ARTISTS:THE BOOK OF WATER (full posting coming soon)

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John Bennett
War Play 153

Artist Statement:

One quiet Sunday morning, a poet (who carries a camera everywhere and
shoots whatever comes to hand, i.e. a bricoleur) notices play surrounding
him. Homo ludens looks one way then the other, but the country remains at
war.

Credits:
Bird Lane Nettle Brew
John Bennett and John Laidler

About the Artists:
John Bennett: poet, video artist; www.jbpoet.com
John Laidler: editor, sound engineer; www.cutsnakestudio.com

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Alana Hicks
16th September 1975

Artist Statement

The reflection of a day captured on 8mm, by my father, projected onto
moving water, show memories that once solid, are now fluid and unfixed.
Almost without reference point, except for the family in the background that
make it more than a moment in history, but a story captured in time.

About the Artist:
Spoken word artist and conductor of poetic experiments in digital theatre,
featured at Sydney Festival, Biennale of Sydney, Sydney Writers Festival,
Woodford Folk Festival and the dirtiest, darkest pub around the corner from
your house. Published in spoken word anthologies Noise and Rattapalax
and theatre work Oi La Loa Tau produced at the Carnivale Multicultural Arts
Festival.

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Jayne Fenton Keane
"Come He Says"

piece one 2010

Artist Statement

A text borders a subtext. Ocean currents and their rhythms express the
presence of sound even as the silence fuses with light and language to
manifest an eye speaking from deep water. An expression of poetic
osmosis where pixels, colour and form are exaggerated, a whale tale
creates a current and deep ocean forests soothe the eye.

Scenes From Haunted Waters
piece two 2010

Artist Statement

Excerpts from older interactive flash animation poems translated to video to
tell the story of mermaids. From gossiping, to capture for exhibition in an
aquarium, to an expression of their blood as they move onto land and
become a form of hybrid human.

About the Artist:
Jayne Fenton Keane is a poet who works with sound, video, flash, performance, texts and installations. JFK has published books, plays, CDs, websites and academic articles and holds a doctorate in poetics. She is the
founding Director of National Poetry Week and the social network "poets in residence". Please visit her websites at www.poetinresidence.com & http://poetsinresidence.ning.com

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Ruark Lewis
An Index of Kindness – HOMELESSNESS

Artist Statement

An experimental study by two of Australia’s most innovative visual and
performance artists. The work explores the spaces between speech and
text, the space/s between what is written and what is spoken or (how we
write-what we speak), “the blank voice . . . in the mute siloquoy”. write-what we speak), “the blank voice . . . in the mute siloquoy”.

Credits:
Yuji Sone
Director & Editor

About the Artist

Ruark Lewis has worked in an area he calls language art since the mid1980s. His major commissions for public art are for the Sydney Olympic Coordination Authority, Nuit Blanch Festival in Toronto and the Biennale of Sydney in 2006. He is known for his collaborative efforts and his cross-arts and inter-disciplinary practice.

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Carol Jenkins
Cloud Me

Artist Statement

Cloud Me melds a reducto-absurdist satire on Dawkin’s The Selfish
Gene, a quick trip through the water cycle and a sly love story. I’m
smitten with clouds, so I’ve floated the poem over some of my cloud
photo collection and collages about blue prints for babies.

Credits:
Carol Jenkins
Cloud Me is from Fishing in the Devonian, (Puncher &
Wattman 2008)

About the Artist:
Carol Jenkins’ first book of poetry Fishing in the Devonian, was short-listed for the Victorian Premier’s and Anne Elder Prizes. She works as the Director of River Road Press – publishing audio CDs of Australian poetry, writes and lives in Sydney. To view her work:

http://showmethetreasure.blogspot.com

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Gareth Jenkins
Rain Laden

Artist Statement

I have always associated poetry with performance. To my own live
vocal presentations I added projected text and images; the improvised
sound-scapes of musicians soon followed. Creating poetry films came
next – a natural extension of my desire to explore poetry’s expansive
reach, its capacity to inspire expression in myriad mediums.

About the Artist
Dr Gareth S. Jenkins: Gareth currently teaches creative writing and literary studies at the University of Newcastle. His theoretical work focuses on avant-garde literature and art-makers that have experienced
schizophrenia. He holds a Masters degree in psychology and has presented and published his research and hybrid creative works in Australia, Europe and the U.S.A.

He holds a position as an editorial member of the journal ‘Vitalpoetics’.

http://vitalpoetics.com

Visual poetic works:

http://www.lulu.com/content/5879679
http://www.drunkenboat.com/db10/10vis

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Patrick Jones
Wage Slave

Artist Statement

born free of ideology
we are gullible and trusting.
we learn from our elders
and we pass on the abstractions
to our children.
the depression rateevery ten years.

