ABOUT ME + CONTACT
This is the year of poetry and according to the Islington Tribune, I’m a notable! https://www.islingtontribune.co.uk/article/forget-comedy-try-poetry #poetry #poetrylondon #performancepoetry #spokenword
'What is fascinating about your practice is that there is nothing outside the research, it seems you fold in art and life. It is concerned with emancipation, it’s an open closed topology. You think about the lectures you give and the teaching you do, experiences you have, the relationship to your partner and his partner’s voices. Everything seems to be a site for research – and whenever you are triggered in terms of being heckled or made to feel uncomfortable, you see that as a place of real potential for the trans-disciplinary! An incredible long body of practice. You went through different theories on that journey - pedagogy, comedy, ethics and participation, different frameworks of study, but what’s really at stake in the work is: desire.'
the words of Jean Mathee (in conversation with Lee) in 2019
REVIEW OF 'PEER' LIVE ZOOM POETRY PERFORMANCE BY LOUISE PENN FOR LOUREVIEWS
‘An intriguing piece of performance art: neither theatre nor film, it tries to find something a little different to play with’ Louise Penn, LouReviewsRead full review here
https://loureviews.blog/2022/07/18/review-peer-by-lee-campbell-online-zoom/
Thank you so much Loureviews - a place of reflection and review for your brilliant review of my new digital poetry performance piece 'Peer' which got its world premiere at Festival ECRÃ 17/07/22
Read here
Tweet @leejjcampbell
Instagram lndnqueerfilmmaker
Email lee.campbell@arts.ac.uk
FilmFreeway: https://filmfreeway.com/LeeCampbell
Technoparticipation: https://leecampbelltechnoparticipation.blogspot.com
VIEW CV HERE:
Dr Lee Campbell is an artist, performance poet, experimental filmmaker, writer, Senior Lecturer at University of the Arts London, and curator/founder of Homo Humour, the first of its kind project on contemporary queer male film and moving image practices that explore humour and LGBTQ+ storytelling and has screened all over the world since 2020. He is gay and lives in London.
His experimental performance poetry films have been selected for many international film festivals since 2019. Lee had his first solo exhibition in North America of his poetry films, See Me: Performance Poetry Films at Fountain Street, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A in July 2022 and a solo exhibition of poetry film, Bona Polari! at The Margate School, Margate and Wimbledon College of Arts Library, UAL in February 2022. Recent film screenings include CINEM’aMOSTr, Teatro Municipal de Vila do Conde, Porto, Portugal, (de)construction,, Kino Club Helsinki, Finland, Living with Buildings III, Coventry,SF Queer Film Festival, San Francisco, FilmPride Brighton & Hove Pride's official LGBTQ+ film festival, Brighton, Feminist Border Arts Film Festival, New Mexico State University, Splice Film Festival 2022, Brooklyn, TRANÅS AT THE FRINGE - International Screening of Experimental Films and Videopoems, Sweden, Post Pxrn Film Festival, Warsaw, REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2022 International Poetry Film Festival and The Football Art Prize, UK-touring exhibition to Touchstones Rochdale, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens.
Lee has won several awards and nominations for his poetry films including: Finalist for ‘See Shells’, Drumshanbo Written Word Weekend Poetry Film Competition, Drumshanbo, Ireland, Juan Downey International Contest (Finalist), Chile, Hombres Video Poetry Award (Finalist) for ‘SEE ME’ SlamContemporary, Italy, Finalist for ‘Rufus’, MicroMania Film Festival 2022, Buffalo, NY, USA, Finalist for ‘The Perfect Crime: A Doggy Whodunnit’, Absurd Art House Film Festival 2022, Finalist for ‘Reclaiming my Voice’, Vesuvius International Film Festival, Honorable Special Mention Award, Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival, Best Psychedelic Fantasy film winner for ‘SEE ME’ (2020), Retro Avant Garde Film Festival NYC, Nominee for Best Original Concept and Best Atmosphere Independent Horror Movie Awards 2021, Best Kent Film nominee for ‘Peer’, Margate Bookie Film Festival, Semi-Finalist (3rd place winner), Splice Film Festival, New York and Special Mention Award, London-Worldwide Comedy Short Film Festival.
