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| INSIDE ISSUE NUMBER 82
| THIS WEEK'S HEADLINES
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While the weather forecasts for London predict thundery showers and howling winds, a different storm is rising within the world of architecture. And that wind cries " Zaha Hadid".
Not only was Hadid the first ever architect to feature in KultureFlash's artist-in-residence programme (with her Car Park and Terminal in Strasbourg, which went on to win the 2003 Mies van der Rohe award), she has now won the 2004 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the equivalent of a Nobel Prize and most prestigious architecture award in the world. The first female architect of global standing, Hadid will also be the first female Pritzker laureate ever, and the third UK-based architect (following James Stirling and Lord Foster) to receive the honour. The prize is awarded to living architects who have "produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture".
It long looked as if this wouldn't happen until 2013. Hadid's career has been made up of 10-year steps: her first international success being a restaurant in Hong Kong in 1983, her first ever building was erected 1993, and 2003 saw the opening of her CAC in Cincinatti, a museum hailed by the reputed architecture critic Herbert Muschamp as "the most important American building to be completed since the end of the Cold War". We couldn't agree more with Muschamp's statement, nor with that of the Pritzker jury. Congratulations, Zaha! | | | |
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| CONCERT | |
EDISON WOODS FEAT. SIMON RAYMONDE... | Wednesday 24 March (7pm) | | Price: £7.50 | | Some ambient gigs leave you colder than a fish on a Billingsgate slab. Others plunge your consciousness into a soothing bath and give your soul a bit of a polish while they're at it. Lo-fi outfit Edison Woods falls into the latter category, creating intimate cinematic soundscapes guaranteed to leave you grinning at strangers for a week. The New York-based collective marshals a mini orchestra for this show, wheeling on clanky tape recorders, cello, harmonium and swooping female vocals. Their recently-released homage to melancholia, Seven Principles of Leave No Trace, will no doubt get a good airing, prompting you to don a black polo neck before the evening is out. Best of all, Cocteau Twins' guitarist Simon Raymonde, the archdeacon of otiose offerings, puts in a guest appearance. Edison Woods is irritatingly fecund -- the group is actually a loose collective of artistic endeavour, churning out art installations, performance art and theatre as well as fine tunes. They also boast one of the most pretentious websites known to man. Just makes you wonder how productive you could be if you weren't doing all that navel-gazing... | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| DANCE | |
SHOBANA JEYASINGH: TRANSTEP | Wednesday 24 March (Wed 24/03 to Sat 27/03 at 8pm) | | Price: £5 - £15 | | If the "postcolonial" label were applied to dance, Shobana Jeyasingh would be it. But dance isn't generally credited with the brains for cultural comment, rather with transporting us to a lost pre-rational innocence. So the outspokenly intelligent Jeyasingh had a fight on her hands as her native Indian classical dance form (bharatanatyam) suffers double exoticism. Refusing to follow '80s "ethnic minority" arts protocol and make dances about arranged marriages told through mudras (hand gestures), she ploughed her own Modernist furrow, using the angular geometry of bharatanatyam as a cool facade for abstract choreography that's both visually luscious and cerebrally inorganic. It explores her migrant condition, but in purely formal dance terms. Now hailed as an icon of urban East-meets-West chic, she's trying another turn. Transtep invites three other choreographers to work with her company -- Lisa Torun, Filip Van Huffel and Rashpal Singh Bansal. But rejecting the stodgy mixed bill format, Jeyasingh weaves their contributions into a seamless 75 minutes of dance that blurs each artist's distinctiveness. It's a novel collage technique that poses a philosophical question about dance production whose aesthetic is on show: is it the individual choreographers or the dancer-collaborators that unify the work? NB: Transtep runs for four nights from Wed 24/03 to Sat 27/03. Giveaway: We have five pairs of tickets to give away to the Wed 24/03 opening night performance. They'll go to five randomly picked Flashers who can name a famous post-colonial critic/academic. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CLUB / DJ | |
