Culture Diary w/c 17-02-2020
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 – Fail Better 2020: Samuel Beckett 7.30pm @ Wilton’s Music Hall, London – £17/£8
Failure – it’s a scary prospect, but giving yourself permission to fail can also be incredibly liberating. Believing it an essential part of the creative process, Samuel Beckett went even further, declaring that: “to be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail.” This evening actor Juliet Stevenson, theatre director Natalie Abrahami, academic and writer Emilie Morin and author Joanna Walsh come together for a programme of live poetry, performance and discussion exploring Beckett’s approach.
Tuesday – Walkabout 8.50pm @ the BFI, Southbank, London – £25/£6
Offbeat, and sometimes overlooked, director Nic Roeg’s Australian outback-set Walkabout, stars Jenny Agutter, stranded in the wilderness with her younger brother (played by Roeg’s son, Luc). Roger Ebert called it “one of the great films … Is it a parable about noble savages and the crushed spirits of city dwellers? … I think it’s about something deeper and more elusive: the mystery of communication.” Catch it tonight. From the archive: In Profile – Nic Roeg
Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: The Habitat of Time, Curated by Julie Louise Bacon 6.30pm @ the Arts Catalyst, London – FREE
Including Thomson & Craighead (above), Robert Andrew, James Geurts, Lucy Bleach, Josh Wodak and Eva Nolan, this new exhibition “focuses on the way that time as a medium shapes our perception of life, the structure of societies, and the vastness of the physical world”, says curator Julie Louise Bacon. Across analogue and digital media; seeds, insects and matter; graphite, ochre and charcoal; satellites, strata and atmospheres, the exhibition seeks to demonstrate how instability, globalisation, digital technologies, and how we consume knowledge have all served to alter the way we experience time.
Film Night at the Museum: The Breakfast Club 6pm @ the British Music Experience, Liverpool – £7
At his peak, writer/director John Hughes launched many a career and left an indelible mark on a generation, introducing us to the likes of Home Alone, Uncle Buck and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. For some, best of all is 1985’s The Breakfast Club (top), which sees five very different high-school students forced to spend a Saturday together in detention. Starring Ally Sheedy (‘the basket case’), Emilio Estevez (‘the jock’), Molly Ringwald (‘the princess’), Judd Nelson (‘the criminal’) and Anthony Michael Hall (‘the brain’), the unlikely group are drawn together through shared experience. From the archive: The Breakfast Club / Pretty in Pink
Thursday – In Conversation: Paul B Preciado & Lauren Elkin 6.30pm @ Tate Liverpool – £5
In An Apartment on Uranus: Chronicles of the Crossing, author Paul B Preciado – a “dissident of the gender-sex binary system” – reflects on traditional power structures and how we might find spaces outside and beyond them. He is joined tonight by writer and critic Lauren Elkin, who knows a thing or two about hierarchies herself – her 2016 book Flâneuse subverts the tradition of ‘a man who saunters around observing society’. Expect the conversation to take in neo-fascism, migration, sex work, and the harassment of trans children as Preciado and Elkin discuss the central ideas and themes of the former’s latest book.
Friday – Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2020 @ The Photographers’ Gallery, London – £5
Staged ‘to recognise and support the most innovative, original and relevant photography-based practice’, this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize features the contrasting work of Mohamed Bourouissa, Anton Kusters, Mark Neville and Clare Strand (above). Under the lens this time are social control and power dynamics; violence, trauma and memory; farming communities; and the process of transmission and reception, respectively. From the archive: “John Wayne don’t do shit like this!” – Mohamed Bourouissa at The Turnpike
Saturday – Sophie Lee: Always Something Moves 12pm @ Bankley Studios & Gallery, Manchester – FREE
Interested in the connection between time, place and memory, artist Sophie Lee’s work (above) explores spaces for contemplation and the act of remembering, to reflect on her father’s dementia (and the shift in familial roles and relationships that followed in its wake). Drawing on performance, text and visual imagery, including responses to her time spent on residency at Linn Botanic Gardens, Lee has said: “Grounding myself and my own memories in landscapes explored as a child, I came across Linn. I felt a strong connection to this space. Learning about its wild, slightly chaotic and hugely diverse garden and its owner brought into focus my feelings of loss and change, growth and renewal.”
Sunday – Exhibition Closing: Alexis Teplin ‘It’s My Pleasure to Participate’ @ the Bluecoat – FREE
Across painting, performance and video, California-born artist Alexis Teplin explores the historical warp and weft of the discipline of painting. Including textiles, large scale works on canvas, sculptural objects and architecture, ‘It’s My Pleasure to Participate’ is Teplin’s largest solo exhibition to date.
Exhibition Closing: you feel me_ @ FACT Liverpool – FREE
From VR experience to space-set neon-lit restaurant, you feel me_ includes Rebecca Allen, Anna Bunting-Branch, Megan Broadmeadow, Phoebe Collings-James, Brandon Covington Sam-Sumana, Aliyah Hussain and Salma Noor, comprising ‘a collection of immersive artworks about power that create a space for healing’. Further Reading: A Waking Dream – Rebecca Allen’s The Observer
Mike Pinnington
Images/media from top: The Breakfast Club; Temporary Index (2016); The Discrete Channel with Noise © Clare Strand; Always Something Moves © Sophie Lee; The Observer (1999 – 2019) © Rebecca Allen; main homepage image: Parade #15 (2019) © Mark Neville
