rosa menkman @ gammm

 

 

 

 

 

collapse of PAL / rosa menkman. 2011

Ten Readers, a theatrical poem installation piece

I just uploaded the score and necessary files for a composition called Ten Readers. This is a piece that for me is as much a musical composition as it is a theatrical installation and a live-generated poem. In it, ten people sit in a circle with books which they're reading to themselves, and on cue they read single words from the books they are reading out loud.

The composition was done in Rotterdam last year at Words Live, an arts event celebrating the use of spoken language in a wide variety of arts disciplines, and it will be done next on september 16 by KlangForum Heidelberg.

poésie / nuit, 4-15 mars, Lyon

la poésie/nuit, une manifestation consacrée à la poésie, à l’écrit et à la performance contemporaine, à Lyon, France, présentée dans le cadre de la manifestation « le Printemps des Poètes ».

L’édition 2008 se tiendra du 4 au 15 mars 2008.

Vous trouverez sur ce site le programme des différents événements, et bientôt les biographies des poètes invités ainsi que toutes les infos pratiques de cette prochaine édition.

Vous pouvez également télécharger la plaquette de présentation de la manifestation ici (pdf, 2.5 Mb).

The Art of Misnarration

Neo-benshi is the art of (mis)narrating a film. I encountered it for the first time in January of 2007, when I saw David Larsen's "Paris of Troy," a verbal deformation of the 2004 Brad Pitt vehicle. Larsen then steered me towards Walter K. Lew, who has been performing neo-benshi pieces since the 1980s. He also introduced the method to his students at Mills College in Oakland. Although Lew's excited by the increasing popularity of this technique, and applauds many of the performances, he's uncomfortable with the term "neo-benshi," since it exoticizes and orientalizes, he feels, a method that had to be widespread during the silent film era. Lew explains:

A fascinating, oft-neglected fact of world film history is that nearly everywhere movies have been regularly shown there was an era in which they were screened with live speech by orators or voice actors. The katsuben of Japan and pyônsa of Korea were the most celebrated forms of this once-global practice. Sometimes praised during their heyday as “poets of the dark,” in Korea the most iconoclastic “movietellers” risked imprisonment or worse to share their interpretations of films with local communities.

Perhaps they would have approved of the wit and freedom with which [contemporary] poets have chosen to recast the 20th century’s most powerful and oppressive artistic form.

More recent antecedents to neo-benshi include Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily? and Beavis and Butthead. As a relatively new and evolving genre, neo-benshi is in its exploratory (and perhaps most exciting) stage, with almost no critical attention as yet. To paraphrase Kent Johnson, its aesthetics haven't caught up with the practices.

After watching performances in NYC this weekend, I'd say that a neo-benshi artist's two main tasks are, in order of importance, A) Compose a narration B) Perform this narration in public. He or she also has the option of recutting the film and/or inserting new footage and/or soundtrack, which requires a third set of skills, that of the filmmaker's. Pivoted on a film, a successful neo-benshi narration surprises and enlightens viewers with a series of verbal tangents that riff on, play with, subvert the shown images. A weak narration insults us with obvious observations. Literalness annoys. The thrill is in the divergence.

[...]

Two CinePerformance Extravaganzas by Poets in NYC

shadoWord Productions presents
Poets of the Unreeled: CinePoetry & Performance Extravaganza
Multimedia poets and artists Linh Dinh, Wang Ping, Paolo Javier (with Ernest Concepcion & Vinay Chowdhry), Jeremy James Thompson, Kate Ann Heidelbach, dennis M. somera, Mike Estabrook, and Dillon Westbrook give live reinterpretations of classic films, screen their new videos, pay musical homage to great jazz drummers, and redraw on-stage some present scenes. Curated by Walter K. Lew.