NAGNAGNAG: CARTER TUTTI | Wednesday 24 March (10:30pm - 3am) | | Price: general £5 | concessions £3 (with flyer) | | Moss-covered media coverage for the uber-trendy NagNagNag may have peaked a while ago but the electro-fashion-pack are still smearing on the blusher for mid-week bleeps. Carter Tutti will be making the stylish ones sweat the night away DJ-ing at the club's second birthday bash. The duo, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti (ex-'70s industrialists Throbbing Gristle) assumed the Carter Tutti moniker in 2003 to free themselves from their own extensive back-catalogue, and to remain edgy and inventive. An album is in the pipeline but tonight celebrates two years of the Nag's sleazy, slutty hedonism that cutting-edge, polysexual Flashers with an eye for Blitz-inspired fashions will love. Imagine the birthday cake. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CLUB / DJ | |
JOSH WINK | Thursday 25 March (9pm - 2am) | | Price: £5 (£7 after 11pm) | | Long gone are the crusty dreadlocks that Philadelphia-based Josh Wink supported for many a year. Whilst hairstyles may have changed, the quality of the music has stayed consistent and compelling, not to mention ass-crunchingly hard and funky. Joshua Winkleman ( we kid ye not) rolls into our fair city next Thursday with an appearance at the effervescent Lottie's weekly Missdemeanours night. The main premise of this appearance is in support of Wink's new album 20 to 20, released on his own label, Ovum. Over the years this has proved a ground-breaking home for music, championing many of the harder, squelchier and blissfully intense sounds in electronic music, without ever veering into hard house or trance-y filth. Wink's latest inclination is to go back to the roots of acid house, and the album is replete with some suitably monstrous cuts. As a DJ, Wink continues to innovate with his sets, never falling into the "play the greatest hits and collect the cheque" mode. Catch him next Thursday at this slinky West London venue: the weekend will start extra early. Giveaway: We have three 20 to 20 CDs to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked Flashers who can name the venue that Wink last played at when he was in London. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CLUB / DJ | |
TIEFSCHWARZ | Thursday 25 March | | Price: £8 (£6 before 12am) | | Combining their family name, Schwarz, with their love of deep house music -- "tief" meaning deep, and "Schwarz" black -- brothers Ali and Basti formed Tiefschwarz in '96 with Benztown Productions label boss Peter Hoff. Mixing house with electro, funk, breakbeats and garage, Tiefschwarz are not only prolific and extremely talented producers and remixers, recently remixing current dance-punk faves The Rapture, but also pioneers of the German club scene with over a decade's worth of DJ experience including collaborations with such luminaries as Matthew Herbert, Masters at Work and Tony Humphries. NB: Joining the Schwarz team on the night are Simon Rigg from the excellent Soho record store, Phonica (51 Poland St., W1) and Destino's very own Pablo Modrono for a night of filthy funk and dirty disco. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART | |
BECK'S FUTURES 2004 | Friday 26 March | @ ICA, The Mall, SW1 (020.7930.3647) Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly Circus | Price: FREE | | Contests for emerging artists have paved the road to success for many and baffled the art-viewing public for years, yet it's so often a breeding ground for outrage, ego, scandal and the occasional genius. Beck's Futures, now in its 5th edition, promises to overcome the stigma attached to this juried prize phenomenon and present an exhibition by emerging and established artists that defines the year's progress. This is not to say that the exhibition promises unadulterated artistic propriety, but there's certainly some outstanding stuff on show: Tonico Lemos Auad presents a figure formed in carpet fluff -- strikingly reminiscent of Gunther von Hagens' Bodyworlds -- along with some disarmingly human bananas, while Nicoline van Harskamp's A Guide to Guards has real-live guards strolling round. On the other hand, animator Haluk Akakce and painter Hayley Tomkins bring us abstraction in opposite mediums and attitudes. And of course, there Simon Bedwell (here read BANK), need we say more. Indeed the roots of art itself, alongside concepts of violence, banality and beauty are challenged by this year's line-up for the prize, which at £20,000, is certainly not to sneeze at. This is a great insight into the art-world-at-large, so you've got no excuse not to go and have a look around! NB: Runs till 16/05. Giveaway: We have three Beck's Futures 2004 catalogues to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked Flashers who can name the last winner of Beck's Futures.
