Tag: performance writing

hyperlocal commission

I am excited to have been selected as one of 10 artists for a hyperlocal commission from Arts and Culture Exeter; I plan to work on a set of short poems / visual texts that respond to the limitations and constraints of the current lockdown period.

Echoing the restraints we are all currently having to live by, Mark Leahy will be creating a series of short poems confined to a square format, which will be shared on his social media. The poems draw on Mark’s readings, news and other text entering his local environment over these uncertain weeks.

Influences include Louis Zukofsky’s 80 Flowers, Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, erasure poetry, Oulipo, Tina Darragh’s On the Corner to Off the Corner, and Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day.

London book launch for The Graveside Orations of Carl Einstein

On Wednesday September 11th, in the Clore Studio of South London Gallery, a number of contributors will present an evening of readings celebrating the launch of The Graveside Orations of Carl Einstein. Published by Ma Bibliothèque, the book collates contributions by artists, poets, critics, and philosophers speculating on a speech given by political radical Carl Einstein at a memorial for Rosa Luxemburg in 1919. Readers on the evening will include: Pil Galia Kollectiv, Rebekah Georgiou-Tolley, Dale Holmes, Sarah Wood, Alison J.Carr, Sharon Kivland, Mark Leahy and others. Places can be reserved via this LINK.


review of new book on Dick Higgins

I have written a review of a new publication of collected writings by Dick Higgins which is now online at theInternational Times. Intermedia, Fluxus and the Something Else Press, edited by Stephen Clay and Ken Friedman, collects a number of essays, manifestos, catalogue texts, and other critical writings by Higgins in one well-designed and produced volume. Higgins’ writing were important to me when I began learning about hybrid and performative modes of poetry, so it was exciting to receive a volume that brought these diverse texts together.

Emergency Index vol. 7

Volume 7, the latest volume of Emergency Index, “an annual document of performance practice”, has recently been published. Covering 260 works made across 51 countries through 2017, the book gives an overview of activity in live and performance art. My projects, Subject to Gesture, with Benjamin D. Duvall in Liverpool; and Tears in Rain, which was part of Plymouth Art Weekender 2017, are both documented in this publication.

The Ugly Duckling Presse website includes further information on this volume. HERE

Sound in Artists Films made in the South West

My short film work, ‘flat-head self-tapping’ (2015) made with sound artist Neil Rose will be screened as part of this event in The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art on November 7th 2018.

‘flat-head self-tapping’ engages with questions of speaking in public, of being on show, of being heard, and displaying coded behaviour. Deriving elements from Bell’s Standard Elocutionist and online dictionaries, the performance text stitches fragments, word lists, letters, and gestures into a display of awkward flapping interrupted by gnomic expulsions.

Originally presented as a live performance at Arnolfini, Bristol, this version for screen was developed with sound, video and editing by Neil Rose; the trailer is available at Vimeo here.

The screening is on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/events/496149960903200/