ICA - LIVE WEEKEND 1

ICA - LIVE WEEKEND 1
PRODUCED BY DAVID GRYN
6 - 9 MAY 2010

Each day will feature artist projects throughout the day and evening:

DAVID BLANDY - Thurs 6 May

TAI SHANI - Fri 7 May

boyleANDshaw -Sat 8 May

BRIAN CATLING, AURA SATZ & TERRY SMITH - Sun 9 May

ICA London - 6-9 May 2010. For the first in a series of three Live
Weekend programmes - David Gryn, director of Artprojx is producing several artist days of live art/expanded theatre/performance related artist's events, screenings and music.

Artprojx will also present films and videos by various artist on the 6 and 9 May in the ICA Theatre:

Ashish Avikunthak – Kalighat Fetish
Shoja Azari – Windows
David Blandy - My Philosophy
Brian Catling & Tony Grisoni – Vanished – A Video Séance & The Cutting
Mark Leckey – Cinema-in-the-Round & Shades of Destructors
Lynne Marsh - Plänterwald,
Jo Mitchell – Concerto for Voice & Machinery II
Damon Packard - The Untitled Star Wars Mocumentary
Francesco Stocchi & Nadine Dogliani - The only good system is a sound system
Matt Stokes – Long After Tonight

http://davidgryn.wordpress.com

This is an opportunity for artist experimentation, taking risk and trying out the unexpected. Join us.

FREE ENTRY TO ALL EVENTS AND SCREENINGS

http://www.ica.org.uk/
Box office 020 7930 3647

DAVID GRYN
ARTPROJX
events@artprojx.com
http://www.artprojx.com
http://www.twitter.com/artprojx
David Gryn and Artprojx Gryn on Facebook

ARTIST PROJECT DETAILS

DAVID BLANDY - 6 May
Choose your Character
As part of David Gryn's LIve Weekend at the ICA, David Blandy's day, "Choose Your Character" on Thurs 6th May, will celebrate a variety of different fan-behaviours and sub-cultural obsessions that reflect the artist's own passions. Including rooms featuring a Street Fighter IV tournament and Turntablist DJing, alongside a record market and Cosplayers.

Features live music from Infinite Livez, King Cannibal, turntablists DJ Phaze, DJ Shorty, DJ CutWild, g-man and Priority Deluxe, music stalls from Ninja Tunes, Rough Trade, Soul & Dance Exchange and Flashback, hardcore fighting game tournament organisers Neo Empire and cosplayers the Rebel Legion and Heroes Alliance UK.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=111522198884501&ref=ts

TAI SHANI - 7 May
'Screentest: R-R-Rhine Peacetime 82'
Performance: 7:30pm & 9:15pm Main Gallery (30mins)
On a sound stage, an actress is being filmed auditioning for a role in a fictitious film based on a strange, actual sequence of events that took place in West Germany in the hot summer of 1982. Over the course of 25 days in three unrelated, tragic incidents members of the US and UK peacetime army stole tanks and rampaged through various German towns and countryside leaving behind a trail of destruction, ultimately driving themselves over bridges and into trains to their deaths. The actress Maya Lubinsky is auditioning for the role of Katja Riemann, a young woman who gets run over by a tank driven by Private Charles S. Keefer, her boyfriend.

In this expanding screentest which occurs on a fractured timeline, the lives and fictions of Katja Riemann, Maya Lubinsky and Maya’s body double overflow and hemorrhage into each other creating a spiraling narrative told through film, heroines, anti-heroines, animated props, an overbearing narrator and a Neanderthal from a parallel universe. The performance is accompanied by a live score by David J. Smith (Guapo, Stargazers Assistant and Amal Gamal Ensemble)

