text:
THURSDAY 28th MAY- ON THE PAVEMENT, DENTED AND SCUFFED
Liver & Lights No 53.
Railton Road, Herne Hill End 2015
Book launch, with a live performance by Bones & The Aft
"One by one my neighbours seem to be selling up and leaving for Margate and Thurrock, according to the Evening Standard, as the familiar denizens of inner London are exchanged and upgraded. In response to all this, Liver & Lights No 53 is a highly selective chronicle of a world soon to pass. Here is the Railton Road I see every day. It is my road, your road, mythical, real, ordinary, strange, full of life and love and loss and comings and leavings turned into ten illustrated pamphlets contained in a brown card box, each containing a character or an incident observed and condensed for posterity and launched at the Horse Hospital with a rare performance by Bones and the Aft"- John Bently
THURSDAY 28th MAY 2015, 7.30 PM
doors open at 7pm for a prompt 7:30pm start
The Horse Hospital
Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
THURSDAY 30th APRIL 2015, 7.30 PM
curated and hosted by BIRD RADIO
The Orchestra of Broken Instruments is a collective of improvisers, initiated by Bird Radio at Platform-7's Waste.Agency, an intervention that took place in Autumn / Winter 2014 at the ex-HMV store in Leadenhall Market, the heart of the square mile financial disctrict in London.
With waste and consumption at the centre of the conversation, The Orchestra of Broken Instruments is an act of defiance against anyone and anything that discourages play and experimentation with objects and instruments, creating improvisations or spontaneous compositions with broken instruments and everyday objects.
The project is blogged by Bird Radio here.
Find out more about the waste.agency here.
This evening you will see and hear the orchestra of broken instruments in action and have a chance to participate in a performance. No musical experience is necessary.
THURSDAY 30th APRIL 2015, 7.30 PM
doors open at 7pm for a prompt 7:30pm start
The Horse Hospital
Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
FRIDAY 27th MARCH 2015, 7.30 PM
Amateur (French amateur "lover of", from Old French and ultimately from Latin amatorem nom. amator, "lover")
is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science in a non-professional or unpaid manner. Amateurs often have little or no formal training in their pursuits, and many are autodidacts(self-taught).
Featuring the work, words and thoughts of
CHIARA AMBROSIO/ JULIUS BELTRAME/ JOHN BENTLY/ BIRD RADIO (with live band)/ PETER BLEGVAD/ HYDAR DEWACHI/ MARCIA FARQUHAR/ KITTY FINER/ JAMES HESFORD/ FIAMMETTA HORVAT/ CHARLIE KAUFMAN/ KRYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI/ ORLANDO MOSTYN-OWEN/ MARK PETER WRIGHT
and more tbc
While sifting through the shelves of Bookartbookshop in East London, where serendipity reigns supreme, I discovered a copy of Unknown Public* 14, titled "Bloody Amateurs". The concept of the "Amateur" chimed strongly with me, especially at this moment in time when finding ways to engage and grow within one's practice continues to be challenged not only by a chronic lack of funding and platforms, but by the widening schism in the arts between what is considered to be mainstream or professional work and what is perceived to be marginal, underground, obscure or esoteric, that which is fashioned out of almost nothing, against all odds out of sheer need to pay witness to a fleeting and mysterious life, and for the love of it.
I myself often oscillate between a wild belief in what I am doing and a profound terror that I may be standing, alone, in a huge and empty void created around me by my stubborn refusal to adhere.
Here is an excerpt from Peter Blegvad's text "On the Word Amateur":
"In the 1970s I lived in NYC. I put out two issues of a little magazine I called Amateur, a word that in our culture often denotes a lack of commitment or skill, but which derives from the Latin for love. With Amateur I wanted to explore and celebrate marginality in general, with a particular emphasis on the marginality conferred on individuals and enterprises by failure. Of course, affecting disdain for success is a defensive strategy so transparent that only the desperate resort to it. But Amateur's assignment was, more positively, that old chestnut- the search for the marvellous in the everyday. Failure and marginality offered conditions in which the marvellous often flourished- for instance Outsider Art or Art Brut came about as an antidote to the slick commercialism of 'career' artists."
It strikes me that the need to create a platform to discuss doubt, fear, marginality and idiosyncrasy remains precious and necessary even more so now that we are vehemently exhorted to become part of a whole in order to avoid a state of perpetual economic and social struggle- absorb the values and expectations of a wide world web in order to better be consumed and digested, and ultimately contained and silenced.
But by what standards are success and failure really measured and quantified, and is an abstract goal (so distant and volatile we should by now understand it for what it is) really more important that the journey towards it?
All the demons we daily encounter and challenge in the privacy of our rooms- on the blank canvases, sheets of paper, empty frames, glaring piano keys- may be a fruitful pool of potential if brought out into the open and explored as a fundamental part of the process, without lonely shame and desperation. The freedom to change, the courage to dissent, the testimonies of our perpetual struggle to grow by discarding the ideas we thought belonged to us- these are important constants in the creative process, and what is art if not a tool to ask questions and know ourselves and the world a little bit better? Observe, imagine, remember, dream and pay witness, also on behalf of all the people who cannot.
William Burroughs once said that a society that cannot dream is destined to psychosis and destruction, and that it is the artist's role to dream for the collectivity.
But within what space does dreaming occur, what is the responsibility of the dreamer, and its relationship to ideas of professionalism and marginality?
Tonight we will explore this fertile soil and celebrate all the struggle and doubt, rejoice in all the things we choose to do for the love of it, and consider ways in which this may constitute a fundamental path into the future.
"Thank you very much. I'm actually really happy to be here; at least that's what I'm telling myself. I've never delivered a speech before, which is why I decided to do this tonight. I wanted to do something that I don't know how to do, and offer you the experience of watching someone fumble, because I think maybe that's what art should offer. An opportunity to recognise our common humanity and vulnerability […]
What can be done? Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won't be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can't help but be that. But more importantly, if you're honest about who you are, you'll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognise him or herself in you and that will give them hope. It's done so for me and I have to keep rediscovering it. It has profound importance in my life. Give that to the world, rather than selling something to the world. Don't allow yourself to be tricked into thinking that the way things are is the way the world must work and that in the end selling is what everyone must do. Try not to.
This is from E. E. Cummings:
'To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.'
The world needs you. It doesn't need you at a party having read a book about how to appear smart at parties – these books exist, and they're tempting – but resist falling into that trap. The world needs you at the party starting real conversations, saying, 'I don't know,' and being kind."
Charlie Kaufman (addressing his audience at the BFI Masterclass on Screenwriting)
FRIDAY 27th MARCH 2015, 7.30 PM
doors open at 7pm for a prompt 7:30pm start
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
THURSDAY 26th FEBRUARY 2015, 7.30 PM
curated by POND SCUM LIGHT SHOW
Finding puddle portals to microbial netherworlds, Pond Scum Light Show present a night of films and specially commissioned performances that explore the fictive tools through which landscape might be engaged. From contaminated railway sidings to ceremonial lakes, through New Jersey Meadowlands to the ancient trees of Shoreham, casting back alternative histories of the rural whilst anticipating the mechanical gardens of the future.
All Flesh Is Grass will present an atmosphere of curiosity about the strangeness of the landscapes we may come find ourselves in, and the further strangeness of our presence within them.
Performances and readings by Nicholas Johnson, Alice Hattrick, Pond Scum Light Coagulator w/ Peter Simpson & Anthony Brown.
Film works by Mathew Killip, Ian Breakwell, Robert Smithson, Peter Greenaway and more…
Pond Scum Light Show is a series of live liquid light projections devised by Jennifer Pengilly and Jamie Sutcliffe developed to coincide with music by Mark Pilkington (Raagnagrok/Urthona) and Mike York (Cyclobe) under the moniker Teleplasmiste. As a stand alone project, it is concerned with explorations of liquidity, site-specificity, contaminated compositions and the pre-histories of psychedellic consciousness.
THURSDAY 26th FEBRUARY 2015
doors open at 7.30pm for a prompt 8pm start
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
THURSDAY 22nd JANUARY 2015, 7PM
INCOHERENT CINEMA: BERTRAND MANDICO and KATRIN OLAFSDOTTIR
curated by PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS
A selection of films and Incoherence Manifest presented by the authors : Bertrand Mandico, Elina Löwensohn and Katrin Olafsdottir
"International / INCOHERENCE manifesto was written on the 12th October 2012 by artists and film makers Katrin Olafsdottir and Bertrand Mandico as the declaration of the principles of Incoherent Cinema based on Incoherence of Screenplay, Manufacturing, Sophistication, Effects, Style, Time and Geography, Taste, Economy, Creativity, Acting and Cinematography.
This very special event in London is a rare chance to see recent films and to meet the authors. Most of the films included in the programme have never been seen on the British Isles before (with the exception of a special screening at Papay Gyro Nights Art Festival on the small and remote island of Papa Westray in Orkney.
We'd like to see Papay Gyro Nights as Incoherent Festival where works of art are shared equally with the landscape, the sea, irrational animals of the island and inarticulate magical beasts of folktale as well as human inhabitants and visitors. Some art works and ideas arrive to the island as a shipwreck and later become part of the place.
With Bertrand Mandico and Katrin Olafsdottir's works, from the beginning, we had a feeling they were growing from the rocks and grass, from the forgotten lives and magic of the island. When the stories are told from the heart – the speech may stutter, become incoherent connecting unnameable. Incoherence is the sign of being honest in conversation with the elements of the surrounding world – the way to become a human, a beast, again and again and again in the world which is not only transforming and flowing, but also ceaselessly transmogrifying
The definition "short film" is not the right one for Bertrand Mandico and Katrin Ofafsdottir films – they can't be defined by minutes of duration in the same way as poems can't be defined by the number of lines, and dreams by timelines. The present time in the films is the past, present and future at every single moment – like in one single phrase from Bertrand Mandico's film BORO IN THE BOX:
"My name is Walerian Borowczyk…
I'm dead polish filmmaker.
All my life I was locked in a box with a hole in it.."
