BIG SPECTACLES CALL FOR BIG DREAMS, AND OFTEN THEY DEMAND BIG RISKS TOO; THIS AS ARTISTS WE INSTINCTIVELY KNOW. IT’S CLEAR THAT BIG DREAMS WERE AT THE HEART OF THE COLONY, THE FIRST WORK FROM FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND’S NEWLY ESTABLISHED CENTRE FOR AUSTRALASIAN THEATRE.
An ambitious concoction of dance, live sound, film and spoken word, The Colony presents the last days of a group of lepers shipped to a nameless tropical island on the periphery of mainstream society. The text, by Sydney-based writer Graham Henderson, explores humanity’s big-ticket items—love, death and the influence on our lives of the natural world.
In the beginning things look promising. Patterns radiating on the slick wet stage suggest the comforting constancy of the tide. In the lighting design is all the sultriness of the tropics, shot through with overripe yellows and reds. A cast of gloriously dishevelled figures melt through their final days, led shambolically by a man called Hamlet, a chronic journal writer. He is cared for by the other inhabitants, including a minstrel, a ghost and a woman named Christmas, until the day he finds himself “in that baroque room at the end of time.”
The performers are clad in exquisite rags created by Australian fashion legend Linda Jackson. The costumes seem to have been made by the earth and the sea, and something more intangible, placing us in a sort of anytime. The colonised folk shelter together in a structure of ghost net and marine debris (by Aurukun artists Mavis Ngallametta and Craig Koomeeta, with Guy and Gina Allain), evoking the impermanence of the inhabitants’ make-do world; their disturbing temporality.
Visually it is all quite stunning, yet when the performers speak and the action unfolds there is a disconnect between characters and dialogue and each other. No one seems to quite know what to do with themselves, or where they are going. There is a fair amount of moping and flinging about of bandages and from time to time someone dies. The character of Irina, a ghost, appears at times to be haunting a different show. More Elvira than White Lady, she delivers soundscape pitch perfect to the north, featuring both curlew cries and gecko chitchat, but it remains unclear what she means to Hamlet.
In a random dance segue (by choreographer Catherine Hassall), a kind of spaced-out, hippy groove sesh, everyone ends up on the floor. Even the ghost gets down with it, and it is a relief to learn that the characters have a sense of humour. Finally, albeit briefly, the audience has been let into the work. This is a show laden with meaningfullness; it’s just difficult to figure out which particular meaning to latch onto. The many ideas swim, wave and drown, each of them unresolved.
It is the character of Christmas who perhaps gives us the best entry point, referring to individual existence as “our small eternity.” Here we are reminded of the contradictory elements that make up our existence—things like beauty, grief and wonder, and how our slow crawl towards the inevitable may be perceived as simply the colouring-in of time.
The signs were all pointing to something big, something breathtaking even, but somehow the parts didn’t add up to the whole. Yet I hope the makers of The Colony continue on their journey; big dreams are wonderful things and only by testing them out in reality may we truly see what is possible.
Centre for Australasian Theatre, The Colony, writer Graham Henderson, director Guillame ‘Willem’ Brugman, ART Ensemble: Warren Clements, Piers Freeman, Srianjali Gunasena, Catherine Hassall, Sue Hayes, Jeremiah Johnson, Miyako Masaki, Kara Ross, costumes Linda Jackson, sound Jeremiah Johnson, Nigel Pegrum, scenography Guy & Gina Allain with Mavis Ngallametta and Craig Koomeeta, film Savannah Productions; JUTE Theatre, Centre of Contemporary Arts, Cairns, Nov 16-23
This article originally appeared as part of RealTime’s online e-dition Jan 30, 2013
YOU HAVE ARRIVED HERE BECAUSE YOU USED GOOGLE TO SEARCH FOR “HYPNAGOGIC” AND “HAUNTOLOGICAL.” I WRITE THIS BECAUSE I AM A MEME WITHIN THE FILM BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO. I’VE HACKED THE FILM TO TRACE HOW ITS MODISH DIRECTION AND PRODUCTION IS BORN OF VOGUISH TERMS LIKE “HYPNAGOGIC” AND “HAUNTOLOGICAL” (HEREIN CONFLATED AS HYPNO-HAUNTO DESPITE THEIR DIFFERING ORIGINATIONS).
What is this film about? If one accepts its hypno-haunto inclination, it’s a dual text. One, a dream-narrative about Peter, a very British sound editor from the mid-70s who ends up producing sound effects for a very Italian mixer, Santini, tracking and mixing an unseen, film The Equestrian Complex, in the eponymous Italian post-production studio. The other, an audiophiliac celebration of the components, procedures and techniques for recording sound effects back then, with an ancillary appreciation of the Italian giallo subgenre of erotic thrillers produced in Italy since the 1960s.
Under hypno-haunto logic, the film fetishises the iconography and sonography of generic Library Music produced across the 60s and 70s—some of it wacky, some of it decidedly experimental. Its initial recouping came via the late 90s post-Lounge trend when European labels like Cinevox, La Douce, Plastic, Dagored and Crippled Dick uncrated rare/dismissed tracks from Italian movies, TV shows and Library Music companies. Groovy lounge music—additionally from British Library Music companies like Bosworth, Chappell and Southern—consequently formed a luridly dank sonic bed in much UK music. Berberian Sound Studio sleeps there too.
It’s a thoroughly saturated aural realm, created equally by hipsters and exploiters, sampling and processing aurally distinctive fragments and textures to signify a type of Cool Britannia re-plugging into a recent cultural past. If there are defining parameters to the hypno-haunto ethos, they are aligned to such ‘acts of listening’ wherein one identifies that something is being appropriated (though not quoted)—but so that one experiences its origins as vaguely remembered events, even though the listener is likely not to have heard the original sounds, only their redistribution through other acts of sampling and versioning. Its value as evocation supersedes its value as specification, hence the sensation of feeling the past’s incursive lay of the present via a haunting refrain.
Berberian Sound Studio
And that’s precisely why Berbian Sound Studio is an example of ‘hauntological cinema.’ It’s littered with affected allusions towards said iconographies/sonographies from Italian giallo movies, British educational docos and groovy film scores from both Italy and England (here ‘hypnagogically’ collapsed through the atmospheric renderings by British duo Broadcast). But as much as I like the cultural library the film unracks—as well as the broad sweep of artists abstractly exploring these tendencies, from Boards of Canada to Mogwai to Broadcast to Pole to Actress, and great re-issue labels like Scamp, Trunk and Lo Recordings—the film does not move past the denotative position of ticking already validated checkboxes.