Friday, February 1st, 7pm
galapagos art space
70 North 6th Street
between Kent and Wythe
Williamsburg, Brooklyn (718 782-5188)
L train to Bedford Ave. (1st stop in Brooklyn)
$6

Saturday, February 2nd, midnight
The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery @ Bleecker, right across from CBGB's
Lower East Side of Manhattan (212 614-0505)
F train to Second Ave, 6 train to Bleecker
$8

Cadáver Exquisito -Performance

CADAVER EXQUISITO

performance

Roberto Echavarren

Romina Freschi

Adriana Kogan

Jazmín Llovet

Mariano Massone

with poems by Néstor Perlongher

Directed by Romina Freschi

For the release of Plebella #11, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Barraca Vorticista

October 10th

Also

Reading by Gabriel Reches

Videos by Eduardo Zabala

Exhibition of Postcards by Gabriela Messuti, Emiliano Bustos y Walter Álvarez

8th Exhibition of Visual Poetry

more pictures

even more

and more

Plebella, poetry review of Argentina

Argentina Poetry Review Plebella #11

This issue contains:

The Difficult Poem, by Charles Bernstein, translated to spanish

Articles by Roberto Echavarren (Uruguay), Anahí Mallol, Romina Freschi, Emiliano Bustos and Adriana Kogan about argentine poet Néstor Perlongher, his work and his myth, regarding the recent edition of a volume of letters by Néstor Perlongher, Un barroco de trinchera (Bs.As. Mansalva, 2006)

Chronicle about I Encuentro de Poetas Mujeres del Cono Sur (First Reunion of Women Poets of the South), Coquimbo, Chile October 2006.

Poems of the future new book by Gabriel Reches with an introduction by Damián Tabarovsky.

As usual, reviews and consulting sections.

Plebella
Subscriptions

Plebella celebrated its first three years with a visual exhibition in the National Library of Argentina in months june and july this year. Extracts of the review´s articles and illustrations were shown in a very original way. A small Visual Arts show and readings by Plebella´s contributors also were part of the exhibition. You can see a small part here.

Contact: Romina Freschi
rfreschi@plebella.com.ar

Amsterdam, Friday April 13 - 20:30



LECTURES ON

Musical lectures by John Cage and Tom Johnson



with:

Tom Johnson * Joep Dorren




Stichting Perdu
kloveniersburgwal 86, Amsterdam
(020) 422 0542 * EUR 6 / EUR 5


In 1949 John Cage wrote his Lecture on Nothing. In this lecture, Cage introduced his rhythmical techniques. But he doesn't do so by explaining them, but by composing them - only, using words as his material instead of notes.

This was the first work of a new type, the composed lecture: a spoken text that has the properties of a musical composition. A special and perfect fusion of form and content. Some decades after, the minimalist composer Tom Johnson wrote pieces in which text, music and didacticism form a complete unity, among which the Lecture With Repetition (1975) - a lecture on and with repetition, in which the audience is invited to participate.

Tonight, Tom Johnson will present his own work and the actor and musician Joep Dorren will read Cage.

THE SILENCE OF MALACHI RITSCHER by Kevin Kilroy

from Wikepedia: [Malachi] Ritscher came into the national spotlight after commiting self-immolation on the side of the Kennedy Expressway near downtown Chicago during the morning rush hour of Friday November 3, 2006, as a protest against the Iraq war and more generally against "the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country." Ritscher's suicide is one of only nine reported incidents of self-immolation performed as an act of protest in American history.

“The Silence of Malachi Ritscher,” by Kevin Kilroy—

There’s nothing like a shower to cool you down. Cool fool, nothing. When I watch my mind, it doesn’t move. Joe’s a fucking idiot. I go to work, on-time, I do my shit. Who does he think he is? Why do I care, really, though? My heart isn’t in it. I don’t have passion for that job. [pause]

Before Malachi self-immolated, writes Kilroy in a recent email conversation about his stage drama, I was working on a political play—something that had a purpose beyond attention to mind, imagination, and intelligent expression, which I felt I was spending too much time on. Utopic but with less outrage, more human emotion, trying to accept today's a-political climate and be in it without desiring a vision of how it should be.

All other discussion about Malachi were very surface level—basically: sane? or insane?—and I understand why that was the case as self-immolation is a very difficult action to contemplate. But I felt somebody needed to spend more time doing just that, contemplating this action, and so I did.

What is my point? My argument? What do I desire? Taxes- they connect me, everybody, to the blood we shed. More, go deeper. The two-party system will never work. Alright, yea – but these arguments have no effect. Everybody says them. What can I say that will touch people more than words? What can I do that’s deeper – people need to feel political. They need to get off their asses. Yelling at them, that’s not going to work – I need to show them… [long/snappy pause realizing he could self-immolate—that scary thought has returned to his head.] Those fuckers at my work, they think I’m a joke. Tonight, I’d work on the website more. Public Parking Party dot Org – people will get into it. I’ll get hits. [sighs again] [singing] “They say I’m crazy. OH, Oh-ohOH! But I don’t believe I can be that strong.”