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| FILM | |
THE STATION AGENT | Friday 26 March | @ Various cinemas across London | Price: Check press for times and ticket prices | | The Americans are very good at these types of films -- gentle and sympathetic movies about relatively ordinary people in relatively ordinary situations. The story of The Station Agent, such as it is, has Peter Dinklage's Fin McBride, a quiet and self-sufficient 4'5" man, inheriting a small train depot in rural New Jersey. When he moves in he quickly becomes subject to Bobby Cannavalle's hugely gregarious Joe, and Patricia Clarkson's Olivia. All three have their own problems and we hang out with them as they come to develop that sort of deep affection that allows you to enjoy just sitting together in silence. One of them says when they first all eat together, "We don't have to talk, we can just eat, I'm cool with that." First-time writer/director Thomas McCarthy's film is beautifully written, beautifully shot and beautifully acted -- a fact reflected in its successes at Sundance last year (Audience Award, Best Screenplay, Best Performance (to Patricia Patricia Clarkson)). These films, by their quiet
nature, tend to be easy to miss -- don't. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CONCERT / FILM | |
PICCADILLY | Friday 26 March (7:30pm) | | Price: general £12 | concessions £10 | | This week there's a rare opportunity to see a classic silent film. Piccadilly (1929), written by Arnold Bennett and directed by E.A. Dupont, presents a glorious evocation of London's jazz scene in the '20s. The story centres on a fashionable nightclub, once bustling with the rich and famous but now in decline. Club-owner Valentine Wilmot ( Jameson Thomas) has to find a novelty act to rescue its fortunes. On a chance visit to the kitchen, his imagination is captured by shimmying Chinese scullery-maid Shosho (played by screen-goddess Anna May Wong), and he transforms her into a star. Shosho is luminous when she performs exotic routines in glamorous costume on stage. The toast of high society and the object of suave Valentine's affections, she provokes the jealousy of his former lover Mabel ( Gilda Gray). Sexual and racial tensions bubble to the surface to create a fatal film-noir. Piccadilly has been wonderfully restored to its former glory by the bfi. The Barbican is showcasing a beautiful new print of the film, suffused in amber and blue tints. It is accompanied by Neil Brand's dramatic new score, performed by a leading seven-piece jazz ensemble. A fantastic melodrama. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| MULTIMEDIA / PERFORMANCE | |
BITSPLITTERS | Friday 26 March (8pm - 2am) | | Price: £7 (before 10pm); £10 (after) | | The Bitsplitters initiative this week presents a "collection of interdisciplinary audio-visual technicians" (phew), promising to demonstrate the power of current computer technology as a creative tool in the hands of all sorts of modern artists. Among a line-up bulging with varied talent are electronic musicians Chun Lee and Konrad Kinard, performing under their own monikers and collaboratively as ZeroPing. Both artists create music from generative algorithms themselves engineered to produce experimental soundscapes. In a similar, but slightly, more conventional vein playful French electronicists DAT Politics proffer music that would help pass the time well whilst loading Chuckie Egg into your BBC Micro from a tape cassette -- this is piercing 8-bit electro, but refreshing and melodically endearing. The visual complement is supplied in the form of techno-urban multimedia by artists such as AI-Hz, Eve Hurford and Spot. Spot (Scott Draves) is the creator of the Bomb, a visual engine for a PC that generates images independently or in response to an input source (such as a keyboard or music). Although the name of the device doesn't sound like the kind of thing you want to install on your PC, it is reportedly quite safe and intriguingly beautiful. The film and dance producer Phuong Nguyen completes the line-up, perhaps performing works similar to Vivid -- a recent production acclaimed at the Thessaloniki VideoDance Festival that should complement the mechanical and technological goings-on at this event. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| SYMPOSIUM | |
