In the next few days UK director and filmmaker Shelly Love will begin a 5-week residency in Manchester as part of a new work for the Big Screen network in a co-commission with moves09 and Sadler’s Wells Theatre, where it will premiere upon the latter’s Polyvision screen (which hangs behind the glass facade at the front of the building and can be seen simultaneously from both the street and the foyer) before touring the UK. With the working title of A Moving Portrait, Shelly will be receiving additional support from Futureworks college in Manchester.

Having directed promos for Turin Breaks, Skin, Charlotte Hatherley, Mark Brown feat. Sarah Cracknell, Fionn Regan and others, it would be fair to say I am more than a little excited. The image above is taken from her latest work, The Forgotten Circus, commissioned by circus training school Circus Space and Arts Council England, accompanied by a lush score from The Irrepressibles.

You can watch an excerpt here. You really should.

Shelly Love official site
Shelly Love on You Tube
Shelly Love on Draw Pictures

Pending confirmation of the technical wizardry required to pull this sort of project together, I’ve received the full support of the folk at the North West Film Archive in plundering the 15,373 news and feature stories recorded to 9,763 cans of 16mm film and magnetic track containing items inserted into live studio shows at BBC North between 1973 - 1986. The archivists will be helping me to select content relating to those moments and occasions when large crowds descend upon Places of Public Resort

Initially intended as a response to the development of a new public plaza on the banks of the River Mersey, I began thinking about the authoritarian fear of large crowds when - in direct contradiction - footfall or turnstile numbers are massaged and multiplied beyond recognition to quantify success for outdoor activity or civic projects. Either we stay at home playing LardArse 5: Colonic Assault, berated for not dusting off our fringed parasols, or we’re being accused of loitering with intent for tying our shoelaces.

I’m old enough to remember the former Belle Vue Fairground and Zoological Gardens in Manchester, live not far from the former White City Amusement Park, attended with my parents and a then-unbelievable 250,000 others the Pope’s visit to Heaton Park, recall the long-derelict International Garden Festival site in Liverpool and hanker for Great Exhibition styled opportunities to wonder - point - pay homage - peer and gather en masse without having to source legal representation in advance.

Don’t you?

]]> http://www.brenocallaghan.co.uk/2009/02/places-of-public-resort/feed/ 0 http://www.brenocallaghan.co.uk/2009/01/screenzine-12/ http://www.brenocallaghan.co.uk/2009/01/screenzine-12/#comments Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:04:08 +0000 bren http://www.brenocallaghan.co.uk/?p=62

Can it really have been so long? Issue 12 of the sporadic and sort-of-quarterly PDF newsletter highlighting the best screen projects of the past few months, including the online launch of NOISE festival live in Second Life to the screen with Badly Drawn Boy and Zaha Hadid, National Poetry Day, 007 Mastermind and a massive ball of dung.

My mother's youngest son will be speaking at the first Art Lounge event at the newly opened QUAD Art Centre in Derby on Tuesday, 20th January. I'll be giving an illustrated talk on the creative use of outdoor screens and leaning heavily on the supportive shoulders of my colleague and friend Louise Angell, manager of the Big Screen Derby. There will be a Q&A afterwards and the official brochure asks artists to bring in examples of their work on the night, which makes it sound as if the pair of us will be sat in upholstered thrones upon an elevated dias, passing censorious judgement. Thumbs up - a knighthood, sirrah! Thumbs down - to the cells! And perhaps we shall...

Art Lounge
QUAD
Thursday 20th January / 6.30pm start
£3.00 includes refreshments

North West-based moves is the largest exhibition platform in the UK for screen-based work exploring ‘choreographed movement’ in the form of dance films, interactive installations, animation and experimental shorts at international level. moves09 will be looking at stories beyond movement, exploring the narrative possibilities of movement on screen through screenings, installations, live events and open-source forums. I'm lucky enough to be on the board of this excellent festival, which is getting bigger and bolder every year. The call for entries is now open!

Image: A Day at the Office / Dir. Robert Deleskie (Moves 07)

One year on from Urban Screens Manchester 07, with USM08 Melbourne recently put to bed and USM10 in Toronto hurled, javelin-like, into the future mists, I've put together a photobook of our digital knees-up in the world's first industrial city using the deliciously bibliophiliac blurb.com.

I can't imagine who else might desire it but should that be the case, there is no profit added to the final webstore price, while the quality of the print, paper and inks used is second-to-none. Photo credits and thanks due particularly to Myriam Thyes, Rob Maclese and Johan Oldekop.

