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Showing posts from August, 2009

If Not This

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Ben Gwilliam, Helmut Lemke, Lee Patterson, Matt Wand Curated by Tony Trehy Friday 4 September 19.00-22.00 FREE Refreshments As part of the Exhibition Not At This Address (1 August – 7 November), Bury Art Gallery presents an evening of new performances from four of Manchester's most active Sound Artists working today. If not this is a survey of works that explores sound in performance, crossing the terrain where music and sound often meet inside and outside of Contemporary Art. Ben Gwilliam performs 'molto semplice e cantabile' a new work for ice records and turntables on the relationship between opus 111 and listening descriptions. Helmut Lemke will perform a durational piece specifically for the gallery that utilises live sound and amplification. Lee Patterson will present a new work containing pre-recorded and improvised elements, where the recordings used are sourced from wire fences in Birtle and within bodies of water in the Bury Metropolitan area. Matt Wand will proba

Back from London

A really productive time in London - met with the Live Arts Development Agency, Carol Watts and Hans Ulrich Obrist, all to discuss plans for the Language Moment. Yet more meetings on returning up north and things are taking shape. My mailbox overflows with emails from all over the world from artists and writers confirming they want to be involved. The deadline to pull all this together for the final selection panel is insanely short - hence my cursory presence here. Food and drink are always more important than art, so I am pleased to announce Sue has launched her own blog in which she gives her latest lifestyle and food tips - soon to become unmissable I predict: http://sue-trehy.blogspot.com/

Language Moment progresses

I don't really have time to blog much at the moment. The Language Moment proposal has to be presented by mid-September, which is intense - create a plan for an International Language Event in 2012 with confirmed artists and venues. Things are coming on very well with many artists and writers from many countries and many languages already signed up. Tomorrow, I go down to London for various meetings to pull more elements together.

The Big Story behind the Headlines

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It would be easy to think that the big event of last week was the day in the swanky London 2012 headquarters with its flash Tony Cragg sculpture in the entrance or later being driven round the new Olympic park (building site) or being briefed on the coming plans overlooking East London ... when actually the story I am sure people would most like to hear is Barney's first trip to London. The Barnster at Piccadilly Station Then the Train adventure! trotting through the London Underground a promenade in Canary Wharf And finally a soft bed in the Hilton...

The Moment of Text

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Sean Bonney commented during his reading at the Other Room that no-one writes manifestos these days (so one of the poems performed functioned as one); there is a sense that such change-the-world declarations are too grandiose for modern times – so of course, the first Text Festival launched with a manifesto. Modelled on John Cage’s Credo for the Future of Music , it is a complex of themes but I can pull out an overarching statement: “Conventional language is about its subject and with the ubiquity of (commercial) typography, the omnipresence of a plenary uniformist language in the public domain has enmeshed the text into the ‘efficient’ and ‘transparent’ – principles of graphic design/language unified as the visual hegemony of packaging, identity and commodity. The aural debris of furniture music burying consciousness in organised marketing noise is the shared fate for text. Restricting the definition of literacy to consensualised standard public organisation, language is co-opted to a

Artists Taking The Lead: The Langauge Moment

The London 2012 Olympic Committee and the Arts Council announce today the shortlist for Artists Taking The Lead - twelve commissions of £500,000 each for projects linked to celebration of the London Olympic Games. 2163 UK artists made proposals and 59 were shortlisted. I am one of the 59. The commissions are allocated regionally so I am down to the last five competing for the North West commission. It's been a very strange ten days or so - we were told a while back but it has all been strickly embargoed, so I have been working on it without being able to tell anyone. My 'mystery' trip down to London over the last two days (more about this later) was to receive a briefing on what happens next and tour the Olympic Park development prior to today's announcement. The website for the commission is www.artiststakingthelead.org.uk where you can read more about my proposal (below) as it develops and see the other shortlisted artists - though when I looked it had been overloade

Things to come

Things have been very hectic this week with little chance to write here. Today I am off to London pursuing some exciting developments, which I will be able to blog on Friday.

The Other Room

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Sean Bonney & Frances Kruk just before their great readings at the Other Room last night - no doubt the film of the event will be online soon.

Luigi Nono

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During the conversations in the lead up to P.Inman 's visit to Manchester, we discovered a common interest in the Italian Socialist avant-garde composer Luigi Nono http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Nono . You can hear some samples if you are not familiar with his work at http://www.musiquecontemporaine.fr/en/search?disp=all&query=Luigi+Nono&exp_aud=on&so=dd When Peter read, the resonances of Nono seemed very clear to me and got me thinking: I am wondering is there anyone else out there who draws on or is influenced by or responds to Nono. At this stage, I am not sure what this will lead to - maybe a collaboration, maybe a publication, maybe a celebration, an event or even a festival. Peter and I are developing ideas for new works, are you interested in being involved? http://www.luiginono.it/en/

vispo workshop as seen by josefin

Proud father, Karri Korro, who organised the Saari poetry workshop in Finland, sent the link to his 14 year old daughter Josefin Strandell's photo record of the event: http://www.flickr.com/photos/38224264@N05/sets/72157621922664234 /

The Other Room

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Wednesday 5th August 7.00pm SEAN BONNEY & FRANCES KRUK Old Abbey Inn, 61 Pencroft Way, on Manchester Science Park, M15 6AY, UK. Admission free.