KF Archive
Artists
Poetry
Interviews

Print Issue
Send Issue
Contact
About KF

Subscribe
Unsubscribe

Issue 125

So the quiet season finally approaches the art world; this only means that we're getting our summer wear drycleaned for the auctions, fairs and finally biennale bashing. This year a double whammy of two rival biennales in the same city is sure to provide the summer's curtain raiser: Prague! If not then Gilbert & George have been keeping up with our Tony in their new work for Britain at Venice. Or acquire Tracey's sms at auction quick? before she stops it!

That said it is also the moment for Cannes, and a Belgium duo have won the coveted Palme d'Or... again! In terms of repetition, George has yet again provoked someone's ire... and it's not just Philip French's, and with Jim Jarmusch, David Cronenberg, Lars Von Trier, Michael Haneke and Tommy Lee Jones putting out new films, Cannes has again had its fair share of proper highlights.

To keep up with our wired fraternity, Cybersalon's Wireless Utopias is back (26/05), and we know it must be warm again as the Sancho Panza crew are pushing out a "floral boat" this week (29/05)...

If you're after something more braincell-burning, then go to Nicholas Ray's Alvar Aalto talk (25/05) or join the newly launched Steidlville Book Club or maybe ponder the criticism of Jasper John's latest show...

The week's scandal, however, has to go to the "quiet" sale of the New York Public Library's Asher B Durand's 1849 Kindred Sprits to the Wal-Mart collection (!?) by silent auction.

Finally our artworker Joerg Sasse speaks about his work, while our header and animated homepage -- in conjunction with his participation in onedotzero9 -- are by Daniel Brown.

Headlines

Art: Iconic NYC Avant-Garde; Jospeh Cornell and Lawrence Jordan; Matisse: Art And Textiles; Urs Fischer

Club: Novamute: L Slater, T.Raumschmiere, C Vogel, Si Begg...; Sonar 2005: Miss Kittin, Francois K, J Liddell, Mental Overdrive...; Soundslike Werk: Party Number 3

Concert: Britsh Sea Power; Damo Suzuki; Lou Barlow; nlf3 trio: Que Viva Mexico; One Self (DJ Vadim)

Dance: Rambert Dance Company

Design: Boudicca Vs Adjaye

DJ: Novamute: L Slater, T.Raumschmiere, C Vogel, Si Begg...; Sonar 2005: Miss Kittin, Francois K, J Liddell, Mental Overdrive...; Soundslike Werk: Party Number 3

Fashion: Anne Valerie Hash; Boudicca Vs Adjaye

Festival: onedotzero9

Film: The Consequences Of Love; Iconic NYC Avant-Garde; Jospeh Cornell and Lawrence Jordan; nlf3 trio: Que Viva Mexico

Performance: Sexymachinery 11

Poetry: Mark Ford

Reading: Mark Ford; Rachel Cohen

Talk: Boudicca Vs Adjaye; Iconic NYC Avant-Garde; Jospeh Cornell and Lawrence Jordan

Artworker: Joerg Sasse

CD Review: Sanso-Xtro

Book Review: Railway Stations

 
WEDNESDAY 25 MAY
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

CONCERT BRITSH SEA POWER

Scala

Wednesday 25 May [7pm]

275-277 Pentonville Rd., N1 T:020.7833.2022 Tube: King's Cross
£14 (advance)

A lot has been made about the rise of intellectual bands. Gone it would seem is the rough working class charisma that characterised our music heroes over the previous decades and arise the middle class, university educated; rejecting the nine to five, in favour of a career in rock 'n' roll. In terms of intellectualism British Sea Power rule the roost with lyrics that mention subjects as wide as Wilfred Owen, Keats and the merits of antique weaponry, to name but a few... oh yes, there is no other band like BSP. At first glance they are a record company's nightmare, demanding that their stage be always decorated with the stuffed animals and foliage that have accompanied them since their early gigs, leading one unbelieving record company executive to describe them as the "worst fu*king band in Britain". Whoever that particular exec was has been proved wrong with the release of their second LP, Open Season, and a fresh round of gigs to support it. Still searching in areas far beyond where the normal band treads and breaking free of the concert hall they will just have performed at this year's Chelsea Flower Show. Now that's real guerrilla gigging!

