Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
vivabrighton<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> 39. <strong>May</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
EDITORIAL<br />
...................................................................................<br />
It started with the Latin word ‘festum’, a feast, more than just a meal.<br />
And then the adjective, ‘festivus’, from which we get ‘festive’. This, in<br />
Old French, turned into the word ‘festival’, which came over with the<br />
Normans, and, still just an adjective, got used to describe certain religious<br />
days, which got all mixed up with all the old pagan celebrations.<br />
As a first-recorded-use example, the OED quotes Milton, from 1598,<br />
‘The morning trumpets festival proclaimed, through each high street’.<br />
Once music gets involved, it’s a short hop from there to an arts festival,<br />
a feast of culture: the oldest in England is the Three Choir Festival in Hereford, Gloucester<br />
and Worcester, which dates back to 1719. The <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival is a relative newcomer: it<br />
started in 1967, which means that this is its 50th edition… which calls for more trumpets.<br />
In <strong>May</strong>, in and around <strong>Brighton</strong>, there’s an absolute explosion of festivals, of all shapes and<br />
forms, which doesn’t start dying down until the end of summer. This month alone, as well<br />
as THE Festival, there’s (take a deep breath) HOUSE, <strong>Brighton</strong> Fringe, the Great Escape,<br />
Artists’ Open Houses, the <strong>Brighton</strong> & Hove Food & Drink Festival, Foodies, the Charleston<br />
Festival, the Village of Type, the Glyndebourne Festival, and, starting off the wellies-and-tent<br />
season, Elderflower Fields. Beyond that… how long have you got? Our theme this month, of<br />
course, is ‘festival’. Within these pages there’s loads of festival-related stuff. We say: pick up the<br />
relative programmes, get some tickets, and indulge yourself. Enjoy the month…<br />
THE TEAM<br />
.....................<br />
EDITOR: Alex Leith alex@vivamagazines.com<br />
DEPUTY EDITOR: Steve Ramsey steve@vivamagazines.com<br />
ART DIRECTOR: Katie Moorman katie@vivamagazines.com<br />
PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE: Adam Bronkhorst<br />
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Rebecca Cunningham rebecca@vivamagazines.com<br />
ADVERTISING: Anya Zervudachi anya@vivamagazines.com, Nick Metcalf nickmetcalf@vivamagazines.com,<br />
Hilary Maguire hilary@vivamagazines.com<br />
PUBLISHER: Lizzie Lower lizzie@vivamagazines.com<br />
CONTRIBUTORS: Alexandra Loske, Amy Holtz, Bethany Hobbs, Ben Bailey, Chloë King, Di Coke, Holly Fitzgerald, Jay Collins,<br />
Jim Stephenson, JJ Waller, Joda, Joe Decie, John Helmer, Julia Zaltzman, Lizzie Enfield, Mark Bridge, Martin Skelton and Nione Meakin<br />
<strong>Viva</strong> is based at <strong>Brighton</strong> Junction, 1A Isetta Square, BN1 4GQ<br />
For advertising enquiries call 07596 337 828. Other enquiries call 01273 810 259<br />
Every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of our content. We cannot be held responsible for any omissions, errors or alterations.
JUNE 11&12TH <strong>2016</strong><br />
BRIGHTON CITY AIRPORT<br />
DISCLOSURE RUDIMENTAL<br />
ICE CUBE JAMES BAY SKEPTA CARL COX ANNIE MAC<br />
BASTILLE BUSTA RHYMES JACK GARRATT<br />
DJ EZ ANDY C FLUME FOUR TET STORMZY<br />
KAYTRANADA THE MARTINEZ BROTHERS DIXON PUSHA T<br />
DAVID RODIGAN MBE DE LA SOUL KURUPT FM<br />
TODD TERJE KANO EATS EVERYTHING<br />
CHRONIXX & ZINCFENCE REDEMPTION RAT BOY<br />
SECTION BOYZ JACKMASTER TIGA JULIO BASHMORE<br />
SKREAM WILKINSON (DJ) PATRICK TOPPING JAMIE WOON<br />
MURA MASA MY NU LENG GERD JANSON MIDLAND<br />
REDLIGHT PREDITAH MARIBOU STATE (DJ) GOLDLINK<br />
SNAKEHIPS NOVELIST CASISDEAD LADY LESHURR<br />
T.WILLIAMS MELE LOGAN SAMA SG LEWIS FRANCES ANNE MARIE<br />
IZZY BIZU ARTWORK BARELY LEGAL JASPER JAMES MONKI NVOY<br />
JORJA SMITH WOOKIE FAZE MIYAKE RAG N BONE MAN<br />
DJ SPOONY MEDLAR THE REVENGE GOTSOME J HUS PHAIRO<br />
KRYSKO MARLON MAHROYAN SUZE ROSSER LEO STANNARD<br />
M.A.X WAX WORX LAO RA SHOREHAM ALLSTARS<br />
#WILDLIFE16<br />
PRODUCED AND PRESENTED BY SJM CONCERTS<br />
AND THE WAREHOUSE PROJECT<br />
TICKETS ON SALE NOW<br />
WILDLIFEFESTIVAL.COM
CONTENTS<br />
...............................<br />
Bits and bobs.<br />
8-25. Jonny Hannah’s steamrollered<br />
cover image, JJ Waller and Joe Decie’s<br />
take on ‘festival’, how the Grand Central<br />
became the Grand Central… and the<br />
wonderful world of Gig Buddies.<br />
13<br />
Photography.<br />
28-29. Jim Stephenson talks to Ali<br />
Tollervey, who has spent months on the<br />
road with <strong>Brighton</strong> band Dark Horses, à<br />
la Annie Leibowitz and the Stones.<br />
Columns.<br />
33-39. John Helmer gets a job, Amy<br />
Holtz gets cold feet, Lizzie Enfield gets<br />
hot under the (dog) collar, and Chloë<br />
King gets the festival lingo sorted.<br />
75<br />
My <strong>Brighton</strong>.<br />
40-41. <strong>Brighton</strong> Dome and Festival<br />
CEO Andrew Comben on why the<br />
Festival is perfect for <strong>Brighton</strong> and why<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> is perfect for the Festival.<br />
In town this month.<br />
43-75. Local musos Time for T; Lauren<br />
Varnfield on playing Myra Hindley;<br />
peripatetic photographer Volker Gerling;<br />
Nione Meakin on Giddy <strong>Brighton</strong>;<br />
immersive spy stuff with Operation<br />
Black Antler; kids’ street stories via Little<br />
Green Pig; Jonathan Brown’s play<br />
A Good Jew; an interview with novelist<br />
Howard Jacobson; Complicite theatre<br />
at the Attenborough Centre; a modern<br />
silent movie, with an original score;<br />
....5 ....
CONTENTS (CONT)<br />
...............................<br />
Spymonkey’s Complete Deaths in Shakespeare;<br />
chap-hopper Professor Elemental;<br />
dancer in the dark Dan Canham; author<br />
Olivia Laing; Sussex Symphony Orchestra’s<br />
Peter and the Wolf; author Nikesh<br />
Shukla; cult documentary The Moon and<br />
the Sledgehammer; beatboxer Shlomo<br />
and Love Supreme’s Caro Emerald. That<br />
enough for you?<br />
9585<br />
Art and design.<br />
76-85. Chloë King meets digital animators<br />
Ramjam, responsible for this year’s 3D<br />
Fringe programme cover. Plus a meet-up<br />
with HOUSE artist Felicity Hammond, a<br />
rare interview with typographical graffiti<br />
artist Gary Stranger, two fashion-blogging<br />
siblings and a very mobile Artists’ Houses<br />
gallery.<br />
The way we work.<br />
89-95. Adam Bronkhorst gets behind the<br />
scenes, literally, at a number of the city’s<br />
top venues, and asks his subjects: ‘what’s<br />
been your best or worst stage moment?’<br />
101<br />
Food and drink.<br />
97-101. Seafood soup at the Lord<br />
Nelson, Dog Haus hot dogs at Patterns,<br />
and what’s up on the <strong>Brighton</strong> food<br />
scene, including the Foodies Festival.<br />
Cycling.<br />
103. We try… unicycling. Well it<br />
seemed festivally at the time.<br />
Bricks and mortar.<br />
105. Angel House, gorgeous Georgian<br />
venue for events and weddings.<br />
79<br />
Inside left.<br />
106. Concrete poetry from the firstever<br />
Festival, April 1967.<br />
....6 ....
MARKET LEADERS<br />
FOR SCOTTISH ART<br />
Entries now invited<br />
We off er free and confi dential<br />
valuations with a view to selling in<br />
our forthcoming auctions. For further<br />
enquiries or to make an appointment<br />
with a valuer in your area.<br />
SAMUEL JOHN<br />
PEPLOE RSA<br />
(BRITISH, 1871-1935)<br />
Daff odils in a Glass Bowl<br />
Sold for £158,500 inc. premium<br />
APPOINTMENTS<br />
AND ENQUIRIES<br />
01273 220000<br />
hove@bonhams.com<br />
bonhams.com/hove<br />
Prices shown include buyer’s premium. Details can be found at bonhams.com
THIS MONTH’S COVER ARTIST<br />
..................................................<br />
Photos by Katie Moorman<br />
It all started with an e-mail from the folk at <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Festival, who wondered if we were interested in<br />
a printing project that featured in their <strong>2016</strong> programme.<br />
When we learnt that a 90-year-old steamroller<br />
was involved, and that artist Jonny Hannah was<br />
happy to get his hands inky for the cause, we were<br />
sold. So on Easter Monday we made our way to<br />
the Amberley Museum to watch the process, as the<br />
steamroller in question, driven by owner Chris Hale,<br />
rolled over the inked-up linocuts of our two covers<br />
(one for <strong>Viva</strong> <strong>Brighton</strong>, and a companion piece for <strong>Viva</strong><br />
Lewes) in front of a small but enthusiastic crowd of<br />
onlookers. These included the organisers Lucy and<br />
Nathaniel from Ditchling Museum, and the artist Pea<br />
Crabtree, who came up with the idea in the first place.<br />
The process generated significantly more excitement<br />
than you’d imagine, considering the vehicle was travelling<br />
at 2mph.<br />
Jonny had designed the two covers - back to front,<br />
of course - by cutting into a sheet of lino, creating<br />
a pair of Festival-enthused figures, a masked man<br />
and woman, with his trademark odd extras, such as<br />
a stripy-jumpered cat, a hand with a heart in it, an<br />
old-fashioned wireless, and a dancing snake and eel.<br />
The most heart-stopping moment was the first ‘big<br />
reveal’, when he rolled the paper off the lino to see if<br />
the process – which hadn’t been tried before in this<br />
country – had worked. Once he’d checked it was OK,<br />
he held the sheet of paper up to the assembled crowd.<br />
A success! Hurrah!<br />
“I’m a commercial artist, and I can only do a few<br />
things for free,” he says, “so I make sure they are different<br />
and exciting projects. This one really fitted in<br />
with my current way of working. I’ve started finding<br />
Photoshop too controlling as a medium – there’s very<br />
little room for happenstance – so I’m moving more<br />
and more to traditional methods. If you can call this<br />
traditional!”<br />
“I only finished the lino-cutting at 7.30 this morning,”<br />
he added, “and I haven’t used lino for three years. I<br />
realised the whole thing could have been a bit of a<br />
car crash. I love the magic of peeling the paper back<br />
to see if it has worked. Screen printing seems to me<br />
like a kind of alchemy.” Digitally enhanced alchemy,<br />
....8 ....
JONNY HANNAH<br />
..........................................<br />
of course: Jonny later added the finishing touches of<br />
colour on the computer in his studio.<br />
Interview by Alex Leith<br />
You can see the steamroller in action on 22nd <strong>May</strong> (12-<br />
5pm) at the Level in <strong>Brighton</strong>, and 18th<br />
June at the Ditchling Museum in the<br />
Ditchling Fair. Jonny will be selling the<br />
<strong>Viva</strong> <strong>Brighton</strong> and <strong>Viva</strong> Lewes cover<br />
images as limited edition prints at<br />
Atelier 51, Providence Place, during<br />
Artists’ Open Houses.<br />
And ‘Cardopolis’,<br />
poetry<br />
book by Duane<br />
Kahlhammer,<br />
a new limitededition<br />
illustrated<br />
by Jonny,<br />
will also be available<br />
to buy from<br />
Atelier 51.<br />
(Left and below) other works by Jonny Hannah<br />
....9 ....
Genting Casino <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
gentlemen’s day<br />
estd 2015<br />
friday 27 may<br />
Prize for the Best Dressed Gent courtesy of James Ross Jewellers<br />
brighton-racecourse.co.uk 01273 603580<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong>Racecourse<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong>Race<br />
Terms & conditions apply. For full terms and conditions please visit our website. <strong>Brighton</strong> Racecourse encourages responsible gambling. www.gambleaware.co.uk.
BITS AND BOBS<br />
...............................<br />
SPREAD THE WORD<br />
ON THE BUSES #13<br />
RONALD BATES (5, 5B, 27)<br />
Niall Moriarty sent this picture, of him reading<br />
our April issue, leaning up against the famous I<br />
Amsterdam sign outside the Rijksmuseum. The<br />
three-dimensional sign, now one of Amsterdam’s<br />
prime photo-op attractions, had recently been redesigned<br />
in rainbow colours to celebrate 15 years<br />
of marriage equality in the Netherlands. Niall<br />
was on a city break, Airbnbing in the city centre.<br />
We love getting pictures of you ‘reading’ <strong>Viva</strong> on<br />
your travels, so if you would like to appear in this<br />
space, don’t forget to take the latest issue with<br />
you and send pics to photos@vivamagazines.com.<br />
LOVE SUPREME: WIN TICKETS<br />
You and a friend could<br />
be joining the jazz, funk,<br />
soul and sun* at Love<br />
Supreme Jazz Festival<br />
in Glynde from 1st-3rd<br />
July. Just tweet us the<br />
name of the act you’re<br />
most looking forward to seeing - using the<br />
hashtag #<strong>Viva</strong>LoveSupreme - to be entered<br />
into the draw to win. Alternatively, email the<br />
same - with ‘<strong>Viva</strong> Love Supreme’ in the subject<br />
line - to hello@vivamagazines.com. We’ll draw<br />
the lucky winner from a (suitably jazzy) trumpet<br />
on 1st June <strong>2016</strong>. *sunshine not guaranteed.<br />
lovesupremefestival.com, @lovesupremefest<br />
See the competitions page on our website for<br />
terms & conditions.<br />
Should <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
have a festival?<br />
Before 1967, the<br />
idea had been put<br />
forward ‘from<br />
time to time’, local<br />
historian Clifford<br />
Musgrave notes.<br />
But arguments<br />
against included<br />
the town’s closeness<br />
to London,<br />
and the ‘heavy losses’ made by other regional festivals.<br />
Local opinion had been ‘strongly divided’.<br />
However, the long-serving Tory councillor Ronald<br />
Bates, an arts-loving solicitor and former Army Major,<br />
backed the idea. An acquaintance, Ronald Power,<br />
recalls him as a knowledgeable guy, who “always<br />
smiled when he was giving advice. He was highly<br />
intelligent. He had great personal charm, there’s no<br />
doubt about that.” And, perhaps most importantly,<br />
he was “a wonderful negotiator. When it came to,<br />
you know, half of a committee wanted one thing<br />
and the other half wanted something else…”<br />
It’s difficult to figure out the exact details of Bates’<br />
role in the festival-or-no-festival debate. But his<br />
Argus obituary noted that his ‘vision and drive<br />
helped launch the <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival’. He was head<br />
of the council’s tourism committee in January 1966,<br />
when £10,000 was voted through to fund the first<br />
event. And he was the original vice-chairman of the<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Festival Society. Later, as chairman, he either<br />
“created the <strong>Brighton</strong> Fringe, or [at least] made<br />
it possible,” Power says.<br />
While the Festival’s original artistic director gave a<br />
worthy-sounding explanation of its purpose, about<br />
people ‘taking a new look at the arts,’ etc, Bates<br />
took a much simpler view. ‘The sole purpose of the<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Festival is to bring pleasure and delight to<br />
everyone.’ Steve Ramsey<br />
....11....
BITS AND BOBS<br />
...............................<br />
JJ WALLER’S BRIGHTON<br />
We gave JJ Waller the theme ‘festival’. This photo, and paragraph, is his response:<br />
“From village fetes and agricultural shows, music weekends and raves, we are<br />
spoilt for choice in and around <strong>Brighton</strong>, with a myriad of summer festivals. For a<br />
photographer that in itself presents a festival of exciting opportunities.”<br />
This pic is from the Gentlemen of the Road Stopover in Lewes in 2013.<br />
....13....
BITS AND BOBS<br />
...............................<br />
DI COKE’S COMPETITION CORNER<br />
This month’s prize is a pair of<br />
tickets to Funk the Format in Hove<br />
Park on Sunday 29th <strong>May</strong>. Brought<br />
to you by the curators of Funk<br />
The Family, the impressive line-up<br />
includes Soul II Soul, Norman<br />
Jay MBE, Rodney P and Nubiyan<br />
Twist - it’s the perfect way to spend<br />
Bank Holiday Sunday!<br />
For your chance to win, let us<br />
know which three acts would<br />
headline your dream music festival,<br />
and what it would be called. Share<br />
your entry on Twitter or the <strong>Viva</strong><br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Facebook page using<br />
the #<strong>Viva</strong><strong>Brighton</strong>Comp hashtag.<br />
Alternatively, email your entry to competitions@vivamagazines.com before 20th <strong>May</strong> <strong>2016</strong>. The most<br />
exciting festival name and line up will feature in the July issue and win a pair of adult tickets to Funk<br />
the Format. Terms and conditions can be found at vivabrighton.com/competitions.<br />
Funk the Format tickets cost £30 each from funktheformat.co.uk - or buy a weekend saver for £45, which<br />
includes entry to Funk the Family on Saturday 28th <strong>May</strong>. funkthefamily.co.uk<br />
COMPETITION WINNER<br />
In the March issue we asked readers to think of a<br />
quirky phrase suitable for use by design duo One<br />
Must Dash on their products. There were lots of<br />
unusual entries, but Amy Inman Villanueva grabbed<br />
our attention with this fun monochrome graphic,<br />
and wins a One Must Dash print of her choice.<br />
See the full range of posters, gifts and other quirky<br />
products at onemustdash.com.<br />
Di Coke is very probably the UK’s foremost ‘comper’,<br />
having won over £250,000-worth of prizes. For<br />
winning tips and creative competitions, check out her<br />
blog at superlucky.me and SuperLucky Secrets book.<br />
....15....
