Past Event
Curators and researchers Karen Di Franco and Irene Revell present a programme of readings, audio and moving image works that capture the grammar of community. Taking the publication Womens Work (1975-8), an anthology of textual performance scores, re-issued earlier this Summer by Primary Information, as its starting point, this event considers a common language produced through contact, as echoes of previous voices and diffracted portraits; conversing with partial materials that document encounters, such as microfilm, bone and newsprint.
The title of the event is taken from an unpublished text by Kathy Acker sent to Pauline Oliveros where the former describes her attendance in September 1972 at the latter’s Women’s Ensemble, the group meetings structured around Oliveros’ textual works, the Sonic Mediations. This text will be read by writer Jennifer Hodgson, as well as extracts from Hodgson’s own writing. Martha Edelheit’s Hats, Bottles and Bones: A Portrait of Sari Dienes (1977) and Coleen Fitzgibbon’sTrip to Carolee (1974) explore fragmentary audio visual portraiture, of Sari Dienes and Carolee Schneemann respectively; alongside Fitzgibbon’s microfiche film Dictionary (1975) and Mary Lucier’s Two Screen Matrix: Air Writing (1974)/Fire Writing (1975), a layered performance video where Lucier “writes” with her camera and then with lasers to create calligraphic text. Beth Anderson’s composition She Wrote (1974), for two violins, mezzo with multiphonics and tape, combines texts by Acker and Gertrude Stein, in an archival recording from a live broadcast by Charles Amirkhanian; while Takako Saito’s sound piece Toro während des Naturreiskochens (Toro while cooking brown rice) constitutes a recorded vocal performance by the artist in collaboration with the titular cooking brown rice.
This event also coincides with Sense Sound/Sound Sense: Fluxus Music, Scores & Records in the Luigi Bonotto Collection on display at the Whitechapel Gallery.
This event is part of the London Art Book Fair, for more information and to see rest of the events click here.
Karen Di Franco is a curator and doctoral researcher with Tate Britain and Reading University researching embodied iteration in artists’ publishing. Recent projects include the group show, ORGASMIC STREAMING ORGANIC GARDENING ELECTROCULTURE (co-curated with Irene Revell), at Chelsea Space, London (2018). She has produced digital translations of the archives of institutions and individuals including Book Works, Spike Island and Eddie Chambers, and writes and presents regularly on subjects such as feminist art practices, archives and artists’ publishing.
Irene Revell is a curator who works closely, often in ongoing ways, with artists who work across sound, text, performance, and moving image. Much of her work since 2004 has been with the London-based organization Electra, as Co-Director. She is also a member of the artist-led collective that oversees the Cinenova feminist film collection. She is ‘Visiting Curator’ on the MA Sound Arts at London College of Communication where she is pursuing doctoral research on the ‘feminist performance score’ at CRiSAP.