Send Event
Print Event
Top

DANCE RAMBERT DANCE COMPANY

Sadler's Wells

Wednesday 25 May [Wed 25/05 to Sat 28/05 7:30pm and Sat 28/05 2:30pm mat.]

Rosebery Avenue, EC1 T:020.7863.8000 Tube: Angel
£15 - £40

First amongst a multitude of good reasons to get a ticket for Rambert this week is Constant Speed, Mark Baldwin's inaugural work as Britain's largest and most treasured contemporary dance company's artistic director. The critics will be ready to pounce on the Kiwi's commission for the Institute of Physics to mark this year's centenary of Einstein's pioneering ideas on relativity, light and atoms. Will he or won't he hit the mark when, like pollen grains in water, he uses the principles of Brownian motion to send all 22 company dancers jostling about Sadler's Wells? Rambert like to balance their programmes with representations of their past, present and future. A big part of their past, Frederick Ashton, has been quite heavily "done" in recent time, so it's encouraging to see a selection -- Dark Elegies and the Judgement of Paris -- from his "rival" for the early 20th century choreographic crown, the contrastingly dark and mournful Antony Tudor, on the bill. Last in the line-up, Momenta, a work dancer Michaela Polley has created in collaboration with a doctoral student from the Royal Academy of Music Patrick Nunn for the current choreographic workshop season, will provide an interesting measure of Rambert's continuing reputation as a choreographer's company.

NB: this mixed programme runs till Sat 28/05. For something completely different; Wed 25/05 will be London's last chance for now to experience the punishment and play of rapidly rising star Jasmin Vardimon as she performs her newest work Park at Sadler's sister theatre the Peacock.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

THURSDAY 26 MAY
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

ART / FILM / TALK ICONIC NYC AVANT-GARDE

Rothermere American Institute

Thursday 26 May [5pm]

1A South Parks Rd., Oxford T:01865.282.710 Tube: Oxford
FREE

This Thursday, art critic Melissa Gronlund and iconic British filmmaker Malcolm Le Grice host a marathon screening of the often quoted but rarely viewed canonic gems of New York's avant-garde film movement. Included is perhaps the most famous film of the '60s avant-garde, the late Stan Brakhage's loving yet unflinching record of his son's homebirth Window, Water, Baby Moving (1962). Screened alongside this arresting meeting between nature and the camera are Dog Star Man: Prelude (1962) and Mothlight (1963), two lyrical examples of Brakhage's renowned visual and philosophical range. Mothlight, a five-minute film of translucent moth wings seen through a window, was described by Brakhage as a "collage" but acts as something closer to a visual poem. Similarly lyrical is Hollis Frampton's Nostalgia (1971), a 36-minute film of 12 photographs burning to ash on a hotplate. Gronlund states that Frampton is deservingly "on the brink of an art world apotheosis". And her prediction is shared by the editors of October magazine who recently dedicated an entire issue to his work and the curators of the LUX gallery who will stage a retrospective of his films in 2006.

NB: in addition, this programme offers an unique opportunity to hear British filmmaker Malcolm Le Grice speak and to see his lauded multi-projector film Berlin Horse (1970). Still strikingly beautiful in their own right, these films also qualify as mandatory homework for anyone interested in film history.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

POETRY / READING MARK FORD

Parasol unit

Thursday 26 May [7pm]

14 Wharf Road T:020.7490.7373 Tube: Old Street
FREE

Sometimes the UK poetry scene seems dispiritingly polarised between a parochial "mainstream" perversely bent on updating Georgian gentility on the one hand and a puritanically gnarly neo-modernism on the other -- either all too familiar or all too strange. So Mark Ford's knack for estranging the familiar makes him a godsend. He looks beyond local modernisms and anti-modernisms to more eccentric and cosmopolitan models like the oddball proto-Surrealist dandy Raymond Roussel, whose biography he's essayed, and the New York School poets such as John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, whose works he has anthologised. Witty and formally inventive, Ford's address to the reader at its best is as uncanny as the one described in a poem from his most recent collection, Soft Sift: "my name whispered fiercely, excitedly, / In a voice I both dreaded and instantly recognized."

NB: this reading is the first in a new series organised by KF Contributing Editor Barry Schwabsky.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

READING RACHEL COHEN

London Review Bookshop

Thursday 26 May [7pm]

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

Work avoidance, that is flat cleaning, reading newspapers or magazines, strolling round the block and napping, are classic methods by which creative individuals sweat out their inspiration. It's not really avoiding but waiting...Another method is to just take a road trip, just call it "research". It seems Rachel Cohen inadvertently did this, having driven cross-country and found in the solitude a moment to spend with the trunkful of authors in her car. The result happily has been her A Chance Meeting: Intertwined lives of American Writers and Artists (1854-1967), a non-fictional literary work of biography?if that makes sense. As its title suggests, the book documents 36 encounters between American creatives: Charlie Chaplin and Hart Crane, Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle, Norman Mailer and Richard Avedon among others. Even Duchamp makes an appearance! In sync with the rise of the American century, these are real lives and real encounters, but what happens then is imagined with the help presumably of research... But Cohen's charm lies in enriching and giving voice to these famous lives. Now here's our opportunity to hear the voice behind the voices.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

CONCERT ONE SELF (DJ VADIM)

Jazz Cafe

Thursday 26 May [7pm]

5 Parkway, NW1 T:020.7916.6060 Tube: Camden Town
£12.50

You don't get time to hang a sign on DJ Vadim. The London-raised Russian has been called the hardest working man in hip hop, having filled the past 17 years with an almost scary amount of releases and live shows. At the moment, he's keeping himself busy with a range of one-off productions for artists from places like Peru, Paraguay and Puerto Rico, while working away with a Spanish flamenco group and making beats for UK acts Foreign Beggars and Dark Circle. Oh, and then there are the two albums he's putting out on Ninja Tune this year, the first of which is Children Of Possibility (out next month), a collaboration with MC Blu Rum13 and Yarah Bravo (Vadim's wife). While this would seem like a breakneck pace for any artist, it is just the way things have been in the wonderful world of Vadim ever since he set up the club Urban Soul in Kingston in 1992. Three years later, DJ Vadim founded his own record label, Jazz Fudge -- and the rest is history. The gig at the Jazz Cafe will be a chance to catch this workaholic before he's off on tour again; 300 dates have been booked in all the major venues in North and South America, Asia and Europe.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

CLUB / DJ SONAR 2005: MISS KITTIN, FRANCOIS K, J LIDDELL, MENTAL OVERDRIVE...

Fabric

Thursday 26 May [Entrance 9pm - 4am]

77A Charterhouse St., EC1 T:020.7344.4444 Tube: Farringdon
£10 (advance)

If you are shopping around for a music festival to be seen at this summer, you could do worse than twinning it with EasyJet's lack of hospitality and making your way to Barcelona for its twelfth annual Sonar festival in June. The event takes in three days of a packed line-up featuring the newest and most progressive music from the best DJs plying their trade across the world. Showcasing new talent and giving the opportunity to see some of the most respected DJs around, Sonar takes breaks and beats, techno, electro -- well, everything -- and gives it space to breathe in a three-day-long club night that makes any other festival look like Butlins. But if you can't wait until June, Sonar's organisers have laid on a night in the East's top club venue Fabric, headlining some of its DJ highlights with Miss Kittin, live sets from among others Francois K, Jamie Lidell, Mental Overdrive and a four-deck set from Undo and Vicknoise. The beauty of a place like Fabric is the possibility to slip from one space to another and from one soundscape to another. So a mini music festival on a Thursday night for ten pounds... it's got to beat Red Coats and the Birdy Song, no?

Send Event
Print Event
Top

FRIDAY 27 MAY
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

FESTIVAL ONEDOTZERO9

ICA

Friday 27 May [27/05 till 06/06]

The Mall, SW1 T:020.7930.3647 Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly Circus
general £6.50 (per event) | concessions £5.50 (per event)

Returning to the ICA for its ninth year, onedotzero really has established itself as a modern institution, committed to celebrating all things moving image. Focusing on the continued crossplatform convergence of emerging digital cultures, the festival includes its usual combination of retrospective, international and cutting edge compilation programmes, feature films, panel discussions and live events. From anime and gaming to promos and architecture, its rich breadth of content ensures the continued dialogue between artists and industry, and the valuable development of new talent.

Below are our picks:

Generative X
Fri 27/05 to Thu 02/06 (12 - 8pm daily)
A showcase of leading internet artists including among others Daniel Brown, Golan Levin, James Tindall, Marius Watz and Ben Fry. On Fri 27/05 at 7pm catch a panel discussion with artists from the exhibition. (Generative X runs till 30/06.)

