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2/11/2004

Arthur Rimbaud

291 Gallery, London

Event Number Three-Four-Five.

In association with NYU In London & Spool - Pool

Arthur Rimbaud 1854 - 1891.
"I say you have to be a visionary, make yourself a visionary. A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless and systematic derangement of the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself; he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessence's. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed and supreme scientist| For he attains the unknown"
Arthur Rimbaud

A few months ago a group of friends met for some food and drink. As the evening progressed and the wine flowed so did our merriment. Consequently the conversations expanded as topics accumulated. At one point in the evening Herve Constant brings up the name Antonin Artaud - this name is indirectly responsible for these events. Before long other names were spontaneously sprouting from our mouths. Lautreamont, Jarry, Baudelaire, Mallarme. Like a game of associations, the conversation at the table was heading straight into symbolist terrain. Then someone said..." Rimbaud, it's the anniversary of his birth soon".

Poets, writers, filmmakers, performers and painters from different nationalities and diverse practices responded to the project plan and the momentum of collective engagement began, with Rimbaud as the illumination. These events were created avoiding excessive academicism and mythological corpse carrying; the agenda is simply to celebrate Rimbaud the poet and to simultaneously explore his influence on contemporary culture.

This evenings events are dedicated to our fellow artists and their guests at La Maison des Ailleurs. 7, quai Arthur Rimbaud 08000 Charleville/Mezieres
Who are at this moment doing precisely what we are|

P E R F O R M A N C E

In the Main Hall:
Performance 'Premiere Soiree' by Matteo Licitra 15min.
A rare performance by Avant-garde composer and performance artist Matteo Licitra takes us through his musical spectrum of light and colour evoking the complexity and rigour of Rimbaud's poetry. Licitra's music At times Echo's the analytical piano of Milton Babbit and the frenetic aggression of Charlemagne Palestine.

Performance Live music by Gamine.
Like fellow monochrome romantics Goldfrapp, THIS London duo would have been more at home in early 60s Paris. All grand pianos in empty rooms and end-of- the affair longing, their desolate laments echo with tenderness and a beauty that is both very French and incredibly bleak. For every floating
arpeggio played by composer Ian Williams, there is a minor comedown to undercut singer Claudia Barton's serene swoon.
'Street in Manhattan's' slurred trumpet and 'Black Widow's' sleazy tango compound the general air of innocence corrupted, and with Barton's melodies being as sinister as they are seductive, Gamine are absolutely enchanting. - Q, April 2003.

A B S E N C E A S P R E S E N C E

Film presented as Installation: Arthur Rimbaud, Une Biographie. Richard Dindo. Switzerland/France. 1991.
35mm.140min.

"My films revolve around absence" Swiss documentary
maker Richard Dindo has said, but the phrase, however felicitous, is misleading. While it is true that the subjects of most of his films are dead and thus literally "absent" from the frame, his films also have a greater feeling of "presence" - in the Buddhist sense of existing "in the moment" - than the work of his peers.
Dindo achieves this effect by relying primarily on eyewitness accounts, original texts and authentic environments and landscapes to gradually immerse the viewer in the world of his subjects. Dindo, born in 1944 made his first film in 1970 and has added more than a dozen since
then, no mean feat for a filmmaker working in this realm. A Marxist by inclination, Dindo gravitates to rebels, but his work is far from visual agitprop. He has a formalist
sensibility that gives a sense of beauty and possibility even to the most downbeat material.

R E A D I N G S - S P O K E N W O R D

In the screening room and bar area

Reading: The short poems of Arthur Rimbaud by Herve Constant (this reading will be in French) 10min.

Reading 2: 'Illuminations' Arthur Rimbaud by Oliver Bernard. 20min

Reading 4: 'En Marche' Arthur Rimbaud by Cristina Viti. 10min.

Reading 5: (title) by Susana Medina. (duration)

Reading 6: 'Black love' by Gad Hollander. 14min

Reading 8: 'Mystic on the wild side' by Peter Mcgurie. 15min.

Reading 10: 'Some thoughts & paraphrases on voids' Louis Benassi. 8min.

