On April 4, 2025, 7:30pm, DaPoPo Theatre will be celebrating American poet, performer, and visual artist Emmett Williams’ (1925-2007) centenary at community arts hub The Nest, 6068 Quinpool. Free admission/by donation, reservations strongly recommended. Doors open at 7:00pm.
The event will feature a series of performances and readings of work by Emmett Williams as well as new works inspired by the artist. The program will include readings, tributes, and performances by Kristi Anderson, Zach Faye, Diego Guerrero, Luke Hathaway, Raeesa Lalani, Craig Leonard, Trevor Poole, Quincy Russell, and Garry Williams.
Emmett Williams’ son, Halifax theatre artist and musician Garry Williams, is organizing the event. Garry often performed with Emmett Williams and artist Ann Noël many times, and attended numerous Fluxus festivals and events. For years, Emmett Williams' piece Four-Directional Song of Doubt for Five Voices was a favourite on the Café DaPoPo menu.
As an artist and poet, Emmett Williams was inspired by the anti-establishment Dadaist movement and covered the Darmstadt School of New Music for the Stars and Stripes. He collaborated with artists such as Daniel Spoerri, Claus Bremer and Robert Filliou in the 1960s and ‘70s. Williams taught at NSCAD from 1972-1974 and was a guest artist in residence teaching at Mount Holyoke College from September 1975 to June 1976 and taught at Harvard from 1978-79. From the mid-1960s through the early 1970s Williams was Editor in Chief of the Something Else Press. In 1991, Williams published an autobiography, My Life in Fluxus - And Vice Versa, published by Edition Hansjörg Mayer, Stuttgart, and reprinted the next year by Thames and Hudson. In 1996, he was honored for his life work with the Hannah-Höch-Preis. He died in Berlin in 2007.
The Nest is located at 6068 Quinpool Road. Please note that the Nest is an upstairs venue with stairs both outside and inside and not accessible to people with limited mobility. It is a small, intimate space and masking will be optional.
A similar event is being organized by museum FLUXUS+ in Potsdam, Germany; and there is an Emmett Williams Centennial exhibition that open at the Galerie Marlene Frei in Zürich on April 4, 2025.
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