Culture Diary w/c 22-02-2016
What’s hot this week? Our pick of the arts listings from around Liverpool and the rest of the UK…
Monday – Exhibition On Screen: Goya (2015) 6.30pm @ Cinemas Nationwide
A special screened tour of Goya: Visions of Flesh And Blood exhibition, currently showing at the National Gallery, London, learn more about Spain’s most celebrated — and gruesome — painter. Famed for his depictions of the Disasters of War and Greek mythology — especially his Black Paintings period, which include Saturn Devouring His Son (1820-23, pictured below) – expect a reflection upon the man himself and the world he painted.
Tuesday — Psychogeography Symposium 6-8pm @ Edgehill University, Ormskirk – FREE (Just Turn Up)
Scrutinising such diverse topics of the Loiterers Resistance Movement’s love of Manchester (Morag Rose, University of Sheffield), dementia’s influence on remembering cities (Andrea Capstick, Bradford University) and where psychogeography might take us now (Dr Phil Smith, Plymouth University), expect this fascinating symposium to instil wanderlust. Entitled Taking It To The Streets: Empowering Interactions With The Urban Environment, this event is part of the university’s Imagining Better strand.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Wednesday — Should Art Be Used As A Tool For Sustainability? 7-9pm @ Bow Arts, The Nunnery, London — £5
A timely question, seeing as arts and culture is increasingly involved in tourism, regeneration and social change; and one which Alice Sharp (Invisible Dust), artist Mariele Neudecker, Fiona Fieber (Head of Learning, White Building), Judith Knight (director, Artsadmin, Toynbee Studios) and Susan Lambert (director, Musuem of Design in Plastics) hope to thrash out tonight. A great opportunity to also see a screening of Neudecker’s films of isolated and colossal oceanscapes, For Now We See (2013), in addition to her (main picture) glorious photography of discarded plastics on show in the gallery space, Plastic Vanitas.
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Ben Rivers / Nico Vascellari 10am-9pm @ The Whitworth, Manchester — FREE
Billed as his ‘most ambitious work to date’, Ben Rivers presents his Morrocan odyssey The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers at The Whitworth this week (formerly shown at Television Centre in London): shot on hand-processed 16mm cinemascope, expect a fantastical retelling of the brutal short story of a man travelling through the desert. In another part of the gallery, Nico Vascellari shows haunting installation Bus de la Lum (pictured): conveying the mystical, enchanting and, some say, Satanic powers of the forest, in this gallery set in a Victorian park.
Biennial Fringe Participant Meeting 5-6pm @ Liverpool Biennial Office, Baltic Triangle — FREE (Just Drop In)
Calling all artists and curators! Are you running an event or exhibition during Liverpool Biennial 2016 (July-Oct), or considering it? Meet like-minded people (and possible collaborators) at the Biennial office this Thursday, and hear how you can get your event out to thousands across the UK in a special fringe edition of the Culture Diary produced by The Double Negative. All welcome.
Fufanu @ The Shipping Forecast, Liverpool – £6
Also in Leeds and Glasgow this week, see Icelandic former techno duo turned alt rockers Fufanu (pictured) downstairs at The Shipping Forecast in Liverpool. When switching styles, the band didn’t abandon their techno roots; instead, incorporating guitars and drums with synth pads, creating a unique combination of sound, which will be best experienced at this intimate gig playing, no doubt, tracks from their first album Few More Days To Go. Have a listen here.
Friday — Film Station: Man With A Movie Camera (1929) 6.30pm @ Metal Liverpool – FREE (Booking Required)
The best documentary ever made? Sight and Sound seem to think so, placing it in eighth position in their all time Greatest Films critics poll in 2012. A narrative-free portrait of city life in the Soviet Union, expect filmmaker and theorist Dziga Vertov’s much-emulated Man with a Movie Camera (pictured) to be as fresh and stimulating as it was on its release.
Saturday-Sunday – Event Weekend @ Not As We Know It @ The Royal Standard Project Space, Liverpool — FREE
A mad weekend of performance and talks from LJMU graduate collective Muesli, London-based artist run space 12ø, and a heap of friends and collaborators in celebration of their current show Not As We Know It. Expect Chariza with Sarah Boulton, Ruby Waugh, Rhoda Boateng and Shenece Liburd to perform an online live-streamed lecture; Ladette Space’s Eggstravaganza artist/cookery workshop with, of course, eggs; and an instigated conversation from Aspiration Suits about the things you do at work — including ‘fucking with the customers’. Ooer.
Saturday – [Lost Inhibitions] Vol. 1 7pm @ Constellations, Liverpool — £15
Techno of a rather different flavour this Saturday night: dig your dancing clothes out for a festival-style party of big beats in one of the Baltic Triangle’s loveliest spaces — and over two stages to boot. Expect international disco ‘visionary’ THE REFLEX on the Warehouse Stage, alongside funk and groove peddlers Galactic Funk Militia, Bear Growls DJ, and 2ndSun DJs; while the Garden Stage will be kept lively (and hopefully warm) by The Levons, Katie Mac, Thom Morecroft and more.
Laura Robertson
