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Showing posts from April, 2009

Textual Days

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It is suddenly a very strange feeling to be in the company of other bloggers who are blogging the same events. It's not so much competitive as contrapuntal. Today after a quick tour of Manchester's more attractive architectural features - Rylands Library, Barton Arcade, Royal Exchange Theatre (I guess Geof will blog that) - we went up to Bury. Tom Konyves went to the Met Arts Centre to prepare for tonight's poetry-film event; while Geof & Nancy came with me to the Gallery. He seemed pleased with the transfer of his concrete poem to a large scale vinyl on glass in the Museum. In the afternoon, Channel M filmed a piece about the festival - with us interviewed and him reading (pictured).
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A delightful evening with Ron Silliman, Tom Konyves, Geof & Nancy Huth - which Geof has blogged better than I could: http://dbqp.blogspot.com/ . - his camera is better too, though this seems to be the only picture of Barney (with GH) in which he isn't a whirling fur shape. Sue’s menu: Canapés: smoked salmon and sour cream blinis accompanied with Petillant de Syrah Pan-fried fillets of Salmon with ginger & chilli spiced ribbons of courgettes and a lemon & parsley dressing accompanied with Stellenbosch Chenin Blanc Fricassee of spring chicken in a white wine, cream and asparagus sauce with crushed new potatoes accompanied with a Rio Verde Sauvignon Blanc A trio of strawberry treats: Strawberry & Chocolate meringue; home-made strawberry ice cream and a chilled Strawberry & Chilli cocktail followed by Coffee (and tea for the Americans) and Cloud Berry liqueur

Ron Silliman on the Verb

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From Ron's arrival from the US, he went to BBC Radio for an interview and a reading for 'The Verb' http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/theverb/ which I think is broadcast on Friday but worth checking and worth listening to - you'll be able to listen again on the site iplayer.

Textual gathering

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An exciting day with the first batches of artists arriving and installing for the festival. Pictured Liz Collini constructing something which can only be described as beautiful. Catronia Glover has also started work at the Met Arts Centre and Carolyn Thompson presented her commissioned sound work "Progress". I am hoping to blog events as they happen but things are already intense so I can't guarantee anything. Tomorrow Ron Silliman, Geof Huth (and Nancy), Tom Konyves and Patrick Fabian Pannetta fly in.

Festival news

Lunchtime Talk tomorrow 28 April 12.30pm Sign of The Times: Carolyn Thompson Bury Museum Refreshments from 12 noon Sign of The Times is part of The Text Festival 2009 Text Festival 2009 The Agency of Words 2 May - 18 July The second Text festival is a celebration of international poetics and language in art. With a focus on performance and sound art, the event features exhibitions and commissions from some of the world's leading practitioners and some great new talents. For more information and festival highlights go to www.textfestival.com See Geof Huth's itnerary: http://dbqp.blogspot.com/2009/04/next-week-text-festival.html

Wiesbaden

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What an attractive city! I highly recommend Wiesbaden, and Gottfried Hafemann's gallery. Marianne Eigenheer's show opened last - the picture in my previous entry is a good image of the upper room with the lower room featured 3 tiny screens featuring beautiful little mobile photo footage from Berlin Zoo and this completely unexpected early painting. Today I managed to see another 8 canvases (not in the show) from the 80's, that really much be shown soon. Tomorrow - back to Manchester and the growing anticipation of the Text Festival - opening night Thursday, but lots to do before then. I would advise anyone thinking of going to the ticket events to book in advance, because they are going fast.

Galerie Hafemann, Wiesbaden

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With the Text Festival website notching up more than 60,000 hits (since Christmas), I am off to Galerie Hafemann, Wiesbaden (Germany) http://www.galerie-hafemann.de/templates/main.php?SID=20 for the opening of the new show from Marianne Eigenheer . I'll also be to check out what's going on in Frankfurt.

Text Festival update

Hot news - In addtion to the readings already announced, Ron Silliman will now read with Geof Huth at the opening of Sign of the Times at Bury Museum & Archives on 1 May.

Text 2

The Text Festival anthology ( Text 2) is now available. It opens with an introductory 'poetic manifesto' from me and includes: Phil Davenport Hester Reeve (HRH.the) Alan Halsey P. Inman Allen fisher Caroline Bergvall Carolyn Thompson Judy Kendall Tony Lopez Scott Thurston Stephen miller Jesse Glass Joe Devlin James Davies Carol Watts Carl Middleton You can get a copy from the Bury Art Gallery shop. The Text Festival is pretty much formed now so you can see the programme at www.textfestival.com

about everything

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Back in January, Phil Davenport’s book about everything came out http://tony-trehy.blogspot.com/2009/01/about-everything.html . It has taken me a while to get round to reviewing it, and as I have digested it over the last few months, I am confirmed in my belief that Davenport is the synthesising heir of Bob Cobbing and Ian Hamiton Finlay. While I could comment on the double column form – drawn from newspaper layouts – the paratactic rhythm of the mirroring colour images to the text, the cutting of ontological meditation with media verbiage, for me I think there is something much deeper and more significant going on in the way the language progresses and at the same time dissolves to [][][][][][]. The following passage from a completely unrelated web site seems to me to encapsulate an important phenomenon about everything: “A phase transition or, phase change, describes when a substance changes its state of matter - eg. ice melting to water is a phase change because a solid changed t

Make It New

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Manchester International Festival (MIF) http://www.mif.co.uk/ claims to be the world’s first festival of original, new work and special events. The Festival launched in 2007 as “an artist-led, commissioning festival presenting new works from across the spectrum of performing arts, music, visual arts and popular culture.” As I mentioned the other day, attending the media launch, my doubts from the first festival were confirmed for the second. Alex Poots, the Director, introduced the festival roughly with: this is the world’s first festival of original, new work and special events, an artist-led, commissioning festival presenting new works from across the spectrum of performing arts, music, visual arts and popular culture. He then handed the platform over to the first artist (I can’t recall which one it was now), who, after explaining his planned work, handed on to the next and then they had handed on to the next, etc. The first thing that stands out in this ‘presentation’ is that the d

Barney on the Beach

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Barney's first experience of the sea was a shock - not knowing what it was, he followed the black labrador in. The look of horror on his face is hilarious.

Holiday

Off to the Isle of Man until Easter: http://www.iomguide.com/

A Day in the Capital

Just back from the opening of the Whitechapel Art Gallery http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/ . The main ground floor spaces look pretty much how I remember them from when I was last there; the main changes are on the upper floors with numerous other gallery and archive spaces, topped by some community rooms. I say numerous because it was quite hard to know how you navigated (and counted) how the spaces connected. Some of them had potential for good display, some didn’t. Overall, my inkling was that the modernisation had a ‘trying-too-hard’ feel and that some of the character of the old building had been lost. The original vision of the founders was proudly stated: bringing great art to all people whatever their circumstances - for which read 'including the poor of the east end of London'. The refurbishment was located in this tradition, but over the years subtle entropy has eaten into such a small number of words in such an aspiration. In modern Britain the emphasis in this sta

zoviet*france

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