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We talk dance, music, starting new things at a more mature age and collaborating at a distance with Karl Jay Lewin and Matteo Fargion, whose Extremely Bad Dancing to Extremely French Music was recently at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. We also chat with Hannah Bateman, the Lead Dancer of the Northern Ballet‘s production of Cinderella, which is currently touring the UK. And this episode’s easter egg is an exclusive preview of our Scottish Poetry Library podcast with Korean poet Lee Si Young with his translator, Brother Anthony, possibly the only Cornish Korean in the world. Presented by Ryan Van Winkle (@rvwable) and produced by Colin Fraser (@kailworm) of Culture Laser Productions (@culturelaser) Photo: Bill Young for Northern Ballet.

Really delighted that ‘Tides Connect Everywhere‘, the latest audiovisual collaborative piece between myself and Dan Gorman, will be hosted in the Melbourne Planetarium this month, as part of the exhibition Elemental.

Tides Connect Everywhere is a site specific audiovisual installation commissioned by the Melbourne Planetarium, Australia in January 2014 on occasion of the exhibition ELEMENTAL, science in the dark. The video will be screened in April 2014 in the dome of the planetarium.

Tides Connect Everywhere is to be considered the second chapter of a collaboration with poet Ryan van Winkle and experimental sound researcher- collector and activist Dan Gorman which started In early 2012 with the realization of the music video No Ideas but in things and released on Invisible Agent. Tides Connect Everywhere represents a reflection on the hypothetical presence of a single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the uni- verse. For this commission I worked with an arch structure of continuously growing geometrical elements taken from my euromeptiness archive of symbols. Very Important is the timing within the transition choices that are meant to be resemble human breathing, therefor not necessarily synched with the track changes.

Really excited to be heading back to Erbil in Iraq for Erbil’s 3rd International Literature Festival. I’ll be doing some readings and workshops, alongside some fantastic Iraqi writers and some familiar faces to Scottish readers, including Kei Millar, Vicki Feaver, Julia Copus, Kapka Kassabova, Nia Davies and SJ Fowler. It’s running from 22-24 April, if you’re in Kurdistan, do drop by.

Now in its third year, the former Erbil International Literature Festival has been renamed NINITI – which is a Sumerian epithet for a goddess meaning ‘lady of life’ – to reflect this year’s focus on women writers. Held at the atmospheric Chwar Chra Hotel, a short walk from Erbil’s 6000 year old Citadel, an exciting line up of international and local writers will come together to give readings and discuss politics and literature. 

Writers participating include Kapka Kassabova, Julia Copus, Ghareeb Iskander, Choman Hardi and Rachel Holmes in an exciting programme of events celebrating women’s writing in the region and beyond. Writing Workshops will also be held during the main festival in partnership with Salahaddin University in Kurdish, Arabic and English for students interested in storytelling or poetry. 

If you missed fantastic performances at this week’s Hidden Door Festival, here is video evidence of my involvement. The entire Camarade event is available on SJ Fowler’s YouTube channel. Check it out.

We think about ancestors, history and industry in this episode. First off, we talk with Louise Welsh about her Merchant City Voices project which explores Glasgow’s Merchant City’s relationship with the north Atlantic Slave Trade. “This city has blood in the mortar.” We also feature visual artist Rebecca Gouldson, whose exhibition Industrial Shift is currently at Edinburgh Printmakers. And finally there’s an exclusive preview of our next Book Talk podcast for the Scottish Book Trust – out Wednesday 2 April.

I’ll be chairing a really exciting event for Superational, an excellent forum for artists to organise cross-genre collaborations, promote and distribute their work. The event is part of the Hidden Door Festival, and will preview some of the work Superational will be doing.

What: Superational Preview

Where: The Vaults, Market Street, Edinburgh

When: 6-7pm, Thursday 3 April

How Much: FREE, book tickets here.

Just a quick reminder that myself and JO Morgan, last seen collaborating on ‘All Signs’, will be joining Hiva Oa, Lipsync for a Lullabye and a line-up of super talented musicians, writers and visual artists for Decagram, part of DAY 7 (aka Thursday 3 April) of the Hidden Door Festival. It all kicks off at 7pm, see you there!

