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Hull 2017

Catching up…

365/17. Daily notes from the City of Culture.

Yes, it’s over 10 weeks since I blogged anything about the City of Culture.

That’s not because there’s been nothing going on.

That’s not because it’s been shit.

That’s not because there’s some underhand, devious plot to silence me.

It’s not because I’m frightened of falling off the guest lists that have made attending so many events this year plausible.

It’s simply because I haven’t blogged anything.

And looking at the list of the things I have seen and experienced over those 10 weeks, the temptation is not to bother to document it on here (it’ll be on twitter if you’re familiar with that rather more succinct way to witter on about stuff).

What kind of stupid mindset was I in when I reckoned I’d blog every day of the year (like I did for, um, 8+ years)? Why didn’t I take notes? Why would I take notes – it’s not like I get paid for this drivel.

So, I reckon a list is easier. I’ve been out a lot and another weekend awaits (Where Are We Now? – “a gathering of time-served trouble-makers, spoken word rebels, artistic mavericks and left-field music pioneers”. Y’know, those people that you swerve in the pub).

Yes, a list. It’ll save you the bother of having to read a stupidly lengthy post, me the bother of having to write it, and avoid the fallout from makers and shakers should I mention that any of it’s been underwhelming, or from the ‘countercultural’ bullshitters should I overstate that I like something.

So, a list it is. Which is a shame, because I do have extensive thoughts on what the list contains, and bubbling away somewhere is some kind of overarching sense of how the year’s shaping up, now we’re five months in, and the team delivering it. But fuck it, this is a free service. Commission me if you want the full story.

This list is not necessarily definitive. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some stuff. And there’s been some work that falls outside the official programme that I’ve been to that’s not included here.

Height of the Reeds: a sound journey for the Humber Bridge. Music by Arve Henriksen, Eivind Aarset and Jan Bang, the Orchestra and Chorus of Opera North; field recordings by Jez Riley French; voices of Maureen Lipman, Barrie Rutter, and Katie Smith. Musical arrangement by Aleksander Waaktar.

Fountain 17. Armitage Shanks, Hull School of Art & Design and a load of artists celebrate the dual anniversaries of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (100 years) and Armitage Shanks (200 years). Toilets, etc.

John Grant’s North Atlantic Flux: Songs from Smoky Bay. Four days of Scandinavian and Icelandic musicians, including GusGus, Susanne Sundfør, Lindstrøm, Sóley, Sykur, Prins Póló, Nordic Affect, Ragga Gisla, Fufanu, Ghostigital, descending on Hull at various venues. With the added bonus of Cobby & Litten.

Slung Low’s Flood: Abundance (Part 2). The second quarter of “an extraordinary year-long epic”. Outdoor theatre in the Victoria Dock basin. With headsets.

ReRooted – Hull Time Based Arts. A two-day takeover of Hull’s new Humber Street Gallery. All free.

SKIN: Freud, Mueck and Tunick. What the half of Hull that got their kit off has been waiting for. With added delights including Ron Mueck’s mind-bending sculptures of the human form.

Depart. An atmospheric Circa Production in General Cemetery (one of Larkin’s favourite haunts).

Richard III. Northern Broadsides and Hull Truck co-pro. Marking 25 years of Broadsides, with added drumming from Hull Samba.

Jason Singh workshop. We learned how to beatbox and make the sounds of waves lapping, saws buzzing and foghorns blasting.

Lego Daffodils. Daffodils. Made of Lego.

BBC Radio 1 Academy – Piano Sessions hosted by Huw Stephens and Greg James that saw Two Door Cinema Club’s Alex Trimble, Oh Wonder, Ghetts & Shakka and Blanaevon stripping back their work and making it a bit more plinky plonky.

BBC Radio 1 Academy – You Me At Six

BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend. We went on the Saturday.

Poppies: Weeping Window. Several thousand handmade ceramic poppies, from the somewhat more impressive installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London, oozed out of the Maritime Museum.

