A note on : ACF 65th birthday - a performance highlight

The Austrian Cultural Forum has meant a great deal to me, supported my work as a poet, performer and curator for many years now. This work is thoroughly documented here www.stevenjfowler.com/acf

Asked to mark their birthday I put together a video message and a highlight video of some of my works in the ACF itself, evidencing, i hope, just how supportive they are.

“As the ACF marks its 65th year we are pleased to present this digital guestbook where we have invited artist, musicians, partners from across the world as well as former directors to share their significant moment and experiences at the ACF London.” https://65.acflondon.org/

A note on: Sampson Low European Poetry Festival publications 2020

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Very happy to have edited a new triple batch of publications for the European Poetry Festival Sampson Low publications scheme we started in 2019. Lots more information on the books and poets https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/sampsonlow

»My Haarschwund« by Franziska Füchsl
Alternative Title : BOOK by Max Hofler
The Patron Saint of Nightly Fire by Robert Prosser

These brand new publications by contemporary literary and avant-garde Austrian poets have been produced in limited editions by London-based press, Sampson Low. With both new translated volumes alongside conceptual collections, these are outstanding representations, in English, of three of the most interesting poets working across Europe, let alone Austria.

All can be bought https://sampsonlow.co/wck-pamphlets/european-poetry-festival-books/

Huge thanks to the poets, to Alban Low and to the Austrian Cultural Forum London and Kingston University, for supporting the books.

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A note on : 11 years since I started, the Writers Forum

I’ve been spending some lockdown time archiving. My website is being archived by the British Library Web team and it’s a decade since I organised my first event, exactly, in May 2010, at Rich Mix, with Romanian poets in London. I started writing, sharing, being out in the world with poetry, then fiction, art etc… almost exactly 11 years ago, after suddenly discovering reading serious work as a thing a dozen years back.

I began through pure chance. I was studying philosophy at university of london and happened to find out about the contemporary poetics research centre from a poster in a hall. I went to meet stephen mooney and he said come to the writers forum. The writers forum that bob cobbing had begun in the 1950s still ran, and still runs now, upstairs in a pub in farringdon, then in old street. My first ever public reading of anything was there, surrounded by some old school poets. bob’s widow, jennifer pike cobbing was there, and some great people, like matt martin, jeff hilson, wayne clements and others. It was formative, because while I read a lot in the year before going, genuinely 5 to 8 hours a day, sometimes more, the poets were sharing sound poetry, concrete poetry, performance. There were some bad things about it too, but who cares. I learned from both.

My first ever publication was about 10 years ago, and it was, to my knowledge, the last publication of the writers forum while it was still united (it split into two, who cares). It was a hand-made, hand-folded set of Concrete Poems, intended to be read aloud as an English person not speaking the language they were built of. They are shaped chunks of text in a language I found and thought looked interesting to shape.

I was encouraged to publish them, helped to make them and became part of the over 1000 pamphlets, booklets and books that make up the remarkable history of the WF press. The forum had published John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin alongside so many important poets from the UK, including Cobbing himself of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writers_Forum

I found a few remaining copies of this pamphlet in my trunk and some Cobbing publications too, that he had made, that were in a box before I asked for them. It’s good to remember where one started when thoughts of stopping are relatively frequent. I’m not nostalgic at all, almost the opposite, but connections like this aren’t useless perhaps.

Published: The Austrian Illuminations Anthology is in the world

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The Austrian Cultural Forum and the design agency Polimekanos have done an extraordinary job bringing together 20 separate artists work drawn from the first three events of the Illuminations series. What really makes the book so brilliant is its beautiful design, its produced to such a high quality and the variation of work within. There's poetry, fiction, non-fiction, photography, visual art, conceptual -- all aligned, feeling cohesive and complimentary. It's a book I'm proud to have edited.

"Bringing to light the work of writers fundamental to the unique Austrian contribution to world literature in the post-war era, Illuminations presented three events in 2017, in London, with over 20 artists. By commissioning truly contemporary and avant-garde writers, poets, filmmakers, performers and artists, asking each make new work responding to the oeuvre or life of the celebrated figure in question – Elfriede Jelinek, Erich Fried, Peter Handke – the aim was to transpose the brilliance of the original into a new moment. One that would stimulate as well as illuminate. 

