writer – artist – teacher
I will present ‘revised dictionary supplement: a performance’ in Studio B, AMATA on the Penryn campus, Falmouth University on Thursday 16th June. The performance is being hosted as part of this year’s Postgraduate Summer Symposium. Further details to come!
On Tuesday 15th February, at The House, University of Plymouth, I will present a performance that responds to the text of ‘revised dictionary supplement’, the second of the projects published in At Sounds Like: 3 Projects. Using dance, improvised actions, and gestures I will treat the textual material as a score for movement, as a ground for further inscription, and as an occasion of variant reading. The live event will draw attention to the materiality of language, to writing as going on, to (im)possibilities of (mis)communication.
revised dictionary supplement: a lecture performance. The House, University of Plymouth; 1930hrs, Tuesday 15th February 2022
More information and FREE booking via: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/whats-on/spring-2022-revised-dictionary-supplement-a-lecture-performance
On November 29th I was a guest presenter on Marcy Saude’s Wax Paper Hours radio show on Soundart Radio. http://soundartradio.org.uk/. Each episode of Marcy’s show has a different theme, A Grand Gesture mixed music (vinyl and digital) and readings that engage with gesture across cultures, media and genres. The show has been uploaded to MixCloud here: https://www.mixcloud.com/marcy-saude/late-november-2019-gesture-with-mark-leahy/
list of readings for Wax Paper Hour – Gestures
1. Sabel Gavaldón and Manuel Segade, from exhibition guide to Elements of Vogue: A Case Study in Radical Performance (2018)
2. Mark Leahy, from ‘What did he do with his hat?’ in The Graveside Orations of Carl Einstein (2019)
3. Hayley Newman, ‘Frottage in the City’ from Common (2013)
4. Anne Boyer, from ‘No’ in A Handbook of Disappointed Fate (2018)
5. Essex Hemphill, from ‘To Be Real’ in Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry (1992)
6. Trajal Harrell, from an interview in Hoochie Koochie (2017)
7. wittyy name, from The Marks We Make, a Voltron Legacy Defender fanfic on Archive of Our Own (2016)
8. Renee Gladman, two sections from Calamities (2016)
9. Mark Leahy, from Subject to Gesture (2017)
10. Lisa Robertson, from ‘How to Colour’ in Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (2003)
11. Tina Darragh, from ‘Adv. Fans – The 1968 Series’ (1993)
12. Tom Jenks, from ‘strikes’ in A Long Hard Night Troubled by Visions (2018)
On November 29th I will be a guest presenter on Marcy Saude’s Wax Paper Hours radio show on Soundart Radio. Running from 5 to 7pm (1700 to 1900hrs) the programme can be listened to on 102.5 FM in the Totnes area of South Devon. If you are further afield, then you can listen live online at http://soundartradio.org.uk/.
Each episode of Marcy’s show has a different theme, or is organised around a different idea. For November we are working with gestures, perhaps counterintuitive for radio, but we’ll see what happens. A Grand Gesture will mix music (vinyl and digital) and readings that engage with gesture across cultures, media and genres.
My contribution ‘What did he do with his pipe?’ is included in The Graveside Orations of Karl Einstein, a new publication from Ma Bibliotheque, edited by Dale Holmes and Sharon Kivland.
At the memorial for Rosa Luxemburg on 13 June 1919, the political radical, art historian, critic, and writer Carl Einstein gave an oration. There is no record of what Einstein said, how he said it, or what it addressed. This collection assembles a broad range of texts from artists, film-makers, writers, poets, critics, philosophers, and art historians. Each contribution is a speculation on what Einstein might have delivered, each as likely and as unlikely to be Einstein’s as any other.
In my piece I present a fictional or imagined synthesis of accounts made by government or right wing spies who attempt, but fail, to record Einstein’s speech. Their observations and annotations generate a faulty record of the gestures of the speaker.
The publication is available from the Ma Bibliotheque website.