Saturday 5 January, 2008 'Part 1: A video documentary combining exhibition footage of the Situationist International exhibitions with film footage of the 1968 Paris student uprising, and graffiti and slogans based on the ideas of Guy Debord' Go here for the other parts Warning: features arse-paddling music.
Friday 4 January, 2008 What constitutes an unpublishable work? It could be many things: too long, too experimental, too dull; too exciting; it could be a work of juvenilia or a style you've long since discarded; it could be a work that falls far outside the range of what you're best known for; it could be a guilty pleasure or it could simply be that the world judges it to be awful, but you think it's quite good. We've all got a folder full of things that would otherwise never see the light of day. Link
Thursday 3 January, 2008 From How We Came Into Performance: A Personal Accounting by Jerome Rothenberg: 'When I was first coming into poetry – more than fifty years ago by now – the opportunities for readings, much less “performances,” were very few. That isn’t to say that poetry was never read or performed in public – in traditional verse plays and early modernist theater, in readings by actors, in lieder and operas and other musical settings, and sometimes (but not then so often) by established poets on what was still a limited lecture circuit, with readings few and far between. What changed, as we then entered into it, were the venues and the participation of increasingly large numbers of poets as readers (later, for some, as performers) of their own work. Once readings could exist and find an audience – as they did – in non-institutional settings, the possibility of readings opened for poets of all ages and with or without established reputations.' Link (PDF)
Thursday 20 December, 2007 Posting on Openned will be slowing down over the Christmas period. There will still be the occasional post. Normal service resumes after Twelfth Night.
On a related note, please enjoy this festive message from Ulli Freer, and have a very happy Christmas:
Sunday 16 December, 2007 'During a hearing last month Lord Justice Moses, one of the Court of Appeal judges, asked Alun Jones QC, representing the US government, about its treatment of Gavin, Tollman’s nephew. Gavin Tollman was the subject of an attempted abduction during a visit to Canada in 2005. Jones replied that it was acceptable under American law to kidnap people if they were wanted for offences in America. “The United States does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not shared,” he said. He said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.” Mr Justice Ouseley, a second judge, challenged Jones to be “honest about [his] position”. Jones replied: “That is United States law.”' Link
Saturday 15 December, 2007 The Openned widgets are now white, because they look nicer this way. Grab them if you haven't already.
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Friday 14 December, 2007 SATURDAY 15 DECEMBER BAH HUMBUG! @ BETSEY TROTWOOD We're taking over all three floors of the Betsey Trotwood, Farringdon from midday til closing time with a superb lineup of poets and spoken word artists. Zena Edwards, Simon Munnery, Tim Wells, Roddy Lumsden, Ross Sutherland, D'Archetypes, Niall O'Sullivan, Generation Txt, DJ Corsair, Excentral Tempest, Yap, Ventriloquist & Tongue Fu Band and more. Entry's just a fiver, and all profits go to charity. Full lineup will be posted here soon.
Thursday 13 December, 2007 [Update: there was a small issue with the coding on the page which has now been rectified. Those of you seeing things you weren't mean to see will no longer see them.] As an issue, 'Thirteen kinaesthetic salsa diphthongs' continues in the spirit of Openned, with the audience and contributing poets governing the direction and the contents of the site. The aim of this issue is to build dialogue between poets through applying cuttings, sitings, algorithms, translations, critical responses, recombinations and myriad other methods to work already in the issue. The launch features work by Tom Jenks, Amy Evans, Martin Dean and Chris Paul Go to the issue
Wednesday 12 December, 2007 [From Everyone's Cup of Tea:] Royal Holloway Poetic Pricktease MA at The Foundry, near Old Street, tomorrow (Thurs 13th).
Wednesday 12 December, 2007 'But since Kenny Goldsmith's actual art project is the projection of Kenny Goldsmith, these are the kinds of questions his work passes over in silence.' - Ron Silliman on Kenneth Goldsmith. Link You should watch. Note to Simon Morris: Precious improv music doth not a good documentary make.