Private View is tonight at The Sheila Cooke Foundation in Wolverhampton, an intriguing little artists boutique shop that I’ve been meaning to check out for a while now. So I will. And then I’ll dash back for the Pub Conversations. Phew!
Archive for July, 2007
Pub Conversations is a rather cool thing I just found out about. The next one is tonight but they crop up regularly.
The deal is fairly simple. The talks are curated by Self Service, a “constantly evolving” group of 14 Birmingham-based artists, one of whom selects another artist who inspires them to talk about their work in a pub. These take place in the Lamp Tavern in Digbeth (map) and they then podcast the recordings which is nice to see. I like it when these sorts of events live on past the actual occasion. Here’s the feed.
Like I say, the next one is tonight. While it’s free they’d like you to book in advance as space is limited by emailing selfservice@hotmail.co.uk, though I’m sure if you turn up and they’re not full they won’t turn you away. Maybe. Here’s who’s talking:
Becky Shaw has been making work that explores the relationship between individual and social since 1993. Projects often involve humorous and sometimes critical contributions to public and private contexts including hospitals, universities, business parks, factories and shops. The resulting works combine live elements, photography, made elements, writing and speaking, and may reverse or misuse existing processes. New works have been commissioned by organisations including Grizedale Arts, New Art Gallery Walsall and Kunstprijs Amstelveen, Netherlands. Becky spent three years making work in response to Liverpool Marie Curie Centre, for PhD research. Current projects include a response to Firstsite’s new building in Colchester, an exploration of retail and regeneration in Preston, and a collaboration with Joanna Spitzner, USA,that explores the American and British car industries. Becky is Research Fellow at ICIA, University of Bath, attempting to follow one object all the way back through its manufacturing process as a way to understand contemporary objectivity and subjectivity. Between 2000 and 2006 Becky was co-director of Static, Liverpool.
Her guest, Steven Eastwood, is a filmmaker whose practice spans experimental fiction, documentary and essay film, artists’ moving image and live art. His films collapse the vernacular of the cinema and the documentary, appropriating and then misusing many of the conventions of a dominant cultural media, and taking the form into unusual contexts. Some of the films are performances; others are interventions or drifts that involve strangers, others still are unsettling in their willful lack of direction (literally) or conclusion. Steven has exhibited at the ICA, BAFTA, EMAF, Brief Encounters, the Lux Centre and Anthology Film Archives, amongst others. Recent installations include The Film, The Film, The Film at MM Luka Gallery Croatia (2006). Steven has been the recipient of a number of grants and awards, has written conference papers and chapters on filmmaking as a social situation and regularly programmes screenings of artists’ film and video. He recently curated two symposia, Interval (1) and (2), based on the film philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. He has lectured widely, and is currently on leave from his position as Assistant Professor in Film, SUNY Buffalo. Steven is about to complete a Ph.D through UCL The Slade, titled ‘Cinema into the Real’. In 1997 he formed the production company Paradogs; in 1996 he co-founded the Volcano! Underground film festival (1996-2000); and in1995 he formed OMSK, a platform (now a collective) for emerging artists with diverse practices.
There’s a lot of information about the collective on the Pub Conversations website. I may well pop along tomorrow as this is the kind of thing I think is essential for Birmingham. Any other events like this going on, do let me know.
- Did you know Antfest, “the first annual live Antmusic festival” featuring “the best Antmusic tribute acts in the world as well as new punk and established acts” took place in Birmingham last week? Truly we are at the centre of some universe or other.
- The Silver Footed Gig Slut listings are up with MySpace links for every band playing in Birmingham over the next week.
- Birmingham Words are doing some site maintenance and I notice that their RSS feed now works properly. Yay!
- Birminghamusic.com has a brief update and overview of the Surface Unsigned Festival which has it’s final at the Custard Factory this Sunday.
- Dave Hart of Digital Central has started up what could possibly be the most useful blog in the region. Strategy Digested is where he takes the somewhat impenetrable reports that come out of Advantage West Midlands and other development agencies and turns them in English. He’s a brave, brave man.
From A knight who says Ni
Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.
Film Birmingham‘s Susie Norton is pushing for a film studio to be established in the city, according to an article in the Post:
We believe a Birmingham studio would help to boost the level of investment by film crews in the city. If we want production teams to come to Birmingham in the numbers that they do to other major cities, such as Manchester, then we need a studio.
