Culture Diary w/c 04-02-2019
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!
Monday – A Private War and Satellite Q&A with Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan 7pm @ FACT, Liverpool – £14.40/£13.40
“She was specifically targeted because of her profession, for the purpose of silencing those reporting on the growing opposition movement in the country.” This was the verdict of Judge Amy Berman Jackson regarding the death in 2012 of correspondent Marie Colvin, while reporting from the Syrian enclave of Baba Amr. Starring Rosamund Pike, A Private War tells the story of Colvin’s fearless journalism and the events leading up to her death.
Operation Legacy screening and panel discussion 7pm @ Khalili Lecture Theatre, London – FREE
In 2009, Kenyan war veterans sued the British government for the truth following the extreme lengths taken – including mass detention, torture, rape and murder – to quell a local uprising by a group collectively known as the Mau Mau. Operation Legacy tells that story. The screening will be followed by discussion, with speakers Dr Chege Githiora, Gikuyu translator during the Mau Mau case, British-Iraqi Hip Hop artist and campaigner Lowkey, journalist James Mbaluto and Olivia Windham Stewart, co-founder of the Museum of British Colonialism and labour rights specialist.
Tuesday – Artist Talk: Sean Edwards 6pm @ Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham – FREE
In May, Cardiff-based artist Sean Edwards will represent Wales at the Venice Biennale, with the work promising to be “a poetic enquiry into place, politics and class intertwined with personal histories”. Tonight, Edwards shows his 2011 film Maelfa, named after the shopping centre in the Llanedeyrn estate where he grew up, followed by a discussion of his key themes.
Wednesday – The Liquid Club #1: Exchanging Perspectives by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro 6.30pm @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE
This new monthly reading group from the Biennial “invites collective thinking” of the participants to drive development of the festival’s 2020 iteration. With reading material for the group shared in advance of each meeting, the first discussion – “rethinking the body beyond its concrete physical boundaries” – draws on Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s writings.
Thursday – Ecstatic Material: Beatrice Dillon & Keith Harrison 7.30pm @ KARST, Plymouth – £5
Experimental and interdisciplinary, the Outlands network brings together musician and producer Beatrice Dillon and artist Keith Harrison. The fruits of the collaboration, says Dillon, involve “a sense of a physical, tactile presence through sound, one that bumps into and spills over into Keith’s sculptures”. Playing different venues through February, the idea is that the duo will explore and respond to the constraints of each site in turn. As Harrison puts it: “We have an overall structure but have factored in a capacity to react to what’s happening each night and change as the tour progresses.”
Exhibition Opening: Mark Leckey: We Are Untitled 6pm @ Output Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
Output’s almost scarily quick turnaround of shows means that, with February barely upon us, the gallery – which presents the work of artists from or living in Merseyside – opens its third exhibition of 2019. This time sees Turner Prize-winning Mark Leckey present 2001 film We Are Untitled. Featuring footage of a party in Leckey’s flat, the result is “part-music video, part-time capsule”, serving as a document by which he, and we, can access his own nostalgia.
Friday – Book Launch: Eerie Imaginings 6.30pm @ The Photographers’ Gallery, London – £8/£5 concs
Eerie Imaginings is the title for an evening of films, readings and photography looking at “the weird and the eerie”. On the occasion of Adam Scovell’s new novel, Mothlight (out this week via Influx Press), host and fellow author Gary Budden, is joined by Scovell, photographer and visual artist Ellen Rogers and writer and performer Soma Ghosh to explore this still-burgeoning area of creative enquiry.
Exhibition Opening: Simeon Barclay – Life Room @ The Holden Gallery, Manchester – FREE
Life Room, the first Manchester solo survey of artist Simeon Barclay, presents existing work, alongside new works responding to the historic collections at Manchester School of Art. Barclay, who “operates at the intersection of contemporary art, fashion, music and popular culture”, draws on an ongoing interest in sense of self, culture and tradition, personal experience and identity.
Saturday – Alien Sound: Ambient Music and the Limits of the Human 10.30am @ Tate Liverpool – £5/£3
What is disturbing ambience? This symposium aims to explore developments in ambient music (a genre typically associated with relaxation), and asks how can we hear ambience differently? How can it make us strange to ourselves again? How can this “alien sound” generate alternative ways of experiencing space, time and world? Guest artists taking on this “unsettling art, crossing boundaries between noise and music”, include Marie Thompson, Paul Reket, Dhanveer Singh Brar, Larne Abse Gogarty, Steve Davismoon, Rachael Rosen, Jon Davies, Annalaura Alifuoco and Silvia Battista.
Horror is no Place for a Lady (seminar/screening) 4pm @ Constellations, Liverpool – £8/£6
Horror, long considered a genre in which women occupy one of just four roles – psycho, virgin, victim or whore – is also one in which the last character standing is almost invariably female. This seminar (convened by Liverpool Horror Club) debates this odd, inescapable dichotomy. Part of a month of events celebrating women in horror, the evening ends with a screening of director Mary Harron’s adaptation of American Psycho.
Emotion Wave: The Aleph, Kuyokuyo, Germanager, La French 8pm @ Drop The Dumbulls, Liverpool – £4 OTD
The focus of our latest playlist, Emotion Wave have been hosting experimental electronic nights in the city since 2015, when frustrating experiences at traditional gigs and club nights led to Neil Grant taking matters into his own hands. The first EW of 2019 puts The Aleph, Kuyokuyo, Germanager and La French front and centre.
Sunday – Queen Zee Album Launch Party 3pm @ Jacaranda Records Phase One, Liverpool – FREE
The wait is almost over for fans of self-described “local punk weirdos”, Queen Zee, with the release of their self-titled debut album. The record signing and in-store performance, they promise, will be the “greatest, glam-est, most disgusting launch parti this city has seen since the Hope and Glory Festival toilets”. You’ve been warned!
Mike Pinnington
Media/images, from top: A Private War Trailer; Sean Edwards’ Maelfa installation shot (Spike Island); Keith Harrison; Adam Scovell’s Mothlight; Alien Sound; Emotion Wave
