Tales of Two Cities
With an OCD fury not seen since the woman in the Shake 'n Vac advert ground her Valium and mixed it with a glug of Bacardi, I've been plugging the cracks in this site and pasting up former production duties with a vengeance. My personal favourites A Wall is a Screen now have a page to themselves, as do the rapidly expanding MegaPhone team - flying the flag for those of us who see no reason why computer games should progress beyond the Atari era. Once upon a festival, The Light Surgeons conjured up a storm in a Gothic salon and The Royal Opera House treat us to no fewer than twelve outdoor relays in the past five years.
Who Do You Think You Are?
So Many Excuses: Who Do You Think You Are?
...here comes DaDaVisions, a brace of opinionated new screen commissions developed right here in the North West and soon to appear upon TWENTY giant outdoor screens across the UK. Launching as a new strand of DaDaFest, four new artist film and video projects will face-slap shoppers with subversive and alternate interpretations of disability. I'll be posting further information upon each as the week progresses.
So Many Excuses: Who Do You Think You Are?
First up is influential agit-prop trio No Excuses, once fond of chaining themselves to buses to chant "Piss on Pity" and now reformed as So Many Excuses. Mandy Colleran, Mandy Redvers-Rowe and Ali Briggs (who some may recognise as Freda in Coronation Street) have revisited the classic Frost Report sketch from the 1960s featuring the Two Ronnies and John Cleese.
Then a comment upon the British class system but now playfully adapted to explore the stereotypes and labels that the disabled place upon each other, Who Do You Think You Are? is written and performed by SME, produced by Asta Films with vintage styling expertise by Maria Lloyd.
Wave Your Hands In The Air
Thanks to friend and collaborator Sam Meech for riding to my rescue, a blonde knight upon his horse Isadora to deliver title animations for Unsilent Night tomorrow. I have blisters on my hand from carrying the 'portable' AnyCast vision mixing desk over from Manchester on the train (the approximate weight of a drowned man wearing flannel pyjamas) and just over 24 hours to remind myself how it works again.
A Small Cinema
If anyone is planning to drop by Liverpool City Centre this coming Saturday the 26th September to sample any of the heap of activities, from AND at the Big Screen (see below) to the Bold Street Festival, can I urge you to attend A Small Cinema. Sam Meech loves amateur movies, loves them in that special way, buys them giant padded birthday cards and scented blue wooden roses from Poundstretcher.
To this end he only went a bought a job lot of plush seats, put his design skills to good use and created a travelling, hyper-local moviemart that showcases local filmmakers. He even includes fake movie trailers and genuine adverts from local traders (Matta's speciality foods is a hoot, the whole family pile out front to wave to camera). Just like it used to be when we were kids, before newborns tumbled out with iPod charger cables where their umbilical cords used to be.
For one day only in the old Rapid store next to Christians Fruit & Veg, there are three shows for the princely sum of 25p - yes, that's right, twenty five pennies - per person admission. There will be popcorn, ice-cream and ushers, with each show lasting an hour. Call by the Big Screen on the way, fill the day with cinematic wonder and interactive wizardry - then go home and make a judgement call on that past-due bag of washed salad.
TV Interruptions
David Hall: TV Interruptions 1971
Video artist David Hall confusing the living hell out of the Scottish public during the 1971 Edinburgh Festivals with his seminal TV Interruptions series. Broadcast unannounced as part of domestic television schedules, those at home on the couch were suddenly faced with the perplexing sight of the goggle box slowing filling with water from a tap, ablaze in the middle of a field or switched to fast-forward in a communal viewing room to the sound of background screams...
David Hall: TV Interruptions 1971
In celebration we are showing these again on the Big Screen Edinburgh by kind permission of REWIND, a research and preservation project for early video art at the University of Dundee. Thanks are also due to Edinburgh Art Festival and curator Lucy Keany, for baffling a new generation of unwitting observers. Appearing daily from 5th August to 5th September, at purposely unknowable timings...
How does it feel
Copyright North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University
A peak at one of the still image grabs from the wonderful archive footage appearing in the giant interactive public video carousel that is Places of Public Resort. This picture is from a film clip of a traditional traveling fair (by traditional, I mean trashy, dirty, vulgar), and is accompanied by a nightime excerpt of a ride on the Waltzers.
The lights streak by in a sherbet blur as New Order's 'Blue Monday' blares from the speakers, stomachs clenched, the persons in the wrong corner of the car crushed by the sliding forms of their companions (or the right corner of the car, if that was your intent), spinning, speeding, colour, sound, chaos, joy... if I could erase my textbook image of heaven as a field with daisies and the occasional harpist, this is what I would replace it with. To err is human, to choke back popcorn peppered vomit on a disco deathtrap, divine.