Performance as Publishing - South London Gallery - Wednesday 6 July - 7 to 10

This festival across a number of spaces in the SLG investigates the shifting relations between performance practice and discourse, events and writing, exploring the work of artists who use existing text as the base for their performance. Includes Fiona Banner, Nicole Bachmann, Ruth Beale, Eleanor Vonne Brown, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Emma Kay, Jenny Moore, Francesco Pedraglio and Heather Phillipson.

7pm - Emma Kay

7.30pm - Francesco Pedraglio

8pm - Nicole Bachmann, Clore Studio

8.30pm - Heather Phillipson, Clore Studio

9pm - Jenny Moore, Clore Studio

9.30pm - Ruth Beale

7-10pm - Works and installations by Fiona Banner, Daniel Gustav Cramer and Eleanor Vonne Brown are on view in the main gallery

Dirty Literature - Tom McCarthy and Francesco Pedraglio

Francesco Pedraglio, Few stories in the shape of abstract objects (Display), London 2011

Tom McCarthy and Francesco Pedraglio Thursday 16 June, 7 PM National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London WC2H 0HE The event is free but booking is essential, please email bookings@electra-productions.com to reserve a place.

On Thursday 16 June Electra continues Dirty Literature - a series of spoken portraits by artists and writers exploring the moment when language threatens (or promises) to become illegible. Francesco Pedraglio's A few stories in the shape of abstract objects is a performative lecture and plotted treasure hunt mapping abstract objects, ideal language and the memories that accumulate around them. The performance will be followed by Tom McCarthy's readings and reflections on his recent novel C, pursuing the breakdown of narrative coherence within modernity and the possibilities that might emerge from such a collapse.

Disobedient Words: A User's Manual, the reader accompanying the Dirty Literature series which brings together specifically commissioned contributions by Samuel Dowd, Tim Etchells, Will Holder, Karl Holmqvist, Tom McCarthy, Francesco Pedraglio, Sue Tompkins and Tony White will be available free of charge on the evening.

Francesco Pedraglio
A few stories in the shape of abstract objects is a performance based on suppositions and rumours, a narration that uses invisibility and abstraction as red threads to make sense of a number of seemingly chaotic clues. Turning to the help of an Egyptian man and his French alter-ego, a rock, an arrow, a hole in the ground and a stomach filled with earth, Pedraglio will attempt to demonstrate the existence of non-experiential memories and their link with the production of abstract objects.

Tom McCarthy
C is flooded with signals. The novel follows the short, intense life of Serge Carrefax, a man who - as his name suggests - surges into the electric modernity of the early twentieth century, transfixed by the technologies that will obliterate him. Affiliated with the abstract language of technical codes and networks, C brings into play questions of systems of transfer and the abstraction of mediated communication. Reading and reflecting on passages of C, McCarthy will expand on the absence and loss of narrative coherence in the three-way relationship between language, technology and subjectivity.

Young London - V22 - 28 May from 6 to 8

Laure Prouvost and Francesco Pedraglio, Faces, such long white faces (again), Billboard and movable signs, London 2011

PV 28 May 2011 from 6 to 8pm / U

ntil 30 July 2011

With:

Thorbjørn Andersen, Ed Atkins, Vanessa Billy, Steve Bishop, Alice Channer, Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth, David Raymond Conroy, Michael Dean, Tomas Downes, Jason Dungan, Lydia Gifford, Anthea Hamilton, Gabriel Hartley, George Henry Longly, Ian Homerston, Claire Hooper, Ian Law, Marie Lund, Stuart Middleton, Gorka Mohamed, Laura Morrison, Eddie Peake, Laure Prouvost & Francesco Pedraglio, Magali Reus, Damien Roach, Lewis Ronald, Gino Saccone, Matthew Smith, Maria Taniguchi, Adam Thompson, Cara Tolmie, Jack Vickridge, Alex Virji, Yonatan Vinitsky

V22 WORKSPACE
F-BLOCK, THE BISCUIT FACTORY
100 CLEMENTS ROAD
BERMONDSEY
LONDON SE16 4DG

A Dying Artist - ICA - 22/23 April 2011

Francesco Pedraglio, A Stomach, reading and video, ICA April 2011

Performances, round table discussions, readings, music and screenings exploring materiality, corporeality, death and dying bodies in art. This event has been organised in collaboration between the ICA and artists Ed Atkins and Siôn Parkinson.

Good Friday: Illness - 22 April 2011
Afternoon:
Brian Dillon
Bonnie Camplin
Dominic Fox
David Toop
Matthew Barney
Dennis Potter

Evening:

Ed Atkins
Heather Phillipson

Francesco Pedraglio

Trouble
Stewart Home
John Cussans
Siôn Parkinson
Raime

Holy Saturday: Death - 23 April 2011
Afternoon:
Steven Connor
Simon Martin & Ed Atkins
David Raymond Conroy
Laure Prouvost
John Russell
Regina Jose Gallindo
Griselda Pollock

Evening:
Michael Dean
Chora
Stan Brakhage
Ed Atkins & Siôn Parkinson
Old Apparatus

The Department of Wrong Answers - Wysing Arts Centre

Laure Prouvost and Francesco Pedraglio, We all know, Sign, 2011

Laure Prouvost and Francesco Pedraglio, The Lot, Video installation, 2011

Laure Prouvost and Francesco Pedraglio, None is in the department for passion, Billboard, 2011

Laure Prouvost and Francesco Pedraglio, There is nothing to see..., Sign, 2011

Saturday 2 April, from 6-8pm, sees the launch of The Department of Wrong Answers’ gallery presentation. In response to their six week residency within the Department, at Wysing, artists Laure Prouvost & Francesco Pedraglio have written a short story which is presented in the gallery through a new film and publication, and around Wysing’s site through a series of billboards and an installation in our recycled building Amphis (re-named Jody’s bar). Rob Filby’s series of Mood Boards and sculptural counterparts will be interpreted live (2 April) by Lorna Higgins, an interior designer based in the nearby village of Cambourne. Cally Spooner’s new filmed monologue performs the crisis of acting out-loud, achieving excellence, and finding something useful to say in public. On Sunday 17 April she will rehearse a new theatre performance live at Wysing. Giles Roundhas made a series of new sculptural works and furniture which will be exhibited in Wysing’s gallery throughout the presentation. The Department will close with a dinner hosted by Round on Sunday 17 April.

