Enemies: selected collaborations : Penned in the Margins - 2013

Enemies is a selected volume of my collaborations, collecting excerpts and selections from works written between October 2010 to October 2013. It is published by Penned in the Margins (London, UK. 145 pages). http://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/2013/09/enemies-2/ From the publisher:

SJ Fowler has Enemies. And the Enemies of his Enemies are his friends.

This ground-breaking, multi-disciplinary collection is the result of collaborations with over thirty artists, photographers and writers. Diary entries mingle with a partially-redacted email exchange; texts slip and fragment, finding new contexts alongside prints, paintings, diagrams, Rorschach blots, YouTube clips and behind-the-scenes photographs at the museum.

THE ENEMIES ARE

Tim Atkins, David Berridge, Cristine Brache, Patrick Coyle, Emily Critchley, Lone Eriksen, Frédéric Forte, Tom Jenks, Samantha Johnson, Alexander Kell, David Kelly, Sarah Kelly, Anatol Knotek, Ilenia Madelaire, Chris McCabe, nick-e melville, Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, Matteo X Patocchi, Claire Potter, Monika Rinck, Sam Riviere, Hannah Silva, Marcus Slease, Ross Sutherland, Ryan Van Winkle, Philip Venables, Sian Williams

Reviews

“An overwhelming assault. The geography is unnerving, almost familiar, then stinging in its estrangement. Intensity crackles. Tension teases. At what point does collision become collaboration? When do the bandages come off?”
Iain Sinclair

“These poems explode with the energy of a first draft and shine with the coherency of having been edited many times over [...] Reading Enemies is an experience of relationship-building at its most visceral, vital and organic, and one that cannot afford to be missed.”
Ben Armstrong, The Windswept Edge

“Enemies is an ambitious and ground-breaking publication where disciplines mingle in conversation with each other, finding new contexts.”
Milou Stella, Annexe Magazine

“By turns enchanting, startling, baffling, overwhelming, poignant and hugely entertaining.”
The Learned Pig

Launching Enemies at Toynbee Studios, London - October 2013

Launching Enemies October 28, 2013

the book, and those who have made the book something special, that is a unique document, in that it is neither a collection, nor an anthology, but a selected set of collaborations, needed a night for itself. Though the massive camaradefest was to follow the next day, we put it together on Friday oct 25th, at Toynbee studios, near Liverpool street and I read with Tom Jenks, Tim Atkins, Eirikur Orn Norddahl, Sarah Kelly, Sam Riviere and David Berridge. We projected youtube videos behind ourselves as we read, each one tailored to the work being read and it seemed as though the subtle differences we aimed to evidence between each work, though they were all readings, was apparent across the evening, complimenting each other with their difference. We tried some polyphonic reading for the final shift and though I wanted the night to be more conceptually performative originally, it ended up representative of the spirit of the book I think. I'm very grateful to everyone who came to the launch to support me, to everyone who is in the book, to Tom Chivers who published the book, everyone who read with me on the night

My introductory essay: ‘A miniaturised bulwark against being solitary’

We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and
friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.
- Orson Welles

First and foremost, this book is a record of friendships. It is a testament to my refusing to be alone in the creative act, as I would not want to be alone in the world, and to my decision to mediate sociality through the artistic impulse of other human beings, whose brilliance leaves me feeling more at home in that world. If my daily life is primarily defined by individuals who have decided to make their brief time on this planet one of creativity, ingenuity, intelligence and humour, and who have talents far surpassing my own, my experience of life can only be one that is defined by constant growth and learning and, hopefully, understanding — towards nothing more than more art unto expiry. Maybe even enough to temporarily blot out life’s adversarial character and essential purposelessness. Certainly it has worked recently, and that’s more than enough for me.

This is why the book exists as selected collaborations, whittled down from over 60 different exchanges I have been a part of over the last few years with writers, poets, artists, photographers, illustrators, designers, sculptors and filmmakers from across the world. The act of collaboration has become a defining turn in my practice, a constant affirmation of a way of writing as well as a way of communicating in real space, between human beings.