Most perplexing is how the film declares its love of the era and its artefacts (through well-researched fawning over Shears ¼-inch tape boxes, a Space Echo Tape machine etc) while curiously annulling the power with which those artefacts helped shape both experimental music and film scores. Berbian Sound Studio’s press kit has a telling line: “Santini’s (the movie’s fictional director) The Equestrian Vortex may be a schlocky giallo slasher, a classic horror, but Peter’s Berberian Sound Studio has a more absorbing, hauntological bent.” I read this after seeing the film, but found that it illustrates much of what the film illuminates for me: namely, a subtextual clash between stiff, uptight, prissy, picky, train-spotting Anglophilia and bombastic, gaudy, sensual, erotic, rapacious culture Italian-style. Yes, that’s the conflict between the film’s central characters, but the film’s shoehorning of contemporary notions of misogyny, sexploitation and B-grade categorisation ignores the fucked-up sexual terror which defines giallo and qualifies how the likes of Morricone (in Bird With The Crystal Plumage) and Goblin (in Suspiria) approached their wonderfully vicious soundtracking. Make no mistake: this film is more Harold Pinter than Lucio Fulci.
But Berberian Sound Studio should be well-liked by an Anglo ‘hypno-haunto’ audience. Retro technology abounds; it’s got a kinda Lynchian feel about it (signposted by its Mulholland Drive/Lost Highway midway dimensional inversion); it extols an ethical aversion to screen violence; the special effects evoke 60s radical cinema you can flip through on ubuweb; and further exhaustive online research for 30 minutes will lead you to single paragraph blogs with Wikipedia-links to Lucio Berio, Cathy Berberian, Dario Argento and Mario Bava. After that you’ll end up here at this review, because you used Google to search for “hypnagogic” and “hauntological.”
Narelle Benjamin, Julie-Anne Long, Something in the Way She Moves
photo Heidrun Löhr
Narelle Benjamin, Julie-Anne Long, Something in the Way She Moves
I HAVEN’T SEEN JULIE-ANNE LONG’S INVISIBILITY PROJECT IN ACTION UNTIL NOW. PERHAPS THAT’S WHY THE SIGHT OF HER TAKES ME BY SUCH SURPRISE. WATCHING A PRE-SHOW EVENT IN THE CARRIAGEWORKS FOYER, MY GAZE DRIFTS AND I SEE LONG STANDING SOLEMNLY IN ORANGE HAT, LONGISH SKIRT AND HI-VIS VEST, CLEANING FLUFF OFF THE FLOOR AND COLLECTING IT IN A BUCKET. SOME ONLOOKERS NOTICE HER, OTHERS DON’T. IT OCCURS TO ME THAT, IF I DIDN’T KNOW WHO I WAS HERE TO SEE, I MIGHT NOT HAVE NOTICED HER EITHER.
Later, seated in Track 8 with the huge doors flung open, we hear a car blasting Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” screech to a halt outside. Car doors slam and a tired but determined looking Long strides into the room. She hauls recyclable shopping bags full of groceries around the perimeter of an expansive pink square of carpet and places them next to a neatly stacked pantry. Not far behind her is her sidekick, Narelle Benjamin, also hauling shopping bags and sporting a crocheted onesie. Car emptied and doors closed, Long moves to a table in the middle of the carpet and makes packed lunches, buttering bread to the music.
There is something about the Whitney Houston song that makes it impossible for me to sit still—or stop wriggling in my seat. It is the sort of music I just have to dance to. It seems that Long can’t resist the music either. As it grows louder and fills the space her buttering movements elongate, warp and are eventually abandoned for lively, hip-swinging dance breaks.
Julie-Anne Long, Narelle Benjamin, Something in the Way She Moves
photo Heidrun Löhr
Julie-Anne Long, Narelle Benjamin, Something in the Way She Moves
As she moves from buttering to other household tasks, her dances become increasingly radical transformations. Taking on a sort of sexual ferocity, in the midst of washing dishes, she wraps a tea towel around her head like a mask (I think of Ned Kelly) and charges about the space, beating her arms behind her like fins. Repeatedly she takes a wide stance and wipes her hands from her groin up over her hips in an emphatic V-shape.
In a later interlude she pulls a sheer nylon stocking over her head, followed by a red net—the sort you buy oranges in. She thrusts her pelvis to the music and rolls luxuriously around on the floor; repeats the V-shape, rubbing her hands across her belly and circling her breasts.
The phone rings. It’s a smartphone. Long holds it at arm’s length and squints at it for a moment before finding her way into the call. We laugh, delighted at the recognisable grimace. I gather that she is speaking to a partner who is promising to come home from work… soon. This first of three calls seems to conclude with phone sex, an exchange that feels more like a light-hearted, charitable gesture than any lustful experience on Long’s part, and elicits hoots of laughter from the audience.
Throughout this trajectory Benjamin remains quietly, if sometimes comically, present in the space, stepping in for support when needed. She helps hang out a bedsheet, for example, upon which a video projection will depict Long frolicking naughtily in bed with a young stud, interspersed with the seduction scene from the Mike Nichols’ film The Graduate (1967).
Eventually the stage is quiet. Standing under a single spotlight in nothing but a white slip, Long presents herself in stillness to the audience. Time expands. I am able to look over her flesh, to let my eyes linger. Gradually it dawns on me that I am seeing more than just the bright and bubbly side of this woman tonight. I am seeing something serious, too. I feel that I am being let into something that is real, and quite private.
Julie-Anne Long, Something in the Way She Moves
photo Heidrun Löhr
Julie-Anne Long, Something in the Way She Moves
As she moves on to don an elegant black dress and dance under dimmed, star-shaped lights—a sort of closing dance—I am flooded with a mix of emotions. I find myself close to tears as I watch her pendulum-like movement, limbs and upper body swinging with such ease.
Something In The Way She Moves works from the idea that sometimes women become invisible, be it because of visions of ‘successful womanhood’ that persist in our cultural consciousness, rendering certain women more visible than others, or because of the everyday realities of adult life that cause a woman to prioritise the needs of parents, partner or children over other pursuits.
