Ghost Cargo - text art in the skies over Leeds for Refugee Week 2011

Writing Encounters is proud to announce a collaboration with internationally renowned artist, Caroline Bergvall:

At midday on the 2011 summer solstice, Tuesday, 21 June 2011, the skies above and around Leeds city centre will play host to a unique sky banner project conceived by artist and writer, Caroline Bergvall, and delivered in partnership with Writing Encounters and Leeds Art Gallery, as a part of the 20th annual Refugee Week celebrations.

As part of the project, the artist is inviting people across Leeds to pick up their phones and video cameras, and help to gather film footage that will be edited together and screened at Leeds Art Gallery later this year.

Click here to find out how you can get involved or if you are a Facebook user go straight to the Event page. You can also get involved in the conversation on Twitter using the #ghostcargo tag.

Bergvall is based in London and of French-Norwegian heritage, and this perspective - crossing borders with language - is at the heart of her work.

This new piece, entitled Ghost Cargo, is inspired by a small-scale model for a large sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, created as her contribution to the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner, an international art competition and exhibition held in 1953 at Tate Britain. Hepworth’s submission did not win the prize and the work has remained unrealised. Yorkshire born Hepworth, a key figure in the development of modern sculpture, was an active and outspoken defender of individual freedom, and this has played a large part in motivating Bergvall to rediscover this moving and highly politicised piece.   

“As Refugee Week starts on the solstice this year it is a good time to remind ourselves that the sun also creates many shadows, some longer than others", says Bergvall. "Ghost Cargo is an invitation to look up and reflect, and to celebrate the importance of every person’s right to move and settle freely. The text created for this work resembles that of the hangman game, piecing together a few missing letters to make a full phrase. It is often by piecing things together that we become more aware”.

Refugee Week is a UK-wide programme of arts, cultural and educational events that celebrate the contribution of refugees to the UK, and encourages a better understanding between communities. Refugee Week 2011 takes place from 20 – 26 June 2011.

Legendary sound-poet returns to Yorkshire to perform, for one night only

The following press release was issued today:

Next month, on 07 June 2011, Leeds Art Gallery will host a very special performance by Yorkshire-born Steve McCaffery, an acclaimed poet and writer in his own right, and a founding member of the legendary sound-poetry group The Four Horsemen. This will be the first time that McCaffery, who is now based in New York, has performed to a Yorkshire audience, despite the fact he grew up in Barnsley and lived in the region until he moved to Toronto, Canada in 1968. This is a unique opportunity to see an artist whose work and critical writing continues to inform artistic practice of all kinds.

McCaffery's performance is part of an evening of readings by other remarkable writers, organised by The Other Room and Information as Material. The programme includes performances by Zambian born Karen Mac Cormack, a New York based poet who, like McCaffery, emerged as a key figure in Canadian poetry and is often associated with the Language Poets; and the Sheffield-based poets Alan Halsey and Geraldine Monk, both widely respected for their ongoing contribution to writing and publishing. All four performers are connected to one another by publishing collaborations that extend across the Atlantic, and demonstrate the international context in which writers across the North of England are working today.

The event will include the UK premiere of McCaffery’s Sound-text environment Carnival Panel III.

This free event will take place at 6pm on 07 June 2011, in the Tiled Hall at Leeds Art Gallery. Booking for the event is advised. For more information about the event, and to book your place, please click here...

The Other Room is a programme of events organised by James Davies, Tom Jenks and Scott Thurston at The Old Abbey Inn in Manchester. The Other Room presents work by 'experimental' writers from all over the world. McCaffery and Mac Cormack will both perform at The Old Abbey Inn on 08 June 2011. 

Information as Material is a York-based independent publishing imprint and was established by artist Simon Morris in 2002. It continues to publish and exhibit work by artists and writers who, as their website explains: “reuse existing material - selecting it and re-framing it to generate new meanings - and who, in doing so, disrupt the order of things.” Information as Material is currently undertaking a year-long residency at one of London's leading visual arts galleries, The Whitechapel.

Steve McCaffery – holder of the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters at the State University of New York at Buffalo was born in Sheffield in 1947 and grew up in Barnsley before moving to Toronto in 1968, where he became a member of the legendary sound-poetry group The Four Horsemen.

Karen Mac Cormack was born in Zambia and holds dual Canadian and British citizenship. A key figure in Canadian poetry and a peer of the Language Poets, Mac Cormack’s ‘polybiography’ Implexures traces aspects of her English ancestry whilst opening up to the worlds of history and science.

