Digbeth tentacle | As1 – Nature has been clawing back the disused warehouse on the corner of Alcester St/Green St for a while now – trees poke out of the windows and the surfaces inside seem to be covered with a coating of pigeon poo. But It seems an entirely new type of creature, created by As1, is now laying its claim to the building. Cheers to Carl for spotting the work in progress.
After having a very long, marathon sleeping session I think I’ve just about recovered from my 12-hour New Year sit-in in the new Birmingham Coach Station. It was a great night and surprisingly good fun – I cannot recommend enough that everyone spends a little time watching the world go by in the nearest coach or train station, to experience where you live as a traveler. You’ll see a truly different side to your area and get to talk to some very interesting people passing through it, who all have their own stories to tell.
Midge passes through before going to a Sheldon house party
I’ll be writing up some of the stories I got to hear here under the heading NYE Express, a title thought up by Midge, who kindly popped by to see me with a little something to see me through the night. He wasn’t the only one:
Ben Mabbett was at the station waiting for me when I arrived with a little bottle of bubbly in a brown paper bag, which was ever so thoughtful.
On the morning of New Year’s Eve I was on BBC Radio WM chatting to Daz Hale – you can listen again here for one week (I’m at the tail-end of the show, roughly 2:18 in).
Roughly twenty-two hours later I was back in Radio WM studio chatting to Brett Birks about the experience. The programme is not available to listen again but Alan Colson took a sneaky audioboo:
I managed to collect quite a few stories during the night. Watch this space for future NYE Express posts to read all about them.
On Friday evening I went to the launch of The Ikon’s off-site projectHey for Lubberland!at The Bond with local photographer Snowshot, who you’ve to thank for the pretty pictures.
Artists Simon & Tom Bloor decorated a canal boat with ‘design and dazzle’ camouflage, a technique I’m told was used in the First World War to confuse people watching through a periscope with their finger on the trigger. Apparently the blocks of colour and mono stripes made it difficult for enemies to tell which direction the boat they wanted to sink was travelling in.
You learn something new every day. It will be based in Brindleyplace from tomorrow (post Supersonic). If you fancy a ride on the vivid vessel look at the timetable on the Ikon website.
Photo by Snowshot
After taking a look at the boat we went over the road to Ikon Eastside to see the new exhibition from Raqs Media Collective’s exhibition When The Scales Fall From Your Eyes. It’s kind of like walking through a 3D Dali painting – there’s lots of scales that look like heads because they’re attached to clear moulds of torsos, which are sat on everyday objects like beds, photocopiers, tables, etc. Inside each set of scales are a collection little objects which you should NOT TOUCH to see the scales swing (at least that’s what I was told). Pity that, I found it that tempting my fingers were twitching. When The Scales Fall From Your Eyes is on display until 6th Sept.
Okay, after all that serious Big City Plan bus stuff it’s time for a spot of fun. You may remember a little while ago I linked to the above photo by Snow Blind, commenting that hunting the rest down could be a good, graffiti art Where’s Wally? So here we have it – a public Google Map. Please insert tags of the stickers’ whereabouts at your leisure, inserting photos if you have them or just their names if you don’t. These are:
