Tuesday, February 4, 2014

'Silvia Ziranek: Readings from Wall Works' at Upper Addison Gardens, 2nd February 2014


My word how the other half live...  Somewhere between Shoreditch and Notting Hill there's a invisible meniscus that separates two worlds.   One on side the filthy, mouse-infested, damp-ridden leaky hovels of the East and on the other the magnificent, high-ceilinged, airy, art-stuffed townhouses of the West.  No prizes for guessing which of these I spend my nights in. I hate turning green with materialist jealousy, but my eyes goggled out of my head as I took in the lovely decor, the paintings and sculptures littering the walls and floor and, most impressively as far as I'm concerned, the bulging floor to ceiling bookcases.  A restful Valhalla for London bohemians if I've ever seen one.

But I wasn't here to moon over a beautiful house, this is Silvia Ziranek's afternoon.  I'm not even going to pretend to be impartial: literally every single time I've ever seen her she's been doing something fascinating, whether it be a performance or simply being slightly abrasive in a dangerously intelligent way.  She's someone you have to be on your toes around: to carry on a proper non-small talk conversation is a little like heading into a sword fight.  You've got to be on your toes or you'll lose a limb.

Every performance of Silvia's I've seen has been accompanied by carefully enunciated and precisely delivered narration, her words chosen not only for their meaning but also for the way they roll off the tongue, punctuate her actions and play off each other.  This afternoon was all about words; a self-described "lively" reading of her new ebook Wall Works.  The book collects writings between 1976 and 2011 concerning the intersection of the human body and architecture, probing the many ways in which a person can be a place or vice versa.

Silvia Ziranek
With sparkly silver heels adding a few inches to her height, a long orange dress covering her from ankle to neck and a sprinkle of pink in her hair she cut the figure of a day-glo priest. This was, after all, a Sunday and with rows of chairs gathered before her and an attentive hushed audience the front room took on a bit of a churchy tone.  I suspect that deep down inside our atheist hearts some basic part of us still craves a Sunday sermon and now that God is dead we scrabble for something to fill the gap.  Adding to the quasi-religious atmosphere was the donning of numerous aprons, echoing of the byzantine fabric folds of Catholic robes. These aprons tied the whole thing together as one performance, cocooning her in patterns, colours and the smudgy distortion of feminine cliches that seems to be the common ground in what I've seen.

I think my favourite reading was Chez E (She Said), a piece that amply demonstrates Silvia's style of wordplay.  Check out this extract:
"SO HERE I AM, IN THE CONVENTIONS OF SEEMS TO BE, A LUCKY SAVAGE AS FAR AS I KNOW. AND THIS . . . IS MY JUNGLE, RAVAGED BY THE ATTENTION TO INTENTION, AT THE MERCY OF DÉCOR.                                                                                                                                                                    THERE IS PROOF OF HOPE IN THE PROVISION OF SEATING. VISUAL EMOTION ACQUIRES A SIGNIFICANT POSITION IN THE PRESENCE OF SIMPLE ECONOMIES - SAVE ON STYLE WITH FUNCTIONAL GUILE: A ROOM WITH A DOOR IS A DOUBLY ATTRACTIVE FEATURE."
It reads like the Burroughsian cut-up of an interior decoration glossy: tossing away catchy buzzphrases and clever rhymes.  I love the punchy lyrical style - casually delivered slogans that you can picture festooned over the placards of some situationist architectural protest.  

A lot of aprons
It's striking how differently you perceive these works in text and when you hear them. Simply reading them allows you to consider them as a whole, to draw connections between the whole piece. But for my money they really come alive as part of a performance, the carefully judged glottal stops, pauses and martial gesticulations (not to mention the neon quilt of Silvia herself) give them a warped authority that causes you to stiffen your back and pay attention. 

I always enjoy when an unexpected element of chaos enters proceedings.  That afternoon this unpredictable element was provided by a friendly black cat that wound its way through the crowd.  Hungry for attention it lept into laps and obliviously made its way to the front of the room, trying its best to upstage Silvia with feline egotism.  The upshot of its presence was that it briefly made Silvia into a kind of comedy straightwoman.  But this cat only underlined what was already there: a vital sweetening element of humour in her asides and comic timing.  After all, there's few things more excruciating than a humourless poet taking themselves very very seriously.

Aldo Ziranek
Breaking up the two halves of the performance was a bit of experimental guitar music by Aldo Ziranek, Silvia's son.  Ordinarily you'd dread this sort of thing, no matter how clear-headed a person is they're usually blind to the shortcomings of their children.  But even before he started you could basically tell that Aldo was going to be, at minimum, good. With a mop of blonde hair, fluorescent trainers and coloured rags dangling from his guitar he certainly looked the rockstar part at least.  He's actually a pretty damn amazing guitarist, launching straight into a psychedelic Hendrixy noodle, his feet clattering over effects pedals bending and pitchshifting the sounds.  Sitting on a clear winter's day in a posh Holland Park house, some of the cream of London's art scene sipping tea attentively is an odd venue for experimental psych rock, but somehow it all hung together.

As Sunday afternoons go it was one of the more pleasant I've had a while.  As London experiences go, sitting in a fancy, welcoming house sipping tea and eating home-made cakes, the smell of a roast dinner gently suffusing the room, quietly drinking in the book collection and bric a brac scattered all over the place is a small slice of peculiarly British heaven.  For all that though it's Silvia's poems: all very much alive, kicking and fiercely intelligent that put the sparkle in the Sunday sunset.

You can get the (very good and also cheap) ebook here for £4.50.

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