GETTING IT MADE: CONTEMPORARY FILM... | Saturday 27 March (10am - 5:50pm) | | Price: general £20 | concessions £15 | | Film has been in a permanent state of fast forward since the first wobbly motion picture came into being. No other creative medium has been subject to such relentless change in ideas, production and audience. With film now in the foreground of the contemporary art scene, the Tate's Getting It Made symposium will be assessing the impact these changes have had on contemporary film and video. The programme is as diverse as its subject, involving talks, debates, handouts and screenings. Mike Figgis will be there talking about his work, and the panel of debaters includes artists Lucy Gunning and Mark Aerial Waller, verbal director Duncan Reekie, producer Rod Stoneman, and filmmaker John Akomfrah. The curator of A Century of Artists' Film in Britain will show a series of short films and talk about the relationship between technology, creativity, and funding. This triangle is crucial to filmmaking, and contemporary art in general. However an artist works, can it be possible to ignore any one of this threesome and still succeed? If you're into film, this might be one of 2004's most exciting days. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| DANCE / THEATRE | |
A2: PRIVATE VIEW | Saturday 27 March (5 - 7pm) | @ ICA, The Mall, SW1 (020.7930.3647) Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly Circus | Price: FREE | | What is private about Private View? Anton Mirto and Alit Kreiz explore the themes of individuality and mass behaviour in this installation-performance of a work in progress. When an individual's actions influence the masses and vice versa, are we aware of our responsibility? What are we accountable for? Mirto and Kreiz create performances that draw from physical theatre, dance, art and poetry, but moreover from their highly sensitive perception of characteristic moments of life. As audience you will experience the show rather than watch it. Previous events include Miss did it hurt when you fell down from Heaven? or Do you want this one again?. "The startlingly talented A2 company" ( Dance Europe) performed at The Place, Hoxton Hall and the ICA as part of the International MIME Festival 2004. Fantastic performers Alit and Anton give stage performance a depth that goes beyond dimension into a realm of sensations. Run! | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CONCERT / DJ | |
SLOW SOUND SYSTEM: LJ KRUZER... | Saturday 27 March (5 -11pm) | | Price: FREE | | After some post-Summer time off, the Slow Sound System is now back on track with their monthly event at The Foundry. On this occasion, not only have they anticipated their usual Sunday afternoon tea (normally leading the way to the Sunday poetry night!) for an interesting Spring Saturday but have decided to go louder as well! In fact, as the collective of DJs warns, "expect a longer, louder show featuring three heroes of London's electronic underground". Opening the evening will be the French London-resident Fred KU ( dorp) with his tumultuous soundscaping and breaks, along with razor-sharp turntable skills from LJ Kruzer, a modern master of electropop and melancholy ambience from Ai Records and uncharted audio, who will be taking the audience slowly to louder territories before the Ministry of Loud Soundsystem deliver bass, beats with some hip-hop, dsp and noise! All will be kept in tune through the resident DJ/VJs (iMax and Albert), collage, digitals and audioscapes, also joined by Janek Ropinsky's visuals. Well, from people warning you to bring earplugs, what else can you expect for the first Saturday of Spring! Well, it should certainly be tried after a nice walk in the park... NB: For those fans of the usual more downtempo SSS events make sure you check out the extension show at state51 (8-10 Rhoda St., E1) on Thu 25/03 (8pm), featuring Leafcutter John, Alxis O' Hara and Mugison. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| FILM | |