JOE DECIE<br />
...............................<br />
....17....
BITS AND BOBS<br />
...............................<br />
PUB: THE GRAND CENTRAL<br />
The Railway Hotel opened its doors<br />
before the railway even arrived in<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong>: it’s first listed in the 1839<br />
Pigot’s Directory, with a Mr Charles<br />
Penfold its landlord. The owners knew<br />
what was coming, obviously, and custom<br />
must have picked up significantly when<br />
the station opened up (for trains to<br />
Shoreham in <strong>May</strong> 1840 and to London<br />
in September 1841).<br />
It wasn’t the only pub that opened in<br />
order to mop up the thirst of the new<br />
customers arriving in town. If anything<br />
there were too many in the vicinity. By<br />
the mid-1850s there were five on Surrey<br />
Street alone, three of which closed between<br />
1920 and 1924. The destruction<br />
of the Terminus Hotel and Shades on<br />
the other side of the road in 1924 meant<br />
that the pub was now visible from the<br />
station. It is probably for this reason<br />
that Tamplins decided to redesign the<br />
building in 1925, using their chief architect<br />
Arthur Packham, who replicated<br />
the design for the copper dome he had<br />
fashioned for the Alibi pub in Hove, on<br />
top of the central tower of an impressive<br />
baroque structure.<br />
There’s not much news of the place to<br />
be found between then and 1986, when<br />
a theatre was built on the first floor, and<br />
the pub was renamed The Nightingale.<br />
It was one of the venues where the Siren<br />
Theatre Company – a hard-hitting,<br />
raucous lesbian collective which grew<br />
from Vaultage band the Devil’s Dykes<br />
– performed drama which is still talked<br />
about today.<br />
The nineties being the nineties, the place got another<br />
rebranding in 1997, when it briefly became known as<br />
Finnegan’s Wake, after Joyce’s everyone’s-got-it-nobody’sread-it<br />
final novel. And finally as The Grand Central, with<br />
the Nightingale Theatre still above it, a situation which<br />
persisted till 2013, when Fullers took over and did an<br />
extensive, and clearly expensive refit.<br />
The theatre is still used – we had our last Christmas party<br />
there – mostly for comedy and burlesque nights. The pride<br />
of the place, just coming into season, is the roof garden (a<br />
vast improvement on the ramshackle space before Fullers<br />
took over) which smells of jasmine in the early summer,<br />
and fills up fast on a sunny afternoon. As does the large<br />
space downstairs, as it’s still the first pub in sight after<br />
leaving the train station, which means now as ever, it’s a<br />
bolthole for thirsty travellers.<br />
Alex Leith, painting by Jay Collins<br />
....19....
Take The Bus<br />
To Make Every<br />
STEp Count<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> & Hove Buses are proud<br />
to present the Get Active bus at<br />
the Take Part Launch Day. Step on<br />
board to discover how taking the<br />
bus improves your well-being.<br />
STreTch<br />
yOur leGs<br />
HOp On<br />
300 stEps<br />
HOp Off<br />
700 stEps<br />
HOp Off<br />
GRAND PARADE<br />
250 stEps<br />
THE<br />
NORTH<br />
laInE<br />
HOp On<br />
800 stEps<br />
BRIGHTON STATION<br />
HOp On<br />
WanDer<br />
HOp Off<br />
www.buses.co.uk
BITS AND BOBS<br />
...............................<br />
CHARITY BOX #2: GIG BUDDIES<br />
What is Gig Buddies? Gig Buddies is an opportunity<br />
for those with a learning disability to be able to<br />
socialise. Everyone deserves the enjoyment of going<br />
out and meeting new people, so why should it<br />
be any different if you have a disability?<br />
Do you always go to gigs with the same person?<br />
You are matched with one person, so that you can<br />
build a trusting friendship.<br />
How long have you been volunteering? I joined<br />
at the launch party at Komedia three years ago.<br />
Do you have to have any special training?<br />
When you join, there is a really great training session<br />
about safeguarding and what to expect. Extra<br />
training is encouraged which is specific to your gig<br />
buddy’s needs.<br />
How many events have you been to? You agree<br />
to attend one event a month, that way it gives you<br />
enough time to plan things you both like.<br />
What is your favourite event? We’ve been to see<br />
‘The Wave Pictures’ a few times at The Green<br />
Door Store, which George (my gig buddy) loves.<br />
It’s a great feeling seeing him absorbed in the music<br />
and dancing without a care.<br />
What events do you attend? Gigs, discos, DJ<br />
events and festivals - anything that takes our interest;<br />
the world is our oyster!<br />
How can people help? You can become a buddy<br />
yourself! The information on how to do this can be<br />
found at gigbuddies.org.uk. Bethany Hobbs
For all your<br />
Denture needs<br />
www.thedentureclinicltd.co.uk<br />
Please call for a<br />
complimentary consultation<br />
CLINICS AT:<br />
Hove<br />
TwentyOneDental<br />
01273 202102<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong><br />
MDS Dental Care<br />
01273 553317<br />
Preston Park<br />
Emergency Repairs<br />
01273 330808<br />
Andrew J Evans CDT RCS (Eng) GDC No:146040 Graeme J Newton CDT RCS (Eng) GDC No:152939<br />
TDC 128x94 Advert <strong>Viva</strong> <strong>Brighton</strong> AW.indd 1 22/01/<strong>2016</strong> 16:41
BITS AND BOBS<br />
...............................<br />
SECRETS OF THE PAVILION:<br />
TURNER’S VISION OF BRIGHTON IN 1824<br />
This exquisite watercolour my JMW<br />
Turner entered the collection of <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Museum only a few years ago. It had been<br />
in private hands since first bought in the<br />
1830s, and came up at an auction in New<br />
York in 2012. We were able to purchase<br />
it with generous help from the Art Fund,<br />
the Heritage Lottery Fund and private<br />
patrons. It was of utmost importance to secure<br />
this gem, as it is one of the few paintings<br />
by Turner that shows the Royal Pavilion.<br />
The palace is only faintly visible in<br />
an oil painting commissioned by the Third<br />
Earl of Egremont at Petworth House,<br />
and in a few rough pencil sketches. In our<br />
watercolour Turner took compositional<br />
liberties for the sake of the ‘picturesque’<br />
appeal of the image, for example turning<br />
the Pavilion by c.90 degrees, to ensure the<br />
whole of its east front can be seen.<br />
Compared to other paintings of <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
by Turner our watercolour provides a<br />
surprising amount of detail. Many buildings<br />
can be identified, among them St<br />
Nicholas Church, the Duke of York’s hotel<br />
and Marine Parade. The most prominent<br />
building is the recently finished Chain<br />
Pier, a bold cast-iron structure, gleaming<br />
in the sunlight and seemingly withstanding<br />
strong waves. It pushes its way into<br />
the composition with the confidence we<br />
see a generation later in a number of other<br />
great cast-iron structures, such as railway<br />
bridges and stations.<br />
The reason for this detailed rendering and<br />
the painting’s relatively small size is that it<br />
was meant to be engraved. The print was used in Picturesque<br />
Views of the Southern Coast of England, an important<br />
topographical publication by George and William Cooke.<br />
It was published in 16 parts between 1814 and 1826, with<br />
Turner contributing 39 images. George Cooke engraved the<br />
watercolour and entitled it Brighthelmstone, Sussex, using<br />
the old name for <strong>Brighton</strong>.<br />
The prints were also published individually and it is still<br />
relatively easy to find a later print of the engraving, as it<br />
remained popular and was reprinted throughout the 19th<br />
century. The watercolour, however, disappeared from public<br />
view until it was shown at <strong>Brighton</strong> Museum shortly after<br />
we had purchased it. In 2013 it was the star of an exhibition<br />
in the Royal Pavilion on Turner and <strong>Brighton</strong>, curated by<br />
Ian Warrell. Because it is a watercolour it cannot be exposed<br />
to light for very long and is not permanently on display, but<br />
we occasionally offer gallery talks during which it can be<br />
viewed. The shimmering painting is in demand: in 2017 it<br />
will be lent to an exhibition at the Frick in New York, thus<br />
briefly returning to where it appeared at auction in 2012.<br />
Alexandra Loske, Art Historian and Curator at the Royal<br />
Pavilion<br />
A longer version of this article will appear on the official Royal<br />
Pavilion & Museums blog at brightonmuseums.org.uk<br />
Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A., Brighthelmston, Sussex,<br />
c1824 © The Royal Pavilion & Museums<br />
....23....
BITS AND BOBS<br />
...............................<br />
MAGAZINE OF THE MONTH: LUNCHEON<br />
As we all know, it’s festival month,<br />
or fiesta, or feast. For as long as we<br />
know, people have been creating<br />
celebrations for their community to<br />
mark something of natural, religious<br />
or artistic significance.<br />
Usually, it means that people are on<br />
the top of their game, too. There’s<br />
not much point celebrating with<br />
poor food or bad dancing. It’s got to<br />
be good. Which is why if you haven’t<br />
got Festival tickets yet it’s worth taking<br />
whatever is still available. Whatever you think<br />
about it, it is unlikely to be rubbish.<br />
In some ways, our little shop is a mini-festival of its<br />
own. Beautifully produced, independent mags that<br />
cause people to talk about them, swoon over them,<br />
savour them and keep them for much longer than<br />
they might keep other magazines. And true to all<br />
festivals, only the good ones last.<br />
So choosing just one magazine this month is especially<br />
hard. Fortunately, a new mag has come into<br />
the shop that has had people swooning from the<br />
moment it arrived. It’s called Luncheon.<br />
Their little trick is to organise<br />
the magazine around five themes –<br />
Catch of the Day, Hors D’Ouevre,<br />
Main Dishes, Classics and Desserts;<br />
although it’s not a specialist food<br />
magazine.<br />
Their big trick is in the quality of<br />
what they have produced. It’s large<br />
format on lovely, lovely paper with<br />
illustrations and words to die for.<br />
They have an eye for the different<br />
angle and every page catches the attention. And the<br />
content is right up there at the top of the tree with<br />
Oliver Messel, Maria Valverde, Lee Miller, Snowdon,<br />
Frank O’Hara, Patrick Proktor and more,<br />
more, more.<br />
Whoever is behind Luncheon (and we still don’t<br />
know at the time of writing) they know what they<br />
are doing and how to do it. It’s a brilliant first edition<br />
in so many ways and a perfect complement to<br />
our own amazing festival here in <strong>Brighton</strong>.<br />
Martin Skelton, Magazine <strong>Brighton</strong>, Trafalgar Street<br />
TOILET GRAFFITO #16<br />
With the city gripped by festival fever, and Fringe<br />
venues getting ever more obscure, there’s every<br />
chance that this isn’t toilet graffiti at all but actually<br />
a playbill… and that an angry Sumo Baby is about to<br />
burst in to the cubicle… slugging away in a participatory<br />
piece of immersive theatre… sending the loo<br />
paper flying and pinning you to the cistern. Awkward.<br />
Best keep your foot on the door just in case.<br />
But where might you meet this badass baby?<br />
Last month’s answer: The White Rabbit<br />
Feel free to send in your own examples of <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
toilet graffiti… but don’t forget to tell us where you<br />
snapped it.<br />
....25....
experience the extraordinary<br />
at the Royal Pavilion<br />
Become a member and help to conserve the Royal Pavilion, and also contribute<br />
to our exhibitions and education programmes, bringing the very best of art and<br />
culture to <strong>Brighton</strong> & Hove.<br />
Membership from as little as £20 will give you:<br />
• FREE entry to the Royal Pavilion & Museums<br />
• Invitations to Private Views and a regular Newsletter<br />
• Exclusive events programme<br />
• Discounts in Museum and Royal Pavilion shops & cafes<br />
• Accompanying children and grandchildren go FREE<br />
• A FREE after hours tour of the Royal Pavilion!<br />
Registered Charity No 275242<br />
Become<br />
a member<br />
today!<br />
visit pavilionfoundation.org<br />
or call 01273 295898
PHOTOGRAPHY<br />
..........................................<br />
Ali Tollervey<br />
The sixth Dark Horse<br />
Music and photography<br />
have a long and rich relationship.<br />
Following in the<br />
footsteps of some of the<br />
greatest photographers,<br />
and some of the greatest<br />
bands, Ali Tollervey has<br />
spent years documenting<br />
the world of <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
band Dark Horses…<br />
You’ve photographed<br />
a lot of musicians in<br />
your time, of all different genres. How does<br />
something like this compare? I suppose it’s<br />
about intimacy, invisibility and access. It’s more<br />
like taking photos of your family over several years<br />
than a photographer turning up and getting ten<br />
minutes with a band backstage to get ‘the shot’. It’s<br />
more of a story. I’ve tried to show them looking<br />
iconic but also capture their vulnerable moments.<br />
I had no idea where the band would end up when<br />
we started and it was that journey that’s interesting<br />
rather than waiting till a band has made it before<br />
people document them. Becoming part of the<br />
band, though, I must have also lost any objectivity.<br />
What was it that brought you and the band<br />
together? We had a shared network of friends and<br />
influences... I already knew the singer Lisa and<br />
we’d worked together before. It was an exciting<br />
time, as the first album was being recorded, new<br />
members were joining the band and I came on<br />
board at the same time (around 2012). I believed<br />
in the music and there was an energy that I<br />
responded to. It started with a photoshoot, then I<br />
joined their first tour, which took us all the way to<br />
Wembley, and it progressed from there.<br />
It seems like it’s a true collaboration...<br />
Yes, I became part<br />
of the group, documenting the<br />
life of a band from the inside<br />
rather than as an outsider looking<br />
in. There’s a real history of<br />
photographers working with<br />
bands, from Annie Leibowitz<br />
and the Stones, Ricky Powell<br />
and the Beastie Boys to Ewen<br />
Spencer’s great work with the<br />
White Stripes. However, I don’t<br />
know of other photographers who’ve embedded<br />
for the whole journey in quite the same way.<br />
My role was also to create visuals that fed back<br />
into the band in response to the music. It was a<br />
collaboration in the sense that each inspired the<br />
other and nurtured a creative atmosphere around<br />
the band.<br />
They’re a very visual band, does this help with<br />
the collaboration? Early on the band all had their<br />
jackets adorned with their branding or ‘colours’,<br />
much like the Hell’s Angels or the 70s/80s New<br />
York street gangs. I was drawn to this gang<br />
sensibility. It can be powerful aesthetically but also<br />
I grew up documenting UK hip hop and skating<br />
subcultures and tribes in the 90s, so it felt quite<br />
natural. But it’s the characters within the band that<br />
provide the real interest. Things are quiet at the<br />
moment as they are locked away writing the new<br />
album and I’ve been working on other projects.<br />
I’m looking forward to the next chapter. I spent<br />
several years in a shadowy monochrome world…<br />
Ali was speaking to Jim Stephenson of The Miniclick<br />
Photography Talks.<br />
alitollervey.com, miniclick.co.uk<br />
....27....
PHOTOGRAPHY<br />
...............................<br />
....28....
PHOTOGRAPHY<br />
...............................<br />
....29....
PHOTOGRAPHY<br />
...............................<br />
....30....
PHOTOGRAPHY<br />
...............................<br />
....31....
Quality Country<br />
Furniture & Accessories<br />
for your Home & Garden<br />
Ready-made<br />
& Custom-made<br />
Open 7 days a week - Large showroom<br />
01273 814317<br />
The Old Forge, Lewes Road, Ringmer BN8 5NB<br />
www.theold-forge.co.uk
COLUMN<br />
...........................................<br />
John Helmer<br />
Reaching out<br />
Accidentally, I got a job.<br />
For those of you new to this column – or just a<br />
bit slow on the uptake – I am one of nature’s freelancers.<br />
It’s how I roll. Misanthropic, distractible<br />
and selfish to a fault, I call no man my master and<br />
like to work peculiar hours. I fret in harness.<br />
And then my favourite client unexpectedly fell<br />
pregnant (unexpectedly so far as I was concerned<br />
at least), and somehow I was enticed into covering<br />
her maternity leave.<br />
So it’s goodbye to those cherished home office<br />
rituals of nose-picking, freecell-bingeing, can’tbe-arsed-this-morning-think-I’ll-go-for-a-bikeride<br />
and screaming obscenities at Fi Glover on<br />
the radio.<br />
Suddenly, I am a number, not a free man; up to<br />
my eyes in logins, privacy policies and surprise<br />
Skype meetings with mystery agendas where<br />
an unshaven person from a random time<br />
zone joins me in attempting to guess<br />
what it is we’re supposed to be talking<br />
about. I sign two or three birthday<br />
cards a day for people I’ve never heard<br />
of. When I trip across the road to<br />
the coffee shop at 11am, I wear the<br />
Lanyard of Shame.<br />
“They make me start every morning<br />
at nine o’clock,” I complain to<br />
friends.<br />
“Yes but you go home at two-thirty,”<br />
they scoff.<br />
“But I have to sit in an office. With<br />
other people.”<br />
“Did you talk to anybody today?” says<br />
my wife, who tends to caricature<br />
somewhat, I feel, my naturally diffident mien.<br />
“Of course I did. I’m a communications expert<br />
for fuck’s sake: that’s what it says on my LinkedIn,<br />
anyway… I spoke to someone in Stockholm, I<br />
spoke to someone in Luton…”<br />
“Luton.”<br />
“It’s a global organization, Kate. I not only spoke<br />
to them – I reached out to them. That’s what we<br />
do in business nowadays: we reach out.”<br />
So overwhelming has been this sudden immersion<br />
in the world of salaried employees that this<br />
month’s <strong>Viva</strong> deadline crept up on me a bit. Desperate<br />
for inspiration, I reached out to Facebook.<br />
“Does anybody have a good idea for a humorous<br />
520wd column in a <strong>Brighton</strong> lifestyle magazine?<br />
Written POV a man in later years who is finding<br />
that life on the whole has not lived up to expectations.<br />
With hilarious results. Deadline Thursday,<br />
don’t sit on your hands.”<br />
This is Facebook to me...<br />
—Man in later years digging his garden uncovers<br />
a box of WWII grenades and uses them to throw<br />
at people in his office.<br />
—Man in later years goes to prison for throwing<br />
grenades at people in his office and discovers he is<br />
not too old to be used like a bitch.<br />
—Man in later years plus spouse get fitbits. She is<br />
fit he is shit. Hilarity ensues.<br />
Me to Facebook: Thanks all, you proper got<br />
me out of a hole there (like fuck). Don’t expect<br />
attribution.<br />
—If none of us gets credit we’re coming round<br />
your house en masse to give you a Chinese burn.<br />
—And a dead leg…<br />
After that it got ugly.<br />
....33....