Enemies is a record of potentiality too, of what the aberrant and ambiguous use of language can be when responding, warping and enveloping another, equally abundant, artistic medium. It is my view that poetry lends itself to collaboration as language does conversation, and it is in poetry we are renovating the living space of communication, and this in itself is a collaborative act. The poet comes up against something other than themselves in the writing of every poem; and in the shaping of every fragment of language there is a response taking place. I hope this book showcases original, dynamic examples of what is produced when the other in question is the equally avid mind of another artist or writer.

The motivation behind my taking on so many collaborations was initially a source of uncertainty for me. I’ve come to realise this reluctance (I began collaborating by invitation, the Voiceworks and Blue Touch Paper projects being early examples) is intensely important. It’s becoming clearer with time that I undertake so many collaborations precisely because, at heart, I believe less than many of my peers in the transformative power of poetry. That isn’t to say I believe poetry isn’t transformative at all — of course I do ascribe it such potential (to me personally, it is utterly and immensely transformative — but I refuse it the power to go beyond my own personal subjectivity. I refuse the idea that poetry is improving in and of itself. There is a tension here, maybe even a paradox. I have both feelings at once, that poetry is both nothing and everything. Yet I do believe, somehow and without articulation, in the Brodskyite notion of poetry being the most important artform because of its relationship to the profundity of language, because of its engagement with what fundamentally constitutes all other creativity and discussion. It is impossible for me to escape the feeling that this relationship is wholly individuated, and so at the very same moment — poetry is nothing, a game for the initiated, the distraction of a select. I suppose then that my poetry, and my collaborations, are about stripping away a glib assumption that poetry is profound, to get to the private meaning, which I do believe is utterly closed and personal though very much present. Here is the second paradox: by maintaining a creative practice often reliant on an other, and an act of exposure toward them, I am able to gain fresh and invaluable access to my own poetry and its process. Paulo Friere’s notion that communication builds community in the creative, organisational act which is the antagonistic opposite of manipulation, and a natural development of unity, ties into the idea that my collaborations might be founded on a central turn — a paradox of dismissiveness and legitimacy about the poetical act and the nature of poetry’s power. For me then, this book is a confusion as well as a testament, a symbol of community and accord, as well as a record I cannot fathom on rereading. And this is exactly how it seems to me it should be — lost in the margins.

Artists who are powerful alone, and need not collaborate, seem to do so easily, uninterested in the protection of their inspiration. If this book is held together by poetry, it is as a soft and tacky kind of glue — uhu — as good for eating as for adhesion, barely keeping pace (which is its strength, I hope, that it acknowledges this in its very firmament) with the photography, art, illustration, musical composition and design of so many gifted others to be found within these pages. I have been told it is a book dense and mysterious, full of challenging material, and shifts in tone. It doesn’t seem so to me, nor did it feel so in its multifarious creation or compilation. But then perhaps that is because I hope that if my work stands for one thing, it is that experimentation and innovation is not a stance, but a pattern of behaviour, not a philosophy of theory, heavy with beneficial and smug associations of rebellion and kudos, but a specific reaction to a specific need or notion — a philosophy in action. How might I express what I wish to outside of atypical methods? This I do not know, interested as I am in the untameable and almost unknowable, and the dark edges of experience, emotion, civilisation and its history. Broken syntax, free verse, Oulipian codas, found text, unconscious writing, high conception &c.: these are what I deem the necessary tools and, as I hope will be clear throughout this volume, ones wholly symbiotic with the subject of each collaboration and the work of each collaborator.

The twenty-nine works ahead of you are almost always excerpts from larger works. At the end of the book you will find a Notes section, which will shed some light on the content and process of each collaboration, and where you’d find them in their full length, if relevant. I want to thank all the collaborators who made it into the book, all those who didn’t, probably better off not being associated with me, and Tom Chivers, editor of Penned in the Margins, who does important work, selflessly and with immense professionalism. Special debts of gratitude to Jon Opie and Shonagh Manson at theJerwood Charitable Foundation, who, alongside Arts Council England, have allowed the concept for this book to grow into a huge programme of events and undertakings involving over thirty happenings and two hundred artists and poets. And to David Kelly and Livia Dragomir, monsters who cannot be unmentioned.