This anthology brings together those new commissions made for the project, from some of Europe’s most exciting artists. It transposes many live works onto the page, and is full of the originality and resonance of the project as a whole. New fiction, poetry, visual and conceptual art, translations, photography and drawing makes up this unique volume, the 17th edition of the Occasions series for the Austrian Cultural Forum in London."

A note on: reflecting on Handke for Illuminations III

Held at the Austrian Cultural Forum in London I had the chance to put on an event reflecting on the work of my favourite novelist, Peter Handke. It brought together performers from Amsterdam, Vienna and across London, and the varying works on the night showed the range of achievement of Handke. My own performance was made up on the night really, a mix of the impersonal and personal, gentle and threatening. 

All the videos from Stephen Watts, Phil Baber, Eley Williams, Verena Durr, Iris Colomb are here www.theenemiesproject.com/illuminations and I'm very happy to say this series, which has had three successful episodes this year, will have another next year, on the remarkable Thomas Bernhard.

A note on: Celebrating Erich Fried - Illuminations II

The second of the Illuminations series took place at Kensal Green Cemetery Dissenter’s Chapel this past Thursday. It was unique for a number of reasons. The first, is that it celebrated Erich Fried. His poetry has been special to me since I began reading poetry because it is indelibly tied to where I have lived for a decade, West London. He was recommended to me by Sheila Ramage of the legendary Notting Hill bookshop, one of the very many writers Sheila gifted me and so many others over many decades, and then, by chance, exploring Kensal Green Cemetery, just over the canal from where I live, I came across his grave, by accident. Pure chance led me to find his burial site and then go deeper, beyond the Calder books of his love and political poems, into exploring his life. For years his presence has been there with me, writing poetry as I have done, in the cemetery and being concerned with the middle European post war aesthetic more than any other. Then this past year the very generous Austrian Cultural Forum allowed me to develop the Illumination series, and I choose Fried immediately.

What followed deepened the aforementioned connection even further. I was able to secure the Dissenter’s Chapel through my collaborative exhibition with Tereza Stehlikova, so host the event in the place of Erich’s burial, which he choose over Austria, as London was his home in exile. I ran the entire event alone, getting in early to set up projections, seats, switching off alarms and locking catacombs. It was well worth it, the audience was able to take in the most beautiful view of the cemetery after hours, sneaking in through a small gate on Ladbroke grove. And vitally, the connection Stephen Watts gave me to John Parham and then David Fried and Kathy Fried, Erich’s children, allowed me to bring the Fried family to the event. Generations of the family were there, with even Maeve Fried contributing, two generations removed from Erich.

A personal affair for me, one tied intimately to the west London literary history I am value so much and feel myself to be in the lineage of. And the performances were really great, full of different, not too reverential to Erich, but not completely oblique either. All the videos can be seen here www.theenemiesproject.com/illuminations and some pictures too by Madeleine Elliott who was kind enough to attend and document.

A note on: Forumstadtpark: Graz, Austria - June 2016

The Forum Stadtpark in Graz is a unique place. I’d heard about it for a few years before I met those who mastermind the institution in 2015. Not a gallery or venue, more of a communal centre in the heart of Graz, for all arts and all kinds of discussions and meetings, set the idyllic second city of Austria, it has a reputation for supporting some of the most avant-garde work in Europe. The word they seem to use, the warm hearted, playful, endlessly hospitable people who seem to wander in and out of the stadtpark, is transgressive or provocative, alongside everything all else that might be interested in the now or the future. A chance to visit here, to speak and perform was granted to me by virtue of the CROWD omnibus project and a two day symposium called Text World World Text, bringing poets and organisers from all over Europe. The symposium was led by Max Hofler, a friend and a text artist I admire so much and was essentially about poetry and politics, and whether there was a connection between the two.

