WORDS LIVE 4
Words Live is a series of compilations of language based art works, brought to life by means of the spoken word.
This 4th edition again consists of performances by artists working with language and voice in various artistic disciplines. A celebration of the oral tradition in the arts, where the voices of poets, visual artists, writers, musicians and storytellers meet.
Even more than in earlier editions, Words Live 4 concentrates on reading as performance, on the narrative aspects of voice and text, which resulted in contributions in which forms and procedures vary between collage, composition and de-construction of text.
In order to, as much as possible, reduce the distance between performer and listener, the artists and audience are seated randomly around a large table.
Each person present will experience the voices differently, as they come from various directions and intermingle above the table.
The artists have been asked to choose, develop or adjust a work for this specific situation. Some works are performed with the voices of cooperating other artists.
Due to the event's approach, with the voice being the only source of sound, loudspeakers and microphones are not used: Words Live 4 might perhaps become as intimate as a living room in which people are reading out to each other. Words live 4 focuses on the intimacy of a living room where people read out to each other.

PROGRAM

Een punt op: 1 min.
A vocal positioning by Myriam van Imschoot and Toine Horvers
In 2012 the artists organized the voice performance 'Singelstemmen' in which participants in couples, loudly and in unison, called the coordinates of their point of location in public space. The project, developed for the Luchtsingel (ZUS-architects) was commissioned by Sculpture International Rotterdam.
For WL 4 Myriam and Toine will pronounce the data about their locations at Perdu and Wallgallery.

Timmermanskunst The art of the carpenter 8 min.
Paul Bogaers, visual artist / photographer / writer
The title of this presentation is derived from a text line appearing in Paul Bogaers' novel Tropenwee 1992, as well as in his collage-based novel Onderlangs from 2007: 'literature is merely the art of the carpenter - merely fitting together dovetails in the right way'
Paul creates new texts by endlessly cut and past parts of existing text matter.
In fact his work should be read. Only by reading the collage character appears most clearly: the cuts between the different fragments are still visible by maintaining the various original typographies.
For that reason Paul's vocal presentation for Words Live 4 is an experiment: it is an attempt to maintain the compositional character of the text by marking the cuts by a simple audible gesture.

Kunstformen der Natur 1 after Ernst Haeckel 6 min.
Cora Schmeiser, singer / performer
'Inspired by texts and illustrations of Haeckel's 'Kunstformen der Natur' from 1900, I wrote and composed 5 texts in Latin and German language: Siphonophorae, Tunicata - Gesellige Personen, Lynchnaspis miranda, PhaedrodARIA und StephoIDEA, Ophiodea.
The structure, or the 'graphic score' of the text was inspired by the forms of the illustrations.
The drawings' descriptions in German language, together with the scientific names by Ernst Haeckel formed the content and the sound scape for the voice'.
Cora Schmeiser 2013

tij grijst 1 min.
Ben Zwaal, poet
'my shortest poem in 2 lines, the opening poem of the collection 'oever drinkt water' (shore drinks water)

It was big enough to get me completely inside 14 min.
Rosie Heinrich, visual artist
Voice: Emilie Gallier, Rosie Heinrich and Toine Horvers
It was big enough... is a sound piece that Rosie published in 2012 in the form of an LP with an accompanying booklet. It's a construction of interwoven interview fragments in which three people recount their experiences of situations wherein, in effect, they lost control over their own will: 'This assemblage relates a fantastical and disturbing tale of esoteric and shamanic rituals, of training schools and occupation, of psychological and bodily accounts, treading a tenuous line between desire and turmoil. It poses the zealous nature of group and individual desire and its potential to dominate and compel'. RH

Een nachtegaal, een minuut, negen strofen 1min.
Toine Horvers, performance - text artist
Voice: Cora Schmeiser and Toine Horvers
'As a result of my book Mei (May), which recently appeared in the Slibreeks-series, I translated the nine sound movements performed by a nightingale in one minute.
This description will be performed by Cora and me in one minute'.

Cowboy 5 min.
Kathrin Wolkowicz, visual artist and filmmaker
voices: Kathrin Wolkowicz and Gerwin Luijendijk
'For Words Live 4, I decided to develop two performances based on texts from my books. In 'Cowboy', I will use my own voice in combination with a 'voiceover' by the artist Gerwin Luijendijk. With Gerwin I collaborated in various sorts of music (folk, schlager, pop) and I feel challenged to transform my written texts into a vocal text piece that is not a mere translation but rather leading to a new work, having a different resonance in space.'

Scrambled speech 6 min.
Myriam van Imschoot, performance artist / writer / filmmaker
In Scrambled Speech language is falling apart into phonemes and morphemes, sounds, breaths and sighs. It is a scattered avalanche of syllables, consonants, vowels, and repetitions. Meanwhile a sentence appears and some other ones. Scrambled Speech is an extract from Myriam Van Imschoot's solo performance Living Archive, where memory is mediated through the DIY recording cultures of mixed tapes, minidisks and other carriers that grow extinct.

