Future-publishing Field Trip with TLP

D132402I’m delighted that future-publishing consultancy The Literary Platform have made Shackleton’s Man Goes South, my Science Museum novel and accompanying exhibition (see detail, right) the destination for the second in a series of fact-finding field trips they are organising and which are open to anyone who is interested.

The field trips are cheaply-ticketed and offer ‘a chance to get out and see project work talked through by the project makers themselves.’ Their previous visit was to Memory Palace by Hari Kunzru at the V&A.

Here is the blurb about the field trip from the TLP site:

Shackleton’s Man Goes South is the new novel by Tony White published by the Science Museum earlier this year. This thought-provoking new work of fiction is the Science Museum’s 2013 Atmosphere commission, published as part of the Contemporary Arts Programme. The novel is accompanied by a display in the Museum’s Atmosphere Gallery charting some of the scientific and literary inspiration behind the novel, that runs until spring 2014. In a central innovation visitors can use a dedicated touchscreen that is part of the display, to email themselves a free ebook of the novel in formats compatible with most devices.

Shackleton’s Man Goes South, square thumbnailJoining me to talk about Shackleton’s Man Goes South, to show participants around the display, and to demo our innovative touch-screen fulfilment point, will be Sarah Harvey, the Science Museum’s Assistant Curator of the Media Space and Arts Programme.

Sarah was production manager for Shackleton’s Man Goes South, so we will be able to talk about the commissioning process, the various collaborations involved (including with celebrated British designer Jake Tilson), as well as ‘future-publishing’ aspects, including the kinds of detailed audience data that we were able to draw upon in devising the innovative publication method, etc.

The registration price also includes a free signed paperback of Shackleton’s Man Goes South, and the tour will end (literally) behind the scenes at the Museum, as we take the back stairs over to the Science Museum’s Dana Centre cafe, to continue the conversations over tea and cake.

Earlier this year I wrote about collaboration for TLP’s sister project The Writing Platform. I have also taken part in a couple of conference panels organised by them: last year’s Writing in the Digital Age conference and the Newcastle Writers’ Conference 2013. Long-short, TLP are great, so if you are interested in finding out more about them, and/or chatting to an interesting bunch of people in informal settings about opportunities and challenges presented by the futures of publishing, then do please join us.

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Shackleton’s Man Goes South : TLP Field Trip to Science Museum

Thursday, 24 October 2013 from 14:00 to 16:00

The Science Museum, London

Registration £15 (includes signed limited edition paperback of Shackleton’s Man Goes South)

Full info and booking via The Literary Platform’s eventbrite page

Octoberfest

Shackleton’s Man Goes South, cover jpegNews of two events to promote my Science Museum climate change novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South, at literature festivals during October. It would be great to see you at either gig if you are in the Manchester or Leeds areas.

On 15 October I will be reading from and discussing Shackleton’s Man Goes South at Manchester Literature Festival, with Gregory Norminton, author and editor of the climate change-themed short story collection Beacons: Stories for our not so distant future (One World). Last time I did an event in Manchester was last year, when I read from my 2012 novella Dicky Star and the Garden Rule for Whitworth Gallery’s lates programme, and there was a great audience, so I’m looking forward to this one.

If you want to help spread the word, please tweet this event using @McrLitFest http://ow.ly/pb50V

Later that same week, joining me at Ilkley Literature Festival on Saturday 19 October will be IPCC lead author Professor Andy Challinor from the University of Leeds. This conversation will be chaired by the brilliant Siân Ede, who as well as being an eloquent broadcaster and writer on art and science collaborations of various kinds, has also been responsible for much art and science activity in the UK through her former role at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. I’m delighted to be sharing a stage with both of them. Also it is a great coup to have Professor Challinor taking part in this conversation just as the first parts of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, IPCC 5, are published, so look out for some personal insights in to both the IPCC process and the very latest thinking on climate change.

You can help spread the word by tweeting this event using @ilkleylitfest http://ow.ly/plx3w Thank you.

Topical trivia: I lived in Leeds for a couple of years in the mid-1980s, and the very first short story that I ever had published was set in Ilkley, but that was a long time ago and is probably a story for another time. More recently, my 2012 novella Dicky Star and the Garden Rule is set in the Leeds 6 area and here is Phil Kirby’s excellent (not-a-)review of it, from Leeds’s own Culture Vultures site.

