Saturday 29 March 2014

Sat 29 March the News Agents

Here is the wonderful huzun track we played.

Really worth watching. Great musicians. Characterful video of them performing  in a home. Casual effortless enthusiastic passionate performances.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZKvVDrNjdU

Friday 28 March 2014

Sat 29 March - Bruce Hamilton's original sound art piece

Hennecker's Ditch Fantasy" is an acousmatic text-sound composition
based on a poem by Katharine Kilalea. All sounds in the piece
originate from a recording of Kilalea reading her poem "Hennecker's
Ditch" in public.

My work is not a setting of the poem, or a depiction of events and
images in the text, but is rather a psychological reaction to
Kilalea's poem and an exploration of a sound world.

Voice, a cough, and ambient noise (including recording hiss) each play
integral roles, but it's the sound gestures within the poetry that
help form recurring musical motives, albeit often highly processed.
Some of the poem's words are intelligible but they are often
rearranged and multilayered.

Kilalea speaks of writing this poem over the course of an
anxiety-ridden year, and the ways in which she attempted to convey
emotions indirectly rather than describing them. In contrast, my
"Fantasy" was produced in a three-day immersion and is my own gut
response to the poem, abstract and similarly indirect. The piece
features shifting moods and tonalities as it plays with contrasting
degrees of clarity, frequency and space.


"Hennecker's Ditch Fantasy" was written for Jude Cowan Montague's "The
News Agents" radio program on Resonance FM (London).


American musician Bruce Hamilton composes and performs music in a
variety of genres. A professor at Western Washington University,
Hamilton organizes the Bellingham Electronic Arts Festival and runs
the Spectropol netlabel. Hamilton lives in Bellingham, Washington with
composer Lesley Sommer and their son Miles.

Sunday 23 March 2014

Saturday 29th March Kate Kilalea, poet, discussing her own work and Orhan Pamuk's novels, and Robert Nickelsberg

Poet Kate Kilalea will read a selection of work and discuss themes and process and the work of prizewinning internationally renowned author Orhan Pamuk.


'Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and grew up in a large family similar to those which he describes in his novels Cevdet Bey and His Sons and The Black Book, in the wealthy westernised district of Nisantasi. As he writes in his autobiographical book Istanbul, from his childhood until the age of 22 he devoted himself largely to painting and dreamed of becoming an artist. After graduating from the secular American Robert College in Istanbul, he studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University for three years, but abandoned the course when he gave up his ambition to become an architect and artist. He went on to graduate in journalism from Istanbul University, but never worked as a journalist. At the age of 23 Pamuk decided to become a novelist, and giving up everything else retreated into his flat and began to write.'

www.orhanpamuk.net


'Originally from South Africa, Katharine Kilalea moved to London in 2005 to study for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Her first book, One Eye’d Leigh was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize for writers under 30. She has received an Arts Council Award for poetry and her poems have appeared in publications including the 2010 Forward Prize Anthology, PN Review and Magma and performed on BBC Radio 3, as well as at festivals including the Wordsworth Trust Poetry Festival, Bridlington Poetry Festival and Worlds Literature Festival. A poem on chairs was commissioned for Martino Gamper's design book, 100 Chairs in 100 days and its 100 Ways. She works as a publicist for an architecture practice.' (from the Carcanet website)

Also, we will finally have Matteo Besana's interview with photojournalist Robert Nickelsberg.

'Robert Nickelsberg, a TIME magazine contract photographer for 25 years, was based in New Delhi from 1988 to 2000. During that time, he documented conflicts in Kashmir, Iraq, Sri Lanka, India and Afghanistan. He was one of the few photographers who had first hand exposure to the early days of the rise of fundamentalist groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan tribal areas and al-Qaeda, and his work provides a unique up close view of the Soviet withdrawal, the rise of the Taliban and the invasion by the U.S.
Nickelsberg moved to New York in 2000 and continues to travel overseas - reporting on the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 - and focus on chronicling the devastating psychological effects of war in Kashmir.
In 2008, he was awarded grants from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, and from the South Asia Journalists Association to document and report on post-traumatic stress disorder in Kashmir after 20 years of insurgency. Nickelsberg serves on the advisory board of the Kashmir Initiative at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University.' from Robert's website.

http://www.robertnickelsberg.com/

Saturday 22nd March - Steven Fielding on Utopia/Dystopia and Matthew Caley, poet

Professor Steven Fielding speaks about utopia and dystopia and dramatist representations in which politics is tackled through this alternative media. The show's first phoner.

Matthew Caley, poet presents poems and talks about his work-in-progress, The Rake. He reads a poem from his most recent published collection, Apparently (Bloodaxe).

