommend the Station Master's Office which has a number of works secreted within it - including by Bob Cobbing and Paula Clare. There is also an exquisite Liz Collini work on the blackboard there.
In a sense the Transport Museum show is like an expanded version of Wonder Rooms albeit one where the pieces are in a greater dialogue with the space and the other unrelated exhibits than with themselves.
A Map of You takes its name from an Arthur + Martha project in which postcards of Manchester have been transformed to carry homeless people's experiences of the city. They also form an important part of the exhibition appearing in the windows of trams and buses in the museum without being differentiated from the other exhibits. Without being noticably any different from any other exhibits.
At the opening I managed to be in the space when Ben Davies took one of his breaks from his durational performance creating collages and had a chat with him. He was using found boards from skips nearby to create the collages on - at least one of which had hand painted text on it.
The collages are created by picking a book blindfold, tearing out pages and tearing those up into smaller pieces. These are then placed in a bag and shaken up. Then they're pulled out of the bag and arranged on the board blindfold before being fixed in place. I'm not sure whether they've subsequently gone on display - it would be good if they have.
I think within the Transport Museum on the opening day - although he wasn't talking to people while creating the collages - Ben probably got more attention than any other element of the Text Festival.
Louise Woodcock also has collage work derived from books in the museum with which I'm much more familiar. Derived from what remains after her Eating Words performance and similar to the piece created and photographed for the recent The Other Room anthology she has three assemblages of fragments from books on a large blue-grey board.
Some of the bits of pages have holes cut in them where words have been removed - revealing images or text on the bits of pages below. The board itself is faded and slightly dirty - enhancing the feel of the pieces.
Philip Davenport has sections of spreadsheet poems - necessarily increased in size on massive sheets of paper on a couple of flatbed vehicles. In at least one case the urge to jump on to the back of the truck and start physically interacting with the work is almost overwhelming.
It's also this museum where my visual poem boxes have been arranged in one of the train carriages and in the coal box of a model train.
Márton Koppány has a couple of large pieces here. One (still) in the upper rear window of a bus like those advertising posters readable from outside but through which pasengers can see - and one consisting of different parentheses printed on a large perspex sheet within a railway carriage. Because the perspex reflects light it's difficult to view it as a whole - and even when you do it's tricky to ignore your own reflection. I think this adds something to the experience.
I'd only seen Márton's work online or printed on small sheets of paper previously - and it was surprising to see how well the pieces worked transformed in this way.
There is much more in A Map of You - I haven't even mentioned the Robert Grenier pieces yet. I'd especially recommend the Station Master's Office which has a number of works secreted within it - including by Bob Cobbing and Paula Clare. There is also an exquisite Liz Collini work on the blackboard there.
In a sense the Transport Museum show is like an expanded version of Wonder Rooms albeit one where the pieces are in a greater dialogue with the space and the other unrelated exhibits than with themselves.
Edit: after three days writing my ridiculously overlong review of the opening is finally complete:
PERFORMANCES @ PARISH CHURCH 4PM
That 4pm start was closer to 3pm for me. The Feral Choir gathered in the sun near a statue of Robert Peel while we waited for a wedding to finish. We also ran through the signals Phil Minton would use to conduct us.
While we'd practiced a number of vocal sounds and familiarised ourselves with the gestures Phil uses we had no idea what shape the overall piece would take. I'm sure Phil had no fixed ideas either.
Once we were able to get into the church we figured out where we'd stand and had a quick soundcheck before sitting down to wait.
Although the workshops had perhaps been a little underpopulated the attendance for the performances - which also came from Satu Kaikkonen and Karri Kokko, and from Ron Silliman - was excellent.
The Feral Choir were first. The plan was to perform for around 20-30 minutes. I have no idea whether that was achieved - or what the performance sounded from within the church to non-participants. I would be interested to hear the recordings.
Ooh - there seems to be a recording here along with the Satu Kaikkonen and Karri Kokko performance from the church, Geof Huth's poemsong from the later event, and the Ursonate event at Warth Mill that I missed because I was out at Sounds From the Other City the following day.
After the choir Satu Kaikkonen and Karri Kokko performed. Their performance appeared to explore the sounds of words and phonemes, pitching variants and repetitions against each other.
Structurally - pairing voices, splitting voices, call-and-responding, changing pace and tone and so on - the performance wasn't that different from Helen White and Moniek Darge. But texturally and dynamically it felt different.
From this distance I think I marginally preferred Satu Kaikkonen and Karri Kokko - but that might just be because I remember less acting, there were fewer props to distract me, and I was a little more awake.
Some of the sounds reminded me of an installation that ironically enough I forgot about earlier. I can't even remember who created it - though I think it may have been Sarah Sanders. Edit 18 May 2011: Wrong - it's by Liz Collini, I really should have remembered that.
