The Small Press Collections held by UCL Library Services Special Collections are a globally significant collection of Little Magazines, literary pamphlets, and counter-cultural newspapers produced as a result of the independent publishing scene of the mid 20th century to the present.

From the late 1950s experimental poets and visual artists took advantage of newly accessible printing techniques to self-publish, and distribute their work outside of mainstream literary journals or established gallery spaces. The collections focus on experimental text and image, visual and concrete poetry, the documentation of performance and sound poetry, and text works by artists.

The theme of Sound is in evidence throughout the collections in various manifestations: actual sound recordings, the visual scores of experimental composers, sound and performance poets, poetry and other texts to be read aloud. This year’s Small Press Project seeks to illuminate all these aspects.

The Small Press Project Event, also includes an exhibition of works and recordings made by the staff and students at the Slade School of Fine Art. The SPP03 ‘Sound’ 10” Vinyl was made with tracks by 14 students & staff. Shenece Oretha produced a series of 5 editioned inner sleeves on which were printed images of Nigerian music pots with 2 holes, traditionally played by women. As well as this special pigment print the cover displayed print works by Slade students and staff who participated in the vinyl project.

A special limited edition in memory of the late northern storyteller and hell raising lyricist Mark E Smith was produced for the occasion by Tom Hardwick-Allen.

Vinyls were shared with:
Rijksaakademie, Amsterdam
Bibliotek Documenta, Kassel, Germany
Kunst & Museums Bibliothek, Cologne, Germany
ZKM Centre for Arts & Media, Karlsruhe, Germany
Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Karlsruhe, Germany
Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland
Ecole Des Beaux Arts, Paris, France
Konstfak Stockholm, Sweden
Chelsea School of Art, University of the Arts London, UK
Glasgow School of Art, UK

Schedule

2.00 Hannah Dargavel-Leafe
Introductions and welcome

2.15 Aura Satz
Aura Satz’ practice encompasses film, sound, performance and sculpture. She has made a body of works that look at key female figures largely excluded from mainstream historical discourse, in an ongoing engagement with the question of women’s contributions to labour, technology, scientific knowledge and electronic music. In her presentation she will give an overview of 3 projects made about women composers, including ‘Oramics’, an artist’s film made in homage to Daphne Oram.

2.45 Holly Pester
Holly Pester will present ‘A short talk on the process of recording lullabies and composing lines from an archive of efforts.’ As well as the talk (and possibly short reading of one of the poems), she will play extracts from her record Common Rest.

3.15 - 3.30 Tea & Coffee

3.30 Holly Antrum
For her presentation, Holly Antrum will introduce an artistic interest in the original items and materials that went into Computer Dances by artist Jennifer Pike (1919 - 2016), as a subsequent tool for inter-generational collaboration and intervention. Jennifer Pike produced the 'Computer Dances' and other works within and around a productive, shared domestic studio, printing and publishing space wherein she was the oft-collaborator, and also marriage partner of Bob Cobbing (1920-2002). Computer Dances compiles Pike's abstract notations for dance and performance: they were made in her 70's, and she created them stepping into digital working, through scans and digital drawing using a simple early Sketch-Up programme. Holly will explore how arriving at these drawings occurred through being in Pike's home and studio and how this sonically entered her 16mm/HD film, titled Catalogue (2012-14). Excerpts will screened from the film (19 minutes).

4.00 Jonathan P Watts
Jonathan P Watts will present ‘g, g, g, grime & kon kon kon konkrete poetry’
There is no actual relation between concrete poetry and grime, but the mix and blend might open up affinities. For example, by concentrating on the physical substance of language, concrete poetry can, to echo Bob Cobbing, help us consider how the microphone and the tape recorder extends the human voice, teaching the human new tricks of rhythm and tone, power and subtlety’. Grime, the Lewisham MC Novelist recently explained, is 'an unorthodox, rebellious sound that represents madness from the hood, the streets'. Concrete poetry is now mostly in the academies, but it was unorthodox in its time. As grime has formalised into a mainstream genre so, arguably, its unorthodox, experimental beginnings have been forgotten. Wiley, writing in his recent autobiography, Eskiboy, reminds us: 'I’ve got a lot of songs that I’ve never released which are just trying different things with the mic, very experimental kind of stuff. I’ve had ideas for whole songs just using the mic, my voice and nothing else.' From Flirta D’s ‘splatterisms’ to Flow Dan’s New Age Synchronised Avengers, D Double E’s ‘blukuuus’ to God’s Gift’s rhyming gunshots, this talk will not place grime in the service of concrete poetry.