…where every single present moment of the film is here and now and in the same time is going beyond of the time of birth and the time of death; where the camera is not an invention defined by technological progress, but the organic extension of the film maker"
Ivanov + Chan / PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS /
THURSDAY 22nd JANUARY 2015
doors open at 7, for a prompt 7.30pm start
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
About the artists:
Bertrand Mandico was born in Toulouse, 1971. He got his degree in directing from the Gobelin animation school in Paris. A draftsman and photographer as well as a filmmaker, it was obvious from an early age that he had a very personal imaginary, full of macabre black humor. His short films have been successfully screened in Annecy and Cannes.
Elina Löwensohn is a cosmopolitan actress born in Romania, American and living in France. Her acting career includes films, videos, photos, performances and theater plays with a pronounced desire for metamorphosis. Starting her career in the early 90s, in the independent New York theatrical and cinema scene, she is remarked in the most famous films of Hal Hartley « Simple Men » and « Amateur », in « Basquiat » by Julian Schnabel and « Nadja » by Michael Almereyda. Her taste for the art of performance as well as her interest in the visual arts, leads her to collaborations with artists such as Marcelline Delbecq, Tom de Pekin, Valerie Mrejen, as well as the filmmaker Bertrand Mandico, for whom she played in many of his films: « Boro in the Box », « Living Still Life », « Our Lady of the Hormones »…
Together with Mandico, she imagines a series of films and polymorphous creations, exploring the mise en abyme of the director-actress relationship.
Katrín Ólafsdóttir's background is dance and choreography and she started making Super 8 films as a teenager. She has directed and produced several short films and documentaries and is currently in post production of her first feature film The Wind Blew On, made religiously with a home made formula of Mutual Aid. Along with Bertrand Mandico she is founder of the film collective International/Incohérence. Katrin also does photographic work, video performances and installations. She and collaborator Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir have been in the habit of taking over abandoned spaces and perform symbolic attacks. Katrin has exhibited in museums and galleries and done installations in abandoned man made structures.
BOOKARTBOOKSHOP presents
FRACTALS: LIVE SHORT STORIES by JOANNA WALSH
A benefit event for the Horse Hospital Fundraising Campaign
Tickets: £5.50 advance, £6 on the door
Buy tickets here
The power of the short story is as evocative and enchanting as any shadow play or moving image.
The primordial power of the spoken word can transport and displace, conjure and erase, and instigate endless journeys across the fertile plains of the mind, where reality and the imagination intersect.
For this special night we join forces with the wonderful Bookartbookshop to welcome writer Joanna Walsh, who will read from her collection, Fractals (3:AM Press).
Joanna will be in conversation with Chris Power (of The Guardian's A Brief Survey of the Short Story) on the subjects of brevity and style in short fiction.
This will also mark The Light & Shadow Salon's 5th birthday, so come and raise a glass with us!
JOANNA WALSH's writing has been published by Granta, Dalkey (Best European Fiction 2015), Tate, Salt (Best British Short Stories 2014) and others, with journalism at The Guardian, and The London Review of Books online. Her collection of short stories, "Fractals", is published by 3:AM Press, and "Hotel" will be published by Bloomsbury's Object Lessons in 2015.
She is fiction editor at 3:AM Magazine, and runs @readwomen2014.
She is also an illustrator.
CHRIS POWER's monthly column, A Brief Survey of the Short Story, appears in the Guardian. His fiction has been published in the Dublin Review and the Stinging Fly.
BOOKARTBOOKSHOP features the publications of some of Britain's best-known artist presses and publishers of artists' books, as well as books from abroad. The shop is a centre and a service for individual & institutional collectors, artists, publishers and the aesthetically and bibliographically curious. As well as being a place to bring books to sell and find books to buy, bookartbookshop also presents discussions, meetings, exhibitions, a poster wall, lectures, book launches, and educational activities all focusing on the relatively inexpensive multiple book work.
MONDAY 14th JULY 2014
A benefit event for the Horse Hospital Fundraising Campaign
Dave McKean is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work spans comics, illustration, animation, film-directing, installation, music and performance.
He is a long-standing collaborator of author Neil Gaiman on cult works such as Sandman, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Coraline, and has designed album covers, books and posters from everyone from Richard Dawkins to Tori Amos, from the Rolling Stones to John Cale.
He is also a prolific filmmaker and his work with moving images echoes his illustrations with a heady collage of 2D and 3D, live narration and dreamlike journeys through impossible landscapes of the imagination.
Iain Sinclair is "a british writer, documentarist, film maker, poet, flaneur, metropolitan prophet and urban shaman, keeper of lost cultures and futurologist".
His recent works center around psychogeographical explorations of London from a variety of different angles, from Hackney's history to the Olympic debacle, from the London Orbital to the resurrected Overground route. His work exposes the sediment of all the visible and less visible stories, histories and culture that have accumulated in the city through time, creating a continuity through the charmed act of storytelling.
Dave and Iain will meet at the Horse Hospital for one very special night of communal storytelling, exploring their friendship, their own individual journeys so far and those stories that have brought them to cross paths along the way.
Featuring moving image and live narration.
TUESDAY 27th MAY 2014
curated by Chiara Ambrosio and Flux Soup
Sound and vision shape our experience of the world. They lead us on multidimensional journeys, allowing us to travel far and wide while staying perfectly still.
Images are indelibly permeated by the sounds we hear when viewing them, while sound sparks images in our minds that are as vivid as the ones produced by light bouncing off surfaces.
Sound and vision are our tools not only to know the world, but also to imagine it anew, shape and mold it, conjure into existence our dreams and nightmares.
Tonight we explore the interaction between sound and vision, and look at this relationship from both sides of the spectrum.
pig7 present their live score to classic silent film "Menilmontant"
Written, Produced and Directed by Dimitri Korsanoff in 1924 and released in 1926, "Menilmontant" takes its name from the Paris district of the same name. In it Korsanoff used many pioneering film techniques such as hand held camera shots, close ups, double exposure and superimpositions.
The film has no intertitles and most of the action is shot on the streets and alleys of Ménilmontant. The film even today feels modern due to its daring editing style.
Ménilmontant is a remarkable film, bearing in mind the filmmaker had no real budget and considering the equipment that was available in 1924.
"A Postcard from Margate"
a short film by Chiara Ambrosio, with a live score by Bird Radio
A short visual exploration of a place in time, and of how live sound can extract, expand and re-compose the narrative threads of the moving image into new choreographies of meaning and memory.
A very special listening session in the dark of Matti Bye's album "Bethanien"
"It began in 2010. If you were anywhere near Oranienstraße, you may have heard it as it traveled through the hallways of a Kreuzberg artist residence once used as a hospital, as it passed you by and continued across the canal, along the piers. The sound of Matti Bye carefully pressing the keys of an old grand piano. Its singing tones taking flight for all of Kreuzberg to hear. Illuminated by the stars of a clear winter sky. Illuminated by the beams of a scorching summer sun. Kreuzberg wasn't always like this.
In 1847, Kreuzberg's Bethanien hospital opened its doors to the public. If you didn't know better, you may have gone there for medical treatment. If you didn't know better, that is. Most did. If the sight of the makeshift, outdoor operating tables didn't change your mind, maybe a perfectly rational fear of infection did. If you still, despite even the notion of contracting some new disease, chose to enter, being denied treatment was still a possible out. Not because you weren't in need, but rather to teach you a lesson. A lesson of patience. Bethanien hospital was not one of repute.
In an otherwise war-torn Berlin, Bethanien was somehow spared. This, however, did little to improve its reputation. By the 1970s, the hospital yard had been taken over by squatters. The hospital itself was no longer in use and, in time, it developed into an artist residence.
It ended in 2013. Finally, the sound of Matti Bye playing his grand piano was captured. Gently accompanied by layers of shimmering, soaring soundscapes. Produced and tastefully engineered in the Wiener Futurismo studio by Joel Danell. The result is soulful, haunting and melodic. Matti Bye's Bethanien takes you, the listener, on a lyrical journey into the world of dreams and illusions."
Formed in 2006 pig7 are an experimental, improvisational electronics duo formed by Stuart Fisher (aka Genghis Attenborough) and Kevin Poulton. (They take their name from a business in Berlin that specialises in selling and repairing English motor bikes. It sounded like a good idea at the time.)
They have been joined by other members including Professor Grant Fisher, Morris English, Adrian Crockford, Steptoe and Helen Bliss. Their music can be described as soundscape, dronescape, filmatic, ambient horror, spacerack, hambient, sconescrape, stonecrop with a hint of Cronenburg.
They have a passion for slowed down voices eg. Judy Garland and Brian Cant, sudden bursts of accidental feedback and found sounds. They often use famous artists' masterpieces and then rework them into their own strange world. Notable victims include Coldplay, ELO, Queen, Paul McCartney, James Last and Weather Report.
pig7 have performed soundtracks to a number of films including:
The Hunchbank of Notre Dame/ Night of the Living Dead/ The Red Shoes/ Theatre of Blood/ Ménilmontant/ Dummy/ Dune.
Matti Bye (Born 1966) is widely considered as one of Sweden's most important composers of film scores and an extraordinary performer with his own, incomparable style of improvisation on the piano. He is also widely recognized for having written a series of innovative scores for such early Swedish silent film classics as Phantom Carriage by Victor Sjöström, Häxan by Benjamin Christensen, and Gösta Berling Saga by Mauritz Stiller, now included on a 6 DVD box set released by Svensk Filmindustri, SF, as well as countless other silent films. Last year he wrote the score for Academy Award nominee Jan Troell's latest feature Everlasting Moments and Stig Björkmans "Scenes from a playhouse" – a documentary about Ingmar Bergman.
Matti Bye's work is also concerned with the tension, which exists between moving image, sound and music. He has recently engaged with collaborative projects involving an esthetic and performative language proper to the contemporary visual arts. Beyond the medium, his work takes the viewer on a unique and lyrical journey of the world of dreams and illusions through a multi-sensorial experience of storytelling.
Bird Radio is multi-instrumentalist Mikey Kirkpatrick who performs and records original songs using vocals, guitars, flutes, loops, effects and a suitcase bass drum. Described on different occasions as "A mix of old testament preacher and Captain Beefheart…", "a flute-toting, bass drum-beating sensation…" and "… future medieval, as if J.G. Ballard had written The Wicker Man", Bird Radio draws from primordial folk, blues and ritualistic sound to create powerful songs that combine the ancient art of storytelling with rousing and hypnotic beats and rhythms.
Chiara is a filmmaker working with animation, experimental film, documentary and sound to explore the ways in which we perceive, remember, articulate and preserve personal and collective histories and place through the filter of memory and the imagination.
Her work stems from an interest in the moving image as a tool through which to experiment with the boundaries of time and space, both conceptually and physically, re-enchanting the experience and perception of reality through an encounter between the poetics of the real and the erratic and subversive language of dream and the imagination.
Sound and music play a crucial role, guiding and displacing the eye, allowing the viewer to engage with the manifold layers of interpretation of the real, erasing and magnifying tones and nuances, building up to a lyrical portrait of place at once objective and profoundly subjective, almost subliminal.
TUESDAY 29th APRIL 2014
RAFT- A London Salon
curated by Chiara Ambrosio
"They tell us that art is a mirror – a mirror held up to nature. I think this is a false image… In a society like ours art is not a mirror but a hammer. It is a weapon in our hands to see and say what is right and good and beautiful, and hammer it out as the mould and pattern of men's actions." John Grierson
While the landscape of the city continues its entropic journey towards self-effacement and erasure, constantly re-imagining itself at the expense of any sense of continuity, community and collective history, London, one of the cultural capitals of the world, is suffering from a mass exodus of its artistic communities, pushed away by soaring rent prices that have transformed space into an unachievable luxury, eradicating history and leaving the city shipwrecked, empty and bereft. Ballard's dystopic visions loom terrifyingly near.
But amidst the change there are those who remain, whose insistent presence is an act of subversion in itself, whose clear and persistent gaze is a witness, whose work and ideas percolate into the soil of the city and keep its blood flowing.
RAFT is an evening that celebrates this kind of occupation, presenting some of the idiosyncratic, irreverent and quintessentially local forms of culture that shape London's identity; the attentive and visionary gazes that penetrate and actively question our times and safeguard the continuation of thought and experimentation into the new generations.
Featuring moving image, live performances and contributions by:
MISS ROBERTS and COS
introduced by
Chiara is preparing to launch RAFT as a regular publication that will act as an archive and space on the page for this kind of conversation and exchange within London, and tonight will be an opportunity to discuss, exchange thoughts and raise new questions about the role and responsibility of the artist and cultural provocateur in our times.
ANDREA LUKA ZIMMERMAN's work as a filmmaker sits at the intersection of documentary and fiction, and is interested in particular in how we record people; tell 'our' histories, restlessly questioning the power structures behind representational norms. A founding member of the film collective Vision Machine, she worked for over a decade with perpetrators and victims of state sanctioned violence, developing filmic strategies in order to establish the effects of political violence on the public imagination. This period also prompted early research for her film essay Prisoner of War (2015), which investigates US militarism and foreign policy through a character study of one of its most enduring rogue agents. She has just completed Taskafa: Stories of the Street, a film about resistance and co-existence. Voiced by John Berger, from his novel King, it is told through the lives of street dogs in Istanbul, and premiered at the Istanbul Film Festival in April 2013, and showed at London Film festival, Antalya, Tarpei, Oberhausen etc. She is currently in production with her new non-fiction feature Estate, a Reverie (2014), the last in a trilogy of works on the Haggerston estate, preceded by the photographic installation on the façade of Samuel House, i am here (2009-13); and publication Estate: Art, Politics and Social Housing in Britain (2010).
JOHN BENTLY is a South London based artist, performer and writer, who has been making art in book form since 1983. Under the imprint Liver & Lights, Bently has produced a staggering 51 volumes so far. Beginning anti -Thatcherite manifesto, the books have evolved into all manner of things including exhibitions, performances and community projects.
The thread connecting all of his work is his unwavering, almost documentary style of human observation.
DUNCAN REEKIE has been a malign influence on British Underground Cinema for over twenty years. He has produced a diverse body of work that explores a variety of styles, techniques and purpose including narrative drama, scratching and colouring celluloid, multiple superimpositions, video collage and lyrical visions. Reekie has developed a mongrel praxis that refuses the institutional separation between theory and practice. It is subjective and chaotic, it is enmeshed in a complex system of political contingencies : he is an agent in the narrative. He is perhaps most celebrated for his performance work which features projected images and scathing rhetoric which is often mistaken for irony. He is a founder member of the infamous Exploding Cinema Collective, a radical open access-screening group and he was the co-ordinator, producer and co-director of the international Underground feature film MALDOROR (2001) that has toured extensively throughout Europe and America. His highly acclaimed book 'Subversion: The Definitive History of Underground Cinema' was published by Wallflower Press in October 2007.
JULIUS BELTRAME is a photographer, filmmaker and a late night urban drifter.
MISS ROBERTS The mysterious and ethereal Miss Roberts along with her Rude Mechanicals is a whirling dervish of strange songs, sounds and looks. The much bandied about word 'unique' would, in this instance, be an accurate description of what they do. The 'rustics' in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' are disparagingly referred to as 'Rude Mechanicals'. A concept which really appeals to the band, reflecting their passion for outsider music and also a spontaneous and frivolous approach to their live performances.
Miss Roberts is an eccentric artist and visionary who, as well as singing with the Rude Mechanicals, writes poetry and short stories, performs her own one person plays and writes and illustrates beautiful hand made books.
BIRD RADIO Bird Radio is multi-instrumentalist Mikey Kirkpatrick who performs and records original songs using vocals, guitars, flutes, loops, effects and a suitcase bass drum. Described on different occasions as "A mix of old testament preacher and Captain Beefheart…", "a flute-toting, bass drum-beating sensation…" and "… future medieval, as if J.G. Ballard had written The Wicker Man", Bird Radio draws from primordial folk, blues and ritualistic sound to create powerful songs that combine the ancient art of storytelling with rousing and hypnotic beats and rhythms.
TUESDAY 29th APRIL 2014
doors open at 7, screening begins at 7.30pm prompt
SUNDAY 23rd MARCH 2014
BIRD RADIO presents: OH, HAPPY ENGLAND?
Composer and performer Bird Radio has been developing his song-cycle of Walter de la Mare poem settings for the past couple of years. In January he spent one month in residence at Aldeburgh Music (Snape Maltings, Suffolk) in the same room where Benjamin Britten composed Peter Grimes. Working intensively for 30 days, starting and finishing the day with a six-mile woodland cycle ride, one question resounded: Why?
Join Bird Radio in his madness or lucidity as he reveals his anger, fear and optimism for a happier England through the lens of Walter de la Mare's poetry, performs some of his recent song settings live for the first time and opens the conversation to you.
Special guests to be announced.
SUNDAY 23rd March 2014
doors open at 5, screening begins at 5.30pm prompt
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 on the door)
The Light & Shadow Salon invites you to a WINTER HARVEST, to celebrate all the acts of cultural resistance and entrepeneurship that inspire us, that challenge the changing landscapes around us and help shape and nurture the path ahead of us all.
At a time of great hardship and storms- both literal and metaphorical- it is of great importance that we all take responsibility for the environment in which we live and grow.
If we are suffocating, we need to find the air to breath.
If we are in bounds, we ought to create a release.
If we are silenced, we must stand up and speak.
A change will arise from the smallest, most humble acts of singular vision.
Simple, concerted interventions will slowly but surely change the tides.
We will be looking at work by artists near and far:
Bread & Puppet Theatre
John Zorn
Tom Chick
Nicholas McArthur
Bird Radio
James Hesford
Atlas Press
Patti Smith
Bird Radio
Chiara Ambrosio
and many more (mostly living!) TBC
This is a night to celebrate the strength, perseverance, freedom and vision that keep our paths entwined.
As Peter Schumann of Bread and Puppet Theatre would say:"That simple light may rise out of complicated darkness!"
FRIDAY 28th of February 2014
doors open at 7.30, screening begins at 8pm prompt
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 on the door)
The Light & Shadow Salon is thrilled to welcome Miss Roberts as its guest curator for October!
The night will explore the fertile dialogue between image and musis.
Featuring music by:
THE MAN FROM URANUS with MICK FRANGOU
ROSHI Featuring PARS RADIO
and films by:
PUNKVERT VJs
doors open at 7.30, screening begins at 8pm prompt
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
SUNDAY 29th SEPTEMBER 2013, 7.30PM
THE QUIET NORTH*: Video Art from PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS** Art Festival in Papa Westray, Orkney Curated by IVANOV + CHAN
* THE QUIET NORTH – the title of the album by Norwegian noise artist Lasse Marhaug
** PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS – the name of the island "Papay", "Gyro" and "Nights" can be translated as : The Full-Moon February Night of a Children-Eating Giantess on the Island of Secluded Monks, somewhere at the edge of the North Sea. Gyro also known as Gygr, Gryla, Grylur, Grøleks, or Skeklers in other Nordic countries' folklore.
The Light & Shadow Salon is thrilled to invite you to encounter Papay Gyro Nights Festival for a one-night-only, deeply special encounter in London!
The Night of Gyros is an ancient festival of the island Papa Westray (Papay) in Orkney, which was abandoned, about 100 years ago, when exhausted men of the island came back home from WW1.
Since 2011 The Night of Gyros is back in the form of video and sound art, experimental film and music, architecture and performance events – taking over fields, rocks, old farm buildings, workshops and ruins. The Festival on the island goes on for eight days. The weather in February is stormy and not many people can travel for the festival, but once arrived – unable to escape.
The Island is a special place where impossible assemblages are created by a blend of isolation, routine of the seasons, local folklore and stories brought by shipwrecked sailors, strange objects washed on the shore.
PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS' art programme is constructing an assemblage, a map, an opera.
Art works are related to the place, its rituals, traditions, history, textures and sounds – to the island as a whole; and also zooming into finest fragments, when stories told and a historical events are taking place – the grass is growing and we'd like to listen and to see it too.
PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS is a search for an ideal language to tell the story of the island.
After PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS programme is "farmed" on the small island (where only 70 inhabitants and brave participants and visitors can see it) it travels. Last year it visited Bergen, Reykjavik, Belgrade, Faroe Islands and Hong Kong.
In London we'll be presenting a video art selection from PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS 2013
Anders Weberg (SE)
Bjarni Gunnarsson & Cédric Dupire (FR)
Juha van Ingen (FI)
Linda Quinlan (IE)
Natalie Price-Hafslund (NO)
Rikke Benborg (DK)
Silje Linge Haaland (NO)
Valentina Ferrandes (GE)
Selection of works by the legendary pioneers of video art and founders of New York's KITCHEN curated by Kirstin Sheving, co-curator Sigrún Harðardóttir . 700IS HREINDYRALAND (IS)
LIVE PERFORMANCE / AUDIOVIASUALISATION by Ryo Ikeshiro (UK)
Construction in Zhuangzi is a "live audiovisualisation" of a modified Lorenz dynamical system, well-known for the "butterfly effect".
The same process produces both the sound and the moving image so what you see is what you hear or vice versa, without the one triggering the other as seen in most VJ performances and visualisations. Far from being a redundant doubling of data, research into auditory displays and perception show that synchronised audio and visuals are perceived as a combined audiovisual entity. In addition with the possibilities of cross-modal phenomena, they become more than the sum of its parts. This is also the basis of Chion's theory of synchresis. This also allows for more complex processes to be experienced than merely audio or visuals alone, making experimental art more accessible without diluting the content.
The work runs on a custom-made program which is like an instrument or a machine that is unpredictable and chaotic. A performance consists of an attempt at understanding and controlling its mechanisms through an improvisation involving the modifications of its parameters. The audiovisuals which are generated in real-time act as the interface to the near-autonomous algorithm, clarifying the complex processes of the Lorenz and human interaction. A machinic or post-human sensibility is evoked through an appropriately digital noisy/glitch representation of emergent phenomena.
Ryo Ikeshiro is a London-based electronic and acoustic musician working in the fields of audiovisual composition, improvisation, interactive installations, soundtracks and theory. He is currently studying for a PhD in studio composition at Goldsmiths College. Research interests include the use of dynamical systems and fractals in generative, emergent structures and nonstandard synthesis, punk/noise/glitch aesthetics and new forms of interaction and presentation of works.
He has presented work at: Noise vs Culture, Kent; Xenakis. La musique électroacoustique, Université Paris 8; PureGold Launch, Southbank Centre; Deleuze Philosophy Transdisciplinarity, London; Redsonic, London; Seeing Sound 2, Bath; Xenakis International Symposium 2011, London; CONTEMPORANEA 2011 Festival di Nuova Musica, Udine; ICMC10, New York; re:new 2010, Copenhagen. He is a member of ry-om and Genosong. As an events organiser, he runs a series entitled ABA. He is also a visiting tutor and runs workshops challenging preconceptions about music.
SUNDAY 29th September 2013
doors open at 7.30, screening begins at 8pm prompt
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
THURSDAY 25th JULY 2013, 7.30pm
THE LIGHT & SHADOW Salon travels to Papa Westray!
Th celebrate the end of the Time To Go film shoot, The Light & Shadow Salon presents a special night of film and live music to thank the island and its inhabitants for having welcomed us to their enchanted shores.
"The Madman and the Cathedral"- James Rogan
"A Walk Through Wooda" film-cycle- Chiara Ambrosio with a live score by Bird Radio
a live performance by Bird Radio!
THURSDAY 30th May 2013, 7.30pm
Film & Video work by Groop Index
curated by Guillaume Vallée
Groop Index
is a Montreal-based collective of filmmakers and visual artists. The group formed in 2011 in order to review, support, advise, and produce each other's projects. Our primary concern is to produce work with a sense of community.
Groop*Index is Irene Boleda, Igor Boudnikov, Vitalyi Bulychev, Olivier Creurer, Ralitsa Doncheva, Sonya Mladenova, Mandi Morgan, Sonya Stefan, Guillaume Vallée.
L'Écho des Îles – Sonya Stefan – 16mm – 11:15
Unfortunately it was Paradise – Ralitsa Doncheva – HD – 10:00
The Yellow Ghost – Guillaume Vallée – 16mm – 04:00
Analog Hellraiser #3 – Guillaume Vallée – VHS – 04:00
Untitled – Guillaume Vallée – 16mm – 01:10
Square Sequin – Sonya Stefan – 16mm/Vidéo – 06:00
No Somos Invencibles – Irene Boleda – Super8 – 07:00
And a live performance by London's very own Harmergeddon!!
THURSDAY 30th May 2013
doors open at 7.30, screening begins at 8pm prompt
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door, first come first serve)
THURSDAY 25th APRIL 2013, 7.30pm
Animated Experientia: A series of experimental animations
curated by Lilly Husbands
"Experimental animation has a long and rich history that is roughly coeval with the origins of cinema itself, first arising out of an avant-garde impulse to simultaneously break boundaries and fuse art forms, to blend high and low, and to infuse visual art with the moods and movements of music. Since the 1920s, artists have explored the seemingly endless potential inherent in this complex blend of visual art and cinema, and contemporary artists continue to produce extraordinary works of animated visual art, making use of both modern and traditional techniques.
There are many ways to define experimental animation; it comes in multifarious types and forms, but, to me, its most important characteristics are the non-normative experiences in which the spectators are invited to participate—where they are challenged to open themselves to works that subvert conventional viewing practices and suppress the normal perception of moving images. They always defy our expectations and ask us to search beyond our ken for a glimpse at something that eludes explanation, something that we cannot control but only feel and marvel at, something that (for lack of words) we call art.
From collage to stop motion to computer generated to direct (cameraless) animation, the artists presented in tonight's programme are all masters of their techniques. I have chosen this selection not only because I think each is brilliant in its own way, but equally because I think it is incredibly important to introduce people to and share this under-acknowledged art form." Lilly Husbands
Featuring work by
And a live set by the wonderful singer and cellist Laura Moody!
THURSDAY 25th APRIL 2013
doors open at 7.30, screening begins at 8pm prompt
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
THURSDAY 28th MARCH 2013, 7.30pm
Multi-Channel Narratives: Sound and Myth-making
Curated by Emmanuel Spinelli
The Golem of Hereford 8.1 diffusion
By Emmanuel Spinelli and Tom Mudd
The Golem of Hereford is a generative soundscape composition that explores the capture, construction, and boundaries of testimony, narrative, beliefs, and memory. The project began with the search for the remains of a small group of people who lived on Maylord Street (then called Jewry Lane…) in Hereford (England), between 1179 and 1290, until they all disappeared, many without trace.
Did they build a Golem? If so, can it be excavated?
In Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard, Mallarmé turns his poem into a map. Fragmented utterances become spacial coordinates and invite the reader to journey through the topography of the text. Following a similar principle, the disembodied voice of the Golem is constructed from a bank of more than 2000 fragments of text algorithmically reorganised in real-time, thus creating a map of quasi-infinite potential where the narrative constantly shifts from place to place, from subject to subject, from one point of reference to another.
Often, in the absence of archaeological evidence, one only finds a mythology. The Golem of Hereford, silent creature in the process of becoming a body without organs, talks to us through the voice of another and reinvents its own history with every performance.
Via interruptions of the schizo-narrative, each section of the myth is augmented by a series of field recordings from: Maylord Street – the Cathedral Church of St Mary the Virgin and St Ethelbert the King – the Chained Library – Mappa Mundi's Museum – Hereford's market – Princelet Street (London) – a soldier's funeral – the Golem's house – all around Hereford.
-Emmanuel Spinelli: Original concept, field recordings, interviews, composition.
-Tom Mudd: Visuals, design, programming.
Theatre (in four parts) Part 4: 'In the past before the past, the thinker'
In the past before the past, the fairytale
Two short films by Nathalie Tafelmacher Magnat
Porcelain Resonance Study 8:1 diffusion + visuals
By Tom Mudd
A live performance that is part of an ongoing collaboration with James Alaska and Tobias Stürmer focused on the sound of porcelain, and specifically the collection of objects created by the ceramicist Walther Stürmer. The set will revolve around recordings of a large, cracked porcelain disc and uses the frequency spectrum as raw material to synthesize harmonic material.
THURSDAY 28th MARCH 2013
doors open at 7.30, screening begins at 8pm prompt
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door, first come first serve)
THURSDAY 28th FEBRUARY- 7.30PM
Dear Friends of the Salon,
following an inspiring and thought-provoking Salon last month, in which we were all called upon to rekindle our own idiosyncratic thoughts, nurture our radical, independent and uncompromising visions and stand up to initiate change, I have the great pleasure to invite you all this month to a special screening of a fantastic film that, in both content and production, embodies all of these concerns.
"HOW TO RE-ESTABLISH A VODKA EMPIRE" charts the journey of film director Dan Edelstyn as he tracks down his long-lost Jewish Ukrainian heritage, and then attempts to re-launch his great grandfather's once glorious vodka empire.
The film is a whirlwind journey back in time to the life of the director's grandmother Maroussia Zorokovich – writer, dancer, painter and romantic – and follows her exciting and turbulent journey during the 1917 Russian Revolution, out of Ukraine, across Europe and into exile in Belfast.
But it is also a moving and comic account of a modern-day struggle to get a business started in the cutthroat world of the drinks industry. It is a meditation on loss and identity, and a celebration of family and life itself, cleverly disguised as a screwball business adventure.
For more information about the film and the production (a truly inspiring roller-coaster journey!), visit http://www.myvodkaempire.com/
The night will also feature two new short films, freshly baked by the same team, plus live music by Tobion.
THURSDAY 28th FEBRUARY 2013
doors open at 7.30, screening begins at 8pm prompt
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door, first come first serve)
Dear friends of the Salon,
a happy new 2013 to you all! I hope the crossing was fruitful, inspiring, and that it fired your minds into a frenzy of determination and resolution for the new year.
Here at the Light & Shadow Salon we've kept the embers glowing while we wandered off awhile to gather new ideas, new stories, discovering new ways of looking through our own very eyes.
