Counting Backwards #5

Contact: countingback@yahoo.co.uk, http://countingbackwards.posterous.com

Counting Backwards is a series of text-sound-performance events. It takes place on the first Thursday of alternate months at Fuel Cafe Bar in Withington. This fifth evening in the series has performances from Philip Davenport, James Davies, Juxtavoices, and Helen Shanahan.


Philip Davenport is a poet whose work manifests as billposters, wallpaper, 3D o...bjects, soundworks. He has curated retrospectives of Bob Cobbing and Ian Hamilton Finlay and exhibited his own work in numerous art shows in the UK (most recently at the Henry Moore Institute) China and Holland. Davenport has been heavily involved in organising the Text Festival, the leading UK gathering of experimental poetry and text art. His forthcoming residency project in the US at Buffalo will take place summer 2011.

James Davies' poetry includes the sequences Manual Handling Process at Beard of Bees and Acronyms at onedit, issue 11. Plants is forthcoming from Reality Street in the first part of 2011. He also collaborates with Simon Taylor to form Joy as Tiresome Vandalism: two collections - aRb (if p then q) and Absolute Elsewhere (Knives Forks and Spoons Press). Between 2006-8 James edited the cult object Matchbox. From 2008 he's been running as the publisher if p then q. Also organiser of The Other Room reading series and website.

Juxtavoices is a large choir formed by Martin Archer in early 2010, whose membership is open to any singer irrespective of training. The repertoire mixes simple scores and instructions with improvised elements, which often allow the choir to determine the shape of the music as it progresses.

"The possibilities are endless... chanting... incantations... howling... wailing...speaking in tongues... interwoven with lines of other stuff... folksy, bluesy, gospelly, punky, funky, jazzy, plainsong, hymnals or whatever...? Its barking!"

Helen Shanahan is an artist who works in various media. Her main emphasis is on moving image, creating a mixture of narrative cinema and video art . Helen’s work explores the complexities and ambiguities of intimate relationships and often centres on the theme of grief and loss. Helen’s recent work includes the abandonments blog, where she documents her ‘desertion’ of miniature sculptures of loved ones in obscure locations. She is 27 and lives in Manchester.

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Counting Backwards is Richard Barrett, Matt Dalby and Gary Fisher

Entry: Free

Time: 7:30pm