Posts

Showing posts from June, 2010

DIY7 - The Eavesdroppers’ Choir

The Text Festival partnership with the Live Art Development Agency call for participants: http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/prof_dev/diy/diy7_2010_participants.html A found-live-language speaking choir, based on a 3 1/2-day intensive collaborative workshop to explore techniques of gathering, creating forms with and improvising live with found language. Who can apply? DIY is a scheme for artists working in Live Art. However, many of the DIY projects are relevant to artists who are interested in Live Art/performance but may not have an extensive track-record of Live Art practice. Deadline and notification The DIY projects have an application deadline of Friday 16 July, 2010. If you would like to take part in this DIY project (or one of the others featured on the LADA website) you need to contact the DIY project leader and submit your application to them. Each project has slightly different selection methods - most often you will be asked to submit a cv or biography and a short statement. Yo

Workload

Image
By way of excuse for my recent slim blogging, an update about things in progress: I am now heavily occupied planning the Text Festival - pictured "The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is overrated" by Joseph Beuys which will be in one of the shows - most of the key elements will be in place in the next couple of months; though the first manifestation of the Festival, the Live Arts DIY development workshop in September will be announced tomorrow. The planning is not being made any easier because the new Con-Dem Government's impeding cuts regime is making budgeting almost impossible. It has to be said that from the information coming though local government it looks more like the complete dismantling of public services. UK cultural life itself is under threat. I'm also simultaneously working on 2 books - The Tragedy of Althusserianism and Tesseract - plus an essay on the future of poetry and academia, and a long blog 'maximalism vs minimalism' .

Lost Properties

Image
arthur+martha artist Lois Blackburn and writer Philip Davenport will launch our new participatory event LOST PROPERTIES. You will find them at: Manchester Art Market, at St Ann's Square, Manchester City Centre, http://www.manchestermarkets.com Friday 25th and Saturday 26th June, 10am to 5.30pm. They will be exhibiting existing LOST PROPERTIES artworks and making new ones with the visiting public. Everyone is welcome. They will document works made during the event and photographs will be posted onto their portfolio site http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthur-and-martha/ LOST PROPERTIES is a project about caring. You might be a carer, need care yourself, know someone else who does, or help pay for care through your taxes. Care and support affects everybody. We are looking for ways to describe the people you care for most and the people who care for you. Lost Properties is an experiment in making art without using drawing or pictures, only words and secondhand objects. Who do you care a

Manchester Day Parade

Image

if p then q readings & book launches

@ Odder Bar 14 Oxford Road (opposite The BBC), Manchester, UK 23rd June 2010 6.30 pm [1:30 pm Eastern Time in the US] Free admission Performers: Joy as Tiresome Vandalism Geof Huth Tom Jenks Lucy Harvest Clarke Programme: 6.30: Joy as Tiresome Vandalism present Nøjagtig Pamplemousse 7.00: Geof Huth (live stream – watch at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/geof-huth ) 7.45: Lucy Harvest Clarke (watch live at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tom-jenks-lucy-harvest-clarke ) 8.15: Tom Jenks: (watch live at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tom-jenks-lucy-harvest-clarke ) If you can’t be there in person use the above URLs to watch on the internet. Please be aware that all times are approximate.

Does the Cambridge School exist when you are in Dortmund?

Before going to Dortmund I was too busy to read much of the discussion of Robert Archambeau’s essay in the Cambridge Literary Review positing the existence of a Cambridge School (of poetry) by Andrea Brady and others in various posts, forum discussions and blogs. At least some of the debate revolved around whether or not the CS exists, but I remember the phrase that came absent-mindedly as it was going on in my background was: “What would it mean if the Cambridge School existed?” Before setting off to Germany I printed off as much of the debate as I could find to read on the planes/trains. Of course, coming to a debate after everyone has had their say and moved on is a bit of a cheat, as you can pick your way through all the previous ideas, the clever analysis and look to be bringing something fresh, even if you’re not. So acknowledging my connivance, I found that reading the Cambridge School debate conflated with the discussions of European cultural policy and social inclusion strateg

Dortmund - The Exclusion of the Artist

Image
Dortmund . 15 nations represented at the Shortcut Europe convention on Culture and Social Inclusion. I must admit that I was a little uncertain as to why I was invited to speak during this event, and a little nervous, therefore, that my contribution might not be pitched at the level at which with no evidence I valorised current German theory-practice function. The event opened as I have previously experienced with welcoming speeches from the hosting organisations followed by an interminably dense academic lecture by a professor from the University of Tübingen. Long theoretical speeches at the beginning seem to be a German tradition. This put me at ease because while turgid it located where things are here for me. This was followed by a panel discussion – the themes of most of the panels tended to be ignored once the conversations started. The standout contribution came from Franco Bianchini (Leeds University) who was notable because his global research gave him a much greater range of

What am I going to say?

The rest of this week I am in Dortmund at Shortcut Europe 2010, a convention predicated on: “The EU is reacting to social tendencies of disruption in society from which culture is not excluded, as social and cultural exclusion often go hand in hand. Can cultural policy, cultural work and cultural education develop strategy against social exclusion?” “Is the theoretically formulated demand of “culture for all” still present in the minds of the stakeholders and what does the actual praxis look like? Are there new approaches and methods of engaging cultural work in the European socio-cultural field? Where are exemplary projects being accomplished, that are worth being repeated elsewhere? Should cultural work include more local activities and approaches? How can socially disadvantaged youth be addressed more directly?” Specifically, I will be initially talking about the conditions of cultural funding in the U.K. and my experiences with it – apparently there is a lot of interest in this. Wh