Murmur #7 at Common

The co-organiser of Sunday-evening reading series Murmur is mega excited about December’s event, the seventh time the (largely) poetry showcase will have popped up at Common in the Northern Quarter. Rory Cook (ably assisted by Lucy Burns) could barely conceal his glee when he announced back at Murmur #5 that the pair had something very special up their sleeves – and not surprisingly, as it’s a line-up that features video artist and poet Ed Atkins (last in town for his special commission for Manchester International Festival at Manchester Art Gallery in 2015, Performance Capture) and visual artist, filmmaker and writer Fatema Abdoolcarim, with music duties taken care of by SMS DJs.

Ed Atkins’ Performance Capture (curated by Atkins himself, the Swiss artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries Hans Ulrich Obrist – who has referred to Atkins as “one of the great artists of our time” – and MIF’s first director Alex Poots, now being fancy in NYC as the founding chief executive and artistic director of The Shed) lifted the veil on the production of digital art. He makes videos, writes and draws, and his art runs the gamut from computer-generated imagery to bathetic poetry. This is an opportunity to catch him at an event outside a major gallery, so be sure to get down early to grab a seat.

Originally from Oxford, he is now based in Berlin and Copenhagen, where he is guest professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (previously he lectured at Goldsmiths College in London, having studied at Central Saint Martins and The Slade School). Recent solo presentations include MMK Frankfurt; DHC/ART, Montréal; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; The Kitchen, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Serpentine, London, and forthcoming projects include solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Bregenz and K21, Düsseldorf. An extensive artist’s monograph of his work was published by Skira in 2017 and an anthology of his texts, A Primer for Cadavers, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions the previous year.

This is your chance to catch Ed reading from his forthcoming novel, Old Food, not out until November 2019. The book shares its title with his most recent exhibition, and his largest solo show to date, which was on view at Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau gallery until earlier this year.

Fatema Abdoolcarim is a Hong Kong-born Indian-Pakistani visual artist, filmmaker, writer and educator. Using photography and AV installation, she creates visual metaphors and non-linear, sensory narratives from personal stories (autobiographical, biographical and fictional), and she will be presenting a new creative-non-fiction piece at this month’s Murmur.

Fatema’s video art and photography has been exhibited internationally in selected group exhibitions at places from Madrid to Melbourne, and Montreal to Mumbai, and in 2012 she was awarded the Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award from The San Francisco Foundation. Her first narrative short documentary, Heidi, had its world premiere at Locarno Film Festival, won Best Debut Film at Cinalfama Lisbon International Film Awards, and went on to screen in competition at film festivals around the world including Sundance. She is now working on her first feature fiction film, Hum. Usually based in Copenhagen, she is currently a PhD candidate of Creative Writing and Art History at The University of Manchester.