Shackleton’s Man Goes South is available in free and DRM-free ebook formats from the Science Museum website, while Science Museum visitors can use the dedicated touchscreen that is part of my display in the Museum’s Atmosphere Gallery to email themselves an ebook of the novel in formats compatible with most contemporary devices, until 24 April 2014.

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New DRM-free label, Submitted by dpic on Mon, 2012-08-13 08:54Shackleton’s Man Goes South: Tony White in conversation with Gregory Norminton, Manchester Literature Festival. Tuesday 15 October 2013, 7.30pm, The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL. Tickets £6/£4 concessions. Bookings: 0843 208 0500 or book online.

Shackleton’s Man Goes South: Tony White and Professor Andy Challinor, chaired by arts and science broadcaster Siân Ede. Ilkley Literature Festival. Saturday 19 October 2013, 1.30-2.30pm, Ilkley Playhouse Wharfeside, Weston Road, Ilkley, LS29 8DW. Tickets £5/£3 concessions. Book online.

Download the novel FREE and DRM-free.

Shackleton’s Man Goes South has an official Facebook page.

Castañeda and the conquistadors

Short story 'Bully Buck' commissioned by the artist Steven Hull and illustrated by the artist Soo Kim as part of the amazing Ab Ovo project.I was just invited to write a new short story for a performance by the US artist Steven Hull at Glow Santa Monica — an ‘all-night cultural experience featuring original commissions by artists that re-imagine Santa Monica Beach as a playground for thoughtful and participatory artworks.’ Glow is this Saturday, 28 September. It only happens once every three years, and previous festivals have included commissions by a wide range of artists including Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot and Usman Haque.

I’ve worked with Steven Hull a few times before. The first time was when I contributed a story to his brilliant Ab Ovo (2006) for which twenty artists sat the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). The resulting reports were given to twenty writers to use as the basis for a character in a story for children or young people, and the resulting stories were given to another twenty visual artists to illustrate; a kind of collaborative relay. My own short story ‘Bully Buck’ was beautifully illustrated by artist Soo Kim. Ab Ovo existed as a book, a website (not currently operational) and a touring exhibition.

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Ab Ovo was a brilliant project to be involved in, and Steven is a great collaborator, so when he emailed this summer, enclosing this sketch (left), to ask if I was interested in writing something for Glow, I didn’t need to think about it for too long, especially as the piece would also include a specially commissioned piece of music/sound by Gibby Haynes, of Butthole Surfers.

Steven’s email said that he was looking for a ‘surrealist’ short story about a stage filled with large sculptures of puppeteers holding marionettes. The puppeteers, he suggested, could be clowns or knights…

I had already been mulling over a short fiction that included a Californian beach scene, so Steven’s request was just the provocation that I needed — ‘How about conquistadors?’ I thought — although, in the event my story, which is presented as a piece of Carlos Castañeda apocrypha, is more psychedelic than surrealist. Also, a simple lesson learned during the testing of Missorts (my GPS-triggered soundwork for Bristol) was that when writing or editing a story that will be listened to in the location where it is set, one doesn’t need to include much description of setting, as this is already visible to the listener. The application of that lesson here would be that if a stage was already physically present, I wouldn’t need to mention it.

Here is the blurb for the new work, which is entitled A Puppet Show:

Steven Hull will create a rotating stage featuring a marionette show based on the short story ‘A Fragment from the Lives of the Conquistadors’ by Tony White. The stage, situated behind the historic arbor in Crescent Bay Park, will display Hull’s sculptures of conquistadors whose hands detach and become the animated marionettes. There will be several performances throughout the night featuring puppeteer Alex Evans, Eric de la Cruz and their marionettes, with musical accompaniment by Anna Huff and Petra and Tanya Haden. The sculptures will be accentuated with light works by Marilyn Lowey and a sound piece by Gibby Haynes.  An illustrated storybook and flags by Tami Demaree will be produced to commemorate the event.

A Puppet Show will be performed at 8:00pm, 9:00pm and 10:00pm, this Saturday evening, behind the arbor in Crescent Bay Park (number 1 on the map below). I will post some images as soon as I get them.