4.30 - 8.00 Private View for the Small Press Project Exhibition

The evening will feature live performances, curated by Hannah Dargavel-Leafe, Honorary Research Associate, by invited artists and students and staff from Slade School of Fine Art. We will also launch a special edition and a 10” vinyl publication produced by students as part of the project

Exhibition

Featured Work by:
Aura Satz | Holly Pester | Holly Antrum | Jonathan P. Watts | Amelia Barratt |Aliyah Hussain | Emmanuelle Waeckerlé | Marijke Keyse | Eloise Fornieles | Gabriella Hirst | Niamh Roberts | Amy Steel | Orfeo O’Leary-Tagiuri | Rowland Hill | Rhona Eve Clews | Louis Scantlebury | Nia Fekri | Leah Lovett | Alastair Mackinven & Ben Wallers | Jayne Parker | Mataio Austin Dean | Bona Bohyeon Kim | Bea Maxwell Macdonald | Marijke Keyser | Solveig Settemsdal | Yijia Yang | Luke McCreadie | Patrick White | Shenece Oretha | David Dobson | Michael Duffy | Jos Nyreen | Cyrus Hung | Leonie Rousham | Amanda Rice
| Lewis Davidson | Ellie Ai Wang and Milan Tarascas | Anja Cecilie Petersen | Rie Marsden | Tom Hardwick Allan

Biographies

Holly Antrum (b. London 1983) is an artist filmmaker based in London, and a current participant of the Acme Fire Station Work-Live residency in Bow. She works with 16mm, paper and digital mediums, and often in collaborative processes and study of practice with other artists and writers. She is interested in the moment of our accustomisation to celluloid-as-digital-material, and in a material moment of being at once archived and removed from the original and native aesthetic. Through her films she utilises the poetics of layered film processes, presence, communication and templates of speech, memory and in-situ sound. Recent projects include EIDOLON(2017) a film commissioned by International Literature Showcase with poetry by Sandeep Parmar. The new work was screened alongside artist-selected archival works within the Cinenova collection at The Showroom (February 2018). Solo gallery installations include Catalogue at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh (2016) and A Diffuse Citizen at Grand Union, Birmingham (2014). Her work has also been screened in galleries internationally. Holly Antrum earned her Masters in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art, London (2011), and her BA Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon School of Art, London (2005). A copy of Computer Dances (first published by Writer's Forum in 1995) is also held in the UCL Special Collections.

Hannah Dargavel-Leafe (born 1987, London) graduated with an MA from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2016 and Manchester School of Art with a BA in 2010. She has exhibited at The International 3 in Manchester, Bluecoat in Liverpool, and at ICA London. In 2016 she was in residence at the East Tower at Television Centre, White City and worked collaboratively with the artist Jack West. She was a featured artist in Ambit Magazine. Dargavel-Leafe runs The Loop, an ongoing research project through symposiums, exhibitions and publishing. She is an associate artist with The International 3.

Holly Pester is a poet and Lecturer in Poetry and Performance at University of Essex. Her work has been situated as recordings, print, sound installation and live readings at international venues and esoteric spaces. Her most recent work, Common Rest was an album of collaborative Sound Poetry and accompanying poetry pamphlet. More info can be found at hollypester.com

