Culture Diary w/c 25-03-2019
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 – Alice Procter: Museums Were Never Neutral 6.30pm @ Lucas Lecture Theatre, London
“How did the narratives of Empire come into being? Who controls them? And how can we learn to see through the whitewash to the truth?” These crucial, pertinent questions are posed by art historian and museum activist Alice Proctor, as she discusses the role of colonialism in shaping major institutions’ collections. As if we were in any doubt, and, as the event info points out: “the history of British art is also the history of empire and genocide, written by collectors who traded in landscapes and lives”.
Tuesday – Happy as Lazzaro 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
Cannes Grand Prix award winner Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders) returns with magic realist outing, Happy as Lazzaro, in which good-hearted young peasant, Lazzaro forms a life-altering bond with a nobleman. Set in the isolated village of Inviolata, the place seems adrift from contemporary society, adding to the sense of wooziness created by narrative twists and turns and its being shot on Super 16mm. The Lazzaro of the title, it’s worth noting, comes from an Italian idiom – ‘a happy Lazzaro’ – or, says Rohrwacher, “somebody who’s poor and therefore has nothing left to lose”.
Wednesday – Exhibition Openings: Hannah Farrell – AFTERLIFES 6pm @ Caustic Coastal, Salford – FREE
“It’s interesting to explore the relationship between the evolution of photography and how this is linked with changes in the female body.” So says artist Hannah Farrell on her 2015 found pornography project Close Your Eyes and Think of England. This week, Farrell takes over three of Caustic Coastal’s exhibition spaces (including a new public commission) for AFTERLIFES: “an exploration of image and image-making in three parts”.
Thursday – Doc’n Roll: Rudeboy – The Story of Trojan Records 6.30pm @ FACT – £12.20/£11.20
Kicking off tonight at FACT with a screening and director Q&A of Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records, the 4th Liverpool edition of Doc’n Roll Music Festival runs in the city until Sunday with a programme including features and shorts. Aside from this evening, other highlights includes tomorrow’s Stories from the She Punks with directors Gina Birch (The Raincoats) and Helen Reddington (The Chefs) at the British Music Experience and, back at FACT, It Must Schwing! The Blue Note Story.
Friday – Exhibition Opening: Arthur Jafa: Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death @ Tate Liverpool – FREE / Ericka Beckman & Marianna Simnett @ FACT Liverpool – FREE
A pair of new exhibitions opens this Friday in Liverpool. At Tate, Arthur Jafa’s Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death demonstrates the artist filmmaker’s attempts “to make black cinema with the power, beauty, and alienation of black music.” Including footage of a civil rights march, Obama, Martin Luther King and Beyoncé, this montage of African American history and experience is soundtracked by Kanye’s Ultralight Beam. Over at FACT, meanwhile, a mash-up of tech and classic fairy-tales can be found in the work of Ericka Beckman & Marianna Simnett, who each foreground “the female body as a main player in the densely layered fantasy worlds they conjure”.
BBC 6 Music Festival and Fringe / Threshold Festival Of Music & Arts, Liverpool – Various venues and ticket options
Live music of the grass roots, emerging/under-the-radar and kind of a big deal variety is ably delivered by this pair of music festivals across myriad city venues. Anna Calvi, Bodega and Charlotte Gainsbourg will draw many into the gravitational pull of the 6 Music Festival, while Threshold rely on the fresh-faced appeal of hopeful unknowns allied with perennials, including Paddy Steer, The Mono LPs and Silent Cities. Look out for Mersey Wylie, OVVLS and the aforementioned Paddy Steer.
Saturday – A “male artist” is a contradiction in terms 1.30pm @ Eastside Projects, Birmingham – FREE
The failure of the artworld to recognise and support artists of the non-white male variety isn’t new. More than half a century since Valerie Solanas published her SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto, and this panel discussion takes its cue from artist Chiara Fumai’s ventriloquizing of Solanas. Programmed by The Ultras, “a new, all-female force”, join curator Eliza Gluckman, and panellists Daria Khan and Rosalie Schweiker, as they set out to channel “varied voices of feminism”.
Playing Houses 2pm @ Flat Time House/Artist Run/Peckham Liberal Club, London – FREE
Calling his Peckham home “a living sculpture”, and renaming it Flat Time House after his complex Flat Time theory, post-war artist John Latham (1921-2006) was known to open his door to anyone interested in talking about art. Having been resident at the house for the past several months, the MA Writing students of the Royal College of Art – including our own editor Laura – invite you this Saturday to ‘play houses’ with them. From tv watching, to making domestic objects and writing exercises, think about what happens on the threshold where the home and the public meet.
Sunday – 6 Music Festival Fringe closing party 7pm @ Phase One Liverpool – FREE
Round out the week with another healthy dollop of music with the closing party of the 6 Music Festival Fringe. Representing some of the best of new music (as decided by Merseyside industry figures), catch Chester’s Peaness, Wrexham’s Kidsmoke and local darlings Seatbelts and Rongorongo.
Mike Pinnington
Images from top: Ericka Beckman;Hannah Farrell; Arthur Jafa; Chiara Fumai
