Just a quick note to share the link to the Aberystwyth Arts Centre website entry for our performance on 21 January http://www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk/whatson/theatre/info/8230/

We are in the booklet too, of course.

If you are in Aber, come to see us!

See the beautiful posters Becky Bridge has made for our Axons and Dendrites performance on 21 January.

Just finished making links available to video interviews and lecture captures from our Gwella launch – showcasing good practice in technology-enhanced learning. Check them out!

Report on Gwella Nexus launch.

Leeds Surrealist Group.

I found their new journal, Phosphor, at the Manchester Art Museum when I went recently to see Angels of Anarchy, surrealist women’s art.

The journal is quite good, the Autumn 2009 issue commemorates Franklin Rosemont, an American surrealist who founded the Chicago Surrealist Group in the 1970’s with his wife, Penelope.  Franklin passed away last April.

Terribly ironic for me, as I had read the Rosemonts’ publications in the 70’s (Athanor, book of poetry by Penelope, and Arsenal, their journal). I’d lost track of them over the years as my attention was directed elsewhere, then rediscovered them about a year ago with the start of our surrealist salon group in Aberystwyth.  Only a short time later, Franklin passed away.

If you are near Leeds, that group’s activities look well worth checking out.

I was nicely encouraged to see various references to synesthesia in the journal.

Watch for more…..

I love this quote from “Forecast is Hot” edited by Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont, and Paul Garon, Black Swan Press, 1997 (no offense meant to any Marxists out there, the Rosemonts put it in double quotes, you’ll note). Collective play and the ensuing freedom is what we’re after.

The Exaltation of Play, Gateless Gate to Objective Chance

Human freedom cannot be won by miserabilist means. Unlike the tradition-bound “Marxist” admirers of “business as usual” who want “Jobs for All,” surrealists demand “All Play and No Work!” To stimulate surrealist collective creation is the principal reason for the creation of surrealist collectives, and we have found play to be the modus operandi that works best. As in “Time-Travelers’ Potlatch,” play questions conventional relationships, overturns definitions, puts pleasure before duty, frees the imagination, reinforces desire. Alchemically, play could be considered the open entrance to the shut palace of objective chance—a free-for-all approach to the infinite variety of unexpected self-revelation, and the basis for a new, revolutionary poetic morality. What at first may appear to be only a moment’s “time out” from the Old Order becomes an “Open Sesame” to the revolutionary life—a concrete prefiguration of the life of poetry made by all.

Here is one poem created on the Manchester Art Gallery site for online exquisite corpse. This one sounds like a real poem, pretty much.

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/angelsofanarchy/besurreal/poems/complete/61/521

The goblin spoke in stones and pyramids

Wings empowered the lioness to write water lives

unlike others my wings slightly tainted

i must swim to reach your beaches, feet in my dune

and out spilt waves of shadow from nature’s womb

Reflections in the sleeping eye of the one I love

Feet of wisdom travel through lifes depth

his blue eyes pierce my heart, I fall to my knees

I saw a cat eating food

Angels of Anarchy

…this proves I must be a surrealist poet.

I’m looking forward to the surrealist women artists exhibit in Manchester!

On 21 October 2009, we held a launch to announce the new Nexus website for enhancing learning through technology, as well as our other Gwella activity: http://aberystwythuniversity.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome

Nexus is part of the Gwella projects undertaken by AU, and we are using the site to pull together the various threads of the projects. It includes case studies of good practice in e-learning, annotated resources, news items, good practice guides, and more.

It is a joint product of the E-learning Team at Aberystwyth University. We hope you like it!

Here is another piece that I drafted in August. Revised 30 November 2009.

Blossom

The future creeps towards you,

the past speeds away.

The world shudders and cleaves,

tears open a void at your back,

black and gaping, a vacuum

that pulls at your coattails,

a hungry child.

Exquisite moments

melt

as they blossom

beneath your finger

tips.