Olchar's Fiddlesticks 3 Report finally!

Sorry about the sporadic blog updates, if anyone's trying to read them, but we're busy as motherfuckers out here trying to keep Fiddlesticks going and attempting to get everything ready for June (especially since so few people are communicating via the blog, which of course results in more work for us). But better late than never, so here's my (admittedly basic) report on the events for Fiddlesticks #3; we'll get reports and documentation up for the next two asap, along with other goodies.

Video documentation of all of this is a bit further down the blog.

Of course, by the time this thing went down, UPS still hadn't delivered Angee's contribution, though I'd had several arguments with them concerning it over the phone. So in the meantime, we tried to give her a presence by producing a puppet play based on an episode from her comic book Mossdale Estate. Initially this seemed like an unlikely decision, and it was certainly quite different from the prototypical Post-Neo puppet play, with its cartoon voices, screaming, shouting of nonsense, vomiting, pounding mayhem; like the comic book it was (relatively, at least) understated and sober. But both in the production of the play itself and in the story that Angee sent us to (anti-)dramatize, it showed how Post-Neo can and has existed in a very wide variety of modes that despite being very different on many levels, nonetheless inform and enrich and even directly develop each other. On the one hand, Mossdale Estate and Angee's work in general is aesthetically and even conceptually very different from the most noisy and assertive tendencies in Post-Neo. It is accessible and down-to-earth; in fact it is generally not even 'absurd' at all (the same could be said of many other people who have been vital parts of the Post-Neo community--Emily Panzeri, Edward Lense, Alan Reed, Casey Bradley, Imogene Engine, and many others). On the other hand, Angee, as one of the earliest collaborators on the Mr. Squibbles films, in fact helped to pioneer the Post-Neo puppet aesthetic which was here expanded to reach back toward what her work is. So on one level this puppet play was a new direction for Anti-puppetry to exlore, while on another level it was a homecoming. And the passage that she chose for us to perform also treats this encounter of the raucous face of Post-Neo with the everyday, with 'real people': her nursing-home resident Rose has come by chance upon the album of the first Post-Neo group, Catharsism of Narcotica, and we watch her quietly come to terms with her encounter with this 'thing' that she has no way to even contextualize.

Next Warren read a poem of his own, one of my favourites from Synapse 3, and four phonetic poems by William Clippenger (no relation to Martha Clippenger as far as I know--correct me if I'm wrong; I've corresponded a bit but never met him in person). These are precisely the kinds of phonetic poems Warren excels at reading: repetitive cycles morphing slightly upon each return, plenty of open vowels that allow him to hurl his voice unrelentingly against the wall in wave upon sharp wave, with the no-nonsense attack of an a-verbal battering-ram, atavistic and throaty. I've actually not seen Warren perform per se nearly as much as I'd like or expect ince I came to New Jersey, and it was refreshing.

I myself have scarcely performed at all since I came here either, and actually this was my first solo performance since I arrived! (needless to say, Brute Salon and soirees are something else, really, more like conversing.) I did my sub-phonetic poem Prayer for the Poison-Child, the first from this body of work I've performed for over a year; and I've missed it. Due to the nature of New Jersey's particular version of Post-Neo, in which group automatism is more the focus than discreet or semi-discreet poems, plays, and sketches as it was in Britain, and also due to my having nowhere to rehearse and exercise my vocal apparatus for a few hours a week as I used to, it was a bit strained, and my breathing was especially shoddy; for the most part though I settled into the poem like an old glove (which it is), and my time apart from the score may actually have helped me to find a greater range of interpretations. Hope to rehearse and do another, longer one at the festival in June.

After all the performances we all went up and hung out in Jamie Bruno's studio, which has just about become a little Fiddlesticks tradition; talked about whatever it was we talked about (hey, it's been three weeks), did some exquisite corpses and other games while Jamie drew on her wall, and finally split about 4:30 AM or some such ungodly time.

And that was that.

FIDDLESTICKS #2 VIDEO TOUR!

As promised, here's the video tour of FIDLESTICKS #3, with poem machine by Charlotte Whalen, video installation by Alan Reed (which you hear playing in this documentation), and ink washes and surgery-curation by Tsubasa Berg.

Fry Report: Feb 22nd (Fiddlesticks One)

On Feb. 22nd Brad, Olchar and I showed up to the Lost and Found Gallery for the first Fiddlesticks show after some breakfast. Jamie Bruno was just finishing up her addition to the room and Lenny Corea had added his marks (ranks upon ranks of ink-drawn, zygote like nodules) the night before. The two had opened up the ceiling to expose the organs of the building overhead, officially breaking the seal on the Post-NeoAbsurdist Perpetual Exhibition Machine. Jamie explained the lighting they'd set up while we navigated the string bound corners of the room and examined the miniature, yarn entanglements that alighted around Lenny's ink-leavings. For some hours, between running errands and spreading the word around the building I sat and talked with Tsubasa, Olchar and Brad as he painted leg-lobed vagipenises issuing from the sides of Lenny's wall drawing. It reminded me of the days when Brad used to paint in a room adjoining our living room at our place in Columbus Ohio. Talking with Brad in this social nerve center of the household as he worked was a daily activity.

