Monday 9 January 2023

at Live Art Club London VSSL 3rd Nov 2022

 

Here's the full video for the improvised performance that I made at the Live Art Club held at VSSL in Deptford (first of every month, book via eventbrite). It probably looks better on YouTube than on this page, which insists on cropping it. The filming was by Nicola Woodham. Below are some stills from the event (all photos courtesy Live Art Club and photographer Henri T).




 

Wednesday 3 March 2021

"UNTIMELY", MY SHOW ON RESONANCE FM IS NOW ARCHIVED ON MIXCLOUD AND AVAILABLE FOR LISTENING, NEW ALBUM AND SOMETHING ABOUT THE DUMPCAST

You can play it straight from here (player below), or it can be found here, with a load of other great stuff that Resonance puts out.

 

Doing the program in the way that I did was a good experience for me - allowing things to remain fairly ragged and trusting that "unfinished" or less-than-perfectly resolved is good enough - especially if that is all you can do, as is my case. I realised in the process that I have a pretty large amount of material with exactly that status, more than would fit into a 59 minute program. Therefore, I've resolved to make an album out of these remainders, and (probably) some brand, spanking new stuff, too. More will follow in the fulness of time. I'll post about it when it's ready (hopefully not too long) and it'll be available for a very nominal fee on my bandcamp

In all of this, I haven't forgotten my podcast series, The Dumpcast, which last year reached the milestone of two whole episodes. I know that one or two people listened to and enjoyed it... then it stopped. This syncope was for no better reason than my feeling overwhelmed at the time by... well, the same shit that was overwhelming so many other people... the narrowness of everything and the feeling that one's own narrowness had little positive contribution to make towards understanding of what was happening. So, boredom (with myself) and frustration (with myself and everything else) played their part as well.  This is all just to say that I'm fully anticipating resuming regular-ish forays into the Dumpcast pretty soon and hopefully in the process I'll work out what I want the Dumpcast to be, format and content-wise. I will announce when it happens.

Tuesday 23 February 2021

THIS FRIDAY - 26 FEBRUARY 2021 - RADIO SHOW

This Friday, the 26th of February 2021, my programme "Untimely" will air on Resonance FM, 20:00-21:00hrs. It will be repeated at 10am on the following Monday.After that, I'm assuming it will be on Resonance's Mixcloud (will post a link when it's up).

To give you an idea of what it will be about, here's some text composed for me by the ever-brilliant Nicola Woodham:

Many people mention lack of concentration, disjointed thoughts, no motivation and anxiety when they are asked about how they’ve been effected by the Covid-19 pandemic. For Robin Bale, who has two learning difficulties: Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD) and dyspraxia, a condition that effects organising thoughts and memory, the pandemic has been a struggle to navigate through. A performance artist and experimental musician since the 80s, his practice went up in smoke in the last year. He felt he saw his making of unfinished fragments, shifting between styles, working on lots of ideas at once as awkward failures, not fitting for release or performance. He applied to to make a program for Clear Spot with the aim to make the show just about that not being able to focus and disordered textures of lockdown. He’s taking up his work on Benjamin’s constellations again. 


The combination of the pandemic and two learning difficulties (ADHD and dyspraxia) has made Robin Bale’s experimental music and sound making even more constellated, unfinished, preposterous. The unfinshed album, the multi-genred EP, the untethered sample all collapse here, unfunctional, awkward, failed. A program designed to help you lack focus, drift, scan without feeling bad for it.

 

It will comprise of a whole load of unfinished/resolved pieces - sound and verbal - composed over the past plague year. Below is a brief taster - it's not all like that, but I like the chaotic raucousness of this one...


Sunday 30 August 2020

Saturday 22 August 2020

First Podcast Episode. The DumpCast #1

First (brief) episode of what I hope to be a weekly outing. In this case, concerning joggers and Steve Bannon; with brief remarks on the "centrist" wastes of space who called themselves The Independent Group - remember them?

Sunday 22 March 2020

CANCELLED: PSYCHOSONIC ACTION LAB 26 MARCH

It will come as no surprise to anyone that this event previously posted about and scheduled for next week has been cancelled, for all the obvious reasons.

I hope that you're all staying safe and well out there. These are unsetlling times; but they have been for quite a long while.

I just wanted to add a couple of thoughts whilst I am here:

This virus is frequently being described as an enemy. We are at war with it. This language has been used by members of the UK government as well as French and American ones. This is patently ridiculous and insulting. What we have is an enormous crisis in public health. There's been the “wars” on terror/drugs etc. for a very long time now; though, oddly, what happened to Iraq or Afghanistan in the earlier part of this century (still ongoing) was never declared, nor the obvious war on Libya more recently. Prosecuting a war on another human regime or nation is at least logically coherent. But nonetheless, it has to be a “war” on Covid, despite the fact that it has no uniforms, flags or territory beyond the individual human body, wherever that body might happen to be. It has to be this way because, in accordance with the emotional blackmail of the so-called “blitz spirit” in the UK, the total mobilisation of civil society, commercial interests and government in order to promote individual survival and the public good can only be understood via the metaphor of war. Peacetime is defined by individualism and endemic competition; solidarity is rare, or even regarded as unhelpful to economic growth or the nation “punching above its weight” in trade and other such banalities. 

Because our society is emphatically not predicated on mutual support and solidarity, protecting the vulnerable and promoting the public good in its “normal” operations, the extraordinary condition must be invoked: that of war with its connotations of existential struggle, sacrifice for the greater good etc.

It seems that the proof that this "enemy" is defeated would simply be getting back to screwing over the vulnerable and each other in a collective-yet-individualised frenzy of business-as-usual? That's something to exercise the virtues of public spirit and self-sacrifice for?


If this current situation is an unprecedented threat to our collective and individual well-being what can be said about what preceded it, the normal background against which this now stands in such supposedly stark contrast that it must be described as a "war"? That this virus is a serious threat to our collective life I do not for a moment deny. It is. I just want to point out that what passed for “collective life” prior to the outbreak - taken as a whole - was also a serious threat to our collective life.

Wednesday 11 March 2020

PSYCHONIC ACTION LAB: UNFORMED - MARCH 26

I am delighted to be included in the following event, with a whole load of other great people: 26 March in south London. Come if you can...




A testing ground for new live artworks, collaborations and chance meetings.

artists working in or across the borders of:

experimental music, sound art, noise, performance, live art, live A/V, artist video, spoken word, poetry, rants, rituals, lectures, workshops...

live:

Mother Disorder
https://www.motherdisorder.co.uk/

Steve Wrong
https://www.mixcloud.com/discover/the-wrong-show/

Nicola Woodham
https://www.nicolawoodham.com/

Tom Bland
https://badbettypress.com/product/the-death-of-a-clown-tom-bland/

raxil4
https://raxil4.bandcamp.com/

Robin Bale
https://robinbale.blogspot.com/

Luke Jordan
https://l-r-jordan.tumblr.com/

dj:

Richard Crow
https://institution-of-rot.org/home/about-2/

video:

Talitha Bell
https://talithabell.com/

SpaceAffect
https://www.facebook.com/spaceaffect/

with new loud speaker system from:
Cheeky Soundsystem

art / book / record stall
cheap bar

£5 suggested donation

https://psychosonicactionlab.blogspot.com/