Join us to celebrate the launch of Chesil Cliff House and Other Failures by Sam Moore, the second text in A Series of Attempts, a new series by Sticky Fingers Publishing. The event will include a group viewing of a supercut of Grand Designs, followed by readings from Sam Moore and Carl Gent, and then a discussion between the two writers.
Doors: 7pm
Tickets: £5 / £8 / £12 [sliding scale]
Orbiting around the saddest house in the history of Grand Designs, Sam Moore’s Chesil Cliff House and other failures takes us to North Devon where, standing at the cliff’s edge, we meet Edward Short: a man with a Fred Perry shirt and a dream. Amongst a chorus of characters including Kevin Mcloud as Father Time, Moore by means of Short leads us into a study of creative failure, gender, and, ultimately, the desire to keep writing.
This new series published by Sticky Fingers Publishing explores the essay form through the etymological root of essay: to try, trial or attempt. In 1508, French theorist Michel de Montaigne published a collection of 107 texts called Essais, described by his contemporaries as ‘self-indulgent and embarrassingly confessional.’ It is through these roots we find the attitude and intentions at the heart of this series; that through thinking together, through trying to figure it out on the page, we can reach new and increasingly nuanced ways to understand each other and the worlds we inhabit. Sam Moore is a writer, artist, and editor. They are the author of All My Teachers Died of AIDS (Pilot Press), Long Live the New Flesh (Polari Press), and Search History (Queer Street Press). They are one of the co-curators of TISSUE, a trans reading and publishing initiative based in London.
Carl Gent is an artist from Bexhill-on-sea, UK. Much of their recent work has sought to refictionalise the life of Cynethryth, eighth-century Queen of Mercia through a range of amateur dramatics, tabletop gaming, self-publishing cesspits and the parading of decapitated kings in community carnivals. Together with Kelechi Anucha they investigated the girly and divine links between folk and church song at Wysing Arts Centre and the Museum of English Rural Life, and their ongoing collaborative practice with Linda Stupart has given birth to a range of live, published and exhibited restagings of the 1990s video game Ecco the Dolphin at the ICA, Cockpit Theatre, Kelder and with Arcadia Missa Publications. Both their latest pamphlet, The Balls of Alban (Monitor Books) and Felon Herb (Kelder Press) were published in 2022.
Sticky Fingers Publishing is an intra-dependant press based in South East London, run by Kaiya Waerea and Sophie Paul. We are a feminist, queer, disabled-led publisher producing experimental non-fiction at the intersection of academia, visual culture, art, design and performance.
Access info: the venue is down a ramp and is wheelchair accessible, but the toilet is not fully wheelchair accessible (there’s also one step to get to it). The floor is cobblestoned and quite uneven. We don’t have any additional rooms to be used as quiet rooms etc (only separate space is outdoors). Masking will not be enforced at this event. A recording of the event will be available via our monthly radio show and archived for remote access.