Phew…
NEW to the archive: Three Little Books by Aram Saroyan: THE BEATLES, I AM ROSE, and MY MUMMY’S DEAD.
NEW from Editions Eclipse: C o n t i n u u m, the latest installment of Stephen Ratcliff’s thousand-page projects triangulating an eco-conceptual poetics through daily devotional practice, rigorous form, and lyrical attention.
What joy. HERE at the Eclipse site
As part of The Dark Would celebrations at The Other Room Mike Chavez-Dawson produced Rorschachs, in part by writing dead poets’ names in paint. These names were given to him by the audience on the night. This clip shows him making John Keats and below that a still of Brecht (Berthold).
Chavez-Dawson judged (alongside Laurie Peake, Paul Stolper and Iain Andrews) and curated the neo:art prize 2013.
He is a PhD research fellow at MMU, MIRIAD, and has exhibited and performed at TATE Britain, Barbican, ICA, Cornerhouse, The Whitworth Art Gallery, British Art Show 7 at Nottingham Contemporary and The Whitstable Biennale (2008). He has also had numerous international shows and projects in Rome, New York, Sans Francisco, Lisbon, Seoul, Helsinki and Dresden.
Writers’ Forum North is meeting again next saturday (26th October). It’s 2-4 pm in function room above Terrace bar in Edge street, Manchester M2. It’s just down road from Madlab, go through back entrance of Terrace and turn immediately right and go up the stairs.
Bring photocopies of poem you like (by someone else) – and one of your own.
A dictaphone will be sent to and from a crater in Hawaii to capture one minute of the most silent place on this natural earth. More here.
Catalogue, text, and photographs from the ‘Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig’ exhibition is now online http://timethedeer.wordpress.com/
Land Diagrams is an ongoing series in which commissioned writers respond to the same visual encoding of landscapes. More here.
In June 2013, Amy Cutler will be putting on a free public exhibition called Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig, a line by Scottish poet Sorley Maclean. It will be on the topic of forests, history, and memory, and will range between natural history (specimens and found artefacts), social history (archival texts, photographs, and samples from museum collections), and art (book works, wood works, and installations). The exhibition will take place at a Grade 1 listed belfry in London (E2 9PA), which is also a community art gallery.
The project needs funds to ensure the safety and appropriate display and transport of the objects, which will allow the museums and artists to loan them. You can support the project via Kickstarter.
Alec Newman reading at the recent The Other Room December 2012
Interview
Reading
One must have a mind of winter to carry off a wig like that.
A long, long note for Santa.
The bottom half of this picture has been edited out.
The Christmas Countdown continues, with Kenneth Koch offering Frank O’Hara a shoulder to cry on.
Homeless people in Manchester have been telling their stories with needle and thread – embroidering the words onto a patchwork quilt, exhibited at Holden Gallery, Manchester 4-18th December.
the warm /&/the cold is a project run by arts organisation arthur+martha, led by poet Phil Davenport and artist Lois Blackburn, who have spent many months working with the homeless community, alongside students from MMU.
Davenport said: ‘The quilt was created by asking simple questions which don’t have simple answers. When were you warm? When were you cold? People talked about being physically cold, but also emotional warmth and cold. Some of the stories were brutal, others funny, or angry – or wise. People outside society can often have great insight.’
The project was devised to help homeless people develop new life skills, socialise and build their confidence. Volunteer student helpers from the Embroidery Department at Manchester Metropolitan University helped to stitch the work and also made quilts in reply. Volunteers from the Women’s Institute also lent their needles and expertise, embroidering the epic 9 feet by 12 feet patchwork poem.
Blackburn said: ‘Some of the students have put heart and soul into this – enthusiastic and very open-minded. Homelessness is a taboo, but it is likely to get more common in this time of economic hardship. We’ve met people from many walks of life and of many abilities. Often their family life has been disrupted and they spiral down from there. We hope that bringing students into the project will help promote acceptance of homeless people and wider understanding.’
The project challenges stereotypes about homelessness, combating hate crime against homeless people and emphasizing needs shared by us all – especially shelter and acceptance. arthur+martha use experimental writing techniques in their collaborations with marginalised people, especially cut-up and poems ‘found’ in conversation; the final pieces are often presented in public spaces and art galleries. This project is simultaneously an art exhibition and a sequence of text animations being shown by the BBC on Big Screens in Manchester and Liverpool.
A long-running project diary describing this and other arthur+martha work with homeless people in Manchester – particularly at The Big Issue in the North office, The Booth Centre and The Red Door – is to be found at the blog http://arthur-and-martha.blogspot.co.uk
the warm /&/the cold is funded by Arts Council England and Bury Arts Service. It is partnered by The Booth Centre, The Big Issue in the North, BBC, Salford University Media Department, Manchester Metropolitan University Embroidery Department.
Media contact: Philip Davenport
philipjohndavenport@hotmail.com
A second issue of the splenid Knives Forks and Spoons, Establishment magazine edited by Jo Langton which is published as a free printable e-magazine.
Installed this month on the Irwell Sculpture Trail, Tony Lopez‘s new text work After. This is one of three inscribed plaques installed in Radcliffe, Lancashire, along a footpath and a canal towpath near Radcliffe Metrolink Tram Station, part of the work After, also known as The Scattered Poem, a holocaust memorial piece that Tony has been planning for the last few years.
Seekers of Lice will perform at the Other Room in December. You can read this dialogue with VerySmallKitchen, who are publishing a collection of sol plays in November, at the VSK site.
Videos below from if p then q’s recent night in London with guest appearances from Michael Basinski and Jennifer Pike Cobbing. Look out for Jennifer Pike Cobbing in particular who read some of The ABC in Sound which will be read by an ensemble at the next Other Room, just under a month away.
Lucy Harvest Clarke
Philip Terry
Michael Basinski
Tom Jenks
Tim Atkins
Holly Pester
Jennifer Pike Cobbing
Information as material was established by the English artist Simon Morris in 2002. Based in York (UK), iam operates as an independent imprint that publishes work by artists who use extant material — selecting it and reframing it to generate new meanings — and who, in doing so, disrupt the existing order of things.
otherroom.org 