Danton's Death - a little predictable but worth a watch

Any true theatre (and film) geek like myself needs get no further than Toby Stephens' name on the cast list (which as the protagonist of this piece happens to be the first) to decide that this play is worth seeing and indeed with that incentive as well as the fame of this Buchner play and the bonus of it being as little as £10 means that no-one has an excuse not to watch this superb actor strut his nonchalent frown on the boards.

Generative Art

This post has been unashamedly,  lazily reproduced from a post for a different blog but hopefully it might be of interest to y'all...

I like digital art for reasons that I’ve mentioned previously in a post I wrote about the Decode exhibition at the V&A back in January.  The art on display there was split nicely into three themes: Code / Interactivity / Network.  I think in the long term Network digital art will prevail because it has the ability to provide timely comment on what we’re up to in the digital space.  But Interactivity is undoubtedly the most fun (as close as you can get over the age of twelve to a trip to the science museum) and Code is the aesthetically pleasing option.

This Code art from Keith Peters is intensely intricate and somewhat a visual jamboree:

Feathers

 
Cube Farm Cube

And for more, click here.

CA

Beck's Record Club

Record Club sets out to record an album a day.  They pick an album, play it and document it in the knowledge that they won't get a second shot.  They say:

"There is no intention to 'add to' the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens."

which I think is a pretty upstanding idea.  They're developing quite a back catalogue which is definitely worth having a flick through and all their videos are on vimeo.  If you're thinking this sounds a little amateur then don't panic.  They've got some old hands onboard to steady the ship like Nigel Godrich whose produced albums for Radiohead, Travis and Beck himself.  A particular favourite of mine is Tom Tom Club-esque cover of The Velvet Undergounrd and Nico's Run Run Run...




CA

Au Revoir, les Film Council.

Last week the coalition government's department for Culture, Media and Sport announced plans to axe the UK Film Council.

Sam Taylor-Wood's 'Nowhere Boy'

Launched by the former Labour government in 2000, the non-profit organisation independently selects film projects eligible for funding and has certainly been a much needed help for struggling film makers. It has poured £160m into more than 900 films since its inauguration and fought hard in having a greater number of films shown in more theatres across the country. It has garnered much commercial success with films such as Gosford Park and Bend It Like Beckham along with others, and has stimulated, both fiscally and creatively, a new wave of British film growth. The UKFC's dedication to unearthing new and important talent cannot be denied, what with such critically acclaimed productions as Hunger and The Wind That Shakes The Barley - films which almost certainly could not have been made without state backing.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

 This is super tops viewing!

CA

The problem with Rupert...

Like all who read or study poetry, I pride myself on good taste. However, there is just one problem that refuses to go away, and it is this...

                    'Twas when I was in Neu Strelitz

                    I broke my little heart in bits.

                    So while I sat on the Muritz train

                    I glued the bits together again.

                    But when I got to Amerhold

                    I felt the glue would never hold.

                    And now that I'm home to Barton Hill

                    I know once broken is broken still.

                                                       'Travel' (1912), Rupert Brooke

I mean, it's silly really. It could be a nursery rhyme, or a child's mnemonic device for remembering German cities. True to the epithet, I have it word-for-word, ti-tum ti-tum, engraved on my brain. It's metrically regular, uses pathetically simple full-rhyme, and revolves around one single, cliched conceit - the broken heart. And yet, I love it.

Notice to Bards and Scribblers

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,

Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain:

Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow

Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burn'd brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay,

Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,

And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.

Need some inspiration? 

Take a little visit to The Poetry Library on London's Southbank, which hosts the largest collection of poets and poetry in the UK. It's free to join, and they even offer advice on how to get your work published. That is, if you can find your Muse. 

Have a browse here.

Extract from 'Astrophil and Stella' by Sir Philip Sidney


AW

Blisters Blackout 10 submissions call...

Following on from the success of Print Club London's two previous shows (Secret Blister and Blisters On My Fingers) this year they're going again with Blisters Blackout.  The exhibition warehouse in Dalston will be periodically plunged into darkness so the posters need to work well in both the light and dark.