COLUMN<br />
...........................................<br />
Amy Holtz<br />
The truth is, I’m a Minnesotan<br />
“What the hell are ‘wellies’?”<br />
I’m on a farm, apparently,<br />
in Somerset. Noah has just<br />
drifted by, and, finding nothing<br />
worth preserving, floated<br />
on through. There is mud,<br />
too, where the water has<br />
managed to find an outlet.<br />
And I keep hearing this word,<br />
like some sort of secret code<br />
between Brits.<br />
My friend points to a<br />
passerby in a Buzz Lightyear<br />
spacesuit and green boots. I’ve seen these before,<br />
these ‘wellies’. I don’t understand why they have<br />
such a non-serious name when they clearly have a<br />
very serious job to do; the weather gods brought<br />
their party heads last night. Now, the only footwear<br />
resembling boots left in a twenty-mile radius, for<br />
the dumb Americans, are a pair of Dr Martens,<br />
size 5.5.<br />
“5 and a half,” I say, turning them over. They are<br />
adorably bijou, which describes nothing I’ve ever<br />
worn on my feet, even in infancy. “That’s practically<br />
a size 9 US, right?”<br />
Optimism is one of this American’s greatest<br />
resources. But once my foot is in, the rest of my<br />
leg goes rigid. There will be no ankle-bending the<br />
rest of this weekend. Which is probably for the best<br />
because the bending exacerbates the continentsized<br />
blisters that form after pulling each foot, with<br />
a slow comedy suction noise, out of fathomless<br />
trenches of clinging mire.<br />
“Once the feet go, the mind goes,” another friend,<br />
who serves in the TA, informs me. I watch carefree<br />
revellers trek across the fields<br />
towards better stages, unflappable<br />
in wellies, covering<br />
mileage like marathoners.<br />
I think I might die here,<br />
Princess Buttercup in the<br />
lightning sand. As it happens,<br />
I manage a jerky, silly walk to<br />
the top of a hill.<br />
“I think I’ll stay here for a<br />
bit,” I say, feigning nonchalance,<br />
heels erupting with the<br />
sorrow of a million steps, the<br />
leather lasering a few last beams at the remains of<br />
my feet, “Who’s on next, then?”<br />
“Coldplay.”<br />
So after the scarring from that experience bubbled<br />
over and smoothed out, I made a list of ideal festival<br />
requirements. Droughts - good. Cold beer, yes.<br />
Toilets, or just a simple, well-concealed hole - better<br />
than cold beer. Bands that no one can make fun<br />
of, because no one’s ever heard of them - perfect. A<br />
(my own) bed - ding ding ding!<br />
Still gunshy, I ventured to the Great Escape on<br />
the very premise that it was indoors, a relatively<br />
dry walk from my own bed. There were also only<br />
twelve of us attending this particular venue, so<br />
the way to the toilet was illuminated even around<br />
a considerable bulk of vintage denim. The ‘band’<br />
consisted of a man and three plastic buckets and for<br />
25 minutes, he battered them and shouted into the<br />
microphone. Such beauty in grime and noise. The<br />
bar was empty; the floor was, well, sticky - but also<br />
not too moist. I stayed for hours, shedding not a<br />
few tears at my good fortune.<br />
....35....
We make curtains and blinds. We supply and fit carpet, stair runners and flooring<br />
AND we have the largest selection of fabric and wallpaper in <strong>Brighton</strong> and Hove!<br />
23 New Road<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong><br />
BN1 1UF<br />
01273 605574<br />
sales@mistersmith.co.uk<br />
www.mistersmith.co.uk<br />
Croft Road<br />
Crowborough<br />
TN6 1DR<br />
01892 664152<br />
info@mistersmith.co.uk
COLUMN<br />
.............................<br />
Lizzie Enfield<br />
Notes from North Village<br />
Apparently the fastest selling show in this year’s festival<br />
is Music for Dogs.<br />
“I really don’t get this,” I say, scanning the <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Festival brochure.<br />
“It’s for dog people,” says fellow North Villager, with<br />
an air of superiority which suggests: a) there is such<br />
a thing as ‘a dog person’, b) I am not one and c) they<br />
are, and are therefore somehow better.<br />
I grew up with a succession of dogs I was very fond<br />
of. I have friends with dogs: some are nice, some are<br />
mad and bark a lot. I do not have a dog now because<br />
I don’t feel the need for the loyalty of a fourlegged<br />
friend, excuse to go for walks or want to be<br />
tied to needing to ‘get home for the dog,’ having just<br />
emerged from years of needing to get home for the<br />
children. Plus there’s a danger I might start photographing<br />
myself with the dog and posting the images<br />
on social media. It happens.<br />
So, for the record, I like dogs, just not the idea of<br />
being defined by whether I own one or not.<br />
And what exactly is ‘a dog person’ shorthand for?<br />
Being kind and caring and looking after something?<br />
Having a house big enough to contain more than<br />
one? Whatever it is, who cares?<br />
The programmers of this year’s festival, I guess.<br />
Yup, (or should that be yap?), the show selling all the<br />
tickets is music ‘specifically designed for the canine<br />
ear, including frequencies audible only to dogs.’<br />
It’s the brainchild of guest director Laurie Anderson,<br />
who’s already taken it to Sydney and New York. It’s<br />
the kind of novel idea you probably have to be Laurie<br />
Anderson to turn into a reality. But she has and<br />
it’s so popular with ‘dog people’ that the initial show<br />
Illustration by Joda, jonydaga.weebly.com<br />
sold out and a second has been added.<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> being <strong>Brighton</strong>, I know a couple of people<br />
who have been asked to play in it. One was as<br />
bemused as myself, both by the concept and by Ms<br />
Anderson’s accent.<br />
“Music for daawgs?” He wondered if this was New<br />
York slang for jazz lovers.<br />
“Dogs.”<br />
“Ah!” He and I were left wondering if “daawgs”<br />
wouldn’t rather be chasing a ball, chewing a bone or<br />
playing with one of those squeaky toys, maybe with<br />
other dogs and making squeaky-dog-toy jazz?<br />
But I shall await the flood of images of beloved pets<br />
in the Open Air Theatre, musing on the delights of<br />
the 60 kHz Phrygian cadence and wondering if the<br />
extra half octave, within a dog’s hearing range, augments<br />
the augmented fourths or diminishes the diminished<br />
sevenths? I shall imagine the dogs barking,<br />
something along the lines of “What did you think<br />
of that dodgy (excuse the pun) sus chord, Rover?”<br />
And I shall start working on my pitch for next year’s<br />
festival: Music for Fish. It’ll be on the beach and based<br />
on the writings of da Vinci and Newton, both at the<br />
forefront of underwater acoustic thinking. Fish people<br />
and non-fish people welcome.<br />
....37....
Support Chestnut Tree House during<br />
Children’s Hospice Week is<br />
the UK’s only awareness and<br />
fundraising week for children<br />
with life-shortening conditions<br />
and their families and the<br />
palliative care services that<br />
support them.<br />
You can support your local<br />
children’s hospice in many ways:<br />
Hold a Superhero Day at your School or workplace<br />
– dress up as your favourite Superhero and organise<br />
themed events.<br />
Organise a cake sale, coffee morning or afternoon tea<br />
Hold your own Children’s Hospice Week Quiz –<br />
we can supply the questions and step by step guide.<br />
Plan your own fundraising event during Children’s<br />
Hospice Week<br />
Sign up today!<br />
For more information visit www.chestnut-tree-house.org.uk<br />
email fundraising@chestnut-tree-house.org.uk or call 01903 871820<br />
Children’s Hospice Week is organised nationally by Together for Short Lives. Registered charity number 1144022.<br />
Chestnut Tree House registered charity no 256789.
COLUMN<br />
...........................................<br />
Chloë King<br />
Guide to festival euphemisms<br />
Family-friendly<br />
The true meaning of this phrase depends on your<br />
own definition of the words ‘family’ and ‘friendly’.<br />
If family is a label that can be applied to anyone<br />
in a straw hat who rambles over to you clutching<br />
a warm can of beer, and if friendliness towards<br />
drunks in hats comes easily, congratulations: you<br />
are at a family-friendly festival.<br />
Long-drop<br />
If you have visited the khazi at Glastonbury you<br />
will know that long is not nearly long enough for a<br />
venue that boasts such frequent use. You will also<br />
know that long drop has a second meaning: to be<br />
applied when the toilet you have been waiting for<br />
is inhabited by a sleeping drunk.<br />
Dressing up<br />
You are an expensively paid up member of what<br />
Harold Rosenberg called ‘the herd of independent<br />
minds’. You will make all your sartorial decisions<br />
by committee. The trustafarians on whose land<br />
you will be dancing have chosen the theme Outer<br />
Space; therefore you arrive in a heavy downpour<br />
wearing the same glitter as your friends. The rain<br />
soon washes off your glitter, and as one of your<br />
friends is wearing a tiny costume woven from ribbons<br />
of tin foil and upcycled flannels, you will feel<br />
both over and under-dressed.<br />
Chillout tent<br />
You’re inside a tent and listening to Sigur Rós, so<br />
why is it still freezing, and why are you so tense?<br />
Glamping<br />
You spy a field on yonder hill populated with<br />
miniature houses not too unlike the calf pens your<br />
vegan friends post pictures of on Facebook. You<br />
could argue that glamping sounds worse than it is,<br />
but it retains position here because once you have<br />
forked out for tickets, adding the excruciating cost<br />
of rent-a-tents will leave you potless. You spend<br />
the weekend longing for a pen. Rumour has it they<br />
have composting toilets.<br />
Headliner<br />
Headliner: a verb meaning to consume a decent<br />
meal, plenty of water and a Dioralyte. A headliner<br />
ensures you can wake up and attend to the kids<br />
you mistakenly brought and/or do it all again the<br />
following day without losing your dignity, sanity<br />
and friends. It’s a shame they’re as rare and as hard<br />
as Guns N’ Roses comeback tours… you say Guns<br />
N’ Roses are doing a comeback tour?<br />
Campfire<br />
A campfire sustained by a single giant log is found<br />
in one of two highly meaningful states. The<br />
first: a nugget of lava boiling away ‘twixt a mass<br />
of humans who intermittently fall in and burn<br />
themselves, as in Dante. The second: a lonely yet<br />
comforting place manned with constancy by a<br />
solitary person who speaks few words.<br />
The past<br />
The only reason anyone ever goes to a festival is<br />
because they want to feel 21. Even the 21-year-olds<br />
want to feel 21. Considering your past at a festival<br />
is a bit like looking into an infinity mirror: you<br />
realise with bafflement that you do feel 21 again,<br />
except feeling 21 isn’t making you constantly<br />
happy, just as being 21 failed to do the first time<br />
around. And so it goes on, all summer long…<br />
Illustration by Chloë King<br />
....39....
Photo by Adam Bronkhorst<br />
....40....
INTERVIEW<br />
..........................................<br />
MYbrighton: Andrew Comben<br />
CEO, <strong>Brighton</strong> Dome & <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival<br />
Are you local? I’ve lived here since <strong>May</strong> 2008,<br />
when I started this job. Before that I was working<br />
at Wigmore Hall, in London. One of the big<br />
reasons I took the job was because I was taken by<br />
the city. I was born and raised in Sydney, and I<br />
feel - even though people look at me slightly oddly<br />
- that <strong>Brighton</strong> is as close to Australia as you can<br />
get. I don’t mean geographically, obviously, I mean<br />
in a kind of spirit. There’s something about that<br />
energetic pursuit of things that are new, that are<br />
interesting, that are fashionable. That’s a gift if you<br />
work in the arts.<br />
How important is <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival to <strong>Brighton</strong>?<br />
There are a huge number of cultural events for<br />
people to witness and be involved in, of course, and<br />
there’s a huge economic benefit from it. But more<br />
than that there’s a huge reputational benefit that the<br />
Festival has provided the city.<br />
Festival City vs Dirty Weekendsville? I think<br />
it’s an interesting tension and it’s one that was selfconsciously<br />
adopted in 1967 when <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival<br />
was set up.<br />
Some accuse the Festival of being too elitist...<br />
I think that it’s a lazy assumption that culture of<br />
any sort will go over the heads of some people.<br />
What I most want to do is to make great work, and<br />
encourage people to look at that great work or be<br />
a part of it. There are real areas of deprivation in<br />
this city: it’s not all affluence and fun and liveliness,<br />
there are people who don’t have access to any<br />
number of things let alone the arts, yet we know<br />
that participating in creative activity can unlock all<br />
sorts of doors. I’m more and more interested in the<br />
role that culture can play in society and how we can<br />
directly benefit areas of need. So although I will defend<br />
to the death the intrinsic value of the arts I’m<br />
unashamedly instrumentalist as well… they can play<br />
a really vital role in people’s health, their wellbeing,<br />
in their aspirations, their routes to employment.<br />
Should <strong>Brighton</strong> have a dedicated contemporary<br />
art gallery? It would be lovely, but I think the challenge<br />
is to make something possible out of what we<br />
have rather than wish for something that’s absent.<br />
Do you get to see something in the Festival every<br />
day… what is the thing you’re more looking<br />
forward to seeing? I often get to see several things<br />
every day, but often not all the way through, because<br />
I’ll go to something and then have to head off to the<br />
next thing. So I’m slightly odd at the end of three<br />
weeks because I’ll have seen lots of beginnings and<br />
lots of endings but not necessarily of the same piece.<br />
Two pieces I will watch through are Guest Director<br />
Laurie Anderson’s Song Conversations and Slide Show,<br />
which reflect two sides of an incredible artist and<br />
story teller.<br />
What’s your favourite <strong>Brighton</strong> boozer? I meet<br />
people in many different city centre pubs, but I’d<br />
have to say the Waggon and Horses on Church<br />
Street, a bit of an ending-up spot for a lot of our<br />
team at the Dome and Festival.<br />
When did you last swim in the sea? I’m really<br />
not a Channel swimmer. Growing up in Australian<br />
waters means I’ve never been that keen on UK ones.<br />
So no, I’m a sailor rather than a swimmer. Though I<br />
had a dip last summer – in a wetsuit.<br />
Where would you live if not in <strong>Brighton</strong>? If you<br />
can find me Berlin-by-the Sea, then I’ll go there.<br />
Interview by Alex Leith<br />
....41....
LOCAL MUSICIANS<br />
..........................................<br />
Ben Bailey rounds up the <strong>Brighton</strong> music scene<br />
TIME FOR T<br />
Mon 9, Prince Albert, 7pm, £5<br />
Their first show of the<br />
year sees Time For<br />
T emerge from some<br />
winter downtime<br />
with a launch party<br />
for their new single Rescue Plane. Given that they<br />
describe their singalong slacker tunes as ‘tropical<br />
folk rock’ it seems apt that the band should only<br />
come out to play once the sun has shown its face.<br />
Though they’ve got a decent following in <strong>Brighton</strong>,<br />
they are apparently quite the thing in Europe,<br />
especially in lead singer Tiago Saga’s birthplace of<br />
Portugal. While they may play huge festivals over<br />
there, Time For T seem content to keep the sunny<br />
European vibe alive and well in Southern England.<br />
Hora de festejar!<br />
KING LAGOON’S FLYING<br />
SWORDFISH DANCE BAND<br />
Wed 18, Spiegeltent, 9pm, £10/8<br />
Dressed like a cross between<br />
P-Funk and The Mighty<br />
Boosh, this eleven-piece dance<br />
band play a fusion of Afro-<br />
Latin rhythms, psychedelic<br />
guitar riffs and funky bass.<br />
Going for the full multi-sensory impact, the band<br />
even employ their own smell technician to waft<br />
song-specific scents in the direction of the audience.<br />
Though this show is part of <strong>Brighton</strong> Fringe,<br />
it’s also a fundraiser for next month’s Kemptown<br />
Carnival – which means you’ll also hear some<br />
samba, in this case from the Carnival Bizarre drum<br />
troupe Barulho. So don’t be surprised if you find<br />
yourself surrounded by a 25-strong roaming gang<br />
of manic drummers dressed like freak show characters.<br />
Should be quite a night.<br />
Photo by Jon Southcoasting<br />
THE GREAT ESCAPE<br />
Thu-Sat 19-21, everywhere, £65.50<br />
The three headliners of this<br />
year’s showcase weekender give<br />
a good indication of how far<br />
the festival has come from its<br />
drainpipe-indie roots. They’ve<br />
got alt-pop duo Oh Wonder on Thursday, desert<br />
punk from Timbuktu’s Songhoy Blues on Friday<br />
and Croydon grime rapper Stormzy finishing up<br />
on the Saturday. But The Great Escape has never<br />
been about the big names. Better to throw away<br />
your programme and see where you end up. You<br />
might even bump into some local talent you’ve<br />
never caught before: from electronica producer Salute<br />
and grunge trio Tigercub, to singer songwriter<br />
Jack Watts and dark synthpoppers Miamigo.<br />
PORRIDGE RADIO AND<br />
THE COSMIC SADNESS<br />
Fri 27, Marwood Coffee Shop, 8pm, £3<br />
The buzz surrounding<br />
this band might<br />
be less important to<br />
some than the actual<br />
buzz on the scant<br />
recordings they’ve<br />
put out. Starting with some scrappy acoustic online<br />
demos, singer songwriter Dana Margolin has<br />
found herself heading an equally scrappy electrified<br />
full band, formed in the time-honoured tradition<br />
of having friends who happened to own the right<br />
instruments. With separate zine and screen-printing<br />
projects on the go, and a split-EP on <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
micro tape label Memorials of Distinction, there’s<br />
no doubt Porridge Radio are pure DIY. While the<br />
edges of their lo-fi noise rock might be smoothed<br />
off over time, the melodies and heartfelt honesty of<br />
the songs have emerged perfectly formed.<br />
....43....
THEATRE<br />
.....................................<br />
Myra<br />
‘Evil people don’t think they’re evil’<br />
Myra Hindley admitted that<br />
she was even worse and<br />
more wicked than her fellow<br />
Moors Murderer Ian Brady<br />
because she knew the difference<br />
between right and wrong.<br />
My interest and intrigue in her<br />
lies in discovering, exploring<br />
and trying to find out ‘Why?’<br />
Myra is not about trying to<br />
shock or offend. It’s about<br />
trying to understand. The challenge<br />
throughout has been to<br />
try and find the humanity of<br />
Myra and I am still trying to<br />
find it. My intention is to not<br />
portray her as either victim or<br />
villain. I want to challenge the<br />
audience into exploring both sides for themselves.<br />
The play is a combination of storytelling, multimedia<br />
elements, various lighting states and<br />
some physical theatre. I’ve done research and<br />
more research. From looking at actual crime scene<br />
images, reading Myra’s letters from prison, seeing<br />
the late Keith Bennett’s mother on TV pleading<br />
to be told where her son is buried, to trying to get<br />
Myra’s voice accurate, hair and costume right.<br />
The famous mug shot conveys a sinister and<br />
emotionless woman that appears dead in the<br />
eyes. What her eyes must have seen no one will<br />
ever fully comprehend or dare to even try to. The<br />
fact that she was a woman and her victims were<br />
innocent children not only shocks to the core, but<br />
more terrifyingly is at odds with society’s culture of<br />
maternal instincts.<br />
I believe that evil people don’t think they are<br />
evil. I believe Ian Brady cleverly engineered a fantasy<br />
world and Myra felt invincible, loved, desired,<br />
powerful and safe in a life he had seduced her into<br />
leading. When you agree<br />
to exist in a make-believe<br />
world created by someone<br />
that has no empathy<br />
and who is a psychopath,<br />
your moral code can be destroyed.<br />
Myra sold her soul<br />
to the devil. Does that make<br />
her evil? I don’t think so. I<br />
believe it made her broken.<br />
She said, “What I did was<br />
evil, but I’m not evil.”<br />
Our company, Pretty Villain,<br />
was formed in 2012,<br />
way before this play was<br />
conceived. The name was<br />
chosen to evoke an art deco<br />
image and a stylish edginess.<br />
Our previous productions of The Crucible and The<br />
Lad Himself picked up <strong>Brighton</strong> Fringe awards.<br />
Prior to Pretty Villain, I trained at the Oxford<br />
School of Drama and have appeared on TV in<br />
Holby City and Afterlife.<br />
A lot of the time I have questioned myself and<br />
continue to do so. There has been a personal cost<br />
involved for me due to the very nature of the subject.<br />
One of the most difficult and upsetting challenges<br />
was deciding to incorporate a short segment<br />
from the Lesley Ann Downey murder using the<br />
original transcript and music that was played on<br />
tape during her horrific and brutal torture. I trust<br />
that I have treated this part of the play very sensitively<br />
and respectfully.<br />
I still have not reached a conclusion, and it’s<br />
likely I never fully will. I didn’t set out to get a<br />
definitive answer about Myra. As told to Ben Bailey<br />
Myra by Lauren Varnfield is showing at the Rialto<br />
Theatre as part of <strong>Brighton</strong> Fringe on <strong>May</strong> 5th-6th<br />
and June 3th-4th<br />
....45....
The Stage <br />
The Times <br />
The Herald <br />
The Scotsman <br />
‘…bound to hit the heights across<br />
the UK and quite possibly the globe’<br />
British Theatre Guide <br />
Tuesday 24 <strong>May</strong> — The Prince Albert<br />
Marissa Nadler<br />
+ Wrekmeister<br />
Harmonies<br />
Wednesday 25 <strong>May</strong> — Green Door Store<br />
Orchestra of<br />
Spheres<br />
+ Wax Machine<br />
Thursday 26 <strong>May</strong> — Patterns<br />
Cavern of<br />
Anti-Matter<br />
+ VENN + Melita<br />
Dennett (DJ)<br />
Friday 27 <strong>May</strong> — Patterns<br />
Cate Le Bon<br />
+ Alex Dingley +<br />
Capt. Lovelace (DJ)<br />
Friday 10 June — The Hope & Ruin<br />
The Mystery Lights<br />
+ support<br />
Monday 13 June — De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill<br />
Beach House<br />
+ support<br />
Tuesday 16 August — The Hope & Ruin<br />
Miracle Legion<br />
+ support<br />
Wednesday 7 September — The Latest Music Bar<br />
Karl Blau<br />
+ support<br />
Thursday 29 September — Green Door Store<br />
Natalie McCool<br />
+ support<br />
Monday 21 September — Concorde 2<br />
Julia Holter<br />
+ Circuit des Yeux<br />
Resident Music<br />
Dome Box Office<br />
Union Records<br />
Music’s Not Dead (Bexhill)<br />
Pebbles (Eastbourne shows)<br />
The Vinyl Frontier (Eastbourne)<br />
Venue if applicable<br />
seetickets.com<br />
ticketweb.co.uk<br />
Age restrictions may apply.<br />
meltingvinyl.co.uk<br />
National Theatre of Scotland / Live Theatre<br />
Our Ladies<br />
of Perpetual<br />
Succour<br />
Tue 17 - Sat 21 <strong>May</strong><br />
Tickets from £10<br />
brightonfestival.org<br />
brightonfestival<br />
brightfest #BF<strong>2016</strong>
PHOTOGRAPHY<br />
.......................................<br />
Volker Gerling<br />
Portraits in motion<br />
My flipbooks are always made up of 36 images<br />
taken in 12 seconds because I use a film-based<br />
Nikon F3 camera. A roll of film consists of 36<br />
images, and my winder is able to take three pictures<br />
per second. I really like using analogue film.<br />
I love developing it in the darkroom, and it feels<br />
right that it should take a long time to produce. I<br />
always print two flipbooks – one for me and one as<br />
a gift for the protagonist.<br />
I first began walking in 2002 when I finished<br />
studying and didn’t have the funds to go<br />
travelling. Walking gave me the opportunity to<br />
exhibit my flipbook project outside of the Berlin art<br />
scene, so I took my hawker’s tray and set off. I soon<br />
realised it was a fantastic way of encountering new<br />
people. I only meet inspiring subjects about once a<br />
week. I don’t choose them, people see me walking<br />
by and stop me out of curiosity. If I feel that it’s<br />
a special moment, then I ask if I can photograph<br />
them. I think if I forced it upon people then the<br />
encounters wouldn’t be as intimate as they are.<br />
The appeal to my photographic flipbooks is<br />
that they show the true face of time. Time<br />
can be stretched and slowed down in a flipbook.<br />
They also expose the gaps in film; time lapses<br />
between frames are much bigger than in normal<br />
film, so the audience sees them and fills the gaps<br />
in themselves. The scene then becomes more alive<br />
in their minds. That’s why most audiences feel so<br />
deeply connected. It’s my belief that the gaps create<br />
power and poetry.<br />
I like humour, but I don’t try to put it in my<br />
show. The comedy on stage happens organically,<br />
which I prefer. People often laugh, but many also<br />
cry because some of the stories are incredibly sad<br />
and serious.<br />
In the summer of 1998 I took my first selfportrait<br />
during a trip to England. I visited<br />
friends in Blackpool, and they gave me a free<br />
ticket for The Big One rollercoaster. I photographed<br />
myself plummeting into the depths of<br />
the ride. You can really see the fear on my face. I<br />
completely forgot I was taking my own picture!<br />
My favourite flipbook is the one I made of<br />
my partner when we first met. I was fascinated<br />
by her but didn’t know if things would work out<br />
between us. I photographed her on the train but<br />
lost the flipbook on my first walk from Berlin to<br />
Munich. I was truly devastated by the loss. Nine<br />
years later I received an email from a man who<br />
had found it, held on to it, and then seen a documentary<br />
about me and my work. He realised it was<br />
my flipbook and returned it to me. It holds great<br />
importance for me now. As told to Julia Zaltzman<br />
Part of <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival. Sat 7th to Wed 11th <strong>May</strong>,<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Dome Studio Theatre<br />
....47....
BRIAN WILSON<br />
PRESENTS PET SOUNDS<br />
UK FESTIVAL EXCLUSIVE<br />
THE HORRORS • HIATUS KAIYOTE • GAZ COOMBES<br />
SONGHOY BLUES • NATTY • SAGE FRANCIS & B. DOLAN<br />
PRESENT: “STRANGE SPEECH, FAMOUS DEVELOPMENT”<br />
POETS vs MC'S • FICKLE FRIENDS • MAX JURY<br />
STEVIE PARKER • SERATONES • MATTHEW LOGAN VASQUEZ<br />
WESTERMAN • DANIEL WAKEFORD<br />
MANY MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED<br />
ALL AGES WELCOME • TICKETS ON-SALE NOW<br />
SEE TICKETS.COM • CONCORDE 2.CO.UK<br />
RESIDENT MUSIC 01273 606312<br />
YEAR 2 OF BRIGHTON’S MOST EXCITING INDEPENDENT, FAMILY FRIENDLY, AWARD NOMINATED FESTIVAL TOGETHER THE PEOPLE.<br />
MUSIC & ENTERTAINMENT ACROSS 4 X STAGES • FREE KIDS CONTENT • CINEMA • LOCAL INDEPENDENT FOOD TRADERS<br />
CRAFT BEER & CIDER • FAIRGROUND • POWERED WITH 100% RENEWABLE ENERGIES • ALL WASTE FULLY RECYCLED •<br />
LOCAL CHARITY & COMMUNITY SPEAKERS • SPOKEN WORD & LITERATURE FOR KIDS & ADULTS
ORAL HISTORY<br />
....................................<br />
Giddy <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Audio psychogeography<br />
It’s not everyone who<br />
would agree to join<br />
a slightly inebriated<br />
stranger on a trip down<br />
memory lane but Carina<br />
Westling is glad she took<br />
the chance (after a swift,<br />
on-the-spot assessment<br />
that she could probably<br />
outrun him should it all<br />
go pear-shaped.) Her unlikely afternoon touring<br />
the streets of Kemptown with a garrulous elderly<br />
gentleman introduced her to pubs “there’s no way<br />
I’d have set foot in otherwise”, and sparked an idea<br />
that turned into a <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival commission.<br />
Giddy is a mobile app created by Westling, and the<br />
two others who make up digital arts collective The<br />
Nimbus Group, that invites users to take a stroll<br />
through <strong>Brighton</strong> in the virtual company of (sober,<br />
definitely benign) locals who knew the city in the<br />
1940s, 50s and 60s. A shout-out on Facebook (“The<br />
kids shun it these days – it’s the best place to rally<br />
us older folk”) resulted in a huge number of people<br />
coming forward to share their experiences with<br />
pupils at Rottingdean’s Longhill High School, who<br />
recorded interviews.<br />
Giddy uses geotracking to alert users when they<br />
are nearing a spot that has strong associations for<br />
interviewees. They can then listen to relevant audio<br />
accompanied by portrait photographs of the speakers.<br />
These ‘treasure troves’ of memories lie all over<br />
the city. The unremarkable Queen Square, now<br />
a favourite waiting place for taxis, was altogether<br />
more interesting in the 60s when there were weekly<br />
shenanigans in the infamous Whisky A Go Go bar.<br />
The back of <strong>Brighton</strong> Dome triggers one man’s<br />
story of seeing a thenunknown<br />
Jimi Hendrix<br />
appearing as support act<br />
for a band he consequently<br />
didn’t bother watching.<br />
Instead he found Hendrix<br />
leaving the venue, asked<br />
him to sign the tambourine<br />
he’d been playing and ran<br />
all the way home, hotly<br />
pursued by teenage girls who wanted his souvenir.<br />
“My encounter in Kemptown really brought home<br />
to me how unaware I am of streets I thought I<br />
knew” says Westling, a wry, Swiss ‘experience<br />
designer’. “We don’t honour these memories and<br />
experiences but they belong to people whose hearts<br />
and souls are in <strong>Brighton</strong>.”<br />
Giddy (“It’s the way life feels when you’re young”)<br />
is the latest example of Nimbus’ interest in the<br />
way audio can alter our experience of the world<br />
around us. It follows their 2014 ‘sound painting’<br />
app, created with acclaimed wildlife sound recordist<br />
Chris Watson, that allowed users to do their weekly<br />
shop accompanied by the sounds of a Mozambique<br />
Nightjar singing on the banks of the Zambizi<br />
or hang the washing out to the soft snufflings of<br />
a herd of elephants sleeping in grassland. “We<br />
can use digital technology just to trace people’s<br />
purchase habits or we can use it to create alternative<br />
histories, alternative narratives. The things we like<br />
to make are designed to challenge the frames of our<br />
daily existences. We want to shift notions of time<br />
and space via a pair of headphones.” Nione Meakin<br />
Launches <strong>May</strong> 7th, <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival. Plus<br />
exhibition at the Sallis Benney Theatre <strong>May</strong><br />
7th–26th. giddybrighton.com<br />
....49....
Handmade<br />
Leather<br />
Accessories<br />
& Workshops<br />
We create beautiful<br />
mens and ladies<br />
Bags, Belts, Wallets<br />
and More.<br />
Bespoke Laptop Bags &<br />
Rucksacks, Commissions<br />
welcome. Available<br />
By Appointment.<br />
We also teach basic<br />
leather skills in our<br />
charming workshop<br />
See website for details.<br />
Workhaus, Unit 4,<br />
18a Arthur Street,<br />
Hove, BN3 5FD<br />
07988 164 640<br />
UB40 featuring Ali Campbell<br />
Astro and Mickey Virtue<br />
Tue 3 <strong>May</strong><br />
YES<br />
Sat 7 <strong>May</strong><br />
ADAM ANT<br />
Sat 28 <strong>May</strong><br />
RONAN KEATING<br />
Sun 2 Oct<br />
@WolframLohr<br />
wolframlohr.com<br />
box office 0844 847 1515 *<br />
www.brightoncentre.co.uk<br />
*calls cost 7p per minute plus your phone company’s access charge
THEATRE<br />
....................................<br />
Operation Black Antler<br />
Immersive surveillance<br />
On <strong>May</strong> 7th, nine spies will gather at a secret location<br />
in central <strong>Brighton</strong>. They will have received<br />
texts beforehand with a bit of background about<br />
their mission. Once they’ve met up, they’ll be<br />
told to go to a nearby address, a police safehouse.<br />
There, they’ll be briefed in more detail about<br />
Operation Black Antler.<br />
This will take place at a pub, at a community<br />
fundraiser which may have been infiltrated by<br />
members of some kind of protest group. So the<br />
nine spies will go to this pub, and try to find out<br />
why these protest people are there, what they’re<br />
doing, and whether they’re dangerous. They will<br />
have a certain amount of power in deciding how<br />
to get that information.<br />
These spies, though, will actually be audience<br />
members in the world premiere of an ambitious<br />
piece of immersive theatre. It was partly inspired<br />
by a 2013 book by two Guardian journalists, which<br />
detailed unethical behaviour by undercover agents.<br />
“When I read that, a whole load of ideas coalesced<br />
that I’d felt before,” says Jem Wall, the piece’s<br />
co-creator. “I didn’t notice these things happening<br />
and that book, I suppose, shocked me - the<br />
unaccountability of our security services,<br />
and the complexity of this [issue].<br />
“I’m very struck by… at the end of this<br />
year, what’s referred to as a Snoopers’<br />
Charter will come into law. When<br />
I’ve looked at that in detail,<br />
we’re giving away a huge<br />
amount of our freedoms<br />
and our privacy.<br />
“As an artist, what<br />
disturbs me is that we<br />
seem to be doing<br />
that with very little examination. I think that’s been<br />
the drive, to get a debate going, to get people to<br />
think about to what extent is surveillance justified.<br />
“It’s not to give an audience a cheap thrill or<br />
power trip. We want to give people an experience,<br />
within a fictionalised environment; a taste of<br />
what it is to have that power, and what moral and<br />
ethical choices they are making. We want people<br />
to think about what surveillance means; what it is<br />
to lie, deceive and cheat, and to note how far, what<br />
they’ve done in that fictionalised environment and<br />
what that feels like.<br />
“We thought, to put the audience in that moral<br />
jeopardy is very powerful, to have them make<br />
decisions. We thought that would be a very strong<br />
way to get them engaged and reflecting on what<br />
surveillance means.<br />
“That is crucial to the work – there’s a section in it<br />
that makes them scrutinise how they’ve behaved.<br />
The hope is that having thought about that, they<br />
realise that’s what they did, and that’s what we’re<br />
asking our state to do, and does that change where<br />
they draw the line?<br />
“Which is a very different experience from watching<br />
a play. You can’t sit there passively in this.<br />
It’s visceral; you’re doing it; you’re making<br />
decisions; it’s happening to you.”<br />
Steve Ramsey<br />
<strong>May</strong> 7th-28th, (Tuesdays to Saturdays). Part<br />
of <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival. The Festival also<br />
includes a debate on the ethics of<br />
undercover security, Mon 23rd,<br />
The Old Courtroom, 6.30pm.<br />
brightonfestival.org<br />
....51....