What struck me about this was the realisation that Birmingham doesn’t have a purpose built film / TV studio, which seems rather odd, so in theory this is a great idea, especially as there’s plenty of aircraft-hanger sized warehouses in Digbeth which would fit the bill. That is, of course, assuming there’s an actual need for one. Susie obviously thinks there is and she’s in a position of knowledge on this but Jon Bounds has questions.
The article comes on the back of Film Birmingham’s quarterly report, a mercifully brief but packed document which, again, tells of an increase in film and TV companies looking to work in Birmingham bringing £3.8 million into the city in the last three months.
You might have noticed some gaps in my posting to this blog recently, so it’s only fair I give a heads up. I’m currently in the process of moving and starting a new job and while this won’t affect Created in Birmingham in the long term (I’m 100% committed to this blog) things might get a little stop-start over the next few weeks with more linkage than features. Rest assured all info sent to me is flagged ready for posting so I shouldn’t miss too much. It just might take a few days to make it online.
And needless to say this weekend is going to be a total write off!
Audiences Central is a West Mids organisation that “works across the region assisting and supporting arts and cultural organisations in the development of audiences for all forms of art” they’ve started up a pretty keen looking a jobs section.
Here’s the skinny:
* Jobs are free to submit and listings are supplied as RSS feeds.
* Registered users get a great system for sharing news – everyone can
upload press releases for journalists and other users to keep track of
(via email and RSS)
* Shared events calendar. Again, registered users can add industry
events and share them with others.
* A new blog.
* Premium resources to help arts organisations better promote and
market themselves.
And lots more….
The jobs and opportunities market in Birmingham seems to generally be communicated by word of mouth and email. I get a lot of them forwarded to me and always think “these should all be in one place online” so this is a really necessary thing. The idea is that it’ll not just cover the usual arts-related admin jobs but also list commissions and opportunities for artists themselves. And of course any site like this is only as good as the information people put into it, so go submit yours.
This is part of a major overhaul of the Audiences Central site by design agency 3form so expect more to follow.
Drowned in Sound has a great interview with Capsule’s Lisa Mayer previewing this weekend’s Supersonic Festival at the Custard Factory, outlining where the festival came from, what it’s all about and what’s scheduled.
We’ve been doing Capsule now since 1999. Basically, the way we started was because we both had pretty eclectic musical taste and at that time we were traveling round the country to gigs, as bands just weren’t playing in Birmingham. We then decided that, instead of moaning about it, we’d start inviting bands to come and play in Birmingham. We realised that there was also a great amount of talent in Brum and wanted to find a way of supporting that by pairing up touring bands with high quality local acts. Birmingham is one of those places that has a bad outside perception, but once you come here you realise that there is loads going on.
Beyond the main draw of the music there’s always a lot of peripheral activity at Supersonic and I thought it would be handy to excerpt this paragraph and throw a bunch of links into it.
We have a great cinema program put together, this year by 7 Inch Cinema, and also Southern Records have dug deep into their archive to pull out some rare live footage from the likes of Sonic Youth (circa 1985), Big Black and Butthole Surfers… and documentaries on The Obsessed and Neurosis. We’re also screening The Knife DVD on the main stage. We have two exhibitions as part of the Festival, one which responds to the title of our symposium, ‘Metal‘, and includes artists Lucy Mclauchlan, Savage Pencil, French, Gas, No Heaven Waiting and Mark Titchner. For the other, we’ve invited the Outcrowd Collective to take over one of the units at the Custard Factory and turn it into a mini gallery.
Okay, I’ll admit defeat on finding a link for Gas. You try.
- Regular appreciator of loud music Russ L overviews the whole thing and throws in his couple of pennies.
- After being repeatedly told Digbeth was not dead, Moseley councillor Martin Mullaney tours the pubs and compares them to his home stretch on the Alcester Rd. As has been pointed out already (by Russ above), he doesn’t stay in Digbeth past 9pm which is probably when it really starts going. But some good points are made.
- The Stirrer (who in case it’s not completely clear started this whole Spotted Dog thing and whose p0wnage of the debate is beyond dispute) has rumours that a massive development in Digbeth could be under threat thanks to the new uncertainty over noise regulations.
- Any meaningful response from the council has not, it seems, been forthcoming.
- In a slightly related story, the Epic Skate Park in Moseley has closed, soon after it lost its entertainments license, presumably due to some noise complaints. The skating part has apparently been taken over by another company but there’s no news on it’s future as a venue / community centre. Details are a bit sketchy right now so I’ll have a report on this in a few days when it all settles down.
More as it develops.
The View Finder is the latest project to appear at the Festival of Xtreme Building site on Moor St Queensway.