Yet this performance doesn’t so much mourn invisibility as simply acknowledge that it happens. It playfully illuminates both difficult and ecstatic moments within invisible experience, paying special attention to the possibilities and dignities that persist in that context. Yes, we can know ourselves to be wildcats, bombshells, oracles…even when the wider world doesn’t see it so clearly.
Performance Space, Sexes: Julie-Anne Long, Something In The Way She Moves: everyday dances for an invisible woman, created and performed by Julie-Anne Long, co-performer Narelle Benjamin, lighting Karen Norris, production management Clytie Smith, sound mix Gail Priest, Mrs Robinson video projection Sam James, video co-performer Matt Prest, other collaborators Deborah Kelly, Caroline Downs; Carriageworks, Sydney, Nov 14-17, 2012
This article originally appeared as part of RealTime’s online e-dition Jan 30, 2013
Welcome to the new-style in the loop. Less chatter and more art, but RT’s in the loop listings continue to be selected for their potential to excite, challenge, inspire and innovate (and because they piqued our curious-kitty natures). Read on to stay informed about interesting events in your part of the world as well as action around the country and overseas.
cementa, kandos nsw
Fiona Kemp, Lap Lane, site-specific work of a 46mx20cmx10cm trough embedded into the ground, coloured chlorine blue and filled with water
courtesy the artist
Fiona Kemp, Lap Lane, site-specific work of a 46mx20cmx10cm trough embedded into the ground, coloured chlorine blue and filled with water
Fancy an art intensive weekend in the country? Try Cementa, taking place at Kandos around three and half hours’ drive from Sydney in central NSW. Co-curated by Ann Finegan, Alex Wisser and Georgina Pollard, Cementa will present over 40 artists in and around the town, which until recently was a thriving hub of cement manufacture. It’s an impressive collection of artists, both established and emerging, offering video, installation, sound, 2 and 3D works. Artists include Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski, David Haines & Joyce Hinterding, Sarah Goffman, Cigdem Aydemir, Sue Pedley & Virginia Hilyard, Mark Brown, David Capra, Pia Van Gelder and Alex White. Each day will feature walking and cycling tours to make sure you don’t miss a thing. Cementa, Feb 1-4, Kandos, NSW, various venues, http://cementa13.com/
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the transmuted signal, frequency oz
Curated by Colin Black and produced by Yanna Black, The Transmuted Signal is a radio series presented on air and streamed online via Kunstradio (ORF, Austria). Black himself and Philip Samartzis, Cat Hope, Nigel Helyer, Lizzie Pogson, Melanie Herbert and Entoptic will “transmute” a visual image into an audio-only work. “Each work follows an evolution of media from hand written symbols to audio technologies, broadcast technologies and the internet via live audio streams and podcasts” (press release). The Transmuted Signal, broadcast on air and online Feb 3 & 10, and March 3 & 10, 2013; www.kunstradio.at; www.frequencyoz.com
wim vandekeybus, ultima vez, adelaide festival
What the Body Does Not Remember, Ultima Vez
photo Octavio Iturbe
What the Body Does Not Remember, Ultima Vez
Jana Perkovic, covering ImPulsTanz 2008 in Vienna for RealTime, wrote “Even the standing room only tickets have sold out, and the raging mass of disappointed kids looks like they may start a riot: the atmosphere before Ultima Vez’s performance is akin to a rock concert. Choreographer superstar Wim Vandekeybus’ company has toured the world with their trademark vocabulary of acrobatic, extreme, often violent movement, soaked in multimedia and energetic music ” (RT87). The Flemish dancer and choreographer Vandekeybus, who appeared in Jan Fabre’s legendary The Power of Theatrical Madness (1984), has revived his 1987 classic What The Body Does Not Remember for an international tour which will bring the work to the 2013 Adelaide Festival and the company’s much anticipated first visit to Australia (and only to Adelaide). Vandekeybus and the composers Thierry De Mey and Peter Vermeersch won a much-prized Bessie Award in New York for the work which was then described as “a brutal confrontation of dance and music: [a] dangerous, combative landscape.” See an excerpt of Ultima Vez in performance at http://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/2013/dance/what_the_body_does_not_remember and glimpses of other works and a complete film on YouTube.
soundout festival, canberra
Now an established part of the summer improv wave that sweeps across the eastern states, SoundOut returns (with funding this year) for an intense weekend of “Free Improvisational, Free Jazz and Experimental Music” (press release). International guests include Abaetetuba Collective (Brazil/Switzerland), Barcode Quartet (Austria/UK), Hermione Johnson (NZ) Jeff Henderson (NZ) along with Charity Chan (Canada). Australian talent includes the Stasis Duo, Mike Majkowski, Alison Plevey and Reuben Ingalls, Jon Rose, Michael Norris and festival director Richard Johnson. SoundOut, Feb 2-3, 2013, Theatre 3, Canberra; http://soundout2013.blogspot.com.au/
blak nite cinema
The Wrong Side of the Road, Blak Nite Cinema
This three-day festival explores “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander visual arts, hip hop and country music, traditional and contemporary dance, theatre and the performing arts through film” (press release). As well as feature films Bran Nu Dae and The Sapphires there’s a great program of impressive documentaries. Blak Nite Cinema, presented by the City of Melbourne, ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image), Federation Square;, Feb 8-10; http://www.thatsmelbourne.com.au/Whatson/blaknite/Pages/BlakNite.aspx
gasp, tasmania
Susan Phillipsz at GASP, photo Rob Harrison; GASP landscapes, photos Pippa Dickson
Tasmania is currently punching above its weight in cultural output. Another venture, Glenorchy Arts and Sculpture Park (GASP), is an impressive addition to the cultural landscape in which The Museum of Old and New Art figures so prominently. The park occupies the public land from Wilkinson’s Point to Montrose Bay on the Elwick Bay foreshore, 10 minutes north of Hobart. The main feature of the park is the architect-designed boardwalk by Room 11 spanning 600 metres of river. For their first permanent commission, GASP asked Scottish artist and 2010 Turner Prize winner Susan Philipsz to create a work for the bridge. The resulting sound installation, The Waters Twine (which takes its inspiration from James Joyce’s 1929 audio-recording of Finnegans Wake), was launched during the MONA FOMA music festival. It will be presented again at various times across the year so stay tuned. Stage 2 of the park is currently underway and due for completion in April 2013. Glenorchy Arts and Sculpture Park (GASP), http://gasp.org.au/