Aura Satz has performed, exhibited and screened her work nationally and internationally, including Tate Modern, Tate Britain, the Hayward Gallery, Barbican Art Gallery, ICA, the Wellcome Collection, BFI Southbank, Whitechapel Gallery, (London); Oberhausen Short Film Festival (Oberhausen); the Rotterdam Film Festival (Rotterdam); the New York Film Festival (NY); Anthology Film Archives (NY); Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne); De Appel Art Centre (Amsterdam); AV festival (Newcastle); Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead); Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin); InterCommunication Centre (Tokyo); Lentos Museum (Linz); and The Sydney Biennale (Sydney).
Recent solo shows include John Hansard Gallery (Southampton); Dallas Contemporary (Texas); Gallery 44 (Toronto); Tyneside Cinema Gallery (Newcastle); George Eastman House (Rochester NY); Fridman Gallery (NY). In 2012, she was shortlisted for the Samsung Art+ Award and the Jarman Award. She is a Reader and Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. www.iamanagram.com

Jonathan P. Watts is a contemporary art critic and occasional curator. He is a visiting lecturer in Critical and Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art, London. Writing by Jonathan has appeared in frieze, Art Monthly and Artforum. His review of Wiley’s recent autobiography Eskiboy appeared in the Times Literary Supplement this week. As 'helter helter', he makes performances that respond to aspects of instrumental grime music.

Performances

Marijke Keyser
Performance of Tuning Meditation by Pauline Oliveros, 1971. The audience are invited to join in.

Eloise Fornieles
I’m a Monster Are you Alright?

Amelia Barratt Aliyah Hussain
Woman on the Edge of Time

Emmanuelle Waeckerlé
O(hh)
from Emmanuelle Waeckerlé’s Ode (owed) to O double CD (Wandelweiser edition 2017). Performed by Bouche Bée. O(hh) concludes a series of experimental readings of the infamous erotic novel Historie d’O, written in 1954 by Pauline Reage. Some earlier experiments are contained in Reading (story of) O, (Uniformbooks, 2015).

Marijke Keyser is a London-based, Seattle-raised artist currently studying at the Slade. She has performed at the Royal Academy of Music, London and Cornish Playhouse Theatre, Seattle.
Eloise Fornieles’ practice is performance based and she is currently completing a PhD using her character Eric Self as a means of research. She has performed at Tate Modern, London and La Casa Encendida, Madrid. She is a founder member of the performance collective, The Perverts.
Amelia Barratt is an artist based in London. Recent work includes new writing performed in response to projects/exhibitions at: Assembly Point, London; SET Projects, London; CCA, Glasgow and Edinburgh College of Art. She is co-director of the performance series Oral Rinse.

Aliyah Hussain is an artist based in Manchester. Woman at the Edge of Time is based on the book of the same name by Marge Piercey and was released on Sacred Tapes. Recent exhibitions include If you Can’t Stand the Heat at Roaming Projects, London and Curio Curia at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester.

Emmanuelle Waeckerlé is a London based interdisciplinary artist, writer and performer working with the materiality and musicality of language. Her compositions, installations, performances and participatory occasions seek alternative ways of engaging with our interior or exterior landscape and each other. She is one third of Bouche Bée improvising trio on the edges of Language, with Petri Huurinainen (guitar) and John Eyles (saxophone). Emmanuelle is a Reader at University for the Creative Art (Farnham, UK)

Performances SPP03 Vinyl playback

SIDE A
Niamh Roberts
Ellie Ai Wang and Milan Tarascas Vowels in Motion
1. 1 Place your tongue near the roof of your mouth in a "r" position.
2. 2 Move your lips slowly between the "E" and "U" vowel sounds.
3. 3 Slowly curl your tongue back and away from the your lips.
Amy Steel Zip
Gabriella Hirst The Winner Takes it All
break
SIDE B
Marijke Keyser Tuning Meditation by Paulien Oliveros, 1971 Orfeo O’Leary-Tagiuri Slipping
Acapella performance
Rowland Hill Interjectional Exercises
A duet for live and pre-recorded voice

Small Press Project Listening Booth Track Listing

A
Slade staff and students
Slade Painting
tracks 1-43 — SLOUD

Lisa Milroy
Cats, 2014

Sarah Pickering
Riot Soundtrack made by Greater Manchester Police

B
Slade staff and students

Francesca Roberts
Arsehair/Glasswear

Hannah Dargavel-Leafe
Flies got up our noses

Joy Gregory
M&S Sample

Leah Lovett with Denton Chikura, Sandy Grierson, Felix Hayes, Jeremy Hutchison and Matthew Fenton
Support (2014/2017)

Lewis Davidson
Snores

Marijke Keyser
How to Live Forever

Marijke Keyser
Sniff

Marijke Keyser
Sound Human

Marijke Keyser
To be sure of where you’re standing

Marijke Keyser
Who Wants to Live Forever?

