Culture Diary w/c 21-04-2014
What’s hot this week? Our pick of the post-Easter listings from around Liverpool and the rest of the UK…
Wednesday — Book Club // Science Fiction: New Death 5.30pm @ FACT Liverpool, FREE
“Gripping… of all fiction’s apocalypses, this is one of the most haunting.” John Christopher’s terrifying 1956 novel The Death of Grass is the focus of our first pop-up Book Club at FACT, themed around their current exhibition, Science Fiction: New Death. Choosing SF novels that explore living and dying in the future, overbearing tech and cult-like communities, this informal meet up is for people keen to discuss sci-fi lit in more detail. Join us over coffee (or beer!) to share insight and opinion on the genre’s modern day relevance (Book Club continues 21 May and 18 June 2014).
Talking Practice: Michael Stevenson 6.30PM @ Frederiks, Liverpool — FREE (booking required)
Describing his exhibitions “as being like archaeological displays without labels”, Liverpool Biennial 2014 artist Michael Stevenson flies over from Berlin tonight to discuss his work and ideas. He uses sculpture, installation, film and drawing to bring to life obscure, fantastical stories; like the replica of the homemade craft used in an failed attempt to cross the Timor Sea; it’s creator detained by authorities and forced to dig ditches in Devon in order to pay for his passage back. Bizarre.
Thursday — Private Preview – Nobuhiro Nakanishi: Reticulated Time 6-9pm @ Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, London
Did you ever have a paper peep-show theatre as a child? Nakanishi makes luxury versions of those; transporting viewers into a level of illusion. Making beautiful 3D photographic sculptures suspended in mid air, the artist ‘renders tangible the intangible and seeks to recreate the tactile sensations produced by our surroundings’; somehow managing to capture how a sunrise feels or a walk through a misty forest.
Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip 7pm @ East Village Arts Club, Liverpool — from £15.18
Both growing up in the small town of Stanford le Hope, Essex, hip-hop/spoken word duo Le Sac and Pip met at their local HMV store in 2006. Their career’s took off just one year later with Thou Shalt Always Kill (a tongue-in-cheek do’s and don’ts list for the noughties). Cue loads of awards and acclaim, and a partnership that’s thrived on tour. Expect tracks from their new release Repent Replenish Repeat, which “bubbles with wit, wisdom and fury” (Uncut, 8/10). UK tour continues until September. Listen to our playlist here!
Friday — Noisy Noisy Arty Arty 7pm @ The Royal Standard, Liverpool — FREE
The start of a six week series of exhibitions and live events running up until the launch of Liverpool Biennial, here TRS directors shine a light on their interests, through collaborations with international and experimental artists. Tonight’s launch will be filled with noise: dystopian pop hits from Michelle Hannah, homemade instruments from Henry Liam Collins, and ‘chirping, whizzing, clicking, buzzing, klanging mechanisms’ from Rie Nakajima.
HELLO JONZO Exhibition 6pm @ Unit 51, Baltic Creative, Liverpool — FREE
Liverpool’s first Risograph print and design studio, founded by recent LJMU graduate design/illustration duo Lottie Brzozowski and Rachel Davey, has a very particular in-house style of crisp graphics and eye-watering colour (see the ace poster work they did for us recently). Officially launching tonight with a special exhibition of print artists, explore the unique ‘quirks’ and characteristics of the machine.
Film Station Presents Lift to the Scaffold (1958) 6.30pm @ Metal, Liverpool — FREE
A war vet (Maurice Ronet) and his lover (Jeanne Moreau) plan the perfect crime: to murder her husband. But in a twist of fate, the perpetrator gets trapped in a lift after fleeing the crime scene, whilst she anxiously walks the streets of Paris waiting for him. Louie Malle’s seminal ’50s French noir (much influenced by Double Indemnity) boasts a terrific jazz score by Miles Davis, and is a BFI reissue. Part of Metal’s fortnightly free cinema programme where the films are nominated by attendees (BYO refreshments).
PICK OF THE WEEK: Saturday — Syndrome Sessions 1.0 8pm @ Kitchen Street Pop Up, Liverpool — £5
Part immersive music experience, part art lab, part live theatre, Syndrome is the lovechild of Liverpool’s best known art/music collaborators Mercy and Hive Collective. Joining forces to do something a bit more experimental, visitors will be embraced by The Drome — a room of responsive visuals and sounds that promises to unsettle, move and make you think.
Sunday – Craftivism workshop: Making a Mini Protest Banner 2-4pm @ Unit 51 Coffee, Baltic Creative, Liverpool — £15
Craftivism = a form of ‘slow activism’, or reflective action which ‘changes the participant as much as it does the world’. The Craftivist Collective will teach you the skills of cross-stitch and hand embroidery, whilst channeling wider ideas of activism and protest; resulting in a cross-stitched Mini Protest Banner to take away and hang up wherever you like.