Immerse yourself in<br />
Wakehurst’s woodland<br />
28 – 30 <strong>May</strong><br />
10am – 5pm<br />
A weekend of wild woodland activities for all<br />
the family including tree climbing, den building,<br />
woodland crafts, storytelling and more.<br />
Wakehurst is on the B2028 just south of Turners Hill<br />
and north of Ardingly (6 miles from Haywards Heath)<br />
www.kew.org/wildwood
AUDIO<br />
....................................<br />
Street Stories<br />
The things they come up with…<br />
Tell us about your show for this<br />
year’s Fringe. Street Stories is an<br />
audio tour of <strong>Brighton</strong>, made up<br />
of stories in the voices of homeless<br />
people, written by eight to eleven<br />
year olds, cut between stories from<br />
two men who have actually experienced<br />
homelessness. The children<br />
interviewed the men, which was<br />
fascinating for us to watch as well<br />
as for them; children don’t have<br />
that self-consciousness about asking<br />
questions that we have as adults.<br />
The tour goes to various shop doorways,<br />
to Jubilee Library, and ends<br />
up at First Base Day Centre. The<br />
stories of the children are voiced by<br />
actors, so you have to guess which<br />
are by children and which are being<br />
told by the men themselves.<br />
What is Little Green Pig? We’re<br />
a creative writing and mentoring<br />
charity for children and young people aged seven to<br />
18. Our mission is getting them inspired by writing<br />
in all different forms, whether it’s poetry, stories<br />
or soap writing. Three really important things are<br />
that we always use professional artists and writers<br />
to plan and assist with our projects; the projects<br />
always have a really clear outcome, whether that’s a<br />
book or a film or a script, so they have something<br />
physical and public to show, and that as well as the<br />
workshop leader, each workshop has three to eight<br />
story mentors, so the children get one-on-one or<br />
even two-on-one attention.<br />
Why is creative writing important for kids?<br />
We’re doing this, firstly, because it’s a really good<br />
way of improving literacy, but also because it<br />
improves self-esteem and self-confidence.<br />
We target disadvantaged<br />
areas in <strong>Brighton</strong>, working with<br />
children from lower socioeconomic<br />
backgrounds who don’t get the<br />
chance to access the arts in the ways<br />
other children do.<br />
For the younger children, is<br />
the focus more on confidenceboosting<br />
than actual writing<br />
ability? You’d be surprised at what<br />
seven and eight year olds can come<br />
up with. A few weeks ago at the<br />
Story Conference in London we<br />
played a game of ‘Piglet or Pig<br />
Laureate?’ where we read out pieces<br />
of poetry and the audience had to<br />
guess whether they were written by<br />
a child or a poet laureate. When you<br />
tell children it doesn’t matter about<br />
spelling or grammar, they come up<br />
with some really amazing stuff.<br />
Do they tend to become more reserved as<br />
teenagers? No… they sometimes become harder<br />
to recruit, but a big part of what we do is to create<br />
trust and a feeling of being in a group, of belonging.<br />
Once you create that atmosphere, which is so different<br />
from being at school – especially secondary<br />
school – it’s a chance for those quieter kids to stand<br />
up and have a voice. It has an effect on all different<br />
levels, not just writing skills but raising aspirations.<br />
Even if writing if the last thing they want to do as a<br />
job, seeing someone else who does their passion for<br />
a living is really inspiring.<br />
Rebecca Cunningham interviewed Ella Burns<br />
Street Stories will run at 11am, 12.30 and 2pm on<br />
Sun 8th, Sat 14th and Sun 15th. littlegreenpig.org.uk<br />
....53....
THEATRE<br />
....................................<br />
A Good Jew<br />
A Holocaust tale, by Jonathan Brown<br />
I’ve been interested in the<br />
Holocaust since visiting<br />
the Holocaust Museum<br />
in Houston, Texas, in 1988.<br />
My wife, Annika, is German,<br />
which has fuelled my interest.<br />
In her neighbouring<br />
village in Bavaria, for example,<br />
many Jewish people<br />
vanished in the war. I found<br />
it striking that some of their<br />
houses are still occupied by<br />
relatives of the locals who<br />
took possession of the properties.<br />
There’s a Romeo and Juliet element to this<br />
story, which starts in Frankfurt in the late<br />
30s. Sol is a Jewish concert pianist. Hilda plays<br />
in the same orchestra and is the daughter of an<br />
SS officer. So their love crosses the divide. Sol<br />
invents a new Aryan identity to protect himself,<br />
but becomes drawn into the Nazi machine;<br />
Hilda, thinking he’s been taken to Theresienstadt<br />
concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, takes on a<br />
Jewish identity to get into the camp and find him.<br />
Theresienstadt was a strange camp. It was<br />
where the Germans sent many Jewish musicians,<br />
artists, actors and directors. Having first<br />
transported many former inmates to Auschwitz,<br />
and cleaned it up to resemble a model camp, the<br />
SS allowed a Swiss Red Cross inspector access.<br />
After being led along a limited tour route, he gave<br />
it a clean bill of health. Later, the camp and famed<br />
interred director Kurt Gerron were similarly used<br />
to create a propaganda film. He and many of those<br />
appearing were subsequently gassed.<br />
There was a lot of subterfuge and identity<br />
shifting going on, including<br />
cases of Nazis trying<br />
to pass themselves off as<br />
Jewish after the liberation<br />
of the camp. As an actor<br />
and director I’m drawn to<br />
all this identity shifting.<br />
We’ve set up a crowdfunding<br />
campaign to help<br />
fund this project and tell<br />
this story. Once we cover<br />
the £3,000 of costs, the<br />
company can start to make<br />
a profit. So we heartily welcome more pledgers<br />
and, moreover, plenty of ticket sales!<br />
We’re putting it on at Exeter Street Hall, in<br />
Prestonville. We needed a lot of room as it’s a<br />
big story – set all over Europe – with eight in the<br />
cast. The audience can get a one-day bus pass<br />
along with their ticket, and visit this hidden gem<br />
of a venue, which holds a range of community and<br />
cultural events through the year.<br />
In the last <strong>Brighton</strong> Fringe I did a completely<br />
improvised show – Je Suis: A Fool’s Guide to Cliff<br />
Edges. It was filled with comic elements, but it<br />
wasn’t comedy. The subject matter depended<br />
on what was brought up on the day. My mother<br />
had been very ill and she died during the run,<br />
which was reflected in the way the shows turned<br />
out. I saw the performance I did the night she<br />
died partly as a poem for her. The audience that<br />
evening became an integral part of what became<br />
an intense, funny and poignant journey to the very<br />
departure gates of life. As told to Alex Leith<br />
A Good Jew, <strong>Brighton</strong> Fringe, Exeter Hall, <strong>May</strong> 6th,<br />
7th, 20th, 21st, 27th and 28th.<br />
....54....
LITERATURE<br />
....................................<br />
Howard Jacobson<br />
Interrogating Shakespeare<br />
“Shakespeare reworked old<br />
stories...” says Howard Jacobson,<br />
“to rework Shakespeare is to keep<br />
those stories alive.”<br />
The author’s latest novel, Shylock<br />
is My Name, is a modern retelling<br />
of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of<br />
Venice. Renowned for his acerbic<br />
wit, astute observations and explorations<br />
of what it means to be<br />
Jewish, Jacobson seems the ideal<br />
author to tackle rewriting this<br />
play, with one of Shakespeare’s<br />
most controversial characters at<br />
its heart. Critics still question<br />
whether Shakespeare was attempting to highlight<br />
social ills or whether he was promoting anti-semitism,<br />
which offers Jacobson rich pickings.<br />
Refashioning these stories does more than<br />
continue tradition, Jacobson continues. It also<br />
creates a dialogue between past and the present in<br />
which “by looking with our eyes at those stories<br />
we notice how far, for better or worse, we have<br />
changed”. This is crucial for examining historical<br />
and contemporary social prejudices, a responsibility<br />
from which Jacobson does not shy.<br />
To Jacobson, the question of why Jews have for<br />
so long inspired such loathing (evident from Shylock’s<br />
fellow Venetians in the play) is “interesting<br />
intellectually and theologically”, and the author<br />
interrogates both what it means to be Jewish and<br />
the prevailing attitudes towards the Jewish population.<br />
Throughout the novel, anti-semitic views<br />
are directed at its central character, Strulovitch.<br />
The views espoused are evidently not that of the<br />
author, but instead are used to highlight the modern<br />
incarnations of anti-semitism.<br />
In so doing Jacobson states the<br />
novel’s position on “Jew-loathing”.<br />
And this is key to Jacobson who<br />
sees such exposition as “vital at a<br />
time when Jew-loathing would appear<br />
to have found its voice again.”<br />
Jacobson also explores contemporary<br />
ideas of ‘Jewishness’<br />
through two Jewish characters,<br />
Strulovitch and his own revival of<br />
Shakespeare’s character, Shylock:<br />
“I began writing Strulovitch as<br />
a contemporary equivalent to<br />
Shylock but soon came to see that<br />
there is and can be no contemporary equivalent.<br />
Historically he simply cannot be uprooted… I<br />
realised that he had to be there, much like Shakespeare’s<br />
Shylock.”<br />
Having two characters coming from a similar<br />
theological point of view but with 400 years of<br />
history between them offers plenty of opportunity<br />
for comparison and Jacobson “saw that exploring<br />
the differences between them would be instructive<br />
and fun”. He applies this examination to a variety<br />
of different areas, including a shocking take on the<br />
‘pound of flesh’ originally demanded by Shylock.<br />
Shifting Shylock from being the instigator of this<br />
violence to an observer has allowed both Jacobson,<br />
as a Shakespeare scholar, and Shylock, as a character,<br />
to examine “what is really signified” then and<br />
now, and “speculate on what it all meant and what<br />
his original intentions were.”<br />
Holly Fitzgerald<br />
Howard Jacobson, The Guardian Book Club, Sallis<br />
Benney Theatre, Sun 8th <strong>May</strong>, 5pm Tickets: £10<br />
....55....
THEATRE<br />
....................................<br />
Photos by Robbie Jack (left) and Sarah Ainslie (right)<br />
The Encounter<br />
An Amazonian adventure in Falmer<br />
The London-based Complicite touring theatre<br />
company launched in 1983 and gained a reputation<br />
for producing “the most imaginative theatre<br />
to be found anywhere”, according to David Lister<br />
of the Independent. This month they’re bringing an<br />
already sold-out show called The Encounter to the<br />
recently refurbished Attenborough Centre for the<br />
Creative Arts, which is on the University of Sussex<br />
campus at Falmer. Now named after the work of<br />
Lord (Richard) Attenborough and his family, the<br />
building was previously known as the Gardner<br />
Arts Centre.<br />
Kirsty Housley, who’s co-directing The Encounter,<br />
thought she’d only be involved for a few weeks<br />
of research when she joined the production team<br />
in 2010. “That couple of weeks turned into a few<br />
months… and then the project kind of continued,<br />
really,” she tells me. It’s part of the distinctive way<br />
Complicite operates, apparently. “Each time a<br />
project is created, a company is built around that<br />
project. There’s a genuine ‘not knowing’ at the<br />
beginning of the process. You relinquish an element<br />
of control, which is quite scary.” In addition,<br />
the work they do is never seen as finished. “You<br />
never lock something down and say ‘that’s it, keep<br />
it exactly as it is now, repeat what you’re doing.’ So<br />
there’s always a sense of evolution in the performance<br />
as well.”<br />
Performing in The Encounter is Complicite cofounder<br />
Simon McBurney, who’s known to many<br />
as the sinister MI6 man in last year’s Mission:<br />
Impossible film and as the often unsympathetic<br />
Archbishop Robert in TV sitcom Rev. The story<br />
is adapted from a book called Amazon Beaming,<br />
which tells the adventures of photojournalist<br />
Loren McIntyre. In 1969, McIntyre went looking<br />
for the elusive <strong>May</strong>oruna tribe in South America.<br />
Also known as the Matsés, they were popularly<br />
referred to as ‘cat people’ because of their facial<br />
tattoos and the whisker-like spines they wore in<br />
their noses. He found them – but, as he followed<br />
a group into the rainforest, he lost track of his<br />
original route. McIntyre’s planned three-day trip<br />
turned into weeks spent with people who shared<br />
no common language with him. Yet much to the<br />
photographer’s surprise, he seemed to develop a<br />
wordless way of communicating with the tribe’s<br />
elderly leader.<br />
Which helps to explain why The Encounter doesn’t<br />
tell McIntyre’s story with conventional imagery.<br />
Simon McBurney performs it as a one-man show,<br />
assisted by binaural headsets that blend his performance<br />
with sound effects to put the audience<br />
in the heart of the jungle. “A lot of the technology<br />
had to be custom-built”, says Kirsty. “We create<br />
the feeling of being somewhere rather than trying<br />
to visually represent what that place looks like. You<br />
don’t see any creepers or any green leaves. Like all<br />
theatre, it really takes place in your imagination<br />
rather than on the stage.” Mark Bridge<br />
The Encounter runs from Wednesday 11th until<br />
Sunday 15th. brightonfestival.org<br />
....57....
CINEMA<br />
....................................<br />
Symphony of a City<br />
A soundtrack to <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
How does the film<br />
compare to Walter<br />
Ruttmann’s original<br />
Berlin: Symphony of<br />
a Great City, which it<br />
was clearly inspired<br />
by? Lizzie Thynne:<br />
Although we follow a<br />
loose structure of a day<br />
in the life of the city,<br />
which is very much the<br />
structure of the original, we also wanted to include<br />
some archive from Screen Archive South East, at<br />
the University of <strong>Brighton</strong>. We have some wonderful<br />
gems, such as a ritual that used to happen<br />
by the pier when ‘Father Neptune’ was dunked<br />
in the sea by beautiful, muscly young men also<br />
dressed up. It’s not really what you would expect<br />
from the 50s, although it’s what you might expect<br />
from <strong>Brighton</strong>!<br />
What about comparisons with Edmund<br />
Meisel’s original musical score? Ed Hughes:<br />
The Meisel score hasn’t survived. However, I think<br />
we are interested in Ruttmann’s idea of the form<br />
of a symphony in a broad sense of an analogy as a<br />
means to create a portrait of a city, using musical<br />
principles of coherence and contrasting themes.<br />
Was there a deliberate attempt to contrast the<br />
music with what is happening on screen? EH:<br />
There is definitely counterpoint between the music<br />
and the picture. We’re aiming at something in<br />
which the patterns of the silent film and the music<br />
co-exist and respond to one another, perhaps more<br />
like music and dance than regular cinema music.<br />
Was the film storyboarded beforehand? LT:<br />
If only! We made the film in four short months<br />
alongside work (Lizzie<br />
and Ed are both lecturers<br />
in the School of Media,<br />
Film & Music department<br />
at Sussex University).<br />
But that was incredibly<br />
liberating because it<br />
very much depended on<br />
us responding to what<br />
we were seeing. We had<br />
ideas that we were trying<br />
to match, such as circular motions, so the <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Eye features as a kind of motif that keeps returning,<br />
and it represents the passage of time.<br />
Is this your first silent film? LT: Yes, and it’s<br />
quite a joyous film but we wanted to explore some<br />
of the more problematic sides of <strong>Brighton</strong>. It was<br />
quite tricky to indicate the issue of homelessness<br />
without it being too voyeuristic, as I couldn’t have<br />
those people speaking in the film telling their<br />
stories. So, inevitably, as with silent films, people<br />
become symbolic.<br />
Has making the film revealed elements of<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> you haven’t witnessed before? LT: It<br />
renewed my enthusiasm for the city. Just in the<br />
way people reacted, and how friendly they were.<br />
I worked closely with Catalina Balan, and there’s<br />
still the radicalism which we’ve tried to reflect,<br />
as well as a few surreal moments that feature<br />
the unexpected, which is something I was really<br />
pleased with about the film in that you’ve got the<br />
extraordinary in everyday life.<br />
Interview by Julia Zaltzman<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Festival, Wed 11th <strong>May</strong>, 7.30pm, <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Dome, featuring The Orchestra of Sound and Light<br />
conducted by Ed Hughes<br />
....59....