Consider this meagre work in your hands a rather miniaturised bulwark against being solitary — a sandcastle before a tsunami, that might provide you with the smallest apertures of pleasant distraction. For my own part, if my work sits alongside, or inside, work of a quality such as I hope you will find beyond this page, it can only be elevated. The others who are my Enemies in art and in life, who make up my community, and who will not let me be complacent, are what this book means to me. I hope for you it might take on another meaning that I cannot possibly fathom from my privileged vantage.

SJ Fowler, September 2013

Reviewed by David Clarke on Sabotage reviews : 2013

The Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin once argued that the distinguishing feature of the novel was its multi-voiced-ness. This distinguished it from the lyric mode, which, he claimed, addressed the reader as a single, undivided voice. Whereas the lyric is a mode of identity, Bakhtin suggested, the novel is multiple, orchestrating an array of discourses, none of which can lay claim to ultimate authority. Avant-garde poetics in its various forms sharply calls such a distinction into question: to the extent that a lyric I is performed by such texts, they delight in deconstructing that I as a mere site through which many discourses pass, a disjointed or even fragmented voice which refuses to resolve itself into univocal meaning. This is as true for that swathe of the avant-garde referred to as modernist as it is for post-modernists like Ashbery or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets like Bernstein. Referring to prose, Bakthin called this effect dialogic, and I was put in mind of this notion repeatedly when reading Enemies: The Selected Collaborations of SJ Fowler, a handsomely produced volume from the excellent Penned in the Margins.

This is a compilation of some of the collaborations which Fowler has undertaken with over 150 artists, writers, sculptors and musicians in a project funded by the Arts Council and the Jerwood Foundation. The scale of the work has been enormous and is a testament to Fowler’s commitment as a kind of impresario of the avant-garde (or vanguard, as he prefers to call it): alongside this anthology, numerous discreet publications have emerged with small presses. Many of the performances associated with the project can also be found on-line (see http://www.weareenemies.com/ and Fowler’sYouTube channel).

The dialogic aspect of the book, in a banal sense, is clear in the material presented, which includes samples of work from 29 of the collaborations. Many of these take on the form of a dialogue between text and image (i.e. where Fowler has written text to accompany visual material), but there are also entirely text-based exchanges: for example, an exchange of e-mails with Sam Riviere and a series of poems written by Fowler and Claire Potter in which the poets have exchanged YouTube links and asked each other to respond. With other co-produced texts, it is less easy to reconstruct the exchange which took place, although Fowler provides notes which give a broad outline of the process.

However, I would argue that these texts are dialogic not merely in the sense that they are the products of artists exchanging work and responding to each other, but in the more important sense that the exchange and the work it produces enter into an unresolved relationship, in which the reader is also implicated. This contrasts with more established notions of how poetry responds to other works of art, or indeed to other poems. The ekphrastic tradition, for example, records the response of the poet to a work of art. She may see something new in that work, bring a new interpretation to it, for example, as Auden famously does with Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus; yet this kind of dialogue with others produces above all a new meaning which the reader is invited to consume. The dialogues taking place here do not follow this pattern.

To take two of the collaborations which set up a dialogue of text and image, we can see how this works in practice. Fowler and Alexander Kell’s ‘Museum of Debt’ juxtaposes monochrome photographs of employees of the British Museum with short poems. The photographs themselves refuse any fly-on-the-wall documentary aesthetic: in fact, it is unclear in most cases what kind of work the individuals pictured actually do. Their poses jar with the context, pouting or apparently larking about in the way people might do in a Facebook photograph, yet the texts equally refuse either to illustrate the images themselves or to comment on the workers’ everyday experience. There is a clear parodic intent, sending up the many residencies offered for poets by workplaces of all kinds (not least galleries and museums), yet it is in the unresolved dialogue between image and text that the real interest lies. In the second poem in this sequene, ‘tooth of the Nile’, for instance, we see a photograph of a young woman grinning exaggeratedly up at statue which cradles another, smaller statue in its arm. The text reads as follows: ‘the ark of the covenant / baby hercule / an asp, a thesp / a guided tour /of softcore’. The text, read together with the image, allows a number of possible meanings to emerge: perhaps this is Hercules we see cradled in the statue’s arms, but what covenant could this represent, in what sense is this an erotic image? Or is our looking at the young woman as she looks at the statue potentially erotic? The reference to theatre is apt, since the image seems self-consciously staged, yet this may also establish a link with the guided tours that museums offer, which are theatrical experiences in themselves. I hesitate to resolve the ‘meaning’ of this poem as it emerges from its relationship with the image, because I ultimately feel that this is not the point. Neither image nor text claim any authority over our interpretation of the museum space, although the interpretations which could emerge from our own interaction with text and image are clearly rich. Even from this one example, however, we can see that the demand for engagement on the part of the reader articulated by this collaboration, for all of its tongue-in-cheek wit, is considerable.

