Feed in Millennium Point are running what they call a Contact Night with Vanley Burke aimed at Matthew Boulton students but open to the public.
He will be discussing his background, how he became a photographer and his role in documenting black culture and british people for the last 40 years.
Tickets are £3.50 and it takes place on Wednesday 16th April, 6:45 – 7:30pm.
I’ve been criminally negligent in reporting on the My Fierce Festival shenanigans this last week but have raised myself from my ineptitude, or something, to inform you that today is the final day to vote on which acts will appear as part of Fierce this year. Get to it!
Artstalking Ana reports on Wunderkammer which opened on Wednesday at BIAD with a live performance, which I’ll let Ana describe:
David Miller and Edward Wakefield were lying inside perspex cabinets as characters drawn from when they were students at Margaret Street. Ed was lying in state, with audio playing (unfortunately you couldn’t hear this very well with all the noise) and David was writhing ineffectually in his white ribbon bondage.
Photo also by Ana with more in her blog post. The show continues (presumably without the live bodies in cabinets) until the 16th, 10am-5pm, not weekends, in the Foyer of BIAD, Margaret St. There’s then a “critique” on the 16th at 6pm.
The first of Harry Palmer’s £1 art commissions is this video work by Simon Raven: “Edited sound and footage of a performance in which a Tibetan singing bowl is played on the ‘The Universe’ big wheel ride in Nottingham.”
“We are in awe and jubilation!” says Harry, and I’d concur. Wow!
More about the scheme at Eccentric City
[audio:indelibleink.mp3]
Indelible Ink
Katy Bennett, aka KTB, emailed to plug a couple of gigs she’s putting on at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath, which is worth posting as it’s not a music venue one immediately thinks of yet it could be really perfect.
Kirsty McGee on Sunday 13th April (£7 / £8) and Danny and the Champions of the World on Sunday 20th April (£5 / £6)
The website for the New Generation Arts festival has been launched, complementing their blogs nicely (although, if I might be picky, the link from the site doesn’t take you to the right blogs page – sort it out please). As you’d expect there’s a diary of the events taking place over the fortnight along with a list of participants which gives a great snapshot of activity in the region along with links to their websites and such, shockingly a rare occurrence on sites like this.
There’s also the massive 52 page brochure avaialble to download as a PDF, though I’d probably recommend picking up the printed version if you can.
The Art of Ideas is three events taking place in Birmingham this week. I’m going to attempt to gather the various online responses in this post. As usual, send me links or add them in the comments.
Ruth Ward has set up an Arts of Ideas blog gathering together all the material associated with the events in one place, including the essays and images. Nice one!
Tuesday: Culture and Identity – The Role of Place in Shaping the Arts
I took notes during the talk. Yes, that was me tapping away in an irritating manner. Sorry.
James Yarker posted his notes on the Stan’s Cafe blog. (Yes, there’s a Stan’s Cafe blog! And it’s very good.)
Catherine O’Flynn’s talk is on the Post website.
Jon Bounds at BiNS was there. He also points us to Euphoria, mentioned by Catherine and celebrating the forgotten bits of Brum. Worth a look.
Twitter:
@RussL: “Reading all this stuff about this talk last night: B’ham is the ultimate post-modern city. It’s strength is its ability (and tendency) to interrupt its own meta-narrative. Or is that too wanky?
@AnthonyJHughes: “Art of ideas – do we really need to discuss/ have discussed our industry as if we weren’t there? Do we need to anylise creativity to death?” and “It’s a bit like a late night review where Tom Paulin and Sarah Dunant discuss why something is funny…..Margaret Street”
Wednesday: Why Should We Care About Creativity in the West Midlands?
I again took notes during the talks. Hope they’re of some use. Of course if the organisers recorded the event and make that public it’d be even better (hint!)
D’Log gives a detailed report.
Stuart Parker wasn’t overly impressed.
Thursday: Future of Sound
This is now taking place at the John Lee Theatre at the Birmingham & Midland Institute, 7:00pm to 10:00pm
Two essays by Matt Price and Catherine O’Flynn are available printed on an absurdly large piece of paper. If these are online anywhere please let me know else I’m going to have to try and scan that bastard.