Malachi self-immolated and thereby became a microcosm of fears and questions and nightmares and love and living. Is this an act of anti-patriotism? Yes and no. No, in that it is not anti-anything. But yes, because it contradicts the motions and ideologies of a patriotic gesture. This play is human, it's about relationships, it’s about fears and questions and nightmares and love and living in the world that is present and taking the time out of lives to connect with each other and discuss what is happening.

Also, politics—living politically on a daily basis, working towards a political consciousness— Malachi's reasoning for doing this: there are so few who could possibly feel any empathy for his situation, his internal crisis, and for the decision he made. We, as a society, are so far away from what his action represents, so I wrote a play that creates more possibilities for more people to gain sympathy for his crisis and, if nothing more, I am walking away from this play wiser about to what degree politics should be played out upon my body and the bodies of those I love. And, I hope, with a greater capacity for empathy.

What I am most proud of, and at the same time doubtful of, is the fact that this play does not say anything. I think it shows a good deal of the conflicts and issues and errors in living, but in the end there is no message which I have judged to be more worthy than any other possible message. However, staying connected to people, to loved ones, seems key to this world created in the play. Another message—avoid utopic actions. Another message—politics touches even the most intimate and private and special areas/moments of our lives.

The Silence of Malachi Ritscher
Opens at Theatre Building Chicago
Mar. 23 - Apr. 21*

*After the final performance the script will be burned

images from David Larsen's neo-benshi performance

[thanks to poet hassen for these photos]

David Larsen and Neo-Benshi

Three blocks from Independence Hall in Philadelphia is the Powel House, named after the city’s first mayor, Samuel Powel, who bought it in 1769, four years after it was built. George and Martha Washington dined there. So did John Adams. On the evening of January 26th, 2007, San Francisco poet David Larsen took over, owned the Powel House with his amazing reading, capped off with a neo-benshi finale. It’s a mystery why David Larsen doesn’t have a larger following. K. Silem Mohammad wrote me in an email, “LRSN embodies just about everything I value in contemporary poetry: raw wit, savage intimacy, urgent strangeness. His frequent use of handwritten text is one material index of these qualities, and his near-monologic immediacy of address is another. It's impossible to feel unscathed by his work, to remain aloof from its confrontational embrace. In addition to his incomparable book The Thorn (Faux Press, 2005), he has published dozens of striking handmade chapbooks that showcase both his graphic and verbal artistry (which are often inseparable one from the other). Much of this creative work reveals the influence of his groundbreaking doctoral studies in pre-Islamic Arabic literature and culture at UC Berkeley. He is a tireless supporter of his poetic community: he was the editor for several years of The San Jose Manual of Style, possibly my favorite poetry journal ever, and he currently curates the New Yipes Reading Series in Oakland, CA. If LRSN did not exist, it would be necessary to cut off our own heads with wickedly curved scimitars and dump them in a river.” Projecting 11 minutes of the film Troy (2004) onto a dining room wall, including its windows and yellow velvet curtains, David Larsen narrated this Hollywood version of the Iliad, book 3:

It is the clitoral tip of Asia.
You don’t believe me?
that’s a Hittite word, Assuwa
for the windy NW corner of Anatolia
where stood gleaming Tarawissa
the Hittite word for Troy

[…]

She stands there for 60 seconds exactly
which you would know if you were
sitting there with me
watching and re-watching this scene from Troy
wearing out the remote control

That’s Paris on the right, the
dreamy abductor
his brother’s trying to tell him something
Yeah whatever

[…]

oh wow
what a bad scene
I just realized I’m going to die learning
about myself in the hardest way
this is no pony party
actually it kind of is, is
what makes it all so horribly real
as if the sound were cutting back in

how much more time is this
going to take
my heart is in my ears
its every report a separate agony
the fight is in my heart
my heart is upside-down

[…]

I am entering my most suggestible period
just now so check it out

the sound has gone out
the arrow shot heavenward has shivered
into a quarter of a million
Fuck Face Advances
boasting of his scratch upon my thigh
but I am ready for the cut from
both our bodies
the raised welts in anger
the severing blow

Not even the leopard’s fury is such
nor the lion’s
nor the ravening boar’s
as the peacock’s at his mirror
with his feathers all pulled away
so pick your battles, grandpa
I don’t think you’re ready for this

[…]

