Cultural Hijack

CULTURAL HIJACK

AA Gallery
Architectural Association School, Bedford Square, London
26/4/2013 - 25/5/2013


ZEVS (FRAN), Ztohoven (CZEC), Krzysztof Wodiczko (POL), Matthias Wermke & Mischa Leinkauf (GER), Upper Space (UK), Gregory Sholette (USA), Michael Rakowitz (USA), Ben Parry (UK) & Peter McCaughey (IRE), Tatzu Nishi (JPN), Renzo Martens (BELG), Knit the City (UK), Peter Kennard (UK), Laura Keeble (UK), Allan Kaprow (USA), Tushar Joag (IND), Space Hijackers (UK), Paul Harfleet (UK), EPOS 257 (CZEC), Electronic Disturbance Theater (USA), Nina Edge (UK), Alan Dunn (UK), Paolo Cirio (ITA), Leah Borromeo & Dr. D (UK), BGL (CAN)
The exhibition presents a series of provocative interventions which have inserted themselves into the world, demanding attention, interrupting everyday life, hijacking, trespassing, agitating and teasing. Often unannounced and usually anonymous, these artworks have appropriated media channels, hacked into live TV and radio broadcasts, attacked billboards, re-appropriated street furniture, subverted signs, monuments and civic architectures, organised political actions as protest, exposed corporations and tax loopholes and revealed the absurdities of government bureaucracies.

Cultural Hijack occurs in three parts: a survey exhibition of documented artworks from across the globe, supported by a programme of artists’ talks; a programme of live-interventions, in which artists arrive in London to agitate and infiltrate the urban territory, starting in Bedford Square and moving out across the city; and CON(tra)VENTION, in which the programme culminates in a carnival weekend of lectures, symposia, screenings, participatory actions, interventions, dinners and debate.

This exhibition is supported by Arts Council England, The Architectural Association, P H Holt Foundation, Polish Cultural Institute, FACT, Québec Government Office London, CitizenM, WAVE, Jump Ship Rat, EU-Japan Fest, Canada Council for the Arts and Creative Futures Institute, University of the West of Scotland.

Exhibitions are open Monday to Friday 10:00-19:00, Saturday 10:00-15:00, unless otherwise stated.

From the creation of insurgent public spaces to the playful disruptions of public life, Cultural Hijack – curated by artists Ben Parry and Peter McCaughey – explores the role of art and the artist in contemporary society and offers the opportunity to rethink the growing field of intervention in relation to cultural activism and social change.

(un)CONVENTION, Friday 26 April 2013, 6pm, New Soft Room

A programme of temporary public artworks, events and performances accompanies the exhibition - Full details will be published here shortly.

From record collecting to 'music curating': cultures of discovery and consumption in a 'post-retail' age

Commercial Music Seminar Series 2012 - 13: No 6

Tuesday 9th April 2013

UWS Space, CCA Glasgow, 5.30pm - 7pm

Graham Jeffery

Reader in Music and Performance, UWS

All welcome - to book please contact Holly.Tessler@uws.ac.uk

My first exposure to the music industry, other than as an occasional public performer, came in the form of a shop-floor job in a celebrated but slightly grubby London specialist classical record store in my year off between school and university. In this talk I will reflect on just how much has changed in how recorded music is bought, sold and consumed since the heady and profitable days of the late eighties, which were arguably a kind of zenith for the record (and CD) industry; these were pre-mass internet days but just at the dawn of the digital revolution that would bring down most of the edifice of 'physical' music retail.  In 1987 Evan Eisenberg published a landmark book, The Recording Angel, which changed the way I (and many others) thought about cultures of collection and consumption of music. He named this field ‘phonography’, and of course since then much has been written in academic work and in fiction about the pleasures and intimacies of ‘crate digging’ and the random musical find, the place of rarity/scarcity in an era of pervasive media, the ‘long tails’  and short wait times of digital sleuthing, and shifts in business models forced by globalization, digitization, peer to peer sharing and fast data transfer. 

What is the future of music consumption, and collecting, now that so much purchasing has migrated online, into the supposedly weightless world of cloud storage? How do we keep and collect our musical treasures? Is the idea of a record shop now an hopeless anachronism or can we see some persistence in the idea of specialism, scarcity and authenticity as a marker of difference within the cultural sphere?

Gardening as Astronomy: Woodend Barn

Woodend Barn are exhibiting a film by doctoral researcher Chris Dooks from 18th March to 23rd March, screenings from 10-5pm daily. The Ayrshire-based artist bans the word 'sun' (keep it as 'star', he says) and defines gardening as astronomy. In this short film, Dooks interviews patrons of Woodend Barn over a 48 hour period and stitches their responses to high definition in-camera triple exposures, a Steinway piano and recordings of everything from the underwater sounds of a burn to the plumbing of the arts centre itself.During Chris' stay in Banchory, he photographed the aurora over Aberdeenshire, which features in the film. Chris Dooks visited us last year as part of a mini-residency. We are delighted to show this short film over a week to launch our Year of Natural Scotland. On loop in Barn. Chris Dooks will return to the Barn on Wednesday 20 March to introduce the film and discuss the work, starting at 7pm. Woodend Barn Arts Centre, AB31 5QA Banchory, United Kingdom.

Writing in Creative Practice

Writing in Creative Practice: Collage, Reflection and Writing

UWS Ayr Campus, Friday 12th April 2013

On 12^th April the University of the West of Scotland will host the first Scotland-based workshop in the Writing in Creative Practice series, which is run in conjunction with Writing PAD and partly funded by the Higher Education Academy.

Titled Collage, Reflection and Writing, this workshop looks at collage’s potential as a method of inquiry through creative practice which seamlessly merges the making and the textual. We will explore the versatility collage offers as it allows one to find the words to express subjective experience through reflexivity and its (collage’s) intrinsic multiple interpretations of the ‘image’. We will take a look (and possibly have a go) at collage as a method of inquiry, reflective bookmaking, poetic inquiry and poem houses, as well as discussing ways of introducing students to structuring academic texts through collage.

Conceived as a hands-on day with lots of activities and discussion, this workshop will give participants the opportunity to explore collage in both a theoretical and practical way, but particularly as a way of engaging students in a reflective and analytical process that can prepare and support their writing tasks.

For more information on previous workshops in the Writing in Creative Practice series, please check the HEA events archive or http://tactileacademia.wordpress.com/?s=writing+in+creative+practice.

The attendance of this workshop is free of charge to all those interested in the workshop topic, with preference being given to staff working in HE institutions and HE in FE colleges from across the UK. Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Lunch and refreshments will be provided, but travel expenses will not be covered. However, the HEA is currently running a funding scheme to support travel crossing national borders to attend events, which could be applied for independently.

For more information or to book a place, please get in touch with Dr Alke Gröppel-Wegener (tactileacademia@gmail.com).

11:00 registration and refreshments

11.30 welcome

11.45 Thinking through Collaging: Reflective bookmaking and poetic inquiry (Sarah Williamson)

13.00: Lunch

13.45: Collage as subjective experience: Transitioning, Relinquishing, Becoming (Alison Bell)

14.45: Collaging in three dimensions: the Poem House (Brigid Collins)

15.45: refreshments

16.00: Collaging the Context: Visual Ways of Collating a Literature Review (Alke Gröppel-Wegener)

16.30: Discussion

17.00: end