Ian McMillan’s ‘the Verb’ on BBC Radio 3 has accompanied my news blackout of the last few months. I quit listening to or reading about current affairs after I realised it was mostly bad news, not ‘bad’ in the gloomy sense but rather the ‘inaccurate’. So it was fun to realise while listening to the show that he was the man we would be workin with on the London Word Festival official poster for 2010. We’re very pleased with the result.

Here is a review of his work by Lauren Romano:

We all shuffle up and take a pew as the proceedings begin. First up, specially commissioned poet Ian McMillan takes to the stage to perform the festival’s official Chip Shop Poem. McMillan gets things off to a flying start as his thickly laden Yorkshire glottal stops spurt out from his mouth at break neck speed. By the time we actually get to the Chip Shop poem, The Epic Friday Night Travels of Norman McNorman I am in a mild state of hysterics and so unfortunately can’t recall the finer details, but it’s very funny, ingenious and has something to do with a man called Norman and a late night trip to the Chip Shop. Hats off to Ian who manages to get the words ‘pigeon’, ‘fusspot’, ‘crepuscular’, ‘incandescent’, ‘hopscotch’, and ‘jump’ along with other maverick mots into a well-rhymed jumble with a particularly good last line involving the word ’spatula’.

Copies are on sale from the London Word Festival.

We are very pleased to announce the publication of the second book by ‘The nth Convention’ testing, among other things, just how different a second edition can be from the first.

This book is another manifestation of the work ‘The nth Convention’ have been undertaking since a collaboration in Leipzig in 2005. Conversations held at the time that encompassed science, literature, conspiracy theories, the Cold War, and architecture led to sculpture making, photo taking, film making, psychic drawing experiments… The latter became a metaphor for making work ‘as one mind’, making a truly shared body of work. This time the focus is on unravelling the CMYK printing process. Operating like the distinct dots that merge optically to form a full colour picture, the artists have worked together on this test-card-like volume of screenprint experiments and transcripts to create a truly confusing architecture.

Not every page is accessible without the use of a knife.

The book is covered with thin card, wrapped in a poster-print, and comes in a hard blue cloth covered slipcase with ribbon. The silkscreen CMYK prints are divided into three sections with transparent architect’s mylar paper.

We will hear more from The nth Convention in 2010.

We had a good show in the Ultima festival, many moments like Ishiguro’s ‘the Unconsoled’ happen at these festivals, like walking in circles with some composers looking for a restaurant that happens to be below the festival office when we find one, running into a torch-lit park and into a castle then ascending a turret to where we are seated moments before a performance of Kurt Schwitters poetry…

There are good reviews in Norwegian of the show, at least they seem to be once babelfished. Here is one in english

The premise of the night was to hand groups a blank sheet of A3 paper as a programme and then to print on it throughout the night as the performances accumulated. We finished the evening with a folding ceremony where the audience followed our instructions from the front to fold the sheet down and form the individual pages.

The audience recieved two screenprints on their way in, the performers then downing tools to take to the stage.

In the interval we dressed like cinema ushers to deliver another print, this time with sponges and fluorescent paint. If you can ever find an aged cinema, you get sold your ticket by the guy behind the desk. Next you go get some popcorn and the same guy comes in and puts on an apron. Then  he takes your ticket at the door, you are the only cinema-goer, and then he comes during the intermission with a tray and wearing a hat. That’s the kind of thing that we were thinking of here.

June last year many of you will remember the show we did with Half-handed Cloud in the Foundry, where the basement was adapted to be a giant record player. The poster we released at that show has followed us ever since - at dinner with friends and at  parties we are occassionally greeted by one of the edition as we enter their home.

Now fans of H-hC in the USA can buy the poster through the Asthmatic Kitty record label. And a new release compiling the dispirate and sometimes ephemeral H-hC releases is also just out.

Next week we’ll be off to Bergen in Norway with the group InterInterInter for the Borealis Festival.  At the PrInterPrInterPrInter blog, dedicated to this project, you’ll be able to take part in what we’re doing through the comment facilities and see what we’re doing as it happens! You can also see stuff at the InterInterInter blog, and the Borealis Festival website.

We are doing our show where we make a book in a night at the end of the festival. Pages will be printed at the audience tables cabaret style and the activities thereon will relate to the music performances about to take place. The pages are then compiled into a single site specific book with improvised pressing equipment like upturned tables and punters drinking their pints. This will be the third in the series after Bethnal Green and Gent {Belgium}.  

In addition we will be doing events with the audience throughout the festival, including shows in the street and at a horse-racing track. We will be bringing two new inventions to bear on this part of the event. Firstly conversations recorded on A3 manilla cards will be continually added to a bergen-box-blog; a primitive computer made of categorised manilla cards in a cloth-bound box accessed with a knitting needle that penetrates the haystack of notes and doodles through holes at the top of the page. Secondly we’ll be using the ‘Interbet’, an interactive alphabet suitable for A sizes composed of PDFs that need some puzzling and assembling once printed. We’ll be making the Interbet available soon!

We had a great night last weekend when we performed our first live print music ballad with Jon Bilbrough at Stoke Newington International airport for the London Word Festival. The last few copies are available through our order form, or if you stop us in the street and ask for one {saves on postage}. Most were snapped up from the line while they were still wet. There are a few videos already online if you search for them, but here is our own humble contribution placed on the centre for Eternal Return that is Youtube

We’ve been asked to come up with a show for the London Word Festival so we will be performing with Indie-folk musician Jon Bilbrough at the Stoke Newington International Airport on Saturday 7th March, probably taking to the stage around 8.30pm. There will be music and live printing and a new publication available in and on the night! 

We know times are hard. People are finding it difficult to make ends meet, and just when you need a bit of beauty in your life, you can’t afford any art! Not so - thanks to Eddie Farrell and the Henningham Family Press. Many visitors admired our credit crunch print that we made with Eddie and hung in our kitchen, so we thought we’d make it available from our shelf for a very affordable £9.99! While stocks last! We’d have performed a price check or given you a price promise, but there’s nothing out there quite like this to compare it to.

Is it a bleak breakfast or a reminder that the things that matter are still abundant? I think the latter.

The2009calendar was just put on sale as is now sold out. I think that took about 10 days? Well done Sarah, Michael and Natalia, that was a great project to be involved in. First of all it looks amazing, but also a lot of people took part.

So on the 1st Jan a year-long exhibition begins for those lucky enough to have bought one. 

www.the2009calendar.com 

A kind member of the audience had posted a video of what they saw at the event in the Foundry recently. I really like the way they’ve managed to get in the explanation of the whole event AND credits to everybody in the band.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjrjZt5E4X8

We also have some footage that we will edit and release later.