Wow + Flutter
Fri 27/05 (5pm), Sat 28/05 (7pm), Mon 30/05 (5pm), Wed 01/06 (9pm), Fri 03/06 (7pm) and Sun 05/06 (7pm)
Ideas lab and showcase of experimental moving image, which includes Edouard Salier's Empire and Guilherme Marcondes' Into Pieces.

Survive Style 5+
Fri 27/05, Sat 28/05 and Tue 31/05 (9pm)
Vinnie Jones stars in this quite mental looking Japanese feature from J-Star director Sekiguchi Gen.

Playtime: Mike Mills Music Videos
Sat 28/05 (5pm), Tue 31/06 (5pm), Fri 03/06 (6:30pm) and Sun 05/06 (8:30pm)
In advance of his debut feature, a retrospective of music promos, including work for Air, Pulp and Yoko Ono.

Memories: Mike Mills Docs And Shorts
Sat 28/05 (6:30pm), Thu 02/05 (5pm) and Sat 04/06 (7pm)
Includes Deformer, which documents the life of pro skateboarder/artist Ed Templeton, and dreamy short The Architecture of Reassurance.

Graphic Cities 05
Sat 28/05 (8:30pm), Sun 29/05 (4pm), Sat 04/06 (4pm) and Sun 05/06 (3pm)
A compilation programme featuring explorations of real or imagined architecture and environments.

UVA: 51 30' 22" 00 07' 50"
Wed 04/06 (8:30pm)
A specially commissioned light based visual performance featuring real time digital manipulation combined with live and recorded musical collaboration.

Anotomy Of A commercial Campaign: Honda Grrr
Thu 02/06 (7pm)
The creative teams responsible for the innovative and award winning campaign for Honda Grrr deconstruct its successful delivery.

War Of The Worlds: Monsterism Vs Pain
Thu 02/06 (8:30pm)
It's a live event featuring Pete Fowler and James Jarvis. Obviously they will be doing the monster mash.

NB: onedotzero9 runs from 27/05 till 06/06.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

FASHION ANNE VALERIE HASH

V&A Museum

Friday 27 May [1:30, 3:30, 7 and 8:30pm]

Cromwell Rd., SW7 T:020.7942.2000 Tube: South Kensington
FREE

As some journalist, in some section of some weekend broadsheet, almost said last week; boho is so "oh no" now Posh that has got her mitts on it. Fashion may be fickle, but let's please bury the big buckled belts, the prairie skirts and the hipsters, weld them into a solid metal box, sprinkle it with ashes of cremated Uggs on So Hill, in the County of Over. Now to the future and clothes that will make you feel special, sophisticated and individual: Anne Valerie Hash's collection is in town and even if you aren't a fashionista you really should go to get wardrobe inspiration. Up come the waistlines, in comes the masculine rearranged for the more oestrogened of us, and hello the second half of this decade. A graduate of the Chambre Syndicale School de la Haute Couture, Anne has flitted her way through Chanel, Lacroix, Dior and even Lagerfeld's office and straight into her own collection. You can catch this rising star's work for free at the V&A's Fashion in Motion, but hurry, places are limited, and those left behind could be resigned to a life of influence from paparazzi shots of tres dull Sienna.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

SATURDAY 28 MAY
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

CLUB / DJ SOUNDSLIKE WERK: PARTY NUMBER 3

Saturday 28 May [9pm - 6am]

secret warehouse in South London
general £10 | concessions £8

How do you like your dance music? Cutting-edge and difficult to define? If so, Werk and Accidental have put together a line-up which, presumably, will appeal to your tastes. We say presumably as, in this instance, they've not released any details (although from our sources we can divulge two of the artists playing: Patrick Pulsinger and Anthony "Shake" Shakir) and are relying on people's good faith to bring them to this event -- but if the luminaries they've had at previous line-ups is anything to go by, fans of intelligent dance will be weeping into their beer with delight (in a mere two parties they've entertained Four Tet, Rob Brown and Mr 76ix, Matthew Herbert and Sir Real among others). It's in a secret warehouse. Tickets are limited and available from the usual suspects like Smallfish (see NB for full details on how to obtain 'em). The music is described variously as "house-hop, spit 'n' sawdust, cheese 'n' ham, fire 'n' brimstone electronic oddball rave guff, drone-core, synth-wash and power-bollocks". Basically, it's going to be mental. Head down, take your friends and leave them scratching your head for weeks trying to work out how you hear about these things.

NB: the free pre-party -- Winkled Sores -- takes place on Wed 25/05 (7pm - 12am) at The Social (5 Little Portland St., W1). Tickets for main event are available at The Social, by sending an email to soundslike_werk@bigfoot.com, or by phone or text on the following numbers: 07990.970.267 or 07977. 984.805. Alternatively you can try and buy 'em at Smallfish, Selectadisc and Sounds of the Universe.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

CLUB / DJ NOVAMUTE: L SLATER, T.RAUMSCHMIERE, C VOGEL, SI BEGG...

Fabric

Saturday 28 May [10pm - 7am]

77A Charterhouse St., EC1 T:020.7344.4444 Tube: Farringdon
general £15 | students £12

Joining the usual Saturday night funky tech-house residents (such as Terry Francis) at Fabric this weekend is an eclectic selection indeed: forward-thinking promoters have given the spacious second room over to one of the United Kingdom's most innovative and exciting labels, novamute. This means that the usual well turned-out crowd will be able to eschew the urgent delights of hard, tribal basslines in favour of a more avant-garde selection of beats: the headline slot goes to none other than techno maestro Luke Slater with prestigious warm-up material in the form of T.Raumschmiere and his full live band. Slater's recent work has seen him step away from the urgent tech sounds he engineered under his Planetary Assault Systems guise and more towards deep, analogue electro-style house, and since crazy Berliner Raumschmiere will be promoting fuzzy punk-electro material with his band, the evening's tone seems to be more eyeliner/angular haircut/glitter-based than normal. Add to the mix the frankly awesome Si Begg and a live performance from Cristian Vogel and you've got a real treat for those who attend Smithfield's most notorious ex-meat market.

NB: if you miss this event, Raumschmiere is taking hedonistic Londoners through the bank holiday in style by playing a second set on Sun 29/05 at The Garage.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

SUNDAY 29 MAY
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

ART / FILM / TALK JOSPEH CORNELL AND LAWRENCE JORDAN

Tate Modern

Sunday 29 May [3pm]

Bankside, SE1 T:020.7887.8008 Tube: Southwark/Blackfriars
£3.50

Jospeh Cornell (1903-1972) was the single brightest star in the firmament of American Surrealism. He was the poet of juxtaposition, best known for his "boxes" of bric-a-brac -- miniature curiosity cabinets composed like three dimensional collages. He was also a pioneer of "found footage" film, producing a series of short films assembled from scraps, including Cotillion, Carousel and Jack's Dream. Lawrence Jordan (aka Larry Jordan) collaborated with Cornell on several of these films in the '50s, before going on to develop his own extraordinary oeuvre: a form of animation drawing on 19th-century ephemera, in which the ghosts of Victoriana inhabit worlds governed by the logic of dreams. With a unique style developed over decades, Jordan continues to elaborate on his baroque and uncanny vision. On an extremely rare visit to the UK, Lawrence Jordan will be presenting a programme of his own and Cornell's work, first at the Compton Verney gallery (26/05) and then at Tate Modern in collaboration with LUX (29/05). Don't miss.

NB: after the screening Lawrence Jordan will be in conversation with Stuart Comer, Curator of Film and Events.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

CONCERT DAMO SUZUKI

The Spitz

Sunday 29 May [4pm]

109 Commercial St., E1 T:020.7392.9032 Tube: Aldgate East/Liverpool St.
general £9 | concessions £7

Krautrock legend Damo Suzuki, key contributor to groundbreaking Can albums such as Tago Mago, is headlining The Spitz for a showcase of electonic, prog and krautrock with a bit of free improvisation thrown in for bad measure. Joining the band onstage as a vocalist the same day he was found busking in a Munich street back in 1970, Damo's vocals were like nothing else, piercing through the music when least expected. All the material played live by Damo and whichever musicians he is with (Perfect Earth tonight, including Mark Jenkins) is "instant composition" free improvisation but with more considered structures. Also performing are seminal '60s electronic rock band White Noise; Alquinia, a vocalist who has worked with Michael Nyman and Hans-Joachim Roedelius; and Nick May ex member of The Enid. Mark Jenkins, Alquina and Nick May are also launching CDs at the event.

NB: early start time 4pm, lots of music to fit in.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

PERFORMANCE SEXYMACHINERY 11

Bethnal Green Working Men's Club

Sunday 29 May [7pm]

42 Pollard Row, E2 T:020.7739.2727 Tube: Bethnal Green
general £12 | concessions £10 | students £10

Billed as "their 11th issue", London multi-disciplinary collective Sexymachinery have chosen to forsake their affection for printed matter and go live. Anyone familiar with the magazine will find the eclectic line-up nothing of a surprise: held in the now faded glory of the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, a jam-packed choreography of pop tunes, popular philosophy and unusual performance is brought together under the rubric that "this event might change your love." Theatre strategists ROTOZAZA with Glen Neath present romcom, which requires two unrehearsed guest performers (for this version, Oscar-nominated Hotel Rwanda star Sophie Okonedo with the inimitable Greg McLaren) to wear headphones telling them what to say and do; Sweden's Sir Eric Beyond promises to sing kindly; artist Shane Bradford welcomes your innermost confessions; and dirty disco devils Freeform Five go acoustic; plus Shez Dawood, Daniel Eatock, Flavia Muller Medeiros, Anna Melkersson, Micheal Neadham, Philippe Ciompi and Metronomy. Think '60s "happenings" in a 21st-century style.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

CONCERT LOU BARLOW

Islington Academy

Sunday 29 May [7pm - 11pm]

16 Parkfield St., N1 T:020.7288.4400 Tube: Angel
£12

Lo-fi Lou's been hunkering down for quite a while now (at least out of the commercial spotlight). It doesn't seem long ago that this man was an integral player in the alternative scene across the pond, commencing his career plucking the bass for J Mascis' languid troupe, Dinosaur Jr (soon to be back on a UK stage with Lou), before becoming a rather ubiquitous figure within the grunge explosion through the early '90s. By then Lou was leading Sebadoh and composing charmingly melodic, idiosyncratic pieces, with a sound always entrenched in punkish sensibilities. When things slowed off a little, the Folk Implosion were formed and Barlow continued his innovative productions before disappearing even deeper into the lo-fi underground with some sporadic releases with Sentridoh... until now. Yes, he's back with his first "official" solo album. Barlow has recently been pontificating upon his fondness of the genuine country simplicity of Hank Williams: a memorable sound to aspire to...This will be a short tour of the UK, but a chance to witness a true character of the alternative scene going back to basics and premiering some heartfelt, lush and stripped down compositions.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

MONDAY 30 MAY
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

FILM THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE

Monday 30 May

various cinemas across London
check press for times and ticket prices

Inspired by the elegant, European businessmen found in hotel lobbies all over the world, Paolo Sorrentino's thriller about a mysterious, disdainful 50-year-old man is a very modern take on the workings of the Italian Mafia. Toni Servillo lends every scene a tragic sadness as Titta, spending most of his time pretending to make notes in the lobby whilst watching the beautiful young barmaid Sofia, played by Olivia Magnani. The only relief from Titta's cold intensity are his witty one-liners delivered to all those who attempt any kind of friendship. Luca Bigazzi's slick, experimental cinematography and the film's edgy electronica soundtrack are difficult to get accustomed to, particularly as they are at odds with the setting and characters. However, as Titta's mystery begins to unravel, the film quickly turns into an extraordinary, moving story of selflessness. It also doubles up as powerful study of the lengths an individual has to go to in order to claim back their life once it's in the hands of a relentless, controlling organisation.

NB: The Cosequences Of Love is released in London on 27/05.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

TUESDAY 31 MAY
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing | Features

CONCERT / FILM NLF3 TRIO: QUE VIVA MEXICO

Institut Francais

Tuesday 31 May [8pm]

17 Queensberry Place, SW7 T:020.073.1354 Tube: South Kensington
general £7 | concessions £5

A long time ago, when chaps twirled moustaches and to be hatless was to be naked, the viewing of moving pictures was always accompanied by orchestra. Indeed, during one famous performance Fritz Lang's Metropolis in the Wigan Picturehouse, a tuba player named Klaus Richtling nearly choked to death when an absent minded filmgoer accidentally dropped his pipe from the balcony into the orchestra pit. The errant briar cast its flaming embers into Klaus's tuba just as the first reel was about to change, ruining the film and the best part of poor Klaus' larynx. Actually that was a lie, but in these days of THX Dolby surround sound, cinema is often a predictable affair. Which is why it's a welcome turn up for the books that nlf3 trio are providing the live accompaniment to Eisenstein's legendary unfinished masterpiece Que Viva Mexico. It's a rare chance to see the film that was abandoned by Eisenstein after the money ran out and the experience will be all the more edifying set to nlf3 trio's eclectic blend of soundtracky strings, Latin rhythms and experimental rock. Just watch out for flying pipes.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

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

ART MATISSE: ART AND TEXTILES

Royal Academy

Ends Monday 30 May [Daily 10am - 6pm, Fri until 10pm]

Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1 T:020.7300.8000 Tube: Piccadilly Circus
general £8 | concessions £7

It's so easy to forget the wonder of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), how line and brushstroke conjoin with colour to form his painting's architecture. Though we appreciate his talent, we're no longer in awe of the jazz-like ease of his riffs. Like the Impressionists now, it?s become chocolate box and poster art to our eyes. Yet this small gem of a scholarly show built around the concept of his collection of mainly fabrics and a few dresses demonstrates how they provide a vital influence to his art and, hence, in the furthering of European Modernism. Coming from a long line of weavers, it seems that Henri as well as being a brilliant draughtsman was also an astute connoisseur of patterned fabrics. He referred to his collection as his "working library", and where usually his frantic "patternation" fades into the grander scheme of his abstract constructions, here we get to compare the actual object with its representation. Broken into roughly chronological groups, the thematic emphasis allows lesser paintings to be seen in a much more interesting light, not to mention the groups of drawings and prints that we are do not normally pay much attention to in "grander" exhibitions.

NB: this is your last chance to see this exhibition as it ends this week. If you are in New York then you can catch it at the Metropolitan Museum (23/06 - 25/09).

Send Event
Print Event
Top

DESIGN / FASHION / TALK BOUDICCA VS ADJAYE

Fashion And Textile Museum

Wednesday 1 June [7pm]

83 Bermondsey St., SE1 T:020.7403.0222 Tube: London Bridge Station/Borough
general £12 | concessions £9

Boudicca consummates their marriage with art by collaborating with architect David Adjaye for Boudicca vs. Adjaye: what happens when fashion and architecture meet, commissioned by Vogue. Together the designers and architect spawn a wood sculpture in which a single naked model nestles at the centre of a cosmos of protruding poles. As this creative merger proves despite their frivolous reputations, fashion and architecture are inherently similar. Since humans need shelter and warmth, both disciplines protect us from the elements, but while fashion and architecture might start off base they aspire to be sublime.

NB: this event was supposed to take place on 07/04 but was re-scheduled to 01/06.

Send Event
Print Event
Top

ART URS FISCHER

Camden Arts Centre

Ends Sunday 10 July [Tue to Thu 11am - 7pm, Fri to Sun until 5:30pm]

Arkwright Rd., NW3 T:020.7472.5500 Tube: Finchley Rd.
FREE

Images of Urs Fischer's first showing in London were unforgettable -- three women sculptured as life-size candles, burning throughout the duration of the show, their waxy limbs melting and dissolving before you. Part Robert Gober, part Jeff Koons and part prankster, Fischer plays around the precarious borderline between beautiful object and sheer ugliness, attacking a purity of thought and aesthetic whilst taking inspiration from the culture around him, spontaneously mutating everyday objects -- a table, a chair, glass, fruit, mirrors -- into spontaneous organic installations. It's his awkward, fidgety tinkering with these banal domestic items that informs his universe, suspending our understanding between surrealism, underground pop culture and art history. Mutation, transformation, alchemical shifts in perception, flushing beauty down the pan, Fischer maintains a punk aesthetic in his work.

NB: Urs Fischer is showing alongside new paintings by Verne Dawson (both end 10/07). Critic Tom Morton will be speaking on Wed 25/05, and it will also be family day with artists Natasha Kidd and Charlotte Thrane. Fischer is also exhibiting at the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in Milan (ends 01/06).