WATERSIDE BRASSERIE AT THE<br />
RENDEZVOUS CASINO BRIGHTON<br />
WE DON’T JUST MEAT EXPECTATIONS,<br />
WE EXCEED THEM.<br />
01273 605602 infobrighton@rendezvouscasino.com rendezvouscasino.com/brighton<br />
Rendezvous Casino <strong>Brighton</strong>, <strong>Brighton</strong> Marina Village BN2 5UT rendezvousbrighton • Rendezvousbton<br />
Over 18s Only | Challenge 21 Policy in Operation | Know When To Stop Before You Start, visit gambleaware.co.uk | drinkaware.co.uk | Rendezvous Casino is a part of Caesars Entertainment UK Limited<br />
A FESTIVAL<br />
WITHIN<br />
A FESTIVAL<br />
BY ST PETER’S CHURCH, BRIGHTON<br />
• 4 THEATRES<br />
• FESTIVAL BAR & ROOFTOP BAR<br />
• FOOD STALLS<br />
• MARKET TOWN WITH LOCAL TRADERS<br />
• CHILDREN’S AREA<br />
5 MAY - 5 JUNE <strong>2016</strong><br />
PICK UP A<br />
BROCHURE<br />
NOW!<br />
www.otherplacebrighton.co.uk
THEATRE<br />
....................................<br />
The Complete Deaths<br />
A Shakespearian bloodbath<br />
Spare a thought for<br />
Toby Parks who so far<br />
this year has watched<br />
his colleagues get<br />
stabbed, poisoned,<br />
drowned, blinded,<br />
smothered, beheaded,<br />
bitten by snakes and<br />
baked in pies, often all<br />
in the same day. It’s<br />
been draining, he admits.<br />
But such is one’s<br />
lot when one is part of a physical comedy group<br />
making a foolhardy attempt to crowbar all 74 of<br />
Shakespeare’s death scenes into a single <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Festival show.<br />
The Complete Deaths is probably Spymonkey’s<br />
most ambitious work to date – and this is a group<br />
who have performed Herman Melville’s epic<br />
Moby Dick. So many characters die in Titus Andronicus<br />
alone that one website created a downloadable<br />
‘death clock’ to help audiences keep<br />
track. There are around 25 untimely demises in a<br />
single Henry VI play: “A lot of those are characters<br />
no one’s really heard of though, so we crack<br />
through them quite quickly.” Then there are the<br />
‘big production numbers’ – the Romeo & Juliets,<br />
the Hamlets, Cleopatra and her asp.<br />
The challenge hasn’t just been in covering all the<br />
deaths but in keeping them interesting. “One of<br />
our earliest discoveries in doing this show is that<br />
it quickly gets very boring watching people get<br />
stabbed and falling over again and again,” says<br />
Parks, who performs with and composes for the<br />
acclaimed <strong>Brighton</strong>-based five-piece. So that isn’t<br />
quite what happens. Instead deaths are reimagined<br />
as, to use Parks’ wonderfully evocative<br />
phrases, ‘a Butoh-inspired medley of stabbings’,<br />
‘a Jacques Tati-style dumbshow set in a pie shop’<br />
and ‘Pyramus and Thisbe as filmed by Ingmar<br />
Bergman.’ When I ask<br />
if there’s a scene with<br />
which Spymonkey<br />
has taken particular<br />
liberty, Parks is at a<br />
loss to pick just one.<br />
“It’s very good for us<br />
as clowns to work with<br />
characters and situations<br />
that everyone<br />
is familiar with. The<br />
stronger and clearer<br />
the situation, the more fun we can have in subverting<br />
it.”<br />
The audacity of Spymonkey’s undertaking has<br />
not gone unnoted. In a preview, the Telegraph<br />
called the as-yet-unperformed show “ultimately<br />
philistine” and protested that poor, innocent<br />
(only slightly bloodthirsty) Shakespeare “does<br />
not deserve this monstering”. And in the 400th<br />
anniversary of his death too! One can only hope<br />
the writer didn’t see Spymonkey’s 2012 show<br />
Oedipussy, which gave Homer’s eye-gouging<br />
Greek tragedy a loud, lewd, James Bond-style<br />
makeover. But Parks does not fear the angry<br />
academics. As he sees it, Spymonkey’s backs are<br />
covered by the involvement of experimental<br />
theatre-maker Tim Crouch, who adapted and directs<br />
The Complete Deaths. Crouch, he points out,<br />
is not only a renowned scholar of Shakespeare<br />
(see his one-man touring show I, Malvolio) but a<br />
bona fide ‘art bastard’ to boot. “We’re basically a<br />
bunch of idiots whereas Tim is a highly respected<br />
figure in avant-garde theatre circles. Tim is taking<br />
care of the erudition, we’re taking care of the<br />
laughs. Between us, we aim to create a show that<br />
is sublimely ridiculous.”<br />
Nione Meakin<br />
Theatre Royal <strong>Brighton</strong>, <strong>May</strong> 11th–15th. <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Festival, brightonfestival.org<br />
....61....
MUSIC<br />
..........................................<br />
Professor Elemental<br />
And his time-travelling trousers<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> has a habit of throwing up eccentrics, but<br />
Professor Elemental must be among the most curious<br />
and amusing of the bunch. With three shows<br />
in town this month, the chap-hop rapper chatted<br />
to us about time travel, the joys of steampunk and<br />
what it means to be British.<br />
What is chap hop? Strictly speaking, it’s a select<br />
musical genre where emcees use traditional hip<br />
hop for inspiration and use it to rap about unlikely<br />
subjects such as village fetes, gentlemanly behaviour,<br />
time-travelling trousers and splendid horses.<br />
Although really it’s just dope hip-hop music in<br />
fancy dress.<br />
What’s this we hear about a time-travelling<br />
butler? Ah yes, dear sweet Geoffrey – not just my<br />
butler, but also my orangutan and my best friend.<br />
Is he reliable, trustworthy and useful around the<br />
house? Not really. Does he throw his droppings at<br />
visitors and do unspeakable things to the postman?<br />
Yes, yes he does. But he is mine and I am stuck<br />
with him.<br />
How did you get into the steampunk thing?<br />
After my Cup Of Brown Joy video went viral a few<br />
years back I started getting Americans writing to<br />
me telling me I was steampunk. I had no idea what<br />
it was at all. After checking it out, I was delighted<br />
to find that my act fitted in really nicely with the<br />
neo-Victorian world of the future and that the<br />
subculture is full of the nicest people you could<br />
ever meet. There’s even a really lovely steampunk<br />
bar in <strong>Brighton</strong> called The Yellow Book, which I<br />
highly recommend checking out.<br />
Are you proud to be British? The older and<br />
more travelled I get, the more patriotic I’ve become.<br />
Not in a Nigel Farage sort of way, but more<br />
a quiet appreciation for odd tourist attractions,<br />
glorious countryside and our unmatchable sense<br />
of humour. As for Europe, we are now faced with<br />
the impossible challenge of either making David<br />
Cameron or Michael Gove happy. And that is a<br />
choice no one should have to make.<br />
You already run a small cottage industry of<br />
comic books, card games and cuddly toys –<br />
what kind of merchandise would you crank out<br />
if money was no object? Well, if money was no<br />
object, this interview would be about the new Professor<br />
Elemental theme park opening on <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
pier, but that pizza chap got in there before me<br />
and snapped the place up.<br />
Any further adventures lined up? I always have<br />
several projects on at once – new novels, albums<br />
and an endless parade of shows. The next thing<br />
out will be issue five of the Professor Elemental<br />
comic, followed up by an album from my old crew,<br />
The Menagerie. Plus you can see me in <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
this <strong>May</strong> with three very different gigs at Prince<br />
Albert (13th), The Wunderlich Review, Spiegeltent<br />
(25th) and Funk Da Family Festival, Hove<br />
Park (28th). Interview by Ben Bailey<br />
professorelemental.com<br />
....63....
DANCE<br />
..........................................<br />
Dan Canham<br />
Of Riders and Running Horses<br />
The idea for Of<br />
Riders and Running<br />
Horses originally<br />
started with my fascination<br />
in, and enjoyment<br />
of, various folk events I<br />
was going to around the<br />
country. Things like the<br />
Flaming Tar Barrels in<br />
Ottery St Mary, Molly<br />
dancing in East Anglia<br />
(which is kind of like Morris dancing but at night<br />
with fire and much more menacing than anything<br />
I’d ever seen before), and Straw Bear in Whittlesea.<br />
Events where music or dance or some other<br />
kind of live element play a central role, and in<br />
which the viewers are very immediate rather than<br />
dance presented from a distance to an audience<br />
quietly sat in a theatre.<br />
It was always my intention for it to be performed<br />
at night time. There’s just something<br />
nice about it being outdoors, potentially in a place<br />
that you might not normally be in at night time to<br />
watch something. I wanted locations that people<br />
would be really familiar with and regularly pass in<br />
their daily life or areas that get taken for granted<br />
as a functional space, but when the sun goes down,<br />
suddenly there’s this magic of there being musicians<br />
and dancers taking ownership of that space,<br />
and people gathering to watch it. It’s normally<br />
performed on a rooftop, but in <strong>Brighton</strong> the<br />
show is at ground level in the overflow car park of<br />
Withdean stadium. The piece ends with a gentle<br />
invitation for the audience to join in and it turns<br />
into a bit of a rave!<br />
The music and dance were composed in relation<br />
to each other.<br />
I came up with some<br />
moves in the R&D<br />
period which the musicians<br />
would respond<br />
to, and I later set a<br />
brief for them to write<br />
some music, which we<br />
then adapted during<br />
rehearsals. The show is<br />
about the relationship<br />
between those two elements, and even now we’ve<br />
created a structure which retains a kind of ‘liveness’<br />
whereby the dancers can be responsive to the<br />
musicians and vice versa.<br />
If I had to nail down the style of dance, I would<br />
say that some of the material is lifted directly from<br />
jumpstyle dance, which I ear-marked in the early<br />
days as contemporary folk dance. It’s rhythmic,<br />
relatively simple, has no clear author and appeared<br />
in the mid-90s in rave clubs in Europe. We also<br />
use house-style steps, and a lot of steps have been<br />
generated by the company themselves. One of the<br />
dancers has a hip-hop background; others come<br />
from more contemporary dance. It’s a real mix.<br />
Using six female dancers was a conscious<br />
choice. I was particularly interested in exploring<br />
an energy of abandon or ecstasy of collective joy.<br />
In a lot of of traditional dance, that will be done<br />
by men, and I feel that more widely in our culture<br />
we’re used to the energy of abandon being more<br />
closely associated with men. I was interested in<br />
allowing women to do that and to give them a<br />
platform to invert the normal folk tradition.<br />
As told to Julia Zaltzman<br />
Fri 13th - Sun 15th <strong>May</strong>, 8.30pm, Withdean Stadium<br />
....65....
䌀 䄀 䰀 䰀 夀 伀 唀 刀 䰀 伀 䌀 䄀 䰀<br />
䄀 䜀 䔀 一 吀 䘀 伀 刀 䄀 一<br />
䔀 堀 倀 䔀 刀 吀 嘀 䄀 䰀 唀 䄀 吀 䤀 伀 一<br />
㈀ 㜀 アパート 㘀 㜀 㜀 アパート 㘀 㔀<br />
䈀 漀 渀 攀 琀 琀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀<br />
“blissfully funny”<br />
êêêêê time out<br />
What’s on:<br />
Bromance 12-18 <strong>May</strong><br />
the lamellar<br />
project 13-14 <strong>May</strong><br />
Wifi wars 15 <strong>May</strong><br />
with a little<br />
bit of luck 17-18 may<br />
sleeping trees:<br />
Western? and SCI-FI?<br />
24-25 may<br />
1972: The Future<br />
of sex 27-28 <strong>May</strong><br />
strange face 2 jun<br />
26-28 may<br />
trygve wakenshaw:<br />
kraken<br />
see the full line-up: theoldmarket.com
LITERATURE<br />
....................................<br />
Olivia Laing<br />
The loneliness of the trans-Atlantic writer<br />
In your latest book, The Lonely<br />
City, you posit that cities can<br />
accentuate loneliness. Is the<br />
countryside, conversely, good<br />
company? I don’t think it’s that<br />
simple. Loneliness is accentuated<br />
by environment, and there’s<br />
undoubtedly rural loneliness, just<br />
as there is urban loneliness. They<br />
have very different qualities, but<br />
you can feel displaced and isolated<br />
anywhere.<br />
As a young woman you spent a<br />
whole spring ‘living feral’ in rural<br />
Sussex. How formative was this experience?<br />
Pretty deeply - it made me very self-reliant, and I<br />
think it has informed all the travelling I’ve done<br />
since. I’ve always been very independent and liked<br />
to go my own way - living off the land alone was a<br />
particularly extreme example!<br />
You have written extensively about the Downland<br />
countryside. Does this area hold more<br />
power over you than other, equally beautiful<br />
areas? It deeply informed my first book, but<br />
since then I’ve been spending much more time in<br />
America. New York is my favourite place, and I’ve<br />
been falling in love with LA lately, but the Sussex<br />
countryside does still have a deep hold on me. My<br />
heart always leaps when I see the Downs.<br />
I’ve read you citing the likes of Ravilious,<br />
Duncan Grant, Virginia Woolf as being important<br />
to your appreciation of this area. Do<br />
you feel you are part of a geographical art/<br />
literature tradition that’s inspired by Sussex?<br />
Not so much now, but spending so long in the<br />
area definitely informed my work, and I still feel<br />
like my writing is very influenced by Woolf. I’m<br />
always drawn to unconventional communities, and<br />
I think the Bloomsbury group were<br />
really interestingly radical in their<br />
work, their politics and the way they<br />
arranged their lives. I find that kind<br />
of experimentation and resistance to<br />
norms very inspiring<br />
You have in the past labelled your<br />
work as being ‘biogeographical’<br />
rather than ‘psychogeographical’.<br />
What’s the difference? Did I? I<br />
don’t know what I meant by that<br />
now. I’m interested in biography and<br />
place and psychology, and I find the<br />
separation of those things frustrating.<br />
I write hybrid books because they make more<br />
instinctive sense to me.<br />
This isn’t your first visit to the Charleston<br />
Festival. What’s the significance of the event?<br />
Or is it just a big jolly? I love Charleston, it’s by<br />
far my favourite festival. It feels like it’s a place<br />
where conversations happen, and I find it very<br />
exciting and nourishing at the same time.<br />
Charleston apart, what does the word ‘festival’<br />
mean to you? Mud!<br />
Why did you choose New York as the setting<br />
for your latest book? Why not London? Do<br />
you think that urban America has more appeal<br />
to readers/movie audiences etc than urban<br />
Britain? I was living in New York, and The Lonely<br />
City is about that experience, and the artists I<br />
encountered during my time in the city. I think a<br />
London book would have been very different in<br />
terms of both feeling and cast.<br />
When did you last swim in the Ouse? Too long<br />
ago. <strong>May</strong>be I’ll get a swim in this <strong>May</strong>.<br />
Interview by Alex Leith<br />
Olivia appears at the Charleston Festival on Friday<br />
20th <strong>May</strong>. charleston.org.uk<br />
....67....
POPUP OPERA<br />
Bellini’s<br />
THE CAPULETS &<br />
THE MONTAGUES<br />
ROMEO & JULIET LIKE YOU’VE NEVER<br />
SEEN IT BEFORE<br />
7pm Sat 30 th April<br />
One night only.<br />
£15/£13<br />
popupopera.co.uk<br />
“a vividly intense and gripping<br />
performance”<br />
PLANET HUGILL<br />
“a thrill to watch”<br />
PAUL IN LONDON<br />
THE SPIRE<br />
ST MARK’S CHAPEL, SUSSEX SQ. BRIGHTON
CLASSICAL MUSIC<br />
.....................................<br />
A Musical Menagerie<br />
Peter, the wolf, and other animals<br />
Photo © Kate Benjamin<br />
How long have<br />
you been with the<br />
Sussex Symphony<br />
Orchestra? Well,<br />
I started it, back in<br />
1993. When I moved<br />
to the area I realised<br />
that there wasn’t an<br />
orchestra which was<br />
absolutely representative<br />
of the enormous<br />
talent we have in Sussex.<br />
Of course you’ve<br />
got the <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Philharmonic, but they don’t exist on a day-to-day<br />
basis. Our criterion at the SSO is that you have to<br />
live or work in Sussex.<br />
How many musicians make up the SSO? The<br />
average is about 70, but that can go up depending<br />
on the piece.<br />
How do you communicate with so many people<br />
at once? That’s the art and the magic of being a conductor!<br />
When people ask what conductors do, there<br />
are so many answers: we’re co-ordinators, coaxers,<br />
interpreters of the piece of music, balancers... If you<br />
really want to see what a conductor does, don’t go to<br />
the show, go to the rehearsals. That’s where all the<br />
blood, sweat and tears happen, where we take apart a<br />
piece and put it back together again.<br />
Why did you choose Peter and the Wolf and<br />
a Carnival of Animals? They’re two of the classic<br />
children’s pieces which introduce the orchestra<br />
to kids – and adults too. You have this wonderful<br />
story of Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev, where each<br />
character has either a section or a particular instrument.<br />
Each one is introduced at the beginning,<br />
so you know that as soon as the narrator – which<br />
will be Alistair Appleton, who’s a great friend of<br />
the orchestra – says,<br />
“Peter walks out<br />
into the meadow...”<br />
you’ll hear the string<br />
instruments start to<br />
play. Then you’ve<br />
got Carnival of the<br />
Animals by Saint-<br />
Saëns, and the way<br />
he’s managed to capture<br />
the animals is<br />
quite extraordinary.<br />
We’re hoping that<br />
all the kids and the<br />
adults will go away humming the different parts.<br />
Do you have to adapt the performance to suit a<br />
younger audience? I think you have to be a little bit<br />
more flexible. These pieces work so well because it’s<br />
very easy to stop and interact with the kids. I absolutely<br />
love it when people come with children who<br />
have never been to a concert before, watching their<br />
little faces light up. We kept with only two pieces<br />
because the attention spans of younger children are<br />
shorter and we don’t want them to get bored, so we’ll<br />
play for about half an hour each section.<br />
Do you have any favourite parts of the pieces?<br />
I like the end of Peter and the Wolf – because it all<br />
ends happily! And there’s a wonderful part in Carnival<br />
of the Animals, Aquarium, which is played on a<br />
glass harmonica. It’s heavenly, ethereal – you don’t<br />
hear it very often.<br />
If you were a character in the concert, which<br />
instrument would represent you? Ha! Probably<br />
the bassoon. It has the fantastic capacity to be very<br />
grumpy, and the capacity to be completely and utterly<br />
joyous. Rebecca Cunningham interviewed Mark<br />
Andrew James<br />
Sat 21st <strong>May</strong> 3.30pm, All Saints Church, Hove<br />
....69....
