A note on: Rest and Its Discontents exhibition at the Mile End Arts Pavilion

A beautiful job has been done, the exhibition runs until October 31st and is really well worth a visit. Some wonderful and works and installations by some brilliant artists and thinkers. http://hubbubresearch.org/event/rest-discontents/

DATE & TIME 30 September – 30 October 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm
VENUE: The Mile End Art Pavilion  Mile End Park, Clinton Road  London, E3 4QY United Kingdom

A note on: The Anatomy of Rest with Claudia Hammond on BBC Radio 4

Pleased to contribute to the first of three programmes by Claudia Hammond, entitled Anatomy of Rest, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this week past. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v07p0

Claudia visited me during a training session, boxing and we discussed the notion that relationship of rest to its inverse state - exhaustion. This has been a major preoccupation of mine, pragmatically, my entire life, being someone who is high energy / agitated and having always found great solace, relief and control in more intensive forms of exercise. It has been a fundamental way of mediating my creative energy too, and meeting Arne Dietrich in Salzburg in 2015, where he talked of down regulation of the pre frontal cortex during exercise, I have spent the last year or two, reading more deeply into the subject. I am also reminded of Sam Harris' comments about weight training, that if we didn't choose to do so, the pain of such conditioning would be akin to torture.

Pleasingly, post programme, where I sounded a bit weird because my hearing had altered a bit, genuinely tired from training and unable to hear myself speak (a mercy), an article has been written by Alex SoojungKim Pang, referring to my remarks and the concept in general. Visit http://www.deliberate.rest/?p=1068

A note on: Rest and its discontents exhibition at Mile End Art Pavilion

Rest & its discontents, a new exhibition from Hubbub exploring the dynamics of rest, stress, sound, noise, work and mind-wandering. Rest & its discontents explores the dynamics of rest, stress, relaxation, sound, noise, work and mindwandering in an evolving laboratory of moving image, performance, drawing, poetry, data, sound, music and debate.

Rest & its discontents features a video installation of my Soundings project with Wellcome Library. A specially made highlight video, edited by Ed Prosser, shows my works with Maja Jantar, Emma Bennett, Tamarin Norwood and Sharon Gal.

DATE & TIME 30 September – 30 October : 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm
VENUE: The Mile End Art Pavilion, Mile End Park, Clinton Road, London, E3 4QY United Kingdom

 

the Being Human festival in the Hub at the Wellcome collection

I had a great time this past tuesday afternoon, nov 18th, in the new Hub space at the Wellcome Trust. http://www.wellcomecollection.org/what-we-do/residents They were hosting a drop in station with seven different interactive stations as part of the Being Human festival http://beinghumanfestival.org/ and I was invited to have a place, called Martial States of Rest, that was essentially a discursive exercise in things I'm interested in that connect the martial arts, my art projects and neuroscience, exploring in this conversation with visitors, alongside a few small demonstrations. It connects with my residency in the Hub, on and off, for the two years of the project, with an intensive period of residence January 2015 to March 2015. After this few hours, I cannot wait to be in this remarkable space and project for much of time come 2015. It is an amazing place filled with equally amazing people. (the picture here shows me throwing a rear naked choke on Jamie Wilkes, which was fun)


The atmosphere of energy and generosity really permeated through the day, I had a wonderful time exchanging ideas with the public, the fellow Hub participants and the Wellcome staff, really grappling with ideas around active states of rest under physical duress, whether neural pathways and behaviors of rest are effected by genetic predisposition, habitual training or active mindful engagement. The conversations were extremely wide ranging and intense, and in the midst I tried to tie this into my life's training in the martial arts, using the technique of the choke to express ideas around psychological / physiological states of relaxation and resistance, and the use of active states of rest in daily life. A really lovely day and a wonderful precursor to much of the work I hope to engage in with the Hub and the Wellcome Trust, all the stations were fascinating, covering issues around sleep, employment, voice, language and more. 

All we need is rest - Nov 18th for the Hubbub at the Wellcome centre

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/events/all-we-need-rest Very happy to be part of the Being Human festival in my very first event related to the Hub residency at the Wellcome trust, where I will be hovering around for the next two years and in intense residence from January through to April. This event will be a drop in session from 12 noon to 2pm at the wellcome trust Hub space itself, near Euston. I'll be there with Patrick Coyle and James Wilkes doing some martial arts demos and performances.
"What does 'rest' mean to you? When, where and how do you rest? Rest can seem hard to find, whether in relation to our exhausted bodies, our racing minds or the hectic city of London. Should we slow down, or should we embrace intense activity? What effects do each of these states have on the health of our bodies and minds? How have people at other times and in other places thought about and practised rest?
Join Hubbub, an interdisciplinary research team, at the start of their two-year investigation into rest and its opposites. The new Hub space at Wellcome Collection will be specially opened to the public for a free, drop-in lunchtime session. Try out interactive demonstrations in poetry, neuroscience and the history of medicine, and hear mini-talks on state-of-the-art research into rest. Find out more about the experiments in the arts, humanities and sciences that Hubbub will be running over the next two years and how you might get involved.
The Hub is a pioneering location for creative work that explores what happens when medicine and health intersect with the arts, humanities and social sciences. Its first residents are Hubbub, an interdisciplinary team investigating the dynamics of rest and its opposites, as they operate in mental health, neuroscience, the arts and the everyday."

