Today was a Beckett kind of day. We announced first details of this year’s HAPPY DAYS Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, which includes Neil Jordan’s multi-screen installation Not I with Julianne Moore, adapted from Beckett’s 1972 play featuring a mouth. Then I saw that Lisa Dwan had written in today’s Guardian about performing the gruelling piece in advance of her run at the Royal Court the week after next. I missed Dwan’s Not I at last year’s Enniskillen festival – she is supposed to hold the speed record for delivery of the piece – and am excited that I’ll get to see it this time round. Billie Whitelaw, who tutored Dwan in the role, first played Not I at the Royal Court under Beckett’s direction in 1972. Whitelaw apparently described performing Not I as being pulled through Hell backwards, and watching this film, which I came across inadvertently again this afternoon whilst reading about David Toop’s Star-Shaped Biscuit, I can believe it. Absolutely terrifying.
I’m working on SNAP, the contemporary art component of the Aldeburgh Festival. It’s a month to go and the final artist lineup and works in show have been announced. While festival founder Benjamin Britten’s ghost might have hovered in the wings of previous SNAP shows at Snape Maltings, this year it takes centre stage. For the first time SNAP artists have been asked to respond to a theme: “Inspired by Britten” is part of the year-long celebration of the composer’s centenary at Aldeburgh Music. The result is a series of works that explore, directly and more obliquely, Britten’s legacy through film, audio, installation, sculpture, painting, performance, and photography. Artists contributing new work include Glenn Brown, May Cornet, Benedict Drew, Roger Eno, Mark Fuller, Ryan Gander, Maggi Hambling, Scott King, Abigail Lane, Simon Liddiment, Sarah Lucas, Emily Richardson, Julian Simmons, Cally Spooner, Juergen Teller and Cerith Wyn Evans. Writer and critic Jonathan P Watts has written an essay to accompany the exhibition and will lead this year’s SNAP discussion on Friday 21 June at 5.30pm (advance booking necessary Box Office 01728 687110).
I’ve been working with Tamsyn Challenger to help publicise her new exhibition, “Monoculture”, the culmination of her residency at Beaconsfield in South London. There’s a great review of it on The Journal of Wild Culture – read it here.
When Challenger joined Facebook and Twitter, in order to communicate with fans from a previous project, 400 Women, she started to notice the ‘same’ self-portrait – particularly taken up by young women – proliferating across social networking technologies. The artist found these ‘selfie’ avatars disturbing for their emulation of a certain submissive ‘beauty’ and discovered that some scientific forecasting of physiognomy suggests that we are knowingly or unknowingly highly influenced by the ‘digital face’ and will even use medical intervention to attain it.
Tamsyn Challenger, Selfie Suit, 2012. Image courtesy the artist and Beaconsfield
Challenger notes mass objectification of the self and draws a parallel with the agricultural practice of cultivating a single cash crop. Oilseed Rape is farmed on a large scale due to its high yield, using the pesticide linked to the so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which can decimate sections of the eco-system. She asks her audience to join her in questioning the level of control being wielded by a supposedly ‘free’ environment like the internet.
Manystalks, Tamsyn Challenger, Monoculture 2012. Residency experiment 2 growing rape installation, detail. Image courtesy the artist and Beaconsfield
Habitual performance, viral infiltration and feminine identity are themes informing these new interactive sculptures and a series of related events: linking earlier forms of human control by pseudo-sexual torture (predominantly exacted upon women who asserted their individuality) with cultural homogenisation on a global scale.
Tamsyn Challenger, Selfie Brank 1 (Facebook), 2013. Image courtesy the artist and Beaconsfield
Monoculture expands beyond the galleries and works on the public in a truly viral way through online interaction and time-based events off-site.
Years ago I was watching a film about the early Nicaraguan revolutionary Sandino in a delapidated old cinema in Guatemala City. In one scene, a village was razed to the ground. In the midst of the flames a tiny hole appeared in the screen and began to burn. At first it was hard to distinguish from the action on screen, but it soon became apparent that the film itself had caught fire, everything shut down and the lights went up. I thought about this while watching Bill Morrison’s Decasia at the Queen Elizabeth Hall the other night, as ancient footage of a whirling dervish gave way to the dancing spots and rain splodges of decaying nitrate film, both eaten away and newly part of the drama. The hypnotic flickering film shows us fugitive moments and is itself fugitive, recaptured from its slow nitrate rot in the archives. Morrison’s film was made in response to Michael Gordon’s minimalist score, played live that night by the Aurora Orchestra. Off-kilter shrieks and rhythms beat the onward march of history beyond the flickering shadows, and wailing melodies build into eardrum-piercing screech. As feedback screamed inside my ears I noticed one of the trumpet players was blocking his. But pain was fleeting: both film and score were extraordinary, dreamlike, and wonderful.
