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THE DARK WOULD: language art exhibition

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7th December - 24th January at Summerhall , Edinburgh Launch (open to public) 7pm, Friday 6th December, 2013 Venue: Summerhall, Edinburgh, 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL Entry: Free  I'll be up in Edinburgh this Friday for the preview of the latest manifestation of Phil Davenport's "The Dark Would" Project. Significant poets and text artists involved in the two versions of the seminal anthology exhibiting works that cross the boundary of living and dying in  The Dark Would: Fiona Banner, Richard Long,  Simon Patterson, Susan Hiller, Sarah Sanders, Jenny Holzer, Richard Wentworth, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Baum, Ron Silliman  and many others, including (perhaps with less significance) me. Unexpectedly Phil has included my small 2005 poetic homage to  Blinky Palermo . Funnily enough when he mentioned his intention I had to take a moment to remember that I had done it but then again it was one of my first published pieces (with the kind support of Greville

The Text Festivals - the Book

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On occasion, I think, people interested in the ideas we have been working with in Bury have been stymied by my preference for the next project rather than the past project. But the Text Festival has been breaking new ground since 2005 so maybe inevitably it has developed a history that needs to be acknowledged. The Text Archive  developed by Holly Pester  through the AHRC funded partnership with Birkbeck Contemporary Poetics Research Centre responded to  that imperative. And now hot off the Plymouth University Press , "The Text Festivals: Language Art and Material Poetry" . You can acquire this must-have publication from  here  or via Bury Art Museum shop (slightly cheaper). Tony Lopez has done a great job - not least getting me to do my bit for it. As he  wrote in his blog  the field of enquiry that the festival has opened up urgently needed focused secondary work which can inform and develop the ongoing dialogue.  Phil Davenport 's seminal anthology The Dark Would

The Dark Would Northern Launch

THE OTHER ROOM presents the Northern launch of THE DARK WOULD Anthology of Language Art, featuring: MIKE CHAVEZ-DAWSON LAWRENCE LANE JO LANGTON CAROLYN THOMPSON NIGEL WOOD DATE: 16TH OCTOBER 2013, 7PM VENUE: THE CASTLE HOTEL,  66 Oldham Street, Manchester M4 1LE FREE Mike Chavez-Dawson  is an artist-curator based at Rogue Artists’ Studios, Manchester, UK. He instigated and curated the critically acclaimed shows ‘Unrealised Potential’ and David Shrigley’s solo show entitled ‘HOW ARE YOU FEELING?’ for the Cornerhouse (2012–13). More recently his extraordinary proposal ‘Beyond the Medium, A Rake’s Dream…’ made the 100 favorite proposals for Artangel ‘OPEN’ 2013. He also judged (alongside Laurie Peake, Paul Stolper and Iain Andrews) and curated the neo:art prize 2013. Laurence Lane  is an artist and curator. In June 2000 he co-founded The International 3, a gallery space in city centre Manchester that developed out of the city’s artist-led activity. He has exhibited

Bury Sculpture Centre

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News of developments will be thick and fast over the next few weeks; lots of things are coming to fruition – finally.  The first is the announcement that Bury’s exhibition spaces are being expanded, with the creation of the Bury Sculpture Centre . Following the Borough Library Review, large new spaces have become available and given our long term leadership of the  Irwell Sculpture Trail   project, the logical or maybe visionary conclusion is to create an international focus for sculpture in Bury.  We've  got some Arts Council funding and the first year’s programme well developed. Barring accidents we should open the new venue with the  Text Festival   – and who better to inaugurate in the context of Sculpture and Language than Lawrence Weiner. (How many more reasons do you need to be at the festival opening weekend?)  After Lawrence's show there'll b e an exhibition investigating the artistic dialogue between East and West (building on our experience and network

Helmut Herbst

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I heard the sad news that my old friend Helmut Herbst died a couple of weeks ago in Estonia. I first met Helmut in 2000. I had been working on the  Irwell Sculpture Trail  for about 3 years, commissioning new works and every now and then an artist I was working with would say that they were working on a similar project in a town called  Waiblingen  in Germany. After it had happened one too many times, I thought I'd have to see who the other curator was. So I arranged to visit Helmut in Waiblingen. I arrived at his office after dark on September evening and the first thing he did was open sparkling wine. We immediately got on personally and professionally sharing the challenges of curating in a satellite town (in his case Stuttgart) which appears marginal in geography and in artistic profile. Over the years since we have done various partnership projects and joint commissions. In 2007, Helmut retired from the Waiblingen Stadt Museum, somewhat disillusioned with that context as

Of Time And

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15 June – 14 September 2013 Bury Art Museum is pleased to present Of Time And , an exhibition of new and existing works by Evangelia Spiliopoulou . Evangelia Spiliopoulou 's work proposes new aesthetic and poetic functions for everyday objects and tools. In her series of digital Office Drawings , made with Microsoft Word Office software, she uses her knowledge and skill in classical observational drawing to create graphs and diagrams reminiscent of technical illustrations or instruction manuals. But rather than practical information, the drawings convey a sense of disorientation, like puzzles in which words and graphic elements seem to contradict conventional logic. They are maps of a mental process of free association and an intuitive response to the play of meanings suggested in words. Her new work Thermohygrograph 2 , created for this exhibition, achieves a similar effect by the most economical means. It consists of two identical devices for measuring temp

