We Are Eastside | Birmingham – Another new local website is live and raring to go! We Are Eastside is ‘your guide to the organisations that host and produce bold new work across film, digital media, crafts, music, visual arts, literature and photography all based in Eastside,’ I suspect the site will be getting particularly busy this month, in the lead up to the fantastic Flatpack Festival, which will inhabit lots of local venues such as Ikon Eastside, VIVID, The Bond and The Rainbow. Tickets for events have just gone on sale and are already selling fast so get in quick!
We Are Eastside has some very useful local information, such as a We Are Eastside map (which I’ll be replacing my old Digbeth arty trail with), and guides to Shopping, Entertainment, Eating Out and Places to Stay. Contributions to the blog are from the local cultural aces that are:
About : Flatpack Festival – A sneak preview peak at the Flatpack fun in store. Digbeth treats include:
WALKING DOWN BRISTOL STREET at Ikon Eastside on Wednesday 24 March, with guests including great Brummie author David Lodge.
Dublin collective SYNTH EASTWOOD: FAST FORWARD ‘present an eye-popping night of audio-visual antics’ on Friday 26 March at the Rainbow Warehouse. YouTube film above for us walkie guys.
JULIEN MAIRE: DEMI-PAS, a ‘Mesmerising performance using modified slide projections’ on Friday 26 to Sat 27 March at Ikon Eastside.
BELBURY YOUTH CLUB give us ‘haunted audio and spooky 70s TV’ on Sunday 28 March at VIVID
More festival details will be coming soon, so be sure to watch their space!
Once again the Flatpack Festival takes over venues across the city with a colourful line-up of film and performance. Highlights at Ikon Eastside include optical illusions from French artist Julien Maire, a retrospective of work by infuential film-maker Takashi Ito, and an investigation into Birmingham’s lively cultural scene during the 1930s with author David Lodge.
On/Off « More Canals than Venice – A timely reminder that it’s Ikon Eastside’s closing party this Thurs evening from 7.30pm, with the party based on the current Ryoji Ikeda exhibition with complimentary music and visuals organised by Colour. The dress code is strictly black and white. Pixie Sixer knows what she’s wearing – do you? I do – the same little black dress I bought especially for thier monochrome closing party of last year.
Japan’s leading electronic composer/artist Ryoji Ikeda presents the large-scale audiovisual installation data.tron (2007-2009) which immerses the viewer in a projection of row upon row of numbers, a sea of ever-changing streams of numerical data.
Exhibition continues to 8 November (open Thursday-Sunday, 1-5pm, free entry).
Birmingham Friends of the Earth: Digbeth: Past, Present & Future – Ben Mabbett at Birmingham FoE gives us his take on the Digbeth: Past, Present & Future discussion at Ikon Eastside last week. It was a lively discussion, covering everything from fears of future large-scale developments affecting the fine grain of the area, the ‘creative quarter’, the ‘digital district’, noise abatement issues and the like. Only problem was that we were a panel member down:
It was just a pity Philip Singleton of Birmingham City Council wasn’t in attendance, he missed a great opportunity to engage with a talented and passionate group of people who had a Typhoo Tea Factory full of great ideas to progress Digbeth in a way that respects it’s past and nurtures it’s future.
“It’s an action: I’ll put the dance in a gallery space. By putting a dance artist’s movement, their performance, in another space, it is a different context. Do the audience bring a different perspective or a different energy or set of questions when they go into a gallery space than when they go into a theatre space? I’m never going to know the answer, but I like to pose a question.”
Minutes is part of the wider work Collection, which also includes a video Lying in Wait at the Custard Factory by Indris Khan and Sarah Warsop, and Russian artist Victor Alimpiev’s exhibition at the Brindley Place Ikon Gallery, which consists of videos which reference contemporary dance.
Hannah has inserted a recording of the full interview into her post.
Colour & Ikon Eastside Collaboration « colour – We Are Colour detail how they’ll be providing the sounds for the Eastside Closing Party, using the work from Ryoji Ikeda’s forthcoming exhibition as their inspiration.
On Thursday 12 November, we’ll be collaborating with Ikon for the Eastside Closing Party, entitled On/Off. The theme of the party will echo the binary principles central to the work of Japanese electronic composer and artist Ryoji Ikeda. Lighting and dress code will be monochrome, while we’ll be showcasing a suitably electronic musician (to be announced soon) and assembling DJ sets that will be both digital in feel and have a party atmosphere later in the evening.