digital media month, colour box studio
Layla Vardo, Cromlech “a kind of burial mound in observance of the death of analogue television” (artist statement)
Colour Box Studio is a pop up multifunctional artspace that opened in November 2012 in Footscray. “The space will change month to month to showcase Melbourne’s creative community and represent a diverse range of artists, creative people and artforms” (website). Over February it celebrates all things digital with an exhibition curated by William Head featuring major works by Layla Vardo and Ka-Yin Kwok, an extensive screening program focusing on non-fiction and more. The space was founded by filmmaker Amie Batalibasi and also offers workshops ranging from photography to web design. Colour Box Digital Media Exhibition, Footscray, Jan 16-Feb 27, 2013; http://colourboxstudio.com/
international: the dark universe, sonic acts festival amsterdam
HC Gilje, Revolver, installation at the opening of The Dark Universe Exhibition
photo Pieter Kers
HC Gilje, Revolver, installation at the opening of The Dark Universe Exhibition
For some serious sound art fare/fair, there’s the upcoming Sonic Acts Festival in Amsterdam, this year titled The Dark Universe, investigating “how to make the invisible imaginable, teach us how to embrace the unknown, and guide us through the dark universe” (press release). The exhibition has already commenced at NASA: New Art Space Amsterdam and will be complemented by three nights of performance and talks. The impressive roster of musicians and audiovisual artists includes Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratke & HC Gilje, Jacob Kirkegaard, Makino Takashi, Mika Vaino, Biosphere, Lustmord, Tina Frank and Cut Hands (William Bennett). Sonic Acts: The Dark Universe, Feb 21-24, 2013, exhibition open now; http://2013.sonicacts.com/
Auspiciously the 2013 In Between Time Festival in Bristol will take place not under one but two full moons. There’s the real one, perhaps difficult to glimpse in the February gloom, and then there’s Simon Faithfull’s Fake Moon, ready to pick up nature’s slack. Based on the College Green, Faithfull will send aloft a helium balloon fitted with its own illumination and each night of the festivities it will make its way across the Bristol skyline.
In fact for a festival in a Northern Hemisphere February, IBT13 offers quite a number of outdoor activities, challenging the brave to rug up and tough it out to experience art’s liveness. In The Woods, Norwegian group Night Tripper will take their audience on a walk through the wintery forest to experience a magical concert exploring animistic myths and voodoo rituals and said to feature an invisible choir. With more of an urban feel, Carmine Mauro Daprile’s The Moon will use “cosplayers”—people who dress up as their favourite cartoon characters (particularly from manga and anime)—to render the everyday environment strange and wonderful (exact location in Bristol’s CBD yet to be divulged).
Zierle & Carter & Chamber Made Opera, Living Room Opera: Between Lands and Longings, IBT13
photo Alan Warren
Zierle & Carter & Chamber Made Opera, Living Room Opera: Between Lands and Longings, IBT13
However, for the weak willed and easily chilled there are plenty of indoor wonders as well. Melbourne’s Chamber Made Opera have been commissioned to create one of their boutique living room operas with Cornwall-based artists Zierle and Carter (see previous review). Titled Between Lands and Longings it will explore ideas of home, displacement and migration. (See RT101 for a review of previous living room operas, and RT108 for an interview with CMO director David Young.)
Victor Riebeek and Florentina Holzinger, Kein Applaus für Scheisse, IBT13
photo Nellie de Boer
Victor Riebeek and Florentina Holzinger, Kein Applaus für Scheisse, IBT13
There’s also a range of performances in more conventional theatre spaces, not that this means conventional theatre fare. From Amsterdam comes Victor Riebeek and Florentina Holzinger with what we are told is a flagrantly boundary-pushing exploration of contemporary pop culture—Kein Applaus Für Scheisse (no applause for shit)—which features “an elusive mix of dance, trashy pop, theatre, roller skating, acrobatics and love” (program). English ensemble Reckless Sleepers will perform A String Section—five women, five wooden chairs and five handsaws—you might be able to imagine how that will end. (After appearing in Brisbane’s World Theatre Festival, Reckless Sleepers will appear in February at Performance Space, Sydney in the Last Supper (http://www.performancespace.com.au/2012/the-last-supper/). There’s also Italian physical theatre company Motus’ whose piece Too Late! (Antigone) Contest #2 is a re-interpretation of the Sophocles classic. And the provocative Glaswegian performance artist Nic Green explores her relationship with her father and her native Scotland in Fatherland.
Coney, Early Days (Of a Better Nation), IBT13
photo courtesy the artists
Coney, Early Days (Of a Better Nation), IBT13
Looking particularly enigmatic is Early Days (Of a Better Nation) by performance group Coney, which invites the audience in as players in a large-scale interactive video performance exploring what happens now after the heady optimism of the people-led upheavals of the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements has settled.
No live art festival is complete without a one-on-one performance, and here it is provided by IBT Associate Artist Jo Bannon with Dead Line, in which you are invited to have a private phone conversation confronting your own mortality. Nor should a festival be without a workshop; for IBT13 it is literally that—in Worktable, Kate McIntosh invites visitors to don goggles and wield tools to make something new from something broken.
There’s also an exhibition at Arnolfini titled Version Control which explores performance not “solely as a ‘live’ activity” but as a method of “making the past present” (program). The exhibition features Amalia Pica, Tim Etchells, Felix Gmelin, Andy Holden, Rabih Mroué and includes video, painting, drawing and sculpture with performative interventions. The opening night of the exhibition will feature Tim Etchell’s Untitled (After Violent Incident) in which he recreates Bruce Nauman’s 12-screen installation Violent Incident using a combination of texts on screens with footage of dancer Wendy Houstoun reenacting the slapstick content. Houston will also perform live on the opening night.
And of course there’s much more, including pavements of gold (Pete Barrett), peripheral visions (Alex Bradley) and fireworks (festival director Helen Cole) and a horsey themed final party which is rumored to involve 5000 My Little Ponies. But if you can’t make it to Bristol, don’t despair. RealTime will be offering up meaty coverage by Tim Atack, Osunwunmi and Niki Russell, alumni of our 2006 IBT writer workshop, as part of our RT114 “festivals” edition.