Grow. Hull Truck’s artist development programme for artists of all ages and at all stages of their careers. Now in its fourth year. Launch event and First Time Out, which included brand new work by Junior Adults, End of the Line and The Roaring Girls.

Raft of the Medusa/Somewhere Becoming Sea. Lucy and Jorge Orta’s multi-sensory installation on the ground floor of Humber Street Gallery, while upstairs international artists, including Simon Faithfull, Lavinia Greenlaw, Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen and Isabella Martin, reflect on how expanses of water that divide countries are also channels that connect them.

Jeremy Corbyn Rally: Zebedee’s Yard. This was a 2017 event, right? With the added bonus of Cobby & Litten and that poem by Shane Rhodes.

What I didn’t get round to blogging about previously:

Coum Transmissions exhibition. The first exhibition of materials drawn from the personal archives of Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge.

Coum Transmissions: Cosey Club. Richard Clouston and Perc in the Tunnel Bar.

What I wish I’d been at:

I wasn’t fussed at the time but Periplum’s Seven Alleys in East Park sounds like it was fun.

 

#challengehull week 10…

365/17. Daily notes from the City of Culture.

Pen

Week #10 of Challenge Hull is courtesy of Pause Project, who provide a creative solution designed to address the needs of women who have, or are at risk of, multiple children being removed from their care.

They urge us to look around, go for a walk, see what we can see and collect objects as we go, then use our magic on these objects and inject them with new life, using glitter, glue, fabric, or anything else we might lay our hands on.

I ignored that brief, and went upstairs to ‘find’ something that I was given at Christmas. One of the most beautiful – and powerful – everyday objects with unfathomable creative potential: A pen.

In 1941, Woody Guthrie placed a sticker on his guitar that read “This Machine Kills Fascists”. And, of course, songwriters, Guthrie among them, have caused a lot of people to rethink their politics, brought about societal change, touched and entertained people, shone a light on wrongdoing or helped people understand life. Maybe he mainly used a pencil, I dunno, but at some point, I’d like to think that even the wielder of a Fascist killing axe will have put pen to paper to write some lyrics, or some dots on lines, down.

Writers in all forms, gripping pens, have sparked revolutions and transformed the world. The weapon of change remains the pen, even in these high-tech days. A pen, coupled with paper, is the primary tool to bring about change. Writing works. Words still work. Maybe that’s why they’re trying to close down libraries. And while it’s nice to tap away into your favourite text editor or phone app, those that know the power of the pen continue to wander the earth with a notebook in their pocket and several pens at hand; laying down thoughts, capturing overheard comments and conversations, exploring their feelings on what they see that is wrong with the world. Graham Greene once wrote, with a pen I hope, that his two fingers on a typewriter never connected with his brain. Only his hand on a pen did that.

There is no need to use glitter, glue, fabric or anything else. The glitter comes from the pen, the glue that binds us together likewise, the fabric that is required to bind society together also. Take your pen, and write about the abuses that people the world over are suffering at the hands of those in power, shine a light on the darkest, murky corners. Never has the pen been more important. It’s an analogue machine that, coupled with some intelligent and considered thought and creativity, can kill Fascists.

Go find a pen, now. And use it.

#challengehull week 3…

365/17. Daily notes from the City of Culture.

Hull 2017 have teamed up with 64 Million Artists and community groups and organisations across Hull to set a weekly creative challenge to encourage everyone in the city to try something new.

This week’s challenge, courtesy of Hull WI – Apple Crumble and Stitch, is to ‘create an inspiring message’. So, in the true spirit of cultural theft, I’ve taken the important and inspiring Japanese idiomatic phrase (which sits atop this very site) and expanded my thoughts on it a little.

A creative life doesn’t take you down a linear path. There are lots of obstacles to climb over, lots of doors to break down and walls to smash through. You’ll be asked to make compromises. Inevitably there are going to be setbacks and rejections. Well fuck that. What’s important is how you channel your energy. You get knocked down, you make sure you get back up, kicking and screaming. It’s all worth fighting for. If you get knocked down seven times, be the one that gets up eight. Keep going, never give up. You’ve got something unique to say, it’s worth saying and that’s the only thing that matters;. nana karobi ya oki 七転び八起き

#challengehull hull2017.co.uk/challengehull

Blade in Hull…

365/17. Daily notes from the City of Culture.

 

Blade installed at Queen Victoria Square, Hull.

Blade installed at Queen Victoria Square, Hull.

 

A massive turbine blade, manufactured by Hull employees at the new Siemens factory in Hull, was transported overnight to Hull’s city centre. As Made in Hull was packed down, the blade was en route to kick-off the next phase of Hull 2017 – Look Up. But it wasn’t just any old blade. It was Blade. A temporary, readymade artwork, we’re told.

Conceived by artist Nayan Kulkarni, Blade has been created as the first of a programme of temporary artworks that will be thrust into and around the city’s public spaces and places.

Blade uses one of the first B75 rotor blades made in Hull and changes its status to that of a readymade artwork. At 75 metres it is the world’s largest, handmade fibreglass component – cast as a single element. According to the Hull Daily Mail, Blade weighs the equivalent of four bull elephants squeezed together on the same scales. Not sure why you’d go squeezing bull elephants on to the same scales, but it makes a change from comparing large things to football pitches and Olympic-size swimming pools.

Is it art? You decide. I think that’s the point. As I tweeted, I’m impressed by the bull elephant scale of this hefty public intervention. It is an enviable and undeniable feat of engineering and an interesting talking point. If it gets us questioning the relationship between corporate sponsorship of arts and cultural events (which will increase, as public funding declines), that’s also a worthwhile by-product.

The brilliance of Bowhead…

365/17. Daily notes from the City of Culture.

Bowhead at the Maritime Museum.

Bowhead at Maritime Museum. Audience members find out more.

I sat in front of Louise Dempsey’s brilliant Bowhead – a whale model and animated interaction – for quite a while. But not as long as Louise, a third year student at Hull School of Art & Design – has. She started work on it in her second year as part of her client related practice and is taking it forward now as a multi-disciplinary research project. In the true spirit of collaboration, the accompanying soundtrack for this installation in the Maritime Museum has been composed by students studying music in the  new School of Arts at the University of Hull. It’s a stunning piece of work that showcases some of the best of the city’s emerging talent in music and games design and Louise’s skills in 3D design and digital animation, as well as the support she was provided with by my former colleague and Games Design lecturer Paul Starkey, who’s one of many extremely talented lecturers that do their thing without any fuss, and often confronted with no praise and shocking apathy from their masters at Hull College Group, over at HSAD.

I overheard a funny comment while I was sat there, prompted by a woman sat in front of me who is “writing a book about the whole year.” “I’m not sure how I feel about seeing this in a whaling museum,” the potential contributor to this book said in a jolly tone. “I mean, look at these beautiful creatures that we murdered. It’s such a shame.” Not sure that was the planned take-home from the installation, and I’ve never really noticed that the Maritime Museum celebrates this part of Hull’s history; rather, it just documents it. But it’s good that Louise’s great work has the power to provoke these thoughts on a past that Hull was built on.

Bowhead’s on until March 19 and I’d urge you to swing by and see it.

Hull before culture…

365/17. Daily notes from the City of Culture.

So Day Five of Hull’s journey in 2017 included me appearing, albeit briefly, on Radio 4 as a contributor to part-one of a two part documentary called Hull Before Culture, produced by Mary Ward-Lowery.

John Godber, the third most performed playwright in the UK, bundled me into a car at the end of November and a microphone between the pair of us captured a chat as John drove us over to Hull KR’s KC Lightstream stadium. I was a bit unwell at the time and had absolutely no idea if what was coming out of my mouth made any sense. I had to ask John halfway through if I was talking gibberish, as I kept losing my train of thought. Miraculously, Mary managed to find some stuff that didn’t make me sound too much of an idiot. I also sound like I’m from Hull, which is a relief. Good to hear Nick Lane on there too, my old mucker Phil Codd and Kardomah94 owner Malcolm Scott, who once gave me the keys to his office block without realising that I’d sleep there on the odd occasion. In fact, I once slept on top of a giant carrot suit. Happy days. Don’t work in the arts, kids.

