Ever felt there’s something missing in your life?

The Event is upon us and we'll be spending the next 5 days changing our name every 6 hours, wearing hand decorated dungarees, playing thought-stopping games, eating brightly coloured food, asking questions, strengthening our Dantien, collective dreaming, strumming red, yellow, green and blue ukuleles, finding portals, calling rainbows, going to the top, chanting punk meditation, making friends, sleeping in pods, giving out flowers, love-bombing, and having all the fun we can cram into the day.

Want to join us?

http://theotherplaceportal.net/family/

One Day Comic & Feature: Architecture

Works by Henrik Schrat (with guests) & Shezad Dawood form an installation at ESP that feels very different from the opening exhibition there.  It may be a happy accident that the artists were scheduled together, but the works complement each other well.  Although many dismiss comics and cowboy films as sidelined genres, here they are stretched and mutated into exciting new forms.

For One Day Comic, Schrat worked with others (including myself) to create each comic in just a day.  It was daunting, and seemed impossible at first, but with plenty of coffee and Henrik's enthusiasm, somehow it all came together.  The final results might not make much sense, but it is the process that's fascinating - it showed you how much you could achieve when you put your mind to it and when you had a tight deadline.

In Feature: Architecture, Dawood has made a film with participants including a Christian historical re-enactment society, Gay Leather bartenders, opera singers and an avant-garde art band (The Lonesome Cowboys from Hell) - I'm not sure I followed what was going on but there was something to do with a massive bar fight, a cross between Billy the Kid and Krishna, and zombie flesh-eaters. My kind of night out.

There's also some extracts from the comics on Henrik Schrat's website

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Feature: Architecture by Shezad Dawood
&
One-Day-Comic by Henrik Schrat
With special guests a.a.s, Access Local, Asia Alfasi, Simon & Tom Bloor, Celine Condorelli, Hans Christian Dany, Shezad Dawood, Stefan Heidenreich, Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry, Plastique Fantastique, Olav Westphalen

open 6 December 2008 to 31 January 2009, Thursday - Saturday 12-5pm 

Eastside Projects
86 Heath Mill Lane, Birmingham, B9 4AR, UK
eastsideprojects.org

Oranges Can Dance

Charlie Levine has just curated a show which continues her interest in selecting and presenting work in an experimental way. This was a solo exhibition in a small theatre room in a pub of Tim Robottom's collection of kitsch ornaments and other items that would often be seen as 'bad taste'.

Questioning ideas of taste and collectability, the ironic distance usually present in such shows was undermined by the audience selecting items that they wanted to keep, and so affirming that they do have value for them. Everyone proudly displayed what they had chosen, and hopefully they now have pride of place in new collections.

Oranges Can Dance was held at The Old Joint Stock Theatre Gallery, Birmingham, on 9th of August 2008, 6pm and 8pm

Oranges Can Dance on Charlie Levine's Website
Charlie Levine's Blog

Re:Flux (Part One)

Just a quick reminder about Re:Flux, which is on tonight in the Jewellery Quarter (details below). It's part of the Vivid Flux Festival and features artists reinterpreting original Fluxus scores and writing their own to be performed by other members of the group, so the focus is more on the sharing of ideas, building on others' work and adding to it. Should be loads of fun and plenty of free apples.

We'll be attempting to live update with photos and texts, and asking the audience to join in, so could be an interesting experience, do follow along and join in if you're there.

Re:Flux Fluxconcert
Co-curated by a.a.s. and Ensemble Interakt
Friday 27th June 2008, 5pm - 9pm (late arrivals admitted)
St. Pauls Church, 30 St. Pauls Square, Birmingham. B4 1QJ
Tickets £3/£2 (Concessions)

Re:Flux Flickr page
a.a.s. Re:Flux pages
aas Twitter

Wunderkammer

Wunderkammer curated by Kate Pennington-Wilson and Charlie Levine at BIAD, Margaret St Birmingham was a 'cabinet of curiosities' made up from the archives there and current student's work. 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.

Charlie Levine Wunderkammer page (on her website)
Charlie Levine Wunderkammer page (on her blog)

KateGoes...

I don't usually write about bands here, but I do sometimes make exceptions if there's some kind of art/performance angle, so my excuse for writing about KateGoes is that they have a different theme for each gig, dressing up and acting in keeping between songs. Of course I'm sure plenty of you are familiar with their output, as they're a perfect recipe for a MoseleyHeath band: seasoned with Misty's Big Adventure, a pinch of Pram, hints of Novak and L'Augmentation, but full of secret ingredients of their own.

Shockingly this is the first time I'd seen them live, although I'd heard some of their tracks online after entering into a correspondence with Kate, who charmingly wrote me a rap about a time we met. I was glad to finally be free to get to one of their gigs, and this one seemed to be themed as a family get-together - apt for Christmas (although in a throwaway line as they left it was revealed that it had actually been a funeral...)

Kate and her 'little sister' were dressed in frilly party dresses, and other members were meant to be her Gran, Grandad and Dad. Family photos were projected behind them, creating odd Tony Oursler effects when faces hit the balloons.

It took a while to get used to the 'overtired little girl' chatting between songs, but it perfectly suited the Slits/Dresden Dolls pitch of the songs - the kind of feminine tactic that can irritate some, but throws the 'crazy woman' stereotype back in people's faces if it's done well. The strength of the songs held the performance together, much tighter than on CD, childhood memories are filtered through knowing adult sensibilities, then freed up again in the sugary high of making such effortlessly catchy pop.

