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Issue 118

It has really been, and will be, a week for passions. Passions in Rome, heat on the pitch at St James' Park, a re-arranged marriage, then on Tuesday evening a very emotional re-acquaintance.

There are also passions of the street, well... maybe it's just passionate mischief. Our very own Banksy has been across the pond and added his "fine" art to the collections of the Met, MoMA, Brooklyn Museum and Museum of Natural History! At last, street art is coming of age, especially with groups like the Wooster Collective and Swoon (who has even been featured in our pages). Meanwhile back in London Parisian street-paint-slinger Jay One is having his first solo show here at dpmhi (08/04) and later at the Kemistry Gallery in July. While on Kemistry, the CutUp collective are exhibiting there (till 30/04), and keep your eyes on the Old Street roundabout area to catch one of their pieces. Continuing with the graf scene, a new big, slick and commercial street art gallery has just opened: the Outside Institute. For its inaugural show, D*Face, the venue's curator, has decided to showcase New York's old-timer, SEEN. That old rough street style may never be the same again.

Flash fave Ed Ruscha, a man of cool passions, is hanging a new painting at Hedgehog and de Moron's de Young in San Francisco, while a few thousand miles away their expansion of the Walker Art Center nears completion (17/04). On the East Coast, Takahashi Murakami brings in a little more of the East. Also the Pulitzer's have been announced, and our saga of the collector and the gallerist continues... Over here Jonathan Jones is bashing art theorists hard.

Finally, this week, keeping on the theme of passions, we bring you a Luc Delahaye image (along with others from the shortlisted artists) in the Deutsche Boerse Photography Prize at the Photographers' Gallery (opens 08/04).

Headlines

Architecture: Building a Better Planet: Will Alsop, Pooran Desai...

Art: Artprojx: Susan Hiller (With Joerg Heiser And Darian Leader); Deutsche Boerse Photography Prize 2005; Jenny Holzer; Lee Krasner

Book Launch: Lauren Bacall

Classical Music: Jonny Greenwood And The BBC Concert Orchestra

Concert: Fog And Efterklang; Rothko

Dance: Vanessa Haska

Design: Brazil, Argentina and Japan in Advertising and Design

Festival: John Berger, Geoff Dyer, Anne Michaels, Michael Ondaatje...; London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

Film: Artprojx: Susan Hiller (With Joerg Heiser And Darian Leader); Bullet Boy (With Ashley Walters, Saul Dibb And Marc Boothe); Los Angeles Plays Itself; The Assassination of Richard Nixon; Totally Truffaut

Retrospective: Totally Truffaut

Talk: Artprojx: Susan Hiller (With Joerg Heiser And Darian Leader); Brazil, Argentina and Japan in Advertising and Design; Building a Better Planet: Will Alsop, Pooran Desai...; Bullet Boy (With Ashley Walters, Saul Dibb And Marc Boothe); Jah Wobble; John Berger, Geoff Dyer, Anne Michaels, Michael Ondaatje...; Julia Briggs: Virginia Woolf; Lauren Bacall; Totally Truffaut

Artworker: Fiona Tan

CD Review: Efterklang

Book Review: DesignArt

 
WEDNESDAY 6 APRIL
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

ARCHITECTURE / TALK BUILDING A BETTER PLANET: WILL ALSOP, POORAN DESAI...

Dana Centre

Wednesday 6 April [7pm]

165 Queens Gate, SW7 T:020.7942.4040 Tube: South Kensington
Free (see NB)

Ever thought about how much fossil fuel goes into making and running a building? Us neither, but maybe that's the problem. And how do the buildings and architects we like to feature in KF rate in terms of that all-encompassing buzzword, "sustainability". Environmental building mover and shaker Pooran Desai plans to debate the issue with creator-of-big-things-on-sticks Will Alsop; it's just possible they may not agree. No suggestion that Alsop's designs perform any worse than most others in the sustainability stakes, but he's certainly not known as one of the growing group of "green" architects who specialise in such things. We assume Will's line will be that a new Puritanism stalks the land -- that questionable environmental claims are increasingly restricting his favoured qualities of delight and imagination in our built world. But we're putting words in his mouth -- as a Flasher with an enquiring mind you'll be wanting to find out for yourself...

NB: tickets are free but must be pre-booked by calling 020.7942.4040 or by sending an email to tickets@danacentre.org.uk. For those architectural fans out there catch Boudicca vs Adjaye on Thu 07/04.

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CONCERT ROTHKO

93 Feet East

Wednesday 6 April [7:30 - 11pm]

150 Brick Lane, E1 T:020.7247.3293 Tube: Aldgate East/Liverpool St.
£6

It's perhaps apt, given their name, that Rothko have chosen to play in the stark, dark interior of East London's hippest post-curry club hangout, 93 Feet East, this coming week -- although that may be reading too much into things. However, given the art-rocking credentials of the band, one could assume that they would invite this kind of introspective musing on their name and history. They certainly like to keep their listeners on their toes. A Protean line-up of the band, which started its life in 1987 as a bass trio, has now morphed to incorporate Caroline Ross, singer with avant-garde London popsters Delicate AWOL, and it's with her that they're touring material from their new album, the enigmatically-named A Place Between (Lo Recordings), released last month . Given that 93 Feet East tends to attract more along the lines of good-time clubbers looking to stomp their feet to hip-hop and soul, it should be interesting to see how Rothko propose to whip the crowd into dancing mood -- however, given the breadth of their experience, it's fair to say that the usual out-on-a-limb psychedelic strutting may be cranked up a little.

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DANCE VANESSA HASKA

The Place

Wednesday 6 April [8pm]

17 Duke's Rd., WC1 T:020.7387.0031 Tube: Euston Station/King's Cross
£5 - £15

The Place plays host to the rising star of the British contemporary dance scene, Vanessa Haska. Haska will present two choreographic hits: Somewhere in my Stomach and Dedicated to along with two London premieres. In Dedicated to, Haska's five female performers make you laugh with their silly walks, astound you with interpretations of butterflies and various other insects and bring you to the brink of tears with a very emotional rendition of "Yes I Love you Baby" by Gene Vincent. The dance is playful and engaging and you leave the auditorium trying to recreate some of tiptoed walks! Somewhere in my Stomach, a piece first performed at The Place in 2003, features a new cast whilst being set to the unmistakable sound of Mr Scruff's "Valley of the Sausages". The audacious and frenetic solo influenced by Pablo Picasso's The Smoker, Flight of the Bumblebee, is premiered along with Same -- a duet for Tamzen Moulding and Lia Prentaki. The piece looks at immigration and the notion of home, viewed from a Greek and London perspective. Of Greek origin, British based Vanessa Haska has worked for the London Contemporary Dance School and for The Northern School of Contemporary Dance. Haska is the choreographer in residence at Moving East.

Promotion: KultureFlash subscribers can claim a top price ticket (usually £15) for just £7.50 by calling The Place Box Office on 020.7387.0031 and quoting "KultureFlash Haska Offer" (please note that this offer is subject to availability).

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THURSDAY 7 APRIL
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

FILM LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF

ICA

Thursday 7 April [Thu 07/04, Sat 09/04, Sun 10/04 and Wed 13/04]

The Mall, SW1 T:020.7930.3647 Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly Circus
general £5.50 and £6.50 | concessions £4.50 and £5.50

The geographic has been getting a thorough going-over of late: artistically and intellectually, the geographic is de rigeur. In Los Angeles Plays Itself, director Thom Anderson grapples with the varied representations of Los Angeles through film. Functioning as either itself or some other self, has made a lot of love to the camera. In 169 minutes Anderson presents a compelling montage survey of the film industry's hussy. LA, the Laurel and Hardy backdrop, the sci-fi city of the future and any other place you want it to be. This is the crux of Anderson's exploration. LA can be distinct yet also indistinct. It is a city with a questionable core. Its architecture, transportation system and social planning defy boundaries. Eras, their social habits and their styles are merged and cross-referenced, creating a questionable soul. This makes LA in its entirety almost impossible to re-represent. Instead it can only ever be deconstructed and reconstructed through the lens of a camera.

As part of the season, Stories From Los Angeles (runs till 14/04), the ICA is showing three Los Angeles city portraits. The Exiles (Sat 09/04 and Thu 14/04), directed by Kent Mackenzie, is incredible raw cinema. Shot in black and white, an amateur cast of displaced Native Americans brawl their way through a Friday night in the deprived area of Bunker Hill. Bush Mama (Wed 06/04 and Sun 10/04), by Ethiopian Haile Gerima, tells the angry tale of everyday struggle in the Watts ghetto: a woman on welfare, a husband in jail and a daughter clinging on. The third film, Bless Their Little Hearts (Fri 08/04 and Tue 12/04), is Billy Woodberry's neorealist take on the banality, frustration and violence in South Central Los Angeles.

