Performance: Schvédranne meets Agneta Falk

Agneta Falk poet, visual artist, translator, editor and widow of social activist and poet Jack Hirschman joins French musician Schvédranne for a collaborative event to revive the San Francisco poetry scene, both past and present. 

Featuring pieces by Falk, and other illustrious poetry figures like Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jack Hirshman, this event will take the form of an homage to protest poetry, feminism and revolt.  

The performance will center on three themes: intimacy, revolt and existentialism. Falk’s poems will appear in tandem with contemporary San Francisco poets’ works to delve into deep emotion, human connection, the effects of capitalism, and how they’re intertwined with violence against women, racial minorities, war and climate change. The event will also feature pieces by protest poetry icons Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jack Hirschman, whose works represent the long history of American counterculture in San Francisco, and contributed to the birth of the Beat Generation in the 1950s.  

These pieces will be read by Falk and Céline Frezza, and accompanied by Schvédranne on guitar, with improvised electronic effects. 

Falk is a poet and visual artist who was born in Stockholm in 1946.

After studying drama and literature, she moved to England in the late Sixties, where she worked as a teacher of drama, communication, literacy and creative writing. From 1992-1999 she was the co-director of Word Hoard, promoting writing in the community and organizing poetry events. For seven years she ran a women’s writing group and also worked with people in recovery and the emotionally disabled. In the late Nineties she moved to San Francisco and married Beat poet Jack Hirschman.

Her first book in English, Here by Choice ( Trigram Press, 1980) received a writer’s bursary from Yorkshire Arts. She co-edited The Long Pale Corridor with Judi Benson, ( Bloodaxe, 1995), an anthology of bereavement poems, the first of its kind. It’s Not Love, It’s Love was published in 2000 (Multimedia Edizioni) and Heart Muscle (Multimedia Editions, 2009, bilingual) was published in Los Angeles, by Caza de Poesia. She’s currently working on her next book of poems.

Jarring Effects is an independent musical label, specializing in independent and non-conformist music since 1995 who encourages artists to be independent, creative and produce the music they love rather than meet commercial demands. Jarring Effects acts as a parent to smaller labels producing techno and hip-hop. The organization also has the capacity to support artists through its Rumble Inn recording studio and Spread the Word Agency which books and produces events. 

Schvédranne, born Antoine Colonna, Schvédranne first cut his teeth in 90s in rock and fusion groups before moving towards electronic music. Now established in the electro scene, he participates in the dissemination and exploration of this music with Salamah Production and  Jarring Effects labels. In 2014, he founded the electro poetic project, and has collaborated with French and American poets. His most recent album, Vanity, Vanity, All is Vanity, offers a stunning sound collection where electronics, blues and trip-hop accompany the protest texts of Jack Hirschman.

Frezza is the studio director of Spread the Word Agency, and co-artistic director with Mister Mo, of Jarring Effects, the famous French independent label of electronic music influenced by everything from dub to Hip-Hop. She has composed three albums under the name Erzatz and describes herself as a sound engineer, sound technician, and is a part of Les Cantues collective which aims to promote music by contemporary women, trans, and non-binary musicians.

Presented in partnership with:

City Lights Bookstore, located in San Francisco, is an iconic literary haven renowned for its counterculture legacy. Founded in 1953, it's a beacon for progressive ideas, social activism and avant-garde literature. As a publisher City Lights has well over two hundred titles in print, with a dozen or so new titles being published each year. The press is known and respected for its commitment to innovative and progressive ideas, and its resistance to forces of conservatism and censorship.

The Lab gives significant funding, time, and space to traditionally underrepresented artists. We seek to transform alongside artistic practices in order to engage meaningfully with visionary communities whose economic and cultural realities have been ignored for too long, to the impoverishment of us all. In this, The Lab is a catalyst for artistic experimentation.

Litquake’s diverse live programs are created with the aim of inspiring critical engagement with the key issues of the day, bringing people together around the common humanity encapsulated in literature, and perpetuating a sense of literary community, as well as a vibrant forum for Bay Area writing. We believe in literature as a public good, so we work to produce events that are accessible to all.

Modernism: Since 1979, the gallery has been at the forefront of the art world, and in the  21st century, Modernism has continued to open new frontiers in the Bay Area art world. The historical program now encompasses Dada, Cubism, Surrealism, Vorticism, and German Expressionism, as well as the Russian Avant-Garde. Representing nearly fifty contemporary artists from around the world, the gallery contributes to current artistic dialogues, both representational and abstract, with several dozen shows per year presented at both Modernism and Modernism West, as well as art fairs in North America and Europe. Areas of focus include conceptual and textual work, and art that meaningfully addresses important sociopolitical concerns.

Villa Albertine, a new French institution for arts and ideas in the United States, builds on the bold and innovative programs that have been the hallmark of the French cultural network abroad for more than a century. Created by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and supported by the French Ministry of Culture, Villa Albertine offers a novel artists’ residency model in which residents choose the location best suited to their work within the host country. With a permanent presence in 10 major US cities, it aims to foster in-depth exploratory residencies for artists, thinkers, and culture professionals hailing from all creative disciplines. In its inaugural year, Villa Albertine will host 80 residents for one- to three-month customized residencies.