With a myriad of problems facing the planet and humanity, it’s ripe time for some political super heroes to come to the rescue. Enter Super Amigos, a disparate group of politically-committed activists in Mexico who dress up in classic wrestling costumes and fight for the environment, for gay rights and more. Super Amigos the documentary never really grew the legs it needed to be seen as much as it could have when it came out in 2007, but lucky for us, Hot Docs has made it available at their free streaming online site. Here’s the Hot Docs synopsis:

Director Arturo Pérez Torres returns to his hometown to show that superheroes do exist. In Mexico City, five real-life “social wrestlers” have capitalized on the popularity of Mexico’s larger than life Lucha Libre wrestlers to fight for social justice rather than trophies. Wearing custom masks, costumes and capes like the wrestlers who inspired them, these anonymous grassroots superheroes protect their metropolis against injustice. Super Animal challenges bullfighters to leave the bulls alone and fight him instead. After a savage beating kills his boyfriend, Super Gay becomes a champion of gay rights, fighting rampant homophobia. Ecologista Universal battles environmental destruction of every kind, all on foot. Super Barrio is the defender of poor tenants, helping them resist evictions by slumlords cashing in on gentrification. With a mixture of live action, comic book-style animation and a surf guitar soundtrack inspired equally by mariachi music and Batman, Super Amigos shows that with a little imagination, a good heart and the right mask, anyone can activate their communities to triumph over evil. In Spanish with English subtitles – Official Selection, 2007 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

Click this link, press play, and enjoy!

It has been announced that the RDS Taylor Art Award worth €5,000 was won by Laura Dowling a student at the National College of Art and Design.

The winning entry was a DVD animation titled Storytellers of Irelandcreated to “promote the tradition of storytelling in Ireland”.

The 2010 Student Art Awards, which are part of the RDS Foundation Art Programme, are particularly important this year as the RDS celebrates the 150th anniversary of the RDS Taylor Art Award. Since its inception in 1860 following an endowment in the Will of Captain George Archibald Taylor, the Award has continued to recognise excellence and creativity in the work of young Irish artists working in a diverse range of formats including multimedia, fine art photography, painting, print-making, and installation work. Many of Ireland’s most eminent artists have received the Award; from Walter Osborne and Sir William Orpen to contemporary artists such as James Hanley, R.H.A. and Eamonn O’Kane.

The RDS Student Art Awards Exhibition will take place in the RDS Concert Hall during the Fáilte Ireland Dublin Horse Show (August 4-8) from 9.00am to 7.00pm daily (entry fee required). Following the Horse Show, the winners Exhibition will continue to display works in the RDS until August 12 from 10.00am to 5.00pm (no entry fee required) before traveling to other venues in Ireland

RDS Student Art Awards Traveling Exhibitions:

From September 4 - October 7: Island Arts Centre, Lisburn, Northern Ireland
From November 5 – 26: Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, Co. Mayo.

Time for a change. Time to be more all encompassing, more directed in my witterings, ramblings, musings, rants and raves about all things that belong to that thing we call culture, that thing that grows and multiplies, that thing that we cultivate through expression, through life.  I work in the arts, on festivals, run gigs,  produce events,  run a free online arts resource, this ezine, listen to the radio, watch tv, sport, read alot, drink too much, have a constant hankering for sausages and ice cream, give out, complain and don’t see enough of what I claim to love. 

However, if I didn’t live in a petri dish I would be nothing. Ever since I was about 15 I’ve wanted to jump in and have a go, first as a cartoonist, then as a carnival puppet maker, designer  and performer, later as a stage designer, theatre writer and producer, then as festival director and finally as one half of an events  company. Along the way I have been introduced to so much. I have been influenced and shaped by everything I have had the pleasure and misfortune to be involved in. Like a ship at sea I have changed direction according to the winds in the constant hope that I’d reach the end of the world, the final frontier, the point, the light, salvation. But on those travels I have come to discover that there is no edge, no singularity, no point of arrival, only departure.

So, to this end I am once again changing tack and am going to have a poke around my petri dish and like all bacteria I shall virally multiply, form, divide and someday may be of use to someone, somewhere over a rainbow.

Start here.