ICA Theatre Film and Video Screenings selected by Tai Shani
4.30pm: Cartune Xprez
6pm: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm by William Greaves,1968, 75 mins
8pm: Jen Wu – Half Light, 5mins 2009 & Damon Packard – Spacedisco One, 2007, 58min
10pm: Jim Hollands – Here, 2007, 70min (3D glasses will be supplied).
Music: DJ set in Bar from 7pm. Owen Hills (of Wooden Spoon and Dollboy). Kraut and cosmic musics.

boyleANDshaw - 8 May
THE SCUTTLER
boyleANDshaw with David Gothard present The Scuttler in collaboration with Sam Belinfante, Patrick Coyle, Adam James, JocJonJosch, Plastique Fantastique, Harold Offeh, Malin Ståhl, Malachy Orozco, Keeley Forsyth and Max Reinhardt

For the ICA they will be presenting and developing a new durational performance-based work called The Scuttler, collaborating with an array of artists, actors and musicians in an improvised and experimental way to bring to this new work to life throughout the various spaces of the gallery.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=113592848671854&ref=ts

TERRY SMITH - 9 May
The Foundling: DRUNK AND DISORDERLY
The final part in a quartet of performances. The last chapter of the Foundling project Drunk and Disorderly will be workshopped as part of an open rehearsal and performed at the ICA. This forms the last of four distinct parts, which includes Lost and Found (performed at the Tete a Tete Opera festival in London 2008), Hide and Seek, (performed at the The Foundling Museum 2009) and Sticks and Stones (performed at St George’s Church in Venice 2009). The video works include texts by the writer Mel Gooding spoken by the actor Julian Bird. This performance includes Linda Hirst, Miguel Tantos, Oliver Coates and Danny Standing.

AURA SATZ - 9 May
TURNTABLE TABLEAU, a film performance.
Aura Satz performs a talking book ventriloquist act, followed by a live soundtrack to her film on gramophone grooves. The hypnotic footage of spinning sound patterns is accompanied by a spiralling multivocal counterpart, a cornocupia of voices recounting a tale of mourning and technology, a forensic love-story of sorts in which the voices overlap, echo and pre-empt each other. The cinematic stage is animated by a voice-over carousel, a spinning tableau vivant, a canon of voices amplified by horns set on a rotating stage.

BRIAN CATLING - 9 May
Mr Rapehead- a new live performance
Mr Rapehead is new 30 minute work made for the ICA extends his obsessive manipulation of the mysterious and enigmatic atmospheres by interrogating them with threats of violence and humour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq8VlTi4nuc

http://davidgryn.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/live-at-the-ica-sunday-9-may-brian-catling-aura-satz-terry-smith-performances/

Thurs 6 May
Midday – 11pm Lower Gallery - David Blandy
7pm – 11pm Theatre & Bar – Artprojx Screenings, David Blandy and Ninja Tune DJ's

Fri 7 May
7.30pm and 9.15pm Lower Gallery – Tai Shani performances x 2
(Get In for performances from midday – 6pm - public access)
Midday – 11pm – Theatre - Tai Shani selected & Artprojx screenings
FREE ENTRY (advance booking required – limited capacity – 150 each performance)

Sat 8 May
Midday – 11pm Lower Gallery – boyleANDshaw
7pm – 11pm – Theatre & Bar – boyleANDshaw selected & Artprojx screenings

Sun 9 May
Midday – 9pm Lower Gallery – Terry Smith performance and rehearsals
4pm – 8pm Theatre – Brian Catling, Aura Satz performances and Artprojx Screenings

PW10 Performance Writing 2010

Image C Aaron Williamson

Sat 8 May 11.00am - 9.00pm & Sun 9 May 11.00am - 6pm.
Day Pass £8.00/£7.00 Concs Weekend Pass £15.00/£12.00 Concs (Students£10.00). For booking tickets please contact Arnolfini Box Office or go to the Arnolfini website

Lingua Franca
During 2010, Arnolfini presents a series of exhibitions and events related to the idea of Lingua Franca: looking at intermediary language, linguistic translation and the subjectivity of language.

