Capital’s first Festival of New Writing took place, International Project Space launched a new film programme and the final ARC of 2010 took place with Important Artefacts.
Brilliantly Birmingham kicked off together with the fifth annual FLUX exhibition, Aedas Presents launched a new monthly art programme and Art of Ideas finally arrived with a host of associated events running over four days.
The We Are Birmingham Shop opened its doors with a drinks reception, Chris gave a debrief of the Arts Council briefing on funding and the West Midlands creative jobs board, Jobplot, returned with a fresh makeover.
November also saw the launch of The Pilot Project, Jennifer Tee’s exhibition, Memento Park opened at Eastside Projects, and Chris attended the wedding of the year.
Lucy McLauchlan returned with her paintbrushes to add something a little interesting to the Moseley Road hoardings, while VIVID launched their latest project, Language, and as December approached, the Christmas fairs sprung into action.
As winter kicked in, we bid a Blonde Farewell to Ikon Eastside, got crafty with Craftspace, said hello to Creative Central and looked ahead to Flatpack and Fierce’s joint 2011 venture.
Joined by Aura Satz and a line up of DJ’s playing winter horror, creepy electronica and spectral pop, VIVID are offering an alternative to the office Christmas party, hosting Nightmare Before Christmas on 18 December.
Marking the close of their 2010 programme and LANGUAGE season, with work from artist Aura Satz, who will also be performing.
Satz’s work explores ghostly presence and illusions through performance and sound and is often focussed on unusual sonic devices, early musical instruments and automata.
Music throughout the evening will be provided by COLOUR, John Napier and Dan Le Trap, plus more to be announced.
The party starts at 8.30 and goes on ’til late. Tickets are £5 and can be bought online.
‘Language‘ is the latest offering from VIVID, opening on 2 December. The exhibition and events programme will explore the constructs of language and meaning from far reaching cultural perspectives.
The international selection of moving image, exhibition, discussion and print includes work from John Adams, William Burroughs, Barbad Golshiri, Gary Hill, Valerie Mréjen, Aura Satz, Guy Sherwin, Margaret Tait, and Olivier Zabat.
…the works cover four decades, spanning films which reflect the post-Structuralist theories of the 1970’s to documented actions and contemporary works newly commissioned by VIVID.
There’s a range of associated events including film screenings and performances within the programme, which can be viewed on VIVID’s site.
The exhibition is open until 18 December, when they’ll also be ending the season with a bang, hosting ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’. The “warped line up of winter horror, creepy electronica and spectral pop”, will include DJ sets from COLOUR, John Napier and Dan Le Trap.
Just a quick round up of everything going on this weekend, there’s a lot and we wouldn’t want you to forget and miss out on anything!
Cum Clubbing – Hosted by VIVID, this art party does not look like something to be missed (although it’s happening now, so get down quick). From 8pm – late, VIVID’s project space will be taken over by live music, DJs and visual artists who’ll conspire to create an excitingly strange evening of camp disco. Tickets are £5.
To save time I’m going to be both lazy and efficient, and link you to everyone else who’s been talking about this. Take a look at Digbeth is Good, More Canals than Venice, brianduffyhasabigbrain, and Birmingham: It’s Not Shit.
Zine Festival - Not put off by the scale of Artsfest, this niche festival has a weekend full of events for you to get involved in.
- Starting this evening at The Edge is a screening of ‘$100 & A T-Shirt‘, Joe Biel’s documentary on zine culture. Entry is a £1, which also gets you a bag of popcorn, along with a talk from Pete Ashton and Rob Horrocks on the emergence of the small press comics scene and music zine influence in the 80s.
- The Victoria is host to the Zine Fair on Saturday from 12 – 6pm, along with a workshop from 2 – 2.30pm with Peter Lally, as he runs through the history of Alternative Press and curates a Q&A session on running your own zine events.
- At 5 – 6.30pm Island Bar are inviting zine fans to ‘Drop in + Draw’, offering a pencil and paper to unwind with, before the party starts with the Atta Girl Zine Party, 8pm – 2am.
- From 6.30 – 8.30pm, Get A Grip will be guiding guests through the process of making your very own totally unique t-shirt. T-shirt, equipment, inks, images and expertise supplied for £20 per person. If you fancy it, book in advance, more details here.
