Artist

Steve McCaffery

Born in Sheffield, England in 1947, McCaffery is an internationally acclaimed poet, critic, video-performance artist and text-sound composer. A co-founder (with the late bpNichol) of the Toronto Research Group, McCaffery is also a founding member of the Institute for Creative Misunderstanding and the Canadian College of Pataphysics. He is a contributing editor to the journal Open Letter and an advisory editor to The New Wilderness Letter (devoted to continued exploration into ethnopoetics.)

He is a member of
The Four Horsemen (a sound poetry ensemble) and has collaborated with several eminent artists in muli and intermedia endeavours: Robert Filliou, George Brecht, Alison Knowles, Charles Morrow, John Cage, R. Murray Schafer, the Toronto Dance Co., Allan Kaprow, Jerome Rothenberg and Henri Chopin.

McCaffery is the author of seventeen books including
Theory of Sediment (1991), The Black Debt (1989), Evoba (1987), Panopticon (1984) and Knowledge Never Knew (1983). His collected critical writings from 1973 to 1986 were published as North of Intention by Roof, New York in 1986.

He participated in the
International Symposium on Postmodern Performance (with John Cage, Eugene Ionesco and Jean-Francois Lyotard) Milwaukee 1978 and more recently at the Holland Festival, Amsterdam, 1985; Polyphonix, Pompidou Center, Paris, 1985; Performing Language Conference, State University of New York, Binghamton, 1988 and 5me Festival-Internationale de Poesie Contemporaine, Tarascon, 1988.

He lives and writes in Toronto, Canada.

Artist Code: 273

Videography

Living Dusts

1991, 40:00 minutes, colour, English

V Beyond the Ideo

1983, 30:00 minutes, Colour, English

Critical Writing

Dark Ladies
by Steve McCaffery. Public, 2004, no. 29.
Steve McCaffery: "V Beyond Ideo" Video by Steve McCaffery "A Book...
by Marina LaPaima. High Performance, 1986, no. 33.