As part of the Lingua Franca season Arnolfini has collaborated with University College Falmouth to create PW10: a weekend of performances, talks, readings, digital and audio / visual work exploring interdisciplinary approaches to language, textuality and environments for writing. Artists and writers include Ric Allsopp, Emma Bennett, JR Carpenter, Nisha Duggal, Drew Milne, David Prior, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Tony Lopez, Marianne Morris, Nancy Reilly-McVittie, Redell Olsen and Aaron Williamson.
PW10 Workshop: Writing and Water

A two-day workshop exploring the theme of writing and water, accompanying the PW10 Performance Writing weekend. Led by University College Falmouth lecturers Jerome Fletcher and Simon Persighetti, this practical writing project will use the floating harbour adjacent to Arnolfini as a site to explore the relationship between writing and water. This workshop is open to everybody, whether you are an experienced writer or just starting out. Participants will also see key performances and talks across the weekend.

Launch of In Time, and thoughts on the definitions of art

written by Mary Paterson

The London launch of In Time (a series of commissioned essays on live art and it’s effects, published by Live Art UK) was held last Tuesday, 13th April. The book is an advocacy tool and study resource for funders, programmers and artists within and without the sector. As such, it’s faced with the problematic task of actually describing that thing we are all engaged with – what is it? This stuff we keep doing, which seems so popular, so urgent, and yet so fragile?

I’ve always thought of art as a type of politics. My current working definition of art is a cultural space that stands beside utility. Sometimes I think of the space of art as a series of alcoves along a corridor. It is not the journey from A to B, nor a birds-eye view, but it is a position. Meanwhile, the definition of live art that I have been carrying round for some time is that live art is strategically interdisciplinary. (This definition is lifted, and quite possibly twisted, from a sentence that has since been replaced on the ‘What is Live Art’ page of the Live Art Development Agency’s website.)

It’s easy to see that live art is a politics, because it’s not tied to any form. Like painting, for example, but without the baggage. That’s not the same as saying that live art is always my politics, although I’d certainly like to identify with the culture of generosity that Sonya Dyer, speaking on Tuesday night, said pervades the sector as a whole.

And while politics may be expressed through an open relation with form, the equation does not work in the opposite direction. Formlessness might be a tool, but it can never be the material manifestation of a political stance. Think of Richard Wright's work which won the Turner Prize last year. Temporal, temporary and responsive to its environment, Wright’s mural for the exhibition was tinged by its context in a way that was little acknowledged at the time. I lost count of the number of people who asked me if I had seen the Turner Prize work, ‘which is going to disappear.’ The hype did not focus on the time of the mural, but on the fact that the time for viewing it was nearly up. In the context of this prestigious prize, it seems, witnessing a temporary act can slide dangerously close to receiving an exclusive privilege.

Despite its slipperiness, I have recently heard a few definitions of art, and particularly live art, that are appealing. At the In Time launch Andy Field from Forest Fringe said that live art is defined, ‘not by what it is, but by what it could be.’ And at the lecture he gave to mark the launch of his book, ‘The Many Headed Monster’ last week, Joshua Sofaer suggested that a determining principle of art, as opposed to craft, could be that its effects are not only felt at the time; they also grown on reflection. I like both of these definitions, and I am going to use them to build one of my own:

(live) art is an attitude, and it grows

The artist Rajni Shah put it even better when she compared live art to a vehicle (which she proposed as one, partial, metaphor). ‘It keeps moving.’ She said, ‘And it can change direction.’

Seeing as we’re on a theme of formlessness, I would also like to suggest another (partial, certainly temporal and quite possibly temporary) word to describe art. The word is ‘yet.’ Yet, is it art? Is it art, yet? Yet is a word that anticipates the future and builds on the past. (I explored this theme for my piece for the Oxhouse Alphabet). Is it a coincidence that one of the synonyms my computer finds for ‘yet’ is ‘in time’?