I've written a whole webpage dedicated to the trip with detailed travelogue. Please visit http://www.stevenjfowler.com/graz

Kakania Berlin - May 9th : 7.30pm at Österreichisches Kulturforum

7.30pm at Österreichisches Kulturforum Berlin kulturforum berlin: kulturforumberlin.at 
ree Entry - May Monday 9th 2016
Stauffenbergstraße 1, 10785 Berlin. T: +49 30 202 87-114 E: berlin-kf (at) bmeia.gv.at

Very happy to announce that the Kakania project will debut in Berlin, with six new literary performance commissions from contemporary artists, each of whom will present a work that celebrates / responds to a figure from the Habsburg era. The event is free to attend if you're in Berlin, please share with friends in the city if you're not http://www.theenemiesproject.com/kakaniaberlin

Book your place here: http://www.kulturforumberlin.at/veranstaltung/kakania/

Max Höfler on Ludwig Wittgenstein
Maja Jantar on Lou Andreas Salome
Stephen Emmerson on Rainer Maria Rilke
Tomomi Adachi on Josef Matthias Hauer
Ernesto Estrella on Gustav Mahler
Ann Cotten on Otto Neurath

This is the first of two Kakania events that will take place in Berlin in 2016, supported by Österreichisches Kulturforum Berlin and follows six events, a symposium, two publications and over fifty new artist commissions in London from 2014 to 2016 thanks to the Austrian Cultural Forum. www.kakania.co.uk 

About Kakania

There has been no one city's culture, at one singular time in modern history, more widely influential on contemporary thought than that of Habsburg Vienna a century ago. A time so densely constituted with intellectual revolution in fields as diverse as poetry, fiction, journalism, music, composition, philosophy, psychology, art … that it seems it can often only be evoked through a wistfulness that belies the melancholy, the energy and the seismic change that constituted it.

With Kakania, decidedly contemporary, avant-garde, original works of text and art are presented in an attempt to be as complex and genre testing as the works, and the people, they are responsive to. This is a project where the past, and our understanding of it, is not be refracted through historical analysis, but the creative process, and one that is utterly contemporary. Kakania is an opportunity for audiences to discover the Habsburg era in a wholly new guise, as our era.

A note on: Kakania in London comes to an end with a 6th event & symposium

A lovely long day at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Knightsbridge wrapping up a brilliant 18 months with the Kakania project in London, before it goes to Berlin later this year. The amazing Theodora Danek helped me develop the project into something special, and the support of all the staff at the ACF has been really outstanding, Elisabeth Kogler and Zhuo Wang especially.

We had three hours of talks and screenings in the afternoon followed by six new commissions in the evening, including my first creative entry into the Kakania output which has included over 60 new works from artists and two books, over six events so far. All the videos are here www.theenemiesproject.com/kakania-events and my page has been updated too www.stevenjfowler.com/kakania

A note on: Kakania returns to London on March 31st 2016

Kakania in London – March 31st 2016: 7pm at Austrian Cultural Forum, London www.theenemiesproject.com/kakania2016

The Event: 7pm – Free Entry / The Symposium: 2pm – Free Entry / 28 Rutland Gate, London SW7 1PQ www.acflondon.org

The Kakania project returns to the Austrian Cultural Forum for a night of brand new performances, each from a contemporary artist or writer responding to a figure of Habsburg Era Vienna. The great, groundbreaking personas of 100 years past are made new by some of the most dynamic and innovative performers and thinkers of our day, without nostalgia, but with faithful invention and intensity. Visit www.kakania.co.uk for more information on the project.

Featuring Harry Man on Erwin Schrodinger  ~ Daniela Cascella on Hugo von Hofmannstahl ~ Steve Beresford on Arnold Schoenberg ~ Thomas Havlik on Walter Serner ~ SJ Fowler on Robert Musil ~ Declan Ryan on ...

The Kakania Symposium - March 31st at ACF London
2pm, 3pm, 4pm in 3 sessions www.theenemiesproject.com/kakaniasymposium

Address: 28 Rutland Gate, London SW7 1PQ. Phone: 020 7225 730 http://www.acflondon.org/

Preceding the evening’s performances there will be a symposium on Habsburg Vienna, through the kaleidoscope of Kakania’s inventive approach, led and curated by Dr.Diane Silverthorne, a leading voice in Habsburg Viennese studies. The Symposium will feature informal and academic talks about the era, interspersed with poetry and text art readings from poets and writers involved in the first year of the Kakania project, who will also give context to their process. The Symposium will also see a screening of the acclaimed film Altenberg: The Little Pocket Mirror. The schedule is thus: 

2pm - A talk by Dr. Diane Silverthorne on expressionist  landscapes in music and art and  talk by Dr. Leslie Topp, on madness, architecture and Vienna.