It's easy to get distracted by the whimsy and references to POGs, but go and listen to Heartbeat on their Myspace page: a sweetly harmonious nursery rhyme that disguises obsessively intense emotions. It takes me back to being a C86 loving teen, shivering with semi-requited lust, wanting to get so close we fused. Never has a squeaky toy sounded more ambiguous.

Hell, they even gave out party poppers and did the conga around the room, what's not to love?

KateGoes Myspace Page

The Nagual

a.a.s. performance at Crowd 6 Christmas event Mistletoe and Mingling. We dressed in festive red velvet and decorations then chanted as we went around a Christmas tree. At the appointed time, we pulled our tinsel entrails out of our stomachs, and started to wrap them around the tree. Spent, after the extertion of the ritual we fell to the floor, then we crawled off, only our animal spirit left. The tree remained all night, dripping 'blood' as a reminder of our sacrifice.

Here's a link to the YouTube video if the embed doesn't work
Larger versions of photos on the a.a.s. Flickr page

Last of the Urgents

Colony's new curated group show coincided with the launch of their book As if something once mentioned, now plain to see

One wall of the show was united by Jo Mitchell's wall painting, a snaking path linking nightmarish drawings by Nikolas Arvanitis and dreamy paintings by GL Brierley.

I didn't catch who made the kitsch/baroque confection in the middle of the room, but I did have to use my cameraphone to see the decorative money inside.

The quietly disturbing exhibition seemed to be less appealing to the audience than the bar and music in the book launch, but there was some powerful stuff here, that wormed its way into my head and set up home in the mouldering ruins of art.

Colony

Where The Deer And The Antelope Play

A joint show between WebsterGotts and Mandy Rees, a sweetshop coloured overload of balloons, 70s wallpaper patterns, and hallucinatory cowboys. The Western theme lassoed the artists together: Bearwood became a border town in a dream, where plastic faces bobbed around in a melodrama of gazes, a stare is so cold and hard it knocks down a man like a bullet, and people are lost in a shifting surface of pattern.

WebsterGotts

Mandy Rees

Birmingham is lucky to have new artist-led spaces putting on light and engaging show like this, it's what really puts us on the map, so lets hope they get the support they deserve, whatever their future plans.

The show will be open 10-4 Saturdays, 11-2 Sundays until the 9th of December

Crowd 6
WebsterGotts

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Sorry about the image quality, I keep forgetting my camera and having to use my mobile

Another Halloween Post

I'm sure you know all about the Bacchanalian orgy that is the annual Ikon Eastside closing party, and this years' coincided with Halloween. Double Trouble. Seven inch provided their usual high quality films and audio (although the acoustics in the warehouse didn't do any favours).

Unfortunately, I didn't get in to Scott's performance/installation, which is a shame as I'd have probably enjoyed it. (I hear it was based on Poe's fear of being buried alive)

Here are a few snaps to add to all those on Facebook and elsewhere.

DY-66

I've been busy with the a.a.s. installation at Five Years Gallery, Unit 66, Regent Studios, 8 Andrews Rd, E8 4QN. It runs 29th September - 7th October 2007, gallery open Sat - Sun 1-6pm. The installation was based on a spy game that started in Birmingham (as KR-36 - part of The Event) and has evolved into a London mission as well.

Photos of events from Birmigham and London became merged in an overall story, there was a key to the photos on an old rolodex and a microfiche with slides of Birmingham gas mains

Visitors playing Cat's Cradle, an important metaphor in the show, as there were lots of threads tying things together, but they were always shifting and uncertain. We'd also been talking about Schrödinger's Cat, so this visitor was perfect

There's some information here, we'll add more after the show has come down.

*News: DY-66 reviewed by Lucinda M Holmes here

a.a.s.
Five Years
DY-66 on YouTube
Photos from a.a.s. Flickr page

How To Make A Difference

Freee art collective have got a show at IPS in Bourneville (27 September to 3 November 2007). We helped them with a performance where they read out their manifesto and we joined in the bits we agreed with to make a spoken-word choir. It was exhausting but I think it's a great artwork, it really made me read the text carefully, and the conversations I had with Stuart about it to choose sections to read were just as much part of the piece as the consensus achieved during the reading itself.

The space was filled with billboard works, and large scale reinterpretations of slogan pieces such as "Protest Is Beautiful" and "The social function of public art is to subject us to civic behaviour".

The small text behind Gavin Wade and David Beech is "The function of public art for the gallery is to preserve the distinction between art and the rest of culture by establishing a legitamate form of exception on art's own terms". I also liked the way they had placards piled in the corner, not displayed like valuable art objects.

Oddly, the Birmingham Comedy Festival has picked up on this event, presumably because of the "Have You Heard The One About The Public Sphere?" video featuring Norman Collier (1970s northern comedian, known for a 'faulty microphone' routine and chicken impressions). They may also have seen the other Freee video pieces, as there is a humour in them, I particularly like the "How To Talk To Public Art" video, where they visit sculptures in Manchester and display slogans in front of them. I won't spoil the punchlines though.

Freee
International Project Space
View photos at Artstalking 2 Flickr page

Modern Traditions

This is a David Thomas show at Crowd 6 in Bearwood, forgot my camera unfortunately so these are just some phone snaps.

Great turnout, this space puts on some really professional exhibitions even though it's only opened recently.

The work was quiet and meditative, simple translations of signs, photos, audio and video of everyday life in China. However the space was dominated by the large banner reading "Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back", which suggests the central theme of the show: that the boom of China's power and economy is coming at a price of the loss of a more tradtional way of life.

The gallery is open 22nd September - 14th October, at weekends or by appointment (Sat 10-4, Sun 11-2)

Crowd 6
David Thomas