Tag: Plymouth

Swim Litany at 37 Looe Street

Swim Litany: A score and a performance

Swim Litany is a visual text and spoken word score published as an A3 poster. One side presents a range of information sourced from diary records of my swims from mid-summer 2025 to mid-summer 2026. This data includes references to place, to bodies of water, to those I swam with. On the other side textual material is organised into three areas, each section having a different character, with the potential for performance by one, three, or more voices. 

Swimming is something that I do, it is part of my life, and I fit it around other things – weather, work, travel, health. Senses of rhythm, of repetition, of the social activity of swimming are evident in the printed poster and in performance. Interruptions to the rhythm and variations in the text record the impact of the rest of life on my swimming, while the writing acknowledges my appreciation of access to safe water and my physical ability to swim regularly.

For a live event on August 27th, a group of performers will read from the text, their voices mixing, blending, bumping against each other as they navigate the three sections. Rhythm, repetition, overlap and silence will depend on the character of the sections, and the speakers’ responses to the words and to each other. 

Performance:  1800hrs (6.00pm) on Thursday 27th August 2026 at 37 Looe Street, Plymouth, PL4 0DQ  as part of the Bathing Places exhibition. 

‘Bathing Places’ exhibition at 37 Looe Street, Plymouth

I will present ‘Swim Litany’, a new text / spoken word / poster piece, as part of Bathing Places, the summer show at 37 Looe Street in Plymouth. The exhibition, with work from 28 artists runs from June 12th to mid-September (the summer bathing season at Tinside Lido).

Swim Litany is a visual text and spoken word score. Its core material is the diary records of where I swam in the twelve months from mid-summer 2025 to mid-summer 2026. This data is layered with additional references and associations. The A3 score organised so that it offers the potential to be performed by one, two, or more voices.

There will be a live performance of the work at 37 Looe Street in late August. Date to be confirmed. More information can be found at the 37 Looe Street website.

review of Sonic Faction now online

My review of Sonic Faction: Audio Essay as Medium and Method is now live at Leonardo Reviews. The review will be included in print in Leonardo 58.2 (due for publication in February 2025).

Sonic Faction was a pair of events, one held at Iklectik in London (July 2022) and one at KARST in Plymouth (February 2023), where three works were presented for collective listening, along with a public discussion and an installation of related material. The three pieces were: Mark Fisher and Justin Barton’s On Vanishing Land (2006), Steve Goodman’s Astro-Darien (2021) and Robin Mackay’s By the North Sea (2022). This book takes on several tasks, operating as a catalogue for or record of the events, offering an expanded commentary on the works presented and giving significant detail on the conception, making and presentation of these. The book also functions as a primer or a means toward defining or describing a genre – the audio essay – situating it in historic, artistic, critical, theoretical contexts. In pursuit of this, the book brings together a selection of essays that describe or demonstrate the audio essay as a medium and as an approach to making art. Bringing together writing by artists, theorists, publishers, broadcasters the mix of perspectives and modes of involvement with the audio essay results in an array of textual riches, supplemented by a comprehensive playlist on YouTube.

‘twiceness’ at SOAK Live Art

Shelley Hodgson and I performed ‘twiceness’ as part of a very full programme for SOAK Live Art at Leadworks, Plymouth on Thursday 25th July. There was a large and enthusiastic audience, and the other performers included Sam Richards, Cristina Varga, Charlie Cornforth and others. Shelley and I will now put ‘twiceness’ to one side as we consider what we want to do next; though one plan is to make a radio version of the piece.

Thanks to Kerry Priest and Sarah Blissett for organising the event. Photos by Natalie Raven.

‘twiceness’ with Shelley Hodgson

On Wednesday 22nd May as part of the student organised Mayfest at Plymouth University, Shelley Hodgson and I will present ‘twiceness’. This is a new performance work we have been working on over the past while. It isn’t ‘finished’ at this point, but it is at a stage that we are happy to share it.

Two performers are present, in the space, as themselves, and as participants in an act of communication. Blocks of information, of narrative, of action, combining the found, the given, and the made, are built into a sequence of telling and showing. The performance questions interaction, engaging with gesture, with doubling, with repetition, with exchange. Underlying the performers’ relationship is awareness of loss and gaps, what is missed or missing, what doesn’t carry across.

The work asks questions that the performers unpick, rework, worry at. How do we tell each other things? How do we know we mean the same? How do we move between registers and codes, adapting and adjusting to fit, to ease, to stick? What happens if we try to do it again? Moving between choreographed passages and improvisation, the piece engages the audience with consideration of what it takes to get along with each other.

‘twiceness’ is a new performance by Shelley Hodgson (writer/sound artist) and Mark Leahy (performer/writer). The two have been aware of each other’s practice for some years but had not found a way to work together. This piece arises from collaborative working, the joint development of ideas, and finding a form for live presentation.

Performance details: 1930hrs on May 22nd 2024 at The House Studio, University of Plymouth. Free tickets available via Eventbrite.