As part of a possibly series on overlooked musical scenes in Birmingham Wechtie’s looking at Broken Beat:
Whilst the scene is dominated by artists and labels from West London, Birmingham has always had a particular and important place in the genre. There are a number of Birmingham artists, DJs and promoters who are major players nationally and have been making things happen in Birmingham for a long time now including Colonel Red, Shaun Cope and E Double D. The don of broken beat in the city though must be Bruce Q who promotes the Liquid Fusion nights, which are most people’s experience of the genre in Birmingham.
Good stuff. This mapping of the niches is a vital thing.
Part of New Generation Arts this year is a game to be played across the city using online tech but also with a hands on arts’n'craft angle. It’s been devised by Nikki Pugh along with a bunch of other souls and having been in the preliminary ideas-bashing stage I have high hopes for this being rather good.
For now, go decide if you want to be a human or a luden, subscribe to the respective feed and await further instructions.
JamFactory aka Gavin Strange is a brilliant designer from Bristol, but he’s launching his new vinyl toy collection, Droplet, here in Brum which gives me a good excuse to write about him here!
I first discovered JamFactory on Flickr, I think after one of his ‘Free Art Friday‘ pics showed up in Flickr’s interesting pages and have been following him ever since. I had seen the above flyer come through on an RSS feed of my Flickr contacts’ photos, but dismissed it at the time thinking it must be a Bristol-based event. Anyway, serendipity fans, I also happen to be subscribed to a feed of all Twitter ‘tweets’ (posts) that mention Birmingham and while doing a very rapid skim read of that, JamFactory’s name jumped out because he was talking about visiting Birmingham. So I didn’t miss out on him coming to Brum :)
Free Art Friday btw is an excellent idea, hint hint, Brum creatives!
If you’re under 30 and doing creative stuff go enter for the 4Talent awards. You’ve got until August so no big rush. Birmingham connection? They’re run by the 4Talent team at Maverick.
Twitter is a service that’s getting a fair bit of traction in Brum right now. Like most of these things it’s as useful as you find it to be so don’t feel you’re “doing it wrong” if you don’t get it, but I’m finding it rather invaluable so you might too.
It’s a combination of things really. The format is limited to 140 characters so it meshes well with SMS texting meaning you can use it from your phone but it also works on the website and via instant messaging along with a bunch of 3rd party applications (I like Twhirl myself). At it’s core it works along the same lines as Facebook status updates and you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s not much difference, but the magic comes from the way it manages conversations and the fine tuning you can do.
Above all it’s an example of what I’m calling an “ambient stream”. Nothing on Twitter is actually that important, unless it is. You can just check in every so often and get a feel of what your community/ies are up to. If there’s anything of relevance that’s great but if not then it’s no great loss. You can spend hours communicating with people or just ignore the service for a day – it doesn’t matter.
I find it useful for random meetups. If someone “tweets” (as it’s known) that they’re in a certain cafe or pub then I might pop in if I’m in the area. Or I might not. Or if I’m looking for help or advice with something I can send out a quick message and see if anyone’s free with no obligation.
(Oh, here’s a handy video which might help. Or not.)
Anyway, if you think it might be useful have a play and see what you think. But be aware it took me a good year to get my head around what I might use it for so it might not hit you at first.
So here’s a list of some of the Birmingham-types who are on Twitter that Created in Birmingham readers might want to follow. You might also want to scan through the list of people I’m following if it takes your fancy. I’ve tried to keep this list more arts/design than tech but there are, of course, overlaps.
In no particular order
Antonio Gould
Jon Bounds
Julia Gilbert
Paul Bradshaw
Stef Lewandowski
Andrew Dubber
Nick Lockey
Ruth Ward
Russ L
Nick Booth
Chris Unitt
John @ 383
Mark Badger
Joanna Geary has two accounts
Danny Smith
Craig of Friends of the Stars
Antonio Roberts
Keri Davis
Ana Milgram
Dunc Autumnstore
Kerry Fused
Anthony Herron
and Pete Ashton.
I should probably stop there. The a good strategy would be to find some people you already know or are connected to and look at who they’re following. And if you fancy some really unfocused ambient Twitter-noise you could subscribe to this feed of Birmingham Twitterers.
Yes, it’s all kinda pointless. That’s kinda the point.
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Okay, here’s a good case study. Immediately after writing this I’m thinking what I might do before going home today. A tweet from Kerry pops up on my computer that she’s “going to ikon to private view for ruth claxton exhibition”. Hmm. That sounds interesting. Didn’t know about that. I may well pop up there.
Result!
