Phonica: Four

The fourth edition of Phonica takes place on Wednesday 19 October, with Martín Bakero, Susan Connolly, John Kearns, Neil Ó Lochlain, Elizabeth Hilliard and David Lacey for a set of performances and presentations traversing the realms of sound poetry, electronic music, visual poetry, improvisation, and more.

Phonica: Four
Wednesday 19 October 2016
Jack Nealons, 165 Capel Street, Dublin 1
8pm start, admission free

Martín Bakero has presented performances, lectures, films, expositions, installations and radio programs in many locations throughout Europe and North, Central and South America. He has experimented with combinatorial, permutation, genetic, astrobiology, quantum mechanics, sound, vision and psychics arts. He studied electroacoustic composition at the conservatory of Paris and has taught in the Universities of Paris, México and Chile specialising in severe personality disorders and sound poetry. He created the pneumatic and electropneumatic poetry, he’s working now in “Acousemantic” poetry. Recently he made creative sound residences and performances in Avatar (Québec), National center for arts (México) and Proposta (Barcelona). He’s member of LaBoRaToiRe, Motor Nightingale, Buzos Tácticos, M’Other, Futures Primitives, Mutiques and pnEUmAtIkOs, where he works with other artistes, scientists, mystics in different rehearsals about the bounds between poetry, music, vision and reality. He created the festival Festina Lente and the Laboratory of electropneumatic poetry (Laboratoire d’electropoésie acousmantique) in Paris. All these fields that he explores allow him to give birth to transversal and unprecedented performances. In his shows, he drives a trance where the breath becomes alive. He uses especially poems moving, projected on his body, on his collaborators and screens. He also specializes his voice in multiphony, modified in live by acousmantic filters. He explores the boundaries between sound, sense, senses, nonsense, smell, vision, action, hallucination, gesture in poetry, always seeking the opening of the limits of poetry and news realities.

Susan Connolly lives in Drogheda, Co. Louth. Her first full-length collection For the Stranger was published by Dedalus Press in 1993. She was awarded the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry in 2001. In the same year she received a Publications Grant from the Heritage Council of Ireland for A Salmon in the Pool, a literary and place-names map of the river B oyne from source to sea. Collaborations with writer and photographer Anne-Marie Moroney include Stone and Tree Sheltering Water (1998), Race to the Sea (1999), Ogham: Ancestors Remembered in Stone (2000) and Winterlight (2002). Her poems have been published in journals and magazines throughout Ireland and the U.K, are included in the Field Day Anthology Vol IV, Voices and Poetry of Ireland and Windharp: Poems of Ireland since 1916, and have been broadcast on The RTÉ Poetry Programme. Her second collection Forest Music was published by Shearsman Books in 2009. Shearsman also published her chapbook The Sun-Artist: a book of pattern poems in 2013, and her third book Bridge of the Ford, a collection of visual poetry, in June 2016.

John Kearns has published poetry in a variety of publications and his long poem ‘begs dull’ was selected for inclusion in the recent Irish edition of Viersomes (Veer Press, London). He is currently working on a volume loosely addressing hoarding. He has worked extensively as a translator from Polish and edited the journal Translation Ireland for 10 years. He also edited the collection Translator and Interpreter Training: Issues, Methods, Debates (London, Continuum: 2008). He holds a PhD from DCU and worked for several years in academia. He is particularly interested in issues relating to mental health and is currently training as a psychotherapist.

Neil Ó Lochlainn is a double bassist, traditional flute player and composer from Ireland. He has studied at the Cork School of Music, the Banff Centre, the S.I.M (school for improvisational music) workshop, New York and the Brhaddhvani Institute, Chennai. He is a founding member of Ensemble Ériu (TG4 Gradam Ceoil recipients 2015) and in 2015 he formed Cuar, a group which combines improvisation, chamber music and irish traditional music. From 2012-2015 he perfomed regularly with the late jazz guitar master Louis Stewart.

Elizabeth Hilliard is a soprano from Dublin. She sings a wide range of repertoire, bringing a dramatic quality and emotional intensity to her performances. She combines pinpoint accuracy and razorsharp musicianship with her passion and relish for performing music by living composers. Elizabeth is a co-director (with David Bremner) of Béal, a production company committed to exploring the relationship between sung and spoken word. The pair have brought international figures such as Robert Ashley, Tom Johnson, Jennifer Walshe and Christopher Fox to Dublin. In October 2016, Divine Arts Record are releasing Sea to the West Elizabeth’s debut disc, featuring works for soprano plus electronics by Mulvey, Bremner, Fox and Buckley. She also features on Mulvey’s CD Akanos released on the Navona Records Label. From December 2015 to March 2016 she was musician in residence at dlrLexIcon supported by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. Current projects include: Don’t Walk – a 45-minute piece from video-artist Mihai Cucu and composer Gráinne Mulvey, for guitar, cello, soprano, electronics and video; Béal 2016: Inappropriate Moments – directing ensembÉal in performances of vocal ensemble music by Jennifer Walshe; Logical Fallacies – a 45 minute work for viola and soprano by David Bremner, performed with Andreea Banciu.

David Lacey is a musician from Dublin, working at the intersection between improvisation and composition. He uses percussion, objects, cassettes and crude electronics, as well as making studio constructions. He has been featured on releases from labels such as Another Timbre, Confront, Copy for your Records, Fort Evil Fruit & Room Temperature. Alongside composers Rob Casey and Conal Ryan, he co-curates the concert series Reception.