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Richmix Cafe | 11am-5pm daily | FREE

Cybraphon is the Bafta Award-winning autonomous emotional robot indie band. Created by Edinburgh-based music and arts collective FOUND, Cybraphon is an interactive, mechanical band consisting of acoustic instruments, antique machinery and found objects played by over 60 robot beaters and motors – all housed in an antique wooden display case. Cybraphon wants to be popular. [...]



by Ant Hampton & Tim Etchells

Bishopsgate Institute Library - April 8, 11-15
Hackney Library – April 16, 18-21, 23
Senate House Library - April 26-28, 30 May 3-4

The Quiet Volume is a whispered, self-generated performance for two at a time, exploiting the particular tension common to any library worldwide; a combination of silence and concentration within which different people’s experiences of reading unfold. Two readers sit side-by-side. Taking cues from words both written and whispered they find themselves burrowing an unlikely path [...]



by Hannah Jane Walker

Toynbee Arts Cafe & Bar

Why do we say sorry? And how do we say it like we really mean it? Hannah Jane Walker hosts an intimate round table performance with a small, invited audience, sifting the genuine from the insincere, drawing on her personal experiences as a serial apologist in emotionally valiant and surprising ways. Secret notes, screened calls [...]



Robin Ince, Stuart Evers, John-Luke Roberts, Matthew Crosby, Rich Sandling, Martin Austwick & Ben Moor



Dalston Boys' Club

Book habits. Costly business. In his 1946 essay, George Orwell compared the cost of reading with more proletariat pursuits and calculated his book consumption at 9s 9d a week. Equivalent to 83 Players Special, or four ounces of tobacco at the time. Which pursuit gives more pleasure? Orwell defended reading as an inclusive and affordable [...]



Pembury Tavern | 3pm | FREE

Our friends from Scrabble Sunday return with a Word Festival special. An afternoon of knockout word-battle in East London’s best boardgaming pub. We bring the boards, you bring the vocab. Compete for the Scrabble Sunday cup and excellent prizes or drop in and play a social game. For those (oddcakes) who don’t care for the [...]



Baby Oil & Ice by Lara Clifton
New work by Michael Curran, Rob Rainbow & Liza Angst, Jason Singh, Gemma Tortella & Caryl Mann (A-Line)
Featuring Ima Doll, Coco, Millie, Vivian, Robert Truscott & Joe Duggan

Sushi by Hannah Silva

Ye Olde Axe

An evening of performance inspired by the striptease trade, set in one of Hackney’s grandest Victorian strip-joints, Ye Olde Axe. Baby Oil & Ice lifted the veil on the world of pub striptease in London’s East End. Containing photographs by Julie Cook & Sarah Ainslie, the book contains over 100 images of venues, changing rooms, [...]



Paul Granjon + FOUND + Ross Sutherland + Nikesh Shukla + Tamarin Norwood + MC Nathan Penlington
featuring Ladies of the Press*

Richmix

A night of performance exploring technology, robotics and automation. Paul Granjon and his robotic support cast present Low Tech Songs and Servo Drive: a combination of video, home-made cardboard instruments, hard-wired disco and reflections on modern robotics. Author Nikesh Shukla dons his white coat and bionic arm to play a scientist with an obsession with [...]



Philip Jones, Nora Daly, Chris Meade, Charles Holland, Jon Stone & Kirsty Irving, Peter Law, Dan Thompson, Trenton Oldfield, Tom Armitage, Nicky Kirk, Rachel Coldicutt & Ruth Beale
hosted by Travis Elborough

Bethnal Green Library

A night devoted to the architecture of knowledge and the future of book-borrowing. Much more than just bricks and mortar, the public lending library has long been considered the cornerstone of an educated and literate population, but what lies ahead for the future? Borrowing its title from Sidney Smith’s description of books, No Furniture So [...]



Nathan Jones, Henningham Family Press, Kerry Yong, Kerri Meehan & Sophie Von Cundale, Marcus Orlandi + screening of Buckminster Fuller's film Modeling Universe
hosted by Tim Clare

with DJs Disco of the Sheep & Goats (& other animals), The Fig Tailor, The Tree of Useless Knowledge, Johnny Cash, Lego and a whole load of apples.

Stoke Newington International Airport

Music, art, literature and film commune for an evening of performance and print, as we throw a four-hundredth birthday party for the King James Bible with a difference. Written and performed by Nathan Jones (Mercy), Noah’s Ark is a poetic re-telling of the biblical tale made entirely using footage from the North West Film Archive, and scored by [...]