In Time features essays on Infrastructure, Public Engagement, and Legacies, commissioned by members of Live Art UK. (My essay on critical writing was commissioned by the Live Art Development Agency.) It is available to buy here, or to download as a pdf for free here. For more information on In Time, go here.

AWAY DAY- CALL OUT

The familiar takes a day off for Away Day.

New site-responsive art and performance to refresh south London parks

Rachel Lois: Both Mary and I have been invited by AWAY DAY guest curator David Berridge to take part in Writers House, a live writing residency in Wandle Park, Colliers Wood.

My live writing performance is called READERS WANTED and I am looking for someone to work with me on it for one day. Details below. Please do pass this call out on to anyone you think suitable.

JOB TITLE- PERFORMANCE ASSISTANT

WANTED- Assistance with a small scale one to one performance
DATE OF WORK 31st May 12-6pm
PAID

LOCATION Wandle Park in Colliers Wood, South London.

DEADLINE- Deadline for expressions of interest is April 30^th 6pm.

TO APPLY- Please contact rachellois@opendialogues.com with a relevant CV and a short paragraph on why you want to work with me in this piece, and why you think you would be good at it.

WHAT- I am looking for someone to assist me in a small one to one performance 31st May 12-6. I need someone who can be a key part of the work, encourage people to join in and run things outside my performance space on the day.

The performance is called READERS WANTED, it calls for members of the public to visit a writer (me) in a tent and share some diagrammatic gestures. It is commissioned as part of WRITERS HOUSE live writing residency, as part of AWAY DAY. More details on the work and its context below.

You will:
Have at least one conversation with me about the work before 31 May
Be with me in the park, at the entrance to my performance space, on 31st may from 12-6
Be ready to help me out in case of an (unlikely!)tent, visitor, performance related emergency
Follow a loose instructional script for meeting and greeting visitors to the work
Regulate the flow of people in and out of the space
Be the public face of – and advocate for- the project on the day

To do this you will:
Want to collaborate with me
Be an open, friendly and responsible person
Understand visual art and/or performance
Understand the challenges and needs of a public and live art situation
Have experience in dealing with the public (preferably within a visual arts/performance scenario)
Be confident and happy talking to all different kinds of people and be able to encourage them to participate in the performance
Enjoy a certain level of persona or showmanship
Be able to think quickly and remain calm if anything does not go according to plan

In return
You will be a collaborator in the development and delivery in this unique piece of work
You will be credited in all publicity, writing and archiving
You will get cash (as a contribution towards any expenses you may incur) of 25 GBP on the day

I hope you might be interested in doing this for half a day?

RL

///////

ABOUT THE WORK

READERS WANTED by Rachel Lois Clapham
31^st May 12-6pm Colliers Wood

READERS WANTED to share an intimate (w)reading performance for two. This is a little game, a small exercise in trust and a live cursive encounter. You can decide how long it might take. Two minutes is good though. Bring a + 1 with you if you like.

Please come. I'll be waiting.

(Suitable for all ages)

READERS WANTED by Rachel Lois Clapham is part of WRITERS HOUSE; a live writing residency curated by David Berridge for AWAY DAY.

/////

ABOUT AWAY DAY

The familiar takes a day off for Away Day
New site-responsive art and performance refresh south London parks

DATES: 29-31 May bank holiday weekend

TIMES: 12 noon to 6 pm

VENUE: Wandle Park, 29-31 May - opposite Colliers Wood tube (Northern line)

Sixteen new artworks and projects will transform south London parks in May and June offering visitors an Away Day from the familiar.

What’s your idea of an Away Day? Maybe a definite excursion but not anywhere too wild or far away. It could be different enough to entertain you with its difference, but people will probably speak the same language – although maybe not. The exhibition Away Day is here to suggest that there is something much stranger that can be experienced, not too far away from our everyday routines...

The project comes from artist network POST, and is led by member Pippa Koszerek and guest curator David Berridge. Selected POST artists respond to three parks in Merton, generating new mappings, audio works, performances, art writing and other projects. Formed in 2008, POST is the new peer-led UK network for artists who respond to place.