IVAN THE TERRIBLE I AND II | Saturday 27 March (Sat 27/03 till Wed 31/03 at 7:45pm) | @ ICA, The Mall, SW1 (020.7930.3647) Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly Circus | Price: general £6.50 | concessions £4.50 - £5.50 | | Conceived as an epic trilogy by visionary Russian director Sergei Eisenstein, Ivan the Terrible appears to tell the story of Ivan IV, Tsar of Russia in the mid-16th century, but acts far more potently as a loosely veiled allegory for Stalin's iron-fisted dictatorship. Eisenstein's portrayal of a more benign Ivan in Part I apparently pleased Stalin, but when the Tsar's dark side was emphasised in Part II, the government banned the film and Eisenstein was forced to re-edit. The myth goes that Part III, much of the footage of which was mysteriously destroyed, makes the analogy between the hubristic and murderous leaders as clear as a fine Stolichnaya vodka. One could be forgiven for thinking that the ICA's screening of this tale of fantastic megalomania and the bloody struggle to consolidate an empire makes further bitchy reference to the furore caused by funboy Ivan Massow when he denounced all conceptual art, and was subsequently ousted with fabulous bling by Director P-Doddy as Chairman of the ICA. NB: Ivan The Terrible I & II is having a five-day run from Sat 27/03 to Wed 31/03. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| FILM / Q&A | |
AMOS VOGEL AND CINEMA 16 | Sunday 28 March (4pm) | @ The Other Cinema, 11 Rupert St., W1 (0207 734 1506) Tube: Piccadilly Circus/Leicester Sq. | Price: general £6.50 | concessions £4.50 | | "In the '40s, it was very difficult, even in New York, to see the kind of cinema I wanted to see. I knew there were lots of films that were far more interesting than the Hollywood product most people were going to." These are the words of 82-year-old New Yorker Amos Vogel who, in 1947, decided to act on his interest by setting up a film club called Cinema 16 that would offer audiences an alternative to the mainstream. Over the next 16 years the club became the most important and influential film society in American history. In this fascinating documentary Amos Vogel explains how growing up as a Jew in Austria shaped his philosophy, and reminisces in detail about his years curating Cinema 16, the film-makers he championed, and the censors he battled. Excerpts from a selection of films screened at the society include the infamous Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew, and the only film made by legendary New York press photographer, Weegee. NB: After the screening the director Paul Cronin will be present for a discussion and will screen several shorts that were originally screened at Cinema 16. If you miss this screening you can catch the documentary at the Ritzy Cinema on Thu 01/04 at 6:45pm. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART | |
ON KAWARA: READING ONE MILLION YEARS | Monday 29 March (non-stop from Mon 29/03 8am till Mon 05/04) | @ Trafalgar Square | Price: FREE | | A man and a woman sit by tables in a glass box taking turns to read from a book, 24 hrs-a-day for 7 days. One Million Years created in 1969 in 10-volumes and 2 parts is just that, a list from 998,031 BC-1969 ( Past) and 1980-1,001,980 AD ( Future). On Kawara (bn. 1933) like perhaps one of the most enigmatic artists ever. The Japanese artist has been an empiricist, or maybe we should say diarist, all his working life. From making Date Paintings or Today Series (that is a painting made of the day of its making and entirely created within that day) to postcards declaring "I am still alive" or " I got up" and documenting daily walks, the urban nomad has been marking his time in the world in a humble, Zen-like, conceptual rhythm. Here thinking, living and making art are united in one life. His work, in particular One Million Years, strikes us immediately as a moment captured, starkly of life and death, of measuring our time on earth, of not wasting our moment. This truly Conceptual art mediated via an Eastern attitude to life should not be missed. NB: One Million Years runs non-stop from Mon 29/03 8am till Mon 05/04. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART / TALK | |
RAOUL DE KEYSER | Monday 29 March (6:30 - 9pm) | | Price: general £15 | concessions £5 | | Raoul de Keyser (bn. 1930) confounds, there's no better way to put it. There is no ideology, nor strategy, not even a conceptual narrative to work around these paintings. Simply, they're oil paint on linen; marks, lines, shapes and scrapes made on canvas; some even filled-in with colour. With a pared-down, easy attitude, these abstract works are eccentric but also beguiling to our mediated and YBAed eyes. It's said that the Flemish painter works from life, more precisely "the moment" but don't expect the veteran's titles nor his footie-love to give anything away. For a long time regarded as a painter's painter, do not let the Haiku simplicity of these "pictures" fool you, these are s-l-o-w paintings to be experienced. Hence it's appropriate