Reading 11: Niall McDevitt delivers his anecdotal story about his nocturnal visit to Rimbaud's tomb. Niall also reads his own poem 'Song of the Highest Tower'

F I L M S

'L'Amour Reinvente'. Maurice Lemaitre. France. 1979. 16mm. 15min.
"If, as Rimbaud asked, love must be reinvented, this can only be done by Poets, to whom it already owes its birth.
And the new forms it will take can only be described - filmed - by poets, notably poets of the screen. Can one still make unheard sounds and unseen images today? That was the wager of this film". Maurice Lemaitre.

'Promenaux' Stefano Canapa. Italy. 2000-01. 16mm. 12min.
This film contains footage of Rimbaud's handwriting on various manuscripts and documents also the reputable Americian filmmaker Yann Beauvais Reads fragments from Rimbaud's poems. This film has a strong visual aesthetic but at the same time firmly located within the literary parameters of its subject matter.

The Red Sea. Michael Maziere. U.K. 1992. 16mm. 25min.
"Now I drift through the poem of the sea, this gruel of stars mirrors the milky sky. Devours green azures, ecstatic flotsam. Drowned en, pale and thoughtful, sometimes drift by. Staining the sudden blueness of the, slow sounds, deliriums that streak the glowing sky, stronger than drink and the songs we sing, it is boiling, bitter, and red. It is love! - Rimbaud 'The Drunken Boat' This film is a subjective testament to an emotional and aesthetic journey.
Touching on sensuality and pain and the inevitability of loss, the film moves across territories of significant yet unresolved images. As in a dream text, the viewer is left in a state of interpretation with a great emphasis on the experimental. Michael Maziere.

Gilded Eternity. Louis Benassi & Jane Fredericks. U.K. 2004.
Mixed formats on mini dv. 8mins.
Portraits of Rimbaud and images of symbolic association are tied together with optical fibre inscribing into space, representing the gesture of transient writing, The speculative question being.....why did Rimbaud stop writing?

Le Poeme. Boogdan Borkowski. France. 1985. 16mm. 12min.
This film consists of the step - by - step filming of the dissection of a human corpse, accompanied by the sound of an impassioned reading of Rimbaud's great poem ' The Drunken Boat'. The painful images of the corpse under dissection combined with the imagery of Rimbaud's poem
produce a strangely unique aesthetic effect, " Le Poeme was made to express a thought, a sentiment, that I felt one night while walking in Monparnanasse, Paris. I wanted to convey that moment, in which an extreme poetic enthusiasm was mixed with an extreme sadness". Boogdan Borkowski.

Histoire de Rien..du Tout. Gilles Breton. France. 1984.
Super 8. 8min.
Composed of five episodes. This is a modest history of love, realised self-reflexively by the light on a writing bureau, near a potted plant. A minute later we are by a jukebox in a New York bar. Rimbaud appears. Drinking a glass of absinthe and observing his surroundings. In the corner of the bar the T.V spews out its spectacular rhetoric. The bar has two spaces- in the terrace, a young girl demands a light from a young man, and then she marches off into the distance. Rimbaud, allegedly fell in love with a young girl he noticed one day while riding what we now know as the
Bakerloo line.

Film 7: (title) George Saxon. UK. (date format)

FILM 8: Et le Cochon fut ne (And the Pig was Born) Julius Ziz. USA/France. 2000. 16mm. 25min.
Info to follow

Film 8: 'The Poets' Julius Ziz. USA/France. (date) 16mm. 8min.
Info to follow

V I D E O

'La Chanson Du Teinturier' ( The Dyer Song) Marco Zoi & Carlo Fatigoni. Italy. 2004. DVD. 10min.

An interpretation of Rimbaud's poem Voyelles. Rare ethnographic film footage is juxtaposed with digital techniques. "This work does not wish to be biographical, its aim is to create a sonorous carpet of time, sound, imagery and colour a fusion of the senses as a tribute to one of the greatest poets" Marco Zoi

'The King who was a King'. Benn Northover. U.K. 2004.
mini-dv. 15min.
This work gives us an insight into the thought and working philosophies of musician and poet, Augustas Varkalis.
Renowned, for his sublime piano compositions for film makers, Jonas Mekas and Julius Ziz, in this portrait Varkalis fluctuates between serene celestial tranquillity and possessed demonic anger as he addresses the dichotomy of the real, illusion, authentic, fraudulence and the geo-political actuality of being a displaced artist in New York, beauty in the chaos. Benn Northover captures the
passionate articulations, of a great if somewhat Mystical and Cartesian Artist.