At 8:00pm after some of the first visitors arrived Brad laid into a reading of Chants de Maldoror and explained the passage's significance in terms of how Lautréamont addresses the hermaphrodite and his interest in its existence as an undecidable subject. The hermaphrodite is beaten and prayed for. More people began to arrive. Brad read two new poems from a book he made (hint hint) for the exhibition entitled hermaphrodite. The poems seemed to detail the extra-romantic encounters of some as yet unborn Post-Neo sexual (thank you Evan Damrow). By the end of his second poem the relatively structured language broke down into herky-jerky spasms of garble-words reminiscent of his Split Tongue.

With anti-gears well lubed we commenced with the John M. Bennett reading. Olchar struck first, dexterously lip-locking the words with the aplomb of an ardent Bennettere. I planted myself and let one rip. Brad fiendishly chawed another with his tell-tale jabber-shouts. We handed the poems around to the gathered visitors giving everyone a chance to put down their noisemaker and operate one of John's phonetic jungle gyms. Tomislav V. Butkovic interpreted a poem using a slide-whistle. Olchar read a poem torn in half. Brad and I read a poem backwards. Jamie, who couldn't be there that night, read poems over the speaker on a cellphone generously loaned to us by Kate Illes. Lenny Corea, Megan Blafas, Steve Dolnack, and Andy Wolf also contributed their own distinct interpretations. As the tempo grew John's poems began intermixing with randomly derived performo-vocal exchanges between veterans of brute salon and PNA-New Jersey soirées. This resulted in noisemaker sculpture, free-style conversations in Bennett inspired tongues, and the random interspersing of 'vim's, 'barr's, 'blit's, 'the shirt's, 'vom's, 'blat's, 'the sheet's, and 'anti's within and around the poems.

Stay tuned for more images and video detailing Fiddlesticks: A Post-Neoabsurdist Perpetual Exhibition Machine's second escapade which includes work by Alan Reed, Charlotte Whalen, Angie Lennard, and Tsubasa Berg. We're planning a 'Familiar Hospital' event to coincide with the opening; Hector Clam is in critical condition after injuries sustained at last night's Bosche on Ice (more on this later) and most of you've heard of Professor Aristotle's continuing struggle with neck-leprosy. The evening will be capped off off with a Silent Soirée at our apartment leading into Olchar's reading of poems by Imogene Engine.

Video from the FIDDLESTICKS #1 Reading

Here are some highlights from the readings of Brad Chriss's and John M. Bennett's work at the kick-off for the first installment of the FIDDLESTICKS gallery:

Chriss introduces his set with commentary and a chapter from the Comte de Lautréamont's 'Chants de Maldoror' of 1869.

Introductory commentary and Chriss reads his poem 'A Divine Crackle'





Chriss reads his poem 'hermaphrodite.'





W. Fry reads Bennett's 'Jleeber'; O. Lindsann & B. Chriss rip J.M. Bennett; Fry & Chriss rorrim Bennett.





Lindsann and Fry tag-team Bennett





B. Chriss chortles JMB





The whole crowd gives Bennett a go in turns, culminating in T. Butković translating him into horn.





W. Fry stirs up Bennett's 'La M al'





Lindsann and a guest split duties on a Be Blank Consort piece.





W. Fry & T. Butković turn Bennett upside down and inside out





A little Noisemaker-tower of babel is constructed to Bennett as babbled by Fry and Lenny Corea (responsible for the wall drawing facing the door of the gallery).





Chriss and Butković shred Bennett with their lungs.





Lindsann throttles Cantar del Huff in the midst of inexcusable craziness that is ENTIRELY John Bennett's fault, we assure you.





Jamie Bruno (responsible for the forest strings amidst which this all takes place) phones Bennett in from a lavatory someplace, to the support of everyone else. Everyone else pulls their cell phones out too.





Megan Blafas and Warren Fry trap Bennett between a rock and a hard place.




We may post a few more over the next couple days, we're still going through the footage! And look out VERY soon for official information on the next FIDDLESTICKS evolution this coming Saturday as Tsubasa Berg, Charlotte Whalen, Angee Lennard, and Alan Reed move in to the L&F Gallery.

Olchar's Report on the Chriss/Bennett Reading

The FIDDLESTICKS exhibition, a three-month show at the Lost & Found Gallery leading up to the Anti-Festival in June, opened last Saturday with work by Bradley Chriss, Lenny Corea, and Jamie Bruno. Photos and a video of what they did with the space are posted below, Lenny's vaguely Cthuloid clusters of phalluses wrapping around the wall, merging into Brad's choratic and androgenous prima materia, with Jamie's string angling across the space, slicing off the corners, and wrapping itself around the appendages of Lenny's drawing.