DECAGRAM is a transcendental fusion of contemporary, classical, post-rock, tribal, noise, dub and hip hop that will eat your brains.

The bill of highly contrasting music artists will collaborate at the transitions between sets, creating a seamless three hours of music set against a spectacular visual feast of short film, animation, improvised visuals, motion graphics and projection mapping.

Programmed by Ed Stack of Ten Tracks

Music

• Gravious
• Numbers are Futile
• Hiva Oa
• Ryan Van Winkle & Jo Morgan
• Lipsync for a Lullaby
• ATMCIS
• Small Feet Little Toes
• Beds
• Urban Farmhand
• Matthew Collings

Moving Image

• Robert Motyka
• Brian Hutchinson
• Gosia Bugaj and KinoKlub
• Ania Urbanowska
• Shaun Glowa
• Amy Shields
• Kate Charter
• Kat Dlugosz
• Stuart Edwards
• Magda Pierwiastek

I’ll be reading with some fine folks who have had stuff published in Valve Journal, an excellent literary compendium. Come hang with us on Friday April 11 at The Poetry Club in Glasgow.

Your favourite literary journal (right?) is having a night of fun at The Poetry Club to celebrate all the good people we’ve come across since we began in 2011.

Rounding up some of our favourite writers published in Valve over the last three years, we’ll kick off with readings from some of Scotland’s most dazzling literary talent (and no, we’re not biased at all).

You’ll be treated to words in sentences from:

Moustache owner and mighty wordsmith RYAN VAN WINKLE

Paisley’s finest poet GRAHAM FULTON

MARY MCDONOUGH CLARK, surfer of emotions and ideas

Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Award-winning LUCY RIBCHESTER, and

Ever-entertaining observer of geriatrics on public transport ANDREW BLAIR

After readings there will be some good old fashioned Valve fun then dancing ’til the wee hours with a DJ set.

Come and be merry with us.

Filmmaker Jessica Oreck discusses her film Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys, which follows one year in the life of a family of reindeer herders in Finnish Lapland. Speaking with Ryan Van Winkle at the Glasgow Film Festival, she discusses the importance of ritual, silence, slaughter and the encroachment of modern technology on the life of the reindeer herders. Check out the interactive accompaniment to the film. We also feature the track ‘Dogwood’ by Jaron Freeman-Fox from his latest album The Opposite of Everything. With thanks to Creative Scotland for financial support.

In this edition of the Book Talk podcast Ryan Van Winkle interviews Kirsty Logan about her debut collection of short stories, discusses parkour with novelist and poet Tim Sinclair and imagines the Scotland of the future with sci-fi author Ken MacLeod.

The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales is the debut short story collection from former New Writers Award recipient Kirsty Logan. Written over the course of five years, the stories are set in locations as diverse as 1920s New Orleans, the Australian Outback and Paris.

Kirsty reads her moving short story The Light Eater and discusses how writing helped her to process difficult emotions.

Australian novelist and poet Tim Sinclair talks about his latest young adult novel, Run. Written in concrete poetry, where words function both linguistically and visually, the book explores the world of parkour, where participants “move through the urban environment in a way that doesn’t allow for boundaries”. When ego gets involved, trouble quickly follows.

Finally, acclaimed sci-fi writer Ken MacLeod discusses his new book about “flying saucers, hidden races and Antonio Gramsci’s theory of passive revolution”. Descent follows the teens and twenties of an ordinary Greenock man whose bad behaviour is blamed on a possible alien encounter.

Moving from science fiction to science fact, Ken also explains his involvement with Hope Beyond Hype, a comic book he wrote in collaboration with OptiStem, an EU-funded stem cell research project. The comic was downloaded over 100,000 in times in the first few days following release; listen now to discover how the book was developed.

Podcast contents
00:00-00:53 Introduction
00:53-09:20 Kirsty Logan interview
09:20-16:30 Tim Sinclair Interview
16:30-30.00 Ken MacLeod interview