3pm - A talk by Jamie Ruers on Cabaret Fledermaus / A talk and reading by Eley Williams on Broncia Koller-Pinel / A talk and reading by Vicky Sparrow on Margarethe Wittgenstein / A talk by Stephen Emmerson on his multi-part performance art response on Rainer Maria Rilke. / A talk by Marcus Slease on writing a new poetry commission on Max Kurzweil. / A screening of Joshua Alexander’s experimental film on Paul Wittgenstein, commissioned for Kakania

4pm - A screening of ALTENBERG: The Little Pocket Mirror  A documentary by David Bickerstaff and Gemma Blackshaw  | 54 min

About Kakania

Following a brilliant first year in which 40 artists made 40 new commissions, 5 events in 5 venues took place in London and 2 original books was launched, Kakania returns with events in Berlin and London. The project is thoroughly documented here: www.kakania.co.uk and the project is only possible through the generosity of the Austrian Cultural Forum London.

Feinde: Austrian Enemies is over, what a week

Feinde was ambitious, 6 events, an exhibition, 4 extraordinary Austrians over in London with us. It was an extraordinary experience to get to know Esther Strauss, Ann Cotten, Max Hofler and Jorg Piringer better, to see their work and collaborations unfold in my city and have the great privilege of hosting them at Enemies events. Each event had its own character, each its own energy and ebbs and flows. It was a remarkably intense week for me, marked by calm conversation, gentle humour, nuanced discussion, a bit of physical illness and some intense artmaking. It sounds like puff, but alongside thanking those four artists I must thank the Austrian Cultural Forum and Theodora Danek for being so sophisticated in their / her support. & what an honour for me to work with Jorg Piringer twice, means the world to me to do so.

You can see all the videos, via link or embedded, with detailed documentation of all 3 London readings & exhibition here http://www.theenemiesproject.com/feinde alongside Alexander Kell's beautiful pictures.

I have also set up my own Feinde page on my site too www.stevenjfowler.com/feinde

the end of Kakania, for now...

In uploading the videos of the 4th and magisterial final act of the Kakania project I waded through all the Kakania webpages to change the tense from future to past. Not too sad a labour as I have stated so often, especially in the light of such an amazing final act, how satisfying the project now seems, how complete.

You can read all my past tenses here www.theenemiesproject.com/kakania

Kakania at the Austrian Cultural Forum - March 26th 2015

The end, for now. But as Kakania ended with war, perhaps our hopes should be too high. This incarnation of the time certainly ended with a beautiful, graceful, varied and dynamic evening of works in the appropriately resplendent salon-like surroundings of the Austrian Cultural Forum. A night for me personally to appreciate just how extraordinary the project has been, and how much this is owed to the generosity of the artists and the almost unheard of support, trust and enthusiasm of the Austrian Cultural Forum itself. Theodora Danek and her colleagues have been remarkable, and this was a night where I able to thank them.

The final event was not to be a culmination, it was, as each event has been, it's own entity, curated with it's own rhythm and feel, relative to the venue and artists. Yet, there was a natural build towards it. It was built on language works, poets, both new to Kakania and those who have acted as a sort of creative spine to the project, read - Stephen Emmerson so beautifully engaging with Rilke (his son is called Rainer), Colin Herd so brilliantly evoking Kokoschka, George Szirtes born to write about Schnitzler. These poets were complimented with some radically different mediums, Josh Alexander with his abstract film on Paul Wittgenstein, which when screened in the dark of that room genuinely moved me, Fabian Faltin with a conceptual performance on Otto Wagner which was utterly unforgettable and witty and energetic, and finally Ben Morris, a sound art beast, on Ernst Krenek. 

