Sometimes it is necessary to look back in order to sum up what you have achieved, and 2017 came with a lot of changes.
The project Black Walnut Grove started February 2017. In between a maple syrup harvesting field and the outbuildings of a closed agricultural college in the small town of Kemptville, Ontario in Canada, there's an abandoned field of planted black walnut trees in rows. February ten blank scores, on unlaminated paper with hand-drawn horizontal lines in ink, were placed in the grove on metal placards. The ten postcard sized scores were marked by wind, rain, sun, melting of snow, chew, spores and other marks of wild life. In April Chris Turnbull published the text Delinquent, deliquescent, where she elaborates on the project.
The project continues through all of 2017, marking the seasons in different ways. The blank scores offers a way to record the workings of the black walnut grove; the movements and change of the Eastern Ontario climate throughout the year, and thus conserve each season as ten short musical movements. In this way it is reflecting the variations of sound that can be heard throughout the year, and becomes a visual recording, and a preservation, of it’s surroundings.
After receiving grant for another year, I ended up being on the move to a new and bigger studio, and by July I was all installed at Økern, Oslo.
Poster for REVERSE Poetry Festival by Derek Beaulieu
I visited the REVERSE -Copenhagen International Poetry Festival August 31st to September 3rd, meeting up with colleagues from around the world and discussing old and new projects. The theme for REVERSE 2017 was "Don't mourn - organize". LiteraturHaus hosted the main stage, and the readings and performances in the surrounding bookstores in Møllergade; ark books and Møllergade Boghandel, made the festival even more comprehensive.
I boldly jumped off my day-job October 1st, giving me more time to actually do the job I'm supposed to do at the studio and allowing headspace for my projects. Kick-starting it in CPH, this resulted in a various of projects during autumn of 2017:
Street of Møllergade @Reverse Fesival
Installation view of Dada Manifestoes, Malmö Konsthall.
October I published Ensō / Rondo week here at www.cbjordheim.com, twitter and facebook, presenting one drawing every day for a week. This project expanded as Joakim Norling and Timglaset showed an interest in publishing a version of the Ensō/Rondo-project spring 2018.
Early November I was able to announce my participation in The Canadian Literature Symposium KANADA KONCRETE: Verbi-Vovo-Visual Poetries in the 21st Century in Ottawa, Canada May 4th-6th 2018. For 3 days there will be discussions, talk, exhibitions and performances. Cant' wait to finally visit Canda!
November 22nd I was invited to Malmö Konsthall to do a performance at their event LjuVisPo, an event connected to the gallery's beautiful exhibition PRESSURE | IMPRINT by Charlotte Johannesson, Ester Fleckner and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt. I performed the project Dada Manifestoes; 8 punctuated dada manifestoes from Hugo Ball (1916) to Tristan Tzara (1921) all played by music boxes. The evening also included performances by Lina Nordenström, Bengt Adlers and Kontorsorkestern which made the event, led by and curated by editor of Timglaset, Joakim Norling, a very successful one.
During summer 2017 I was invited by Derek Beaulieu to react on the project a, A Novel, which is an erasure-based translative response to Andy Warhol’s novel. Beaulieu erases all of the text on each page of the original work, leaving only the punctuation marks. By December I created two sound responses, in participation with singer Stine Janvin Motland with technical assistance by Børge Motland, to the erased novel. The pieces are to be released as Sound of a, A Novel late 2018 by CANT AUDIO in Leeds, UK.
2018 is also going to include an elaboration on my pieces that are set with a geopoetic mindset. I'll be participating with a text for Geopetics in Practice, due April 2018. Contribution from geographers and poets/artist come together in order to search for an interdiciplinarity in between the fields. The text will be published on the blog later on. From the CFP:
How do contemporary poets engage with geographic concepts or methodologies —with place,space, environment and landscape, with fieldwork, mapping, and the socio-political dimensions of locations and sites? And how do contemporary geographers think about creativity and poetry? This collection will gather contemporary poets/geographers to share their practice and thoughts on the intersections between poetics and geography.
All in all, 2018 seems like quite the busy one.
Happy New Year!