I’m sick of it
and the tap-tap tapping of the
spear-points all around
what the hell for
why should I care what this stupid
armored turtle thinks
I’m like the grinning crescent on the
flying flag flying over these ruins
face down in front of my community
the hero done with acting like
a can of cat food was a kill

Some say it is the violent
death of an opponent
others the soothing touch of ointment
to a fissure in the skin
while others name the first cigarette
at the end of a long illness
of all things out on the black earth
the most beautiful
but I say
I say
I

I emailed Larsen to ask him about neo-benshi. He explained:

The art form’s acknowledged starting point is in Korea and Japan of the silent film era. Benshi is a Japanese word referring to the oral "interpreter" who performed a live narrative accompaniment to silent movies, in lieu of showing intertitles with dialogue, etc. In Korean the practice is known as pyônsa. "Neo-benshi" is the name that's been popularized by Konrad Steiner and others for the current practice/genre/game of producing alternate voice-overs for "talkies."

Linh Dinh: How long have you been doing it? Where did you get this idea?

David Larsen: I was approached by Konrad Steiner through Roxi Hamilton back in 2005. At first I said no because it sounded like so much work (and sure enough it took 3 days solid to write that 11-minute piece you saw). Without their urging it never would have occurred to me to do it.

LD: How many people are employing this method? Can we call it a trend? A fad?

DL: The same night I performed it in Philly, there were eight people in San Francisco doing exactly the same thing. Among experimental poets in the Bay Area it's definitely a fad, and they're doing it in Los Angeles too. I performed it the next night at Betalevel in LA's Chinatown, where they do a series called “Da Benshi Code.” New problems with sound & projection come up every time it’s performed, but that just adds to the “live” effect. The only thing I’ll never try again is a throat mike. I'd rather perform with no amplification.

LD: Who are the better practitioners of this?

DL: Hard to say as I haven't seen more than one performance by a single performer. (Hopefully someone will write a notice about the January 26th performances in San Francisco.) The best neo-benshi performance I’ve seen was Mac McGinness' reading of a script by Norma Cole along with a segment of the film JUDEX (1963) by Georges Franju.

LD: Has this phenomenon been critically appraised?

DL: I think Walter Lew has written something about it.

I phoned Walter Lew and was told that he's been performing neo-benshi pieces since the 1980s. He has also introduced the method to his students at Mills College in Oakland. Although he's excited by the increasing popularity of this technique, and applauds many of the performances, Walter's uncomfortable with the term "neo-benshi," since it exoticizes and orientalizes, he feels, a method that had to be widespread during the silent film era. There are certainly antecedents closer to home, such as Walter K. Lew himself, Beavis and Butthead, and What's Up, Tiger Lily? It's clear that neo-benshi needs to be examined more critically since, to paraphrase Kent Johnson, its aesthetics haven't caught up with the practices.

Bon Voy age Emmett!

after emmett

a dispersion of ninetiles

Dickinson / Beuger in Amsterdam

Should you just happen to be in Amsterdam coming Friday, you might want to visit a very special performance at Perdu, where an extraordinary reading of Emily Dickinson will take place.

Dutch-born German Composer Antoine Beuger is the editor of Edition Wandelweiser, a music publisher-cum-international experimental composers network. The music of the Wandelweiser group has been among the most radical of experimental music over the last decade or so, often featuring very long pieces with very few elements, long notes, long silences.

In Amsterdam, together with Sylvia Alexandra Schimag, Beuger will present one of the pieces in his 20-part Emily Dickinson cycle, "Landscapes of Abscence". Each of these works consists of a reading of one of Dicksinson's poems, syllable by syllable, over the course of 100 minutes, with extremely sparse instrumental accompaniment. Reading is done at what might be the speed of writing, or even slower, to stage the work of Dickinson, not as a form of public speaking, but primarily as a private working enterprise, the concentrated writing of messages to absent partners - and the extreme time-frame puts performer, text and listener on the edge of disappearing themselves into time and poetic work as such. The Amsterdam performance will be of Landscapes of Absence 2 for voice and flute, a setting of Four Trees - upon a solitary Acre -

Text-pieces are among the the important concerns for quite a few composers affiliated with Wandelweiser. Also on the Wandelweiser site, check out some of the experimental writings and text performance scores of Gottfried Wanner (1944-2006)

Perdu: Kloveniersburgwal 86, Amsterdam. Friday, December 22, at 20:30 (doors open at 20:00). Entry 6 euro.