Anyway, you’ll be able to listen to Hull Before Culture Pt 1 again here.

 

 

Made in Hull 2…

365/17. Daily notes from the City of Culture.

We went back for more.

This time to look at the faces on the people looking at Made in Hull.

And each and every one of them fucking loved it.

Made in Hull…

365/17. Daily notes from the City of Culture.

Imitating The Dog's Arrivals and Departures. Pic by Ben Hames.

A real sense of pride. That’s what we felt, as we followed up our night at the fireworks by taking to the streets to soak up Hull 2017’s Made in Hull trail, the work of an “eclectic group of extraordinary artists”, headed up by creative director Sean McAllister, writer Rupert Creed, and with sound design by Dan Jones and lighting design by Durham Marenghi.

Where to start? Perhaps where we did, in Queen Victoria Square, for Zsolt Balogh’s We Are Hull – the “epic” retelling of the past 70 years of Hull people and their history and a deft use of image mapping lighting up the City Hall, Maritime Museum and the Ferens. For me, the mapping worked best on the Maritime Museum – the old Dock Offices, former home of the Hull Dock Company that ran the entire dock system in the city – partly because of that grand architecture and the use of the windows, partly because of the fishing industry headlines that would have caused headaches for those that used to work in the building but mainly because when the epic focused on the Blitz, it really did look like the building was alight.

We loved We Are Hull so much that we watched it from every available angle, spotting different moments in history, different faces, different headlines and marveling that, whatever the angle and craggy wall surface, Deano always cracked that volley into the back of the net.

We Are Hull set the tone and the standard. Invisible Flock’s 105+dB in the fab Zebedee’s Yard virtually sent us out into the centre of the KC Stadium, although nobody in their right mind would stay for the entire Hull City game that this “spectacular stadium of sound” was recorded at. It’s an aural and visual assault: We moved on with a chant of “Steve Bruce’s black and amber army” hurting our ears, having been blinded by the floodlights.

Then we took in Whitefriargate, a right rag-bag of installations in shop windows – the highlights being Preston Likely’s veracity-questioning Amuse Agents, Sodium’s We’re All Going On A Summer Holiday, featuring the Roaring Girls playing Scrabble in a mock caravan and miraculously not giggling like they do in real life and, again, Invisible Flock, this time with their Reflections.

Quentin Budworth’s Hullywood Icons is a fantastic collection of recreations of iconic big screen images and included so many of our mates that I’m still not sure if I like the pics because of their artistic merit (which is high) or if I’m just amused by people that I’ve consumed booze with dressing up (or in the case of Rupert Creed, standing on his doorstep in his underpants).

Jesse Kanda’s recreation of the club scene in Yorkshire – Embers – seemed to baffle most people, although the footage was fun. But it wasn’t the rave we were looking for. MakeAMPLIFY’s (in) Dignity of Labour looked beautiful but, having read the blurb, which promised something that gave voice to the unemployed, I’m not sure the narrative was clear enough – but one heck of a crowd took it all in.

We posed for Urban Projections’ Vantage Point, a large scale selfie that put us in a work of art, which was fun. And we ended up at The Deep, for imitating the dog’s Arrivals and Departures, my personal favourite of all of the Made in Hull happenings, which told the story of the ebb and flow of people, and animals, into Hull and, like We Are Hull, was a fantastic use of mapping technology.

It was a great trail to follow, most of it impressed greatly and there was a terrific buzz around the city, as people realised that this was not only the start of the year but a bloody good one at that. The team that pulled it all together deserve all the plaudits that will come their way – they instilled a real sense of pride in every one from Hull that experienced the trail, will no doubt silence critics outside of the city, and this opening salvo bodes well for what will follow in the coming weeks and months.