This glorious, lucky 13 year begun for us with a strong desire to build, to commit ourselves to the communal task of nurturing the minds, quickening the bodies, sharpening the thoughts, fueling the conversations, with greater vision and even greater courage. We want to continue to provide a place for us all to share the art that we make, with great pride and often under very difficult circumstances, but that nevertheless keeps us afloat in dark times, and reminds us constantly of what our responsibilities are as artists, as citizens, as sentient human beings, no matter how hard the times may be.
We have many surprises in store for the months ahead, including a publication and a festival, and I am very excited to share this all with you as the year develops.
To begin with, for this month's Salon I would like to invite you all to bring something to share with us, whether a film or a poem, a thought or an observation, a drawing or a song, anything that reflects your feelings as we begin again, a resolution for the new year.
Here is an excerpt from a text written by composer John Zorn as a preface to his ARCANA books (the full text will be one of the offerings at this month's Salon) that might put you in the right mood:
"Our present culture is in chaos, riddled with corruption, greed and materialism. A rite of passage is necessary to break from this maelstrom, to gain contact and remain in accord with the ancient continuum of creativity that gives true meaning and order to the universe. Art is one form of such a discipline. It is a sacred trust, and to honour it one must endure hardship and make personal sacrifices. The Dark Ages is a time for coming together, and often Art and Music can function as a call to arms."
In this spirit I invite you to join us, and reignite the embers into full-fledged flames, more than ever we need this fire burning vigorous and strong in this long, dark winter we're in.
WEDNESDAY 30th JANUARY 2013
doors open at 7.30, screening begins at 8pm prompt
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
THURSDAY 25TH OCTOBER 2012 7pm
The Ginger Light, featuring poet Jeremy Reed
The Ginger Light is a unique collaboration between Jeremy Reed and sonic soundscaper Itchy Ear. Bored by the staid glow of light that poetry recital currently bathes in. Jeremy and Itchy have collaborated to bring some "Ginger Light" to the performance in an attempt to blur the boundaries that exist between spoken word, music, sound design and song.
Jeremy Reed, born on a chip of rock off the French Normandy coast has been for decades Britain's most dynamic, adventurous, controversial and futures poet. Called by the Independent 'British poetry's glam, spangly, shape-shifting answer to David Bowie', his poetry, fiction and performances of his work are singularly inimitable in their opposition to grey mainstream poetry. He has published over 40 books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, winning prestigious literary prizes like the Somerset Maugham Award, and was on his coming to live in London in the 1980s patronised by the artist Francis Bacon. His biggest fans are J.G. Ballard, Pete Doherty and Bjork who has called his work 'the most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world.'
The James Worse Public Address Method
Mr. Worse writes semi-automatic poetry.
He also performs with experimental musical improvisation outfit Hand of Stabs.
Daniela Cascella
Daniela Cascella is an Italian writer based in London. For over ten years her research has been focused on sound and listening across a range of publications and curated projects. Her most recent work explores Writing Sound in connection to landscape and memory, and fictional tropes in criticism.
Her new book En abîme: Listening, Reading, Writing. An Archival Fiction explores listening and reading as creative and critical activities driven by memory and return, reshaped into the present. It introduces an idea of aural landscape as a historically defined cultural experience and contributes to the emerging area of listening as artistic practice, adopting an expansive approach across poetry, visual art and literature.
Saskia Vogel
Vogel has worked as an art model, an editor for an adult entertainment news magazine, a reporter on all things fruit and vegetables, and all the other gigs one takes while writing. She is now the publicist for Granta magazine and is working on a memoir exploring sex and society.
Bird Radio
Bird Radio loops flutes, bones, a red kick drum suitcase and his own very un-ethereal vocals to create an intensely curious mash-up between electronic music and traditional folk tales.
"Bird Radio is future medieval, as if J.G. Ballard had written The Wicker Man".
Steve Chandra Savale, Asian Dub Foundation
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
A panorama of Italian animation curated by Paola Bristot & Andrea Martignoni
This month the Salon is honoured to introduce a wonderful collection of contemporary Italian animation, gathered and collected into a beautiful DVD by Paola Bristot and Andrea Martignoni of Ottomani Laboratori.
Come along to discover short work by some of the most established names in Italian animation, together with the work of up and coming young directors and illustrators.
The screening will be uninterrupted, a real feast for the eyes!
The DVD was released a few months ago, and this will be its first public screening in the UK.
The night will also feature a live cello recital by ground-breaking cellist Alfia Nakipbekova.
Wednesday 26th September 2012
Doors open at 7, screening begins promptly at 7.30
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
THURSDAY 28th JUNE 2012- DIY POP VIDEO
A show curated by maverick artist, poet and musician Sexton Ming.
Sexton will give a talk about how to use the D I Y Punk ethic in music video making: how to use what you have at hand, whether it be with a low budget or no budget at all.
"If you can play three chords you can be in a band" Mark Perry of ATV fame once said.
"If you can get your hands on a cheap, second-hand Camcorder you can make your own videos" says Sexton. And stick it to the Man at MTV.
Featuring work by amateurs and professionals who use such DIY techniques in creating, including
Shaney Pops
Joe Whitney
Lupin Crook
and many others.
With live performances by some of the bands/artists that appear in the videos, including
Miss Roberts of The Rude Mechanicals
Lupin Crook
Black Spot and The Hand of Stabs with special guest Homeless Pagan
"The aim of this show is to inform the next generation that anything is possible when it comes to creativity. Not to believe the lies that such things like X Factor or Big Brother feed you. That one can make something that is entertaining, informative and expressive without knowledge, skill and especially vast sums of money. Creativity should not be just for the elite. Its for everyone."
Sexton Ming is a British artist, poet and musician who was a founding member of The Meadway Poets and the Stuckists art group.
Thursday 28th June 2012
Doors open at 7, screening begins promptly at 7.30
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
THURSDAY 31st MAY 2012- EXPERIMENTAL WOMEN
This merry month of May I am very excited to present you with a double retrospective by two women who have been experimenting with the moving image for a very long time, in the most interesting and eclectic of ways:
Jo Ann Kaplan is an acclaimed prize-winning filmmaker whose work has been exhibited in galleries, cinemas, festivals and on television worldwide for the past 40 years. Her work is marked by an extraordinary diversity of forms which includes animation, dance film, fiction, and experimental film, as well as documentaries and arts programmes. Inspiration for her work comes from equally diverse sources: the imagery of Georges Bataille, Robert Burton's classic text on Melancholy, and the seminal films of Maya Deren. She has collaborated on film projects with writer Angela Carter, dancer Dana Caspersen of the Bill Forsythe Company, and with musicians including Alexander Balanescu, Keith Tippett, Kate and Mike Westbrook, Annabelle Pangborn, Thom Willems and Graham Hadfield.
Jo Wonder is a visual arts activist who uses work made from diverse materials, such as champagne wrappers or bacteria and poetry, to challenge established notions.
'There's no one way of looking at Jo Wonder's work. There's no one way of looking at anything! We only have to shut one eye and you get a different angle, turn our head quickly for another, so imagine (ha) what the brain can do through the lens of our perceptions, our values, memory, body and past. There can also be a backward telescopic journey into childhood, when our imaginations were quite erotic – as a part of our life force- at a time before we become erotic.' Jan Woolf
Jo Ann Kaplan and Jo Wonder will join us on the night to talk about their experience and answer whatever question their work might trigger in you, so I promise you a very special night indeed, I really hope you can all be there!
The evening will also feature a live music set by the extraordinary Miss Roberts of The Rude Mechanicals.
Thursday 31st May 2012
Doors open at 7, screening begins promptly at 7.30
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
Friday 13th APRIL 2012
SUBLIME- Late at Tate Britain
Drawing inspiration from Turner's work, and notions of the sublime in his paintings, we will present "SUBLIME", an evening of moving image, listening sessions, conversation and live music, exploring the Sublime from a variety of different perspectives.
This evening will include a rare screening of The Quay Brother's beautiful and haunting short film " In Absentia", and will feature a panel discussion with writer, curator and editor Gareth Evans and philosopher Iain Hamilton Grant.
featuring moving image work by
Chiara Ambrosio
Martin Earle
Ivanov & Chan
Daniel Ojari
Matteo Pizzarello
Quay brothers
James Rogan
and a listening session including work by
James Hesford
Mark Peter Wright
a panel discussion with the artists and
Gareth Evans
Iain Hamilton Grant
and live music recitals by
Bird Radio
Adam Donen
Alfia Nakipbekova
FRIDAY 13th APRIL 2012, 7- 9.30pm SHARP!!
FREE ENTRY, tickets will be available at the entrance to the Tate Britain Auditorium on a first-come first-served basis, so I suggest you get there early as it will be a truly special night!
SATURDAY 18th FEBRUARY 2012
The Light & Shadow Salon at Wooda Farm
The Light & Shadow Salon will present a selection of short films from past programmes in the spectacular surroundings of Wooda Farma in Nort Cornwall.
Including work by
with live music by
Saturday 18th February 2012, 7pm
Crackington Haven
North Cornwall
Monday 30th JANUARY 2012
The Stories of Rust- a multimedia performance presented by Herefordshire's Avocado Music Productions
The Stories of Rust will be presented live for the first time, including a performance and reading of the final chapter by the author.
Jeremy Creighton Herbert and Mikey Kirkpatrick created Avocado Music Productions in 2002 and have been composing together under the pseudonym A*M~P since. After releasing their third studio album they discovered a rusting threshing machine high up in the hills of Herefordshire. This machine became the compositional tool, instrument and central character for what was to become The Stories of Rust; a magical realist tale presented with sound, illustration, film and text through a monthly online blog. The project consists of eleven chapters written by Jeremy, eleven sound pieces composed by A*M~P with the exception of "Bare Brittle Bones" by sound artist Mark Peter Wright, as well as eleven original illustrations and a short film by Chiara Ambrosio. The project also includes performance contributions by violinist Haruko Motohashi, Soprano Nathalie Chalkley, Singer Lucy Rigby, Weston Under Penyard Bell Ringers and the Unicorn Singers of Llangattock.