Sound clips from two movies representing dystopia - The Planet of the Apes (1968) and Wall-E (2008)

Tuesday 18 March 2014

Sat 22 March - Robert Nickelsberg and Matthew Caley

Photojournalist Robert Nickelsberg speaks about his new book 'Afghanistan: A Distant War'  which gives a visual insight into the country's tumultuous modern history and discusses the challenges facing contract photographers documenting conflict.

http://www.robertnickelsberg.com/

Poet Matthew Caley discusses utopia/dystopia and gives a taster of work in development on the theme of 'the Rake'.

Saturday 15 March 2014

Sat 15 March - Jenny Lewis and Adnan Sayegh - upcoming workshop

Jenny Lewis and Adnan al Sayegh at the British Museum

 Writing Mesopotamia: performance


Sunday 27 April,
14.00–16.00
Stevenson Lecture Theatre
Free, booking essential
 


Come to the British Museum for a unique public performance of works inspired by the history and culture of Mesopotamia and Iraq.
This includes readings from participants in the 'Writing Mesopotamia' series of creative writing workshops at the Museum, followed by a performance in English and Arabic by Iraqi poet Adnan al Sayegh and British poet Jenny Lewis, and a performance by renowned oud player Ehsan Emam.

Saturday 8 March 2014

Sat 15 March - Talking Mesopotamia with poets Jenny Lewis and Adnan al-Sayegh

The poet Jenny Lewis presents her forthcoming collection Talking Mesopotamia (Oxford Poets / Carcanet) with poet Adnan al-Sayegh.

Adnan al-Sayegh was born in al-Kufa, Iraq on the banks of the Euphrates River. One of the most original voices of the generation of Iraqi poets that came to maturity in the 1980s, his poetry denounces the devastation of wars and the horrors of dictatorship. Adnan has published ten collections of poetry, including the book-length Uruk’s Anthem (Beirut 1996) and won several international awards. Since 2004 he has been living in exile in London.

Adnan

Jenny Lewis’ published works include When I Became an Amazon (Iron Press, 1996/ Bilingua, Russia 2002), Fathom (Oxford Poets/ Carcanet 2007) and After Gilgamesh (Mulfran Press, 2011) a verse drama for Pegasus Theatre, Oxford. Her forthcoming collection Taking Mesopotamia (Oxford Poets/ Carcanet) expresses the revulsion and despair that ordinary people, especially women, feel towards war. She teaches poetry at Oxford University.

Jenny Lewis

Jenny Lewis is a poet, playwright, children’s author and songwriter who specializes in cross disciplinary work combining poetry with other art forms.
She first trained as a painter at the Ruskin School of Art before reading English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. She has published two books of poetry (When I Became an Amazon, Iron Press 1996 and Fathom, Oxford Poets/ Carcanet 2007) and has had several plays and poetry cycles performed at theatres across the UK including her verse drama, After Gilgamesh (for Pegasus Theatre, Oxford) published by Mulfran Press, 2011.

Thursday 6 March 2014

Sat 8 March - Interim Review


Jude Cowan Montague and Rob Edwards review the shows to date and look forward to what's to come. With original new art pieces, many commissioned for the show or coming out of collaborations between guests and other artists. Work from Steve Layton, Ash Cooke (aka Pulco), Hans Glib and more. Plus Jude reads her new ballad written in response to Rob's journalistic work on North Korea, based on the book recommended to her by journalist Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy.

Saturday 1 March 2014

Sat 1 March - John McKiernan and Platform 7, Professor Loretta Lees and Professor Andy Pratt

John McKiernan, founder of Platform-7 Events will be discussing public art interventions and contested space with Professor Andy Pratt (City) and Professor Loretta Lees (Leicester). The focus will be Platform-7’s art performa...nce interventions in Margate during 2011 mirroring the opening of the Turner Contemporary, an intervention about the politics of the videocassette in a disused Blockbuster Video store, closed following looting during 2011 riots in Catford, and an annual event that explores how people reach their opinion on conflict and war, which has taken place every Remembrance Week since 2009.

With sound art inserts from Nathan Harmer's Ext-1 (Blockbuster 2012 intervention), a section of Claire Ryohko Kohda Hazelton & Dean Wood's Claire & Dean play Tony & Dominic track (Margate 2011 intervention), Julian Jacobson's Prelude (no man's land 2012) and conclude with excerpts from GYBE 2012 album Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! on owning sonic space, directly inspired by the Montreal demonstrations in 2012.

www.platform-7.com

The essay, Art-led regeneration in Margate: learning from Moonbow Jakes Café and Lido Nightclub intervention by Professor Loretta Lees and John Mckiernan will be published in Art and the Public Sphere: Public Art and Accountability, March 2014





Platform-7
www.platform-7.com