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Showing posts from October, 2009

Lemur

St Philip with St Stephen Church, St Philips Place( just off Chapel Street), Salford, M3 6FJ map below (0161 834 2041), THURSDAY the 29th October , doors open 7.30pm, entrance fee: the usual £5 LEMUR are: > Hild Sofie Tafjord performer and composer, plays french horn and electronics. She studied jazz and improvised music at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Tafjord has a solo project and plays in bands like Lemur, SPUNK, Agrare, Trinacria, Phantom Orchard Orchestra, She is one half of Duo FE-MAIL with the prolific and bonkers Maja Ratkje and she has collaborated with numerous artists like Wolf Eyes, Campbell Kneale, Matmos, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins,Otomo Yoshihide, Fred Frith, Zu, Evan Parker etc. She participates on more than 30 releases at a.o. Rune Grammofon, Asphodel, picadisk, ECM, Universal, Moserobie, Jazzland, Important Records, Psychform Records, Gameboy Records, OHM records. www.myspace.com/hildsofie > Bjørnar Habbestad, flautist educated in Bergen, London and Amsterdam.

The Other Room

most perfect days there is nothing horizon in the protocol we employ Unwent, urelements we are not, with our grey the same as theirs THE OTHER ROOM AT OXJAM Sunday, 25th October, 13:45 start Apotheca, 17 Thomas Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester M4 1FS. The Other Room is organising an extra event as part of the Oxjam festival. For this event only, The Other Room will be at Apotheca, 17 Thomas Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester M4 1FS. Entry is free, but a donation to Oxjam is suggested. Read more about Oxjam at http://www.oxjammanchester.org. I will be reading including extracts from Space The Soldier Who Died For Perspective (also above). Hope to see you there. Also reading: STUART CALTON has published four books of poems: three with Barque Press, and one on his own press, Fenland Hi-Brow. His fifth, Three Reveries, is awaiting publication. He is also a musician who records and performs Free Improvisation and Musique Concrète under the nom de Dictaphone T.H.F. Drenching. JAMES D

Kill Tony Trehy

There was a moment when I was pulling together the Language Moment structure when I knew that all the major organisational issues had been resolved. At that instant, even though I was very tired, I also knew that this would mean that by the time the event actually happened (if it did) I would have to have moved beyond it to stop myself being bored. I was reminded of Geof Huth’s proposal for my ‘death’ back in June during the Text Festival Thinking Environment workshop. We were considering the question: “ What are the assumptions + obstacles that prevent the extension + intensification of the connective + transformative model which the Text Festival represents ?” In one of the circuits through the participants, Ron Silliman suggested that the solution would be ‘to clone Tony Trehy’. Geof Huth picks up the story on his blog at the time ( http://dbqp.blogspot.com/2009/05/it-was-metaphor.html ) “By the time the conversation wended its way around our circle to me—I was two people away from

Crisis? What Crisis?

In 2006, the Arts Council of England (ACE) decided that as an arts organisation it should commission some new works itself, rather than its general remit of funding other organisation’s. It coincided with its new intranet/finance computer system. So the brief was that they would commission 9 new works – one for each of the Arts Council regions – images of which would be suitable for as desktops or screensavers for each individual officer to use on their computers. It was a strange internal selection process which they didn’t advertise. The first I knew about it, I had been the shortlisted to the last 2 for the north west region – I never knew whom the other person was. So in response to the invitation to submit, empathizing with the existential antinomy facing individuals with a commitment to the arts in the context of a bureaucracy, I proposed a new text work which would set out to consider the question: how can a creative individual function (and survive the pressures of conformity)

Busy as usual

Again not much time to write: busy developing my new website, just finished proofing the new book " Space The Soldier Who Died For Perspective ", which gets launched on 15 November at the London Small Publishers Fair; and a rush job developing an artists' books project with Foligno Museum (Italy) - apparently the town in which Dante's Inferno was first printed.

Bigger than the Olympics?

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While we await the decision from the Olympic Selection Committee, the big news is that Barney has been called for an audition with a modelling agency.

Oh no! It’s National Poetry Day.

It’s that dismal day again. As Charles Bernstein noted “poets are symbolically dragged into the public square in order to be humiliated with the claim that their product has not achieved sufficient market penetration and must be revived by the Artificial Resuscitation Foundation (ARF) lest the art form collapse from its own incompetence, irrelevance, and as a result of the general disinterest among the broad masses ...” ( http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/044106.html ) “Our” theme this year is Heroes and Heroines. Ostensibly this resonates with the spirit of the time, daily stories of backs-to-the-wall heroism in the war, while at home according to the media, citizens need courage just to step out of the door in the face of yob violence. Similarly it is fairly obvious that Carol Ann Duffy should have been invited to be the poet in residence for this her first year as the Poet Laureate. However, there is a poetry politics subtext in the theme. The celebration of heroes and hero

Special Event 'Paul Neagu' exhibition

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Thursday 8 October 2009, 7 - 9 pm Romanian Cultural Institute, 1 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PH Hyphen-Ramp, Serpentine Gallery London, 1976. © Paul Neagu Estate Talk in the Gallery Artists and Curators: Is there a difference between artists, with their special knowledge of working processes, and curators, with their special understanding of exhibitions, in creating a show? with: Marianne Eigenheer, artist and curator, Basel / London; David Thorp, curator, London; Stephen Foster, Director of the John Hansard Gallery at the University of Southampton. 'Paul Neagu' - a film by Ruxandra Garofeanu, 2003 UK Premiere, a Romanian TV production Translation, subtitles and editing by Lucas Florian The event is part of the 'Paul Neagu' exhibition, first major show of the British-Romanian artist's work in London, five years after his death. Curated by artist Marianne Eigenheer (London/Basel) & Iolanda Costide (Paul Neagu Estate London). A partnership with The Paul Neagu Es

The Other Room

Wednesday 7th October, 7.00pm CRAIG DWORKIN (video presentation) and MICHAEL HASLAM. Old Abbey Inn, 61 Pencroft Way, on Manchester Science Park, M15 6AY, UK Admission is free. www.otherroom.org

The Figure of the Question is in the Room

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The Figure of the Question is Death The Figure of Interrogative Philosophy The Figure of the Question is in the Room The James Lee Byars at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park http://www.ysp.co.uk/view.aspx?id=688 is great show - split between the Bothy Gallery and the Chapel. The former has some truly beautiful pieces. The first room features a huge scroll partially unrolled with a single drawn line - a remarkable sweeping gesture. In an intimate space, the QD, IP, QR gold columns were powerfully affecting. The installations in the chapel are less powerful, being reconstructions - interesting configurations of Byars but strangely parenthesised by his own quotation "I cancel all my works at death!" The context that made the show look even better was its juxtaposition with the utter banality of the endless Peter Randall Page retrospective on at the same time.