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TALK JULIA BRIGGS: VIRGINIA WOOLF

London Review Bookshop

Thursday 7 April [7pm]

14 Bury Place, WC1 T:020.7269.9030 Tube: Holborn
£4

Virginia Woolf was a great 20th-century novelist yet she was also a critic, essayist and journalist, writing in The Times Literary Supplement, and commenting on social issues. "In or about 1910, human character changed," said Woolf, as French Post-Impressionism, the accession of a new king and the suffragette movement characterised the vibrant modern experience. In capturing this, Woolf pioneered the experimental writing technique "stream of consciousness", epitomised in To The Lighthouse, an autobiographical masterpiece of idyllic childhood summer holidays spent in St Ives, with her sister Vanessa Bell. As an essayist, Woolf was a perceptive literary critic, commenting that "life is a luminous halo" in Modern Fiction, and arguing for greater equality for women in A Room of One's Own. But, beneath these accomplishments, who was the real Virginia Woolf? She has been championed as a feminist, a genius and a style icon of universal relevance, recently portrayed by actress Nicole Kidman in the award-winning film The Hours. Julia Briggs addresses this question in an excellent new biography, Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life. The English professor analyses Woolf's outstanding commentary on the creative process, in her letters, diaries and essays, to place writing back at the heart of Woolf's life.

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FRIDAY 8 APRIL
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

FILM / TALK BULLET BOY (WITH ASHLEY WALTERS, SAUL DIBB AND MARC BOOTHE)

Curzon Soho

Friday 8 April [6:40pm]

93-107 Shaftesbury Ave., W1 T:020.7439.4805 Tube: Leicester Sq./Piccadilly
£8.50

Saul Dibb's exceptional cinematic debut Bullet Boy is a gritty glimpse at the world of north London's young, black and unemployed. Dibb's sensitive and well-researched drama about a 19-year-old convict's attempt to stay out of trouble after his prison release takes on the subject of gun crime and violence in Hackney. The film's strongest qualities undoubtedly lie with its three main characters, played with great naturalistic style by Ashley Walters (aka So Solid Crew's Asher D), Leon Black and 15-year-old Luke Fraser, as well as the clever use of its setting. North London's dialogue, attitudes and locations are given the screen time they deserve from the canals, parks and housing estates to the narrow streets of Hackney, so that any local resident will be able to take great pleasure seeing them on the big screen. Saul Dibb's documentary filmmaking background comes through in his ability to get a sound grasp of the culture his characters are submerged in, and the values and aspirations of Hackney's youth are captured with refreshing accuracy. Not unlike Shane Meadow's Dead Man's Shoes, Bullet Boy is a great British film, capable of combining a well-written script with keenly observed social realism.

NB: Bullet Boy is released in London on 08/04. Other films released on the same day of interest are Kill Your Idols and The Assassination of Richard Nixon.

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FILM / RETROSPECTIVE / TALK TOTALLY TRUFFAUT

Cine Lumiere

Friday 8 April [08/04 till 30/04]

17 Queensberry Place, SW7 T:020.7073.1350 Tube: South Kensington
see Cine Lumiere website for times and ticket prices

Cine Lumiere presents Totally Truffaut, a complete retrospective. This could easily be an annual event -- when was the last time you got to see so many Truffaut films at once on the big screen? It must be 18 months since BBC Four screened the Antoine Doinel films (very late at night, of course). Tirez sur le pianiste makes a more regular appearance on the telly, and Jules et Jim too. This is a complete retrospective of features and shorts.

Serge Toubiana, filmmaker, former editor of Cahiers du cinema and now director of the Cinematheque francaise, will be giving talks about Truffaut's private life and working friendships with Carole le Berre, author of Truffaut au travail (Fri 15/04 and Sat 16/04). Nicholas Roeg will be introducing Fahrenheit 451 (Sat 09/04) -- he was the Director of Photography on that film. Julian Barnes, Mike Figgis, Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh and the actress Kika Markham will also be introducing films (Tue 19/04, Thu 28/04, Fri 22/04, Thu 21/04 and Fri 15/04 respectively). We say: make your journey to South Ken and rub black leather-clad shoulders with fellow franco-filmo-philes. BYO French person to put you in the mood. And those films that say "in French only" are especially tempting! (Totally Truffaut runs till 30/04.)

