(Philadelphia, PA) In celebration of the newly released poetry collaboration entitled The City Real & Imagined, the ICA will host a reading/performance by CA Conrad & Frank Sherlock on Wednesday February 3 at 8pm.

The poets will read from their work during the event, which also features a visual presentation from photographer Zoe Strauss.

Conrad and Sherlock have engaged in many collaborative efforts in the city of Philadelphia for more than a decade. Their combined endeavors have included curatorial work, political activism, literary projects, and a close working friendship. The culmination of their shared actions has resulted in The City Real & Imagined, a new Heretical Texts title from Factory School Books. This book-length poem was fueled from walks through Philadelphia, which included sharing both their common and divergent experiences of their city with each other.

Poet/critic Rob Halpern of Nonsite Collective says, “Through their (Conrad’s & Sherlock’s) modes of practice, the poem becomes a form assumed by lived social relations under the pressure of so many forces conspiring against us. What’s more, the poem becomes not only a formal expression of dissent, but the insurgent means by which “dissensus” might potentially and provisionally be organized within contested social spaces and public discourses.”

The book release party will include a slide presentation from Zoe Strauss, who is a Philadelphia native, USA Gund Fellow and  recipient of a Pew Fellowship. Her work is featured on the cover of The City Real & Imagined.

The ICA event is an opportunity to wander with Conrad & Sherlock through their psychogeographical work and play. The event will include peoples’ histories and magical traditions rooted in the first capital of the American possible- the city of Philadelphia. Landmarks that remain standing will be visited, citizens that live on in memory will be revisited, and provocations for future mappings of a real & imagined city will be shared.