VIVID exhibition: ECSTATIC (13 May-18 June)
“a visual and sensory season of moving image works and intervention exploring heightened emotions and altered states”. What more could you ask for?
A New Generation of Live Artists | Platinum
Fierce Festival are working with Sarah Farmer, Mark Essen, Rob Jones, Nikki Pugh, Alexs Wojtulewicz and Lucy Nicholls via their Platinum programme. You can see some of this at The Edge, Cheapside on 2 June
Wanted: Critical friends
“BiNS is looking for contributors, willing to go out, and then come back, and write good criticism about what they found”. Splendid.
Nikki Pugh’s Colony Prototype | Hide&Seek
“On Tuesday I went to Birmingham, to try out a protoype of Nikki Pugh’s developing project Colony.” From Holly at Hide & Seek
LOCKED OUT | The Abri
“We need to keep the building, which used to be an old post office but is now privately owned, in the community. We need a dentist and a GP, the building is ready for both. We need a place where mothers, fathers, families, friends and local businesses, (who remain or will soon return), can meet, have coffee and relax with a book.” Help needed to take this social enterprise on
City TV Broadcasting
“City TV Broadcasting Ltd has announced it will file an application to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, to acquire television licences in a minimum of five cities across the United Kingdom. It will locate its head of operations in Birmingham”
{placekitten}
One for the web designers, courtesy of Mark James from Made. It’s “A quick and simple service for getting pictures of kittens for use as placeholders in your designs or code”
Where we’re at… « colour
“After much reflection, we’ve decided to wind down our live activities for the foreseeable future. We’re still very much interested in collaborations with other organisations, consultancies and guest DJ sets, but we won’t be putting on any of our own shows – only if something truly unmissable comes our way”
Fifty:Fifty partner announced
“The Crafts Council and Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (BMAG) will work together to deliver a major contemporary craft exhibition in autumn 2011. The exhibition called Lost in Lace”. BMAG was chosen from a shortlist of three institutions
Digbeth is Good linked to this publication, Uncertain Eastside by Nikki Pugh, the first issue of which is now out, offering a ‘critical questioning of the branding of a version of Eastside as the Cultural Quarter and of her relationship to it (or not) as an artist.’
This is the first document in a series of unknown length recording the shifting landscape of the ‘Eastside’ areas of Birmingham. Including intersecting regeneration projects and plans for leisure, learning and transport developments, these are places with varying characters, histories and aspirations that are very much in flux.
Nikki Pugh went to the Make-It Zone open day at the weekend and returned with a load of photos. The sort of photos that made me go ‘ooh’ and ‘cor’ a lot (in my head, at least).
The place screams ‘POTENTIAL’ (and also, in places ‘fixer-upper’) and they’ve got artisan workshops for rent.
ARC #5 – curated by An Endless Supply « ARC’s blog
“join ARC at The Vaults on Wednesday 30 June, 6-8pm, for ‘Peace Out June! (Piece in June)’, an exhibition curated by Robin Kirkham and Harry Blackett, the artists behind publishing collaboration An Endless Supply”
call for submissions « ARC’s blog
“I am currently seeking submissions for an exhibition I am developing which explores the physicality of sound”
Ceramics in Birmingham | Birmingham Conservation Trust
“Ceramic tiles cover walls and floors, roofs and pavements, furniture and stoves, and can be seen in churches, mosques, pubs, shops, hospitals and homes in Birmingham” Here are some examples…
genzai·chi » Prototyping games for the whale hat
On Monday I went to a Pervasive Games Lab at the MAC, organised by Fierce with Hide & Seek. It was interesting and fun. Here’s Nikki Pugh’s write-up
‘Rhymes’ Performance Poetry Special
“After a brief interlude, ‘Rhymes’, Birmingham’s premier platform for Performance Poetry and spoken word is back with a special one-off format to celebrate it’s first year”
The fizzPOP Howduino event takes place on Saturday 21st November, 10am – 5.30pm:
It’s a free event that will bring together 40 people from different backgrounds to work individually and collaboratively on various projects based around the Arduino platform. (Arduinos are small microcontrollers designed for easy prototyping of things that have electronics/data that respond to things in the physical world and vice versa. In their own words: “It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.”)
The event will cater for people of all skill levels (we’re running introductory workshops for beginners too) with the main aim being to get people combining components – be they electronic or cardboard – and ideas to produce cool stuff.
An outdoor dance spectacular that’s part of Birmingham Town Hall‘s 175th birthday celebrations. They’re hoping for up to have had up to 12,000 people take part. It’s being performed on Friday 9 October at 8pm and Saturday 10 October at 3pm and 8pm – and you can learn the steps half an hour before each performance.
