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Showing posts from February, 2005

Cobbing Retrospective

It seems only a few days ago that the Galleries where covered in dust and workmen but already Philip Davenport and Jennifer Cobbing have virtually finished the hang of the Bob Cobbing retrospective. It’s been great to see the excitement of the hang and the discovery of how remarkable the work is as it is curated categorically in his progress from sound-language toward abstraction. The show’s centre piece is part of the massive 300 book collaboration Bob did with Lawrence Upton, but there are so many gems in the show it will be a must-see event opening on 19 March.

Text - the manifesto

The Text catalogue arrives back from the Italian printers this week, care of a fine design by Alan Ward (Axis Design). A few thoughts on the book, written before Christmas last year: It separates itself from the world 'phenomenologically' - the cover represents the world outside with its Manchester street scene. The whole text is in inverted commas. But of course this isn’t possible, once inside layers of symbols, text and reference accrue again. The first being that it is modeled on another text - John Cage ’s The Future of Music: Credo (from Silence). This was partially because the Text needs a manifesto now as contemporary music did then. Having decided to replicate Cage’s structure some time after having read it, I returned to re-read and discover he had done what everyone who has ever written a manifesto does: he attacks the current state of things, points out the direction that new things are (likely) going and waxes lyrical as to why that will be better. But the final

Grenier Festival Performance

In the early stages of curating the opening exhibition of the Text Festival, I wanted to show Robert Grenier 's seminal poem, Sentences , ( http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/grenier/ ) and after some research found a rare copy located in a library in California. Sadly, the complications and costs of borrowing it were unsurmountable, but spotting mention on Silliman's blog of a Grenier show in New York, I pursued the link ( http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/grenier/boesky2004.htm ) Ironically, it turned out easier and cheaper to buy 9 new works than to borrow Sentences. A conversation started up - initially around having copyright permission to reproduce the poems for education and publicity purposes. It turned out that Robert had become aware of the Festival and was actually quite keen to attend. Today we confirmed the visit: Robert will read at the Festival on Thursday 29 September.

Bodyscan

An exhibition at the Cornerhouse by Eva Wohlgemuth, ( www.evahohlgemuth.com/BODYSCAN/ ) with a strapline quotation: “The smallest text file of me is 1MB, so I fit on a disk; you can just about recognise me as a wireframe, but when it’s rendered there can be no doubt, It is me! So, am I more than just my data set – as we always assumed – or has my data set become an essential requirement for me to assert my position in cyberspace?” The show is a series of screens featuring brightly coloured slow-motion animation of Wohlgemuth’s static naked body plus a series of plinths topped by modelled figurines of the same body and on the way out of the gallery a bank of computers featuring web links and coding for these digital projections. Basically, we can cut to the chase and answer the above question: (there certainly is doubt that it is you) and yes you are more than your data set. The physical/virtual elements are clumsy, and have no more interest than if these were watercolour self-portrai

The Man Without Content

At the weekend I attended a symposium bringing together writers, artists and philosophers together ostensibly around “ The Man Without Content ” by Giorgio Agamben, but ranging into a more general analysis of aesthetic philosophy. The Live Artist Hester Reeve, whom I have commissioned to do two pieces for the Text Festival (of which more another time) has been working around issues raised by the Agamben’s writing and organised the symposium primarily drawing together a group of associated thinkers. I approached the event highly critical of the Agamben I have read, and can’t say I changed my mind at the symposium. The first point of dispute then is Methodology Agamben has a strange and decidedly unphilosophical approach to arguing a philosophy. I don’t think I have ever read a philosopher whose method so stands on the shoulders of sources. In comparison, a philosopher such as Sartre will start from a position of rigorous analysis of previous thinking, and in drawing out weakn

A Sculptor's Text

FOURTEEN SHEETS OF FILM, EACH CONTAINING FOURTEEN SQUARES ARRANGED IN AN AREA WHOSE SIDES EQUAL FOURTEEN TIMES THEIR SIDE LENGTHS, POSITIONED IN A WAY THAT ONLY ONE OF THEM APPEARS ON EACH HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL LINE, JOINED TOGETHER BY LAYERING, FORMING A NEW LARGER SQUARE - Ulrich Ruckriem