The Rest is Noise is over! my talk on British 21st century poetry

The rest is noise festival is over. I've been pretty lucky to be involved, considering my lack of erudition and learnedness next to those who have also been teaching and lecturing and so forth. Im not being overmodest either, events with Tom Service, Gillian Moore, Diane Silverthorne, Sophie Mayer, Tony Benn, Harvey Cohen, world renowned educators have been punctuated with discussions with artists like Steve Reich and John Adams etc... This last event I was involved in, this past thursday, was a study evening, and I was alongside Mark Titchner, the remarkable artist and Gillian Moore, who is the head of music at the Southbank. It was, like all the study evenings, really mesmerising listening to others speak, as the environment is unique, they are allowed to speak to what they truly find engaging and tend to be very passionate and original. I waffled about 21st British poetry and stealing huge swathes from others ideas, talked about capitalism and the internet. I took a shit recording of it below. A lovely way to end a great year of lecturing and teaching in a really amazing program, Ive cut my teeth on it. http://therestisnoise.southbankcentre.co.uk/#1 

Teaching Beckett for the Rest is Noise study evening at the Southbank centre

Teaching Beckett is frightening. Teaching Beckett at the Southbank centre, in the QEH hall, as part of the groundbreaking Rest is Noise festival, at a free evening study course open to the general public for free is even more so. Teaching alongside Tom Service and Charlottle de Ville, even more so yet again. But it went proper well, a small generous group of people, amazing support staff at the Southbank, and my focus on the ethical engagement /disengagement of Beckett through paradox and disjunction in language was well received, not having the skill or expertise to make a proper ham of historical fact or textual analysis. I just waffled with purpose and read excerpts from Worstward ho! It could hardly go wrong. Charlotte and Tom were both inspiring to hear, I genuinely spent hours after the evening, which felt an easy 150 minutes (!) researching what they were speaking about. I hadn’t come across Tom Service before, but his work is really amazing with the BBC radio and the guardian, and I was at Wigmore hall just a few days later, rediscovering my discovery of classical music.

Rest is Noise festival - on Thomas Bernhard & the Black Mountain college

A day of two halves. The first, a bite talk, 15 minutes on Thomas Bernhard. It was a failed experiment. I overwrote the content, wanting it to be so good because of the passion I have for Bernhard, and was far too loyal to the text. I was boring. The art of lecturing is a practice I am engaged in learning. You learn more from a 'loss' I suppose. Still annoying to speak so poorly about an author I love so much, and if anyone stayed awake through my monotone the actual content had some moments of insight I hope. / I then went on to chair a panel on the Black Mountain college with Alyce Mahon from Cambridge Uni, and my old friends Tim Atkins and Peter Jaeger. It was a brilliant hour, fluid, insightful and balanced. Each speaker brought information from differing perspectives, and were all very generous with their thoughts. Peter offered real insight into John Cage and Zen, Alyce opened up the history of the school with its creative spark offset by administrative suicide, and Tim told everyone that poets killed the college. The list of alumni or teaching staff is unbelievable - Duncan, Olsen, Williams, Cage, Cunningham, Albers, Twombly, Creeley, de Kooning, Rauschenberg, Dorn. The questions were also very positive, and we ended up talking about the modern state of the education system and how restricted it is, against such a hotbed of radical innovation and collaboration as the BMC. / The rest is noise is an awesome opportunity to open up so many discussions that rarely get such a platform. Next up, Walter Abish and Jack Spicer in November

Rest is Noise festival, Britten weekend - on post-war avant-garde British poetry & BS Johnson, and witnessing Anthony Blee

I was especially frightened by these two lectures. The bites format of 15 minutes is as engaging for the audience as it is troubling for the speaker, and these talks would have a fine audience indeed being a part of the Southbank centre's remarkable recapturing of 20th century cultural history through the Rest is Noise festival. Judging how deep to go, or what to cover, becomes a serious issue, and my two talks were on things very close to my heart. I felt a responsibility to do them justice.

 The talk on the Avant garde poetry of Britain around the Era of Britten was one of my most gratifying public speaking performances. Not because it was good, but because everyone was saying afterward how the information was new to them and it was easily accessed and understood. And it is important information, to me, that can't be spread wide enough. You can hear it here:

 The real highlight of the day was the other speakers though, all genuinely more powerful and clever than I. Diane Silverthorne has inspired me since the first time I saw her speak, I even dedicated a poem to her about Mondrian, and Sophie Mayer is a peer I really admire as a poet and an intellectual. But thank god I asked to switch the original running order just moments before the events began, which I initially was supposed to conclude, because if I hadn't I would've followed the absolutely remarkable Anthony Blee, and fallen quite flat upon myself. 

 He is an architect, one of the finest our country has produced, and he was speaking about his work on Coventry Cathedral, a world renowned project he began working on at 24 years of age in 1956. I can't express the brilliance, humility and grace of his account of this time in his life. It was genuinely emotional to watch him recount stories of Sir Basil Spence and Yehudi Menuhin, and breathtaking to see this building, this cultural hub, this national pride, grow from his personal slides and memories. To watch a man who has spent a lifetime at the service of a professional artform, and shone so brightly through that life, reduced me to feeling like a very fortunate, very embryonic and very humbled, witness. I had the chance to meet his whole family afterward, who were as gracious and warm as he was, who were unduly kind about my piffling talk, and the experience left me feeling struck in the most organic and valuable of ways. They seemed people truly open, collaborative, kind and able to navigate these very real qualities through their art / practise. This article reflects some of the man, and I'm definitely visiting Coventry cathedral soon. http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/feb/27/anthony-blee-geoffrey-clarke-coventry-cathedral

 For the earlier session, I spoke on BS Johnson, and I refused the lecture format, as he would've liked, I think, and cut up quotes that were relevant and let people pick the order from a box. A lecture in a box. All can be heard here: