Björk, the Icelandic singer’s Biophilia project incorporates handmade instruments, iPad apps, David Attenborough’s nature films and an album too – and she’s showcasing it all at Manchester international festival.“There will be an album in September, with an app to go with each of the 10 songs“.Extraordinary.This article titled “Björk: ‘Manchester is the prototype’” was written by Alex Needham, for The Guardian on Monday 4th July 2011 19.00 UTCOriginally formulated by scientist Edward O Wilson, the biophilia hypothesis suggests that human beings have an innate affinity with the natural world – plants, animals or even the weather. Yet it’s not biophilia but good old-fashioned fandom that has drawn a small band of Björk obsessives to queue outside Manchester’s Campfield Market Hall since 10am this morning. Not that there’s anything old-fashioned about the woman they are here to see. Biophilia is the Icelandic singer’s new project – the word means “love of living things” – and promises to push the envelope so far you’ll need the Hubble telescope to see it.A collection of journalists have already had a preview at a press conference in the Museum of Science and Industry over the road. Björk is absent, preparing for tonight’s live show, her first in the UK for over three years, which will open the Manchester international festival. Instead, artist and app developer Scott Snibbe, musicologist Nikki Dibben and project co-ordinator James Merry talk through Biophilia’s many layers. There will be an album in September, with an app to go with each of the 10 songs. There will be an education project, designed to teach children about nature, music and technology – some local kids will embark on it next week. There will be a documentary. And then there will be tonight’s show, performed in the round to a 2,000-strong crowd including journalists representing publications from New Scientist to the New York Times, as well as the diehard fans waiting outside. One, 20-year-old Nick from London, is a classical violinist who has loved Björk since the age of 14. “I wasn’t really into pop at all until I heard Medúlla,” he says, citing her most challenging album. “It was like a gateway drug from me liking difficult 20th-century western art music to liking pop.”It’s a journey in the opposite direction from the one most music fans make, and one which speaks volumes about the complexity of Björk’s work. “More classical musicians respect Björk than any other pop star,” he adds.At the museum, Snibbe is demonstrating the apps. The app that goes with the first single, Crystalline, includes a game in which you collect crystals in a tunnel, through which process you alter and customise the music. The app also includes an abstract version of the musical score; and an essay by Dibben that explains, in this case, how the structures of crystals relate to the musical structure of the song. The app for another song, Cosmogony, presents a 3D cosmos you can navigate. Each app has been created by a different – often rival – developer. “To me, it feels like the birth of opera or the birth of cinema,” says Snibbe.Yet Björk didn’t have such lofty aspirations in creating the project. “My main aim is to not get too bored myself,” she says, via email (she rests her voice between shows). “I feel that if I’m curious and excited there is a bigger chance the listener might be. At the end of the day, it’s more about the feeling of an adventure rather than the details of the adventure itself. So in short: whatever turns you on.”That said, the change from a passive to an active listening experience is a radical one. “The apps are mostly made for headphones and a private experience,” says Björk. “What you see live is only us playing our version. You can play a totally different versions at home.” If you’ve no desire to do that, Merry is at pains to point out that Biophilia will still exist as a CD or download – and indeed only those with access to an iPad or iPhone can experience the apps. So far, the project has been too expensive to adapt to other handheld devices.At the show venue, the journalists are being given a tour of the new instruments that have been specially built for the project. One contraption looks like a giant silver mangle decorated with two massive ear trumpets, but is called a sharpsichord. There are two giant pendulums, which have strings plucked by a plectrum as they swing past. There’s a Tesla coil that descends in a cage from the ceiling; two prongs that emit purple flashes of lightning – and, with it, sound. There’s also a celeste, which has been gutted and fitted with the pipes of a gamelan. These fantastical devices are controlled by an iPad. Above the performance space is a circle of screens that show the apps for each new song; moving tectonic plates for Mutual Core; invading pink cells for Virus (“Like a virus needs a body, as soft tissue feeds on blood, I will find you, the urge is here,” go the lyrics).It must be one of the most complex pop shows ever, and according to Björk, it could have been more elaborate still. “Manchester is the prototype,” she says. “We had to leave many things out because of budget and time and stuff.” As it is, the whole project has taken three years and cost so much money she told Rolling Stone that “we’ll be lucky if we earn zero”.Yet, on purely artistic grounds, it’s hard to regard Biophilia as anything other than a success. As the lights go down, Björk’s childhood hero David Attenborough’s unmistakable voice, recorded just that day, fills the room to explain the songs. The show includes Björk’s favourite footage from BBC nature documentaries playing when she performs older songs. Hidden Place is illustrated by a beautiful but disturbing clip from Attenborough’s Life – of a seal’s corpse being devoured by psychedelically coloured worms and starfish. All 10 tracks from the new album are played. Such an onslaught of new material would try the patience of most audiences, but this one is rapt – no one even goes to the bar.Much of this is due to the sensory bombardment of music, images and costumes – not least Björk’s bright orange wig, which a comment on the Guardian’s review says makes her resemble a tamarin monkey. Her decision to ban cameras and other recording equipment from the venue has also played its part. “I feel since everyone has made such an effort to be there all together at the same place and time, we might as well go for it,” she says. “It can be hard to play music for people who are filming you for Twitter or whatever. It’s like going to a restaurant with someone who keeps texting their friends while you are speaking to them – hard to concentrate.”Then there’s Björk’s extraordinary voice, once compared by Bono to an icepick, and still imperishable at 45. “My voice has changed,” she says. “I thought it had gone a little deeper. On my last tour I got nodules [on the vocal cords] but managed to stretch it out with three years of vocal work, so I’m back to my old range now.” Björk “adores” a whole range of singers: “Chaka Khan, Beyoncé, Antony” – the latter being Antony Hegarty, a former collaborator who is here in the audience – though her “favourite singer alive today” is Azerbaijani devotional singer Alim Qasimov. She is accompanied by a 24-piece Icelandic choir she discovered on YouTube.After spending so long meticulously making Biophilia, performance feels liberating. Live shows and making an album are, says Björk, “extreme opposites. After noodling for ever on an album, gathering together the best moments, it’s refreshing and healthy to have to do it all in one whack. Then you sort of have to take real life into it and accept that you only have whatever you have that day – and that is enough.”Right now Björk is at the intersection of music, nature and technology, exploring how the three together might help build a more sustainable future. But is it still pop? “Yes, absolutely!” Björk claims. (Dibben, who wrote a book about Björk, says the singer is wary of having her music hived off into the rarified world of the academy.) “Or perhaps I would rather call it folk music – folk music of our time. I was never too much into Warhol and the whole pop thing – it felt a bit superficial. I prefer folk. People. Humans.”• Bjork plays Manchester international festival on 7, 10, 13 and 16 July. Biophilia is released in September<br /> <a href=”http://oas.guardian.co.uk/RealMedia/ads/click_nx.ads/guardianapis.com/music/oas.html/@Bottom” _mce_href=”http://oas.guardian.co.uk/RealMedia/ads/click_nx.ads/guardianapis.com/music/oas.html/@Bottom” rel=”nofollow”><br /> <img src=”http://oas.guardian.co.uk/RealMedia/ads/adstream_nx.ads/guardianapis.com/music/oas.html/@Bottom” _mce_src=”http://oas.guardian.co.uk/RealMedia/ads/adstream_nx.ads/guardianapis.com/music/oas.html/@Bottom” alt=”Ads by The Guardian”></img><br /> </a><br />guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogBjörk: ‘Manchester is the prototype’Related posts:who is itExclusive Radiohead artwork plus The King of Limbs album streamCanterbury Cathederal
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Björk: ‘Manchester is the prototype’
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/07/05/bjork-manchester-is-the-prototype
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July 5 2011, 8:45am | Comments »
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This week’s new exhibitions
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/30/this-weeks-new-exhibitions
Ian Hamilton Finlay | Rob Churm | Young British Art | John Salt | Amanda Ross-Ho | The Count Of Monte Cristo | Norfolk & Norwich Festival | Kit Craig & Andrew Lim
This article titled “This week’s new exhibitions” was written by Robert Clark & Skye Sherwin, for The Guardian on Friday 29th April 2011 23.06 UTC Ian Hamilton Finlay, London Swamped by a tide of fleeting tweets, it feels good to be reminded of the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay, the Scottish artist and poet who made language a thing of concrete beauty. Finlay was obsessed by classical culture and ideals but not in the fusty academic sense. He mined the epics for pressing themes like sex, death and violent revolution. “Zimmerat-haunting wood nymph”, reads one of his works in leafy green neon. To specialists in military history, a zimmerat’s a protective coating used on second world war-era tanks, but for Finlay it becomes a magnet for the hotties of Greek myth. A selection of his sculptures are being offset by “definitions” stencilled on the wall, using his own peculiar dictionary. Victoria Miro, N1, Thu to 1 Jun Skye Sherwin Rob Churm, Glasgow Rob Churm explains the title of this exhibition, The Exhaustion Hook, thus: “The hook looks like a leminscate but it feels like a ball bearing.” Clear? He deals in deliberate graphic bewilderments. A central figure of his etchings and wall drawings in Tipp-Ex and Biro is his alter ego Prame, a character who apparently dates back to Churm’s zine comics The Thirteen Flashbacks Of Prame and My Visions. This would all add up to pseudo-surreal wackiness if it weren’t for the artist’s subtle ability to mix dreamworld doodling with compositions of geometric precision. So Death wields a bladeless scythe amid a congregation of hardly credible angels and dragons as, elsewhere, good old Prame paddles across the River Styx in a toy canoe. Sorcha Dallas, to 27 May Robert Clark Young British Art, London As an artist, Ryan Gander’s known for his love of mystery and chance, peppering his sculptures, films and lectures with personal anecdotes and oddball cultural references. Here he turns curator, bringing together work by 38 young artists whose only point of connection is – in the words of the press release – that they’re “exceptionally talented”, and that every work selected is in black and white. The rest is left to merry happenstance. Look out for work by last year’s Cartier Award winner, Simon Fujiwara, who transformed sections of the Frieze Art Fair into an archaeological dig uncovering a fantasy bisexual, amoral and thoroughly hedonistic ancient city dedicated to art. Then there’s The Hut Project, a collective with a self-deprecating take on artworld conventions, as with their self-organised retrospective at the ICA a few years back, rascally titled Old Kunst. Limoncello, E2, to 4 Jun SS John Salt, Birmingham With this first retrospective, John Salt returns to his city of birth, where he was the first artist to exhibit at the Ikon in 1965. With a typically meticulous airbrush and stencil technique, Salt has painted pictures of American cars, plain and simple. Yet these on-the-road images follow the American capitalist dream as it has stretched from the cars dumped under the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge in the late-60s through to the cars abandoned outside 1990s trailer parks. It’s the deadpan focus of these paintings that affords them a chill air of psychological tension reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s earlier deserted cityscapes. But, unlike Hopper, Salt leaves out the protagonists. Ikon Gallery, Wed to 17 Jul RC Amanda Ross-Ho, London This LA-based artist’s work is a puzzle mixing personal history with 21st-century flotsam. Her sculptural assemblages and photo collages have included such disparate items as chunks of her studio wall, her old shopping bags and cat litter. And while she also uses family photographs, the history isn’t always obvious: coming from a tribe of professional snappers means these have included parental portraits and coolly close-lipped product shots. Here, a needlepoint diagram bearing the words “Time Waits For No One” is the jumping-off point. The Approach, E2, Fri to 5 Jun SS The Count Of Monte Cristo, Manchester Alexandre Dumas’s 19th-century tale of unjust imprisonment, treasure hunting, role playing and revenge provides the subject for present day reflections by five contemporary artists: Annabel Dover, Hayley Lock, Cathy Lomax, Alex Pearl and Memei Thompson. The angle is pretty ironic, as a project is proposed to use Arts Council money to assassinate thousands of artistic rivals (surprise, surprise: the Arts Council declined the funding application). Posters of aristocratic heartbeats are painted with utterly swooning brushstrokes (Lord Wilmore: “As rich as a goldmine and eccentric almost to insanity.”) The formal classicism of French garden design is digitally transformed into spaced-out hallucinations. Elsewhere, reproductions of aristocratic party scenes are defaced with viral rashes, and a spy camera is covertly used to investigate the V&A’s collection of miniature eye jewels.
Rogue Artists’ Studios & Project Space, to 6 May RC Norfolk & Norwich Festival The Norfolk & Norwich Festival has a pedigree that pre-dates Glastonbury. Begun as a music fest back in the 18th century, it now runs the gamut from circus acts to ballet and theatre. Kicking off this week, it ushers in a month of stand-out exhibition openings. Highlights include Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s show dedicated to Jean Genet, the gay French author beloved by the existentialists, with an unexpected connection to Norwich: Genet’s fascination with rebels and petty crims took him to the city for the wedding of his lover’s car-thief stepson. Later there’s a show featuring Hubert Duprat’s exquisite hybrids of precious gems and metals with caddis fly larvae at Nottingham Castle (14 May-29 Aug). A collaboration between man and fly, this work features larvae of just 2–3mm creating protective sheaths for themselves from gold, opals, pearls, rubies and diamonds. Chaimowicz: The Gallery at NUCA, Fri to 21 May SS Kit Craig & Andrew Lim, Manchester A complementary show of sculptural and graphic enigmas. Craig draws diagrams of contraptions seemingly designed for experiments into human perception or the inner machinations of the psyche. They tend to have mystic or mysterious titles such as Hermit’s Lampshade and Holomonic Model. Lim’s sculptures are precariously balanced abstract structures with titles as self-explanatory as Pressed Against One Another or as declamatory as O, OU, OUT. Together they’ve come up with an apt collective exhibition title: On Measuring Uncertainty. Castlefield Gallery, to 29 May RCguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
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April 30 2011, 6:38am | Comments »
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Never has London’s atmosphere as a rich city-state felt so extreme
Geographically, never mind socially, we are not all in this together. Life in London feels different to anywhere outside. By London, though, we are only talking about a small area of central, west and north london. Out in the banlieu, you might as well be in Bradford.
This article titled “Never has London’s atmosphere as a rich city-state felt so extreme” was written by Ian Jack, for The Guardian on Saturday 16th April 2011 07.30 UTC In Bradford on a winter’s night 25 years ago, I stood in front of an estate agent’s window and made a calculation. For the price of our terrace house in north London – two up and two down and a bit of garden at the back – I could buy 10 similar houses in Bradford. This month I read that Burnley has the lowest property prices in England, and made another calculation. For the price of our London house I could buy 40 houses in Burnley that were averagely cheap and 80 of the very cheapest. This doesn’t mean that the differential in house prices between London and northern England has grown by more than 400% since 1986. I live in a bigger house now, and Burnley isn’t Bradford. But the gap is certainly widening: according to Halifax figures, houses in Newcastle-on-Tyne cost on average 28.8% less than they did in 2007, while in Islington they’ve risen 9.7% in the past year after changing very little – up or down – in the previous two. I look at pictures of the cheap houses in Burnley. They’re Victorian terraces. Their doors open straight on to the street, but they look solidly built from Pennine stone, no frills, but handsome. I imagine workers came home to them from cotton mills. Our house is certainly more imposing, three floors rather than two, with bow windows and ornamental red brick. But it has shallow foundations in London clay, so whether it’s sturdier is doubtful. I imagine someone who earned money in a suit, a senior clerk or a shopkeeper, first moved in when the terrace was completed in 1890. Without substantial inherited wealth, not even two-income families in the modern equivalent of those jobs could move in now. Newspapers sometimes write that the coalition cabinet contains “18 millionaires” as though it were a peculiar outrage, but everybody who’s paid off their mortgage in my street is a millionaire, if property is counted among their assets. And I stress that this is an ordinary street; until 30 or 40 years ago, a schoolteacher or a Fleet Street sub-editor could have afforded a house here. What explains my good fortune? To some extent many of my generation share it, especially if they worked in a trade or profession that blossomed in the 1980s (better, on the whole, to have been a national-newspaper journalist than a mechanical engineer). Most people I know have grander homes than their parents, no matter where they live in the United Kingdom. If they live in favoured parts of cities such as Edinburgh and Leeds, their homes are often enviable for their architecture and space. Only the very grandest of them, however, could be swapped for 40 cheap houses in Burnley. Above every other consideration – career, age – the combination of judgement and happenstance that made me a London house-owner is what explains my relative wealth. To a certain degree, this is an old story, and common to every metropolis. Moving to London four decades ago, I discovered one-bedroom flats were double the price of those I’d left behind in Glasgow. But then the 1980s arrived and the British economy’s centre of gravity shifted sharply (and to date, permanently) south. Between 1979 and 1986, jobs in manufacturing industry declined by almost two million; 94% of jobs lost in every sector in those years were north of a line drawn between the Wash and the Bristol Channel. The traditional idea of Britain – one taught in school geography books – was a country that made its money in the midlands and the north (including Scotland, and not forgetting Wales) and spent the profits mainly in the south. But now both the generation and consumption of wealth grew concentrated in the same place, and the north-south divide suddenly marked something more fundamental than dialects and traditions. It was during this time, soon after the miners’ strike, that I stood with a notebook in a Bradford street and worked out the house price ratio. I wondered then if it could last. It didn’t seem possible that it could get worse – and for several years around the turn of the century it didn’t. Public spending financed by European grants and taxes raised in the City of London secured for many northern towns at least the suggestion of a viable future, if viability is measured in warehouse conversions, art galleries, warm cappuccino and rising property costs. The crash has since jeopardised all these simulacra of metropolitan living. The odd thing – the unfair thing, considering where the crash originated – is that the metropolis itself is immune. Geographically, never mind socially, we are not all in this together. Life in London now feels different to anywhere outside, as though you leave through city gates at turn-offs on the M25. Never has its atmosphere as a rich city-state felt so extreme. “Revenues have bounced back and we are again seeing strong sales growth. The outlook for the UK as a whole may be gloomy but I think the long-term prospects for London, especially with the Olympics, are very good.” These are the words of Des Gunewardena, who runs a chain of expensive restaurants (Le Pont de la Tour, Quaglino’s) and I read them last week in the Evening Standard, underneath the headline, “Surge in dining out feeds a flurry of restaurant launches”, next to a picture of Sienna Miller arriving at Sheekey’s. Each in the list of a dozen new restaurants still to open has the name of a chef attached. One of those already opened, the Pollen Street Social in Mayfair, took 5,000 calls looking for reservations in its first day. Beyond the hope that manufacturing industry can rebalance the economy, and the faraway prospect of a high-speed rail line to Birmingham, no government strategy exists to spread this wealth further north. The political tone is southern – look at the party leaders, or many of the Labour candidates parachuted to northern seats. It has been left to the BBC to do a little social engineering by – bravely or foolishly – relocating departments to Salford, Cardiff and Glasgow, so that half of its output will be produced outside London by 2016. Will better programmes result? Very few BBC staff seem to think so; on the evidence of BBC2′s Review Show, now made in Glasgow, extra expense in travel and hotel costs looks the likeliest difference. But three formerly great industrial cities will have BBC budgets and salaries added to their troubled economies; there will be job opportunities; the middle class in each place should grow a little larger. The staff who refuse to go are easily mocked. Haven’t they heard about the better quality of life, the Lowry, the easily accessed countryside, the “creative buzz” that’s now reported along the banks of the Clyde and the Manchester ship canal? Their reluctance to move is usually expressed in personal and professional terms: of not wanting to interrupt their children’s education, or being too far away from their show’s guests. But perhaps among their worries there’s something less easy to define; that by quitting London they’re removing themselves from its cultural, political and economic heft, which has grown so remorselessly and, whether or not BBC Breakfast gets done in Salford, will carry on regardless. The country’s centrifuge: both awful and interesting.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
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April 16 2011, 11:21am | Comments »
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Smash! – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/02/smash-%E2%80%93-review
A Theatre review of Smash! at the Menier Chocolate Factory Theatre, London
This article titled “Smash! – review” was written by Michael Billington, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 20.30 UTC “Is there anything that matters less than a musical?” a character irreverently asks in this revival of the late Jack Rosenthal’s 1981 play. It’s not a sentiment one ever expected to hear on the stage of the Menier. But it sums up perfectly the comic anguish at the heart of Rosenthal’s biliously funny piece: a backstage story based on his own nerve-wracking experience of seeing his TV play, Bar Mitzvah Boy, turned into a musical floperoo. The musical, as everyone tells you, is a collaborative form: what Rosenthal captures is the high emotional cost of bringing together so many competing creative egos. In this instance, there is an added cultural clash: a Broadway composer and director find themselves yoked to a British lyricist and librettist under the shaky supervision of an American-Austrian producer. Things look bad from the initial New York encounter, when the veteran composer dismisses the book and its “cardboard, asshole characters”. Matters get even worse in the course of London rehearsals and a Manchester try-out after which the director demands new sets, costumes and rewrites of the rewrites. Yet, in the strange way of showbiz, everyone still believes miracles can be achieved by the time of the West End opening. I wish Rosenthal had defined more clearly the show on which they’re working: we learn its title, Whatever Happened to Tomorrow, and not much else. And, although Rosenthal forgiveably changed the book-writer’s gender to avoid a Twelve Angry Men feeling, it slightly weakens the enterprise’s testosterone-fuelled absurdity. But what he captures perfectly are the shifting loyalties of the team, the oscillations between insane optimism and despair, and the notion that a musical is like some giant, uncontrollable machine with which everyone feels obliged to tinker. As the director claims, in the play’s best single line: “In a musical nothing’s all right until it’s too late to be changed.” Tamara Harvey’s production creates exactly the right sense that everyone, while working for the good of the show, is protecting their own territory. Richard Schiff, of The West Wing fame, makes the composer a figure of wondrously acerbic vanity who prefaces every remark by reminding everyone of his 28 Broadway scores. Cameron Blakely’s director is all elegantly attired bombast masking profound insecurity. And Natalie Walter plausibly makes the writer, clearly representing Rosenthal himself, the still, small voice of sanity in this creative madhouse. But the funniest performance comes from Tom Conti as the producer who seeks to exude avuncular reassurance while secretly aware that the show is under-capitalised. What Rosenthal’s delightful play really proves, however, is that musicals operate in a special way: in conjuring up a world of fantasy, they leave their creators trapped in their own private bubble of preposterous self-delusion.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
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April 2 2011, 11:37am | Comments »
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What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/what-to-see-lyn-gardners-theatre-tips
Arts Council cuts have hit many of this week’s theatre companies, from Shared Experience to Manchester’s Greenroom. All the more important to go on theatre breaks and see them – now.
This article titled “What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips” was written by Lyn Gardner, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 1st April 2011 14.06 UTC There’s plenty of great theatre around this week, but the question after this week’s cuts is whether the same will be true in five years’ time – or even a year. The Arts Council is not to blame for the hand it’s been dealt by the government, but has it really done enough to realign the landscape and redirect money away from the haves to the have-nots? Most importantly, has ACE’s strategic thinking been as robust as it needs to be to ensure that theatre continues to thrive and audiences grow both in numbers and diversity? So let’s start What to see this week with fine companies who have been unlucky in the recent funding round. Shared Experience have been excluded from the National Portfolio but who – as their multi-layered production Brontë confirms – can deliver probing and beautiful work. Catch it at Oxford Playhouse until tomorrow, and then at London’s Tricycle Theatre from next Tuesday. Another casualty – and one of several small touring companies who have been cut, including Northumberland Theatre Company and Oxfordshire Theatre Co – is Forest Forge, which is out on the road playing village halls and venues with Peeling (tonight at the Lighthouse, Poole). Then there’s Manchester’s Greenroom, which for 28 years has been supporting artists making performance and live art in a city dominated by the Royal Exchange, and who are this week playing host to Kings of England and Levantes Dance Theatre through their Method Lab, a scheme that previously helped nurture Nic Green’s Trilogy and Drunken Chorus. Remove the venue, and where do the artists find the support they need? Despite an 11% cut for many organisations, regional theatre buildings are going to have to do a great deal more to nurture talent, support companies and present work. Feeling the pinch will be no excuse and it can’t be business as usual. Every bit of theatre is now reliant on collaboration. This week Coventry’s Belgrade theatre, which took almost a 15% hit, has a new version of Uncle Vanya, which will then transfer to London’s Arcola (which, with an 82% rise, was one of the day’s big winners). North in Bolton, the Octagon opens its tale of local hero and steeplejack Fred Dibnah, The Demolition Man, in the same week that its highly acclaimed revival of The Price transfers to the Stephen Joseph, which says goodbye to Paines Plough’s touring show, Love Love Love, which in turns is heading into the West Yorkshire Playhouse. It’s all connected, and my hunch is that it will have to be more so in the years ahead. Staying in the north, Birmingham Rep’s teenage drama of life and death, Notes to Future Self, goes into the Royal Exchange Studio, the excellent Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf continues at Sheffield Crucible before heading to Northern Stage, and Alan Bennett’s tale of the woman who took up residence in his garden, Lady in the Van, is revived at Hull Truck. While we’re in Yorkshire, do think about booking for Harrogate’s Two’s Company Festival in May, a mini version of BAC’s brilliant One-on-One Festival, which features Laura Mugridge’s delightful camper van show, Running on Air, a new piece by Analogue, and Tea is an Evening Meal, a collaboration between Northern Stage and Third Angel, (the latter very mysteriously cut by ACE). Two successes in the funding round are Freedom Studios who are behind Mill – City of Dreams in Bradford, and Theatre in the Mill, which this weekend offers the interactive thriller, The Falling Sickness, and follows it with Instant Dissidence’s One on One, When Night Falls, from Tuesday. Let’s head further south to the Royal and Derngate in Northampton, where Rattigan’s In Praise of Love opens next week, and from there into London, where the lively young Colombian circus, Circolombia, which is made up of former street kids, returns to the Roundhouse (another funding winner). Looking ahead, at the Roundhouse you should be booking for The Fat Girl Gets a Haircut and Other Stories, Mark Storor’s participatory show made with teenagers. The Almeida may have suffered a substantial 39% funding cut, but it still gets £704,000, which should be more than enough to ensure that it continues projects such as Crawling in the Dark, a new play for young people inspired by the current main house hit, David Eldridge’s addiction drama, The Knot of the Heart. Soho Theatre – another significant loser but with new artistic director Steve Marmion at the helm – has Bryony Kimmings’ Sex Idiot, a tale of STDs and pubic hair. Ireland’s Abbey Theatre bring Mark O’Rowe’s play about Dublin life Terminus to the Young Vic, which has a small uplift in funding. Cheek by Jowl take their Russian Tempest into the Barbican. Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton collaborate on The Quiet Volume, a unique experience in a library as part of the London Word Festival and check out Chisenhale Art Club, which always happens on the first Wednesday of the month. I rather like the sound of Hotel Confessions, too, which is performed in a Bermondsey hotel. Just outside London, Lee Hall’s terrific The Pitmen Painters sets off from the Theatre Royal in Windsor on a nationwide tour. Derek Jacobi’s King Lear is at the Theatre Royal in Bath. Fevered Sleep’s delightful children’s show And the Rain Falls Down goes into Bristol Old Vic, Comedy of Errors continues at the Tobacco Factory, Journey’s End goes into the Theatre Royal in Brighton and at the Basement choreographer Ivana Muller considers her place on the stage in 60 Minutes of Opportunism. Circus did well in the funding shake-up and its happy birthday to Circomedia in Bristol who are celebrating in style. Marivaux’s A Game of Love and Chance opens at Salisbury Playhouse. In Scotland – which is, of course, unaffected by ACE funding decisions – Liz Lochhead’s Educating Agnes, a version of Molière’s School for Wives, is at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh. Elsewhere in the capital, the Jimmy Boyle-inspired The Hard Man is at the King’s, and Catherine Wheels’ new version of Beauty and the Beast, Caged, is at the Traverse today before moving to Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree tomorrow, with more tour dates to follow. Head to The Arches in Glasgow from Tuesday for a double showcase of award-winning work, which includes Me and the Machine’s dislocating love story When We Meet Again, Claire Duffy’s Money… the Game Show, Thickskin’s tale of teenage catastrophe, Blackout, and Gareth Nicholls’ Pause With a Smile, which lingers on everyday coincidences.