MONDAY 30TH of JANUARY
doors open at 7pm, programme begins at 7.30 sharp
Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
In this tale of historical fiction Paul Peters wakes up one winter Sunday morning to find that past local heroes and villains from the nascent industrial revolution have merged with his own present day confusions. This nightmare seems to coincide with the extraordinary appearance of a rogue threshing machine in the hills of South Herefordshire England. Peters is privy to all the ups and downs, loves and battles of an honourable but struggling farming community that faces an agricultural upheaval the like of which has not been seen before. He comes to realise that this parable centres on his own family's inability to come to terms with a childhood tragedy. Will he begin to distinguish between the real and the imagined events? Will he grasp this opportunity to avert his crumbling life by reconciling the gaping rift between him and his father and thereby begin to overcome his self inflicted guilt?
The stories of Rust
Avocado Music Productions
12th DECEMBER: An Artesian Salon, curated by Gareth Evans
Monday 12th December 2011
Doors: 7pm; Commencement: 7.30pm
At The Horse Hospital, Bloomsbury, London
Tickets: £5 (available on the evening; limited availability)
An Artesian / Light and Shadow Salon Evening
Live Music, Films, Readings and Reflection on AIR in its various manifestations…
Join us for a unique evening of artists' films, live music and readings by contributors to the upcoming latest issue of Artesian, the journal of committed creativity in life and art. This issue – and the evening – offers personal, passionate, lyrical and luminous responses to the ceaselessly rewarding questions of the air and its meanings, from breath to song, storm to space, surveillance to sea-bed reflections, and much much more.
The issue will be launched in January 2012 but we could not miss the chance of an invitation from the wonderful Light and Shadow Salon to participate in their esteemed series. Please join us.
Films: wondrous short films by Britt Hatzius, Manu Luksch, Hannes Schupbach, Margaret Tait and Andrea Luka Zimmermann.
Performance: striking solo live art by Ira Brand and Mikhail Karikis.
Readings: award winning poets Astrid Alben, Jeremy Clarke and Stephen Watts.
Live Music: Mikey Kirkpatrick's Bird Radio will lift our spirits.
Available Now: Artesian 3: TIME
featuring original photography, artwork, poetry and prose from international artists, writers and thinkers, including: John Berger, Ry Cooder, Susan Derges, Garry Fabian Miller, Bill Morrison, Iain Sinclair, Jan Svankmajer and Tilda Swinton.
It is also available from the BFI Filmstore, ICA, London Review
Bookshop, Tate Modern and http://www.gotogetherpress.com/page3.htm
The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London, WC1
Nearest tube: Russell Square (venue is immediately behind station)
020 7833 3644; http://www.thehorsehospital.com
25th NOVEMBER: Listening Salon- curated by The School of Sound
curated by
The School of Sound
Listen: to make the effort to hear something; to hear with attention
Whether at a concert or the theatre, in a cinema, facing some sort of screen or out on the street, we have images to keep our hearing company. This, the second LISTENING! programme curated by the SOS, is an opportunity for people to listen, as a group, without pictures. To immerse yourselves in unfamiliar worlds and strange stories; to confront unexpected emotions, feelings, impressions; to share the unseen with those around you – all through sound.
Narrative, abstract, radio, sound art – LISTENING! extends from documentary to the surreal. With selections by Mark Peter Wright, Jeremy Creighton Herbert and Mikey Kirkpatrick, Emmanuel Spinelli, Wricke Wolfe, Werner Cee, Gen Doy, the Firesign Theatre, Hildegard Westerkamp and others. Introduced by Larry Sider.
Friday 25th of November 2011
doors open at 7pm, listening session begins at 7.30 sharp
Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
The School of Sound explores the creative use of sound in the arts and media. Since 1998, we have presented an international symposium and specialist workshops that investigate soundtracks and the relationship between sound, music and image. http://www.schoolofsound.co.uk
Thursday 27th OCTOBER: Neo-barbarism, neo-medievalism and the apocalypse- curated by Nicholas McArthur
This Salon will present work by visual artists whose concerns and practices involve aspects of ritual and self-created belief systems, in many cases drawing upon ancient practices to inspire new approaches to modern themes and materials.
Including moving image, live performance and readings, this Salon will be curated by multi-media visual artist Nicholas McArthur, whose practice is directly informed by the ideas explored tonight and who will be presenting the UK premiere of his new performance "A God-shaped Hole".
Featuring work and contributions by
NICHOLAS McARTHUR
Doors open at 7pm, screening begins promptly at 7.30pm
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
£5 entry on the door
Thursday 29th SEPTEMBER: Welcome back to the Salon- celebrating our 2nd birthday!
Dear Friends of the Salon,
Summer is over (whether it ever started at all is a decision I leave up to you all!) and we are getting ready for our return, creeping through the smell of burnt wood and the sound of falling leaves, somewhat autumnal if you ask me, but the seasons are indeed a mysterious working on these here British shores!
I hope you all had a wonderful break, and that you might also have had some time to stop, think and consider the changes happening swiftly around us in more than one way.
The Salon is coming back in full force, with an exciting line up of events that will see us well into next year, but first let me stop you for a moment and talk to you about the upcoming Light & Shadow Salon on Thursday 29th September.
This Salon will mark somewhat of a turning point- it will be at once an opportunity to celebrate our 2nd birthday and a chance to reflect on why the Salon came into being in the first place and what it needs to grow into in order to offer a viable, outspoken and dynamic alternative to the difficult and lonely times we are all experiencing, for better or worse.
I am inviting you all, Friends of the Salon, to contribute something to the night, be it a thought, a piece of work, a film, a song or whatever else might encapsulate your views/thoughts/sentiments about the world you believe in and dream of, and might like to help build given the space and time- or indeed are already involved in building daily.
It's a call to action for all of us to step up and take full responsibility for the things we disagree with and make a common step towards a more engaged and thoughtful way of existing that thrives on what we all have to offer and share. I am hoping that we might spend an evening carefully listening to one another so that we can feel stronger and less alone in our dreams and journeys.
The night will also include a selection of films and contributions from some of the artists that have graced the Salon so far, including, but not limited to:
JAMES ROGAN/ JAMES HESFORD/ HERMANN/ BIRD RADIO/ OLIVIA HUMPHREYS/ JAMIE QUANTRILL/ YUI HAMAGASHIRA/ HELENA HUNTER/ MARK PETER WRIGHT/ PHIL PHILMAR/ GARETH EVANS/ MATTEO PIZZARELLO/ A.C. FUME and many, many more!
Bear in mind that your presence on the night would be in itself a way to contribute to the Salon and it would mean a great deal to us if you could all try and be there, as I believe we have an opportunity to change things in quite a significant way if we realise how strong we all are together.
Doors open at 7pm, screening begins promptly at 7.30pm
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
Friday 10th June 2011
The Light & Shadow Salon
featuring moving image work by
plus live music by
and spoken word by
10th June 2011,
Doors open at 7, screening begins promptly at 7.30
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
Tuesday 26th April
The Light & Shadow Salon
curated by Jamie Quantrill and Ron Delves
featuring writing by
Michael McCanne
and moving image work by
Jamie Quantrill
Ron Delves
with live performance by
Jon Clayton
with spoken word by
Ron Delves
April 2011,
Doors open at 7, screening begins promptly at 7.30
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
* Thursday 31st March
Curated by Tereza Stehlikova
The idea behind this salon is to approach moving image from the perspective of its physical attributes, literally through exploring the "language of matter". Based on Jan Svankmajer's idea of physical objects being accumulators of memories through their contact with the world, I have invited a number of artists from different disciplines to show some of the particular ways in which they draw stories from matter, be it through the power of language, narrative, sound, touch, movement, or various intriguing combinations of these.
Tereza Stehlíková is currently involved in a PhD research at the Royal College of Art. Her research is focused on capturing and communicating embodied memory through touch while using the expressive vocabulary of moving image. Specifically, she focuses on how tactility might connect filmmaker and viewer, memory and moving image. http://www.terezast.com
Deborah Levy
Deborah Levy is a writer who works across a number of media: fiction, performance, visual culture. After graduating from Dartington College of Arts, Levy wrote a number of plays acclaimed for their "intellectual rigour and visual imagination" (Marina Warner).
Novels include Beautiful Mutants, The Unloved, Swallowing Geography (Vintage) Billy and Girl (Bloomsbury). Poetry includes An Amorous Discourse In The Suburbs of Hell (Vintage). Short stories include Ophelia and The Great Idea (Vintage) and Pillow Talk in Europe and Other Places (Dalkey Archive Press). http://www.deborahlevy.co.uk/
Stephen Cornford is a sculptor working with music, sound and noise. His interests lie in the relationship between the physical and spatial attributes of sounding objects, musical instruments and audio technologies and their acoustic properties or timbral characteristics. He borrows strategies from bricolage, process music, kinetic sculpture and the extended technique of free improvisation. http://www.scrawn.co.uk/
Paprikaland – puppet show
Akhila Krishnan – filmmaker, live music performance
Ryan Edquist is an artist, educator, and filmmaker is an exploration of fundamental experiences, the moments before, during, and after something transforms into the comprehensible. His seesaw is an interactive kinetic art object conceived in response to questions of viewership and play that emerged during my time teaching animation to primary school students.
Adam Graddon, an artist working with a wide range of materials creating installations which question the familiar. Shadow Light and Ceramics is a sequence of works exploring the idea
of utilitarian objects and their hidden stories.
Rosalyn Driscoll is an artist who explores the languages of the body and the senses, focusing on the dynamic relationship between touch and sight. Through her fascination with perception she engages with neuroscientists, engineers, psychologists, philosophers, educators, art historians, artists, designers and people involved with disabilities. http://www.rosalyndriscoll.com/
Thursday 31st March 2011
doors open at 7pm, programme begins at 7.30 sharp
Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
* Wednesday 16th February– Drawing and the moving image (curated in association with Veselina Dashinova)
Come join us as we explore the world of lines, movement, empty space and tension: watch shapes appear, disappear, life transform, morph and escape from the frame!