‘Animal Husbandry’, a series of inkblots and accompanying texts by Fowler and Sian Williams, calls upon the reader to make sense of the relationship between inkblots of the kind used in psychiatry and texts made up of tentatively associated (but often very beautiful) fragments of language. Again, rather than simply offering an interpretation of the inkblots, the texts set up a loose chain of associations which do not finally resolve themselves into a final meaning. The reader’s dialogue with abstract image and mysterious text is all the more disquieting when we look at the context of the inkblot test, a psychiatric technique for uncovering unspoken desires. It is unclear whose desires are failing to reveal themselves to the reader here, but the inkblots themselves are an invitation to the reader to make their own interpretation, which will necessarily interfere with that (not) to be found in the text.

Although in subtly different ways, the text and image collaborations in the volume follow similar patterns. The pieces based on exchanges of text, however, make similar demands of the reader in terms of their dialogic construction. For example, ’40 Feet’, written with Dave Berridge, emerges from an exchange of blocks of text (none of which are marked as belonging to either author), which produces a kaleidoscopic vision of London made up of fragments of real events and apparently disconnected thoughts. The reading experience made me feel a little like one of Wim Wenders’ eavesdropping angels in Wings of Desire, but without the privilege of their omniscient point-of-view. ‘Dead Souls Like’, with Chris McCabe, produces a similarly multiple, wildly associative piece of flaneurism or psychogeography on the city of Liverpool.  In ‘Videodrome’ with Claire Potter, the exchange of texts about YouTube videos which we cannot actually see, involves the reader in a disturbing act of imagination, particularly given the hints at violence contained in Potter and Fowler’s texts: I will admit that I have not dared to open the links, although I would not mind betting that their relative harmlessness is part of the joke. The key point in all of these, however, is not so much the space left for the reader in these dialogues, but that any (ultimately unrealisable) attempt to pin down the meaning which these conversations set in motion is the reader’s alone: none of the many voices in these collaborations is going to relieve the reader of that responsibility.

For me, this is the significance of the title that Fowler has chosen for his project. His collaborations are not friendly: neither in the sense of seeking to arrive at a position of harmony between those producing the work, nor in the sense that a finished artistic product offers the reader any easy answers. In fact, these collaborations are the opposite of a ‘finished’ product: they remain open to a dialogue with the reader, indeed to many dialogues (as in many re-readings) with the reader. In his introduction, Fowler acknowledges that he has been told that ‘this book is dense and mysterious, full of challenging material, and shifts in tone.’ This is certainly the case, and the volume requires not just a careful reader, but a ‘writerly’ one, as Roland Barthes would have put it. Some of the texts leave less space for this. The series of invented proverbs Fowler produces with Tom Jenks, although amusing, are more easily consumable, and the e-mail exchange between Fowler and Riviere circles around the latter’s typical concerns about the role and identity of the poet, as well as exploring the very possibility of collaboration itself. A kind of meta-collaboration then, or a collaboration about collaboration, but sometimes a little too close to shop-talk.