For more details click here.

All the best of the luck to you (if you enter).

CA

MEET: The Man From The Box

 
"It's quite late now, do you want a ride home Dimi? We have loads of stuff, but there's room for you."

25 thousand sheets up for grabs...

Vimeo Festival + Awards -- Nick Campbell from Nick Campbell on Vimeo.

Just in case you've got some cheeky 4K film kicking about... send it through to Vimeo to swap it for 25K and help Helicon earn their 10% commission for pointing it out to you.

CA

MEET: Mad Georgie, Playful Princess

“The only ones for me are the mad ones… who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn… “ Jack Kerouac

Beth is a mad one. She makes Lily Savage look like a librarian. She charms and reminds you of anything delirious and beautiful, anything lavish and colourful. She reels people in with her extravagant pronouncements and witty self-deprecation. She prefers the unreal to dull facts.

“When I was little, there was this arctic fox that always came to see me while I’m upset. It’s not physically there; it’s like a see-through, spirit animal kind of thing.”

Black And WTF

If you're struggling to idle away the sunny summer and can get over the limited name, I suggest you check out this blog:

Black and WTF

Comprised of photos from yesteryear that bemuse, baffle and leave you a little shocked at what your ancestors got up to in their spare time. The only people I wouldn't recommend this to is animal lovers... they did some pretty whack stuff with them pre-2000.

CA

Gnarcade

Gnarcade from Mike Benson on Vimeo.
And I quote "A video game invasion has hit Mt Hood" Yes!

CA

SEE: Johan Grimonprez at the Fruitmarket

On display here is the one-hour masterpiece which first brought Grimonprez international notoriety: Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y first shown at Documenta X in 1997.  This was a pioneering work that has grown in stature since its arrival in the contemporary art world. Bob Dylan once said, “Don’t prophesise what you can’t understand”.  Well if Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y  is anything to go by then Grimonprez certainly did understand some of the greatest shifts in the way we conceptualise the world which have taken place during the Virtual Revolution, not just as they happened, but before they happened.  So this work is better than timely and almost certainly will be timeless.  He prophesised pretty nicely.

The Trouble With Roman.

Following his detention last September in Zurich, nine months of house arrest and decades of murky incertitude, this week Switzerland refused the US extradition of film maker Roman Polanski.
In the lead up to this week's decision came staggering support for Polanski, in the form of a high profile 'free Roman Polanski' campaign, a petition circulating this year's Cannes film festival and such unlikely celebrities as Whoopi Goldberg denouncing Polanski's arrest for sexual assault on the grounds that "it wasn't rape rape." It seems Goldberg, along with many others, have well and truly missed the point...

From graduate shows to Picassos

Tedious rhymes aside, a trip to London this week opened my eyes to the huge gulf between modern art then and modern art now. Visiting the degree show of fine art at Central Saint Martins was testament to the tired and monotonous recapitulation of conceptual themes by students working under the ever-present shadow of the YBAs. Was a cactus on the floor a plant or a phallic metaphor? More to the point, does anyone really care anymore? Not only is such work past its sell by date, having long since lost the ability to shock as so wittily inaugurated by Duchamp almost a century ago, but it certainly doesn't justify the price tags that seem to have been optimistically posited as a student debt get-out clause.

A fascinating exhibition of Picasso's Mediterranean years, meanwhile, served to further highlight the degree to which the act of making has become a lost art. A vibrant, and surprisingly diverse, selection of his later work is on display; ranging from large canvases to ceramic plates. The extraordinary talent of this most eminent of modern artists is apparent throughout, and his ability to draw lies at the heart of the best work; such as the raging bull summoned to life by a few deft brushstrokes in the lithographic series at the start of the exhibition. Entrance to the somewhat elusive Gagosian Gallery is free of charge, funded by wealthy buyers rather than an admission fee. Perhaps, rather than being disgusted by the record sales achieved at Sotheby's and Christie's recently, we should be thankful to the thriving modern art market for generating such wonderful exhibitions at a time of harsh budget cuts in public arts expenditure.

T.B.