In Between Time 13: International Festival of Performance, produced by IBT in association with Arnolfini, director Helen Cole; Bristol, various venues; Feb 14-17, 2013, exhibition Feb 2-April 14; http://ibt13.co.uk/
Festival director Noel Staunton has announced David Berthold as the independent performance curator for the 2013 Brisbane Festival. Berthold has issued a callout for independent productions including installation and site-specific works. Funding from $1,000-$10,000 will be allocated to the chosen works. Applications due March 8, 2013; http://www.brisbanefestival.com.au/
2013 icmc, edith cowan university
The International Computer Music Conference for 2013 will be hosted by Edith Cowan University (WA) incorporating the Australasian Computer Music Conference and taking place simultaneously with TURA’s Totally Huge Music Festival. The theme for this year’s conference is International Developments in ElectroAcoustics (IDEA). Submissions are now open for papers, demonstrations, studio reports performances and more. Deadline for papers & works Feb 11, 2013; ICMC Aug 12-16, 2013; http://icmc2013.com.au/
bayside artists-in-residence
Bayside City Council in Melbourne’s southern suburbs is offering four 12-month residencies in the historic Billilla Mansion in Brighton. The residencies are open to visual artists, writers, composers and multimedia artists. Applications close March 29 2013; http://www.bayside.vic.gov.au/arts_artist_in_residence_program.htm
chippendale new world art prize
Chippendale Creative Precinct (CCP) has announced a new art prize/residency to the value of $10,000, one awarded each year for the next 10 years (thanks to a very generous private donor). The residency is at the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, July-September 2013, with the resulting work exhibited at the NG Art Gallery, Chippendale in 2014. Each year the prize will have a different theme: for 2013 it’s ‘revitalisation.’ Applications close April 16, 2013; http://chippendalecreative.com/art-prize/
western australia contemporary dance initiative
Now in its second year the Australia Council Dance Board’s three-year Western Australia Contemporary Dance Initiative seeks to “develop the contemporary dance sector in Western Australia. It aims to build on existing activity and funding in the sector and to encourage artists to take time to develop a work through its life cycle” (website). Open to individuals and companies in WA applications can include one or more development stages of a work. Funding can be up to $50,000. Applications due Feb 8, 2013; http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/grants/2013/western-australian-contemporary-dance-initiative
horror filmmaking bootcamp, hobart
For Tasmanian locals and those inclined to boldly travel to the apple isle there’s a weekend Horror Filmmaking Bootcamp taking place in Hobart, Feb 2-3. You’ll be able to learn make-up special effects, the basics of screen acting and a little bit about music and sound for horror. This is all particularly useful if you are thinking of entering the 48hour Tasploitation Challenge the following weekend where you can try your hand at whipping up your own splatter masterpiece. A selection of the best films will then be screened at the Stranger with my Face Horror Film festival in March. Bootcamp, Feb 2-3, http://strangerwithmyface.com/48hour/horror-filmmaking-boot-camp; 48Hr Tasploitation Challenge, Feb 8-10; http://strangerwithmyface.com/48hour/; Stranger with My Face Festival, March 7-10, http://strangerwithmyface.com/
borough of queenscliffe’s 150th anniversary art awards
The Borough of Queenscliffe is an hour and half’s drive south west of Melbourne on the Bellarine Peninsula. To celebrate 150 years of settlement the council is offering several art prizes: an Open Art Acquisitive Award of $5,000; a Print Making Award of $500; and a People’s Choice Award of $500. The prizes are open to artists from across Australia and shortlisted works will be exhibited in local galleries Salt Contemporary Art, Seaview Gallery and Tussock Upstairs in May. Entries close March 13, 2013; http://www.queenscliffe.vic.gov.au/boq_150th_anniversary.php
Keith Gallasch talks with Matthew Whittet who wrote and performed in Windmill Theatre’s School Dance (directed by Rosemary Myers) presented at the Sydney Theatre Company in association with Sydney Festival.
School dance 2013 tour
Sydney: January 10-February 3, 2013
Sydney Theatre Company and Sydney Festival
Wollongong: February 7-9, 2013
Merrigong Theatre Company, Illawarra Performing Arts Centre
Melbourne: April 10-20, 2013
Arts Centre Melbourne
Brisbane: July 31-August 3, 2013
Brisbane Powerhouse
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
photo Jamie Williams
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
PERMISSION GRANTED, THE LAST OF THREE CONCERTS CELEBRATING COMPOSER JOHN CAGE’S CENTENARY AT THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE, WAS A THRILLING EXPERIENCE, ENGAGING A DIVERSE AUDIENCE WITH BANG ON A CAN ALL-STARS’ TRADEMARK, CHATTY INTIMACY AND THEIR POWERFUL, TAUT ENSEMBLE PLAYING, AT TIMES WITH ROCK BAND INTENSITY, A REMINDER OF THE WIDE SCOPE OF CAGE’S CULTURAL INFLUENCE.
The title was apt for a program that proved to be a shorthand if lateral exposition of certain aspects of the lineage of Cagean influence. Did John Cage beget Terry Riley and Riley beget Louis Andriessen, and Andriessen beget Australia’s Kate Moore?
As in any ecosystem, evolution is inevitably more complex; after all, none of the inheritors composes in the manner of Cage (is there even a style?) while Riley’s minimalism can be heard in Andriessen and Moore, if dramatically reconfigured and ruptured.
What Cage’s experimentation, his creations and his philosophising did was open up possibilities for the radical mutation of music, ‘classical’ and popular, in the second half of the 20th century, generating a richer musical biodiversity.
The world-wide John Cage (1912-1992) celebrations in 2012 of the artist’s 100th birthday acknowledged the man’s influence on generations of musicians, composers and audiences. His liberating departures from concert hall music, especially from serialism, included his engagement with new tools for composition (prepared piano, tape loops, amplification and contact microphones, electronics, the computer), performance with spoken text, an alertness to the power of silence, the invitation to the performer to become co-composer in the act of playing, the deployment of chance operations for composing and a philosophical disposition (influenced by Zen Buddhism and the music of the East) that saw music as integral to life rather than as stand alone art. Permission Granted presented exemplars of the Cage influence.
The concert opened with Cage’s 4’33” (1952), a respectful, quasi-religious moment (very quiet save for the ever loud hum of The Studio aircon) and closed with Terry Riley’s In C (1964) “the Sacre of musical minimalism,” in the words of Robert Carl in his exhaustive book on the work (Terry Riley’s In C, OUP, 2009). There was little if any overt silence after 4’33 in the ensuing, pulsing trio of works played with the Bang on a Can All-Stars’ amplified house-style vigour.