Featuring moving image work by
with live performance by ROBERT BIDDER
and spoken words by A.C. FUME
* Thursday 27th January– Music and the moving image: from music videos to experimental visual representation
Featuring moving image work by
* Thursday 25th of November 2010, 7pm: A Listening Salon
by The School of Sound
Listen: to make the effort to hear something; to hear with attention
It is rare to listen as a group. Whether at a concert or the theatre, in a cinema, facing some sort of screen or out on the street, we have images to keep our hearing company.
This is an opportunity for an audience to listen, together, without pictures. To immerse themselves in unfamiliar worlds and strange stories; to confront unexpected emotions, feelings, impressions; to share the unseen with those around you – all through sound.
Narrative, abstract, radio, sound art – LISTENING extends from documentary to the surreal focusing particularly on the voice.
Selections by Scanner, Piers Plowright, Alan Hall, Trevor Wishart, John Wynne, Antonin Artaud, Stan Freberg, the Firesign Theater, Werner Cee, Glenn Gould and others.
With Larry Sider, Mark Peter Wright and Annabelle Pangborn in discussion.
Thursday 25th of November 2010,
doors open at 7pm, listening session begins at 7.30 sharp
Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
The School of Sound explores the creative use of sound in the arts and media. Since 1998, we have presented an international symposium and specialist workshops that investigate soundtracks and the relationship between sound, music and image. http://www.schoolofsound.co.uk
* Thursday 28th of October 2010, 7pm: A Halloween Salon
It's the Salon's first birthday!
Come celebrate with us, and prepare for Halloween, with an array of fantastic short films ranging from the surreal to the absurd and phantasmagorical, with live music by drum and flute duo Zashiki Warashi and spoken word by A.C.Fume.
Fancy dress strongly welcome!
Featuring moving image work by
live music by ZASHIKI WARASHI
spoken word by A.C.FUME
Thursday 28th of October 2010,
doors open at 7pm, screening begins at 7.30 sharp
Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
* Wednesday 29th September 2010, 7pm: Documentary, myth-making & the moving image- Part 2
Come join into yet more talk about what is real, and what is not, on whether you can tell a real story from an imaginary one, whether they differ in the first place, and how to create myths through narrative, storytelling and the moving image.
Featuring moving image work by
a live performance by performance poet Phil Philmar
live music by OO IS AN INSTRUMENT
and our resident poet A.C. Fume
Thursday 26th August 2010
This month we will be marveling at the magic and illusion within the moving image in all its forms, from film, to toy theatre, to painting.
Let yourself be charmed by the beauty of our short films, including work by early cinema revival maestro Guy Maddin himself, the handmade special effects of Robert Poulter's New Model Theatre, and follow Kathryn Barush as she talks about William Blake's pioneering experiments at setting the world into motion…
Featuring moving image work by
plus a special performance of "MR TURNER GETS STEAMED UP"
a NEW MODEL THEATRE SHOW, written, designed & performed by ROBERT POULTER
and KATHRYN BARUSH in conversation on WILLIAM BLAKE AND OSCILLATING SNAILS
Live music by
and spoken word by
Doors open at 7, screening begins promptly at 7.30
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
Wednesday 16th June 2010
of the Salon's journey so far
Come and celebrate the birth of the Salon, reminisce on some of the films we've watched and some of the thoughts we've shared so far, meet friends old and new alike and toast our first summer together!
featuring moving image work by
Chiara Ambrosio
Rudolf Buitendach
Oliver Cheetham
Veselina Dashinova
Martin Earle
James Rogan
Markus Schroder
Cristoph Steger
plus live music by
Bird Radio
and spoken word by
A.C. Fume
Doors open at 7, screening begins promptly at 7.30
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 1JD
(£5 entry on the door)
Thursday 22nd April 2010
ANIMATION EAST & WEST: a panorama of contemporary animation
This Salon is going to explore the relationship between eastern and western animation.
Through a selection of groundbreaking contemporary short animations, we will consider the influence that eastern european and russian animation has had on the rest of the west, both technically and conceptually and investigate the relationship between animation and literature and the ancient tradition of animating matter, from the old Golem myths, to alchemy, puppetry, surrealism and animation.
featuring moving image work by
Noro Držiak
Martin Earle
Bali Engel
Joseph Feltus
Eric Rosenlund
Cristoph Steger
Vaclav Svankmajer
Agnieszka Woznicka
Michal Zabka
Friday, 19th of March 2010
This Salon will present a series of films and audio pieces that will explore notions of documentary as myth-making, and how to perpetrate collective and personal memories and experiences through film.
featuring moving image work by
DAN EDELSTYN and HILARY POWELL
and a special presentation of
"Lands and genotypes mov II: Anseriformes Twins"
Thursday, 18th February 2010
This Salon will explore the relationship between the moving image and other disciplines within the Visual Arts, focusing on the way in which film is used by artists who work predominantly in a field other than film, and the way in which narrative is explored within the parameters of the moving image vs 2D representation and live art.
We will be looking at filmmakers who have an unorthodox approach to narrative and filmmaking as a language, who have a background in the fine arts and who use this sensibility/training to carve out an idiosyncratic approach to film.
Also, artists from other visual art disciplines that experiment with film, video and animation.
programme includes moving image work by
and live music by
Tuesday, 8th December 2009
featuring moving image work by
compositions and soundscapes by
and the participation of writer and editor
plus live music from
GEORGES KAPLAN presents…
Tuesday, 17th November 2009
featuring moving image work by
and the participation of sound artists
LARRY SIDER and MARK PETER WRIGHT
Thursday, 22nd October 2009


text:
Chocolate orange biscotti
Chocolate Orange Biscotti
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, room temp
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
zest of one orange
juice of 1/2 an orange
1 cup mini chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, mix flour and baking powder. Set aside. Cream together sugar, butter, salt, orange zest & orange juice. Add eggs, one at a time. Add dry ingredients until just incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips. Form dough into a 12 inch log on the baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit for 30 minutes. Using a serrated knife, cut log on the diagonal into 1/2 inch pieces. Place cut side down on the baking sheet. Bake until pale golden, about 15 minutes.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Tag Archives: Walking Dead
WWW Wednesday (October 23)
What is keeping my eyes sharp and my brain exercised and a look at my new favorite podcast! All in this week's WWW Wednesday! W…W…W…Wednesdays is a weekly reading prompt hosted by MizB at Should be Reading. TO PLAY ALONG, JUST … Continue reading


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Diamonds used to be a girl's best friend…until we combined diamonds with mind-blowing vibrations! This dual-action rotating vibe features three rows of spinning metallic pleasure beads and a powerful, vibrating beaver clit stimulator.
The soft, phthalate-free shaft is smooth and sleek, while beautiful diamond crystals playfully adorn the base of the shaft.
Reversible Rotation
Phthalate Free


text:
Click me to go home
SOURCE: Multiple - Internet
Reports have been circulating that BLM announced at the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board meeting in Phoenix that they were canceling this summer's roundups.
It isn't exactly true.
What BLM explained it was doing was canceling two burro roundups, one for technical reasons and the other because the agency was short on funds and the gather wasn't a high priority.
What BLM also said was that if the Senate didn't keep $12 million in appropriations for BLM in its version of the federal budget bill, that the Bureau wouldn't be able to conduct any roundups except for emergencies.
This was simply an "if - then" kind of statement, most likely intended to remind Congress that it can't work without money.


text:
In an ever-advancing march toward becoming the most open and accessible console in the UNIVERSE, we continue to hangout LIVE on the Internet (of all places). So far we haven't been epically trolled — aaaaaaand I'll probably regret typing this.
Check out the OUYA DEV SUPPORT OFFICE HOURS from today:
We hangout live from our Google+ page every Monday at 11:30 a.m. PST!
Come chill, ask OUYA questions, talk about games and jelly beans and have fun with us.
(4:10) — Derp w/ Doherty (A weekly DEV tip from Alex Doherty)
(15:15) — Sales actually work… :P
(19:00) — What games are you playing this week?
(28:30) — Social, betas and platform roadmap questions
(37:45) — More questions about social
(50:57) — What's the optimal hardware/software to test your game if you don't have an OUYA?
(51:48) — Are you going to make a new OUYA like the Tegra K-1?
(52:36) — What are you playing Tim?
(55:05) — Flappy talk
(60:10) — Should I buy an OUYA right now?


text:
Hello. I just wanted to let everyone know that I submitted my petition tonight. I have always been interested in the Freemason fraternity and I am excited to here back…. I know that patience is a virtue, so I will do my best.
By the way, I think this particular forum is the best thing since sliced bread.


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My Little Lady's First Summer Class Ever!6:33:00 AM
If you wonder why I was away for so long, this is the reason:
Bella had her first Reading Summer Class ever! I know. I know. I know you'll say, "What were you thinking? She is just two!" Oh well. Yes, she is just two but wait till you read what she can already do in school.
Since Bella already knows her alphabet and her phonics, we decided to enroll her in a reading summer class. Her classmates ranged from age 4-6 and she was the youngest. The group of around 18 kids was divided into two groups, one for those who don't know the phonics yet and the other group for those who have memorized the phonics. I know you know which group Bella landed on.
But she didn't like to stay with the group she belonged where her classmates were 5-6 years old because she enjoyed the singing and dancing in the other room. Since the school was badly damaged due to super typhoon Yolanda, they are still using a generator and only one room has electric fans and projector. To make the story short, the fun is there and so Bella is there.
In school, she tried to write.
But in truth, this is what she was doing.LOL. She is lazy when it comes to writing.
She gives the sounds of each letter and started learning to read. Bravo!
Sometimes she even tells her classmates what to do. There was one pupil who is shy and doesn't participate in their dancing. Her mother kept on telling her to stand. Bella saw her. She approached the girl who was like 4 years old and said, "C'mon. Stand up and clap your hands!" And the girl did. I can see that this little lady of mine is going to grow up as a leader (like me! *wink).
What she loves most is dancing and singing.
And I guess she loves snack time too!