Mataio Austin Dean
Dialectic of Labour

Patrick White
The Artist’s Music Collection Chronically Organised | Side A | 1935 — 1999

Patrick White
The Artist’s Music Collection Chronically Organised | Side B | 1999 - 2013

Solveig Settesmdal
Recall/Reset

Tom Hardwick Allan
gan sorro 2 many dsik last lizard

C + D
Bob Cobbing, Peter Finch, François Dufrêne, Helmer Bodil, Lawrence Upton
(Slowscan vol. 36) Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Slowscan, 2017

Peter Finch and Bob Cobbing
Blue

Peter Finch (sax Barry Pilcher)
Miss Skin

Bob Cobbing and François Dufrêne
Computer Poem

Bob Cobbing and Lawrence Upton
A Round Dance

Peter Finch
Four Times As Many

Peter Finch
Seasonal Cycle

Bob Cobbing
Helmer Bodil Trigram (Trilogy)

Bob Cobbing and François Dufrêne
Slowly Slowly The Tongue Unrolls

Soundproof nr. 0 (Slowscan vol. 22)
Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Slowscan, 2013

Michael Gibbs
The Art of Poetry, Page 75

GJ de Rook
Interpretation of ‘Ten Works by Lawrence Weiner’

Ulises Carrion with Michael Gibbs and GJ de Rook
Clinch

GJ de Rook
Minus A-E-I-O-U

GJ de Rook
Consonantisation of Leo Vroman's 'Vrede'

Michael Gibbs with Pnina Reichman
Sononymous Poem - Beginnings Endings

Greta Monach
Fonergon 77-1

Michael Gibbs with Pnina Reichman
Tome Tones

Greta Monach
Fonergon 78-1

Michael Gibbs
Two Texts

Revue Ou 34/35 (1967) Edited by Henri Chopin
François Dufrêne
Haut Satur December 1967

Bob Cobbing
Marvo Movie Natter

François Dufrêne
Haut Satur June 1967

Henri Chopin
Mes Bronches

François Dufrêne
Haut Satur November 1967

Bob Cobbing
Spontaneous Appealinair Contemprate Apollinaire

Revue Ou 38/39 (1971) Edited by Henri Chopin
Bengt Emil Johnson
(Among) II

Sten Hanson
Railroad Poem

Jacques Bekaert
The Day After

Sten Hanson
Revolution

Henri Chopin
Les Rire Est Debout

Revue Ou 40/41 (1972) Edited by Henri Chopin
J.A. da Silva
Audiopoem

Brion Gysin
Poem

Henri Chopin
Audiopoem

William Burroughs
Valentine Day Reading 1965

Bernard Heidsieck
Passe Partout

Revue Ou 42/43/44 (1973) Edited by Henri Chopin
Charles Amirkhanian
Each LL

Ake Hodell
Numro Ba Besch

Arthur Rimbaud
Le Vrai Sonnet des Voyelles (Reading by him)

Ladislav Novak
Two Poems

Henri Chopin
Les Mandibules du Dejenuer sur L'Herbe 1971

Small Press Project is organised by:

Liz Lawes, Liz Lawes, Art Librarian at UCL Library & UCL Small Press Collections;
Lesley Sharpe, Holding Page & Teaching Fellow, Slade School of Fine Art;
Hannah Dargavel-Leafe, Honorary Research Associate, Slade School of Fine Art;
Sarah Pickering Artist & Senior Teaching Fellow, Slade School of Fine Art

The Small Press Project is generously supported by the Teaching Initiatve Fund, IAS and the Dean's Strategic Award.