Devised by Mel Brimfield
Hosted by Sir Francis Spalding
Featuring Simon Munnery, Kevin Eldon, Tony Law, Josie Long, Oompah Brass, Helen Lederer, Isy Suttie, Rachel Pantechnicon, The Beaux Belles & referee Tim Wells*

The Nave

Fascinated by kayfabe, the elaborate staged nature of professional wrestling, ambiguous comedian Andy Kaufman gained notoriety for wrestling women during his live act, proclaiming himself the Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World. Taking on an outrageous wrestling persona, based on the characters created by professional fighters, he would offer any woman in the crowd $1000 [...]



by Emmy The Great & Jack Underwood
Featuring Elizabeth Sankey (Summer Camp), Miriam Elia, Joe Dunthorne, Nikesh Shukla & Ladies of the Press*

The Nave | Please bring a book you no longer want to the show.

Mining the Dewey Decimal classification system, Emmy The Great and poet Jack Underwood waltz through ten sections of their 000-999. Inspired and shaped by categories found in British libraries. From True-Life Tragedy, through Mind, Body & Spirit, Sociology, Large Print, and Teen Fiction, Emmy and Jack use song, poetry, multimedia to present a light-hearted lament [...]



by Debbie Pearson

Stoke Newington International Airport

“Debbie Pearson’s piece uses old video footage to explore the gap between the person she was in 2005 before she left her native Canada, and the person she is now. The person she was is a ghost behind the camera, never as in focus as the laughing female friends she will soon wave goodbye to; [...]



by Chris Goode

Stoke Newington International Airport

Nitrogen, oxygen and argon; love, laughter and longing; hopes, ideas, testimony. Breath — as evanescent as theatre, and every bit as full of incident and promise. In this early draft showing of a brand new piece of evolving, responsive storytelling, Chris Goode looks at what can be found, said and shared in one brief, vital [...]



Devised by Tom Basden, Francesca Millican-Slater,
James Wilkes & Joe Dunthorne
With Iain Sinclair, David Aaronovitch
& Geraint Anderson (Cityboy)

60 Farringdon Road

  September 2008. Without warning or explanation, an elite group of hedge fund managers disappear from their City headquarters. Rumours spread through glass offices and cocktail bars. Reports of strange happenings on Cheapside, abandoned experiments; esoteric financial mechanisms gone wrong, and vigilantes on the prowl. Three years on, and a team of investigators operating below [...]



+ Luke Kennard
+ Maria Fusco
+ Ben Gwalchmai
+ MC Ross Sutherland

Vibe Live

Acclaimed Canadian experimental poet Christian Bök makes a rare trip to the UK. Author of the bestselling Oulipian book Eunoia and the ‘pataphysical encyclopaedia Crystallography, Bök creates conceptual art and viral poetry, makes artist’s books from Rubik’s cubes and Lego bricks, and alien languages for Gene Roddenberry. Bök will perform his uncanny feats of compositional [...]



Stewart Lee, Steve Aylett, Robin Ince, Savage Pencil, Melinda Gebbie, Kevin O'Neill & The Retro Spankees

Round Chapel

Alan Moore’s reinvigoration of the underground fanzine, Dodgem Logic, comes alive in the non-conformist surroundings of Hackney’s Round Chapel. A night of art, comedy, comment and put-something-back localism. Released bi-monthly since 2009, Dodgem Logic is equal parts escapist entertainment, social curiosity and grassroots activism: a formidable pick-and-mix of hardworking humour and indie-essaying. An ink-stained-mantle-carrier for [...]



Tim Key, Will Adamsdale, David Trent, Thom Tuck
Sara Pascoe, Rich Sandling, Terry Saunders, Benjamin Partridge, Greg McLaren, Nathan Penlington, Tim Wells, James Ward, Miriam Elia & Nathaniel Metcalfe

& Colin Hoult as host 'Number 2'

+ post performance DJs (til late) & Ladies of the Press*

Bethnal Green Working Mens Club

Prepare to be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed and numbered. Combining 1960s countercultural themes, surrealism, science fiction and fantasy, cult television series ‘The Prisoner’ brought to life the mysterious dystopian resort setting of The Village. Be Seeing You takes its cue from Episode 6, in which an elaborate mind control system Speedlearn, backed by [...]



Ladies of the Press* are Ana ?avi? and Renée O’Drobinak: a performative press duo that re-imagines the role of the publisher into a theatrical persona. Mincing together print and performance in impromptu settings, they’ll be pitching up their travelling micro-newsroom across the festival, and responding to the evening’s proceedings in their various guises. For their [...]