What I’ve just read:
A great travel book by Chinese author Ma Jian.
I read it years ago and had forgotten all about it until I was looking for something to read. After spending too much time poking around my bookshelves looking vainly for an unread book I stopped, gave up and went for second best; a novel I hadn’t read more than twice.

In 1983, Ma Jian turned 30 and was overwhelmed by the desire to escape the confines of his life in Beijing. All around him, China was changing. Deng Xiaoping was introducing economic reform but clamping down on “spiritual pollution”; young people were rebelling. With his long hair, denim jeans and artistic friends, Ma Jian was under surveillance from his work unit and the police. His ex-wife was seeking custody of their daughter; his girlfriend was sleeping with another man; and he could no longer find the inspiration to write or paint.

One day he bought a train ticket to the westernmost border of China and set of in search of himself. Ma Jian’s journey would last three years and take him to deserts and overpopulated cities, from scenes of barbarity to havens of tranquility and beauty. The result is an insight into the teeming contradictions of China that only a man who was both an insider and an outsider in his own country could have written.

Well worth a read and if you have any interest in the rising dragon that is China this is for you – a good counter point to everything we read in the press today

More notes from a petri dish to follow…

The Some Blind Alleys autumn course list has been posted. Online booking is available for CW1 and CW2. CW1 starts on Thursday, September 2. CW2 starts on Tuesday, September 14. The CW3 course on offer is full. For more information about the Some Blind Alleys Workshops, please contact workshops [ at ] someblindalleys [ dot ] com.

From “Someday” by Alicia Hart.

read more

The Livestock summer party takes place at The Market Studios this Saturday the 31st July. Livestock is a bimonthly Live Art/Performance night. It encourages performers from any discipline and experience level to present new ideas to a live audience. This … Continue reading →

Part five of a story I wrote called Glyph. It’s rough and unfinished but should be entertaining. You can search for the other parts using the search box in the top right hand corner.

His memory was flawless. Apart from having absolutely nothing from before he was thirteen when he work up alone in a hospital bed with the doctor unable to find any trace of him on any database. Whatever put him there had left his body covered in tiny wounds and a long, thin and perfectly straight scar along the left side of his skull. From that moment onwards, Duncan had been building himself from scratch.

Duncan pushed open the large steel up-and-over door of his single room flat. The dank sunlight filled the single room, barely casting any shadows. It wasn’t sparse. Duncan just didn’t have much stuff. People who lived in what was a stack of converted storage containers didn’t tend to have a lot of possessions. Duncan lived at the very top of seven storeys of concrete. It gave him a great view first thing when he left his flat but was bitterly cold in the Winter. Duncan looked over the favela that this part of the city had become. He took a deep breathe of what would be the last mostly-clean air for a while and made his way down the bolted-on stairwell tower.

“How may I help you?” said the smartly dressed girl behind the front desk.

“I’m here for a 1 o’clock interview. My name is Duncan.”

“Please take a seat. Someone will be with you shortly.”

The girl’s irises were an unnaturally bright green. As Duncan took a step back towards the rigid plastic chair, the green of the girl’s iris looked like it began to bleed into the rest of her eye until two emerald pools stared out from her flawless pale skin. She then raised her hands and her fingernails glowed the same colour. Duncan watched as she moved her fingers in front of her like some kind of elaborate dance of sign language.

“That’s an augment I’ve not seen before,” said Duncan. The girl turned her head towards him and the colour quickly returned to the normal position. She made a small smile.

“It’s new,” she said, “Only got it last month. It’s so much quicker now.” Duncan sat down and let the girl get back to work. He was glad to sit. The nerves were building up inside him. He watched the people in the Central Auditerminal. Some were browsing the variety of shops that went all around the edge. Some were sitting, reading or on talking on phones. A few were taking pictures of the four grand exhibits placed in this room. Most people carried suitcases or bags. Some were passing right on through to check into their flights. A number of people walked past Duncan to climb the marble staircase next to him. They strolled around the mezzanine before disappearing into the exhibition galleries of the museum. After fifteen minutes, a woman came striding across the auditorium with a slightly frantic edge to the way she walked. Her hair was ash blonde with slightly lighter grey strands in it. She wore all black. She gave Duncan a well rehearsed smile of greeting that made fine dignified wrinkles appear. She offered Duncan her hand.