What Cage offered Riley, and which Riley merged with his dominant passion for Indian music and admiration for John Coltrane (among other jazz musicians), was a move away from harmonic structure to a focus on duration and cells of sound, allowing greater responsiveness to texture and timbre, revealing new sounds and rhythmic complexities. In C is a one-page score with a set of instructions that can be played by any number and kind of musicians (as in the Shanghai Film Orchestra version, a favourite of mine) with recognisable but very different outcomes since each musician has to make decisions about when to play and at what volume.
For In C, the six-strong Bang on a Can were joined by six members of Sydney’s Ensemble Offspring in a combination similar to the New York group’s 2001 CD of the work but without a pipa (sometimes called the Chinese lute). Realised by musicians ever alert to each other, the hour-long performance in The Studio was perpetually engaging, displaying a remarkable range of nuanced collective modulation, while individual voices and sudden pairings rose briefly above the communal pulse such that the weave of notes always remained whole, an embracing but ever changing mantra.
With minimalism, Terry Riley also granted many composers new freedoms, including not only Philip Glass and the phase-shifting Steve Reich, but also, to a degree, Louis Andriessen, the Dutch composer who had broken with serialism and experimented with tape in the 1960s. We can hear the insistent pulse of minimalism in Andriessen, but his work sounds much tougher, and louder, the repetitions chunkier, hovering on the edge of the dissonance that minimalism had tonally muted. Composer (and sometime Philip Glass assistant) Nico Muhly writes, “In 1975 Andriessen finished Workers’ Union, a pounding, relentless work for unspecified (but loud) ensemble. This is a piece at whose performances woodwind players have been known to bleed from the gums, a near-hysterical, blue-collar rant.” http://nicomuhly.com/projects/2007/notes-on-andriessen-wolfe-ziporyn/
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
photo Jamie Williams
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
About Workers’ Union, Andriessen wrote in 1990, “This piece is a combination of individual freedom and severe discipline: its rhythm is exactly fixed; the pitch, on the other hand, is indicated only approximately, on a single-lined stave. It is difficult to play in an ensemble and to remain in step, sort of thing like organising and carrying on political action.” Like Riley’s In C it can be realised in any number of ways. You can find substantially different versions by Bang on a Can and Ensemble Offspring on YouTube as well as by other ensembles large and small.
The Bang on a Can concert performance feels maximally percussive, from all the instruments, with a heavy, chugging pulse that suddenly accelerates, scaling up, almost like a collective stutter but with a riff-like cogency. Bass notes thud and the clarinet swoops and we’re back in the threatening groove of a kind of swirling unison. By the end the tightly bound ascents and flights veer thrillingly close to disintegration. It feels a long way from the neatness of American minimalism. It’s a stirring, raucous performance of an infectious work.
As for Andriessen’s influence, his students are composers as diverse as Kate Moore, Ensemble Offspring co-artistic director Damien Rickertson, Michel van der Aa, Yannis Kyriakides and Steve Martland among many others. Muhly writes, “While the influence of the American minimalists seems to be measurable by gestures—a Reichean rhythmic canon, a blissed-out Riley-esque drone, an eager Glassian arpeggio—one speaks about the ‘spirit’ of Andriessen being found in the music of the younger generations.” Perhaps then Andriessen’s influence is open-ended, like Cage’s. Muhly continues, “While it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly comprises this spirit, some key Andriessen emotional tricks include the strategic (as opposed to textural) use of repeated notes, a strong sense of community from within the orchestra (expressed by certain pairings of instruments always playing in unison), and an uncompromising rhythmic agenda.”
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
photo Jamie Williams
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
Kate Moore’s Ridgeway (2009; it can be heard on the band’s 2011 CD Big Beautiful Dark and Scary) reveals immediate kinship with Andriessen’s modernist-minimalist ‘model.’ Perhaps that’s because it comprises in this concert the same instrumentation and enjoys Bang on a Can’s distinctive approach. A brief program note by Moore describes the work as a reflection “on the landscape of my childhood and my memory,” as part of a search for a sense of place and identity. But this bracing work feels only occasionally reflective, the beating motifs, big and small, slipping exquisitely near in and out of sync, suggesting perhaps obsessive recall. Much more nuanced than Workers’ Union, Ridgeway nonetheless has a similar propulsive drive which can abruptly accelerate, erupting over gentle piano-vibe contemplations. Most haunting is the recurrent siren-like clarinet and string keening high above throbbing bass and pounding piano. Ridgeway is a memorable 12-minute epic that reveals but does not bow down to its inheritance.
While Permission Granted could only gesture at the complexity and duration of the Cage influence—limiting itself to two ‘sacred’ works (1952, 1964) and two exciting confirmations and departures (1975 and a leap to 2009)—it nonetheless was a concert at once contemplative and visceral, honouring an enduring heritage. The two other concerts—John Cage and his American Descendants and the Ambient Evolution (Cage and Brian Eno)—added further dimensions to our appreciation in this enthusiastically received exultation of lineage.
The Composers 2: John Cage, Centenary Celebration, Bang on a Can All-Stars with Ensemble Offspring, The Studio, Sydney Opera House, Nov 2, 3, 2012
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
photo Jamie Williams
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
IT SEEMS TOO EASY TO START THIS ARTICLE WITH A QUOTATION FROM JOHN CAGE—A BON MOT THAT LIKE A GOOD HAIKU SAYS SEEMINGLY NOTHING AND EVERYTHING. AND WHICH PEARL OF WISDOM TO CHOOSE? HE WROTE SO PROLIFICALLY.
The paradox of Cage is that, arguably, his writing is better appreciated than his music—I’d suggest he’s more often quoted than played. This situation was to some degree perpetuated by the Sydney Opera House’s John Cage Centenary Celebration presented by Bang on a Can All-Stars from New York, which offered a small selection of Cage musical experiences complemented by a rich collection of his utterances and philosophising.
john cage and his american descendants
This was exemplified by the first concert of the two-day mini festival, titled John Cage and his American Descendants, which opened with two pieces by Cage performed simultaneously: Indeterminacy from 1959, a collection of Cage’s texts to be spoken in differing orders; and Variations II from 1961, for any number of players producing sounds by “any means,” guided by a graphic score of dots and lines that can be arranged in an almost infinite number of permutations. The master of ceremonies, guitarist (and one of the founding members of the band) Mark Stewart, tells us that the players each have “rigorously prepared” their part separately but not yet together.