Tonight, at the Library Theatre, our new poet laureate, announced yesterday as Adrian Johnson (ACE West Mids Literature Officer), will be performing for the first time in his official capacity.
Nicky Getgood, on Digbeth is Good, has linked to a fair amount of interesting stuff happening:
Eastside Studio are holding an Open Studio on Saturday afternoon from midday to 5pm to ‘celebrate the completion of carving the ‘Rugby Writers’ commission’
Also on Saturday, VIVID are taking part in The Big Draw with a variety of artists getting visitors to interact with their work
UPDATE – Oops, cheers to Nicky Getgood for pointing out the next one is on Sunday 18 October:
On Sunday Nikki Pugh is doing a GPS-assisted walk around “the perimeter of the regeneration area taking great care to stop, investigate, prod, document, tell stories about and explore things along the way”
Also, see the comments for more free stuff this weekend.
Okay. Still trying to creep back into things after spending ludicrous amounts of time in a darkened room with no technology to make me worse. If I’ve missed your ‘thing’ then sorry, and if you have a ‘thing’ you think is good, tell me about it!
In the meantime, two things that compliment one another have come to my attention.
Firstly, an opportunity:
INTER?OGATION: WALSALL
Call to Artists:
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to become a secret agent for a day in order to interrogate the public spaces of Walsall.
Using the New Art Gallery Walsall as a base you will investigate the artist’s role in the post-industrial world through one of four methods:
INTER?OGATION: WALSALL explores the impact that one artist (you) can make in one place, in one day.
This programme of work is organised by Longhouse and the New Art Gallery Walsall, working with lead artist Anna Francis (who can also be found here), and is designed to investigate the impact of short, sharp interventions within the public realm. Deadline for expressions of interest is fairly soon – 12pm Friday 28 August 2009 - so go visit the site to find out more.
Secondly, I really enjoy the idea of creative practice being fused with more spy-like activities – interrogations and investigations.. where everyone gets to be a secret agent and have their own missions! So for those of you whose toes are curling at me daring to mention WALSALL in a CiB post, I wanted to temper that with a signpost towards a great Birmingham artist – Nikki Pugh. I feel she really embodies this excitement within her practice, but best of all has taken the time to document in detail how she’s used this approach with great effect in her “How to Wow” series.
Do you know of any other local artists who work in this way?
It’ll probably be in January some time. If you’re interested, or you know of anything going on already, then please say hello in the comments. I’ll put more info up here as and when.
Call and Return : ludogeography
Nikki Pugh’s new project looks like being the Emergent Game writ large, although I’m wary about second-guessing this – one of the strategies is ‘take nothing for granted’, after all. Missions will be announced on 19 September but the time to sign up is now. Workshops will be taking place in Japan soon (told you it was writ large)
Craftspace shortlisted for a national award – Audiences Central
“Craftspace have been shortlisted for this award in recognition of their work with ‘The Project Group’ (an arts social enterprise) and the Quilters’ Guild of Great Britain”. I can’t find a mention on the Craftspace website but congrats to them all the same
New First Light Movies Studio Award Deadlines Announced
“With the First Light Movies Studio Award organisations with experience in collaborative filmmaking with young people can apply for up to £30,000 to fund the production of between two and four short films”. Deadline for applics is 14 October
New book from Tindal Street Press
Spaghetti Gazetti report that “Tindal Street Press is delighted to launch their latest book ‘Never Never’ by David Gaffney”
This one’s come to my attention a bit late and I’m struggling to find much info on it. Praise be, then, to Nikki Pugh who has blogged about her involvement:
This is a group show with the works chosen for the theme of “mechanics, engineering, the factory and multiples†in response to the location: a disused bed warehouse.
The warehouse can be found at 332-346 Moseley Road and the exhibition will be open from 4pm to 8pm on Saturday 28 June.
What’s also interesting is that the owner, Sham, is apparently working to turn the huge warehouse space into a viable arts venue of some sort. Which should be supported, I reckon.
Nikki Pugh will be exhibiting some work there on Saturday before shows in Manchester and Germany in the coming weeks. Read about that on Nikki’s blog.
From 1930 to 1960 Bearwood Snooker Hall was a cinema, then a variety theatre and finally a rep theatre. Since then the building has been used as an ice rink and, in its present incarnation, a snooker hall.
Parts of the old theatre space remain and Nikki Pugh was recently invited by the people of Crowd6 to have an explore. There’s information on her blog and plenty of photos too.