to find American poet and critic Barry Schwabsky and Portugese Museum director Ulrich Loock taking us for a preview tour of this retrospective -- no doubt the trans-Atlantic struggle to find words to match the objects will give our eyes a chance to acclimatise. Do not expect answers, just more lively questions to put the bounce in your steps... NB: Raoul de Keyser runs till 23/05. Edge of the Real, a group show of young painters, runs concurrently. (The discussion panel members include: Barry Schwabsky, Adrian Searle, and artlab's artist duo Charlotte Cullinan and Jeanine Richards.) Giveaway: We have two pairs of tickets for the The Real Life of Painting talk (24/04 at 2 - 4pm) to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked Flashers who can tell us the name of a famous student (hint: they've shown together). | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ARCHITECTURE / TALK | |
THE SNOW SHOW | Tuesday 30 March (6:30pm) | | Price: general £7 | concessions £4 | | Lance Fung, a curator of towering ambition, unveiled The Snow Show in the sticky heat of Venice last May. A village -- ultimately two -- of ice and snow constructions resulting from collaboration between architecture and art was to be built in Finnish Lapland. Flash forward nine months, and a lucky few have donned their furs and boarded chartered jets to skip among the sculptures in Kemi and Rovaniemi. For some creative teams the challenge has yielded epiphanies, while others were plain surprised by the materials. The structures exploited the frozen translucence and opacity, and some were shot through with dyes or studded with lights, though Cai Guo-Qiang's "caress" of Zaha Hadid's form with flaming vodka was a slightly slimey damp squib. People like Future Systems and Anish Kapoor, Tadao Ando and Tatsuo Miyajima don't have much time for leisurely brainstorming so if collaboration was Fung's hymn, interpretations varied from teams who could meet to those whose project development was via fax. Co-curator Hilkka Liikkanen and Seppo Makinen, The Snow Show construction specialist, reveal the experience for fans who couldn't make it north, and participants including Rocio Paz of Zaha Hadid Architects review the collaborative process. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CONCERT | |
DEERHOOF | Tuesday 30 March | | Price: £10 | | Given the current practice for US labels to use the UK as a testing ground for their more outre charges, it's now common to see bands go from obscurity to ubiquity in the space of a few months. So it's a rare treat to "discover" a new favourite like Deerhoof. This San Franciscan five-piece have released half a dozen albums of loopy art-punk on the Kill Rock Stars label and should now ready themselves to luxuriate in deserved adulation with a forthcoming Peel session and UK mini-tour to promote their most together album yet -- Milkman. Their latest revolves loosely around a Brothers Grimm-style fantasy about the titular character who invades the dreams of children only to imprison them in the clouds. If this sounds rather macabre, their music is anything but, combining an engaging artlessness with beautifully crafted pop melodies and the wild diversity of Satomi Matsuzaki's vocals -- from ditzy naivety to screeching histronics in a heartbeat. That they typically cram several direction changes, stop-start dynamics and any number of holy shit pop thrills into two giddy minutes should only commend them to you more. Pepper them with kisses. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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MONSTER | Thursday 1 April (6:40pm) | | Price: general £8.50 | concessions £5.50 | | You can argue that gay/queer people historically rarely figure in Hollywood productions unless they are severely disturbed, racked with guilt or just simply homicidal maniacs. You would be right, and this is bad. However, some queer people, like many other folk, occasionally do really bad things -- such as becoming homicidal nutcases -- and you can't really rag on Hollywood for picking up the stories. So, when a woman in a bisexual relationship goes on a killing spree, Hollywood has a wet dream. Result: beautiful actresses, transformed visually, are given the opportunity to really hone their talent for something they rarely engage in: acting. And so you have Monster, the story of serial killer Aileen Wuornos and an Oscar- winning performance by Charlize Theron. It is not just horror, guts and sensationalism, but an actual attempt to understand the mind, and the life that shaped that mind, that could bring any individual to commit these acts (if that is possible). Potential minefield? Of course, therefore all the more worth exploring. NB: The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Patty Jenkins. Monster hits cinemas nationwide on 02/04. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CONCERT | |
