Poetry Film programme at MIX Conference 2017, Bath Spa University

I have co-curated a Poetry Film programme exploring the concepts of Revolution, Regeneration, and Reflection for the Mix Conference at Bath Spa University.

MIX Conference is organised by the Bath Spa University School of Humanities and Creative Industries. The conference will look at where creative writing, storytelling, and media creation intersect with and/or are dependent upon technology. The programme features a vibrant mix of academic papers, practitioner presentations, seminars, keynotes, film screenings, discussions, and workshops.

The Poetry Film programme will be screened on 10-12 July 2017, running continuously in the Viewing Theatre.

To celebrate the human capacity for renewal and experimentation, combined with deep thought, the themes for MIX 2017 are Revolution, Regeneration, and Reflection. Twenty films have been selected from the international submissions received. The programme has been curated by Lucy English (Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, co- founder of Liberated Words) and  Zata Banks FRSA, founder of PoetryFilm, the influential research art project and film screening series.

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Daata at the Venice Biennale 2017

Daata Editions will be at the Venice Biennale in collaboration with Zuecca Projects, May – August 2017.

The Daata Editions Mixtape for the Venice Biennale 2017 includes two artists (Susanne Weigner and C.O. Moed.) who were chosen by me and commissioned by Daata as part of the Daata Season Two commission series on the theme of “Poetry”.

If you are attending the Venice Biennale, please do come and view the Daata Editions Mixtape.

Featuring artists: David Blandy, Jacky Connolly, Jeremy Couillard, Casey Jane Ellison, Yung Jake, Daniel Keller & Martti Kalliala, Sara Ludy, Rachel Maclean, C.O. Moed, Scott Reeder, Charles Richardson, Artie Vierkant, Susanne Wiegner, Saya Woolfalk, Zadie Xa.

PoetryFilm at Millfield

It was a pleasure to return to Millfield School on Wednesday 3 May 2017 to present a talk and short screening programme.

PoetryFilm at CSW Torun (documentation)

Documentation of the PoetryFilm screening and talk at CSW Torun in February 2017 is below. The event took place in the “RGB Cinema”.

Malina Barcikowska, Zata Banks

Radosław Osiński, Zata Banks, Tomasz Dalasiński, Malina Barcikowska and Michał Pranke at Kino Centrum

Daata Editions launch at Soho Hotel (documentation)

Documentation of the Daata Editions Season Two launch at the Soho Hotel Cinema, London, in February 2017, is below.

Zenopress: Zeno’s paradoxes

I am delighted to have been commissioned by Zeno Press to contribute to a forthcoming anthology exploring the themes of Zeno’s paradoxes. The book will feature works by artists and writers who have been asked to respond to nine of the most known paradoxes.

Invitation: Zata Banks FRSA selects new poetry artworks for Daata Editions – The Soho Hotel Screening Room 21 Feb 2017

Daata Editions presents:

Laura Focarazzo, Kate Jessop, C.O. Moed, Julian Scordato, Susanne Wiegner, Antoinette Zwirchmayr.

Selected by Zata Banks FRSA

A short screening and a Q&A with Kate Jessop and Zata Banks, introduced by David Gryn.

The Soho Hotel Screening Room, 4 Richmond Mews, London W1D 3DH

Tuesday 21 February 2017, 6.30pm-8pm

Tickets are FREE

Please RSVP by Wed 15 Feb to info@daata-editions.com (as numbers are limited)

Contact: David on +447711127848

http://daata-editions.com

MIX 2017: Revolutions, Regenerations, Reflections

I am delighted to be co-curating the poetry film programme for Mix Conference 2017 at Bath Spa University, 10-12 July 2017.

After the success of the last three MIX conferences, MIX 2017 returns to Bath Spa University’s Newton Park Campus. Bath Spa University is the UK’s foremost provider of creative writing programmes at undergraduate, masters and PhD level and MIX is well-established as an innovative forum for the discussion and exploration of writing and technology. MIX has attracted an international cohort of contributors from the UK, Australia, and Europe as well as North and South America. MIX is now situated within the recently created international research centres, Making Books: Creativity, Print Culture and the Digital, and the Media Convergence Research Centre.

The themes for this year’s conference are revolutions, regenerations, reflections. We would like to encourage artists/poets and digital writers to submit poetry films/ film poems/ video poetry to be screened during MIX in our Viewing Theatre at Newton Park campus.

The films will be selected and curated by Lucy English, Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, and Zata Banks, founder of PoetryFilm research art project https://poetryfilm.org

www.mixconference.org

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British Concrete Poetry 1960-1980

INTEGRATION ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH
Selected works of British Concrete Poetry 1960-1980
Curated by Andrew Hunt

3 February, 2016 – 24 March, 2017
PV 2 February 6-8pm

Richard Saltoun is pleased to present an exhibition of works of concrete poetry rarely seen in the UK, including artists Henri Chopin, Bob Cobbing, Kenelm Cox, Tom Edmonds, John Furnival, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Peter Mayer, Charles Verey and Edward Wright.

Taking its title from a work by Bob Cobbing, Integration Alone Is Not Enough points to the ongoing synthesis between media initiated by the concrete poetry movement – a fusion of poetry and painting, literature and sound art, typography and Eastern phenomenology – that continues in other art formstoday, and relates in part to what Rosalind Krauss has called the ‘post-medium condition’, a non-hierarchical index, or entwined helix of specialised genres and modes of production that holds ongoing potential for contemporary art.

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NYC Type Directors Club Exhibition and talk by Charles Nix

The Typographic Circle are pleased once again to host the NYC Type Directors Club Exhibition during its travels around the world.In addition to hosting the exhibition, we will also have the pleasure of a talk by Charles Nix, Chairman emeritus of the Type Directors Club. Charles Nix is an American designer, typographer, and educator. He is Chairman emeritus of the Type Directors Club and has spent the last 25 years designing books and typefaces, and teaching typography and graphic design. Since 2015, he has been a Senior Type Designer at Monotype in New York.There will be opportunity to view the exhibition following the talk. Join us for a drink while looking at beautiful award-winning typographic work.

Paterson’s dimensions

Another One
Ron Padgett 
When you’re a child
you learn
there are three dimensions:
height, width, and depth.
Like a shoebox.
Then later you hear
there’s a fourth dimension:
time.
Hmm.
Then some say
there can be five, six, seven…
I knock off work,
have a beer
at the bar.
I look down at the glass
and feel glad.

Ron Padgett

*article below written by Elizabeth Flock for PBS Artbeat

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The Physarum Experiments, Studio Ex Purgamento

15 January 2017

To mark the last day of the exhibition at Studio Ex Purgamento, curator Natalia Zagorska-Thomas and artist Heather Barnett talked about interspecies creativity, control and authorship, examining the intelligent slime mould, Physarum polycephalum (image above). Questions explored the agency of organisms, nonhuman subjectivity, and interdisciplinary enquiry. The discussion was followed by a Live Morsing sound art performance by Zata Banks, a sonic transcreation of a piece of visual art called “Warm/Hunger” featured in Maintenant 10(0), the annual anthology of contemporary Dada writing and art published by Three Rooms Press in New York. 2016 marked the 100 year anniversary of Dada. Thanks to Natalia for a marvellous event.

PoetryFilm Workshop at TOGETHER! Disability Festival, December 2016

In December 2016, I was invited to run a two-day workshop exploring poetry film with the TOGETHER! Disability Film Club in West Ham, London.

This was a two-day workshop for disabled artists and filmmakers, and was hosted by the TOGETHER! Photographers and Filmmakers Club at the Grassroots centre in Memorial Park West Ham. The workshop was co-facilitated by Julie Newman (Together! 2012), Ju Gosling, (TOGETHER! Festival Director) and me (Director of PoetryFilm). Filmmakers had requested the topic of poetry film, and it also made the workshop attractive to participants in the TOGETHER! Pop-Up Poetry Club.

After discussing different kinds of poetry films and screening a number of examples, the group began to develop and build their own creative ideas for a poetry film, and filming began. The second day was spent filming, recording and editing three brand new poetry films which were screened the following day at the Film Festival.

The works featured paintings, text-on-screen, voiceover, sound art, tessellation, zoom in and zoom out, and visual treatments to a single photograph. Film stills are below.

Christmas – Kathleen Jackson

The Gatepost – Alison Marchant

Right place, right time – Kirwin Gibson

#Nous Sommes Paris: poetry anthology from Eyewear Books

On 13 November 2015, a series of mass shootings erupted in Paris.

On 13 November 2016, Eyewear Books published #Nous Sommes Paris, an anthology commemorating the outpouring of support and empathy with the victims immediately after the attacks and attempting to recapture the collective, human response to the horror, prior to its use as a political tool.

My poem Le Pavillon des Lettres is included in the collection.

https://store.eyewearpublishing.com/products/noussommesparis

Zebra Poetry Film Festival 2016

ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster | Berlin

I was delighted to attend the biennial ZEBRA Festival 2016 – this year it took place in Münster, Germany, at a beautiful Art Deco cinema with all the original interior features. The press release is below including a list of the winning poetry films.

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Language and Light

Art Language Location (ALL) is an art festival taking place between 13 – 29 October 2016 in locations throughout Cambridge, featuring innovative and experimental contemporary artists, from across the UK and beyond, who use text in their work.

“The Act of Creation” is a collaborative artwork by Zata Banks FRSA and Joe Banks, and is the winner of the Cambridge Assessment Award for an artwork on the theme of “language and light”. It was commissioned by Art Language Location for exhibition at the Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge, 13 – 29 October 2016. Thanks to Art Language Location and to Cambridge Assessment.

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A lost George Méliès film has been unlost

Researchers at the Czech national film archives have found a film by early cinema pioneer Georges Méliès that was thought to have been lost forever.

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Happy (Poetry) Palindrome Day: 6 10 2016

Palindromes invited.

Art Language Location Festival 2016

I am delighted to be one of the featured artists at Art Language Location Festival 2016 (Cambridge, UK). The invitation to the Private View on Thursday 13 October is below.

Maintenant 10(0) launch celebrating 100 Years of DADA (documentation)

DADA! Saturday 3 September 2016 at The Horse Hospital, Bloomsbury

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CCR competition finalist 2016: Accidentals (recalculated)

Accidentals (recalculated)
Ian Gibbins

The work fuses mathematics with poetry and showcases the aesthetics of equations. ~ Zata

accidentals (recalculated), the probability that accidents do happen, if you slip and fall, fly too close to the sun, if your car runs off the road, if you cut your finger, miss a secret assignation, catch (or not) a slip of the tongue, when words fail, when all you have left is abstraction, operators, a lasting approximation, a mathematician’s code

IAN GIBBINS retired in 2014 after a career as an internationally recognized neuroscientist for 30 years and Professor of Anatomy for 20 of them at Flinders University, South Australia. He is a widely published poet in-print and on-line, working across diverse styles and media, including electronic music, video, performance, and public art installations. He has produced three collections of poetry: “Urban Biology” (2012); “The Microscope Project: How Things Work” (2014; with artists Catherine Truman and Deb Jones) and “Floribunda” (2015, with artist Judy Morris). Ian also has a significant role running the Adelaide Festival of Ideas.

CCR competition winner 2016: Haiku

Haiku
Saebom Kim

The artwork is an invitation, a compelling silent film that draws parallels with the haiku form. Using visual images as its vocabulary, this understated and powerful film demonstrates the power of simplicity in evoking emotion and plural meanings. ~ Zata

Please note that Haiku is the first film in this Vimeo showreel, 0:00-1:45 seconds.

All miniature videos and texts are oriented in the form and structure of Japanese Haiku.

“Zwischenraum / Space in Between” HD 00-01:45. The two persons are in the same place, but we don´t know how close or far they are from each other.

SAEBOM KIM is a filmmaker, media & sound artist, writer and photographer. Born 1985 in Seoul, Korea, she studied film making and film sound at the Korea National University of Arts. During this time, she made several short fiction films and worked for film sound. In 2011 she moved to Berlin and studied Art and Media at Berlin University of the Arts where she has expanded her artworks in diverse and experimental ways. She currently lives and works in Berlin.

CCR competition finalist 2016: All of Us

All of Us
Pawel Granjert

A twenty-second metaphor about the human condition that piques both individual memory and the collective mind. ~ Zata

PAWEL GRAJNERT is a writer and filmmaker who works in the US and Europe.

CCR competition finalist 2016: October Fourth

October Fourth
Video making by Giacomo (Jack) Daverio
Poem and performance by Francesca Gironi
Music by Luca Losacco
Translation by Francesca Girono and Maria Cleary

A strong example of a dance-led poetry film incorporating sound design, visual layering and a voiceover poem about the self. ~ Zata

Ironic dialogue between poetry and video art. Self escape becomes hyper presence.