“You must be Duncan. Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Jonquil, the Deputy Curator here.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Duncan said as he shook her hand.

“Come this way, I’ll give you a quick tour first then talk about what you want to do whilst you’re volunteering here. It’s only me giving the interview I’m afraid as our Head Curator is in meetings all day.”

“That’s fine by me.”

“I’m sure you meet him soon.”

Copyright 2010. Pete Newcurator. Newcurator.com

Barbara Knezevic: Temporary Equilibrium, helium, latex weather balloons, elastic bands, cotton string, brass eyelets, dimensions variable, 2010; image courtesy the artist.

In 1969, Samuel Beckett’s short play Breath made its debut in Kenneth Tynan’s bawdy revue Oh! Calcutta!. Infuriated by this staging, which ignored a typically specific set of stage instructions, Beckett withdrew the work and the play became a shadowy chapter in his back catalogue. This incident forms the crux of Barbara Knezevic’s recent exhibition at the Joinery, Breath and Other Shorts, in which a framed programme of Oh! Calcutta! is set beside an old  library copy of Breath and a red-bound book, entitled Beckett: an exercise in omission. This latter piece contains Knezevic’s account of Breath’s ill-fated debut. Inside, the text is facsimiled hundreds of times, each page a copy of the one before until its image fades and becomes skewed. A metaphor for the changes that occur when a work is re-staged, this piece establishes a thread for the rest of an exhibition which abounds with duplicates.

A case in point is A testament to bravery which consists of a stone set face-to-face with a duplicate fashioned from wax. A one-sided mirror, which reflects only the wax model, separates the two. With only the duplicate then being duplicated, the stone is rendered a self-contained entity by contrast. Hefty and squat, one is led to ponder the Herculean (if not Sisyphean) effort required to heave the stone into the gallery. In the adjoining space, a length of pine, sharpened at either end, balances precariously on a small bronze rest. The symmetrical form and exacting equilibrium of Forewarned is Forearmed echoes the doubling of the first work, as does the delicate tension of Temporary Equilibrium in the final room where two large balloons are tethered to the floor.

Barbara Knezevic: A testament to bravery, stone, microcrystalline wax, mirror, dimensions variable, 2010; image courtesy the artist.

These doppelgangers could be cast as interpretations or restagings of the original object, thus engaging with the artist’s interest in the multitude of interpretations that may intervene between the production of work and its ultimate reception. After all, the exhibition takes its title from a particular edition of Beckett’s shorts, rather than from the play itself. Through the juxtaposition of an historical account of a text and its performance alongside the original, Knezevic draws our attention to the many readings that producers, directors and actors impose on work, thereby distancing it from the writer’s intentions no matter how specific his stage instructions. One cannot but help draw parallels to the process of artistic production whereby gallerists, curators and technicians mediate between the artwork and its  audience.

This in turn elucidates the ease with which Knezevic relinquishes control of her sculptures through the use of fragile materials such as balloons (the contents of which neatly evoke the exhibition title), microcrystalline wax, and the failed register of the photocopier used in the omission book. Knezevic is sanguine about the prospect of these pieces degrading, relishing the unpredictability of the end result. While the works might be seen initially as austere minimalist objects, the artist’s acceptance of their mutable nature suffuses them with a referentiality beyond the material. Read as an ensemble piece, the chasm between the idea and its material manifestation recalls Beckett’s defence of the honourability of human effort – in spite of the risk of failure. Knezevic reminds us that to try and not succeed does not mean to founder in futility. Despite the instability of these materials, they are still capable of making an idea manifest.

Barbara Knezevic: Forewarned and forearmed, sharpened pine broom stick, bronze, dimensions approx 120cm x 20 cm x 5cm, 2010; image courtesy the artist.

The work in this exhibition raises a number of questions, some of which could be more fully resolved. The formal relation of the texts to the sculptures also seems a little weak. All in all, however, Breath and Other Shorts displays the deftness of touch that intertextual works often lack. This is an intelligent body of work which wears its erudition lightly, of which I look forward to seeing more.