NB: not only is the Cine Lumiere feeding the habit of Nouvelle vague junkies, the Everyman Cinema is doing it too! The Movie Lounge Series comprises of Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard films screened with an introduction by Roland-Francois Lack on Monday nights during April.

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TALK JAH WOBBLE

Chelsea College of Art and Design

Friday 8 April [6:30pm]

Millbank, SW1 T:020.7514.7751 Tube: Pimlico
general £5 | concessions £3.50

Considered by many to be a true post-punk Renaissance man, Jah Wobble's musical career covers a wide spectrum. As former bass player for PiL, where his taut, deeply dub-inspired basslines were sometimes rumoured to play second fiddle to a mean right hook, he eventually found himself working as a session musician for the likes of The Orb, and collaborating with Sinead O'Connor among others. However, the term "session musician" does him a great injustice -- his work, like the wandering melody his bass picks out on The Orb's Blue Room, drive tracks firmly along from the lower bass frequencies. His stint as a London Underground train driver and dissatisfaction with the music industry is relatively well-documented, but in a time when proudly London-centric musicians are held near the forefront of the UK's musical climate, the time for a comeback is right -- and he's quietly been releasing new material in collaboration with others which encompasses forward-thinking electronic music whilst retaining a blissed-out dub vibe. And now, following in the footsteps of the likes of Iain Sinclair, he's talking about his new book -- discussing the mystical aspects of the city as defined by the Thames.

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SATURDAY 9 APRIL
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

ART DEUTSCHE BOERSE PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE 2005

Photographers' Gallery

Saturday 9 April [Mon to Sat 11am - 6pm; Sun 12pm - 6pm]

5 & 8 Great Newport St., WC2 T:020.7831.1772 Tube: Leicester Sq.
FREE

Would it be horribly cynical to suggest that Deutsche Boerse, operator of the German stock exchange that recently tried to take over our own stock exchange, is sponsoring the Photographers' Gallery's international photography prize in a contemptible attempt to curry favour with Londoners? To be fair, they take over from Citigroup, who were hardly homegrown and, considering the exchange's nascent photography collection, this could be quite a coup for the gallery. The selection is on the basis of a significant publication or exhibition in Europe in the past year or so, and up for the not inconsiderable prize are Luc Delahaye, JH Engstroem and Joerg Sasse, with Stephen Shore as the daddy of the boys. And given that Sasse and Shore are favourites of KultureFlash this long time, maybe DB (not to be confused with the other db, which incidentally like Boerse has signed a three-year sponsorship deal with Frieze Art Fair) deserves credit for canniness after all.

NB: runs till 05/06.

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SUNDAY 10 APRIL
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

FILM THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON

Sunday 10 April

@ various cinemas across London
check press for times and ticket prices

Nixon wasn't assassinated (true), someone did try to assassinate him (also true), their chosen method was to crash a plane into The White House (unbelievable we know, but true) and this was 30 years before September 11. Niels Mueller unearthed this remarkable story while researching another script and turned it into a great film, combining the study of a man unfit for how life works with an excellent evocation of a different time. Sean Penn plays Samuel Bicke (the real man was named Byck), a low-key, ineffectual kind of no-hoper who broke down -- and as always when the impotent go after the powerful, he resorts to extremes. Having lost his wife (played by Naomi Watts) and children, his brother, his job and his dream (a mobile tyre service -- how's that for an aspiration?) in an inexorable pounding of fate, he feels himself driven to the desperate measure of the film's title. An outstanding supporting cast gives the film some heartbreaking moments -- a photograph he fails to take of his estranged kids, the showdown with his brother -- and as they say, you couldn't make this stuff up.

NB: TAORN is released in London on 08/04. Other films released on the same day of interest are Bullet Boy and Kill Your Idols.

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MONDAY 11 APRIL
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

ART / FILM / TALK ARTPROJX: SUSAN HILLER (WITH JOERG HEISER AND DARIAN LEADER)

Prince Charles Cinema

Monday 11 April [6:30 - 8:30pm]

7 Leicester Place, WC2 T:020.7494.3654 Tube: Leicester Sq.
£10

Approaching the ignored or hidden, Susan Hiller begins looking at the familiar to embark on a trip of discovery and exploration. Like an anthropologist in her local setting, Hiller explores notions of reality, using art as a potential to rearticulate the visible and invisible. The J-Street Project (2003-05) presents Hiller's alternative visual mapping of the contemporary German landscape. Recording places, with names referencing a Jewish presence, she provokes a re-evaluation of the socialising of space, proving that, whilst these places are so synonymous with a society, they almost become ignored. They also act as reference points for historical document, evoking a sense of loss and disturbance in the comfort of our familiar environments. Suggesting that art provides an "enhanced awareness" of how we are all "collaboratively and creatively implicated in making a culture", Hiller's work is not just the object, but the thoughts and ideas led by the imagination on experiencing it. If viewing art is itself an act of finding that which doesn't exist within it, but rather the discovery of something missing from the everyday, then Hiller's latest project provokes the desire to transcend the experience of life and art and rediscover that which remains a continuous noisy silence.

NB: after the screening Susan Hiller will be in conversation with Darian Leader (psychoanalyst and author) and Joerg Heiser (co-editor of frieze magazine). This event has been programmed by Artprojx and the Timothy Taylor Gallery in conjuction with the exhibition of the J-Street Project at the Timothy Taylor Gallery (14/04 till 21/05). On Fri 15/04 catch the Artprojx special screening of Beneath the Roses, a documentary on Gregory Crewdson's latest body of work.

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FESTIVAL / TALK JOHN BERGER, GEOFF DYER, ANNE MICHAELS, MICHAEL ONDAATJE...

Royal Festival Hall

Monday 11 April [7:30pm]

South Bank, SE1 T:0870.401.8181 Tube: Embankment/Waterloo
general £9 | concessions £6.50

London's John Berger season takes its title from his latest novel: Here Is Where We Meet. The season stretches over a month and 20-odd venues, featuring film, talks, readings, exhibitions and performances that span the diversity of Berger's extraordinary creative output as novelist/screenwriter/dramatist/critic. This retrospective is as much a celebration of his work as the ideas of openness and creative collaboration he has come to stand for. What The Hand Is Holding: Writing Now starts the season by bringing Berger together with other important literary voices to discuss the state of writing and its possibilities today. Joining him will be past collaborators Anne Michaels and Timothy O'Grady, follower Geoff Dyer and poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje.

NB: this event launches the John Berger: Here Is Where We Meet season (runs till 18/05). If you cannot make it to this discussion then catch Berger on Tue 19/04 when he chats with Geoff Dyer at the NFT.

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TUESDAY 12 APRIL
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

DESIGN / TALK BRAZIL, ARGENTINA AND JAPAN IN ADVERTISING AND DESIGN

Old Billingsgate

Tuesday 12 April [Tue 12/04 and Wed 13/04 at 7:30pm]

16 Lower Thames St., EC3 T:0207.840.1127 Tube: Monument/Tower Hill
general £20 | concessions £16 (members)

Think of Brazil and Argentina, and design hardly comes to mind. Instead there are the flights of footie fancy, the joys of their samba and carnival tango and, now, dance music, but D&AD are highlighting another export of these two South American giants: advertising. Washington Olivetto of W/Brazil, Leandro Raposo of JWT Buenos Aires and Carlos Bayala of Mother will speak on matters related to the growth of the South American advertising industry, its success and what we can learn from it.

On the other hand, Japan brings up a different though equally interesting idea in cultural terms. They have slowly, like the Borg, assimilated the West, then, strangely, re-designed it in their own unique way. Forget Wabi-sabi, tea ceremonies and them samurai; instead think Sony, Kurosawa and the Pizzicato Five throwing back our very own ideas in different guises. D&AD are bringing together architect Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham, Tom Lloyd of PearsonLloyd who is setting up there, Teruo Kurosaki of Idee and Jonathan Barnbrook on Barnbrook Design's success story. All will provide practical advice and speak on matters relating to that truly foreign, yet weirdly familiar, country.

NB: Brazil and Argentina: Latin Logos is being held on Tue 12/04 and Japan: Design In Translation on Wed 13/04. On Sat 16/04 catch the 2005 D&AD Awards Winners Exhibition (10:30am - 6pm).

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ONGOING & UPCOMING
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueFeatures

FESTIVAL LONDON LESBIAN AND GAY FILM FESTIVAL

Ends Wednesday 13 April

NFT and Tate Modern
check press for times and ticket prices

"The personal is the political", so goes the phrase from the '70s women's movement, but maybe that form of empowerment has also trickled into the Gay-Lesbian crowd over the years. They may not have achieved ubiquitous acceptance just yet, but a lesbian kiss in a soap is huge progress, not to mention regular, and popular, film festivals. This year's edition, the 19th, is city-wide, bringing us all sorts of "personal": young love, old love, Morrissey, parenthood, orgasm... Ultimately these films are not alternative; rather they allow us to remember our complexity and difference, something that Hollywood constantly tries to iron out.

For the emotionally adventurous, everyone's favourite alternative, angst-ridden filmmaker, Gregg Araki, is back with a coming of age story, sweet you think, until true to his roots Araki lets his young characters walk down much darker paths (13/04). Likewise the daughter of Italian horror maestro Dario and cult siren Asia Argento's finely characterised second feature, based on JT Leroy's semi-autobiography, also allows the young to come of age in treacherous and difficult ways.

For the more visually adventurous, there is a series of William E Jones films at Tate Modern (Fri 08/04). The gay and cult documentary filmmaker's touching sociological study of Morrissey fans among the Hispanics and Latinos of Los Angeles should bring a smile to music cultists as well as the Mancunian's fans. But for the more serious, Jones' other studies, the self-explanatory The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography or his hometown document Massillion, may be more appreciated. Fast Trip, Long Drop (Sat 09/04), the avant-garde, art activist and Douglas Crimp protege Gregg Bordowitz's first film feature, which was included in the Whitney Biennial, turns the camera on himself in this narrative of becoming more AIDS aware.

NB: on 11/04 (8:45pm) JT Leroy will give an introduction to Asia Argento's The Heart is Deceitful... Above All Things. You can also catch Leroy before at Foyles when he reads from his work (6pm). Gregg Bordowitz will give a talk after the screening of Fast Trip, Long Drop on 09/04 (3pm).

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BOOK LAUNCH / TALK LAUREN BACALL

National Theatre

Wednesday 13 April [6pm]

South Bank, SE1 T:020.7452.3400 Tube: Embankment/Waterloo
general £3.50 | concessions £2.50

While KultureFlash is not generally fanatical about luvvies, it's not everyday a great silverscreen diva comes to town, dahling. Since the death of fellow lippy actress and close friend Katherine Hepburn, it's left to Lauren Bacall to carry the mantle for all those women who don't fancy sloping off meekly or donating their bodies to plastic surgery once they've hit the 40 mark. Her famously ungenerous comment about her co-star Nicole Kidman -- she suggested that la Kidman was too young to be an icon -- had an important point to make about our youth-obsessed, here-today-gone-tomorrow celebrity culture. Always impossibly elegant with her angular looks and shirt-'n'-slacks combo, she's also a refreshing counter to the vulgar sexuality that today's young actresses are expected to flaunt, however ironically. Tonight she'll be talking about the follow-up to her autobiography, By Myself, prosaically titled By Myself and Then Some. Always enjoyable to hear an insider slagging off the Hollywood industry -- after all, she's a veteran of some 50 films -- we can count on Bacall to divulge characteristically candid and entertaining truths.

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CONCERT FOG AND EFTERKLANG

Bush Hall

Thursday 14 April [8pm]

310 Uxbridge Rd., W12 T:020.8222.6955 Tube: Shepherd's Bush
£10

Enjoy two remarkable contemporary talents in the genteel surrounds of the Bush Hall next Thursday thanks to promoter Knom. Fog is Andrew Broder -- an artist who has expanded the alt-rock palette to subtly incorporate spindly breaks, electronic fuzz and tone poetry. Not to mention the odd tune. Recorded by Tom Herber (responsible for Low's excellent The Great Destroyer), Broder's forthcoming 10th Avenue Freakout has been variously described as a "newfound treasure" and "like a deaf orchestra with an armless conductor". (The former is more pertinent, dear Flasher.) Rather more unified praise for Efterklang, the Danish Collective, whose melds of delicate melody and epic noise has been favourably compared to Sigur Ros. Their debut album Tripper has just received widespread acclaim (released in the UK last month) and their first EP -- Springer -- is to be released in the UK next week (sadly not in its original white fur, natch). Listen to first track "Kloy Gyn" here.