Provisional event publicity at http://www.postartists.com/awayday.html

About Rachel Lois Clapham

Rachel Lois Clapham is a writer and Co-Director of Open Dialogues, a UK based collaboration producing critical writing on and as performance. Her current research interests are live writing, contingency and the porosity of text. Recent work includes NOTES at the Laing Gallery 2009, Writing Live with Performa Biennial 2009, Question Time at COP15 and Re- at PSL Gallery 2010. www.opendialogues.com

All material copyright the author 2010.

Audience horror stories and ‘The Many Headed Monster’ by Joshua Sofaer

written by Mary Paterson

We all have a horror story like this one. It was a Sunday night in Battersea. I was given a lollypop as I entered the room. Someone said, ‘feel free to walk around the space.’ The space was filled with raw chickens hanging from the ceiling like fat, dimply, headless men. I did not feel free to walk around, but, like the rest of the audience, clung to the walls with a growing sense of unease. Artists began to manipulate chickens enthusiastically. They tried to get the audience to ‘participate’ by flinging bits of flesh our way. I left when a piece of fowl landed in my wine.

Audiences, naturally, sit at the centre of any artwork. They’re invited to watch, asked to immerse, encouraged to join in. The relationship between artist and audience is delicate and personal, and the more unusual the artistic method (for example, the further a piece of performance gets from the proscenium arch), the more carefully the artist must consider who and how is her audience.

Joshua Sofaer’s new publication, The Many Headed Monster, published by the Live Art Development Agency, promises to be an indepth look at the relationship between artists and audiences. It is a boxed set containing a lecture, a DVD and image cards. Most importantly, it knows exactly who it’s aimed at. The Live Art Development Agency says:

‘Monster has been specifically conceived and created with higher education in mind as a tool kit that can be used as a resource to undertake personal research, or as an illustrated lecture suitable for students at all levels, or as a template for workshop and seminar programmes, or even as the foundation for an entire teaching module.’

I don’t know why it’s called The Many Headed Monster yet (I’ll be heading to the launch event on 8th April to find out), but I hope it has nothing to do with horror stories. There are two events to mark the launch – one at Tate Modern on the evening of April 8th, and one at Whitechapel Gallery on the afternoon of 7th May. For more information, including the type of audience each event is aimed towards, and how to buy the publication for a special launch price, follow this link to the Live Art Development Agency website.

Notes towards a navigation through Unbound: from U for Unbound to A for Authority.

by Mary Paterson

In 2009 I began a residency at the Live Art Development Agency.

res•i•den•cy [rez-i-duh n-see] –noun,plural-cies.

1. residence (def. 3).

2. the position or tenure of a medical resident.

3. (formerly) the official residence of a representative of the British governor general at a native Indian court.

4. (formerly) an administrative division of the Dutch East Indies.

[["residency." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 31 Mar. 2010. .]

I have been looking at Unbound, which is the Agency’s online publication and distribution arm. Unbound is an online shop for books, documentation and the paraphernalia surrounding live art. It is also a commissioning platform for new works, and as such it stocks art historical text books like (for example) Body Art by Amelia Jones, as well as limited edition, commissioned artworks made to mark the Live Art Development Agency’s 10th birthday, which are exclusive to Unbound.

res•i•den•cy ['re-z&-d&n-sE] –noun, plural -cies

1. an often official place of residence

2. the condition of being a resident of a particular place

["residency." Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 31 Mar. 2010. .]

At the Art Writing Field Station event in Leeds last week, I presented some notes towards the text I’m writing for the residency. I described Unbound as my field of study. “Imagine that we are looking.” I wrote, “Imagine that this is what we find – a series of resources labelled Unbound; a metaphorical sheaf of published and commissioned paraphernalia connected to the suggestion of live art. Imagine that this website Unbound is the field of study.”