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
photo Jamie Williams
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
The next piece offers us even more of Cage’s wisdom, and better still, in his own voice. In An Open Cage, composer Florent Ghys took a recording of the man himself reading from the eighth part of Diary: How to improve the world (You will only make matters worse) and scored the ensemble parts according to the cadence of Cage’s voice. This technique can often result in abrupt and jagged, rhythmic figures, but Cage was a measured and lyrical speaker so the music develops a lilting edge within the uneven rhythms and phrases. This lyricism is ramped up and formalised by the middle of the piece where the text is subsumed completely and the piece finds its own jazzy rock style. It’s an interesting technique (one employed also to great effect by The Books) suggesting an embodied and material sense of the man and his words.
The remainder of the American Descendants concert consisted of works by three of the Bang on a Can All-Stars’ founding members (who were not present, the current touring party consisting of Stewart and musical guns for hire, and excellent marksmen at that). Sun Ray by David Lang delicately cycles unresolved phrases that shimmer like dappled light and gradually morph into an energising stabbing, syncopated conclusion. Michael Gordon’s For Madeleine, dedicated to his now deceased mother, juxtaposes a hovering piano line and long sweeping glissandi to create a quietly mournful incantation. Sometimes the insistent sliding notes feel like sirens, but increasingly ascend, leading to an ambiguous finale. It seems the filial relationship was a complicated one.
The concert concluded with Julia Wolfe’s Big, Beautiful, Dark and Scary, which true to its title starts at high energy and, like Gordon’s For Madeleine, it too revolves around ascending melodic phrases, this time creating a sense of both anxious and excited anticipation. It’s a piece that just gets gloriously bigger and bolder until it reaches a sustained cacophonous and utterly energising conclusion.
The pieces by the “American Descendants” are all rigorous and vigorous pieces of contemporary composition presenting challenges to even an experienced listener but also providing emotional touchstones, harmonic pleasure and metric rhythmic cohesion to satisfy a broader audience. How these pieces directly relate to Cagean techniques is not so clearly defined, except to say that everything after Cage has been undeniably affected by Cage’s philosophy, particularly his spirit of finding freedom within constraints.
ambient evolution
The second concert followed a similar format. First up was Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, a mid-career work written by Cage between 1946 and 1948 (earning him a Guggenheim Fellowship). While it has a strict mathematical structure and the preparations for piano are quite complicated, it dwells in far more harmonic territory than his later pieces and is inspired by his studies in Indian philosophy. The excerpted (and unidentified) sonatas and interludes occupy a tranquil and mesmerising zone of melodic fragments, the piano notes transformed by the string preparations into the soft metallic clangs of gamelan or deep reedy bamboo sounds, or broken music box tinkles. The Asian influence is strong in the harmonic choices and rhythmic repetitions with pianist Vicki Chow playing with a very delicate and lyrical touch to create a spellbinding experience.
Again, the program did not indicate which composed Improvisation Robert Black on bass and David Cossin on percussion were performing, but it exemplified the Cagean characteristics of instrumental parts existing on their own trajectory, little conscious layering and a disregard for transitions—here we see Cage concentrating on time as a container for actions and timbre rules over rhythm and harmony.
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
photo Jamie Williams
Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
The connection between the Sonatas and Interludes and Brian Eno’s Music for Airports is evident. Eno is perhaps one of the few contemporary composers who can be compared to Cage in terms of the impact his Ambient music had on ideas of listening. Hearing the two works next to each other, their musical relationship is also clear, with both relying on a perceived simplicity, spaciousness and a kind of wandering cyclical structure. However Eno’s Music for Airports is like the extended mix—with each of his segments lasting 9-17 minutes—its very length creates the experience of floating and immersion. In his introduction to the piece Mark Stewart said that the music rewards both concentration and indifference and encouraged people to come and go from The Studio, however the audience remained in respectful concert mode for the almost 50-minute performance.
Each of the four movements of Eno’s work has been arranged by the founding members of Bang on a Can All-Stars: Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe and guest composer Evan Ziporyn. The live arrangements are faithful to the original, Eno’s pre-recorded instruments and electronic elements sensitively transposed to live piano, synthesiser, cello, bass, percussion, clarinet and guitar. What is necessarily different in the live interpretation is the sense of presence, not simply of the liveness of musicians, but the new instrumentation adds a three-dimensionality to the music which in original recording is deliberately planar. Seems it’s hard for these living, breathing musicians to emulate Eno’s intended flatness, their swells and crescendos (and by the end unabashed emotional inflections) resisting restraint and compression. This was in no way a bad thing, but rather an interesting testing of the threshold of ambience and expression.
Michaela Davies’ Involuntary Quartet, Musicircus, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
photo Jamie Williams
Michaela Davies’ Involuntary Quartet, Musicircus, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
musicircus
By the time we exited from the airport ambience, Musicircus was in full swing—a cacophonous shock to our tranquil state. Cage’s Musicircus is a “happening” of simultaneous musical expression first performed in 1967. Any number of performers including dancers, actors and lay-people can present just about any piece relevant or irrelevant to Cage. This gathering was well wrangled by Sydney’s Ensemble Offspring and featured a hula hooper, toy piano players, tin whistle tooters, turntablists, a large furry animal and even a 18-month-old child, as well as Offspring and Bang on a Can All-Stars members, with each music station offering a pertinent printed quotation from Cage (of course!). The spread of acts along the long narrow foyer outside The Studio made it seem more an expo than a circus but there was no less sense of joy and play. And while some performers simply plied their trade others offered some serious experimentation such as Michaela Davies’ Involuntary Quartet in which electro-muscle stimulators literally shocked the musicians into playing; or the performance by clarinettist Nathan Cloud who used the movement of audience members across the foyer’s large square tiles as his score. Cage would definitely have enjoyed the romp.
Musicircus, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
photo Jamie Williams
Musicircus, The Composers 2: John Cage Centenary Celebrations, Sydney Opera House
In fact the entire mini-festival had this tangible feeling of joy. While we only experienced a small sample of Cage’s actual musical output, we were well fed on his philosophy and spirit, which arguably is his lasting legacy. While I didn’t start with a quote, I’ll end with one from Brian Eno, as it encapsulates the idea of Cage’s oeuvre as being greater than the sum of its musical parts:
“In [Cage’s] case, composition was a way of living out a philosophy and calling it art” (program note).
