Alba Launch Friday at 6:00pm

Launch of Alba Londres 2

We are happy to invite everyone to the launch of Alba Londres 2

The project Alba is very similar in its different locations; nonetheless, we would like to introduce an outline about our particularities because we organise ourselves in an autonomous way. In Alba Londres we find and promote links between the Spanish and Hispano-American culture and the Anglo-Saxon one. We work with different languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Gallego, Euskera, English, etc. We publish original translations and we are interested in poetry.

Given the spread presence of our culture in London and given the influences, references and interferences happening on a daily basis in the linguistic-literary field as well as the artistic and intellectual, we believe that Alba Londres will fill a void at the same time that will arouse creation.

 

Organised by the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre
The event will take place on the 16th of December
From 7.30pm to 9pm
Room 624 in Birkbeck main building
University of London
Malet Street, Bloomsbury
London WC1E 7HX

Bank of Ideas

Hello,

Today I went to the Bank of Ideas to take some pictures of conversations. I took part in an interesting debate hosted by Martin Wilding Davies (see below for a brief introduction). He talked about demarchy as an alternative to Britain’s current electoral political system.

http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/89demarchy.html

Photofusion Annual Members Photography Show

Hello,

I went to Photofusion’s Annual Members Photography Show lat night. The show is gaining a reputation for showcasing a diversity of approaches and genres from photographers based in London and further afield. This year continues the collaboration with Hotshoe Magazine which includes the “Hotshoe Photofusion Award”.

http://www.photofusion.org/gallery/photography/exhibitions/current/default.htm

The evening went smoothly and I saw some interesting work. Below are some examples.

 

LEFT © Eva Stenram | RIGHT © Judith Lyons

© Alison McCauley

© Jo Phipps

Second Sight Tomorrow at Fabrica Art Gallery, Brighton

If you are free tomorrow around lunchtime I recommend you go to Second Sight.

Open ’11 Brighton Photo Fringe

Really exiting exhibition I went to last Friday. The most interesting thing is behind the scenes.

Emerging from curator-artist dialogues and the contributions of a group of selected events curators and guest writers, a series of related events and texts has evolved for both the gallery space and online forums.

The works in the gallery exhibition take inspiration from popular culture, sculpture, archival processes and notions of ritual. Through reflective approaches, references to other cultural disciplines and a sense of humour, the works question the veracity of documentation and transcend assumptions about the medium of photography.

This is an innovative collaborative effort of curators, artists and writers that have worked together for months and on a number of platforms before the show.

More info on the website:

http://www.photofringe.org/

Melanie Manchot Talk at Fabrica

Special White Nights Armchair Critics 29th October 7:00-8:00pm

Armchair Critics

Fabrica’s regular forum for informal debate hosted by artist Lorenza Ippolito and followed by a Utopian Walk through the city.

Melanie Manchot’s film work Celebration (Cyprus Street) shows us a modern day street party in East London. As a portrayal of a multi-cultural community at ease with itself and re-enacting an old and important social ritual it depicts a kind of Utopia.

The idea of Utopia – a perfectly constructed place where the social infrastructure enables individuals to be at their best for the good of everybody – has had currency since the Enlightment. Since Thomas More’s first use of the word in 1516 to the present day, our desire to organise ourselves according to a religious, economic, political or ecological ideal is clear, and is generally accepted as a good, even noble endeavour.

But whose idea of a better society is it? Who gets to decide what we should aspire to as individuals and as communities? And what is the ideal community anyway? Isn’t the dream of one social group another’s nightmare?

Join Lorenza Ippolito and her guest Richard Parker to talk about Utopias, Dystopias and the reality of living together.

Reply

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Drawing Space

Drawing Space

Drawing Space is an interesting initiative by Brighton artist Carolyn Bew during the Artist Open House. It is a collaborative event over three weekends. Visitors are invited to take part in a collective drawing incorporating sound and video, which will transform this empty space into an interactive environment. Each evening a video will be made of the artworks, before the walls are repainted for the following day.

May Festival at Blank

THE EXCHANGE

throughout May 2011
The time is right for FREE things:

• FREE painting
• FREE film
• FREE knitting

Are You Ready for it?

All of Portslade has been declared an involuntary park.

The only currency valid here is skill (any skill) and the only place to redeem it is at THE EXCHANGE, curated by artist group Involuntary Park at BLANK

Neither an exhibition nor a performance piece but a Pay-What-You-Earn-Art-Cafe and a workshop the size of a building …

Come and hang out at The Deer Feeding Station Cafe, take part in an Involuntary Fashion Trail, help make a life size Knitted Deer, record your own Sound Nugget, or go out on an urban hunt with watercolours..

We aim to discover the hidden talents of Portslade by opening up our gallery and studio spaces to the community. Come and swap something YOU can do for something WE can do.

No skill is too big or too small. Everything is a currency we can exchange…

Participants so far confirmed include:

Mike Weatherley MP; Monica Crowe, Katie Blackwell & Friends from The Goodwill Co-op at Emmaus; Parliament of Feathers screen printing; Josie Jeffery of Seedfreedom; Lorette Mackie of Portslade Community Forum; plus BLANK artists Carolina Diaz, Rosie Holmes, Romily Meredith; Chris Shaw-Hughes; Amy Smith, Eva Weaver, Tamsin Williams, Libby Davy, Jo Shapland, Lorenza Ippolito.

FOR A LIST OF ALL THE WORKSHOPS ON OFFER, DATES AND TIMES PLEASE FOLLOW THIS LINK:

List of Workshops at THE EXCHANGE

BLAST THEORY at Armchair Critics

Hello my friends,

tomorrow evening there will be another session of Armchair Critics, this time Matt Adams from Blast Theory will be joining us to talk about how artists have used the Hertzian space in their work and the political aspect of it’s privatization by mobile phone companies amongst others.

If you would like to know more come along, have a chat and a glass of wine with us!