If you’re in Glasgow next Thursday or any time until 18 November, try walking past the Scottish Music Centre. You’ll see the window appear to be filled with dozens of small birds that flutter and settle on the strings of an old upright piano. As they land they trigger a series of vibrations across the strings, playing a delicate and ever-changing musical score.
Kathy Hinde’s enchanting sound sculpture, Piano Migrations was inspired by the way that birds landing and perching on telegraph wires resemble musical notes on a stave. The piano becomes an instrument that plays images.
The installation is more than a nod to John Cage, and flags up Sonica 2012, a season of events which has as its heart a 10-day programme of performances and installations at major venues across the city, 8-18 November. The line-up includes Juste Janulyte’s stunning living musical installation for four cellos, Sandglasses; Remember Me, Claudia Molitor’s miniature opera staged in a desk; Sven Werner’s immersive penny-farthing-powered peepshow; and the multi-media opera Bluebeard, by Netherlands-based collective 33 1/3, staged around a white cube to gripping effect. I’m lucky enough to be working on it and can’t wait.
In the meantime, I’m feasting on sonic experiences in London courtesy of Ether Festival. Julia Wolfe’s Adventures in Sound at Queen Elizabeth Hall last Wednesday was eye- as well as ear-opening – who’d have thought that 9 bagpipes played in unison could be remotely enjoyable – but it was, thanks to The Red Hot Chilli Pipers – geddit. Cruel Sister was exquisite and Colin Currie’s performance as a human drum kit astonishing. Next up is Michael Gordon and Bill Morrison’s Decasia, and then an appointment with a cat called Mia, some dancers and a piano on Tuesday.
Well, the Beckett Lunches didn’t happen in the end, but I did have a Krapp Sandwich at the Jolly Sandwich (chicken, mayo, olives, tarragon). The filling is going to become a permanent feature on the cafe’s menu. The first year of the Enniskillen International Beckett Festival created a fabulous buzz in the town. Blakes of the Hollow, the Enniskillen institution and festival club HQ for the duration, was full of festival revellers every night, as locals and visitors rubbed shoulders with the likes of theatre director Robert Wilson, artist Joseph Kosuth and actor David Soul.
Overheard in the Ladies:
Girl in tiny hotpants: “A boy just asked me if I’m here for the Beckett Festival”
Friend in tiny dress: “That’s why there’s so many old people in here tonight”
Oldies or not, check out the amazing Adrian Dunbar singing traditional Irish songs in this video of the festival launch and David Soul talking about why he flew over for the festival:
I have been thinking a lot about vegan food recently after a particularly disappointing meal at a well-known vegan restaurant in North London. Nut roast with all the trimmings – didn’t that go out with the Ark? While my dining companions lived to regret the sad parody of Sunday lunch – I chose the more promising Indian Thali. It was okay, and at least didn’t make me feel like I had to lie down for three hours afterwards, though to be honest I could have eaten better in Drummond Street at half the price.
With everything we know about modern food cookery, it made me wonder that why it wasn’t possible to serve up vegan food that makes the tastebuds dance. A plate of courgette salad at The Endurance in Soho’s Berwick Street this week did exactly that. Foodie duo Blanch & Shock have taken over the pub kitchen for a month. The lunch menu of small plates included grilled ox heart with capers, cured bream and radishes, and barbequed mackerel with buttermilk and sorrel, but the courgettes stole the day. They were served two ways, in thin rounds and as a delicate green puree, with strips of lemon zest and finely sliced fennel, finished with crunchy seeds of roasted spelt – amazing.