Lee has a long history of performance practice, performing across the UK and internationally since 2000. These include solo performances Experimental Comedy Training Camp Public Performances, The Banff Centre, Canada, Archipelago, Cafe Gallery Projects, London, Noisy Image, Cafe Oto, London, Whitstable Biennale, Whitstable, FRESH, Reading, Sounds Verbal, Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, London and Testing Grounds, Permanent Gallery, Brighton. His recent live Zoom poetry performances have been showcased at events including Disturbance#2, Ugly Duck, London, Theatre Deli, London Festival ECRÃ Edition 5+6 Rio de Janeiro, the Immersive Storytelling Symposium, Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham and Rise Up! Reconnect. Rebuild. Recreate 10th International Digital Storytelling Conference, Loughborough University, VIDEOAKTION #3, Raum für drastische Maßnahmenm, Berlin and Re-Connect, Virtual Identity? Festival of Performance, Prague Biennale. Lee has previously given headliner performance poetry sets for Forum (online) + Incite! New Poetry Shack, Islington, London and one of the invited performance poets for Bold Queer Poetry Soirée, Above the Stag Theatre, London and Poetry from the Underground, Network Theatre, London. Lee performs his poetry regularly across London including New Poetry Shack, Mind Over Matter, Poetry LGBT, The Word Zoo, Mother Wolf Club, Gob Jaw and Paper Tiger Poetry where he won Best Poem of the Night (September 2021). Lee presented a one hour solo poetry performance, SEE ME, at Brighton Fringe 2022 in May 2022. His poetry has received critical acclaim and was mentioned in a Summer 2022 edition of London’s Islington Tribune.
Lee has been interviewed numerously about his current film/performance work including interviews on BBC Radio Sussex and Surrey with Kathy Caton for Out with Kathy, KMTV (local Kent-based TV station) interview feature about Bona Polari! solo exhibition, interview with Jane Glennie, Moving Poems Magazine in July 2022, Daniel Hess for To Tony Productions, Tim Kirk, Matt Skallerud for I Love Gay Today/PinkMedia LGBT, Hamish Downie’s Five Questions With – Lee Campbell (March 2021) BBC Radio Kent- Interview with Dominic King for The Dominic King Show January 2021. His film work has received critical acclaim with recent review features of his film work by Francesca de Luca in Cut Frame Magazine and James Clark in Lost Creatives. In 2008, he was interview ed by Libby Purves for BBC Radio 4 where he discussed his solo performance for Whitstable Biennale that year.
His poem ‘Clever at Seeing without being Seen’ was recorded for Sometimes, The Revolution is Small, Disarm Hate x Poetry project by Nymphs & Thugs Recording Co. UK. Publications of his poetry include Hakara: A Bi-Lingual Journal of Creative Expression, The Atticus Review, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Untitled. Voices, Gob Jaw Anthology 2019-2022, Issue Two: Wasteland, Powders Press, Issue One: First Times, Powders Press, Otherwise, You Are Here - The Journal of Creative Geography, Queerlings – A Literary Magazine for Queer Writing and New Note Poetry.
Lee has a long history of curating performance and fine art exhibitions internationally. For example, between 2005-2008, he curated All for Show, an internationally touring film showreel of emerging and established British moving image artists whose work exposed the banalities of everyday life through humour, self-introspection, and serious play. In 2020, Lee curated Radical Ventriloquism at Kelder, London. His most recent curation is Homo Humour which has screened at Metal, Southend-on-Sea, Open Eye Liverpool and FRISE, Hamburg, Germany in 2022 and forthcoming at Centre for Comedy Studies Research (CCSR), Brunel University in February 2023. In January 2021, he curated a set of queer poetry evenings for BBC Radio.
Lee trained in Fine Art Painting at Winchester School of Art (1996-2000) and Slade School of Fine Art (2005-2007) where he received his MFA and then received his doctorate in 2016 from Loughborough University. He was part of the artist studio programme Conditions between 2018-2020 and has undertaken artist residencies at The Banff Centre, Canada 2012, Spazju Kreattiv, Malta 2019 and Theatre Deli, London in 2021.
He works as a Senior Lecturer at Wimbledon College of Arts, University of the Arts London. Lee also has a keen interest in critical performative pedagogy and has published extensively also in this field. In 2020, he published his first book volume, Leap into Action: Critical Performative Pedagogies in Art and Design Education (Peter Lang USA). Lee’s research has been published internationally in publications including PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, Body Space Technology, Performance Paradigm and Performance Research: On Interruptions. He was awarded the University of Lincoln Best Practice Award in Promoting Equality in 2018 and a Loughborough University Teaching Innovation Award in 2015.