- Sunday will be a chilled out picnic in Cannon Hill Park at 1 – 4pm. With nothing for sale and free to attend, the party will be meeting at mac.
Artsfest – As already mentioned, the weekend of free arts events kicks off this evening and will continue to entertain through to Sunday night. With live performances coming from Centenary Square and Chamberlain Square, along with short films and animations screened at the Crescent, plus various performances and workshops held at theaters and bars across the city, don’t let the miserable weather deter you from leaving the house!
The folks at In Birmingham have picked up on Andy Burnham MP‘s comments about social mobility and the issues around unpaid internships. Andy Burnham used the BBC to make his point, saying:
‘There are young people working within the BBC for long periods without pay’, he said. ‘This is not fair to them, but more importantly it excludes many others who simply don’t have the means to support themselves’
While someone from In Birmingham has applied the same to this city’s cultural industries, using un/low paid opportunities at Punch Records and VIVID as examples.
Here’s the article – Exploitation in the Cultural Sector: unpaid internships in Birmingham’s cultural industries. Go comment if you’ve got an opinion either way.
If you’re free this afternoon then VIVID is the place to be (or one of them, at least) from 2-6pm for Afternoon Delight, another Capsule birthday bash event:
Almost since day one, 7 Inch Cinema have been crouching in a corner at Capsule gigs with a video projector gaffa-taped to a stool showing films of hairy men shouting and small dogs in space. To celebrate the grannies’ remarkable and unexpected longevity we shall be gathering up some filmic highlights from the last decade and showing them at Vivid, alongside the customary mix of light snacks and word-searches
Outer Sight will be there too, bringing “disco sci-fi and noisy puppets”.
Also, if you’re in the area then pop into The Funeral of The Site which closes today.
While we’re on the topic of films, here’s the next few listings for the Birmingham International Film Society:
The latter being a five-screen installation with HD plasma screens combining film, poetry, music and dance. Which sounds pretty cool.
All films are shown in the Library Theatre.
That’s me (on the right) working the mulled wine stall on Saturday at the Kings Heath Big Party. A huge thanks to everyone who came down and bought a cup of something warm.
In fact, a fair few thanks are in order:
I’ll soon be putting up some info about the next project that’ll see CiB getting out and about in the world. I’d best write some posts about other folks first though.
Of all the things on last night I only made it to two out of five. I missed out on the opening of Ryoji Ikeda’s exhibition at Ikon Eastside (which I might go and catch at lunchtime today), Jordan McKenzie’s ‘Day Into Night’ at Vivid and Colour’s night at The Victoria featuring World of Fox’s album launch.
Still, I did make it along to the Arts & Business Awards. The special guest was Patrick Stewart (who walked, not teleported on stage – disappointing) and the winners were:
- Community Award – EC-Arts & National Express Coach
- Cultural Branding Award – Stan’s Cafe & AE Harris (Birmingham) Ltd
- Museum, Libraries and Archives Award – Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust & Inchscape Motors Shrewsbury
- People Development Award – Holte Visual & Performing Arts College, St Francis Primary School & Signet Trading Ltd
- Sustained Partnership Award – Sinfonia ViVA & Rolls Royce plc
- Young People Award – County Youth Arts & Balfour Beatty Capital
- Business Volunteer of the Year Award – Colin Wells from Prologic plc & Multistory (also winner of the Champion of Champions Award)
Congrats to all of them.
After that I wandered down to the Sunflower Lounge for Gallery of Owl’s ‘All You Can Eat Zine’ which was fantastic – billed as ‘a night of Zines, comics, small press, music and performance’. It provided all of that as well as a palpable sense of
I didn’t stay for that long, but long enough to catch Richard Peel‘s entertaining performance of Dracula, have a chat with Claire from ATTA grrl a buy a couple of zines (ATTA grrl and Girls Who Draw, since you asked). There was a good turnout, a great atmosphere and the excitement of knowing there’s loads of interesting stuff going on around the city.
Here’s what I picked up:
And check out the hand stamp too – easily the best one I’ve had in a while:
Bollywood Steps
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.
It’s part of the People Dancing programme and there’s plenty more info on westmidlandsdance.com and the Bollywood Steps website.
Birmingham Poet Laureate Inaugral Reading
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.
Info on the Birmingham Book Festival website.