LE TIGRE, ERASE ERRATA AND KAITO | Monday 5 April (7pm) | | Price: £12.50 | | DIY Feminist electro-punk sloganeers Le Tigre return to the Astoria with their Riot Grrrl-fuelled radical female politics, bringing with them an equally gritty, attitude-wielding pair of post-punk rock acts -- prepare yourself for a hedonistic girlie activism vibe running at full throttle. Time has flown for the seminal trio of New Yorkers, best known for their rise out of the early '90s Grrrl-power movement as raging feminist-theorists-cum-hard-edged-pop-musicians, who are now about to release their fourth album, after their cause-celebrating 2002 release, Feminist Sweepstakes. Combining pared-down electronic sampling and politically engaged lyrics with a hefty helping of punk, Kathleen, Johanna and JD have paved the way for similarly fresh and fiesty female outfits, from Peaches to Chicks on Speed and smaller DIY electro-feminist outfits such as London's lektroLAB. Alongside Le Tigre on this brief UK tour (including a date at ATP) are potent, post-punk, all-girl four-piece Erase Errata, and their Blast First label-mates Kaito, whose much anticipated debut album Band Red is released later this year. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| FILM | |
ZATOICHI | Ends Thursday 22 April | @ Various cinemas across London | Price: Check press for times and ticket prices | | Those of you Flashers with cable may be familiar with mad game show Takeshi's Castle, and are hopefully also aware of Takeshi Kitano's more serious side: the existential Sonatine, enigmatic but touching Kikujiro, American broadside Brother and of course Golden Lion winner, Hana-Bi. Now watch out, Zatoichi is his first studio film as director, also a first period piece and very non-arthouse. It is a re-imaging -- better than Emmerich's Godzilla -- of the classic samurai TV and movie series, and, unlike Rutger Hauer's Blind Fury, Kitano's script and direction for the eponymous wandering blind masseur (shock) and secret swordmaster does not leave out the violence, jarring cuts, slapstick humour and subtle existential gestures that has made him the thinking person's Clint Eastwood. If the term Renaissance man is an intellectual creative, then Beat Takeshi (stand-up comedy, acting name) or Takeshi Kitano (director name) is a one-circus creative industry, from films to comedy to novels, poems and paintings, his motorcycle crash did not slow him down but made him all the more thoughtful. The samurai flick is the Japanese version of the Kung Fu movie or the western; it is that very male genre which explores honour and violence. Do not expect your regular Hollywood twists in this tale, and of course, there's that tap dance sequence to make even Gene Kelly shy. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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ARTWORKER OF THE WEEK #28
Jonathan Lasker @ Timothy Taylor Gallery
The statement that Jonathan Lasker's (bn. 1948)
abstract paintings seem to be making at first glance
are solely about painting, but look deeper and they also appear to be a
conversation about our world. In the '80s
these paintings
made an argument for abstraction that engaged with figure-ground perceptions -- formerly the terrain
of figuration and narrative -- against the simpler Abstract Expressionist field or a
Brice Mardenesque
minimalism. Also this art established another understanding of "subject matter" or "narrative". However they also
appeal
to notions of power and hierarchy, abstracted statements about our being-in-the-world. Within these structured
philosophical arguments, intellectualised
sensual paint contest space with graphic scribbles that bring to mind the hustle of urban noise. Lasker's
intent to make narrative without narrative, that reified moment, seem to be a shout to younger
abstractionists about another way to speak painting, yet they also radiate a new way to understand of
painting's materiality. He is represented by
Sperone Westwater
in New York.
