The workshop proposed a format that we had been discovering in recent years, working in art schools and festivals. It establishes the workshop participants as collaborators from the first day onwards, as it is with them that we count on doing and performing whatever happens there. This allows us to alternate between different disciplinary fields and artistic practices, in order to summon poetic and fluid strategies of implication with manifestations of ‘sound poetry’ and other voice arts, in line with the needs of the context that welcomes us and with the anxieties of the moment.
‘Total Poetry’ is a term created by the Italian poet Adriano Spatola, an expression coined in his book, Toward Total Poetry, when he “was looking for a total support that escaped the limitations of poetry and could include theatre, photography, music, painting, typography, cinematic techniques and any other aspect of culture capable of sustaining the utopian ambition to revitalize and reformulate art”. The organisers went on to say that “For us, this instance opens up a two-way street. If Spatola started with poetry to go on to approach the other arts, we can proceed in the opposite direction and approach poetry through the other arts, as a resource to experiment with the potential – of creating the (in)comprehensible, of making and unmaking sense, of perceiving – of language, and with all its performative capabilities.
The conviction that underpins our approach is that our communication systems are regulated by normative structures of power (inherent in language), which call for contestation and revision. Rhetoric has been subverted by politics, just as poetry has been (ab)used by the advertising industries. Against such terror, we adopt different ways of making sense, bordering on murmuring, stammering, singing, and the cry of love or ‘being speechless’ [wordlessness, according to Stefan Hertmans]. Against the power of authority, we summon the force of libidinal vocal expression. And in this we are not alone: in the workshop, we will map our allies and our sources of inspiration, through case studies, readings, projection of original materials from Russian ‘organic futurism’, and other movements of contestation and avant-garde practice.
The workshop proposed the rethinking of vocal activity from a wide spectrum of positions to inhabit and/or move from.
Applications were made by sending a motivation paragraph (up to 250 words) and a short biography (up to 150 words), in English or Portuguese, to pcaspao@gmail.com by 31st March.
Notification of acceptance was sent by 5th April, and confirmed after payment of an application fee: €40
The workshop took place between April 24th and 26th, and its working language was English.
Commitment to the workshop included availability to participate as a performer in the final work produced by the workshop, or as a spectator and (potentially) conversationalist – in the soirée on the 27th.
To consult the workshop call click here.
Supported by: CET / FLUL, Foundation for Science and Technology, Casa Atelier Arpad Szenes Vieira da Silva, Espaço Alkantara and Teatro do Bairro Alto.