The point was to create a specific energy and experience throughout the evening that rested upon complimentary and responsive artforms, artworks and artists. And more than that to show how powerful the connection is in 21st century London to the iconoclasts of early 20th century Vienna. Each work spoke to the next, as together they were far more about the artists through the ghost voices of their Habsburg predecessors, than the details of the individual artworks themselves. It was like all of Kakania, unique, and warm hearted and brilliant.

considering Kakania before the IV at the Austrian Cultural Forum

http://www.acflondon.org/literature-and-books/kakania-iv/ Book your place
March 26th Thursday 7pm!

Kakania has been one of the most satisfying curatorial experiences of my career, perhaps the most satisfying. It's not just that the concept was so lovingly taken up by all the artists I approached, and that there was such a groundswell of positive responses from the extensive audiences and readers and creative folk involved, but because it began ambitious, almost intimidatingly so, and yet is coming to a close feeling intimate, careful and thoroughly realised. It's hard to marry one's ambition to reality in these kind of art projects, but four events in, two books, 40 artists each with a new commission and it feels I've barely broke a sweat. Without being cloy, the genuinely amazing support of the Austrian Cultural Forum is a huge part of this.

The final event is not a culmination, it is, as each event has been, it's own entity, curated with it's own rhythm and feel, relative to the venue and artists. Yet, there is a natural build towards it. It is built on language works, poets, both new to Kakania and those who have acted as a sort of creative spine to the project, will be reading - Stephen Emmerson so beautifully engaging with Rilke (his son is called Rainer), Colin Herd so brilliantly evoking Kokoschka, George Szirtes born to write about Schnitzler. These poets are complimented with some radically different mediums, Josh Alexander with his abstract film on Paul Wittgenstein, Fabian Faltin with a conceptual performance on Otto Wagner and Ben Morris, a sound art beast, on Ernst Krenek. 

The point is to create a specific energy and experience throughout the evening that rests on complimentary and responsive artforms, artworks and artists. And more than that to show how powerful the connection is in 21st century London to the iconoclasts of early 20th century Vienna. Each work will speak to the next, as together they are far more about the artists through the ghost voices of their Habsburg predecessors, than the details of the individual artworks themselves. It'll be unique, come along

Kakania III - the videos

The third installment of Kakania was held in the legendary avant-garde hub the Horse Hospital right in the heart of Bloomsbury London. It featured some of the most interesting live artists from across the continent, including Joerg Zemmler, Caroline Bergvall, Martin Bakero and Damir Sodan. You can watch the videos from the performances here www.theenemiesproject.com/kakaniaevents

 

Kakania IV at the Austrian Cultural Forum – March Thursday 26th 2015

The Kakania project closes its program for now with a grand event at the Austrian Cultural Forum, just off Hyde Park, in London. Four new commissions, and four new iterations of previous commissions blend poetry, avant-garde music, performance art and video art, all from contemporary artists and poets each responding in their own unique way to a figure of Habsburg Vienna around one century ago.

George Szirtes reads poems on Arthur Schnitzler
Ben Morris offers experimental music on Ernst Krenek
Joshua Alexander screens his video art on Paul Wittgenstein
Emily Berry reads poems on Sigmund Freud
Colin Herd reads poems on Oskar Kokoschka
Fabian Faltlin performs in response to Otto Wagner
Stephen Emmerson shares things in response to Rainer Maria Rilke
eff Hilson reads poems on Ludwig Wittgenstein

The event is completely free, but please do use this link to book your place
http://acflondon.org/literature-and-books/kakania-iv/

Both Kakania publications, the Kakania anthology with over 40 contributors, and Oberwildling: On the Life of Oskar Kokoschka by Colin Herd & I, will be available to buy at the event.

Once this phase of Kakania is complete, the remaining copies of the books will be available online and the anthology will have a special reading launch in June at the Hardy Tree gallery in Kings Cross, London.

Also in situe at Kakania IV will be books from the imitable Pushkin Press, who have generously supported the Kakania project and who publish some of the finest authors of the era we are emploring. http://pushkinpress.com/kakania/

Thanks too to Theodora Danek, Elisabeth Kögler and the team at the Austrian Cultural Forum and all those who’ve helped make the project so special. www.kakania.co.uk