art

Home of Metal clocks in from tomorrow

Home of Metal clocks in from tomorrow

  Should you be interested in the music known as Heavy Metal, or the history of the West Midlands, then this summer there’s an afternoon at least of your time that needs to be dedicated to the Home of Metal. Wassat? Let the blurb tell you: “Four decades since heavy metal was unleashed onto the world, Home of Metal arrives this summer, presenting a series of ambitious exhibitions and associatedevents which explore the foundations, social context and heritage of heavy metalculture, which has gone on to be a global phenomenon. .Curated by Capsule, Home of Metal is a celebration of the music that was created in the West Midlands, its legacy and influence across the world. Home of Metal focuses on the Midlands-born innovators of the genre and those thatcontinued to develop it. From Black Sabbath, unquestionably the founding fathers ofHeavy Metal, Judas Priest, defenders of the faith whose twin guitar attack paved theway for multitudes of melodic metal acts in their wake to Napalm Death, whose first two albums introduced grindcore to an unsuspecting world.” But it’s about so much more than music, behind the huge gothic drapes lurks threads of your local heritage from the immediate post-war to today’s...

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Jargon soup

We figure this is about arts funding in Birmingham, but frankly who can tell. If you can understand this get out of the arts now (but could you translate it first please). *shitty stock music* (via Dave Harte, title by Pete Ashton)

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Central Library at 4am

Central Library at 4am

The global media sensation the 4am Project was a perfect excuse for about 40 photographers to get access to our beautiful Central Library in the middle of the night. From the stacks in the basement to the very roof, we got to see the lot. Nilki Pugh’s photos, my photos. Am sure there will be more an better than mine at least appearing online, feel free to drop links to any you find in the comments:

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Fierce Festival 2011

Fierce Festival 2011

Festival smestival, festivals are just marketing exercises where the same shit as normal is glossily repackaged and the “vibe” is some flyers. Not when they’re painstakingly and artistically curated by a team that manage to make Birmingham the centre of the performance art world for a week each year. Go Fierce. Including ‘ Burningham ‘ all week: “a playful intervention on Eastside Green conceived and constructed by acclaimed French architecture collective EXYZT. The site is in the shadow of Birmingham’s abandoned Curzon Street railway station and on the route of the proposed HS2 high speed rail link. You are invited to drop in and help EXYZT in their process of ‘urban psychoanalysis’ of the city. Does Birmingham have low self-esteem? Does Birmingham have multiple personality disorder? Should Birmingham be renamed? Visit throughout the week, and join us for a public feast at dusk on Saturday 26th March.”

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Flatpack Festival 2011

Flatpack Festival 2011

Festival smestival, festivals are just marketing exercises where the same shit as normal is glossily repackaged and the “vibe” is some flyers. Not when they’re painstakingly and artistically curated by a team that manage to make Birmingham the centre of the film world for a week each year. Go Flatpack. Including ‘The Secret History of Birmingham‘ on Sunday: “The screening will include Miracles Take A Little Longer, a film about Birmingham’s reconstruction which includes brilliant colour footage from the post-war period and narration by Frank Bough. We’ll also have some marvellous amateur cine footage of Bournville from the 1950s.”

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Danny Smith: Skinner in the Underworld

Going Through Hell is Mike Skinner’s first single from his last album as The Streets. It’s an oddly poetic title that has a lot of resonances, including echoes of the Greek myth Orpheus when our titular hero walked through hell to return his wife, Eurydice, to the Land of the Living. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was completely intentional, Mike Skinner strikes me as a smart guy. The image of a Greek hero is also apt, an all-conquering hero after many trials and tests returning home but finding this his hardest test yet is an old rote. It was, after all and as he kept reminding us the last time he would be performing in his home city. And I don’t use the word ‘hero’ lightly. The gig tonight was a story of someone facing adversity, and overcoming it with aplomb. The adversity being the crowd. When I first got there the crowd was notable by its diversity, a massive age range. But as the venue started filling up, the mid-twenties gym rat started to swell the ranks, polo-shirted skinheads stinking of Lynx deodorant. In the half an hour between the support acts and The Streets starting things...

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Don’t Lose Your Head, Carry On

Don’t Lose Your Head, Carry On

From Birmingham News Room: “Curators from Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery have secured funding to restore sculptor William Bloye’s 1934 statue of the Greek God Pan, which formerly had pride of place the West garden at Aston Hall. Just one problem – the statue’s head was stolen by vandals six years ago. Aston Hall & Park reopened to the public in July 2009 following a £12.75m refurbishment and restoration project. The refurbishment of the West Garden was not included in the original scheme but thanks to ongoing fundraising efforts a package of restoration and landscaping work to the garden costing some £70,000 will be carried out this year. Artists from specialist sculpture company Eura Conservation have completed an initial clay maquette (small scale model) of the missing head which will ultimately be carved in Portland stone and reunited with the rest of the figure. Unfortunately, there are no detailed images of the statue prior to the vandalism and sculptors need help to recreate an accurate copy of the missing head. That’s where Birmingham residents can help. Curators are urging members of the public to send in photographs of Bloye’s statue to assist the restoration project.” Upload photographs to http://www.flickr.com/groups/1614884@N23/ or...

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What Colour is the 11 route?

From my 111111 explorations: This year I decided to see what colour the outer circle was. I’ve been fascinated with an iPhone app called Color Identifier that does nothing else but read out the colours it detects in the centre of the camera’s sensor — based first on RGB values and then this list of colour names. I sat on the top deck of the bus and angled the camera so the colours it was reading were around eye-level for someone on the pavement. The headphone output of the phone was linked up to a recorder, recording it in real-time. The app reads a new colour about every three seconds. I got on the 11C at around 11:20am, on Vicarage Road in King’s Heath, but it took around one stop to set up the iPhone and Zoom H2 to record. So, the circuit started here, opposite King’s Heath Park. The circuit took around 2 hours 20 min — the driver had a fag break in Ward End and popped in to a house opposite Acock’s Green Garage for a minute or two. So here’s what colour the outer circle is. A beautifully relaxing two-plus hours of spoken word (please feel free to download...

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111111 2010

On the eleventh of November 2010 you are invited to take part in a pyschogeographical epic. A window of eleven hours to complete a circuit of  Birmingham’s number eleven bus. 2009′s results were recorded here… including MoxyPark’s wonderful 11 bus song:

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