Culture Diary w/c 22-10-2018
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from around the North of England and the rest of the UK – and loads of it’s free!
Tuesday – The White Review No. 23 Liverpool Launch 6-7pm @ Tate Liverpool – FREE
At The White Review’s 23rd issue launch tonight, expect talks about poetry and class (from poet and teacher Raymond Antrobus) to coincide with a dystopian romp through an alternative London (as TWR editor and first-time novelist, Patrick Langley, introduces his debut, Arkady). Free drinks, live readings and kick-ass cover art by Allison Katz.
“First You Write A Sentence” – The Art Of Great Writing With Professor Joe Moran 6.30pm @ Waterstones Liverpool — £4/3
Zooming between the greats — from Maggie Nelson to George Orwell — and learning a lot from their techniques, join Professor Joe Moran tonight to hear more about his new style guide, and how it breaks down the art of great writing for beginners and experts alike.
Ugo Rondinone: Liverpool Mountain (Permanent Public Display) @ Albert Dock, Liverpool – FREE
What a contrast — an acid trip against Liverpool’s Victorian docks. Swiss-artist Ugo Rondinone’s Liverpool Mountain has been installed and you can go see it, for free, any time you like. His first British public artwork and the first of its kind in Europe, this huge sculpture takes inspiration from American ‘Hoodoos’, or volcanic spires, typically found around the Colorado Plateau and the Northern Great Plains… and now Merseyside.
Wednesday – Film Screening Plus Q&A: Female Human Animal (2018) 6pm @ Edge Hill University, Ormskirk – FREE
Time to get weird… This trippy thriller stars Lancastrian/Mexican artist Leonora Carrington’s real life friend, the novelist Chloe Aridjis (playing herself), in a fittingly surreal homage to the surrealist painter. Filmed during Tate Liverpool’s 2015 retrospective exhibition, the fictional plot mimics fact: as writer Aridjis curates Carrington’s show, she forms an obsession with an intense man, lurking on the edges of reality.
M. John Harrison In Conversation 7.30pm @ The Printhouse, Sheffield – £7/6/5
Meant to be an evening of live readings from novelists Mike Harrison and Iain Sinclair, and with Sinclair having had to pull out at the last minute, expect Harrison in conversation with physicist Professor Richard Jones. A superb writer who’s been genre-bending since the 1960s, Harrison has bagged all the best sci-fi awards (including the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Philip K. Dick Award); undoubtedly talk tonight will turn to his first collection of short fiction for over 15 years, the astonishing You Should Come With Me Now: Stories of Ghosts (our review here).
Thursday – Jenny Hval In Conversation 6.30pm @ The Bluecoat, Liverpool — £5/4
Norwegian musician and writer Jenny Hval started writing for a newspaper after she released her first album in 2006; now her sensual, metaphorical debut novel, Paradise Rot, is being released in English for the first time. Expect, in Hval’s own words, “a lot of liquids and a lot of rotting” as she discusses the book’s themes — spanning queer desire and horror — with artist and writer Claire Potter tonight.
Friday & Saturday – Hello Merseyside Party, Talk And Get Together @ Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre, Prenton — FREE
It was built in 1866 and can be seen from Wales, but this ground-breaking, Grade-II listed observatory and much loved local landmark has a new purpose in 2018: as an arts hub. Join the new owners tonight for a party (9pm onwards) featuring M T Hall and Raime DJs (amongst others), and a biscuit-fuelled discussion on Saturday (12 noon onwards) featuring writer and researcher Jon Davies, where you can expect to learn more about the big renovations, its mini-archive and history, and it’s plans for the future.
Saturday & Sunday – Last Weekend: Liverpool Biennial, Beautiful World, Where Are You? @ Venues Across Liverpool — FREE
Camp and Furnace are seeing the Biennial team out with a bang this Saturday, and you can join them — dance the night away with music from Sonic Yootha and a laser show from the Kazimier. Sunday, nurse your hangover by taking a last look around: our highlights include film director and New Wave pioneer Agnès Varda’s extraordinary film installations at FACT (our interview here); the tradition-defying drawings of Canadian Inuk Annie Pootoogook at Tate; and Aslan Gaisumov’s heartbreaking film Keicheyuhea at St. Georges Hall (review here).
Laura Robertson, editor
Images from top: Ugo Rondinone: Liverpool Mountain, credit Mike Pinnington; M. John Harrison; Jenny Hval, credit Baard Henriksen; Paul Elliman, The Day Shapes, 2018. Feature image: still from Female Human Animal (2018)