Courgettes are not on the list of ingredients available to Edinburgh chef William Gould, who is creating a Samuel Beckett inspired lunch menu to be served daily during the Happy Days Enniskillen Beckett Festival, 23-27 August. The three-course meal – Inferno (starter), Purgatorio (main), Paradiso (dessert) – promises to be a cross between 1920s canteen food and haute cuisine, drawing on ingredients and food mentioned in Beckett’s writings, all for only £13 and not a nut roast in sight, but then it’s not vegan either…
Beckett ingredients:
Carrots (Waiting for Godot)
Eggs (Endgame)
Hamm (A character in Endgame)
Clov (A character in Endgame)
Lobster (Dante and the Lobster)
Blancmange (All That Fall)
Hake (All That Fall)
Biscuit (Endgame)
Pale Ale (All That Fall)
Green Tea (Play)
Olives (Play)
Bananas (Krapp’s Last Tape)
Gooseberries (Krapp’s Last Tape)
Radishes (Waiting for Godot)
Chicken (Waiting for Godot)
Wine (Waiting for Godot)
Turnips (Waiting for Godot)
Grapes
Sugar Plum/ Bonbons (Endgame)
Turkish Delight (Endgame)
Gobstopper (All That Fall)
Bread (Waiting for Godot)
Tarragon / Estragon (a character in Waiting for Godot)
Pig (Waiting for Godot)
Fish Bones (Waiting for Godot)
My work this year has already taken me to lots of places I didn’t know, or didn’t know well, and now back to Northern Ireland to the beautiful Fermanagh Lakelands for this new festival that celebrates Samuel Beckett’s work, inspirations, and dark humour.
The lovely island town of Enniskillen in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland is gearing up to host the first annual Samuel Beckett Festival, 23-27 August. The inaugural festival is going toe to toe with the Edinburgh colossus, with a programme of world and UK premieres that spans international theatre, music, visual arts, comedy and talks, alongside Beckett haircuts, cocktails and shopwindows. www.happy-days-enniskillen.com
Antony Gormley’s “Tree for Waiting for Godot”, a stainless steel tree made in 37 separate pieces, was unveiled last week in the Grand Yard at Castle Coole, where it is being “seasoned” in advance of a future festival production of the play in 2014.
(The commission for Gormley’s Tree was inspired by Beckett’s commissioning of his friend Giacometti to create The Tree for his stage set in 1961)
In another UK first (and quite possibly last, see below), veteran US conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth will be showing his neon text homage to Beckett; “Texts (waiting for-) for nothing” Samuel Beckett, in Play. Kosuth, who has recently moved his studio to London from Berlin, told the Impartial Reporter that the festival might be the last showing for the piece.
Robert Wilson might have offended a few with his comments about English theatre in his interview with The Times last week, but Beckett would have been amused at the writer’s mishearing 50 for 15 minutes as Wilson described the length of silence in Krapp’s Last Tape (since corrected online). Silent or not, it’s a opportunity to see Wilson directing himself in a UK premiere that is also part of the London 2012 Festival.
I’m looking forward to taking to my rocking chair in Pan Pan Theatre’s special listening chamber to experience their acclaimed production of All That Fall, seen briefly in Dublin last year; and to Theatre Clastic’s puppet interpretation of Beckett’s Act Without Words 1.
Music-wise, and with Faber’s new The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett hot off the press (Edited by Seán Lawlor and John Pilling. Faber and Faber), I love the idea of Sophie Daneman’s programme of songs by some of Beckett’s favourite composers, selected also because they are by poets who influenced Beckett: Schubert/Goethe; Debussy/Verlaine; Poulence/Appolinaire etc.
Also super-keen to see Gavin Bryars and Ensemble’s performance of The Sinking of the Titanic and The Beckett Songbook, another London 2012 Festival event:
And the writers? So many to choose from in the programme, but Will Self’s just published a new novel, and I’m interested to hear what he has to say about Beckett; Alice Oswald because I was so wowed at her performance at the Hay-on-Wye festival earlier this year and I can’t wait to hear her read her poetry again; and Raja Shehadeh in conversation with Paul Farley about the relationship between walking and landscape because walking is one of my big loves.
Deborah Warner’s much anticipated Peace Camp sound art installation, inspired by the Olympic Truce, launched last Thursday 19 July. Hundreds of glowing pods perch around the UK coastline at some of our most stunning coastal locations, and each night the air fills with the murmuring soundscape of poems and fragments of recorded conversations about love. Watch this wonderful trio of films from three of the installations at Cuckmere Haven near Seven Sisters in East Sussex, the medieval Dunstanburgh Castle at Craster in Northumberland, and Cemaes Bay in Anglesey in Wales.
Here’s a sneak preview of PEACE CAMP, which will take place simultaneously at eight different coastal locations around the UK between 19 and 22 July. Created by Deborah Warner in collaboration with Fiona Shaw, and produced by creative company Artichoke, for the London 2012 Festival, it will take the form of eight illuminated encampments, which visitors will explore between dusk and dawn. They will hear a soundscape by composer Mel Mercier, of voices, sounds, and signals: the great love poetry of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. This trailer gives a tantalising glimpse of what’s in store for the adventurous spirits who visit one of the extraordinary places around the UK. It features the voices of actors Ioan Gruffudd and Eileen Atkins. http://www.peacecamp2012.com