Glow-map

Here are the opening few lines of my story:

Carlos Castañeda once told this parable about the Conquistador Hernán Cortés. He didn’t write it down, so you won’t find it in any of his books or among his papers, but in any case I heard that Castañeda once spoke of a legend about Cortés, one that he in turn perhaps had heard from his own teacher, don Juan Matus. The legend tells that late in his life – but before his final fall from grace – Cortés and his closest allies, maybe his generals and one or two of their mistresses or companions, stopped on the beach in what is now Santa Monica and stayed here for a short time…

To find out more you’ll have to go to Glow Santa Monica this coming Saturday, or wait for the planned publication of story and audio. More news on that as and when.

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Glow Santa Monica, Santa Monica Beach, 28 September 2013, 7pm to 3am. Plan your Glow here!

Also (until 12 Oct), Steven Hull at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Bergamot Station, B4, Santa Monica, CA 90404

“… Climate, crisis and Oulipan strategies”

Shackleton’s Man Goes South, square thumbnail‘Shackleton’s Man Goes South: Climate crisis and Oulipan strategies,’ is the title of an introductory talk I’m giving at King’s College, London on 9 October, to kick off my residency in the French department there. It is primarily an opportunity — I think — to meet staff and students, most of whom for the first time. So, to make things simpler, my talk is scheduled as part of the research seminar series that runs through the term on Wednesday evenings. Here is the blurb, for my talk at least:

Author Tony White has recently been appointed Visiting Research Fellow and Creative Entrepreneur in Residence at King’s College London. In this introductory talk he will discuss his work, in particular the 2013 novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South — the first novel ever published by the Science Museum — and Dicky Star and the Garden Rule a novella that was specially commissioned to reflect upon the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Both books deploy literary strategies associated with the Ouvroir de littérature potentielle. He will also briefly introduce the collaboration with KCL’s Dr Sanja Perovic and the artist Stuart Brisley that is the subject of his residency.

There are more events relating to the novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South coming up through October (more info on my events page), and the novel is still available free and DRM-free on the Science Museum website.

What there wasn’t room to say in the blurb for King’s College, London, above, is that Dicky Star and the Garden Rule was written to accompany a series of works entitled Atomgrad (Nature Abhors a Vacuum), also reflecting on the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, by the artists Jane and Louise Wilson. Readers in London may be interested to know that some of Jane and Louise’s Chernobyl works are currently on show in their exhibition at Paradise Row gallery, which runs until 26 October.

Here is a short video of my reading from Dicky Star and the Garden Rule, shot by publishers Forma at the novella’s launch at London’s Free Word Centre last year. The novella’s short afterword, also published on this blog, traces some of these connections with Jane and Louise’s work and with the Oulipo. There are plans for publication of a commercial ebook edition of Dicky Star and the Garden Rule, alongside the existing print edition, later this year. More info soon.

Tony White reads from Dicky Star and the garden rule at the Free Word Centre, London, 26 April 2012. From Forma Arts & Media on Vimeo.

The Ice Man — Trinidadian street cries preserved in song

Screen Shot 2013-08-29 at 16.26.09A warm welcome to the many visitors from Trinidad and Tobago who find their way to this page to hear this incredible song! Greetings to you from London.

This ice man is not Sir Ernest Shackleton or George Clarke Simpson, but an ultra-rare calypso 7″ by Lord Melody, that preserves some of the Trini street cries of the day. ‘Street cry in the city really does amuse me!’ he begins:

‘Plantain to boil and fry! Plantain to boil and fry!’

And, ‘Bottles! Bottles! Bottles! Lady any bottles today!’

But the nicest cry of them all, is when I hear the ice man bawl:

‘Ice! Ice! Cold ice! Hard ice! All kind a ice!’

The song — recorded in ‘Feb 60’ — is written by Pat Castagne who also wrote the national anthem of Trinidad and Tobago. Vocal harmonies are provided by The March of Dimes, and the whole arrangement is by Cyril Diaz and his Orchestra.

The record belonged to a good friend of mine, a bit older than me, named Dave Blair in Leeds, UK. He’d bought it one sunny day at Portobello Market in London in the mid-1960s, along with a job lot of ska singles on the Blue Beat and Island labels by Jackie Edwards, the Blues Busters, Stranger Cole, Theophilus Beckford and many more. He also a bought a couple of pounds of cheap tomatoes. Then he went to the pub…

To cut a long story short, it was a mistake on such a hot day for Dave to have put all those tomatoes in the same bag as the records and then forget about them. The whole squashed mess got put in a cupboard and forgotten about, until the subject came up in conversation a couple of decades later in the mid-1980s.