吀 爀 愀 渀 猀 昀 漀 爀 洀 礀 漀 甀 爀 栀 漀 洀 攀 眀 椀 琀 栀 漀 甀 爀 昀 椀 渀 攀 猀 琀 焀 甀 愀 氀 椀 琀 礀<br />
匀 㨀 䌀 刀 䄀 䘀 吀 洀 愀 搀 攀 ⴀ 琀 漀 ⴀ 洀 攀 愀 猀 甀 爀 攀 椀 渀 琀 攀 爀 椀 漀 爀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀<br />
琀 ⸀ ㈀ 㜀 アパート アパート アパート 㠀 㐀 ㈀<br />
攀 ⸀ 挀 漀 渀 琀 愀 挀 琀 䀀 戀 攀 氀 氀 愀 瘀 椀 猀 琀 愀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀<br />
眀 ⸀ 眀 眀 眀 ⸀ 戀 攀 氀 氀 愀 瘀 椀 猀 琀 愀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀
LITERATURE<br />
....................................<br />
Nikesh Shukla<br />
Spider-Man and the post-Snapchat novel<br />
How is your latest project, The Good Immigrant,<br />
going? We’re just getting all 21 essays<br />
to feel like a cohesive book now. It’s been a great<br />
process, one that has surprised me. Because it’s<br />
a mixture of people I know well, like Chimene<br />
Suleyman, Riz Ahmed and Musa Okwonga, and<br />
people who I only know through their work like<br />
Coco Khan, Sarah Sahim and Darren Chetty.<br />
And each essay has been surprising, hard-hitting<br />
and most of all, bloody brilliant.<br />
What was it like when JK Rowling hit donate<br />
to your crowdfund? Great. I think she’s<br />
amazing and I’m a Potter fan, but in reality,<br />
she’s one of over 700 people who wanted to<br />
fund this book nearly a year before it’s due to be<br />
released, so actually the thing that excited me<br />
most was the appetite for the book. It made me<br />
think, why have we had to make our own book,<br />
publishers? We told you the hunger was there<br />
and you ignored us. And now look!<br />
So you’re a big Spiderman fan? Firstly, he’s<br />
The Amazing Spider-Man. That’s important.<br />
He’s not Phil Spiderman. I accepted that<br />
Indians were never the main character<br />
in anything but there was something<br />
about his teenage self, caught<br />
between two worlds, super heroism<br />
and studies, that really spoke<br />
to me. In a weird way, it made<br />
my teenage years, of being in two<br />
weird environments - a mostly white<br />
school and my Gujarati community -<br />
more manageable. Spider-Man really<br />
nailed what it’s like to be a teenager.<br />
What’s your process? Six cups of<br />
coffee, procrastination?<br />
My writing process<br />
is ‘argh I have<br />
an hour lunch break, write, write dammit. Argh<br />
I have to get six hours sleep at least, before my<br />
baby wakes up, write, write dammit’. There’s<br />
nothing like a baby and a day job to give you the<br />
necessary fuel to find the time to write.<br />
Do you feel like those who grew up straddling<br />
both sides of the internet divide are<br />
uniquely placed to tell stories like your novel<br />
Meatspace? Will future generations, who<br />
don’t know life before Snapchat, tell very<br />
different stories to those of previous generations?<br />
No. I mean, there’s this thing about<br />
how there are only seven different plots. I think<br />
people will find different ways to tell stories.<br />
And they will be experimental and interesting.<br />
But we’ll always come back to this form, I think.<br />
It’s timeless. And as long as stories try to understand<br />
humanity, as long as we remain a mystery<br />
to ourselves, there will always be stories.<br />
You’re delivering the New Writing South<br />
Lecture during the <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival - how<br />
does it feel? Being asked to do the prestigious<br />
annual lecture is just mind-boggling.<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong>’s literary prowess is so high<br />
right now: Hannah Berry, Polly<br />
Dunbar, Emma Jane Unsworth,<br />
Damian Barr and so many more<br />
incredible writers make this city<br />
proud, man.<br />
Amy Holtz<br />
Nikesh Shukla will deliver the<br />
New Writing South Annual Lecture<br />
as part of <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival<br />
on Sun 22nd <strong>May</strong> at <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Dome Corn Exchange.<br />
....71....
CCA holds 8 exhibitions<br />
annually, represents<br />
established and emerging<br />
British artists, exhibits<br />
at major British art fairs and<br />
offers art consultancy<br />
For more details visit<br />
CAMERONCONTEMPORARY.COM<br />
GALLERY OPEN Monday to Saturday from 10.30am—6pm<br />
Sunday and Bank Holidays from 12pm—5pm (closed on Tuesdays)<br />
1 Victoria Grove, 2nd Avenue, Hove BN3 2LJ<br />
TELEPHONE 01273 727234 EMAIL info@cameroncontemporary.com<br />
THE FLOWER SCHO O L<br />
B R I G H T O N<br />
CCA_SussexLife_Advert_93x133_Feb<strong>2016</strong>_v1cAW.indd 1 20/02/<strong>2016</strong> 16:40<br />
Day & Evening Workshops<br />
Wedding Floristry<br />
Bespoke Floristry Parties<br />
Contact Vicki on<br />
01273 563363 / 07867 544218<br />
䌀 漀 渀 琀 愀 挀 琀 䨀 䨀 䀀 䨀 樀 䘀 氀 愀 甀 渀 琀 ⸀ 椀 琀 愀 渀 搀 洀 攀 渀 琀 椀 漀 渀<br />
嘀 椀 瘀 愀 䈀 爀 椀 最 栀 琀 漀 渀 昀 漀 爀 愀 氀 愀 甀 渀 挀 栀 攀 瘀 攀 渀 琀 椀 渀 瘀 椀 琀 攀<br />
www.theflowerschoolbrighton.co.uk<br />
info@theflowerschoolbrighton.co.uk
CINEMA<br />
....................................<br />
The Moon and the Sledgehammer<br />
Field of dreamers<br />
“I was absolutely fascinated by them the moment<br />
I got there,” says Philip Trevelyan, of the Page<br />
family, the subject of his 1971 documentary The<br />
Moon and the Sledgehammer, which is being given<br />
a rare screening as part of the <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival.<br />
Trevelyan, then a young ambitious film-maker<br />
(he now makes artisan farm tools) was introduced<br />
to the Pages by a friend. The family consisted of<br />
patriarch ‘Oily’ Page and four of his grown-up<br />
children, two men and two women, who lived together<br />
in a field near Chiddingly in a ramshackle<br />
house set amid a few acres of woodland.<br />
“They were threshers by trade,” he continues,<br />
“so they needed a lot of land for their machinery.”<br />
They also ran a couple of steam engines,<br />
which the two sons are constantly tinkering with<br />
throughout the film, as if the twentieth century<br />
has passed them by. Their father is building what<br />
appears to be a submarine. For entertainment<br />
they sing round an old piano. They eat rabbits<br />
the father shoots in the woods.<br />
The beauty of the film lies in the fact that the<br />
family, while they appear on the surface to be<br />
dysfunctional, also make the audience realise that<br />
the modernisation they’ve avoided hasn’t necessarily<br />
made ‘normal’ people’s life better.<br />
“[Oily Page] realised that a lot of ordinary people<br />
he saw [when he left his wood] didn’t have time<br />
to enjoy things they once had; they didn’t have<br />
enough time for the family. They would get on<br />
the train to London, get a paper, go to the office,<br />
leave the office, get another paper, and get on the<br />
train again. The only time they’re with their family<br />
was when they’re asleep, and it’s very sad.”<br />
The Pages might have had more time together<br />
than most families, but it wasn’t all harmonious.<br />
The domineering character of the father comes<br />
through more and more as the film progresses.<br />
Despite the bickering he captures, Trevelyan<br />
wasn’t aiming to portray a negative image of the<br />
family. “I was looking for the riches within the<br />
characters,” says Trevelyan. “For that reason I<br />
didn’t try to make a fly-on-the-wall documentary.<br />
I wanted the people I was filming to put forward<br />
what they had to offer.”<br />
What they do have to offer is a lot of home-spun<br />
philosophy which makes you realise how far we<br />
have moved on from the world they are so comfortable<br />
in, which predates the oil age, let alone<br />
the computer age. And what makes for uncomfortable<br />
viewing is that even though you know<br />
that their way of life is doomed, you can see that<br />
in many ways it all makes sense. And that the<br />
family are masters of their own universe, however<br />
eccentric that universe might be.<br />
It’s a beautifully made film, with no narration or<br />
extraneous explanation to distract you from the<br />
strange world that you become immersed in from<br />
the moment you meet Oily Page, playing up to<br />
the camera, reciting an old cockney rhyme, with a<br />
shotgun in one hand, a rabbit in the other.<br />
Alex Leith<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Festival, Duke of York’s Picturehouse,<br />
Sun 29th <strong>May</strong>, 4.30pm, followed by a Q&A with<br />
Philip Trevelyan<br />
....73....
MUSIC<br />
....................................<br />
Shlomo<br />
King of the jam<br />
When did you start beatboxing? I started<br />
learning when I was eight and I first did it on<br />
stage when I was about 18. I was obsessed with<br />
beatboxing and the culture around it, and in 2002<br />
I entered my first competition, King of the Jam.<br />
It was in the park and the winner got a jar of jam<br />
(Bonne Maman, the good stuff) and I won the jam!<br />
I was quite chuffed. It snowballed quite quickly<br />
from there.<br />
You’ve said that using anything other than your<br />
voice on stage felt like cheating. I’ve now learnt<br />
that if it feels like cheating, it’s probably what you<br />
should be doing. The creative restriction of using<br />
only my voice pushed me to get really good at<br />
making lots of different sounds, but then I reached<br />
a point where I was using it as a safety net. Eventually<br />
you need to break the rules and create new<br />
restrictions for yourself.<br />
What else do you use? I’ve just finished creating<br />
my own machine… A traditional machine can only<br />
do whatever the manufacturer has programmed it<br />
to do, but with this I can programme the buttons<br />
to do whatever I want: I can loop and manipulate<br />
my voice in loads of different ways, I can record<br />
the audience and use that sound like an instrument.<br />
Are you still discovering new sounds that you<br />
can make? Not as much as when I was younger.<br />
For me it’s become less about finding new sounds<br />
I can make and more about putting together a<br />
complete piece of music. I spend less time touring<br />
and travelling than I used to and a lot more time<br />
composing – every day I’m writing music.<br />
Have your performances changed as a result?<br />
They take people on a bit more of a journey; my<br />
family show is this purely joyous celebration of<br />
music where kids and adults are expected to take<br />
part, maybe come on stage, and I create this big<br />
imaginary world. My grown-up shows go to a bit<br />
more of a dark place with the music and stories.<br />
Can you beatbox to any genre of music? I’m yet<br />
to come across any style of music that doesn’t work<br />
with beatboxing because, really, it’s just another instrument.<br />
It’s like saying ‘is there a genre of music<br />
that doesn’t work with piano?’ It depends how you<br />
play it. Interview by Rebecca Cunningham<br />
Shlomo is performing at Elderflower Fields on<br />
27th and at two <strong>Brighton</strong> Fringe shows on 2nd<br />
June. shlomobeatbox.co.uk<br />
....74....
MUSIC<br />
....................................<br />
Caro Emerald<br />
‘English is the language of jazz’<br />
How would you define your music? They are<br />
jazz vocals, with a 40s or 50s influence, and the<br />
nostalgic feel that that has. But it’s definitely not<br />
old-fashioned music, I want to be very clear about<br />
that. We don’t just want to be a copy of anything.<br />
We want to update the sound and make it something<br />
else… it’s definitely modern music.<br />
You’re Dutch, but you sing in English. Is that<br />
hard? When it comes to my music, English is<br />
my first language. In Holland, from the start,<br />
all of the music we hear is English, so it’s pretty<br />
normal. Plus, I’m schooled in jazz singing and<br />
there aren’t many Dutch jazz songs. English is<br />
the language of jazz.<br />
Do you write any of your own songs? Yes, I do.<br />
I’m a co-writer. We’re like a collective. There are<br />
two producers and a Canadian songwriter, who’s<br />
a genius, with a witty story-telling thing going<br />
on. That’s the core of the team. My speciality is<br />
the top lines. Sometimes the idea for a song starts<br />
with me creating the melody, then we’ll create a<br />
lyric on top of that.<br />
Did Amy Winehouse pave the way for your career?<br />
She was one of my biggest inspirations. She<br />
created a place for jazz singers within commercial<br />
music. I mean she played real music, and was a<br />
real singer, and she’s unique because her lyrics are<br />
great. Before her there was no place for jazz singers<br />
in the charts, it was all about singing in little<br />
jazz bars. Also vocally she was an inspiration. But<br />
her music was way more retro than mine. Her<br />
lyrics are very contemporary, but her music was<br />
more old school.<br />
What’s it like singing at a festival, rather than<br />
in a more intimate jazz setting? An intimate<br />
setting – let’s say of 200 people – is scary. It calls<br />
for more intense facial expressions, because the<br />
ones at the front can see every bead of sweat on<br />
your forehead. Outside at a festival it’s important<br />
to grab everyone’s attention. You can do a lot<br />
with lighting and the choices of song – in a less<br />
intimate setting I’d do all the big hits and miss<br />
out the dark ballads. Keep the tempo high.<br />
I hear you want to record the Bond theme…<br />
It is a big ambition of mine. Ever since I started<br />
making this sort of music, with these guys, when<br />
we were discussing what music we should be<br />
doing the word ‘Bond’ got repeated over and over<br />
again – music that’s very atmospheric and filmic.<br />
I think me doing a Bond song would be a match<br />
made in heaven.<br />
Who would you like to see as the next Bond?<br />
[She hasn’t, it turns out, heard of Tom Hiddleston].<br />
Sean Connery isn’t possible, I guess. How<br />
about a Dutch Bond? There’s this guy called<br />
Michiel Huisman, he’s in Game of Thrones. He’d<br />
be great. The campaign starts here… AL<br />
Caro is on the bill (with Grace Jones, Burt Bacharach<br />
and a host of other top names) performing at<br />
Love Supreme, Glynde Place, 1st-3rd July <strong>2016</strong><br />
....75....
DESIGN<br />
......................................<br />
RamJam<br />
Augmenters of reality<br />
I meet Tom Jackson from digital animation<br />
studio RamJam over coffee. My flat white<br />
has arrived with a sign swirled into the<br />
top that Tom refers to as ‘seaside humour’.<br />
Without meaning to sound rude, it’s a neat<br />
coincidence. Tom and colleagues Phil Hart<br />
and Toby Funnell spend much of their<br />
working lives realising the integration of<br />
hidden games and jokes into other media,<br />
just like a digital version of my cuppa.<br />
The project I’ve come to talk about is<br />
RamJam’s design for the Fringe festival<br />
programme. The digitally illustrated cover<br />
featuring a white rabbit, a full English<br />
breakfast and the <strong>Brighton</strong> Eye is based on<br />
the idea of synesthesia. The image is full of<br />
visual puns, but most impressive is the way<br />
the design extends throughout the programme’s<br />
pages, as a series of augmentedreality<br />
experiences.<br />
Augmented reality, Tom tells me, “is about<br />
seeing something in the real world that<br />
isn’t there”. It’s an inspiring device to work<br />
with because it “plays with people’s excitement<br />
and imagination”.<br />
Having downloaded the Fringe 3D app,<br />
I point my iPhone at the ‘see this in 3D’<br />
logo on page 37 and find myself playing<br />
a game of ‘save the kitten’. I’m not sure<br />
whether sending a cat into the stratosphere<br />
attached to a bunch of helium balloons<br />
constitutes a rescue, but it’s certainly<br />
a step up from my previous AR experiences,<br />
which have been underwhelming.<br />
Tom says “it’s got to a point now where<br />
it just works” and like all things in tech,<br />
it’s changing rapidly. The next stage, he<br />
says, you’ll be looking at the logo on your<br />
tumble dryer and it will show you how to<br />
change the parts. “Augmented reality won’t<br />
....76....
DESIGN<br />
......................................<br />
rely on holding a device; you’ll wear it.”<br />
I imagine AR being like a canapé before<br />
the Virtual Reality feast, but Tom tells<br />
me they’re actually “part of each other”.<br />
“When it’s really going to break,” he says,<br />
“is when they’re both fully together.”<br />
Back at the office, Tom lets me have a<br />
go on his virtual reality headset, now<br />
available from about £80. A mobile phone<br />
is slotted into the front and suddenly<br />
I’m inside the Fringe programme cover,<br />
standing on an egg and looking at a large<br />
rabbit. It’s an intense, discombobulating<br />
experience and I share Tom’s enthusiasm<br />
for its potential.<br />
“Microsoft HoloLens shows what’s possible,”<br />
he tells me, “where 3D motioncapture<br />
allows mixed reality so you can<br />
walk around a hologram of yourself… it’s<br />
just bizarre. It’s all going to happen,” says<br />
Tom, “it’ll be just a few years.”<br />
I can see why RamJam were chosen for<br />
the Fringe: their work encapsulates the<br />
playfulness and diversity of the festival.<br />
I can’t help but wonder, however,<br />
whether our embrace of these fictional<br />
digital worlds might in time detract from<br />
enriching real-life experiences like the<br />
Fringe. “I don’t,” says Tom. “Technology<br />
will always influence things but it’s still a<br />
sterile environment. It’s not seeing people<br />
and talking to people. It’s just something<br />
to play with; that’s how I see it… Our<br />
motivation is to have fun.”<br />
Interview by Chloë King<br />
ramjam.co.uk<br />
....77....
