to perform: SO: to speak

Performance: How Can You & I Ever Be Free In the 21st C?
Jane Birkin and Walter van Rijn
21 October 2017
Tower House, Town Quay Road, Southampton SO14 2NY

A performance of Jane Birkin and Walter van Rijn as part of the SO: to speak festival of words in Southampton on 21st October 2017. For the first time we combined our work to create something, yes well what I don’t know, but it was great to start in Tower House on Town Quay Road. While talking through the kind of stuff we make and performing, reading and discussing we ended up creating a kind of poetic archivalism or poetic machinism. Texts, lists, archival descriptions, and collections of artwork titles transformed to rhythmic sound pieces. Some are very expressive, while others appear to be monotone. The combination of image and sound, performed, is something we can explore much further.

Review and work on Soundcloud

Stuart Ffoulks has writen a nice review on his blog: A Thousand Words

I’ve made a few of the text-sound pieces we performed available on Soundcloud, see links below.

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Recently added:

Artist’s Book, Digital edition Jane Birkin & Walter van Rijn, To Perform: SO: To Speak (2020) 52 pages, 3 b&w illustrations, ISBN 978-1-9164523-3-6.

We produced a book which covers the text-based work we showed/ performed/ discussed and it features the Being Human font I designed. In a handy A5 format, it gives a good overview of my artwork with texts and sounds between 2005 and 2017. Jane Birkin & Walter van Rijn, To Perform: SO: To Speak, is available now as a digital edition (PDF).

I wanted to publish this edition during the COVID-19 pandemic because in 2017 I only made 20 hard copies and now I can distribute it online. Today’s context is also relevant. At this point in time, art stops being shown as an object or event in space. Now the art has to come to you, disembodied, as a digital thing, in order to allow us, our bodies, to stay home or ‘socially distanced’.

Jane Birkin & Walter van Rijn, To Perform: SO: To Speak (2020)

Artist’s Book, Digital edition (PDF and E-book); ISBN 978-1-9164523-3-6; 52 pages, 4 b&w illustrations. [After receiving payment I will send you an email with the PDF and e-book attached.]

£10.00