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April 1 2011, 3:47pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Exclusive Radiohead artwork plus The King of Limbs album stream
See artwork exclusively created for the King of Limbs project and listen to the new Radiohead album in full.
This article titled “Exclusive Radiohead artwork plus The King of Limbs album stream” was written by Caspar Llewellyn Smith, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 28th March 2011 09.06 UTC Six weeks after Radiohead issued The King of Limbs as a download – engendering a flurry of excitement – the band are releasing the CD version of the album. At noon on Monday, the record will be launched at three special events in London, Manchester and Glasgow, where a free newspaper created by the band called the Universal Sigh will be handed out to fans. Radiohead are also releasing a “newspaper album” version of the King of Limbs priced at £30 – although this will involve a different newspaper than the one handed out to fans. The London event will take place at the Truman Brewery on Dray Walk, London, E1 6QL, the Manchester event will be outside the Bread and Butter Cafe on Tibs St in the Northern Quarter and the Glasgow event will take place on Dundas Street. There are another 59 similar events worldwide – and fans in New Zealand have already got their hands on the paper. You can listen to a stream of The King of Limbs above, and below are two exclusive examples of artwork created for the project, credited to “Zachariah Wildwood & Donald Twain”. The Universal Sigh features writing from authors Robert MacFarlane (whose books include Mountains of the Mind and The Wild Places) and Jay Griffiths (winner of the Discover award for the best new non-fiction for Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time). The Guardian will be bringing you our own view of Radiohead’s newspaper, plus our own special response to it later today. . .
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March 28 2011, 3:49pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Libya uprising continues – live updates
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/03/libya-uprising-continues-%E2%80%93%C2%A0live-updates
The Libyan government has accepted a plan by Venezuela to seek a negotiated solution to the conflict in the north African country, a spokesman for president Hugo Chavez said on Thursday. The Venezuelan plan would involve a commission from Latin America, Europe and the Middle East, along with talks between Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi and opposition forces. Venezuela’s information minister also confirmed to Reuters that the Arab League has shown interest in the plan. Arab League President Amr Moussa says the plan is under consideration. “It is a Venezuelan proposal and sent to us and we are considering it and that is all,” Moussa told Reuters
This article titled “Libya uprising continues – live updates” was written by Paul Owen, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 3rd March 2011 17.38 UTC
5.52pm: Some useful links: • Richard Seymour on the “siren song” of the neocons in David Cameron’s cabinet. • A Q&A on Libya and the international criminal court from Human Rights Watch. • James Meikle’s story on Khaled Att-ardi, the man from Manchester who has reportedly been killed in Brega.
5.19pm: Here are today’s key events on another eventful day for Libya: • The Libyan government has accepted a Venezuelan proposal to seek a negotiated solution to the crisis in the country, according to Hugo Chavez’s information minister (see 3.53pm). It is unclear how exactly this initiative would work and whether it would help (see 12.46pm). • Muammar Gaddafi and his sons are to be investigated by the international criminal court for possible crimes against humanity. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Gaddafi’s security forces were alleged to have attacked peaceful demonstrators in several towns and cities across Libya since 15 February. Gaddafi has denied using violence against demonstrators, whom he has described as agents of al-Qaida. International media have been unable to witness the worst of the reported incidents. • Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, has indicated that establishing a no-fly zone over Libya is unlikely, in what was seen as something of a snub to British prime minister David Cameron. Germany has come out against foreign military intervention in Libya (see 3.12pm). • Brega and Ajdabiya have reportedly been bombed by Gaddafi’s forces as troops loyal to the Libyan leader continue their bid to reclaim towns and cities controlled by anti-Gaddafi demonstrators. Reuters reported that the airport in Brega was targeted, while strikes in Ajdabiya were aimed at forces massed at the city’s western gate. • Khaled Att-ardi, a man from Manchester who was born in Tripoli, has reportedly been killed in Libya (see 4.24pm). A British citizen who had lived in Manchester for 13 years, Mr Att-ardi had reportedly gone to Libya to bring back his daughter. • In Egypt, prime minister Ahmed Shafiq has resigned on the eve of a protest rally, and has been replaced by former transport minister Essam Sharaf, who is seen as closer to the protesters. For all today’s events as they happened, click here.
