On the eve of Bloomsday, Usurp Art welcomed the Waywords & Meansigns project for a collaborative event based on "Finnegans Wake", the bizarre book by James Joyce. The event was a great success, bringing together a wide range of artists and academics from music, spoken word, performance & beyond, and explored the possibilities of, the future of language, being, non-being, perception, listening and performativity. This video contains a few excerpts from the night in running order.

MC for the night was Waywords & Meansigns project director, Derek Pyle, who navigated us through not only Joyce’s idiosyncratic text but the performers take on it.

Poets/Performers, Amy Neilson Smith & Bob Kesh, rendered a captivating cross reading of Finnegans Wake & Ulysses.

Simon Ross created a mesmerising mix of glitched beats, turntable recordings and readings from "the Wake".

Krzysztof Bartnicki, translator of the first version of Finnegans Wake into Polish, took us on a journey with examples to explain his research work with "the Wake" and music.

Ollie Evans & Eleanor Massie’s avant-garde performance used noises, voice manipulations & spoken word and had the audience spellbound.

Conspirators of Pleasure introduced us to a speech synthesis reading of Joyce, augmented with modified sitar & electronics, that questioned the idea of "the authentic voice and accent".

Neil Campbell's multi-channel performance with live and pre-recorded readings, LDR synths and noise, with live vocals by "Sticky" Foster.

The evening followed with a free-improv set including audience participation which was truly avant-garde / Dada.

The Waywords and Meansigns projects featured in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/feb/02/finnegans-wake-music-james-joyce-birthday

More info: www.usurp.org.uk