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Showing posts from April, 2011

The Bury Poems

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In 2008, when Robert Grenier was in Bury for his reading at the "Irony of Flatness" exhibition, an interview had been set up with him conducively located in a local cafe-bar. Unfortunately the interviewer was taken ill, which we didnt hear about for a few hours and with Bob not carrying a mobile phone it took a while to let him know. In those hours of waiting, he wrote 6 poems responding to the local rural landscape, north of Bury, where he had requested to be billeted because he can't sleep if there is any urban noise. They were called the "Ramsbottom Poems" from the village where he was staying.  This got me to thinking about the poetic responses that could be accumulated from artists' involvement in working Bury - and thus was born the idea of the Bury Poems. Initially, I commissioned Phil Davenport, Carol Watts and Tony Lopez to create new Bury Poems - which all 3 performed at the 2009 Text Festival. Also during that festival, while Ron Silliman was h

Curating the Text

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Although I have only written about my curatorial conception of the Text Festival exhibitions once before they actually open, it feels like it is a tradition that I should continue with the forthcoming displays. In this, I’m mainly thinking about the Bury Art Gallery shows, Wonder Rooms and Sentences . I’ll write about A Map of You, TradeStamps , and Requiem another time. Preparing for this the third festival, it occurred to me that while previous TF displays included examples of visual poetry, no show so far has directly addressed the question of the location of visual poetry in a gallery. My conception for the show has developed from my responses to the dynamics and location of visual poetry itself. The first thing that seemed obvious is the disconnection of visual poetry from visual art. I am not aware of many (any?) exhibitions of visual poetry qua visual art curated by a curator in an art gallery. Since the 1960’s and conceptual art, text-based work in contemporary art galleries

The London Delivery

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I've been looking forward to today for some time: the day when the art movers delivered the artworks collected from artists, galleries and collectors in London. It's a great moment when works that you pursued get unwrapped of their packing. Invariably they are bigger or smaller than you expected, which is also fun, because you have to re-think how things fit together. It was a very intense day while the main focus was on working out the Sentences show, there was still installation work going on in the Fusilier Museum too.

The Team working hard on continuing installations

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Chris and Scott hanging a work by Márton Koppány. Another Márton Koppány work being transferred to the Transport Museum. Sarah Kerrison (Transport Museum Curator) checking out a work by Marco Giovenale and another Márton Koppány. Helena Ho sorting out Geof Huth's vispo cards Kat and Richard installing vispo...

Language Moment

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The trailblazer event of the Text Festival took place last night at the Green Room. I was pleased with how the juxtapositions of artists worked - a great gig. These pictures were taken during the sound checks. More pictures, films and a soundtrack will be available in due course. Maggie O'Sullivan Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl Phil Minton

Text Festival

The Language Moment Featuring Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, Maggie O’Sullivan, Phil Minton and Ben Gwilliam & Phil Davenport, Sarah Sander, and Sarah Boothroyd @ The Green Room, Manchester Friday 15 April 2011 In a pre-festival partnership event with the Green Room, Manchester, the Text Festival presents an evening of virtuoso vocal performance and groundbreaking sound art. Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl is an Icelandic poet and author of three novels. He works with performance and sound-poetry, and regularly appears at poetry and music festivals, as well as dabbling in the dark arts of the concrete. In the recent years he has explored the possibilities inherent in the European and North-American avant-garde traditions, and focused on disassembling language into its visual, social and linguistic units. Nothing can prepare you for the power and dexterity of his performance, the sonically richness of his sound poems, and his amazing control of his material. His huge contortions twist his mouth

Wonder Rooms hang

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 The curation and installation start in earnest for the Wonder Rooms visual poetry show.

Helen White installs

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Belgium-based poet Helen White arrrived today to install her texts in the Museum. http://www.krikri.be/helen/

Dinner

Could art ever compare to one of Sue's fine dinner parties? Last night, guests Christian Bök, Phil Davenport and Julia Grimes.  On arrival prosecco and sharing platter consisting of bresola, hams, roasted red and yellow peppers, artichoke hearts, various dips and sausages in a spicy sticky sauce. Followed by: A choice of parsnip soup or cauliflower veloute with chorizo and herb garnish accompanied with a Hungarian Furmint to drink. Pan-roasted pork tenderloin, portobello mushroom sauce, cubetti potatoes, carrot puree and spinach accompanied with an Argentinian Bonarda. Cointreau and blood orange jellies, home-made orange ice cream, and home-made orange-scented short breads; with Muscato d’asti to drink. Cheese board followed by coffee and home-made chocolates (and for old times, no doubt some Finnish Cloudberry liqueur)

Text Update

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Another week packed with Text Festival organisation: Printing late submissions from Michael Basinski in Buffalo, Fatima Queiroz in Rio and new tradestamp designs for Wang Jun (CHI) and Satu Kaikkonen (FIN) for the Museum Tradestamps show, which I also spent time talking through with Museum Curator Sue Lord who has done the massive job of researching and pulling together the history and objects for the show – the nearly final installation layout decisions were made on Friday morning; followed immediately afterwards by the installation walk-through at the Transport Museum – for which the Nozomi video piece from Peter Jaeger and Kaz was confirmed yesterday. Phil Davenport was having such good ideas for this show that I invited him to take over its curation. Then quickly across the road to the Fusilier Museum with incomparable Curator Kat McClung-Oakes and Technician Chris Holland to look at the siting and technical issues of Steve Giasson’s 246. Finally found Brazilian sound artist Bruno

molto semplice e cantabile

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In 2009 during the Bury Art Gallery exhibition "Not at this address", the UK sound artist Ben Gwilliam performed a new work using ice casts of Beethoven's molto semplice e cantabile. Today, we received the conceptual conclusion of that work with delivery of a limited edition of the disc cast in transparent vinyl. Ben will be performing at the Green Room on 15 April with Phil Davenport as the opening gig of the Text Festival. molto will be available for sale at the Festival shop (£15) - I would suggest that your art collection is incomplete without a copy of this work. In molto semplice e cantabile Ben Gwilliam taps into the traditions of harmonic music of the classical period, the Cagean rejection of what Beethoven stands for, sound artist turntablism, the physics of the anomalous expansion of water, the metaphysics of time, the counter-continuous diagram of creation through entropy, the very ontology of the listener. The plenary space fills with more than the sound o

Textual Excitement mounts

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I often comment in conversation that by the time Text Festival arrives it will already be over for me as I will have seen all the exhibitions before anyone else arrives. Obviously I won’t have seen buzz of so many artists hanging out or experienced the performances – but sadly I am able to enjoy these less than most because I have the stress of carrying the event and hopeful making sure it all comes together. The run up to the last festival wasn’t so good for me because I had an agonising broken tooth so preparations for the shows were a little distracted. Without that pain, this time round is doubly exciting because the Text has achieved a presence in many artists’ thinking so lots more practitioners than previously have engaged with it. Each time I walk into the receiving office at the gallery there are tables full of newly arrived works, packages wait to be unwrapped, fresh printed digital submissions: beautiful visual poetry from Japan via Vienna, the first 50 of 100 vispos b