Send Event
Print Event
Top

FEATURES
Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | TueOngoing

ARTWORKER OF THE WEEK #47
JOERG SASSE

Joerg Sasse (bn. 1962) is yet another significant photographer to have benefited from tuition under Bernd and Hilla Becher in Duesseldorf. His work spans series entitled Computer Manipulated, Public Spaces, Private Spaces, Shop Windows and Still Life, all of which share Sasse's dizzyingly anonymous numerical tags. His recent practice has focused on using digital computer techniques to draw out his final image from found snapshots. Evidence of the painstaking process was published recently for the first time in Tableaux & esquisses by the Musee de Grenoble to coincide with his retrospective that ended there earlier this year.

Joerg Sasse is currently exhibiting work at the Photographers' Gallery as one of the shortlisted photographers for the Deutsche Boerse Photography Prize 2005 (till 05/06).

To read the interview click here.

 

CD REVIEW
SENTIMENTALIST

Sanso-Xtro

Type
UK release date: 30/05/2005

Sanso-Xtro is Australian, Hackney-based Melissa Agate's solo project. Originally a drummer -- both in Australian avant-rock outfit Sindog Jellyroll and later in her London-formed trio Salt -- as a solo artist she deploys her musical talent as a well-trained multi-instrumentalist managing to bring out the best out from analogue string instruments. Indeed Sentimentalist -- her debut album on London's young and emerging electronic music label Type records -- shows Agate's ability to combine an array of sounds ranging from acoustic guitar and ukulele to traditional bells, kalimba and glockenspiel. The majority of the tracks have strings imbued with subtle electronics; for example the opening track, "The Last Leaf", gently inaugurates a melodic journey. Yet in "Unsentimental" Agate takes her drums to the spotlight and shows a much more courageous but somehow unsettled side of her sound, demonstrating how experimentalism can be both accessible and beautiful. The album was mastered by Swedish post-minimal electronic artist Andreas Tilliander, which perhaps helps emphasise the subtle glitches present in the overall soundscape that she has created. The 11 tracks put together in this short yet strong album reveal Agate as being one of the more interesting artists to emerge from the vast array of current "electronic meets analogue" music... said with no sentimentalism but with a truly objective ear.

To buy Sentimentalist online click here.

 

BOOK REVIEW
RAILWAY STATIONS

By Alessia Ferrarini

Electaarchitecture: £29.95
ISBN: 1-904313-34-5
UK release date: 04/2005

Since the advent of the aeroplane, rail transportation seems to have been relegated to another era. Though it has lost its fizz, in this moment of cheap flights we really should be aspiring to the joys and chugs of that old machine age... particularly from a green point of view. With the TGV and Eurostar about, perhaps rail travel, like the ocean liner, can re-invent itself as the new "it-transport". Electaarchitecture's latest volume, following in the footsteps of Twenty Houses by Twenty Architects, moves from Paris' '50s Gare de L'Est to Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's updated Penn Station via Santiago Calatrava's Lyon TGV stop and Hiroshi Hara's futuristic Kyoto station. Writing generally about the changing social history of the train's terminus and the charge of contemporary high-speed rail while using examples culled from more recent successes (Aix-en-Provence and Arnhem Centraal), Alessia Ferrarini discusses the future of the train station as a social space that is in flux and its architectural implications for the future.

To buy Railway Stations: From the Gare de L'Est to Penn Station online click here or buy it through Walther Koenig Books at the Serpentine Gallery (020.7706.4907).

 
125
25 | 05 | 05
Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Monday | TuesdayOngoing | Features

KF Archive
Artists
Poetry
Interviews

Print Issue
Send Issue
Contact

Subscribe
Unsubscribe
Top

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.

If you want to tell us about an upcoming event please do so by sending an email to: events@kultureflash.net. Please note that KultureFlash is not a listings e-zine and we do not receive any payment from venues, artists, managers or promoters.

Please send all invites, press releases, CDs and books to:

KultureFlash Ltd.
52 Cranmer Court
Whitehead's Grove
London SW3 3HW

STAFF

Julien Dobbs-Higginson
Sherman Sam
Rob Oldham
David Moore
Jen Thatcher

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Robin Rimbaud
Barry Schwabsky
David Sheppard

SENIOR WRITERS

James Cowdery
Ana Finel Honigman
Matt O'Leary

CONTRIBUTORS

Oliver Basciano
Chris Clarke
Ilsa Colsell
Deborah Coughlin
Sarah Evans
Ant Hampton
Magnus Larsson
Eric Namour
Aoife O'Brien
Matt O'Leary
Matt Powell
Mike Sperlinger
Richard Thomas
Annie Wells