Samuel Brzeski at Poetic Punk Gala
Friday 7 February at 20.30–21.45
The performance is called How to Live on twenty-four hours a day. It is a speedreading performance where Samuel Brzeski reads from a phone playing the application Spreeder, a speedreading program that shows words in quick succession so the reader can read them faster. The book plays through the app at 400 words per minute and, the artist attempts a vocal recital of the book, reading and reciting as much as possible under the time stress. 400 words per minute is too fast for anybody to repeat exactly the words. In this way, the work borders between sense and nonsense. This results in an intense and forced vocal recital and is a form of live poetry writing with the voice, testing the cognitive connection between reading and reciting, and the limitations of the body (the vocal system).
It's also a comment on the proliferation of language in contemporary digital culture, the information overload we are all subjected to, and the constant need for consumption and proposed self-betterment promoted by wellness and self-help culture. The book that the artist read is Arnold Bennett's How to Live on 24 hours a day, written in 1908. This work is one of the original self-help books.
The festival is decribing the event Poetic Punk Gala like this: "From ugly and furious, low-pitched and gloomy to high-pitched and laudatory - the poetry contains all the extremes of human existence. Eight poets meet this evening in a lyrical world off the map".
Host for the evening is poet and writer Eira Søyseth. On stage is Johannes Anyuru, a Swedish novelist, playwright and poet. His texts often revolve around questions of identity in today's Sweden. Gisela Casimiro is a Portuguese writer, poet and activist who was born in Guinea-Busseau. Her work often reflects the after-effects of colonialism. Einar Økland is considered one of Norway's most versatile authors and poets and has been a central part of the Norwegian literary community for more than 50 years. Grethe Fatima Syed from Bergen is an author, academic and marketer and made her debut as a poet in 2024. Samuel Brzeski is a British-born artist and writer who has made Bergens his own. He creates performances where language is the raw material. In recent years, Brynjulf Jung Tjønn has distinguished himself with two collections of poems that revolve around questions of adoption, love and what it is to be Norwegian. Sumaya Jirde Ali is a Norwegian-Somali social debater, literary critic, playwright, author and poet, who debuted with the poetry collection Kvinner som hater menn in 2017.
The event is in Norwegian, English, Swedish and Portuguese.