This volume fulfils a further function in setting out the stall of the avant-garde in contemporary British poetry. While anthologies of recent years have situated the avant-garde as one feature of a ‘pluralist now’ (as in Roddy Lumsden’s anthology Identity Parade) or have made the argument that younger poets have bought into avant-garde techniques without necessarily sacrificing the motivation to express personal concerns (as in Nathan Hamilton’s recent Dear World and Everyone in It), this book will serve as an introduction to the full provocation of today’s ‘vanguardist’ poetics, for which Fowler is a vocal and eloquent advocate (see, for example, various talks on his Soundcloud page). Fowler’s co-ordinating presence has an impact on the themes which emerge most strongly in the collaborations: issues of criminality, marginality, sexuality, and control and surveillance noticeably echo elements of Fowler’s own Minimum Security Prison Dentistry, for example. Nevertheless, this is a volume whose primary function will be to engage contemporary audiences with the ramifications of the avant-garde’s undiminished challenge to the reader.

Review of Enemies by Ben Armstrong

November 14, 2013 http://windsweptedge.com/2013/11/14/literature-review-s-j-fowler-enemies/ 

Literature Review: S.J. Fowler ‘Enemies’Posted by progiestben on November 14, 2013 in Books, Reviews| Leave a comment

‘Enemies’ // Penned in the Margins 2013

“I imagined a man and a woman copulating and I was disgusted because their union might produce life”

As poets, that is to say, as either writers or readers of poetry, we are deeply connected to conflict; how our opinions clash, how our perceptions are distorted, how words bleed into one-another, reject eachother entirely, sit side by side as friends. We are both lovers with the text, and by extension, are at war with it as well. Moving forward from poetry as Homeric storytelling, the modern poem is a forum for debate, for contention, and for conflict: such is its place within a literary world as ‘other’, as either misunderstood, or ignored entirely by the majority. For those that do choose to embrace poetry, though, for those that learn its language, there are many ways in which it can be life-changing and more often than not, life-affirming. ‘Enemies’, a collaborative anthology of works by S.J. Fowler and ‘friends’, is a strong embodiment of the modern poem and an ideal work through which to discuss how reader, writer, and text become something altogether more than the sum of their parts.

Reading ‘Enemies’ over the past week has been an experience, not an easy one, but a deeply rewarding one. At 168 pages, there is a lot of material here to mull over, dissect and absorb, and not a single piece within this book is simple. It is impenetrable from cover to cover; Fowler does not give away his secrets easily. The opening poem here, ‘The Mechanical Root’, is narrow, cluttered; a train of thought which achieves its rhythm through shifting fragments of meaning, forcing the reader to move on restlessly picking up what they can along the way. It is both frustrating and incredibly liberating. The confusion of not understanding juxtaposed with the freedom and beauty of the word choices and turns of phrase becomes pivotal.

When reading ‘Enemies’, it becomes quickly obvious that to search for a narrative, for some shred of authorial intent, is to miss the point somewhat. As Fowler states in his eloquent introduction, ‘I hope for you, it ['Enemies'] it might take on another meaning that I cannot possibly fathom from my privileged vantage’. As a primer, the author’s words do a great deal to assure us that the collection is as much our work as his, that he would prefer us to ascribe ourselves upon it and find our own meanings within it. With this in mind ‘Enemies’ become less intimidating and something hugely immersive.

“The voice from the central tower went silent,

however, the words continued:”

For all its depth and density, for its chaotic and confusing stylistics, ‘Enemies’ is a work of great breadth, too. Fowler’s selected collaborations pull in a varied assortment of mixed media including doodles, artwork, Rorschach blots, musical scores, advertisements, YouTube links, emails, &c.,&c which both add to, and alleviate us from, the chaos. Many of the pieces which combine art and poetry revealFowler to be a master of ekphrasis, as his words push and pull against the images, painting their own pictures. As readers, we are given something physical to cling onto and an insight into Fowler’s mind first hand. It is hard to tell if these pieces were written spontaneously, almost reflexively after seeing the art, or in an altogether more meticulous and planned fashion. It could be both, but impressively, these poems explode with the energy of a first draft and shine with the coherency of having been edited many times over. In this sense, the ‘enemies’ of the book’s title, the collaborators, prove themselves to be worthy assets in charging Fowler’s writing with considerable power and insight.

