Angharad Davies Rydal Mount
A Text Realisation by Neil Chapman, Holly Pester and David R J Stent
Published by Compost and Height, 2015 (26 pages; riso print paperback)
Edition 200
Rydal Mount presents a photographic score by Angharad Davies realised by three artist/writers: Neil Chapman, Holly Pester and David R J Stent. Each has responded to the photographs, following instruction to use each as a stimulus for performance – in this case in the form of publication.
The three contributions combine to form one realisation. The publication, initiated and edited by Sarah Hughes, is intended as a provocation to consider the boundaries of contemporary composition and the potential of its realisation in various media.
From Rydal Mount:
“A workspace is demarcated as a white field bounded on four sides with a line of the finest width. Use the mouse to bring the cursor over that square. Right-click to mark a point then repeat the operation. Now there are two points. A vector appears between. Right-click again and another point connects to the last. In this way a simple wire-frame object is made. You will have noticed already that it is not stable in its position. The points drift and the vectors stretch and contract accordingly. These are slight movements with a random quality, movements like those of a body making itself comfortable, or the expressive movements accompanying speech.” Neil Chapman
Angharad Davies is a violinist, one at ease in both improvising and composition, with a wide discography as part of varied range of ensembles and groups. She’s a specialist in the art of ‘preparing’ her violin, adding objects or materials to it to extend its sound making properties. Her sensitivity to the sonic possibilities of musical situations and attentiveness to their shape and direction make her one of contemporary music’s most fascinating figures. 2015 has seen her being commissioned for a new work at the Counterflows Festival, Glasgow and premiering Eliane Radigues new solo for violin, Occam XXII at the El Nicho Festival, Mexico.
Neil Chapman is an artist and writer whose work explores visuality, textual practices and collaborative methods. His exhibitions and performances include Barricade Writing (2012 with David Stent), The Execution of Kurt Steiner (2011 with Carl Lindh & Ola Ståhl). He is the author of Glossolaris (2010) and contributor to Deleuze and Contemporary Art (2010). His book Diagrams for Seriality is published by Copy Press (London, 2014) and has been described as a “meditation on the relation of seeing to saying, the possibility and impossibility of communication, and the very business of making and writing”.
Holly Pester is a poet and multidisciplinary writer. She has worked as an archivist, lecturer and practice-based researcher with readings, performances and sound installations featuring at Segue, New York, dOCUMENTA 13, Whitechapel Gallery, and the Serpentine Galleries. She teaches courses on Oulipo and Poetic Practice at the University of Essex. Her collection GO TO RECEPTION AND ASK FOR SARA IN RED FELT TIP was published by Book Works in April 2015.
David R J Stent is an artist, writer, curator and performer whose work is concerned with relationships between text, image and publishing practices. His most recent work has been concerned with the role of fiction in art practice, particularly in association with artists’ publications, collaborative authorship, and the use of theory and philosophy in contemporary art. He is a founding member of The Set Ensemble, a collective dedicated to the performance of experimental music and contemporary composition, and a founding editor of BORE, a journal of scores for performance.