FRANCESCA GIRONI  is an Italian dance artist, performer and poet. She has been active in the field of contemporary dance and performance both as a dancer and an independent choreographer since 2008. She has taken part in dance festivals, showcases for young choreographers, poetry festivals and artistic residencies all around Italy. She was a finalist in LIPS Italian championship of poetry slam 2015 and 2016. Her first poetry film was selected for screening in Doctor Clip Poetry Film Festival 2015. Her poem “Cuore” has been included in the Italian anthologies of spoken poetry SLAM.IT and Guida Liquida al poetry slam. She has a degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures and a Master in German from Dalhousie University, Halifax (Canada).
website: http://www.diadi.org
poetry blog: http://laterzapolaroid.tumblr.com

GIACOMO (JACK) DAVERIO is an Italian Film maker. After a degree in performance studies and new media from Urbino University, he started making artistic videos and specialized in time-lapse techniques. He worked with several artists, art institutions and contexts: from street art to cultural organizations (Massenzio Arte, Fondo Frasca’, Tecnologia Filosofica); from museum (Macro, Museo Del 900, Castello Di Rivoli, Palazzo Calicola di Spoleto) to art galleries (Terna, Fuxin Gallery, 999 Contemporary, Galo Art GAllery).
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/immonda

LUCA LOSACCO is a musician and composer. He composes electronic music for dance pieces and plays for young audience. He has worked with theatre companies and choreographers in several productions.

CCR competition finalist 2016: Julia Child’s Legs

Julia Child’s Legs
Christy Sheffield Sanford

This language-led work was chosen for its unexpected tone of voice communicated through text-on-screen, and for its sound design and visual tracking. ~ Zata

Julia Child’s Legs is an animated prose poem from The Hem-nal, a multimedia collaborative project with Charlotte M. Porter. The overall theme is how time, place and culture circumscribe existence. Emphasis is placed on often neglected parts of women’s lives. A persistent question is how the public versus private space is determined.

Appearing throughout the various pieces are “birds” used for centuries in literature to send omens or personify human emotion and “tongues” used in the present work to symbolize exposing taboos or intimate thoughts. A skirt that moves and blows in the wind becomes a weighted image implying how much is revealed and how much freedom is enjoyed.

I am sometimes stitching up a scene, sometimes hoping to rip out a heart. I try to free the bird and save the sequins, no matter how chipped. I need glinting light to track the beasts, uncloak phantoms that render us mute and helpless. “Hems” are a metaphor for limits placed on unexplored territory.

Photoshop and I-Movie were the basic animation programs used. The music “Toasterbottle” by Dave Howes was found at the archive.org.

CHRISTY SHEFFIELD SANFORD lives three blocks from the majestic St. Johns River in northeast Florida.  Her mp4 “Awakening” is in Light Ekphrastic’s May issue as part of a collaboration with Margo Lemieux. Sanford won the recent Bacopa Literary Review cover contest, and her art was featured on the cover of Yellow Chair Issue 6 in March. Her long poem “Portrait of Yet Another Lady” is online at The Ekphrastic Review.  Sanford holds an M.A. in Creative Writing and Interarts from Antioch University and has won an NEA Fellowship in Poetry.  She is the author of seven small press books including The Cowrie Shell Piece (Baroque and Rococo Strains), Only the Nude Can Redeem the Landscape and The Hs: the Spasms of a Requiem.

CCR competition finalist 2016: Whatever You Do, Don’t Move

Whatever You Do, Don’t Move
Imee Cuison

A concrete poetry film featuring considered typographic design, sound design and a main visual image all aligned with the creative concept and message.~ Zata

CCR competition Special Mention 2016: Playing With Strings

CCR poetry film competition 2016

Special Mention

Playing With Strings
An accomplished entry from 16 year old Peighton Tubre.

The director, cinematographer, and editor of this film is Peighton Tubre. Peighton is 16 years old and is a sophomore in Media Arts at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA). She is pursuing a career in film and directing.

Peighton collaborated with poet Lily Hauge who wrote the poem for this film. Lily is 16 years old and is a junior at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) Creative Writing department.

Carbon Culture Review Poetry Film Competition 2016 – winners announced soon

The Carbon Culture Review (CCR) poetry film competition winner and finalists will be announced shortly. I enjoyed watching the 85 international submissions and was delighted to be invited to judge this wonderful competition celebrating creativity.

DAATA Editions Season Two Curated Commissions

I was delighted to be invited to curate the “Poetry” strand of the Daata Editions Series Two commissions. More details coming soon.

“Daata Editions commissions artist video, sound, poetry and web. This new and innovative way to collect art is designed specifically to be a native platform to a new generation of artists who work with moving image and sound. Limited edition artworks can be viewed and acquired as digital downloads.” https://daata-editions.com