NB: see our features section to read our review of Efterklang's two releases on Leaf, Tripper (LP) and Springer (EP).

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ART LEE KRASNER

Bernard Jacobson

Ends Saturday 23 April [Mon to Fri 10am - 6pm; Sat 10am - 1pm]

6 Cork St., W1 T:020.7734.3431 Tube: Green Park/Oxford Circus
FREE

Being played by the "uncompromisingly tough" Marcia Gay Harden must somewhat make up for having to nurse maid a demanding husband. Where the latter was regarded for his synthesis of Picasso and the Mexican muralists, Lee Krasner's maturity, though it came late, can be viewed as stemming from Pollock (via Picasso) and Matisse. Perhaps, we could call it a splattery, fragmented floralism? These days our eyes are so unaccustomed, especially in this city, to arguments made first for the eye, hence Krasner's (1908-84) work seems entirely from another era; her ideas came to fruition long after that kind of maximal painting went out of fashion. Perhaps most like de Kooning, her work is a synthesis of European thought with American attitude; drawing is turned into paint, pictorial structure goes from end to end, pattern -- which may be her big innovation via Matisse through Pollock -- is wielded through scythes of the arm rather than wrist. Ultimately they are female without being feminine, painterly without being drippy, yet this selection of work covering a 30-year period is not necessarily her strongest -- that is on view in the Abstract Expressionist room in Tate Modern -- rather this is a taster as the artist has not shown here in 20 years. (Runs till 23/04.)

NB: for a deeper understanding of the Matisse connection, catch Matisse, His Art and His Textiles at the Royal Academy.

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ART JENNY HOLZER

Sprueth Magers Lee

Ends Saturday 23 April [Mon to Frid 10am - 6pm; Sat 11am - 4pm]

12 Berkeley St., W1 T:020.7491.0100 Tube: Green Park
FREE

Jenny Holzer, in case you didn't know, makes art out of words, and has done so for a while now. If you'd been attentive while strolling down New York City streets in the late-70s, you may have encountered her Truisms in the guise of stickers and posters. These basic statements, almost anti-Haikus, have now evolved into complex sentences carried by equally thoughtful structures. When offered a show at the Guggenheim, she created a spiral of cascading electronic words all flowing down that famous walkway, and moved from a purer conceptualism into that of the visual event. Here, Holzer has collaborated with poet Henri Cole to float his words within an inverted pyramid-like structure on the one hand, and a curved band on the other. Unlike the ascetic conceptualism of the early years, the words here have become a landscape of visual elements, upside down, backwards, forwards, fast, slow. Holzer with Cole is creating a visual poetry that can even be seen from across the street.

NB: this show has been extended until 23/04.

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CLASSICAL MUSIC JONNY GREENWOOD AND THE BBC CONCERT ORCHESTRA

LSO St. Luke's

Saturday 23 April [7:30pm]

161 Old St., EC1 T:020.7638.8891 Tube: Old St.
general £15 | concessions £12.5

Hot on the heels of his recent collaboration with the London Sinfonietta, roving Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood here launches three years as composer-in-residence for the BBC Concert Orchestra, thus turning his CV into a thing of unparalleled magnitude. The naysayers who think Radiohead became unlistenable after OK Computer (and who generally never got round to actually listening to the splendid Kid A) are probably bracing themselves for some wrong-footing creative blowback come the band's next release, or just tutting indignantly at the audacity of the man. But as an instrument connoisseur (a pet obsession is the very weird electronic whooper, the Ondes Martenot) who started his music career as an accomplished viola player, Greenwood's credentials are compelling. Working with a consistently pioneering orchestra, whose other projects include a Flashmob Opera, it'll be intriguing to hear what he comes up with. Just don't be surprised if the next Radiohead album sees guitars being replaced entirely by clavichords.

NB: this event is part of the Barbican's Only Connect series of events. It will sell out so get your tickets fast!