DIRTY LITERATURE - National Portrait Gallery

DIRTY LITERATURE

Samuel Dowd, Tim Etchells, Will Holder, Karl Holmqvist, Tom McCarthy, Francesco Pedraglio, Sue Tompkins, Tony White.

Curated by Fatima Hellberg (Electra)

Ondaatje Wing Theatre, National Portrait Gallery
17th March - 16th June 2011

All events are free, but booking is essential:bookings@electra-productions.com

From performative lectures that roam across fact and fabrication to genre-defying plays with storytelling, Dirty Literature brings together artists and writers exploring the boundaries of narrative. Here the characters in the National Portrait Gallery collection form a rich cast, portrayed yet again with the use of the spoken word. In the evocation of a person, a presence, the participating artists turn to an array of references and materials - a form of contaminated literature, unfolding at the edges of coherence. Ephemeral like a rumour, mobile like gossip this is a form of biography that escapes the weight and permanence of the published word and the painted figure alike, a real time portrait.

The series will be accompanied by a publication which brings together new contributions by the participating artists, an essay by curator Fatima Hellberg reflecting on language and latency, alongside work from the Tactile Poetry series by pioneering Austrian artist Josef Bauer.

Tim Etchells and Tony White
Thursday 17th March, 7:30PM
In a new text-performance for the National Portrait Gallery Tim Etchells builds and dissolves stories, worlds and pictures in language, working with rules, games and strategies unfolding at the edge of narrative coherence. Etchells draws on text material from catalogue essays and critical responses to works in the collection whilst also invoking the more familiar landscapes from his work through dystopian urban adventures, science fiction and distorted fairytales. The performance will be followed by a contribution by Tony White, the author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber and Faber), described by writer Toby Litt as, 'one of the best London novels you'll ever get to read.' For Dirty Literature, White will read from works of fiction that respond to the National Portrait Gallery's location, as well as his satirical 1999 novel about an alienated police force who seem locked in to a cycle of violence and prurient self-justification: Charlieunclenorfolktango.

Samuel Dowd and Sue Tompkins
Thursday 14th April, 7PM
Sue Tompkins' performances unfold as a stream of consciousness, moving from personal reflections to quotations from multiple, and at times conflicting areas of life. Tompkins' new performance Hallo Welcome To Keith Street will be followed by Samuel Dowd's ambitious collaborative piece, Aphrodite's Left Turn. Realised together with four other writers, this performed screenplay evokes a forgotten moment in the life of architect and artist Frederick Kiesler (1890-1965).

Writers and readers:
Rebecca Bligh: The Young Man (Edwin Denby)
Ben Cain: Aphrodite (Elisa Landi)
NaoKo TakaHashi: The Cat ('sing-sing' the cat)
Isabel Waidner: The Choir Boy (John Latouche)

Karl Holmqvist and Will Holder
Thursday 12th May, 7PM
If one takes the act of portraiture as heresy, then surely any visit to The National Portrait Gallery must be thought to bring one to the heart of the scene of the crime. Swedish artist Karl Holmqvist's work deals with the relation between language and image, figuration and abstraction - relationships he has explored over the last twenty years. For the specifically commissioned artist's talk, 'Change Your Face' he will elaborate on his mostly language-based visual arts practice, and how elements such as repetition and rhythm in language may bring us closer to concerns more often thought of in relation to images. The event will be followed by a new work by Will Holder. Will Holder makes publications, using conversation as a model for production and documentation. He approaches language as a ready-made, reproducing existing texts to emphasise the construction and negotiation of meaning. On May 12th, in the Ondaatje Wing Theatre, Holder continues a series of publications dedicated to single mothers. Previous readings have complicated Adam Pendleton's "Black Dada" and Alice Notley's "Dr. Williams' Heiresses", in favour of an intensified reception of the gendered subject positioned in them.

Francesco Pedraglio and Tom McCarthy
Thursday June 16th, 7PM
Francesco Pedraglio writes short stories that look at words as physical bodies inhabiting spaces that extend beyond the parameters of the page. Writing directly in a foreign language (English), he focuses his texts on straight narratives, facing frontally the basic problematics of delivering a story to an audience. On this line he will present a short story based on the idea of abstract objects and fictional characters. 'Few small stories in the shape of abstract objects' will be followed by a reading by Tom McCarthy, writer, co-founder of the semi-fictitious organisation International Necronautical Society and recently shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for his novel C. The readings of selected passages of Cwill reflect on the breakdown of narrative and coherence within modernity and the possibilities that might emerge, phoenix-like from such a collapse.

Davide Cascio E.N. - Book launch and presentation

Davide Cascio E.N. by Davide Cascio

A book edited by Egija Inzule

Published by Spector Books

The publication will be presented by Francesco Pedraglio at Xippas Gallery (Paris) March 1st from 18:30 onwards.