It would be easy to write thousands of words about all of the ideas and themes on display here, but as Fowler so aptly states, it’s all about finding your own way through the works and also through yourself, in order to come to your own conclusions. It would simply be impossible for two people to come out of Enemieswith the same interpretation, except maybe for having the opinion that we are all its authors. I would also argue that it is impossible to love, or even like, every single piece in this collection, such is its multiplicity. You will make both enemies and friends within its pages. Perhaps its greatest strength is in its putting on a banquet for the reader, putting everything on the table and inviting you to sit down. Importantly, this is a book to own, a book to keep lying around for that moment when you want to challenge yourself, a book which you can watch change as you do.

Personally, I’m looking forward to reading ‘Enemies’ (which, to add, has been beautifully printed on glossy paper – which will certainly assist its longevity – byPenned In The Margins) in several months time, or several years time, and see how differently I approach it. For Fowler’s  collection, in its writing on art, allows us both to read and write a version of ourselves.

“This book is a confusion as well as a testament, a symbol of community and accord, as well as a record I cannot fathom on re-reading”

‘Enemies’ is highly recommend for those with an open-mind and for people unafraid of innovation. As with many collections of poetry, but especially with this one, the author rejects his Virgil-esque role, refusing to hold your hand all of the way. Instead it is infinitely up to you, as a fellow artist and an equal, to get out as much as you’re willing to put in. Reading ‘Enemies’ is an experience of relationship-building at its most visceral, vital and organic, and one that cannot afford to be missed.

Tags armstrong, ben, enemies, review, windsweptedge

a review of Enemies by for Annexe Magazine

November 27, 2013

http://annexemagazine.com/review-enemies-sj-fowler/

Enemies, recently published by Penned in the Margins is a collection of twenty-nine collaborations – ‘a record of friendship’, as SJ Fowler puts it himself in the introduction – that spans across all fields of language and poetics, from photography to illustration without limit in means of expression, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself searching videos on Youtube (Videodromes with Clare Potter) or reading (well trying to read, for some) a musical sheet ( see collaboration with Philip Venables, The Revenge of Miguel Cotto).

More importantly these twenty-nine pieces are an incredible collage in their own right. A collage that sweeps away all expectation by throwing you around from one experience to another without much time to breathe, but it’s worth it.They are a testimony to the importance of sharing, taking risks, communicating and experimenting while pushing the boundaries that define poetry and even, the notion of collaboration itself. In Enemies we go from ‘simple’ poetry block exchange (see The Mechanical Root, or  The ‘Burbs…) to referencing historical folklore with a contemporary twist like in Gilles De Rais where a parallel is created between the 15th century Breton knight and Jimmy Saville. Rich in intertexual and cultural references all over, it is literary poetry meet avant-garde linguistic disjunctions like in David Berridge’s collaboration, 40 feet, or the piece with Tim Atkins, entitled Secretum Meum, a re-writing of the Petrarch text which sees a dialogue between Petrarch and Saint Augustine; here the classic philosophy form is kept and yet subverted to create an amusingly awkward contemporary vernacular.Amidst the sense of playfulness and inventiveness that this collection conveys, there are some pieces that stand out not just because of their innovative form and/or syntax, but also for their striking performative element, I’m talking of 1000 Proverbs, a collaboration with Tom Jenks and Long Letter, Short farewell, an exchange of emails between the poet Sam Riviere and SJ Fowler. They are amusing, clever and highly accessible compared to the mysterious connections that some of the other collaborations set within each other and the reader.

Enemies is an ambitious and ground-breaking publication where disciplines mingle in conversation with each other, finding new contexts; In SJ Fowlers’ words ‘experimentation and innovation is not a stance, but a pattern of behaviour, not a philosophy of theory, heavy with beneficial and smug associations of rebellion and kudos, but a specific reaction to a specific need or notion – a philosophy in action.’The unnerving feeling that comes from this type of poetical assault, can only be seen as inspiring and, hopefully,  as the spark igniting many more collaborations within the realm of  the arts._____________________________________________________

SJ Fowler is a poet, artist and performer. His books have been published by Veer, KnivesForks&Spoons, Red Ceiling, AnythingAnymoreAnywhere and Penned in the Margins. He is the curator of the Enemies project and theEnemies book is published by Penned in the Margins.Reviewed by Milou Stella. 
Milou Stella is an artist, writer and co-founder of Witches of Odd. Her pamphlet, Meander is published by Annexe.