A Meat Performance by France's Julian Blaine

http://documentsdartistes.org/artistes/blaine/media/poemorte.html

UBU Enchained, ACT III

Ubu Enchained
Act III


Participating in this event were members of the New Jersey and Washington D.C. Post-NeoAbsurdist Contingents and members the Water Heater audience.


Ubu Enchained, Act III from PNA-Video on Vimeo.


Performed on 2/21/09 at the Water Heater, Roanoke VA

Act III was conceived as a live, participatory foley event. It appeared after act IV (coming soon) which was performed earlier that day. The dialogue was prerecorded and played over loud-speaker while event participants used objects like shoes, chains, and watermelons to produce live foley sounds. We ran out of tape before the act ended so the last two minutes are lost to memory, unfortunately.

A few words from Amy Oliver

Documentation of Act II of Ubu Enchained is posted below. Here are some words from the play's translator, Amy Oliver, which I asked for as a shoddy stand-in for her actual presence at the goings-on (stuck as she was over in the U of K):


Dear friends, enemies and innocent bystanders,

In the interests of brevity, I will be brev. Suffice it to say that if the experience of translating this play has taught me anything, it is that the act of translation involves not merely substituting one word for another, that is to say not at all. It involves rewriting the whole thing, not merely for speakers of English, but for speakers of the 21st Century, of America and England, of digital watches and fat-free yoghurt and 24-hour supermarket shopping. That is not to say that the text has been brought up to date in any way- indeed, I hope it maintains that unnatural combination of eerie timelessness and off-putting anachronism with which, in part, Alfred Jarry won our love in the first place.

My other great realisation was that, contrary to my previous beliefs, I could not actually speak French at all. This was, as you can imagine, something of an impediment to the completion of this project. Nevertheless, I discovered that by staring intensely at the book for a protracted period of time, I was able to extract some meaning from the senseless gobbledegook on the page. It is that meaning, painstakingly squeezed, that we present to you
today.

My thanks go out, of course, to the New Jersey Post-Neo contingent, firstly for doing me the honour of choosing to perform my translation of Ubu Enchainé, and secondly for edifying it with what I anticipate to be a truly shit-hot performance. I hope you may come to appreciate the horrors which I have wrought upon this poor, defenceless piece of theatre. I am clutched by horrifying pangs of grief when I think that I cannot be with you today in order to suffer the deluge of rotten fruit, eggs, other groceries and perhaps even physical beatings that I might otherwise have found myself suffocating beneath in the event of your displeasure.

Thank you.

Amy Oliver, Feb 2009

UBU ENCHAINED, ACT II

Slowly but surely! Here is Act II of Ubu Roi from the Marginal Arts Festival, in the form of a shadow-play. Act II was actually the fourth to be performed, on Sunday shortly before Act V.

Evan made the puppets, performing them are him, Megan Blafas, Warren Fry, and me (Olchar), with Tomislav on sound.

More documentation up soon!

Hello Roanoke, Hello Deleuze, Hello Economy

Here's a video detailing Psychogeographic activities in Roanoke, VA from our friend Matt Ames:

T.J Anderson Reads Bob Kaufman

Proff. T. J. Anderson is an associate professor of English at Hollins University. He is the author of Last Round Up and Notes to Make the Sound Come Right: Four Inovators of Jazz Poetry and has written extensively on jazz poetry and African American literature.

Bob Kaufman (1925-1986) was a surrealist/beat poet most known for his activity in the late 1950's and early 1960's in the San Fransisco Bay area. Known in France as the American Rimbaud, he co-founded Beatitude Magazine and is considered by many to be the quintessential jazz poet of his generation. His spoken word poetry comes to us largely because of the work of his wife Eileen Singe who transcribed his readings.

Anderson is seen her at the Water Heater in conjunction with the Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival. He is accompanied by Matt Ames on guitar. Later, Post-NeoAbsurdists Brad Chriss and Olchar Lindsann join him for a simultaneous scat poem. Anderson caps off the reading with two of his own poems.


T.J. Anderson reads Bob Kaufman at the Water Heater, Roanoke VA, 2/21/09 from PNA-Video on Vimeo.



On

On yardbird corners of embryonic hopes, drowned in a heroin tear.
On yardbird corners of parkerflights to sound filled pockets in space.
On neuro-corners of striped brains & desperate electro-surgeons.
On alcohol corners of pointless discussion & historical hangovers.
On television corners of cornflakes & rockwells impotent America.
On university corners of tailored intellect & greek letter openers.
On military corners of megathon deaths & universal anesthesia.
On religious corners of theological limericks and
On radio corners of century-long records & static events.
On advertising corners of filter-tipped ice-cream & instant instants
On teen-age corners of comic book seduction and corrupted guitars,
On political corners of wamted candidates & ritual lies.
On motion picture corners of lassie & other symbols.
On intellectual corners of conversational therapy & analyzed fear.
On newspaper corners of sexy headlines & scholarly comics.
On love divided corners of die now pay later mortuaries.
On philosophical corners of semantic desperadoes & idea-mongers.
On middle class corners of private school puberty & anatomical revolts
On ultra-real corners of love on abandoned roller-coasters
On lonely poet corners of low lying leaves & moist prophet eyes.

by Bob Kaufman

UBU Enchained ACT I

VIM VOM VIM to All!

We're back...FINALLY!

Just last week Olchar Lindsann, Evan Damerow, Tom Butkovic, Julian Mathews, Brad Chriss, Megan Blafas and I got back from Roanoke VA after having finished our production of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Enchained, translated from the French by British Post-Neo Amy Oliver. We were invited by Jim Leftwich, Brian Counihan and Ralph Eaton to perform the play in conjunction with the Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival. It was decided early on to take a different approach with each act (pantomime, improv, puppet play, shadow play, and radio play with live foley sound), which gave us a chance to explore different creative modes and lent itself well to the loose structure of the Festival itself.

Here is a link to Jim Leftwich's amazing Flicker post of the Marginal Arts Festival (with over athousand photos):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/textimagepoetry/sets/72157613626382481/

Here is Act I, which we decided to do as an improv of the original script. It took place on Market St. in downtown Roanoke and was strategically positioned at the mid-point of the 1st Hoo-Rah Marginal Arts Parade organized by Ralph Eaton.

Ubu Enchained
ACT I

Cast:
Pa Ubu- Brad Chriss
Ma Ubu- Megan Blafas
Pisspoor- Evan Damerow
Pisspot & Eslpeth- Julian Mathews
The Three Free Men- Tomislav Butkovic, Olchar Lindsann, Warren Fry

UbU Enchained ACT I part1 05/20/09 from PNA-Video on Vimeo.

Camerwork by Jim Leftwich (thanks Jim!)

So,

We have a host of documentation to go through and put up on the blog. This includes the Be Blank Consort, which took place in New Brunswick last November (its almost ready), the rest of last summers Anti-Festival, and Fiddlesticks events from nearly a year ago. So, our work is cut out for us. But bare with us, its coming!