This was a glass cabinet filled with large scrolls, each of which was printed with one or two repeated words on each side. These were drawn from a German text - but again one I can't remember. I'll check when I return to have another look at the Festival.
Although the words and sounds were different from those on the scrolls - or at least written differently - there might easily have been an overlap. After the event two poets handed out a small pamphlet which carried the programme of their performance and extracts of what they performed.
Finally Ron Silliman read from Northern Soul. I very much enjoyed the reading. In particular it was good to hear the extract that's been used for the neon in the gallery in context.
His reading was good if fairly unadventurous - and I know a couple of people enjoyed it less than the sound performances.
I'd like to quickly say a word about his soundcheck. He read some of the vowel sounds from the first page - promising when he was done that he'd 'fill in the consonants later'. I think something similar in the actual performance would have been fascinating and probably would have taken the audience by surprise.
I enjoyed the poem too - which seemed to jump between Bury and various American locations - and to jump around in time. But as ever my memory for specifics is poor.
After the performances most people went to Automatic next to Met Arts for drinks/food - where I managed to catch up with Ryan Ormonde.
The point of going there was that we could go straight through to the Met for the evening performances.
PERFORMANCES @ MET ARTS 7:30PM
The performances came from Holly Pester, Derek Beaulieu, Christian Bök, Geof Huth and Eduard Escoffet.
I'm afraid by this time of the evening my lack of sleep, poor diet in the previous week, the long day, and emotional exhaustion (I mentioned my meltdown in the shopping mall in a previous post) had started to catch up with me.
Consequently details of some of the performances have gone altogether, I can't remember what order things happened in, and what I can remember may be utterly mangled.
It started with a lengthy piece played out over the PA. Both the sound of it, and the fact that she's mentioned on the programme leads me to believe that this may have been a piece by Sarah Boothroyd. From memory it dealt with horror films, the need to be frightened, and although I can't remember any specific examples it may have touched on women's experience of fear/horror.
That was followed by a performance from Holly Pester. I remember enjoying it, I remember that while it was mainly constructed around language it seemed to include some non-verbal vocalisations, and I remember it including an element of performance inasmuch as while it was read from paper the emotions were enacted to a degree.
Beyond that it's gone. Apologies to Holly and everyone else who's had fairly sketchy reviews because of my unreliable memory.
I'm really not sure who was next, although I think it may have been Derek Beaulieu with a short spoken piece against poetry. It may have taken us into the break.
Since I don't remember the sequence of events at all from this point I'm simply going to conjecture and speak about the remaining performances in an order I've assigned to them.
I do know that Eduard Escoffet came on following a recorded sound piece - which I'm going to assume from the information on the programme was by Bruno Bresani.
Eduard Escoffet ranged from spoken pieces in a variety of languages through pieces that played with vocal sounds to more live-art style pieces. His final piece culminated in him tearing up a newspaper and stuffing the remains in his mouth.
Although superficially quite simple and certainly a short performance Geof Huth's poemsong was a highlight for me. There were no recognisable words. The light shone on him in his seat and he stood up and sang - I have no idea whether the piece was improvised or rehearsed. His voice is very good and he performs with confidence.
I'd recommend you have a listen to the recording linked earlier. Once he was done he sat down. Thinking about it the performance may have been before the break - I remember him handing over the small mic he wore after the performance - but before the evening was done.
Christian Bök did both sound pieces and more conventionally read pieces. I very much enjoyed the vocal performance and overall effect of the roaring, screaming opening piece.
The opening piece was downright frightening in some ways. Certainly as a child it would have terrified me. Even as an adult it made a great impression on me. It's just a damn shame I can't remember what it was called or where it came from.
He is a vocally flexible and impressive performer - perhaps the one who came closest to the kind of effects Phil Minton was able to demonstrate at the Green Room event weeks ago now.
But as I said there were also more conventional pieces - Christian also read the two Xenotext poems - and a longer piece about the extremophile bacteria to be used.
An interesting effect of Christian Bök's performances, conceptual poetics, and the amount of detail he gives you about them is that you start to question whether what he tells you is actually true. Or maybe that's just me. Anyway, it's not a thought that's going anywhere, just a reflection.
I would have enjoyed rather more of the extreme, alarming Christian Bök than the charming conventional poet (for very limited values of 'conventional').
And that was it. Just a ride home on a tram some teenager had thoughtfully filled with watery vomit, and a walk back through the city already half asleep on my feet.
A fucking great day. Go on - share your own thoughts. If you were less knackered/out of it than me I'd like to know whether you remember more.
Comments
:-)
For anyone who's a bit puzzled, the link in differx' comment is to the text that Marco Giovenale read at the Text Festival opening.
:-) bestest
Marco