Goings on in Digbeth
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.
Were you there? VIVID would like to talk to anyone who attended the following events in Birmingham in the 1980s.
John Akomfrah: Handsworth Riots – Twenty Summers On © Pogus Caesar / OOM Gallery Archive 1985
- The launch of ‘Handsworth Songs’ at the Birmingham Film & TV Festival in October 1986
- Q&A with Dennis Hopper at the Triangle in 1985 or 1986
Please contact Harriet intern@vivid.org.uk or 0121 766 1304.
You can read more about Handsworth Songs in a previous post by Pete.
Things over on Eastside are really hotting up over the next few weeks. I will be heading down Digbeth way on Friday evening for the opening of SCULPTURE SHOW – an exhibition of work by the following artists showing at Eastside Projects:
Athanasios Argianas, Art & Language, Mel Bochner, Susan Collis, Michael Dean, Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez, Lothar Hempel, Torsten Lauschmann, Marko Lulic, David Medalla, Scott Myles, Elizabeth Price, Tommy Støckel, Sue Tompkins, Franz West.
I have linked to articles or websites about all of the artists. Have a look around and I’m sure you will agree this is indeed an exciting exhibition of contemporary works.
Just up the road that evening VIVID will hold a late opening from 6-9 pm, to present new work by Ran Huang and Nika Oblak & Primoz Novak. The artists will be in residence at VIVID throughout Spring 2009 as part of the two year European Media Artists in Residence Exchange programme. Mike Stubbs, Director of FACT will be in conversation with Ran Huang at 6pm.
Next door, IKON Eastside will be opening Józef Robakowski’s My Very Own Cinema, a highly subjective body of work produced between 1970 and 2000 by a pioneer of Polish Independant Cinema.
If you have never ventured to this historically industrial area of Birmingham, this will be a great opportunity to experience the type of art you might not find on the tourist trail.
VIVID are giving you the chance to do something different with your weekend are are hosting a series of Saturday screenings of independent video work..jpg)
George Barber / Beyond Language & introduction by George Barber
Saturday 28th March 2pm £3/2
A pioneer of British video art, George Barber was a founding member of ZG Magazine and a leading figure in the Scratch Video phenomenon of the 1980s. Moving away from Scratch in the early ’90s, Barber created many lo-tech video pieces and was influential in defining the then emergent ‘slacker’ aesthetic. Narrative is at the centre of much of his work, whether deconstructing it as in Scratch, or creating humorous and absurd situations to find existential meaning in the margins of modern life.
Gazwrx: The Films of Jeff Keen & ntroduction by Will Fowler, Curator (BFI)
Saturday 4th April 2pm £3/2
Jeff Keen‘s unique and imaginative filmmaking has outlived the various scenes in which it thrived - the Sixties counter-culture, punk and beyond. Making work of immediate power and raw intensity on a range of film stocks, this World War II veteran, self-taught artist and pioneer of radical British independent filmmaking continues to defy categorisation.
The twelve short films in this programme, made between 1960 and 1993, reveal the astonishingly tireless talent of a filmmaker not afraid to grapple with sex and war, or to experiment with visceral soundtracks and brutal animation techniques. Truly inspired and inspiring, this programme is a testament to the irrepressible force that is Jeff Keen.
A couple of events from VIVID:
INSPIRATIONS (Sat 07 Feb 2009) invites five UK based individuals who have played a major role in the critical, artistic and curatorial development of moving image, to select one moving image work that has made a significant impact on their own practice.
VIVID is delighted to announce 2009 selectors David Curtis, Catherine Elwes, Malcolm Le Grice, Sarah Wood and John Smith. The selections will be screened at VIVID on Sat 07 Feb 2009 and is accompanied by a 500 word text by each of the selectors explaining their choice.
FIGURING LANDSCAPES (Wed 25 – Sat 28 Feb 2009) is a remarkable collection of moving image works that has grown from the background of the political and cultural history that links Australia and the UK and the close relationship that continues between them.
More infom on the VIVID website’s homepage (scroll down).
At VIVID until 20 December (but only Wed-Sat), The Perfect Sound is a ‘single channel video work’ which looks at the idea of creating a ‘perfect sound’ within the English language.
Katarina Zdjelar has been in residence at VIVID for the past couple of months and this is her first solo exhibition here.