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March 3 2011, 12:06pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Leeds to Paris in four hours – but high-speed rail plan faces protests
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/02/leeds-paris-eurostar-high-speed-rail-plan-protests
Leeds to Paris by Eurostar in four hours when the high speed rail network is completed.
This article titled “Leeds to Paris in four hours – but high-speed rail plan faces protests” was written by Dan Milmo and Martin Wainwright, for The Guardian on Monday 28th February 2011 19.51 UTC The battleground over a £32bn high-speed rail network moved from the shires to the north after the government outlined the case for a second phase linking Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds. Undaunted by a backlash in Tory heartlands over plans for a 225mph London-to-Birmingham line, the transport secretary, Philip Hammond, backed plans for joining it to a Y-shaped national network. The proposals include a link to the Channel tunnel rail route that would transport passengers in Manchester and Leeds to Paris in less than four hours without a London stopover. However, the proposals for 200 miles of new track are likely to be of more immediate concern to the thousands of households that line the potential routes in Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire. The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said the economic arguments in favour of the northern extension of High Speed Two (HS2) could be drowned out by protests over blight. “As this proceeds, we are going to hear some very different voices from the north, arguing passionately about the beautiful local countryside,” said Ralph Smyth, CPRE’s senior transport campaigner. “Take the Cheshire area around Wilmslow, which lies right on the likely route of the Birmingham-to-Manchester line. You have got very wealthy, very influential people there, who are not going to take happily to HS2 driving through.” Launching a consultation on a national high-speed network, Hammond was confident that the economic case would prove more powerful with residents in the north than it has in the home counties, with the full route forecast to produce a £44bn boost to the UK. “Ironically the further north we get the easier it will get. Once you get further away from the south-east people seem to understand more clearly the argument on jobs and growth.” According to the Department for Transport, the first phase alone would help create 40,000 jobs. Hammond said the northern section could open in 2032, six years after the London-to-Birmingham route. A consultation on the specific route will start next year after detailed plans are published. It is understood that more than a dozen routes are under consideration for phase 2, which will be reduced to a shortlist by early 2012. If the proposals receive the green light, journey times to Manchester and Leeds from London will be reduced from more than two hours to 73 and 80 minutes respectively. Sources said planning for the Birmingham-to-Leeds section has proved particularly challenging, due to the hilly landscape and the number of small mining communities and former collieries dotted along the potential route. “It is a complicated landscape,” said one expert. Hammond said ramblers in the Peak District would not be disturbed by bullet trains tearing through an area of outstanding natural beauty, with the Birmingham-to-Leeds line likely to pass between Derby and Nottingham, and to the east of one of Britain’s most stunning national parks. However, the Chiltern Hills, another area of outstanding natural beauty, have been less fortunate and the first phase of the network will pass through the area when the line opens in 2026. Hammond said environmentally friendly amendments to the London-to-Birmingham route published in the consultation, such as deeper cuttings, would be repeated when the northern extension is drafted: “We will be doing exactly the same as we are doing in the Chilterns. We will work with communities and engineers to minimise the effect on sensitive landscapes.” The Department for Transport is confident the rail route will challenge one of the major bastions of domestic aviation – the London to Scotland route – with a forecast journey time of three-and-a-half hours. Rail would take half of the air-rail market, the consultation argued. The current figure stands at 20%. Under the proposals high-speed trains will leave the network at Manchester and Leeds and travel to Scotland on conventional lines. The consultation argues that high-speed rail is the obvious solution to a looming capacity shortage on England’s major rail routes, pointing out that passengers are already forced to stand up on peak-hour services on those lines. The document states: “Long-term forecasts have been developed on demand growth on these three main north-south lines out of London which connect the majority of Britain’s major cities. These forecasts look forward to the early 2040s and show that, even allowing for a range of enhancements to these lines, crowding levels on long-distance services will continue to rise.” However, the debates over blight and economics are likely to rumble on. Critics of the programme pounced on revised figures in the consultation, which showed that the economic benefit of the first phase would equate to £2 for every £1 spent, instead of the £2.70 that was forecast last year. “That is mediocre value for money by official Treasury standards,” said Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation. A government source said that earlier estimates had been based on “fantastical” forecasts by the Labour government.
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March 2 2011, 12:44pm | Comments »
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