Culture Diary w/c 15-09-2014

Leonid Borisov

What’s hot this week? Our pick of the listings from around Liverpool and the rest of the UK…

Monday – Inside Sight & Sound 6.30pm @ BFI Southbank, London — £6.50

Our go to publication for sober, illuminating and yet accessible writing about film, Sight & Sound magazine is an international institution and constant reminder that one doesn’t have to resort to buying studio-influenced publications such as, well, you know, ever again. Tonight finds editor Nick James, features editor James Bell, web editor Nick Bradshaw, and production editor Isabel Stevens discuss film writing in a world of online criticism, how S&S is put together and why film festivals are important.

An Evening with Julian Cope 7pm @ the Unity Theatre, Liverpool — £6

From post punk frontman with fondly remembered Liverpool band The Teardrop Explodes to poet, cultural commentator, survivor and now author. Cope is joined by Lee Brackstone, Creative Director of Faber Social, to discuss debut novel One Three One. Writing in the Guardian, Toby Litt called it “brilliant, serious, funny – and completely bonkers”.

Tuesday – David Dawson talks about his painting 18 45 April 7th 2011 1pm @ Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool — FREE

Long time friend and assistant to Lucian Freud, artist David Dawson fills the Tuesday Talks slot at the Walker this week. There to discuss his John Moores Painting Prize 2014 exhibited work 18 45 April 7th 2011, no doubt conversation will turn to those days spent with Freud.

Martyrs 6.10pm @ Cornerhouse, Manchester

Screening in parallel to artist, filmmaker and writer Sophia Al-Maria’s exhibition Virgin with a Memory (until 2nd November), Martyrs is a revenge thriller of the most extreme kind (the erstwhile Observer critic Philip French refused to review it). Sure to divide the audience, Martyrs is the final film in this short Al-Maria-programmed season of female-fronted horror.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Wednesday – Russian Afternoon Tea and Curator Talk: Leonid Borisov 3pm @ Gallery Elena Shchukina (Mayfair) FREE (pictured above)

If you’ve paid a visit to Tate Modern lately you may well have seen Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art. You may also, quite reasonably, have come to the conclusion that another hit of abstraction is due. If so a trip to Mayfair’s Elena Shchukina Gallery is in order, where you’ll find Lessons in Geometry, the first ever UK exhibition of the Malevich-tinged Leonid Borisov’s work.

20,000 Days On Earth

20,000 Days on Earth 7pm @ cinemas across the UK

Following a fictitious 24 hours in the life of Nick Cave, 20,000 Days on Earth — from first-time feature directors Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard – takes an intimate look at Cave’s creative process.  More on 20,000 Days here

Thursday – Festival of the Mind @ venues across Sheffield — Prices Vary

How to populate the subject line of an email if you want it to be opened by TDN: “Post-watershed lecture series to explore human/robot intimacy.” This is Festival of the Mind a “two-yearly cultural celebration” where academics from the University of Sheffield collaborate with the city’s cultural, digital and creative bods to bring the results of their research to the public. Includes exhibitions, talks and those X Lectures that grabbed our attention.

Friday – The Companion @ venues across Liverpool — FREE

Think you’ve done the Biennial for another two years? Think again. The Companion – “an experimental programme that brings together a group of artists for a few days in the city of Liverpool” — is a weekend of performance pieces. The brainchild of Biennial curator Mai Abu ElDahab and the artist and writer Angie Keefer, the latter along with James English Leary forms part of the programme, enacting bits of Jean Genet’s play, The Screens.

Hope Fest @ venues across Liverpool — Charitable Donations

Fancy seeing a festival featuring a raft of local and grassroots talent across multiple venues this weekend? Do you also want to feel a glow of benevolence to your fellow human being s while doing so? Hope Fest, which boasts the likes of Mono LPs, Amazing Kappa and Low Winter Sun, is in aid of Merseyside’s homeless and weekend wristbands will cost you a “Hope Pack”: socks, jumper, toothbrush, toothpaste and soap. Get there.

Saturday – Digital Design Weekend @ the V&A, London — FREE

Digital Design Weekend at the V&A introduces new works by James Bridle, YoHa and Paulo Cirio. Bridle and YoHa are concerned with secrecy and the use of data in the context of war, while Cirio’s work, the interactive online catalogue for the Data as Culture 2014 programme, gathers the data “fingerprints” of visitors. Digital Design Weekend coincides with the London Design Festival.

Ugo Mulas, Venezia, 1968. Proteste studentesche, XXXIV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte, “Photo Ugo Mulas © Ugo Mulas Heirs. All rights reserved,” courtesy camera16 contemporary art

This Workshop will (NOT) be Documented! Led by Guy Atkins 12pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool — FREE

The Open Eye Gallery contribution to the Biennial Not All Documents Are Records features the work of Ugo Mulas, who captured the political and cultural strife visited upon the 1968 Venice Biennale (protests, artists veiling or removing work etc). In that spirit, and ahead of next month’s TUC rally, artists Guy Atkins and Jenny Richards lead a session on making protest material. Read our review here.

Sunday – Philip Jeck & Lol Sargent: Vinyl Requiem 2pm @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool — £6/£4

Back in 1993 Jeck and Sargent collaborated on Vinyl Requiem, a performance which included 180 Dansette record players, 12 slide-projectors and two movie-projectors; it won the Time Out Performance Award the same year. More than two decades on, amid digital download culture and, if anything, the increasing fetishisation of vinyl, what does Jeck and Sargent’s piece say about where we and technology are today?

To Catch a Thief 6pm @ FACT, Liverpool — £9.50/8.50

This French Riviera-set, Hitchcock-directed jaunt starring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant sees Grant’s reformed cat burglar John Robie wrongly accused of a spate of daring jewellery thefts… Need we go on? It’s perfect Sunday afternoon fodder. Also, check out Robie’s amazing wardrobe…

Posted on 15/09/2014 by thedoublenegative