Jonathan Lasker at Timothy Taylor Gallery runs through 27/03
To read the
interview browse
here
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CD REVIEW
Red Your Blues
Picastro
Release date: 29/03 ( Monotreme Records)
While Dubya's redneck
imperialism, Monsanto's glow-in-the-dark rapeseed, and Camp X-Ray's hospitality turn the land of the free
into a pariah state, many of its musicians seem to be operating in a sanctified
parallel dimension. Last year saw the release of a clutch of brilliant, sensitive (and whatever the
opposite of gung-ho is, gung-no?) albums by North American acts as diverse as
Rachel's,
The Innocence Mission and
A Silver Mt. Zion -- records whose very
essence seemed to refute the lowest common denominator
culture in which they were made. The latter hail from Canada, a country which, when not being written off
as terminally boring, is being inaccurately tarred with the poisoned Yankee brush. All of which preamble
brings us to Picastro, a
multi-instrumentalist sextet from Toronto whose
debut album seems duty bound to
refute pigeonholing. There's not a band in the UK today prepared to mix things up quite like this bunch of
science students, kite-makers and moonlighting Hidden Cameras. Sure, there are precedents --
Godspeed You! Black Emperor and
The Dirty Three are the most obvious parallels -- but
while, like those tousled precursors,
Picastro blend moments of sublime, semi-symphonic lustre (Winter Notes) and alluring guitar chime (The Sea
Will Kill You), they also mine their own, unique vein of smouldering disquiet. Whenever
Liz Hysen's
distracted, subterranean vocals kick in (think Movietone-via- Nico)
and Stephanie Vittas's unfettered cello glowers, the sense of personal and, yes, political, discontent is palpable. Protest and survive.
To buy
Red Your Blues click
here
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BOOK REVIEW
Zaha Hadid: Space For Art
Edited by Marcus Dochantschi and Lars Mueller
Lars Mueller Publishers: £28
ISBN: 3-03778-005-3
Buy Zaha Hadid: Space For Art online or buy it through Walther Koenig Books at the Serpentine Gallery (020.7706.4907).
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Halfway through Jonathan Franzen's exhilarating novel The Corrections, the two characters Enid and Alfred Lambert meet a hilariously horrible Norwegian couple, the male of which is said to read a work by every winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature annually, leading to the complete works of one favourite laureate. The architectural equivalent of this practice would be to scan through the monographs and other books about all the Pritzker Prize winners, from Philip Johnson to Zaha Hadid. And what better book to experience the genius of the latter than this volume, showing off her latest achievement and best building to date: Cincinatti's Contemporary Arts Center. Designed as a seamless extension of the ground, the street level turning into an "urban carpet" carrying the visitors through their breathtaking climb up a vertical museum, the CAC is a remarkable piece of architecture. Hadid has been known as the enfant terrible of the architecture world, a paper designer who made lovely drawings and never got anything built (at least not in the UK). Finally, with winning the Pritzker Prize and having this book published, she is being celebrated for what she is: one of our most radical and visionary creative minds.
Giveaway: We have one copy of Zaha Hadid: Space For Art to give away. It'll go to one randomly picked Flasher who can tell us the name of the project that we are presenting on this week's header.
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kultureflash info |
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STAFF
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Julien Dobbs-Higginson, Sherman Sam, Rob Oldham, Iain Norman, Jen Thatcher, Simonida Tomovic and Eric Namour.
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CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
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CONTRIBUTORS
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Franck Bordese, Deborah Coughlin, James Cowdery, Charlotte Dobbs-Higginson, Justine Dobbs-Higginson, Thom Falls, Laura Fellowes, Patrick Fetherstonhaugh, Catherine Hale, Andreas Hesse, Nicola Homer, Simon Hitchman, Magnus Larsson, Jonathan Lee, Francesco Manacorda, Emily McMehen, Nina Miall, Gill Munro, Aoife O'Brien, Emma Pettit, Matt Powell, Graeme Ross, Ingvild Rytter, David Sheppard, Tom Uglow and Eliza Williams.
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ABOUT US
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KultureFlash is a free, weekly newsletter covering happenings and openings in and around London.
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