Text Festivals: Five Actions Plus Time

If the last post was a little too long to wade through, in a nutshell the Text posited that we were in one of those historic moments when different artforms are cross-fertilising, and specifically around language through five modes of operation, namely, parataxis, intertextuality, materialisation, spatialisation, and restricted/constricted processes. In that first iteration I had lumped time-based arts across the latter three practices, but in later explanations I began to refer to the Text’s criteria for inclusion being ‘Five actions plus Time’. The Festival opened with a survey show of work by the recently deceased Bob Cobbing, guest curated by Phil Davenport and Jennifer Cobbing; the sound installation ‘Little Sugar’ by Caroline Bergvall, and the main exhibition I curated simply called the ‘Text’, which spanned the theoretical basis of “art that can be read as poetry and poetry that can be viewed as art.”

Installation view: Bob Cobbing 

The rest of the nine months featured solo exhibitions by Lawrence Weiner, Maurizio Nannucci, Shaun Pickard, Alan Halsey, exhibitions of artist’s books curated by Greville Worthington, different alphabets curated by me; public art from Lawrence Weiner – WATER MADE IT WET and the gallery atrium neon installation (pictured below) by Nannucci.

There were numerous performances from too many poets to mention but headlined by Robert Grenier – the start of a long relationship with Bob that led to Bury having one of the biggest collections of his work, and certainly the biggest outside the USA. If you’re interested in more details of the festival’s activities, I’m pretty sure I blogged about most of it at the time, so it’ll be searchable.

Returning to the observation that the festival’s concept was difficult for some to grasp, I’ll share an anecdote which confirmed to me that we were on the right track, or at least it entertained me greatly at the time. Our Media Relations were handled by the incomparable Catharine Braithwaite. One day, Catharine rang me to say that she had an international arts magazine interested in featuring the festival and that the art journalist wanted to do a phone interview with me. Fine, I thought, we set it up for later in the week. All sounded positive until she cautioned me to be prepared for him because he really knew his stuff, was rigorous and could cut through art-speak nonsense when he heard it. So, the interview started with me duly serious, taking onboard her warning. Even with my explaining the Five Actions analysis, there was a tone in his questions that suggested he was thinking: ‘am I interested in covering this?’; so I fell back on a shorthand formulation I had used in other conversations, saying: “Look, if I program Lawrence Weiner in front of an arts audience, they’ll know who he is; but if I program Ron Silliman with the same audience, they won’t. Similarly, a poetry audience will know who Ron Silliman is, but not Lawrence Weiner.” There was a long silence at the other end of the phone, and then rather sheepishly, the journalist said, “I don’t know who Ron Silliman is.” After that, the interview was smooth sailing.

On to the 2009 Text Festival. After nine months I felt that I had exhausted the subject (and the audience) of the Text – and I was certainly personally exhausted. In anticipation of that, I had arranged a 12-month sabbatical for 2006 – during which I wrote my first poetry book 50 Heads. This came out in 2007 after I returned to Bury. Various review copies were duly sent out and unexpectedly I got calls from different friends saying that Ron Silliman had reviewed it on his world-famous blog.

“While there are poets in the U.K. who are close to langpo personally – Tom Raworth in particular – there has never really been anything you could call a language school, as such, in Britain. I hear this equally as a techno descendant of someone like Prynne, a concept that strikes me as very odd indeed. And a sign that Trehy isn’t really like anyone else at all.

Trehy is an eminently readable poet, tho you have to pay attention as you proceed through each work. He promotes this further with a vocabulary that is large and sometimes technical.” (excerpt)

Preview viewers of Liz Collini wall-drawing

It seemed only polite to thank Ron, so I emailed him. But just staying ‘thanks’ seemed a bit thin, so I threw in, “if you ever fancy performing at the Text Festival, we’d be delighted to have you.” To be clear, I had no intention of doing another festival – it was a spare of the moment throwaway remark. At that point I still felt it had done everything it needed to do. Ron replied almost immediately saying: “I get an invitation to perform in the UK about 3 or 4 times a week, but I guess the Text is the important one, so I’d be pleased to attend.” I don’t remember ever telling Ron that the only reason for the 2009 festival actually happened was simply to host him! That said, I put as much effort into it as the first and it was again a success. For me, the personal moment I savored came on the night Ron performed. I had created a mixed programme for the evening, as was the Text way, opening with some Italian sound works, a Scottish storyteller, German turntablist/sound artist Claus van Bebber, followed by Ron. I was standing alone in the dark with him backstage waiting for him to go on and he said with obvious excitement at the evening, “this is just what I am about.” 

And onto the story of why there was a 2011 festival. As part of the 2009 funding for Ron’s travel, a gig in London was included. I accompanied him down to Birkbeck for the performance. One little anecdote, a handful of people (assuming that the Text must be a biennial) regretted that they had missed the 2007 festival. To which I replied that it had been the best one. Anyway, during drinks after the reading, someone enthusiastically wanted to know when the next festival would be. Admittedly having had too many drinks and flushed with positive vibes, I calculated how quickly I do another, and the date popped up ‘2011’. So there it was.

The smartest summary comes from Derek Beaulieu’s blog at the time: “On April 27 and 28th I will be installing an original concrete poem in the windows of the Bury Art Gallery as part of the Text Festival. In addition to that installation, the festival includes my Prose of the Trans-Canada and my Box of Nothing. The Festival also includes visual poetry from Satu Kaikkonen, Eric Zboya, Geof Huth and a tonne of other international poets; performances by Christian Bok, Ron Silliman, Karri Kokko, Jaap Blonk and more; installation work by Pavel Buchler, Simon Morris and many others. This is the 3rd bi-annual Festival
 and promises to be an incredible affair." This is a link to Derek’s blog about his experience “An irresponsible act of imaginative license” #8: The Text Festival, Part 1. | derek beaulieu's blog

And again, fully satisfied with 2011 festival I was convinced that was it. No More. I found various occasions when I was actually saying out loud there would not be another.

2012-13 my project activity shifted completely to touring exhibitions in China. And then 2014 came. Again, its initiation was triggered by something exterior to my intention. Long story short, Bury restructured the Gallery complex to create a new Sculpture Centre on the ground floor and it needed a sufficiently high profile opening show to establish its credentials in international practice. Who better to launch it than Lawrence Weiner, who had by then a long association with Bury and a number of his works sited around the Borough. (Coincidentally, on the same night he opened in Bury, he also opened shows in Rio and Milan). Of course once the Weiner show was likely, the logic of an accompanying Festival was inevitable. Artistically the Festival was strong and by this one, the audience was knowledgeable and committed, but as Sue had warned me, my health wasn’t at its best and I must admit that I missed a large part of the opening weekend due to my collapse.

I retired in 2019 but would almost certainly programmed a fifth event with a new conception. So it couldn’t happen (and probably wouldn’t have anyway due to COVID), but I have continued to develop the analysis that would take things forward and will be posting these ideas after these commemorative posts.