At 8:00 the series kicked off with a reading by Chriss, followed by a reading by all of us of poems by John M. Bennett. Here's my own report of the event, hopefully other people who were there/involved will post their own too.

Brad's reading, formulated around the notion of the Hermaphrodite, moved back and forth between his thoughts on the hermaphrodite as a figure, and his poems in which he engages with it. He started out with a reading of the chapter on the hermaphrodite from Lautréamont's Chants de Maldoror (Book II, Strophe 7), which certainly made my fucking day at the very least. As the chapter progressed, his rhythms and cadences began to subtly disrupt the text, they developed their own ebb and flow that worked independently of the grammar and sense of the passage. It's the first time I've heard someone other than myself voice this seminal text, and it was nice seeing this gesture of turning back to examine this tradition that he (and we all) are continuing, so that we can all take a measure of both how an Anti-Tradition has developed and changed, and also of the continual projects and concerns that we share with our counterparts 150 years ago... Brad then read two other poems on the hermaphrodite from his book-in-progress, hermaphrodite. These poems are quite a bit more constrained and refined than his earlier stuff (formally at least; in most other ways they're still pretty, mm, balls-out shall we say?) and his reading was more restrained as well, which (as a kind of microcosm of the progress of his set as a whole) made the final, a-semic strophe of the second poem that much more effective as it broke apart into rhythmic phonetics.

Which led us right into the Bennett reading.

We began with the (by now ritual) Distribution of the Noise-Makers. Warren, Brad, Tomislav Butković, and myself planned to take turns reading at random from a stack of Bennett poems to the accompaniment of everyone else--we had La M al, Sound Dirt, Cantar del Huff, Backwords (Quite a bit of Konstelanetz got read somewhere during the evening as well, an interesting added dimension of a joint endeavour on that book's model), and a thick sheaf of printouts of recent poems, especially from John's Globbolalia series. We would offer the opportunity to any of our guests to come up and give it a go themselves. As so often happens with New Jersey Post-Neo crowds, their energy was too restless to allow anything so straightforward to proceed. After several poems, Brad sent a stack of poems around the room, forcing everybody to step into John's linguistic world at least once. As the texts began to crisscross the room, there would sometimes be a couple going at once, sometimes read intentionally as simultaneous poems and sometimes nearly oblivious to each other; an impromptu assemblage grew out of the floor, and it took on the quality of a Brute Salon (the gatherings of collective automatism that have been going on intermittently in New Brunswick for the last couple of years), though the spine of Bennett's texts being read--sometimes as the centre of activity, sometimes on the periphery--provided a textual and (a-)linguistic continuity. Not what we had expected or planned, but it is nice to be surprised by your friends sometimes. Whenever new people showed up they were commanded to perform duets with us--Lenny, Andy Wolf, Megan Blafas when she arrived from Washington at the height of the thing. Jamie was unable to attend the event in person, so she called in to a speaker phone lent to us by the audience and belted out some Bennett poems from a bathroom stall someplace for about 15 minutes. (a side-note: as it happens, the set of Bennett poems performed by David Beris Edwards and I at the Anti-Festival in England a year and a half ago also took place in the toilet.) The phone sparked off some other ideas and Steve Dolnack started playing feedback produced by playing two cell phones off each other. At this point precise memories begin to fail me, perhaps other people can fill you in, but--eventually it all ended, apparently, everyone very kindly pitched in cleaning the place up, and a group of us went out and got pizza, then back home for further refreshments.

There will be some photos and video posted as soon as possible; we've got a pretty driving schedule here but we're getting everything up as quickly as possible.

This weekend--in fact later today--is BOSCH ON ICE, organised by Tom Russotti, which we'll get reports up on as well once we can do so; and the following weekend FIDDLESTICKS will undergo its first metamorphosis as Tsubasa Berg (New Brunswick), Alan Reed (Quebec), Charlotte Whalen (New Brunswick), and Angee Lennard (Chicago) move their stuff in; celebrated by (among other things) a Silent Soiree (this idea's been in the air for a long time) and a reading by myself (Olchar) of poems by the Ohio Post-Neo, Imogene Engine.

JOHN M. BENNETT READING Photos

Here are a few photos of the John M.Bennett reading at the Lost & Found Gallery, taken by Tsubasa Berg and other people as the camera was passed around. We'll get some video up presently as well, and a flickr account with more photos.

Brad Chriss reads from Lautréamont.


Chriss reads hermaphrodite.

Warren Fry reads John M. Bennett


Brad Chriss reads Bennett


Sarah Grannet gives Bennett a go


Olchar and a guest perform a Be Blank Consort piece.


Chriss Bemused by Bennett.


...and then this happened...


Jamie Bruno belts Bennett through a mobile phone.