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Neither was I talking about high theory, cris, what I was leg-pulling about was the language that was being used, it really did come across like the product of a middle-management seminar to me. In this latter post you are much more specific, and it's more interesting. Btw I have an electric toothbrush, nyah nyha neyah! (wink) Best Dave David Bircumshaw Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet & Painting Without Numbers http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "cris cheek" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 5:09 AM Subject: Re: Coherent traditions (was Re: Performance Poetry) Get a grip David, it's not high theory i'm talking here. I'm going to do a cut and paste job, which i don't like doing but: On Nov 30, 2004, at 10:45 PM, david.bircumshaw wrote: > > sorry, cris, but this reads to me like pure 'management-speak'. An > exploration of the book? Like opening one, do you mean? No. One example might be a project instigated by Allen Fisher called 'a painting' in which around a dozen little press publishers collaborated on over[printing. So that textual contributions could not tell in advance what might and what might not remain legible. And no not just any old experience of opening a book but thinking about say the double-page spread as an environment, yes of course you can say you always do that but do you really, as a writer consider that space as such.? Many of these writers did so and do so. That sensibility extended into the whole of a book, such as Bergvall's 'Eclat' or O'Sullivan's 'Red Shifts'. > > >> - a proclivity for interdisciplinarity of reference and influence< > > Sorry, cris, that is so fudgespeak it could have been written by a > personnel officer. Do you mean listening to music, noises on the > street, the argument upstairs, looking at pictures, the washing-up > from yesterday, the bus you just missed, and being influenced by > what you read when you were five, that argument last night, alongside > that other night the stars came out in Turkey, as things to > which one should 'proclive'? Well, don't we all do that anyhow? I mean all of those things as given in any sense of attention and awareness (for you, others will have others) but more of a tendency, even a liking for working with writing in close conversation with other art forms, letting peer artform practices influence and inform the writing in evident ways so that the writing can suggest or occasion a hybrid - between handwriting and drawing say or between poetry and song or between the experience of reading on a page and on a screen (say a poem shot as a film and projected) . . . > > Like, naturally? > > >> - a tendency towards collaborative practice< > > I like tendencies towards collaborative practices too but > unfortunately Vicky's got a headache. It is one mode of collaboration for sure, Gilbert and George, Ulay and Abramovic, the Christo Team . . . but hardly the only one;) > > >> - the uses and abuses of lo-tec in many aspects of the performances > of poetry< > > > By 'lo-tec' do you mean, erm, someone reading something? I mean using print technology to transform texts and not merely to reproduce them (duplicators, scanners [old-style] copiers, stencils, . . . interfering with the plates during the process of printing and so on and I also mean using tapes, instruments to affect the voice, voice-activated lights, dictaphones . . . as part of a reading. Generally cheaper ends of technology and don't go on about how all you can afford is an ordinary toothbrush;) I use one of those too. > > > I am ribbing you, to an extent, but if comes down to it, poetry as a > performance art is most widespread inside our heads, such > repute that poetry does have in our society mainly stems from what is > read, public recitals do not exist in the way they did in the > past, plus of course the enormous cultural fact of the Shakespeare > plays, poetry does still get into common parlance, Larkin's 'They > fuck you up, your mom and dad' has entered into common speech. It's ok > to emphasise the joys of the performance but really its that > still, small voice is what matters. I've never been to a reading of > Celan's poetry, for example, and can't imagine I'd even want to, > but I adore the poems. The act of writing, on a page even, is a performance too. That small voice in your head is a performer too. Performances of poetry both on and off the page i wrote and i meant it. Think about it. love and love cris