On the Last Day, There was Singing

Jaap Blonk Performing Part of Kurt Schwitter's "Ursonate," Bury Art Gallery, Bury, England (1 May 2011)
The last day of the Text Festival was more of a day for poets and artists. We gathered in one of the open spaces in the gallery, and Ian Hunter led a group of sound poets and academicians in a discussion of "Ursonate," a sound poem by Kurt Schwitters that intrigues all of them. The discussion was informative and personal, each participant admitting to how "Ursonate" captured their imagination and what strange things that enchantment made them do. (Two of the panelists memorized the entire piece.) One of the joys of this part of the show was watching the incomparable Jaap Blonk perform part of "Ursonate" while showing us photocopies he'd made of the text of the sound poem in 1976.

Andrew Faraday Performing His Sound Piece in the Basement of Warth Mill, Bury, England (1 May 2011)
After a break for lunch, we made our way to a distant outpost of Bury, to Warth Mill, which served as an internment camp for refugees from Nazi Germany during World War II, and which once housed Schwitters himself. We were in the basement of this facility, which was much like a cave, but filled with broken walls, breaches outward toward daylight, and all manner of dirty and broken equipment and supplies. It was a filthy and, thus, unforgettable space. In this spot, I found two broken bird's eggshells and wrote a poem on them, while we listened to Andrew Faraday play strange music through the space while he was covered with sticky notes.

Ian Hunter Introduces "Ursonate" as Christian Bök Reads His Script by the Light of the Flashlight of My Cellphone (1 May 2011)
Soon "Ursonate" was set to begin, so Ian Hunter introduced it. All the performers, except Jaap Blonk, needed to read from a copy of the script, so I lent them my cellphone with its flashlight app shining brightly.

Christopher Fox Performs Part of "Ursonate" Quietly (1 May 2011)
The four performers had wildly different styles, which made the performance only more enjoyable. Christian Bök began with his hyper-controlled (he himself used the term "robotic") performance. The control and near perfection of this reading was remarkable (and very much like Christian), and it was much different than the looser but still controlled rendition that Florian Kaplick gave us. Most interesting to me was Christopher Fox's slow and melodious performance, which gave a totally different feel to the piece.

Audience Watching the Performance as the BBC Records the Performance (1 May 2011)
Jaap Blonk finished the poem, performing from memory, and his performance was good, almost as good as Christian's right up until the end, at which point it became great. He used his mouth, his fingers in his mouth, the spit of his mouth, anything at hand (or mouth), to make this weird averbal sounds but following the script of the poem. He abandoned the poem and, thus, made it real, and his performance ended with the largest round of applause, justifiably so (and I say this having deeply enjoyed each of the performances).

After the end of the show, we left the cavelike room and out into the sun, which was too bright and warm, but we remained cool from the aftereffects of the performance, one of the finest performances I've ever seen and one seen by maybe 30 people in a dank and dirty basement in a small corner of Bury.

Still, a great way to end the Text Festival.