Hungarian Lit Night '#2: tributes to Attila József
June Wednesday 5th 2019 : 7pm - at Hungarian Cultural Centre

Lyrical, idiosyncratic and impassioned, the mature works of Attila József have been celebrated throughout the world since his premature death in 1937. His self-conscious, concise, ambitious poetry contains within it a unique insight into poverty and suffering. Gone before his 33rd birthday, the short, intense life of József spawned an outpouring of poems that seems, as much as any other, to represent the tumult of the European 20th century at large.

This event celebrated the iconoclastic Hungarian poet through brand new commissions of contemporary artists, writers and musicians, who responded to József - his poems, ideas & life - with new performances, recitations and readings.

The event featured Ellen Wiles, Astra Papachristodoulou, Stephen Watts, SJ Fowler and Bettina Fung.

This event also saw a performance by Dominic Jaeckle, Serena Braida & Han Smith to celebrate the new Hotel Cordel project - ‘A House on Fire’ (Translations After Atilla József). For more info visit partisanhotel.co.uk/Hotel-Cordel-A-House-on-Fire

Supported by http://www.london.balassiintezet.hu/

London based artist Bettina Fung | 馮允珊 creates two dimensional, performative and site specific works. Her practice centres on drawing and focuses on its performative aspect. She draws live at exhibitions, sharing her process and allowing her work to unfold overtime. She is drawn to the liminal space between nothing and existence that is potent with possibilities. Themes of ritual, futility, purposelessness and notions of productivity and progress are subjects of interest. Bettina’s background is in computer animation, where she gained her degree in Bournemouth University (NCCA) in 2005. She has exhibited nationally and abroad. She was the recipient of awards such as the a-n Artist Information Company's New Collaborations Bursary in 2014 and Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts award in 2018. Bettina is currently taking part in Syllabus IV, an alternative peer led artist development and learning programme, and is an Associate Member of the Asia-Art-Activism Research Network.

Hungarian Lit Night '#1: tributes to László Krasznahorkai
March Wednesday 20th 2019 : Hungarian Cultural Centre : London

László Krasznahorkai has produced an iconoclastic and utterly unique body of work throughout the 20th and 21st century. This event celebrated the idiosyncratic Hungarian novelist through brand new commissions of contemporary artists, writers and musicians, who responded to Krasznahorkai - his novels, ideas & life - with new performances, recitations and readings.

The event featured Eley Williams, David Spittle, Mischa Foster Poole, Karen Sandhu, Benedict Taylor, Christian Patracchini, SJ Fowler & Stephen Watts.

Supported by http://www.london.balassiintezet.hu/

Eley Williams' Attrib. and other stories (Influx Press, 2017) was awarded the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2018. With stories anthologised in The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story (Penguin Classics, 2018) and Liberating the Canon (Dostoevsky Wannabe, 2018), she is a Fellow of the MacDowell Colony and the Royal Society of Literature. 

Karen Sandhu is currently completing her PhD in contemporary poetry and artists’ books at Royal Holloway. Her poetry has been published by The Archive of the Now, Opon, HOW2, and BlazeVOX. She has collaborated with the ICA (London) and performed at Camden People’s Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre and Arnolfini (Bristol). She has also written for The Blue Notebook: Journal for Artists’ Books and her bookworks have been exhibited at The Showroom (London) and Galerie éof (Paris). 

Mischa Foster Poole is interested in the politicopoetics of nonsense. His work has appeared in 3:AM, Hotel, HVTN, Perverse, Poetry London, Poetry Wales,SALADE, Stride, Tentacular, and X-Peri. His debut collection unboxing, teardown is forthcoming from Veer Books.

David Spittle has poetry published in Blackbox Manifold, 3am, The Literateur, Datableed, Zarf, and is translated into French by Black Herald Press. Twice shortlisted for the Melita Hume Prize (2015/2016) and included in the Best New British and Irish Poets 2016 Anthology (Eyewear Press). His first pamphlet, B O X, is with HVTN Press (September, 2018). In addition to poetry, he has written the libretti to three operas, performed at various venues around Cardiff and at Hammersmith Studios in London. In 2014 David was commissioned to write a song cycle for the Bergen National Opera, since performed internationally. He has curated a series of interviews, Light Glyphs, with poets-on-film and filmmakers-on-poetry. This ongoing series has included John Ashbery, Guy Maddin, Sophie Mayer, Andrew Kötting, Redell Olsen, John Adams, and Lisa Samuels. See here for Spittle’s website. 

Christian Patracchini is an artist, writer and curator, working across different art forms, projects alternate between performance, text based work, sound and drawing. He has recently completed Knots a new writing project presenting a collection of one line poems and aphorisms exploring the notion of the event in the making. He is the founder of ZenoPress an independent publisher. www.christianpatracchini.com

Benedict Taylor is a solo violist & composer. He is an active figure within the area of contemporary string performance, at the forefront of the British & European new and improvised music scene. He performs, records & composes internationally, featuring in many venues and festivals including: Cafe Oto, Jazz en Nord France, Royal Court Theatre, The Vortex, Ronnie Scott's, BBC Late Junction, BBC Hear and Now, BBC Arts Online, BBC Radio 3 & 2, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, Cantiere D'Arte di Montepulciano, Edinburgh Fringe, CRAM Festival, The Barbican, Royal Albert Hall, Southbank Centre, ICA London, Radio Libertaire Paris, Resonance FM London, Film London, Rotterdam Film Festival, Berlinale, TriBeCa Film Festival, London East End Film Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Theatre 503 London, Venice International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Vault Festival, London Contemporary Music Festival, Bike Shed Theatre, Old Red Lion Theatre, Third Man Theatre.  As an ensemble performer, he has worked with Evan Parker, Paul Dunmall, Hannah Marshall, Marcello Magliocchi, Terry Day, Keith Tippett, Wadada Leo Smith, Alex Ward, Renee Baker, Steve Beresford, Pat Thomas, Tetsu Saito, Alison Blunt, Gianni Mimmo, Veryan Weston, Sylvia Hallett amongst others. He is involved with a number of higher education institutions, giving lectures in performance, improvisation & composition at the Royal College of Music, City University of London, Goldsmiths College, Royal Holloway College London. He is the founder, and a curator of CRAM, a music collective and independent label.