Hi Ira, sorry for late response  -  been
trainbound yet again

>        What do poets here think of the use of
>language, the poetry, in modern art/music/dance,
>etc? A lot of recent art I've seen uses words,
>in over the top or deadpan ways, not often very
>interestingly to me - or showing any sign of
>reading anyone, MacLow, Cage, anyone. Could there
>be (do people know of) "settings" by artists of
>interesting poets; *interesting* words in art
>works? Could poets here collaborate with artists,
>or do it themselves, to produce "gallery-standard"
>visual work with words (or are there phobias against
>that as against commerce, hanging over from the
>70s?)?

Firstly, i can say something about the context at the
late 1970s 'end' of the London 'scenes' post.
This is just one example mind:

at the ACME Gallery, in Covent Garden,
there were shows by artists such as the late
Steve Cripps, Ron Haseldon, Kerry
Trengove and so on. Cripps can be seen through the
excellent monograph published by the Acme in
association with the Stephen Cripps Trust. I don't know
how many here remember Steve's work. He was a
'pyrotechnic sculptor'. In many respects the Bow Gamelan
Ensemble provided an extended homage to his influence.
Paul Burwell will be a more familiar name here, worked
with Richard Wilson (of the '20 : 20' oil installation
fame  -  bought by Saatchi's and a big moment of arrival for
installation art that fed into Brit Art) and Anne Bean
as Bow Gamelan for a decade. Paul played in Abana with
Bob Cobbing  -  commissioned Bob for the 'In C and Air'
shows that BGE gave at the ICA, has even cajolled me into
performing 'Howl' with himself and Anne (they both love
Ginsberg) and worked closely with Carlyle Reedy. So
right there is curious assemblage of connections. Cripps'
pieces were sort of Heath Robinson punctuated and set into
motion by explosions of diverse textural and durational
insertion. There often a calligraphic element to the twizzle
of magnesium fuses connecting in the darkness  -  not at all the
bravado of Picasso's flare bull filmed ephemeral drawing,
but quizzical -  unsure  -  exhuberantly exploratory.

Ron Haseldon put together an ACME show during which he rewired
together a boat he'd found on the Thames reaches and broken
apart to get it to the gallery. It filled the gallery space.
One almost had to squeeze past it. It had its motor running and was
suspended above the ground, so it vibrated and every point of
re-assemblage creaked and trembled. I remember spending hours
recording it in detail, from joint to joint and being very
engaged by the particularities and tendernesses of its physical
presence. At that time it chimed strongly with Deleuze and
Guattari's circulating writings on 'desiring-machines' in
Semiotexte.

Kerry Trengove, in another well-documented piece of that period,
'Passage' (1977), dug his way out of the gallery under the road
outside into a building site nearby. He took 8 days to do this,
was regularly interviewed for both radio and tv during the doing,
which was curtailed by hitting a mains gas pipe.

Anyway the point of all the above is that the ACME also hosted
regular cross-artform events. Sometimes a cabaret-style event,
sometimes sveral one-off nights in a row. I'm conflating here,
but a fairly typical line-up might include Sally Potter playing
a cello and  singing the kind of songs that appear on Lindsay
Cooper's 'Song of the Shirt', a monologue by Rose English, Rosemary
Butcher with Miranda Tufnell and Sue MacLennan and Dennis Greenwood
working on an exploration of site through choreography, Guy
Sherwin projecting films onto his body, Carlyle Reedy bringing
poetry and image into intricate proximity through performance.
Annabel Nicolson telling stories by the light of imported fireflies.

Bang Crash Whallop (cris cheek, ee vonna-michel and Lawrence
Upton) exhibited in that context.

It might be possible to sample much the same fare
at a London Musician's Collective festival in the Railway
building along Gloucester Avenue or next door at the London
Film-makers Coop or from studio to studio at Butlers Wharf
where X6 among others was housed. There was this brief 'moment'
of blur.

However, writing was not highly present. Certainly poets were
there  -  sometimes showing work, although not often their
poetry.

love and love
cris








%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%