The View Finder is the result of a collaborative process between an architect Will Schofield of Glenn Howells, five schools and the community of Sheldon.
Visitors who seek to enter the inside will discover that the walls are precisely pierced to provide selected views of Birmingham city centre.
The views that are afforded through the solid have been chosen by children from Sheldon and are the result of collaborative work with Sheldon Heath Community arts college, Mapledene primary school, Stanville primary School. Brays school and James Brindley school.
I saw the collaboration in progress when I visited the site last month where groups of kids were picking out their views. One interesting side effect of this is you’ll see Birmingham from the perspective of a 4ft high person.
The launch is this Saturday at 1pm when Clive Scott’s Muvuca Samba Band will be performing. That link has tunes!
Also worth noting that the FXB website has been updated and is now written in English rather than the unfortunate funding-speak it was blighted with before, thus more accurately reflecting the style and manner of its envisioner Dave Pollard (but with less swearing). Also, they’re always looking for volunteers. This pretty much involves hanging around the site talking to the public about the exhibits, amongst other things.
Saturday 14th July form 10am to 4pm. Click on the above for a map (pdf) of where stuff is at.
The Timetable for Supersonic has been published should you be wanting to meticulously plan your schedule for the weekend. There’s a lot of overlapping so in theory you could see a little bit of everyone.
As with Rootsville the Arches Stage is being used, which is nice to see, replacing the theatre as a music venue (I believe 7 Inch Cinema are taking that over).
Here’s hoping the weather holds.
From srboisvert
Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.
Jazz Thrash Assassin are getting a lot of mentions on this blog at the moment. That’s because they’re doing interesting stuff and relentlessly telling me about it.
So here’s news of their new CD, Eclecticore, featuring cover art from Matt Robinson aka Jinpow and designed by local outfit Psicon Lab.
The CD will be available at the Surface Festival on next Sunday, where they’re playing, and eventually directly from themselves.
And one day I’m actually going to see them play and judge whether they deserve all this publicity. I suspect they will…
Tying in rather neatly with the do it like Manchester debate comes this article by one of our ex-Poet Laureates, Roshan Doug, about what we can learn from Sheffield, hosts last month of the prestigious Bollywood Awards run by the International Indian Film Association. Here are some excerpts from How Brum missed out on Bollywood:
The answer is quite straightforward and, incidentally, also the reason why Birmingham wasn’t successful in its Capital of Culture bid two or three years ago: it’s all to do with the distinct lack of communication between various factions within the cultural arts world in our city. Birmingham is missing co-ordination, co-operation and a proper, well-defined, campaign. At the moment arts groups and key players exist almost in isolation and not in harmony or in collaboration with one another for the advancement of our city or the greater good.
Competition for arts funding has been rife and the rivalry between one organisation and another means there is a great deal of secrecy which inadvertently perpetuates a closed door policy. No one really knows what the other is doing or planning, which might be good for the furthering of management careers of key players but it does very little for the city as a whole.
Take another example: the Artsfest of which our Council is, supposedly, so proud. As a matter of principle it seems no artist taking part gets paid for his/her time and effort. And yet inexperienced and at times, incompetent, organisers – employed by the city’s great and the good – responsible for the administration, are paid. It’s absurd as far as I’m concerned. But such is the jaundiced way in which our leaders think. And yet, for years the Artsfest has been featured in council literature as one of the main cultural events in our city’s calendar. It’s pure lip-service.
He concludes:
I suggest our arts leaders, both in the public and private sectors, stop being so lame and ineffectual. Instead I would urge them to learn from Sheffield and start using, what they would regard as dirty, c-words – coordination, cooperation and campaign.
Do read the whole piece as I’ve only snipped bits out of some context.
Going back to the Manchester thread I again want to quote Rhonda Wilson’s comment:
Its that sharing thing. Here everyone wants to own things so they prevent other people doing their thing. There people got it – one thing that everyone has a share of and some trust in the directors. And look at what’s happened. Let’s leave this antiquated idea about power and control behind us and work on some things together. Then we all might benefit.
Co-oporation. Sharing. These things are common sense to me, but then I come from a fanzine and internet background where sharing without expectation of reward is accepted as essential. And I think, from my experience, that sharing already goes on at a grassroots level in this city. It’s the lifeblood of artistic expression whereby people come together to share ideas and resources for the greater good. Applying this to a how the arts are co-ordinated and marketed can’t be that hard, right?
Or maybe out political and financial leaders just don’t get the sharing thing.
Roshan Doug link courtesy of D’log, reading the Post so I don’t have to…
