Next month I will be coordinating a workshop entitled Miscellaneous expertise: performance, unlearning stories and public speech at the MoKS Kunsti ja Sotsiaalpraktika Keskus AVAMAA sympsium in Mooste, Estonia.  This is a collaboration with my good friend Giles Bailey, and the workshop will take place over five days with the dissemination on the sixth.

We proposed Miscellaneous expertise as an experiment using the workshop format; we hope to explore some of the structural components of performance through a patchwork aesthetic, with a concentration on “found” materials, chance, and non-linear constructions.  One potential subtitle was “Performance for non-performers AND non-performance for performers”, though that's a bit too constrictive and I think "unlearning" is a better term to use.

The outcome of the workshop will be a panel discussion that dissects the nature of performance, which of course will itself be a performance, which of course will not be.  If you remember my post about last year’s Mutopia workshop @ AVAMAA, then you’ll know I valued the MoKS approach to creative practice, a flame that will hopefully burn through this.  

Details about the workshop (how to attend, as well as info on the other workshops and projects occurring during the AVAMAA week [Natalia Borissova’s workshop looks amazing, and I wish there was some way to clone myself and do both]) are available on the MoKS website.  If you’re thinking of participating in Miscellaneous expertise, feel free to drop me a line or comment here.  See you in Estonia!

Here's the end of our set from Ptarmigan last weekend, performing the song 'Talbot' which is actually not on the 15,000 Day Boat Trip LP (available very very soon from 8mm!) but a song from my project Handshake Garden.  Blurring the lines, you know.... Please accept my apologies for how awkward it is to watch someone sing and play viola at the same time.  More live shows (with hopefully an expanded band lineup) will come in the future.  And thanks to my partner Tara for filming this and using a nice arty slow shutter speed.

I will be performing twice this month in Helsinki.

First, Friday 6 November at Kokoteatteri (Krunnunhaka), as part of Helsinki Meeting Point.  I will be playing esraj along with James Andean (piano and electronics) and three dancers (Riikka Theresa Innanen, Jaakko Simola, and Virva Talonen).  More information here.

On Saturday 21 November I will be performing as "The 15,000 Day Boat Trip Band" at the It's All In Your Mind 2009 festival, at my space Ptarmigan.  There will very possibly be copies of the record The 15,000 Day Boat Trip in my possession by then, which would make this a 'record release show'; not sure yet what the performance or "band" will entail but it will assume some similarity to the album.

I spent the last 10 days in Estonia, mostly at the MoKS AVAMAA 2009 ArtSymposium.  While the symposium offered traditional workshops (on printmaking and sound electronics), I participated in Mutopia 3, an exploration of collaborative creative practices that is quite difficult to describe.



Led by MoKS coordinator John Grzinich, the name is intended to combine the idea of Utopia with the process of mutation.  And Mooste, Estonia does seem like some type of Utopia to my city-stained soul.  A village of 500 people, about 40km from the also-charming Tartu, Mooste was far away from the distractions of my everyday life.  The workshop was very focused on Mooste itself (though Mutopia 2 was held in Portugal) – the ideas of place and space were perhaps the one common theme throughout.

Bat Tarbet "noses" from last week. We'll be performing again at Kokoteattri in Kruunuhaka, Helsinki on the 15th of March with the Shitty Listeners.