There are even times that she acts as a teacher. Her teacher even told her: "Bella, can you help me teach your classmates?" Of course, she was just joking but Bella said Yes and went to the front at once. She'd bring a long rolled cartolina with her. She will say "Good morning everybody!" then points to the letters on the board and ask "What letter is this? What is the sound? Very good!" I always end up LOLing because of what my little girl is doing. She would even go to the other room and then lets her classmates read the words on the board. The teacher will say, "Okay Bella let them read. I'll just take a rest." LOL!
I am proud of Bella. Her Daddy and I are very happy with how she performed in school despite her young age. We saw that Bella was indeed ready for school because she had been telling us that she wants to go to school even when she was just one. Because we saw how interested she is, we decided to let her try schooling. And because of her good performance, we will let her take Nursery1.
By now, Bella can read but she would still start giving the letter sounds before figuring out the words. She can also write some letters which amazed me because she never did her writing assignments. I don't force her into doing it because she is still young anyway but I am happy that she is actually learning everything despite being young!
We are proud parents and we are sure Bella has a long way to go!
12 (mga) komento
awww so cute, xxxxxReplyDelete
i know these feeling hehe , because i have a son who is 3 years old and having his first school year and it was very fun.. the feeling of excitement is their. :)ReplyDelete
That's a bright lil' girl you have there... It's never too early to start learning and by the pictures it seems that's Bella is having a great time.ReplyDelete
Funny how she chose the room where the fun is but I'm sure, she still did learn a lot here.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJune 2, 2014 at 10:49 PM
Your little girl is so cute and I'm happy for her learning in such a young age. She is a smart girl for learning alphabet and phonics. You're a great mom. :)ReplyDelete
It must be a bittersweet moment when your kids start school! Sounds like she's doing really well and you'll have plenty more proud moments to share here!ReplyDelete
It's great that as early as now she is being exposed to a lot of learning experiences! :)ReplyDelete
awwww! so cute! i wonder if im like that when i was a kid! hahaha anyway, shes such a darling and good to hear that she's doinng great :)ReplyDelete
aww, they all looks so cute!ReplyDelete
Such an adorable post! So good that you enrolled her to this summer school so young :) she'll definitely have a head start on the other pupils when she goes to primary schoolReplyDelete
Awww so cute.. God bless her alwaysReplyDelete
I love kids much. It is a happy moment if you could see kid like to go school. Hope she love her classes. =DReplyDelete


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My big question was, if you were in charge of a country where people were so desperate to leave that 5,000 people each day would rather abandon their homes, the places they grew up, the food and the customs and the music and their friends and their family and their places of worship and the places where family members are buried -- they would rather leave all that, and put themselves in the hands of complete strangers to guide them into completely foreign lands and risk being taken advantage of, kidnapped, raped, or left to suffocate in a truck, or who knows what else -- 5,000 people each day would rather risk all of that than to stay in your country, wouldn't you start to think that maybe something's wrong with the way you're running your country?
Mm, apparently not if you're the guy in charge of Syria.
Syrians in a refugee tent in Nizip, Turkey in 2013. Apparently, Bashar Al-Assaad would rather blow up his country than have these people stay in it. Just look at those threatening children.
(Photo from Reuters, sourced from PRI)
I don't want to give you a history of all that's happened in Syria. Lots of other sources out there have done a much better job of that than I could (see Sources at the end of this entry). Instead, I'm going to give you some facts here & there that you might not know (I didn't know these things). Because everybody's saying this is the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.
In reading about the refugee situation, I discovered I got kind of tone deaf to all the numbers being tossed around. They're all so big, it doesn't take long before they start to get meaningless. I had to find reference points for those numbers so I could get a picture of just how big they are. So I'll give you some of those numbers along with the reference points, too.
I know this map is hard to read, and it's outdated from 2012, but my point is the arrows. They're pointing to all countries on all sides of Syria. Meaning that people are taking any and every route possible to get out of the country.
(Map from somewhere on News Aggregator)
The Numbers
- Syria is about the size of Arizona.
- Arizona's total population is about 6.7 million people.
- Syria's total population -- difficult to estimate given how many people are leaving -- is somewhere around 22 million people.
- 22 million people is everybody who lives in Florida plus everybody who lives in Iowa.
- Since 2011 when the civil war started, an estimated 2 to 3 million people have left Syria. That's somewhere between all of Houston leaving the country, or all of Chicago leaving the country.
- Millions more people have not left Syria but have been displaced from their homes. This is a nice way of saying their houses got bombed or destroyed, or their farmland was burned, or there's no longer any usable water, or for some other drastic reason they had to leave home and find someplace else to live.
- That number is estimated to be anywhere from 4 million to 11 million people.
- 4 million people is all of Los Angeles plus more. 11 million people is all of New York City plus all of Chicago. Looking for someplace else to live, all at once.
- Imagine everyone in all the five boroughs of New York leaving their homes and looking for someplace else to live. Because all five boroughs have been bombed or destroyed or have otherwise become unlivable. Oh, plus all of Chicago too.
- Another way to think of that 11 million is that it equals half of the entire country's population.
One of the refugee camps specifically for those who have left Syria. This one is in Za'atari, Jordan, as of 2013. The camp is 30,000 square meters and can hold up to 113,000 people. Over 600,000 refugees from Syria have come to Jordan.
(Photo from the US State Department, sourced from Wikipedia)
What's So Terrible?
- For that many people to leave, things must be pretty bad.
- The dude who runs Syria, Bashar Al-Assad, is pissed off and he is bombing his own people.
Looks like your basic nerd, doesn't he, with the sleeves of his jacket too long and everything. He was trained to be an ophthalmologist. But apparently this is what a desperate villainous dictator looks like.
(Photo from Bashar Al-Assad's personal website)
- He rules his country in one of those pseudo-democracies that are really dictatorships that also have a religious component. Since he's in charge, his religion is the only acceptable one to practice, and he denies various rights to or persecutes people who practice religions other than his.
- His religion is a small branch of Islam (Alawite). Other Islamic branches which have more people, both in the world and in his country, his government has repressed in some way.
- For example, political parties that are allied with one of the unacceptable Islamic religions or some other religion are illegal, and if you're found doing political things associated with those illegal parties, you could be jailed or worse. People have been beaten, kidnapped, disappeared, etc.
- So in 2011, a bunch of people attempted their own Arab Spring and rebelled against his government.
- His father used to be in charge of Syria, and when his father faced an uprising from another Islamic group, he dealt with that by destroying entire neighborhoods where that group was centered. I mean, he leveled everything like a tornado.
This is Bashar's dad, Hafez. How many people must suffer because of Bashar's daddy issues?
(Photo from Bashar Al-Assad's personal website)
- So Bashar tried to do the same thing. He got his army to kill or kidnap or "disappear" the people involved in that revolutionary effort. But when he tried his dad's technique, it didn't work. His attempt at repression backfired. It only made the rebels fight back harder. And then so did he.
- He's bombed his own cities, he's burned people's farms, he's had people kidnapped or murdered, his army has raped women and killed children, and then of course you remember the sarin gas incidents when he gassed his own people.
- He got rid of the sarin after the international community made all kinds of threats, but reports say he's now using chlorine and ammonia. Plus, he's recently gotten funding from Russia so he's dropping even more bombs -- including barrels full of ammunition dropped from helicopters -- onto places that may or may not house rebel forces. So he's killing or injuring lots of civilians in the process.
- Meanwhile, ISIS has seen this chaos and destruction as a prime opportunity for them. So they've moved into Syria and they're conducting their brutal recruitment tactics with their lovely beheadings and so on, forcing those people whose heads they have not cut off to join them.
- Hospitals have been destroyed, water lines have been blown up so there's not much clean water, in some towns there aren't enough people to bury the dead, and as for food, even before the war people were having to smuggle things in through underground tunnels and now those tunnels have been blown up in places so it's very hard to get decent food, or for anyone to deliver supplies to them.
Syrian residents in a refugee camp within Damascus waiting for food to be distributed. These are people who have left their home somewhere in Syria and come to this camp for the displaced in Damascus. The food aid being given out is not from their own government but from the UN and other relief agencies.
(Photo from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency / Getty, sourced from US News)
- There have been attempts at a peace agreement, but the rebels don't believe that Bashar will keep any agreement he makes, so nothing sticks.
- With no end of the destruction in sight, more and more people are saying, Time to GTFO.
The Initiating Event
- What triggered all of this? What was the event that set all this in motion?
- Some teenagers painted revolutionary slogans on a school wall.
- The teenagers were arrested and beaten and tortured. Always the appropriate response to graffiti.
- Demonstrators protested.
- Government security forces shot at the protestors and killed several.
- That only led to more demonstrations, and ultimately thousands of people filled the streets demanding Bashar's resignation.
- But of course Bashar would not give up his power. Apparently he would rather destroy his entire country than give up his power.
- All this from some words that some teenagers painted on a wall.
- What did they write? "The people want to topple the regime" and "It's your turn, doctor."
This graffiti, painted in 2011 during the initial uprisings, says "Down with Bashar."
(Photo from jan Sefti on Flickr, sourced from Wikimedia)
Syrian children in a refugee camp in Za'atari, Jordan
(Photo by Jeff J Mitchell / Getty)
This page lists all the organizations (primarily US) that are providing some form of aid or support to Syrian citizens or refugees.
Summaries of the Conflict
BBCNews, Syria: The story of the conflict, March 12, 2015
BBCNews, Syria's war
The Washington Post, 9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask, August 29, 2013
The Numbers
CIA World Factbook, Syria
World Population Review, Syria Population 2015
CNN, War has forced half of Syrians from their homes. Here's where they've gone, September 11, 2015
The Situation
The New York Times, For Those Who Remain in Syria, Daily Life is a Nightmare, September 15, 2015
The Economist, Syria's Humanitarian Crisis, June 8, 2015
Newsweek, Syrian Refugees: All You Need to Know, September 17, 2015
The New York Review of Books, Syria's Refugees: The Catastrophe, October 10, 2013
The Spark
The New York Times, A Faceless Teenage Refugee Who Helped Ignite Syria's War, Februrary 8, 2013
CNN, Daraa: The spark that lit the Syrian flame, March 1, 2012
Open Doors, Graffiti on a Wall Sparked Syrian Conflict, March 9, 2015