About the Artist the Artist
Patrick Jones is a writer, poet, artist and permaculturalist. His poetry is often written by his body and experienced by an unspecialised reader in public
space; a form of physical graffiti printed or tagged on the retina of the passer-by;abiophysical poetrythatis oftheworld,thatparticipates in what it represents. His work has been featured in ecopoetics (USA), Angelaki (UK),
Spiral Orb (USA), Jacket, Meanjin, Cordite, Trouble, Artlink, D!SSENT and Going Down Swinging, but mostly in everyday life. His physical poetry with Jason Workman (WorkmanJones) was recently featured at MUMA in an
exhibition titled "Too Much of Me: 7 Paths Through the Absurd (with Detour)". Jones is currently committed to a research doctorate within the Writing and Society Group at UWS in the areas of poetics and ecology, and with his
family, The Artist as Family, is currently working on the project "Food Forest" as part of a forthcoming ecologies exhibition at the MCA called "In the balance: art for a changing world".

http://permapoesis.blogspot.com/
http://theartistasfamily.blogspot.com/
http://gardennotesforrelocalisation.blogspot.com/

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Ken Simpson & Jacqui Fitzgerald
“Touch of Spirit on the Body”
Rumi

Artist Statement

This piece is an exploration of light and shadow both on the literal body and
other ‘bodies’ in space. Through filmed fragments of cast foliage
shadowing and the sinuous movements of smoke rising from a tiny point in
space, we play with formation of text and image interchangeably. Inspiration
comes from a stanza in a Rumi poem:

“There is some kiss we want
With our whole lives,
The touch of Spirit on the body”

Credits: Ken Simpson & Jacqui Fitzgerald collaboration

About the Artists
Ken Simpson: http://simpson-ken.blogspot.com
Jacqui Fitzgerald: http://jacquelinefitzgerald.daportfolio.com

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Steve Smart
Strange Sleeping Habit

Artist Statement

The video for Strange Sleeping Habit was originally filmed for the Transit
Lounge online component of the Transmediale Festival in Berlin. It
represents an aspect of the artist’s strained relationship with water and life
close to the poverty line. Shot in grainy tones with uncompromising
candour, the video-poem is not meant to be viewed as a bleak comment,
more to highlight the need of escape from inner-urban life.

About the Artist
Steve Smart is a Melbourne based poet/performer and the former Director of the Overload Poetry Festival. Over the last twelve years he has performed his works across Australia and overseas. His work has been described as
blunt, cynical, funny and unlike anyone else on the scene. Steve has self-published several chapbooks and released three independent CD’s. He is currently working on a verse novel, three poetry collections and a fourth CD.

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Angela Stretch
Resident Noise

Artist Statement

A silent figure of significant noise exists in writing. In the line that has been drawn between sound, noise and musical sound there is an accelerating line. The social world, real and digital, seems itself in the waves of the most meaningless noise. The sounds of actual pained voices become more of a personal reality.

Concrete Poems:
Sound Tracks
Sound Survey

About the Artist
A Director of Laureate Productions Pty Ltd and member of the Poets Union, coordinating the Brett Whiteley Readings. She is the founder of Wordjammin’,a Sydney based organisation that fosters poetry and spoken word.

Angela’s work extends to visual art that explores text with audio-visual technologies and was awarded winner and people’s choice prize for Amnesty International’s Freedom Art Competition 2008. She was awarded Highly Recommended in the Marrickville Council Art Prize 2009. Curator of New Directions, a collection of video-poems for the Australian Poetry Festival 2008 and Overload Poetry Festival 2009
people’s choice prize for Amnesty International’s Freedom Art Competition 2008. She was awarded Highly Recommended in the Marrickville Council Art Prize 2009. Curator of New Directions, a collection of video-poems for the Australian Poetry Festival 2008 and Overload Poetry Festival 2009.

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The Book of Water

Do rivers not render an increase in letters by going where they’re going and not stammering?
- Jackson Mac Low, “See” E1

The images in this book give motion through its digitised pages, crossing over and through words seen and unseen to create new and unpredictable cycles of thought and associations. The video poems flow independently of each other but are bound together within an exhibiting Sydney arc. Words spray from the images screened and meanings are bridged by the words. Artists were challenged to submit projective works with no audio component. An interesting confrontation arises when noise itself is being communicated as festival environment. A sentiment of sound in video poetry in a large open setting would be an abstraction and an impassable communication.

With respect to the artists the immersion has been placed in a direct field of vision. Presenting 10 video poems of contemporary art and culture where the individual defines his or her borders through their visual direction.

The depictions are invaluable tidal vistas created by the artists, John Bennett & John Laidler, Alana Hicks, Carol Jenkins, Gareth Jenkins,Patrick Jones, Jayne Fenton Keane, Ruark Lewis, Ken Simpson & Jacqui Fitzgerald and Steve Smart.

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Project: The Book of Water
Event: Sydney Writers Festival
Date: exhibited each day of the Festival 17-23 May 2010
Address Wharf 5 (Upstairs), The Rocks
Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
W www.sydneywritersfestival.org.au

A special thanks to the Poets Union, Chip Roley, Annette Alderson and the team at the Sydney Writers Festival for their support. Thank you.

Angela Stretch**
Curator

Endnote: Jackson Mac Low, “See”; Electronic Poetry Center, http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/maclow

** Angela Stretch is a director of Laureate Productions Pty Ltd and member of the Poets Union, coordinating the Brett Whiteley Readings. She is the founder of Wordjammin’, a Sydney based organisation that fosters poetry and spoken word.

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