A_ Impossible Reader

A_ Impossible Reader is incomplete, unbound, personal and portable. It is (not) a record, (not) a document, (not) a marker of absence, (not) a work of art.

Open Dialogues will be exhibiting A_ Impossible Reader in After Live, Norwich Arts Centre.

A_ Impossible Reader is a specially designed and made series of publications containing texts from SPILL: Overspill, an Open Dialogues project exploring the event of criticism in relation to performance and the SPILL Festival 2009.

Each reader is displayed in the gallery at intervals throughout After Live and contains a randomly curated variety of texts from SPILL: Overspill. If a text exceeds one page, it remains incomplete. A_ Impossible Reader is a partial document of Overspill, or a partial document of SPILL, or a work of art in its own right.

A_Impossible Reader also comes with its own assembly instructions for the curators of the Afterlive exhibition:

To be printed and assembled inhouse by Norwich Arts Centre, print 3xA4 sheets, cut according to cutting lines, fold once parallel to the long side, slot into each other as on sample provided, cut A4 printed sheet with cover in half, wrap one cover/bellyband around folded assembled booklet aligned with the open edge of booklet, seal with sticker.

Comment from Overspill writer David Berridge ‘It’s a startling transformation of the generally straight reviews on the SPILL: OVERSPILL blog, opening them out both into a new found materiality of their textual existence, and into a new autonomy of presence separate – and/ or differently related – to the performances from which they originated. A_IMPOSSIBLE READER is also a subtle and agonistic answer to some of the complexities of the SPILL: OVERSPILL project and the problems and possibilities of writing in (contractual) proximity within a performance festival. Curiously, if A_IMPOSSIBLE READER opens into the full possibility of a writing practice in proximity to performance, it also does so through illegibility and anonymity.

A_Impossible Reader is usefully viewed alongside SPILL: ON AGENCY. Here, alongside a spread for each of the performers, there is a gathering of essays by SPILL_OVERSPILL writers. Many of these are engaged with the same questions: what is the residue of a performance (and a performance festival)?’

Credits:

SPILL: Overspill is a writing project created by Open Dialogues and produced in association with Pacitti Company and SPILL Festival 2009. See also SPILL Festival of Performance: On Agency

Overspill writers: David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Mary Kate Connolly, Alex Eisenberg, Eleanor Hadley Kershaw, Mary Paterson and Theron Schmidt. Participating SPILL artists: Rajni Shah, Grace Ellen Barkey.

A_ Impossible Reader is commissioned by Norwich Arts Centre, and designed by Marit Münzberg in association with Open Dialogues.

Open Dialogues
A UK collaboration producing writing on and as performance.

Pacitti Company
Touring award-winning, radical new performance works worldwide since 1990, Pacitti Company also produces the SPILL Festival Of Performance, the UK's premiere artist-led biennale of experimental theatre and live art.