Alan Halsey ran The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye from 1979 to 1997. He continues to work as a specialist bookseller in Sheffield and co-edits West House Books with Geraldine Monk. Halsey produces text-graphics as well as poetry and has published collaborative works with both Mac Cormack and McCaffery.

Geraldine Monk was born in Blackburn and has lived in Sheffield since 1984. During the seventies she lived in Leeds where she came into contact with the poet and painter Jeff Nuttall who admired and encouraged her work. The Salt Companion to Geraldine Monk, edited by Scott Thurston and with a foreword by Nuttall was published in 2007.

The event is supported by Leeds Art Gallery and funded by Art Council England, as part of 'In a word...', a regional programme that aims to stimulate support for people who approach writing in new and interesting ways that both respond to and challenge convention.

In a word... next programme of free event is announced

Image: Nightwood 2005. Crime novels, oil paint and reading lamps © Emma Bolland.We are very happy to announce the final installment of the In a word... programme, which includes dinners hosted by East Street Arts and Rachel Lois Clapham with Wild Pansy Press; an evening of reading performances by extraordinary writers from either side of the Atlantic; and a collaborative skywriting project with French-Norwegian artist, Caroline Bergvall.

This email, sent out in the last few hours, contains all the details: http://eepurl.com/dHA3c

The first event will take place this coming Thursday. It is the, rescheduled, second dinner in the How is art writing? series, hosted by East Street Arts as part of '...and from west behold! A pale horse...'. The event will include readings by crime writer David Peace and a conversation between artists, writers and the wider audience, turning on themes of murder, modern myths and fairy tales, discussion will focus on crime as contemporary narrative.

We hope you can take part, and we look forward to reconnecting soon.

information as material launch a year long residency at the Whitechapel Gallery

They've been called inspired lunatics and literary perverts and now York-based independent publishing imprint information as material can add Writer In Residence to its list of aliases as it begins a year long residency at one of London's leading galleries, The Whitechapel.

The residency leads on from iam's successful The Perverse Library exhibition at Shandy Hall, Coxwold during September and October of last year, supported by In a word... 

The following is lifted from the Whitechapel's latest bulletin: 

Screening/discussion/launch: information as material

Thursday 28 April, 7pm 

£6/£4 conc. includes free drink and poster edition  

Launching their residency at Whitechapel Gallery, information as material (Craig Dworkin, Christine Morris, Simon Morris, Nick Thurston and Simon Zimmerman) screen Simon Morris’ film making nothing happen, presenting the work of widely acclaimed expatriate Czech artist Pavel Büchler. Followed by conversation with Morris and Büchler and drinks in Gallery 3.

Also distributed on the night: Instruction Manual, 2009, by Lucia della Paolera. 

Brooklyn-based writer Lucia della Paolera constructed the poem Instruction Manual in 2009. It has been editioned as an A1 lithographic print by information as material to inaugurate a series of four poster poems that will be presented in conjunction with their residency at Whitechapel Gallery. Read more here. 

Writer collective information as material have been called literary perverts, philosophically irresponsible and inspired lunatics. They have also taught, published, produced, curated, exhibited and performed internationally. For their Whitechapel Gallery residency, Craig Dworkin, Christine Morris, Simon Morris, Nick Thurston and Simon Zimmerman programme events that explore the possibilities opened up by conceptualist approaches to writing and performative approaches to reading. Through editions, conferences, schools, workshops, discussions, screenings and collaborations, the York-based independent publishing imprint create a space for a poetic and critical engagement with issues such as ‘undesigning’, antiexpressionism and cultural piracy.

whitechapelgallery.org/education/writer-in-residence/information-as-material

informationasmaterial.com

To book: 
www.whitechapelgallery.org

020 7522 7888

tickets@whitechapelgallery.org

If you are in London, and not too busy making wedding preparations (!?) please join the iam team for a drink and help them celebrate the launch.

How is Art Writing? A document from dinner one, edited by Rachel Lois Clapham

Sohail Khan takes guests on a walk through the back-streets of Huddersfield as part of 'Zone Conversations' 2010 © Simon ZimmermanBack in September 2010 Sohail Khan hosted a dinner at his home in Huddersfield. This was the first in what will eventually become a series of artist-hosted dinners curated by Rachel Lois Clapham under the title How is Art Writing?

Documentation from this first event, edited by Rachel Lois, is now available to download.

Sadly, owing to the horrors of the December snow storm, the second dinner at East Street Arts was cancelled. This event has been rescheduled for 13 May 2011, with further events to be announced in the very near future.

As a series, How is Art Writing? aims to profile as well as stimulate support for an ecology of interdisciplinary writing practices, as part of the In a word... programme.