"To be or not to be...to be! to be!"

'Photographs from vacation and somewhere else'. Manuela Corti. Italy. 2004. mini-dv. 3min.
"Photographs from Vacation and Somewhere Else is a tour, a re-visitation of many places I have been or I imagined I have been. The marks I add to the images are the tracks of my passage and of that action I wanted to circumscribe, and which return the deceptive tri - dimensional perspective of the postcard back to two dimensions. They are places of remembrance, but also places unknown. Places, therefore, where memory imagines other places, or the action on a single space, that wants to contain them all". Manuela Corti

'Arthur Rimbaud, Liberte Libre'. Jean - Philippe Perrot. France. 1998. mini-dv. 45min.
An epic voyage beginning in the Ardennes and ending in Ethiopia with Rimbaud. poet, adventurer, and merchant. A picturesque, tragic and startling journey far removed from the myths and hagiographies. Jean - Philippe Perrot uses emotions more than description and manages to release the deep and immutable forces of a life driven by the quest for "free freedom" the film contains images of incredible beauty as well as rare and previously unreleased archive material and animations accompanied by a sound track worthy of a full length feature film. This experimental documentary has a genuinely innovative style that makes it quite exceptional.

Athar, Sur Les Traces De Rimbaud En Afrique. Jean - Philippe Perrot. France. 1998. Betacam. 55min.

Aden, Djibouti, Obock, Tadjourah, Lake Assal, Ankober, Entoto, Awash, Dire Dawa, Harrar: Ethiopia, here are the main stops of a faraway journey on the tracks of Rimbaud, in the horn of contemporary Africa. We follow the main itinerary of "the man with sole in the wind" and we discover with fascination the real life of these geographical areas, the people, the customs in these
landscapes we reveal an important part of the life of poet turned adventurer.

Une Saison en Enfer. Carla Della Beffa. Italy. 2004. Video.
1min 25sec.
As Rimbaud wrote "Crisis come and go, just like the seasons. But they hurt each time. Sometimes I wonder whether it's possible to avoid at least some of the grieving and burning" Carla de la Betta began making videos in 2000.Three of her video works were selected for the Polyphonic festival, Paris 2002. Une Saison en Enfer is her eleventh video.

Les Assis. Marina Gasparini. Italy. 2004. flash on mini-dv.
3min.
In this short piece Marina Gasparini approaches the poem 'Les Assis' from a feminist perspective. "In my work I often use poetic texts and words that have a semantic curiosity. In this case it is a challenge for me to use a poem by Rimbaud, more so since I am a woman, and I believe that Rimbaud had an ambivalence towards women". Marina Gasparini

Hand Ballet. Herve Constant. U.K/France. 2004 video. 2min
45sec.
This work depicts a series of hand gestures evoking emotions such as tension, aggression and tenderness, while at the same time illustrating the semantic- to wash ones hands of it - to refute the responsibility or confrontation, like Pilate and Jesus, or like Rimbaud washing his hands of his career in poetry and of Paris choosing instead to leave, disappear in search of peace and repose elsewhere. "Real life is absent" or " I is someone else"

Wrapping Unwrapping. Herve Constant. U.K./France. 2004.
Video. 3min 30sec.
A man is covering and uncovering his head. To start with, he presents a bundle of textile strips as a gesture of offering; he would like us to participate and to engage in his metaphoric suicide. It is a means of drawing attention to his plight and represents his desire to disappear from
reality. However, when he has finished wrapping himself, his impulse is to breath again. He wishes to continue the journey he feels optimistic. This short piece is a variation on the "Myth of Sisyphus". The man was seen pushing a heavy rock up a mountain just to see it roll back into the
valley. In an act of absurd reoccurrence he descends the mountain to start again.