I wasn’t alive when this record was recorded, but I was and remain a massive fan of Jamaican music as well as what a Jamaican friend of mine once called ‘small island music’, and I was particularly hungry for some new and rare ska tunes. So I volunteered to clean Dave’s singles up so we could listen to them. It wasn’t easy getting that decades-old and rock-hard tomato pulp off the wax. I had to soak them overnight, then wash each disc very carefully in warm water and washing up liquid. It took ages, but once they were cleaned up, we made a tape.

I looked for many years, but never did find a copy of ‘THE ICEMAN’ on vinyl, though the screen grab of the label reproduced here came from a copy that I sadly missed on ebay a few years back. This MP3 is extracted – to preserve it – from my rather battered cassette, which was recorded off the record in the mid-1980s, so the quality is not great, but what a song!

All together now: ‘Ice! Ice! Cold ice! Hard ice! All kind a ice!’

As ever, feel free to extract the file from the WordPress player if you want to listen on your own device.

#Paperbackbookday

Strange Horizons just ran a very positive short review by Niall Harrison of Shackleton’s Man Goes South, which concludes that ‘it’s certainly the most distinctive and formally creative novel I’ve read this year.’

Harrison then deadpans a favourable comparison (and grouping) of Shackleton’s Man Goes South with ‘the year’s second museum exhibition science-fictional tie-in literary experiment’, Hari Kunzru’s very well received Memory Palace novella and exhibition currently at the V&A.

Shackleton's Man Goes South, paperback in display case (showing Jake Tilson’s logotype on the cover), Atmosphere Gallery. Image: Science Museum

Shackleton’s Man Goes South, paperback in display case. Image: Science Museum

Book Cover Prize for Missorts Volume II

The brilliant Situations, who produced Missorts, my permanent soundwork for Bristol that launched at the end of last year, are holding a book cover design competition for a forthcoming paperback edition of my novella Missorts Volume II, which was first published as a free ebook last year to accompany the soundwork.

Cover_template

I’m really excited about the competition. Missorts Volume II means a lot to me, and so I am very excited to see how designers might respond to the novella.

Here’s what Situations say on their website:

The 2013 Book Cover Design Prize is a one-off open call for artists, designers and illustrators based in the South West, UK

We are seeking an intriguing and eye-catching cover design for the first printed edition of a Bristol-based novella Missorts Volume II by author Tony White.

Published in November 2013 in a limited edition of 250, this will be the first print version of the novella, which was published by Situations as a free e-book in November 2012, to accompany Tony White’s permanent public sound work, Missorts.

Situations is a Bristol-based visual arts organisation. We are committed to providing sustained support in talent development and are launching an open call to artists and creatives from the  South West to conceive a cover design that will capture the intrigue, personal stories and Bristolian context of the novella. Entrants will have their work reviewed by a panel of leading experts including Emily King, design historian and former editor of Frieze magazine, and Fraser Muggeridge, award-winning graphic designer and educator.

What you will win:
– £350 prize
– 10 complimentary signed copies of the limited edition novella
– A national PR campaign including Bristol and London launches of the book

Deadline is Monday 2 September 2013 at 12pm

A designers toolbox, including guidelines and FAQs, logos, a complete text of Missorts Vol.II and design templates can be found here

For anything else: missorts@situations.org.uk
0117 930 4282
or use @Situationsuk or #missorts to talk to us on twitter

Further information about the Missorts public artwork can be found at www.missorts.com

Asian Eastenders flyer

Click here to open the Asian Eastenders flyer (opens as PDF) for the event that I’m doing at the Idea Store Whitechapel on Saturday 20 July. I’m delighted and honoured to have been invited to read from my novel Foxy-T as part of Asian Eastenders for the Cockney Heritage Festival on the 10th anniversary of the novel’s publication by Faber and Faber.  Booking is recommended! Click-through this Googlemaps Streetview photo for the eventbrite page.Screen Shot 2013-07-16 at 11.54.08