Plateau 13 from The Path of the Weeping Night

Note: Both the web-version and the gallery version are looped and start with a 20 second black nothing

Web-version : http://www.vilt.net/nkdee/data/downloads/chlebnikov/vlak_13_web.html (25 mb)

Gallery version: http://www.vilt.net/nkdee/data/downloads/chlebnikov/dirkvekemans.zip (50mb)

About Plateau 13 of The Path of the Weeping Night

"This is a performance of the existing code for plateau 13 of The Path of the Weeping Night

The Path of the Weeping Night is the ‘score’/ ‘source code’ written by dirk vekemans for the performance of his re-write of Velemir Khlebnikov's Zangezi totalling 20 such planes or plateau's one for each part of the Russiian original. Not unlike dv's New Cathedral of Erotic Misery (see http://www.vilt.net/nkdee - an update of Schwitters original Kathedrale des erotischen Elends), the Path is faithfull to the original work only in spirit.

The code is to be used freely for non-commercial purposes. In fact everyone involved in this International Celebration of Russia's foremost Modernist Poet would very much like to see some more 'performances' of existing code along the Path. Authors and performers are advised to go about this in a very free way, in fact throwing away the existing code might in some cases be a better way than trying to make something of it. Heck it’s in Dutch anyway.

There's consistent rumours of a Great International Khlebnikov Carnaval to be held from august 11 to 17 , 2008 in Kessel-Lo, near Louvain in Belgium, so it might be a good idea to start thinking about your contribution right now.

Source code (in Dutch) for the Path is made available through http://khlebnikov.wordpress.com

In any case Dirk refuses responsibility for any damage to performing players or machines."

This Plateau premiered at the *ZAOEM festival of Present Day Poetry in Gent earlier this april: http://www.krikri.be/zaoem

Performers

Text: dirk vekemans

Recitation and singing: dirk vekemans en Ilse Derden

direction: dirk vekemans en Arnout Camerlinckx

Ilse Derden en Arnout Camerlinckx and their assorted friends together form the art-collective Grapes of Art, see http://www.grapesofart.org

Web-version : http://www.vilt.net/nkdee/data/downloads/chlebnikov/vlak_13_web.html

Gallery version: http://www.vilt.net/nkdee/data/downloads/chlebnikov/dirkvekemans.zip (50mb!)

(please send us a picture and some details of whereabouts if you ‘re showing the gallery version)

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To conclude here’s some lines from the master himself, from a longer poem
that sets out with “When autumn comes to turn the trees[…]then we think of spring and Mardi Gras!”:

“Good friends, arise! And stand prepared
to follow her with heaps of light
and woven strands of mist and flowers!
Wilder than the sea at dawn,
spread yourselves in streams across
the east and watch, enchanted by
the air’s blue escapades,
As dreams uncoil like waking snakes.
Iridescent as the flowers,
blown by the breath of human mouths,
Spring arises from her sleep,
all men who scrabble after profit,
who reckon days in gain and strain,
who reckon days in trade and coin,
all have joined the single flood
of love for the Virgin Spring, loyal subjects
sure her CARNIVAL will last forever.”

Velemir Khlebnikov – from ‘ The Poet’ transl. by Paul Schmidt

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Thank You.