Sunday 7 June 2009

Poetry's First Pop Group



Someone suggested I watch this video from back in 1998, of 'poetry's first pop group', Atomic Lip. In the aftermath, I find myself uncharacteristically lost for words. Wow. Just wow. Actually spectacular. Anyone starting out in performance poetry could learn a huge amount from this video. Just study the choreography, their various delivery techniques, and the content, then do the exact inverse.

4 comments:

  1. Come on? This has to be a piss take? Doesn't it? Please?

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  2. Wow! Thanks Tim, that was almost as funny as the literal video of Total Eclipse of the Heart! 1996? Looked more like 1986. I felt sorry for Patience, she really is much better than that made her look.

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  3. I think we've all got moments from our creative pasts we'd rather forget, and if funded sections of the Arts are doing their job properly, they should exist to underwrite risk, not just financially, but also in the case of creative failure. One thing you can say in sincere praise of this video, is at least nobody is settling on doing something 'safe'.

    At the same time, experimenting only works if you're open to the data you get back. I'm not sure how this got to the stage of being filmed. Who was responsible for quality control? A pillow with a face drawn on it?

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  4. You know, one day someone's going to find that "beat 2" pilot and then a lot of people are going to look pre-tty silly...

    Nigel, if you're out there, I'll pay you to burn those tapes.

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