Android

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Preview: Friday 7 th June Exhibition: 8 th -14 th June, 1-5pm 4a Piccadilly Place, Manchester Live Performances from Naomi Kashiwagi & Sarah Sanders, plus artist talk 8 th June, 2-4pm. Things are not what they first seem... Carefully chosen artists have been invited to respond to the theme Android, originating from the Greek words 'andro' meaning man (or human) and 'eidos' meaning like or likeness. These new artworks are varied in media, and together, create an intense visual and audio experience to captivate the viewer. The inspiration for this show comes from the cult classic Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott (1982) and Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang (1927). Woven into this discourse is a new work by Beth Ward The Mountain Has a Mouth (An alternative book cover illustration for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick) . Incorporating elements from the novel such as: Mars, a mountain and clouds of dust. Antony Hal

(Venice Biennale): Helmut Lemke: the Surplus Value of Sound

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On Tuesday, I head off to Venice for the Biennale   - lots of previews, parties and meetings planned. I have a particular interest in the show at the  Palazzo Bembo  as I wrote the catalogue introduction for  Helmut Lemke 's exhibition there. Here is that essay:  Since the 1970's Helmut Lemke has developed site-specific concerts, performances and installations. His endeavours have taken him to concert halls and outdoor markets, to Galleries and Museums and to the frozen seas off Greenland , to Function Rooms of Pubs and to International Festivals. He has presented his work all over the globe, collaborating with other Sound Artists and Musicians, with Dancers and Scientists, Visual Artists and Architects, Poets and Archaeologists, Performance Artists and Wildlife Rangers. He has experienced many audible sounds as well as those made audible through creative interventions, and fundamentally come to understand the site the sound requires. Through these investigations int

The Other Room

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The Other Room is putting on an extra, one-off event at The Town Hall Tavern, 20 Tib Lane, Manchester, M2 4JA on Saturday, 18th May, 5 pm start. The readers are derek beaulieu, Tom Jenks and Holly Pester. Details of all three readers are below and previews of each will appear on The Other Room site ( http://otherroom.org/ ) in the coming weeks. derek beaulieu is an internationally-recognized text artist, conceptual writer and literary critic. He is the author or editor of 15 books, the most recent of which are Writing Surfaces: The Selected Fiction of John Riddell (co-edited with Lori Emerson) and Please, No more poetry: the selected poetry of derek beaulieu (edited by Kit Dobson) both of which are published by Wilfrid Laurier Unversity press. He is the publisher of the acclaimed smallpresses housepress (1997–2004) and no press (2005–present) and is the visual poetry editor at UBUWeb. Beaulieu has exhibited his work across Canada, the United States and Eur

The Text in The Dark Would

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As is often the case nowadays, I have been too busy with other things to blog: one of which is starting work on the next Text Festival - opening 2 May 2014. In the meantime between the last festival and the next two projects have kept the Text Festival evolving - The Text Archive mentioned in my last blog, and Phil Davenport 's The Dark Would . Phil has been an active and indispensable force in all of the Text Festivals - from his curation of the Bob Cobbing show in 2005 to the homeless poetry project in the 2011, and now The Dark Would. I have had many discussions with Phil during the creation of the anthology but take no credit for his significant achievement. A little close to it, I find it hard to review so in the first instance share, with his permission, Scott Thurston 's response:    "My appreciation of this anthology comes from my point of view as a contributor. Whilst this means my goal is not critical engagement, I hope to provide an insight into the

Archiving the Text

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Almost since the first Text Festival (back in 2005), I have had requests from researchers and artists to access the Text Festival Archive. Generally, while trying to be supportive to their needs, I have put them off 'accessing the archive' because it didn't exist - except in dispersed boxes, cupboards and filing systems. I hasten to add that the art collection - works commissioned, acquired, etc - arising from the festival was safely stored in the vaults. But this didn't get away from the absence of an archive. There was a reason for this: generally, I am more interested in what I am going to do next rather than what I have previously done. Over the years the occasional requests for access have increased because there have now been 3 festivals plus various projects between - most recently the Text show in Tampere, Finland - people interested in studying/using the Text naturally assume that it must have a significant volume by now. It does, but is still not in a usa

The Dark Would Preview

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THE DARK WOULD language art anthology will be previewed at the Southbank Centre in London on 6 Feb, 8-9.30pm. Material from both volumes will be shown and there will be readings and a panel-led discussion around the issues raised by the anthology. A gallery launch event for both volumes will take place in April, again in London.  Preview of a new, pioneering anthology of text artists and poets, which includes work by over 100 contributors including Richard Long, Fiona Banner, Maggie O' Sullivan, Tacita Dean, Ron Silliman, Shin Tanabe, Marton Koppany, Tom Phillips, Tsang Kin-Wah, Charles Bernstein, Susan Hiller, Tony Lopez, Caroline Bergvall, Sarah Sanders, Kay Rosen, Rosemarie Waldrop, Robert Grenier, Me , and many, many more.  Join us in the Southbank Poetry Library for a set of readings and a panel discussion by artists and poets. Chairing the discussion and fielding audience questions are THE DARK WOULD editor Philip Davenport, poet Carol Watts and artist Liz Col

Bird Sheet Music

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Bird Sheet Music  by Kerry Morrison, Helmut Lemke & Jon Hering Discordant nature in harmony Performed live – for one day only – in the Foyer, Tate Liverpool Sunday 20 th  January Performance times: 2.30pm, 3.30pm, & 4.30 pm Live performance by a.P.A.t.T. Orchestra with Helmut Lemke Sound installation by Helmut Lemke and Kerry Morrison, The Art Dock, Tate Liverpool