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...