Reiterations to S's Cornered Thoughts and B's Blinkered Busyness.... 8 min.
Marcus Bergner, experimental filmmaker / sound poet / visual artist
'"Aspiring towards sonorous relapses of literary parlance, my work for Words Live 4 will bring together a series of ‘illegible events’, ‘speech acts’ and ‘staggered alliterations’ gleamed or arranged from reading Honoré Balzac and Gertrude Stein. In many senses this will be a direct continuation of the kind of literary investigations carried out by the Australian sound poetry group Arf Arf of which I have been a long-term collaborator and member."

pauze

In toestand van [oorlog] 2013 7 min.
Rozalie Hirs, poet / composer
In toestand van….is a listening experiment by n-readers performed by 12 voices.
The n-readers listen to the other, the n1-readers, and speak as soon as they catch certain signal words.
The score is entirely timed and written out.
In case the n-readers in question missed a certain signal word, several retakes are possible

Artillery
 8 min.
Rachel Carey, visual artist / writer
In an age where we are told that the middle class is slowly disappearing, the opposite spectrums of surplus and reduced means seem to manifest themselves more noticeably. For a present moment, we will swim in a standardized pool of stored energy: energy that binds, constricts, and reduces down to repeated essentials. For Words Live 4, Rachel Carey has developed a performance that explores using stored energy.

on ordeningen en 1 gewezen taal uit: De weg naar het een Boek En 4 min.
Hans Stevens (1948 - 2013) visual artist / writer / thinker
voice: Toine Horvers and G.J. de Rook
The book 'En' is an impressive archive of thousands of A4-sheets with machine-typed words and texts, at which Hans Stevens worked during his entire life. An extensive meditation on fundamental matters of existence, written in an idiosyncratic, awkwardly constructed, wordy language.

W / B 2 min
Kathrin Wolkowicz, visual artist and filmmaker
Kathrin is intrigued how one spends time with text. In her second performance for WL4, she will read out loud from her book W / B which was initially meant to be a silent, single experience for one reader. This performance is an attempt to render an intimate text-experience public.

Essay for Four Voices and Twelve Books 11 min.
Samuel Vriezen, poet / composer / pianist / writer
performed by various voices
'EFVTB' is part of a series of compositions, in which it is not primarily sounds that are composed, but the act of reading. It is a meeting of readers, and of books. The essay of the title is what might come out of that encounter: an attempt to discover how the books and readers resonate with one another. Earlier pieces using similar ideas include Motet (2004, premiered in Perdu) and Ten Readers (2008, written for Words Live 1).

Kunstformen der Natur 2 after Ernst Haeckel 6 min.
Cora Schmeiser, singer / performer

Een kamer 8 min.
Ben Zwaal, poet / theatre maker
'my longest poem ever, my debute in Raster in 1980.
I once published the text anonymously in a Bewth-theatre publication, designed by the artist Richard Menken, put in nearly unreadable small letters, I needed a lens to be able to read it.
So maybe I can read it out from this lousy paper, resulting in gaps and stotters.
It is about a woman and a fly looking at each other, with the repeatedly appearing sentence:
'but that’s not all'.

Muage - kwintet
Teun de lange, media artist
performed by various voices
For his contribution to the Slibreeks - a series of small books published by the province of Zeeland - Teun wrote 'Muage, according to Cage' a language/music piece based on quotes by John Cage.
The title refers to Cage's 'Mureau' a collage which in turn refers to the work of Henry David Thoreau.
This Kwintet - version of Muage was specially developed for Words Live 4.

Siseneg 5 min.
G.J. de Rook, poet / language artist
As in earlier stages, the recent work of G.J. De Rook is characterized by a 'dry' analytical approach. The artist is more a researcher than a poet, more a strategist than a word-artist.
In Siseneg he works with a more than well-known text, which he wants to provide with a new content by a different way of presenting.

Reizende Zeilen
Neuropäpste (duo van geniale dilettanten) Florian Cramer, Mariëtte Groot
With Reizende Zeilen (Travelling Sails / Prikkelende Zinnen) the Neuropäpste, Mariëtte Groot (NL) and Florian Cramer (D), play an ingenious game with (their) bilingualism. The starring point is simple: two parties, two halves. To keep things simple: German on the left and Dutch on the right. In the beginning each play within their boundaries, but the borders soon become indistinct and compel the two halves to merge; they converge, and shrink to a central point. Reizende Zeilen is a complex lingual ritual that incites skewed hearing.

year	2013
date	29,30 - 11 and 01 - 12
location	St. Perdu amsterdam, Wallgallery Rotterdm
brief description	a performance event about the spoken word in various art-disciplines where performers and audience are randomly seated around a table.
performed by	Marcus bergner-Paul Bogaers-Rachel Carey-Florian Cramer-Emilie Gallier-Mariëtte Groot- Rosie Heinrich-Rozalie Hirs-Toine Horvers-Myriam van Imschoot-Teun de Lange-Gerwin Luijendijk-G.J.de Rook-Cora Schmeiser-Hans Stevens-Samuel Vriezen-Kathrin Wolkowicz-B
curator	Toine Horvers / Kathrin Wolkowicz
photography	David Stamp
further information	financially supported by St. Volkskracht en Budelinc