Bitten by the vanity press bug, I'm now scouring my environment for purposely niche subjects to inspire a photo challenge. The Secret Life of Fruit Labels? Mismatched Door Furniture of Old Trafford? A Journey to the Bottom of Sonya's Freezer Drawer? 

Urban Screens Manchester: Art & Events Photobook

Cover image: Flag Metamorphoses / copyright Myriam Thyes

If you should find yourself in the Liverpool area on the eve of Halloween, you'll be spoilt for choice for things to do. Not only is it the launch night of MTV Liverpool Music Week, but it's also the first attempt for the region at one of them fancy Nuit Blanche affairs, albeit prematurely curtailed by midnight (baby steps!) in the form of The Long Night of the Biennial.

But wait! All this pales in comparison to my own shindig that very same evening, which as a result all 3 are cross-promoting to pull in the punters, especially as we appear to kick the evening off at 7pm following which multiple routes through the city are possible. I'll be screening F.W. Murnau's classic silent horror film, Nosferatu, dating from 1922 and starring the spew-inducingly ugly Count Orlock (all needle teeth, wasp waist, bespoke tailoring and elongated fingernails) played by Max Shreck, and so brilliantly re-interpreted in Shadow of the Vampire by Willem Dafoe.

The whole caboodle has been made possible by collaborating with PMS: The Popular Music Show on BBC Radio Merseyside and Liverpool-based experimental band a.P.A.t.T. who are providing the live contemporary score within the Performance Space on Hanover Street. This, and a live feed of the band, will be relayed live to the Big Screen in Clayton Square via picture-in-picture, while the public are encouraged to move between the two sites during the transmission period.

It's all completely free, there are gratis glowsticks in it for you if you come along (that's Latin for 'chuff-all', how very Gothic of me), and for the 1000+ of you with tickets to attend the sold-out Vampire Weekend gig at the Carling Academy later that night, what better place to start the evening?!!

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
Big Screen Liverpool & BBC Radio Merseyside
Thursday 30th October 2008 / 7pm start 

The grossly talented Sam Meech, recipient of a screen commission earlier this year for The Model City (at the heart of the Sizemology programme), will be premiering the one-off event A Small Cinema at View Two Gallery in Liverpool on Friday 24th October as part of the Local Heroes exhibition.

Designed to create an intimate movie-going experience, there will be plush velvet seats, popcorn, ice-cream, oh - the best short films by local filmmakers, if that should float your boat - and some beautifully designed screenprinted tickets and posters worth nabbing and framing if Sam's past form is anything to go by. Admission is the pocket money friendly price of 25p. Bargain!

A Small Cinema
View Two Gallery, Liverpool
Friday 24th October / 7pm start 

I don't know what it is about the lure of the North and of Scandinavia but I feel my gene-code twitching in response. As an only partly diluted Celt (by way of Salford) the chill, darkness and impeccable design aesthetic holds much more of an affinity for me than lying prone and singed-pink upon some yawnsome beach.

So it was with glee that I was fortunate enough to be invited to NordiCHI to contribute to the Digital Urban Living workshop in Lund, Sweden this past weekend courtesy of Martin Brynskov of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, with whom the Big Screens share the shame wish-list for public use and engagement.

Martin and his colleagues first came to pay me a visit earlier this year to check out our activity in Liverpool and to share information, including news of the impressive Aarhus by Light project in which the city concert hall was wrapped in an interactive media facade. Back in Lund, I had to follow an impressive presentation from Nokia's Head of Design Direction, Adam Greenfield, but fortunately I was armed not with buzzwords but heaps of images and video from recent screen projects. When in doubt, speaka da international lingo del pretty pictures.

University of Aarhus: Centre for Digital Urban Living

NordiCHI

Interactive Spaces

Birmingham's first digital festival, Hello Digital, is a showcase of robotics, illuminations, animations, digital film, music and games. Held at Millennium Point between Oct 23rd-26th, Hello Digital is completely free to attend.

Hello World is the (inevitable) associated conference, and on Thursday Oct 23rd at 4pm I'll be contributing to a panel entitled Digital Art in the Public Realm, exploring the revolution in digital content development and the opportunities for digital media to deliver artistic content in public space.

The discussion will be chaired by Steve Manthorp and my fellow panellists include Marcus Romer of Pilot Theatre, Emma Chetcuti of Multistory and Sandra Hall of Friction Arts. We're on immediately after James Fabricant of MySpace talks about Faintheart, the world's first user-generated movie, so perhaps we might retain some of his audience. Hell, I'm not proud...