But a field of study is normally a finite entity, and Unbound is not finite in two important ways. Firstly, it is effectual: unlike an archive, it does not simply claim to record a set of influences, but also to define those influences and shape the discipline. Secondly, it points to resources, but does not map their contents. You have to click on the elegant photographs, enter your credit card details, and wait for a parcel before you can access the knowledge described on Unbound.

res•i•den•cy [rez-əd-ən-sē] –n, pl -cies

: a period of advanced medical training and education that normally follows graduation from medical school and licensing to practice medicine and that consists of supervised practice of a specialty in a hospital and in its outpatient department and instruction from specialists on the hospital staff

["residency." Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 31 Mar. 2010. .]

But it is this oblique relationship to knowledge that interests me about Unbound.

residency: The position or term of a medical resident; The position of a musical artist who commonly performs at a particular venue; The condition of being a resident of a particular place; The home or residence of a person, especially in the colonies

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/residency accessed 31st March 2010

Unbound does not represent knowledge, but it does give information about it. And information is, of course, another kind of intellectual resource; arguably, one that is more relevant to contemporary living than the weighty facts of knowledge.

I remember sitting round the kitchen table when I was 11 or 12, helping my brother learn the capital cities of the world so that he could pass an exam. He was sliding round the kitchen in his socks and he learnt the capital cities by rote, to the rhythm of his body making laps of the table.

No-one needs this kind of knowledge anymore. It’s all available on the internet, and so accessing the internet is more important than being able to remember words or phrases. This amounts to a change in status that I think of as a change of location. The names of the capital cities of the world are no longer resident in the bodies of schoolchildren. Instead, they live in a shared, virtual system that everyone can access, but which no-one needs to possess. It is a change in status from knowledge to information.

residency: The location that a student is deemed to live for the purpose of funding.

www.learnnowbc.ca/course_finder/glossary.aspx accessed 31st March 2010

What does it mean to have access to “a shared, virtual system”? Is it the same thing as “virtual memory”? Or “cultural knowledge”? Or “common sense”?

residency: Please refer to the Residency Classification Guidelines.

www.umich.edu/~regoff/tuition/explanation.html accessed 31st March 2010

In Leeds, I asked Simon Zimmerman to read out the text I had written, which was about memory and meaning. I asked him to insert some of his memories into my text. He talked about childhood games with his sister, and about travelling on buses with his aunt. When he spoke his memories he lifted his head from the script, and the left corner of his mouth rose in a shy smile. Everyone in the room was captivated.

residency: they tax anyone who lives there, regardless of citizenship;

www.answers.com/topic/multiple-citizenship accessed 31st March 2010

It reminded me of the time when something traumatic happened to a friend of mine. The event was so traumatic, that to describe it was to hold an audience’s attention. After I had described the event to people, they would retell the story elsewhere. Soon, people who did not know my friend would tell the story of the traumatic event. Sometimes I would find myself in a crowd of people where I was known as the person who had a friend who had been affected by this traumatic event. One or two people admitted that they were jealous of me for being so close to such a shocking incident. Nevertheless, they restyled my feelings into their own language. The event had become “common knowledge”, or “cultural memory”, or perhaps “virtual sense.”

Main Entry: domicile/ Part of Speech: noun/ Definition: human habitat/ Synonyms: abode, accommodation, apartment, castle, co-op, commorancy, condo, condominium, crash pad, dump, dwelling, habitation, home, house, joint, legal residence, mansion, pad, rack, residence, residency, roof over head, roost, settlement

http://thesaurus.com/browse/residency, accessed 31st March 2010

After Simon had finished speaking at Art Writing Field Station, we had a short discussion. Emma Cocker (who made a presentation later that morning in relation to rhizomatic diagrams on graph paper that refer, obliquely, to the knowledge and information of her studio and her practice) said that she had been thinking about ‘residency.’ She said (rhetorically): ‘What does it mean to take residency inside someone else’s text?’ Simon said that he was interested in parasitic writing – writing that lives off another source.