This celebration reminded us that we have permission to do the same.
The Composers 2: John Cage, Bang on a Can Allstars, Ashley Bathgate, Robert Black, Vicky Chow, David Cossin, Mark Stewart, Ken Thomson; with Ensemble Offspring; The Studio, Sydney Opera House; November 2-3, 2012
Robert Walton, enjoying afternoon tea at The Butterfly and The Pig
courtesy the writer
Robert Walton, enjoying afternoon tea at The Butterfly and The Pig
reason for travelling
Returning, for the first time since emigrating Down Under, to the city where I lived for 10 years to catch up with friends and family, and celebrate Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve).
viva glasvegas
Glasgow was the inaugural European City of Culture in 1990 and remains a hot(gritty)bed for all the arts, punching well above its weight with major artists (including the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Turner Prize winners), bands and big ideas. Though only separated by 70kms centre to centre from Edinburgh, there seems no end to the rivalrous banter between the posh, ancient, touristy and better-looking capital and Scotland’s larger, harder-working, catalytic, slightly dangerous, sardonic cultural powerhouse, Glasgow.
A throng of traffic wardens huddle together in a frozen Queens Park
photo Robert Walton
A throng of traffic wardens huddle together in a frozen Queens Park
I cringe at using “cultural” as Scotland is so caught up in its own distinctiveness from England and its proud history (and there’s lots to be proud of) that everything can become a little tartan-tinted. But Glasgow bucks that trend by looking outward and is genuinely awash with contemporary, vivid and living culture. That’s why I lived there for a decade and why so many artists stay despite the weather, the history of violence, the areas of abject poverty and, let’s face it, the food, but that, at least, is getting better. You can get stuff done there, enjoy the banter and wicked humour, it’s cheap to live, and the housing (lots of grand Victorian tenements) are great to live in. Glasgow is also an exciting place to visit.
dear green place
Glasgow in Gaelic is Glas-ghu, meaning ‘dear green place.’ It’s great all year round, but spring into summer is my favourite time. Yes it can be cold, but wrap-up under the bright blue sky and go for a walk around the beautiful Victorian city centre and creepy Necropolis, or Queens Park and Shawlands on the Southside, or Kelvingrove Park, The Botanical Gardens and Byers Road in the Westend.
Kelvingrove Museum is the most visited in the UK outside of London and is worth a visit. It is the best exponent of those great British city museums that seem to have one of everything and something for everyone. Enjoy the mix of classy taxidermy and an eclectic art collection including the stunning Christ of Saint John of the Cross by Salvador Dalí. Like all of Glasgow’s museums, Kelvingrove is free to enter.
The taxidermied badger cub at Kelvingrove Museum (the badger is the UK’s largest native carnivorous land mammal)
photo Robert Walton
The taxidermied badger cub at Kelvingrove Museum (the badger is the UK’s largest native carnivorous land mammal)
When in the city centre, visit the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art (GoMA) and the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA http://www.cca-glasgow.com/home). Further out, but worth visiting are the new Riverside Museum and The Burrell Collection.
Tramway, on the Southside, is a vast visual arts and performance venue that you should definitely make the effort to visit. Home of some of the best work I have ever seen, this venue programs the best of international theatre and dance. The Turner Prize will be held here in 2015. Call ahead to check whether there is something on before making the trip South of the river; sometimes it is dark between shows.
The Arches, a cavernous super-venue underneath Central Station, is the place to find Glasgow’s extraordinary performance and experimental theatre scene. Like a bunker for the arts, the warren of theatres, galleries and bars comes alive when fully utilised during festivals like Behaviour and Arches Live. It’s also a great live music and clubbing venue.
Buchanan Street in winter, Glasgow
photo Robert Walton
Buchanan Street in winter, Glasgow
The emerging arts are what it’s all about in Glasgow. The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) have a lot of good to answer for. Their students graduate and stay, and the amazing artist-run galleries (Transmission, Market Gallery, SWG3 etc.) and performance festivals—Buzzcut, Into The New etc—are a testament to these institutions as well as the city. Thus it is worth checking out the degree shows of the GSA and RCS if you are around in June and January respectively.
for a wee swally (drinky)…
…head directly to Stravaigin, the iconic Glasgow bar and eatery, for excellent locally sourced food, roaring fire and fine cocktails, whisky and beer. This is the best place to try haggis. There is no shortage of fine bars and pubs in Glasgow. If you can’t pick one, try them all.
In the city centre, check out Stereo on Renfield Lane which has a great selection of beers, vegetarian food and gigs downstairs. Up on Bath Street, The Butterfly and The Pig serves amazing cakes upstairs during the day and is a great pub downstairs at night, also with good food.
For dancing head to The Buff Club or see if there’s something more exciting happening at SWG3.
At the end of the night it is tradition to stand in the taxi cue at Central Station for an hour, cold and a little scared, but enjoying the banter, outrageous clothing and jovial atmosphere.
Cold nymphs frolic at the edge of the city
photo Robert Walton
Cold nymphs frolic at the edge of the city
for sleeping…
CitizenM is a concept hotel that is pretty comfy and very central. The Brunswick Hotel in the lovely Merchant City is nicer, with a great tapas bar, and often gigs and parties. Nicest of all is One Devonshire Gardens, in the West End, but it’s pricey—great for a special occasion though.
haste ye back
If you are staying more than a few days it is well worth making the pilgrimage to Loch Lomond; it’s not far and you can get there by train. If you have a car try exploring the eastern bank—less busy and more beautiful. A trip to Oban or The Isle of Arran is also really worthwhile as both the journey and the destinations are amazing. If you have longer, go island hopping. And if you’ve exhausted everything else, you could always visit Auld Reekie (Edinburgh).
The view north from the bonnie, bonnie (east) banks of Loch Lomond
photo Robert Walton
The view north from the bonnie, bonnie (east) banks of Loch Lomond
Robert Walton is a Melbourne-based director, live artist, writer and educator. He is Co-Artistic Director of Fish & Game. In 2011 he left Glasgow and moved to Melbourne to take up the position as Lecturer in Theatre at Victorian College of the Arts. robertwalton.net, fishandgame.org.uk; vca.unimelb.edu.au/performingarts/theatre
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RealTime issue #109 June-July 2012 pg. 24