Video 11: Swallow. Renato Meneghetti. Italy. 1981.
mini-dv.2min 20sec.
Info to follow

Video 12:Nulla Vita Ex Hoc Pane. Renato Meneghetti. Italy
2002. mini-dv. 4min 50sec.
Info to follow

Video 13:An Invasion Of Privacy Invaded. Renato Meneghetti.
Italy 1999. mini-dv.9min.
Info to follow

Video14: 'En Marche' by Gad Hollander & Cristina Viti.
UK. 2004. mini-dv 8min.
Info to follow

' the palaver transcription'. Gad Hollander. UK.
2000. mini-dv. 37min.
While the text deals with what Edmond Jabès calls "the impossibility of writing" - an attempt to grasp the essence of writing, the pause in speech - the video turns on the impossibility of touching, the distance of desire. The desire to speak and to touch informs the narrative and
its successive digressions at every frame and every syllable. A narrator invokes "a voice in the shape of a window" while conferring that invocation upon a third person, "corse" (corpse). The voice has a shape and the corpse has a voice, and the two interlocutors face each other in an undefined space, like analyst and analysed, facets of the same character at different stages of being - alive and dead. The internal monologue of the presumed narrator is externalised in the corpse of a suicide victim, who addresses his own self in the past. Gad Hollander.

Video 16: 'And he turned his face into the wind' Julius Ziz. USA/France. 2004. mini-dv. 20min.
Info to follow
_________

Biographical information on writers and curators

Oliver Bernard: Member of British Actors Equity and holds the Poetry Society Gold Medal for verse speaking. He was for seven years a Drama Advisor in education, and has done prose readings for BBC Radio 4 and Anglia TV, and voice over's for Channel 4 production companies. He has published several books and pamphlets. Anvil Press Poetry now publishes his Apollinaire selection originally published by Penguin in a revised and expanded edition.

Herve Constant: Born in Casablanca. Artist and authority on the work and times of Arthur Rimbaud. He has exhibited his work extensively in the International arena and many of his works belong to reputable collections including the Musee Arthur Rimbaud, Charleville/Mezieres France. Recent projects involve video, photos, audio and Artist's Books.

Manuela Corti: born in Siena, Italy. Since 1990, Corti has devoted herself exclusively to the visual arts, with particular stress on multimedia: video and post-production, digital images and computer image processing and design of interactive works for Internet sites including audio mixing
with intranet connections for collective art works and for presenting literary and philosophical works with hypertext interactivity.

Louis Benassi: born Glasgow. Artist, Filmmaker and Curator, has screened his work and curated artists and experimental cinema in Europe and the U.S.A. The Melbourne Underground Film
Festival, Australia. He is the Founder of The Spool Pool a forum that combines Poetry and spoken word with moving images. He is currently working on 'Convulsions in the Linier' a film based project spanning from the Symbolists to the Situationists.

Cristina Viti: born Milan lives in London. translator and poet. Versions of Apollinaire & Cendrars published in Modern Poetry in Translation & Brindin Press. Currently preparing a new translation of the poetry of Dino Campana and researching the work of other, less well known Italian
poets. Further examples of Cristinas work can be found online.

Niall McDevitt: born (London) actor and poet. Has acted in Neil Oram's 24-hour play 'The Warp', Ken Campbell's 'Pidgin Macbeth' and John Crow's 'The Southwark Mysteries'. He has travelled in Europe as a folk musician - ending up in Corsica, The Island of Beauty. He was one of the organisers of 'The Palace of Wisdom' -a 24-hour poetry symposium in honour of William Blake. He is currently the resident poet at the Hammersmith Irish Centre.

Susana Medina: writer and filmmaker. born in England (Hampshire) in 1966 to a German mother of Czech origin and a Spanish father. After living a few months in Germany, her family moved to Spain (Valencia) in 1968, where she was brought up. Then she studied History of Art and Italian at University College London and lived for a year in Venice and Bologna where she studied at DAMS with Umberto Eco and Dario Fo.

Pete Maguire. Poet and writer. Born Dublin. Initially concentrating on freeform poetry, which has been published in various poetry magazines. His interest in the work of Rimbaud has been
consistent and the short story 'Mystic on the Wild Side' is an acknowledgement to the free expression that Rimbaud advocated.

Wed 3rd - Thur 4th - Fri 5th Nov 2004 7.30pm - 2am.

Admission: £7 - £5 concessions
Bar open till 2am

The 291 Gallery
291 Hackney Road E2 8NA

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