Main Entry: dwelling/ Part of Speech: noun/ Definition: home/ Synonyms: abode, castle, commorancy, den, digs, domicile, dump, establishment, habitat, habitation, haunt, hole in the wall, house, lodging, pad, quarters, residence, residency

http://thesaurus.com/browse/residency, accessed 31st March 2010

Aren’t we all parasites? Quotations, definitions, references, libraries, archives, styles, fashions, networks, nods, winks … the building blocks of culture are other people’s ideas. Or, as it says on the gates of the British Library, ‘An original idea. That can’t be too hard. The library must be full of them’ (Stephen Fry). Or to put it another way, we’re all ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ (Isaac Newton). Or, to put it another way, the moment when you know you are an adult, when you know that you are symbolically present and able to participate in your culture, is when you realise that everyone else is making it up as well (Mary Paterson). Authority is the relative value that we ascribe to cultural artefacts, which turns them into shared experience, implicit or otherwise.

par•a•site [par-uh-sahyt]–noun

1. an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment.

2. a person who receives support, advantage, or the like, from another or others without giving any useful or proper return, as one who lives on the hospitality of others.

3. (in ancient Greece) a person who received free meals in return for amusing or impudent conversation, flattering remarks, etc.

Perhaps the difference between being a parasite and being a resident is ‘any useful or proper return.’ While a residency is defined by its location, a parasite is defined by its (lack of) production. My work in relation to Unbound is parasitical. It uses the resources to gain nutriment, without offering any of its own. But it is also about location – the location of knowledge, the location of information, and the location of meaning.

The Parasite is the name of several fictional characters that appears in Superman comic book stories published by DC Comics. ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite_(comics) accessed 31st March 2010

THE READING ROOM BERLIN

By Rachel Lois Clapham

My score for writing performance, originally devised live and in public at the Laing Gallery 2009, has been selected to be in the Reading Room Berlin as part of David Berridge's Essaying Essays: An Assembling.

For the Reading Room Berlin project I turned the original score into a physical book object of twenty (fourscore) square elements. The elements are all treated equally within the book, published in no particular order, and can be moved, shuffled or placed around the Reading Room according to the reader’s whim. The mobility of the score, and of the reader encountering it, is sympathetic to the original live performance context from which the score was written. The square format also indicates the book, and the individual elements, can be read from any direction. The binding is also moveable, consisting of two elastic bands.

Each element contains a prompt for writing performance. During printing, one or two graphics were mistakenly repeated on the reverse of certain elements. These errors are retained in the final publication, making both copies of the book unique, and indicating a potential reverse side of the score.

Publication details
Title: A Score for Writing Performance
Format: Book Antiqua on white card 21.2 mm x 21.2 mm 210 gsm

Binding: Red elastic bands
Inserted (in no particular order) : A table of elements and a title page
Number of copies: Two

Details of the original score devised live at the Laing Gallery are here.

You can see ESSAYING ESSAYS: AN ASSEMBLING in its original PDF form here.

About the READING ROOM BERLIN

The Reading Room is based on former institutional “Reading Rooms” (such as the one of the British Museum in London), and functions as such: it will be open for public viewing, with those wanting to use it being required to make an appointment and also register beforehand their particular interested in the publications or project. The Reading Room takes its initial presentation location from the idea of the “Salon”, gathering its printed matters under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host. The visitors and readers of the Reading Room will ring the bell of a private apartment, climb up the stairs to it, and then be able to sit in a study room. Refreshments will be served.

The organisers of The Reading Room will maintain a curated monthly selection of approximately 25 publications that can be seen at one time. Those will be chosen based on changing criteria, such as topics, size, colour, content, and links to each other. A monthly index will be published online. By special agreement, the remaining publications of the archive can of course be read and viewed, next to the monthly selection.

The Reading Room is a project conceived and organised by Dominique Hurth and Ciarán Walsh

All images 'A Score for Writing Performance' courtesy Rachel Lois Clapham, 2010