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ARTWORKER OF THE WEEK #42
FIONA TAN

The author Djuna Barnes has been quoted as saying, "A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same." Fiona Tan has always been similarly fascinated by the influence of an individual's self-perceived identity on their behaviour. Her complex background has forced her to never take her own identity for granted. Indonesian-born Tan is the daughter of a Chinese-Indonesian father and a Scottish-Australian mother, and though raised in Australia, she was educated in Germany and Holland. Confusion about her own identity has led her to explore the meaning of cultural and personality identity through her role as an artist. In her work, she examines how identities are constructed and how notions about identity impact our attitudes towards strangers and our assumptions about ourselves. Tan's first solo museum exhibition in the UK, at Modern Art Oxford, includes Countenance (first presented at Documenta 11). Here, Tan revisits August Sander's extensive photographic essay People of the 20th Century, in which he photographed more than five hundred German citizens between 1892 and 1954, and organised the portraits into seven portfolios according to profession and social milieu.

Fiona Tan's Countenance is currently on view at Modern Art Oxford (runs till 29/05/05).

To read the interview click here.

 

CD REVIEW
TRIPPER (LP)
SPRINGER (EP)

Efterklang

Leaf
UK release dates:
Tripper 28/03/2005
Springer 11/04/2005

Imagine a frozen lake, with the gentlest morning light. You can hear a shadowy sound, a glacial elegance beneath the surface of the water. Break the surface and the sounds that crystallise in the air draw images of Tarkovsky and Bergman, Boards of Canada crossing paths with Sigur Ros, Max Richter dining with Rachel's, Mum, Mogwai, Arvo Part, The Sugarcubes, and a fuzzy history of sparsely populated Icelandic towns. This solemn, yet eminently elegant sound is Efterklang, an extended ensemble from Copenhagen, who have produced some of the most lush and exquisite music in recent years. Uniting electronics with acoustic instrumentation, anchoring them to a central pulse and weaving a delicately incomprehensible voice across the landscape, as a mournful choir and sympathetic strings illustrates and colours in a textual manner, is the principal shape to their sound.

Released in 2003 (and re-issued this month), the Springer EP is a striking introduction, with patiently balanced male/female vocals against contemplative displays of tension and surface. Tripper, originally released in 2004, continues this symphonic approach with an intelligent and effective use of drama and silence, bridging the vast spaces with whispered voices and intricate flittering electronic glitches. There's nothing erroneous about creating such beautifully sensual work and Efterklang are unafraid to offer us moments of absolute bliss in a time of unrest. On record and live, they are a seductive and essential force. Close your eyes for an instant and breathe, and relish that moment.

Cath Efterklang next week on Thu 14/04 when they play with Fog at Bush Hall.

To buy Tripper and Springer online click here.

 

BOOK REVIEW
DesignArt

Alex Coles

Tate Publishing: £18.99
ISBN: 1-85437-520-2
UK release date: 03/2005

"It's decorative", that classic putdown, marks the line that separated art and design in the last century. Only in recent decades have these parameters of intellectual creativity shifted such that artists now consider the designed world as part of their visual vocabulary. This does not imply that there hasn't been art that engages design, in fact right now there is a Matisse exibition at the Royal Academy that makes just this point. Yet that line between ornament and art has been well preserved. Matisse's patterns through to Pollock's rhythmic gestures and Morris Louis' veils, then the '70s Pattern Painting generation, have all contributed to the gradual breakdown that had already begun with Modern's revolution across the visual arts. When Jorge Pardo first began appropriating design objects, it was considered an aspect of West Coast appropriation, but in time his work has settled onto that very line of demarcation itself. We won't even mention what Murakami has done with Louis Vuitton; he was, according to Scott Rothkoph, the most visible artist in Venice at the last biennale because of the street side sales of those bags. All this brings us to the "bathroom" academic, Alex Coles, who has coined the phrase "design art" to refer to this very work that sits on the line. A regular critic-about-our-town and lecturer at Surrey, Coles' book, divided into Jim Lambie, furniture, interiors and architecture, allows him to re-engage our last century and recent history in terms of Art's designs on design.

To buy DesignArt online click here or buy it through Walther Koenig Books at the Serpentine Gallery (020.7706.4907).

 
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KultureFlash is a free, weekly newsletter covering contemporary culture in and around London. Each week we track down some of the more unusual and interesting events taking place in the Capital and deliver them straight to your inbox. Featuring art, gigs, films, talks, clubs and more -- we are committed to bringing you an eclectic mix of the most stimulating events in London.

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