Artists are playing with words again – raiding the archive, bringing the dead back to life, making the living look dead. Quicker than the ever-elusive present, they are forging a practice through words, images, books, and ephemera, that begins to anticipate the past, forecast possible histories and re-visit alternative futures.
Meeting at Conway Hall (slight return) consists of three distinct works that utilise a combination of spoken word, printed matter, slides, and music that respond to existing texts and iconography. as the slide play collides with the open lecture, it is a visual and aural account of doubt, destruction and fear. Originally staged at the Conway Hall Ethical Centre – London’s centre for Humanist free-thinking – in July 2004, the meeting has been reconfigured for IBS: Bournville.
A conjuncture of archive, spoken word, new commissions and distributive practices are realised for the fourth installment of Again, A Time Machine at Spike Island, Bristol. The Wanderer (The Storage) is a new film and installation by Laure Prouvost. Based on artist Rory Macbeth’s ‘translation’ of a Franz Kafka novella, attempted without any knowledge of the German language or a dictionary, the film depicts a stranger, caught in storage, hallucinating, with no sense of separation between time and space.
For Again, A Time Machine at The Showroom, words and archives are discharged into the present, with the start of The Artist Talks a year long project by Sarah Pierce, and a monthly series of talks and events.
Book Works Projects/Open House 1998-2001 has given curators the opportunity to work in partnership with Book Works to commission, develop and promote innovative new practices. Initiated to encourage an active dialogue between artists and curators, Open House also seeks out new audiences.
Exhibition and book launch that took place at Book Works in 1985.
A light installation by Pavel Büchler that illuminated the St. George’s flag on the spire of Manchester Cathedral with a red light shone from the Reading Room window of Chetham’s Library.
A symposium on independent publishing and publishing by artists, exploring why producers feel compelled to deliver such materials, and the economic models and audiences that ensure their cultural presence.
Contributors included: Michael Bracewell, Jeremy Deller, Matthew Higgs, Christoph Keller, Stéphanie Moisdon, Sina Najafi, Polly Staple, Lionel Bovier, Dr Cornelia Lauf and Ingrid Swenson.
Link to information on TATE’s website: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/bookworkssymposium1209.htm
Artists are playing with words again – raiding the archive, bringing the dead to life, making the living look dead. Quicker than the ever-elusive present, they are forging a practice through words, images, books, and ephemera, that begins to anticipate the past, forecast possible histories and re-visit alternative futures.
A series of six, monthly events that focus on artists’ writings, readings, discussion and debate. Themes include: artists’ publications, nomadism, cosmopolitanism, the avant-garde, transgression, power.
The events prioritise work that carves out new territories and disrupts established forms. No consensus of practice is aimed for, rather these six events present a range of singular and contesting voices, including: Eileen Daly, Dan Fox, Maria Fusco, Robert Garnett, Stewart Home, Andrew Hunt, Nina Power, Clunie Reid, Lynne Tillman, and Mark Waugh.
11 November 2008