圀 愀 渀 琀 琀 漀 倀 氀 愀 礀 㼀<br />
䌀 甀 猀 琀 漀 洀 椀 猀 攀 搀 琀 甀 椀 琀 椀 漀 渀 挀 愀 渀 栀 攀 氀 瀀 礀 漀 甀 猀 漀 氀 瘀 攀<br />
琀 栀 攀 洀 礀 猀 琀 攀 爀 礀 漀 昀 最 爀 攀 愀 琀 最 甀 椀 琀 愀 爀 瀀 氀 愀 礀 椀 渀 最 ⸀<br />
䰀 攀 愀 爀 渀 昀 漀 爀 礀 漀 甀 爀 猀 攀 氀 昀 琀 栀 攀 琀 攀 挀 栀 渀 椀 焀 甀 攀 愀 渀 搀 琀 栀 攀 漀 爀 礀 渀 攀 攀 搀 攀 搀 琀 漀<br />
瀀 氀 愀 礀 眀 栀 愀 琀 攀 瘀 攀 爀 礀 漀 甀 眀 愀 渀 琀 ⸀<br />
䘀 爀 漀 洀 愀 戀 猀 漀 氀 甀 琀 攀 戀 攀 最 椀 渀 渀 攀 爀 猀 琀 漀 最 爀 愀 搀 攀 搀 洀 愀 攀 猀 琀 爀 漀 猀 Ⰰ 昀 爀 漀 洀 㜀 琀 漀<br />
㜀 礀 攀 愀 爀 猀 漀 氀 搀 ⸀<br />
䐀 攀 氀 椀 瘀 攀 爀 攀 搀 戀 礀 愀 昀 爀 椀 攀 渀 搀 氀 礀 Ⰰ 攀 砀 瀀 攀 爀 椀 攀 渀 挀 攀 搀 Ⰰ 焀 甀 愀 氀 椀 昀 椀 攀 搀 Ⰰ<br />
䌀 刀 䈀 愀 渀 搀 䐀 䈀 匀 挀 栀 攀 挀 欀 攀 搀 琀 甀 琀 漀 爀 ⸀<br />
眀 眀 眀 ⸀ 琀 昀 琀 甀 椀 琀 椀 漀 渀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀<br />
琀 栀 攀 漀 䀀 琀 昀 琀 甀 椀 琀 椀 漀 渀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀<br />
㜀 㠀 ㈀ 㠀 㤀 ㈀ 㤀 㐀 ㈀<br />
眀 眀 眀 ⸀ 昀 愀 挀 攀 戀 漀 漀 欀 ⸀ 挀 漀 洀 ⼀ 琀 昀 琀 甀 椀 琀 椀 漀 渀<br />
MELANIE MANCHOT<br />
PEOPLE PLACES<br />
PROPOSITIONS<br />
16 April - 10 July <strong>2016</strong><br />
Free entry<br />
www.townereastbourne.org.uk
ART<br />
....................................<br />
Felicity Hammond<br />
Sculptural photographer<br />
Felicity Hammond<br />
is all smiles when we<br />
meet outside the<br />
newly-acquired<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> University<br />
building on<br />
Edward Street,<br />
opposite the old<br />
Amex Wedding<br />
Cake. “I love this<br />
space,” she says,<br />
pointing out the<br />
interesting use<br />
of pastel yellow and orange inside and out, and<br />
telling me that she’s been upstairs to explore, and<br />
though the downstairs is all flash and smooth<br />
and new and shiny the upper floors still haven’t<br />
been refurbished from their days in use by Amex,<br />
and it’s all old furniture and peeling paint, and it<br />
makes her feel like the place is decaying before<br />
it’s even been completed. Which she loves.<br />
Felicity is wearing paint-spattered cords, a check<br />
shirt and a baseball cap, and has a drill in her<br />
hand. Having arrived earlier the same morning,<br />
she’s busy installing one of the two site-specific<br />
pieces she’s been commissioned to produce<br />
by HOUSE. Felicity is notionally a photographer,<br />
but that allows for a wide brief nowadays,<br />
and what she’s preparing for <strong>May</strong> is more of a<br />
sculpture, with photographic elements. ‘Site<br />
specificity’ (I stumble over the word, she doesn’t)<br />
is extremely important to her work, she tells me:<br />
both her pieces will respond in different ways to<br />
the other site, on Circus Street, and the fact that<br />
there used to be a fruit market there.<br />
These two works, like much of her recent stuff,<br />
have been influenced by architectural ‘renders’:<br />
artists’ impressions of what new developments<br />
will look like, often blown up large on hoardings<br />
in front of the building site in question. “At<br />
Photo by Ellie Rose<br />
first glance,” she<br />
says, “they seem<br />
to be portraying a<br />
perfect world, but<br />
if you look closely<br />
you see that they<br />
are pixelated and<br />
warped and the<br />
perspective is all<br />
wrong… <strong>May</strong>be<br />
this is pointing to<br />
the future of the<br />
city, and the fact<br />
that the buildings they are portraying are not<br />
sustainable. The digital ruins of the render are<br />
pointing to the future ruin of the city.”<br />
“In a way this is an emotional response to my<br />
home territory,” she continues. “Back in time my<br />
father lost his job in a factory due to the rise of<br />
technology making his trade obsolete. I always<br />
associated this with his decline in health.”<br />
I’ve disturbed her from her work of putting<br />
together the installation that’s going into the<br />
Edward Street site, which will be ‘a 3D photo<br />
collage, made of industrial materials… two metres<br />
wide, four metres forty high… an immersive<br />
space like a room made of panels.” The materials<br />
she’s using will reflect the fact the building is still<br />
being refurbished: “I’ll include expanding foam,<br />
and insulation tape within the sculptural work<br />
to point to the fact that the building has worked<br />
hard to maintain its exposed features.”<br />
It’s impossible to envisage exactly what she<br />
means, even though I’m familiar with her previous<br />
work, which makes me all the more intrigued<br />
to see the finished version. She’s all smiles again,<br />
as I take my leave, but there’s a determination in<br />
her eye: she’s got plenty to do.<br />
Alex Leith<br />
House Festival, housefestival.org<br />
....79....
....80....
ART<br />
..........................................<br />
Gary Stranger<br />
Typograffiti artist<br />
Were you into graffiti first or typography first?<br />
I became interested in graffiti first; at age 15 it was<br />
pretty much all I cared about. My appreciation for<br />
typography has been growing since my college days<br />
when I studied graphics. I think an understanding,<br />
if not an appreciation of typography is useful if you<br />
intend to paint graffiti that looks any good.<br />
Why did you choose the name ‘Gary’? Choosing<br />
a name in graffiti is more important than you might<br />
think. You need a name that stands out, grabs attention<br />
and sticks in the mind of fellow writers and the<br />
public. An awful lot of people write graffiti for years<br />
and are never really noticed, partly because the<br />
handle they chose is forgettable. I have had dozens<br />
of aliases over the years, too many to list. Choosing<br />
a real name initially was just a way to get noticed.<br />
That, and I’m a Gary Numan fan.<br />
How has your style changed over those years?<br />
Over the years my painting has become much more<br />
type-based and I’ve drifted away from painting anything<br />
that looks too much like traditional graffiti.<br />
I’m finding I’m only really satisfied with letters that<br />
look like letters. As a graffiti writer, if you intend to<br />
communicate with the public as well as other writers<br />
then making legible letters is one way of doing<br />
that. A lot of writers, however, have no intention of<br />
communicating with the public.<br />
If you’re creating prints, do you work digitally<br />
or still by hand? I’ll have an original hand-painted<br />
version and produce the screen prints from that.<br />
Sometimes I’ll need to rework or tweak things digitally,<br />
but there is always a hand-painted element. I<br />
don’t separate the different elements of what I do;<br />
painting large walls in spray paint, print-making<br />
or brush-work painting, they are all just a medium.<br />
I enjoy painting in the studio just as well as I do<br />
painting walls. That said, there’s huge satisfaction<br />
from completing a large wall piece.<br />
What’s your favourite era in typography? It’s<br />
very hard to commit to a favourite era, but the<br />
early-to mid-twentieth century saw the creation<br />
of some iconic fonts, the Johnston font being an<br />
obvious and topical example with the centenary this<br />
year. The neo-grotesque aesthetic is what I’m a fan<br />
of, I suppose. I’m not as knowledgeable as I perhaps<br />
should be when it comes to type design, I just know<br />
what I like.<br />
Despite your artwork becoming so well-known,<br />
you’ve stayed reasonably well out of the public<br />
eye. Painting graffiti is all about shouting ‘notice<br />
me!’, which is something that in my everyday life<br />
I’m keen to avoid. I find accepting and dealing<br />
with attention is much easier if it’s via an alter-ego.<br />
Rebecca Cunningham<br />
See Gary’s work round Ditchling in the Village of Type<br />
festival till 30th <strong>May</strong>. ditchlingmuseumartcraft.org.uk<br />
....81....
Sculpture Exhibition <strong>2016</strong><br />
1 <strong>May</strong> - 30 September<br />
Kindly sponsored by<br />
Beautiful art, affordable prices<br />
Borde Hill’s 17th annual Sculpture Exhibition<br />
transforms the garden into an outdoor gallery<br />
with figurative & abstract works in bronze, resin,<br />
stone, metalwork, stained glass and ceramics.<br />
www.bordehill.co.uk T: 01444 450326<br />
Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 1XP<br />
Blackcap – by featured artist Carlina Oliver<br />
A friendly<br />
welcome awaits<br />
you at the<br />
Chalk Gallery<br />
Chalk Gallery<br />
4 North Street<br />
Lewes, BN7 2PA<br />
t: 01273 474477<br />
w: chalkgallerylewes.co.uk
ART<br />
.............................................<br />
Dreamliner Arts Club<br />
Camper Van Gogh<br />
Who says you need to have a house to have an<br />
Open House? A young group of artists called the<br />
Dreamliner Arts Club are transforming this 1980s<br />
Talbot Dreamliner Vogue into a multi-functional<br />
art gallery on wheels. Cameron Lee, the owner of<br />
the van, says “I always thought I’d love to have a<br />
van, like a really cool VW or something, but this is<br />
what I got.”<br />
At under 150 square feet, it might be the snuggest<br />
of the houses on the central trail, but the<br />
group have big plans for this small space: “There<br />
are going to be ten of us exhibiting; sculptors,<br />
ceramicists, weavers, illustrators, print makers, film<br />
makers... everything you can think of really.”<br />
To accommodate this array of art works, the<br />
Dreamliner will be divided into three main areas.<br />
The back of the van, which houses the kitchen<br />
and en suite, will be curtained off and will become<br />
the ‘observatory’, displaying a fish tank filled with<br />
glowing, neon pieces and some illuminated resin<br />
jellies. The main living area will be transformed<br />
into a gallery space where their prints and illustrated<br />
pieces will be exhibited. During my visit – two<br />
weeks before the Artists’ Open Houses kick-off<br />
– three of the group are painstakingly scrubbing<br />
and scraping clean some wooden boards which<br />
will become the gallery walls, covering up the van’s<br />
melamine units and retro upholstery. The driver<br />
and passenger seats will be curtained off, creating<br />
the third zone: a two-person cinema where the<br />
work of the film makers will be screened.<br />
It’s an impressive endeavour; even once the construction<br />
is complete the group will have to face<br />
the near impossible task of parking a 20-foot-long<br />
vehicle in central <strong>Brighton</strong> on a weekend, five<br />
weekends in a row. And this might be your only<br />
chance to see it. During the next year the artists<br />
will be off travelling around the world, but unfortunately<br />
it seems like the Dreamliner is just too big<br />
and heavy to come along for the ride. Cameron<br />
says, “I’d love to do more exhibitions in it, but<br />
then what sort of event really calls for a gallery in a<br />
van?” Rebecca Cunningham<br />
The Dreamliner will be parked near 92 Buckingham<br />
Road. Weekends between Sat 30th April and 29th<br />
<strong>May</strong>. aoh.org.uk. Instagram: dreamliner.arts.club<br />
....83....
FASHION<br />
....................................<br />
2MNYSBLNGS<br />
Fashion City Africans<br />
“We first started our blog to document our<br />
style; we have since evolved and branched out<br />
into fashion philanthropy.” Velma Rossa is one<br />
half of the brother-sister duo 2MnySblngs [two<br />
many siblings], whose Tumblr site showcases the<br />
diversity, not only in fashion, but in architecture,<br />
art and culture, of their home town, Nairobi. The<br />
pair have styled four outfits for display at <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Museums’ Fashion Cities Africa exhibition.<br />
Co-curator Helen Mears says “There’s been a<br />
surge of interest in contemporary African art and<br />
design in Europe and the US in recent years, but<br />
this is the first major UK exhibition dedicated to<br />
contemporary African fashion. We want to reveal<br />
the diversity that exists across the continent, and<br />
show that wax print is only part of the story.”<br />
Velma says that African fashion is experiencing<br />
“a sort of re-emergence or rebirth” in the global<br />
fashion scene. “People are now interested in what<br />
the continent has to offer; its energy, culture, food<br />
and people all contribute.”<br />
She and her brother Papa “like to shop anywhere<br />
we can get good deals – flea markets like Toi and<br />
Gikomba market are ideal.” These flea markets<br />
have been a source of controversy in Kenya for<br />
some years. The ‘mitumba’ – second-hand clothing<br />
imported from Europe and the US – offers<br />
many people on lower incomes the opportunity to<br />
buy decent quality clothing at a reasonable price,<br />
as well as a chance for style seekers to pick-up<br />
something unique. But others have blamed it for<br />
the decline in the local textile industries, because<br />
local manufacturers struggle to compete on price.<br />
The East African Community has made plans to<br />
phase in a ban on mitumba over the next three<br />
years in a bid to boost local textile manufacturing.<br />
2ManySiblings have embraced mitumba as a part<br />
Photo by Sarah Waiswa<br />
of their style, mixing up second-hand items with<br />
pieces by their favourite Kenyan designers: “We’ve<br />
just discovered Ami Doshi Shah for quirky eclectic<br />
adornment and impeccable jewellery, and underground<br />
designer Hephziba - she works miracles<br />
with organza.” This is where the aforementioned<br />
‘fashion philanthropy’ comes in. As well as showing<br />
their own fashion ideas to their online followers<br />
and offering styling tips, they hold themed<br />
Thrift Socials, creating a platform for hand-picked<br />
local designers and dealers to sell, and a space for<br />
like-minded creatives to get together.<br />
That sounds like the kind of event you’d expect to<br />
find in <strong>Brighton</strong>, doesn’t it? The good news is that<br />
the siblings will be putting on a one-off <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
special at the museum on Thursday 16th. They<br />
will also be in conversation with journalist and<br />
author Hannah Azieb Pool on Saturday 18th. RC<br />
Thurs 16th, 7-10pm, £10/8. Sat 18th, 11.30am-<br />
12.30pm, £8/6. 2manysiblings.tumblr.com /<br />
brightonmuseums.org.uk<br />
....85....
Summer <strong>2016</strong><br />
festival round-up<br />
Love Supreme 2015<br />
If there are two things that turn festivals into a<br />
bummer, it’s the rain, and the long journey back.<br />
We’re not able to promise you a barbecue summer<br />
in <strong>2016</strong>, but we can offer you a wide range of festival<br />
choice within an hour’s drive from here, whether<br />
you’re looking for old cars or wild electronica.<br />
<strong>May</strong>, of course, is all about culture, and this edition<br />
of <strong>Viva</strong> is full of the sort of stuff you can expect to<br />
see at the <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival, <strong>Brighton</strong> Fringe,<br />
HOUSE, Artists’ Open Houses, The Great<br />
Escape and the Charleston Literary Festival. But<br />
the end of the month has become the kick-off for<br />
the tent-wellies-and-live-music season, with the<br />
family-friendly Elderflower Fields festival, which<br />
enjoys its fifth edition (and its third at Pippingford<br />
Park, in the Ashdown Forest) from <strong>May</strong> 27th-30th.<br />
There are loads of activities for both kids and adults<br />
with music from the London Afrobeat Collective,<br />
the Resonators and many more.<br />
Next up, in a rather different vein, is the Floral<br />
Vintage Fair, at Knepp Castle in West Grinstead,<br />
on June 4th and 5th. Billed as ‘an eclectic, quirky,<br />
foodie, arty, plantaholics’ wildlife event with a vintage<br />
twist!’ it’s open from 10.30am to 5pm.<br />
It’s fair to say that the Wildlife Festival (June 10th<br />
and 11th, <strong>Brighton</strong> City Airport) is aimed at a<br />
younger audience. Hosted by DJ teams Disclosure<br />
and Rudimental, it boasts an eclectic plethora of<br />
DJ acts from Ice Cube to Annie Mac, all aiming<br />
to knock your flip-flops off. If you’re looking for<br />
more oral than aural gratification, the Hastings<br />
Midsummer Fish Festival, June 26th and 27th,<br />
could be your thing. In the Stade open space, where<br />
fishermen used to dry their nets, all the fish on<br />
sale (fresh and cooked) will be seasonal, and locally<br />
caught by the fleet operating from the beach just<br />
yards away.<br />
Love Supreme Jazz Festival, meanwhile (July 1st-<br />
3rd), is starting to feel like something of a veteran:<br />
this is the fourth year the organisers have brought<br />
jazz and soul to Glynde Place. In the past we’ve<br />
seen the likes of Brian Ferry, Chaka Khan and Van<br />
Morrison headlining; this time it’s the turn of Grace<br />
Jones and Burt Bacharach. Believe us, if last year is<br />
anything to go by, it’ll be fabulous.<br />
Eridge Park, near Royal Tunbridge Wells (August<br />
5th-7th), is the setting for the second edition of<br />
Forgotten Fields, which will feature the likes of<br />
Suede, Dizzee Rascal and, for lovers of old-style<br />
rapping, The Sugarhill Gang. Much nearer home<br />
(so near there’s no camping) is the Together the<br />
People festival at Preston Park on Sept 3rd and<br />
4th. Acts are yet to be confirmed: last year’s line-up<br />
included Super Furry Animals and Billy Bragg.<br />
Finally Boundary <strong>Brighton</strong> makes its debut at<br />
Stanmer Park, (September 17th). Again, acts are<br />
tbc, but we’re promised a mix of dub, techno, drum<br />
‘n’ bass, jazz, bashment, house and break, with four<br />
stages, two of them run by <strong>Brighton</strong> clubs Concorde<br />
2 and Patterns. Sounds like a scorcher.<br />
....87....
THE WAY WE WORK<br />
This month, Adam Bronkhorst faced his fear of heights as he clambered,<br />
camera-in-trembling-hand, to the top of <strong>Brighton</strong> Dome and beyond, capturing<br />
five different venues’ stage crews at work. Anything for a good photo...<br />
We asked each of them: what’s been your best - or worst - stage moment to date?<br />
adambronkhorst.com | 07879 401 333<br />
Setch, Deputy Technical Manager at Theatre Royal <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
“Years ago I accidentally turned a revolving part of a set too early, causing extensive<br />
damage to scenery, props and stage furniture. Suffice to say, I’ve never done it since.”
THE WAY WE WORK<br />
Beth O’Leary, Senior Technician at <strong>Brighton</strong> Dome<br />
“I was once naked in a bath on stage for a university production...<br />
but mostly I prefer to stay behind the scenes.”
THE WAY WE WORK<br />
Matt Jones, Senior Technician at The Old Market<br />
“During a show someone forgot to hand the leading lady her prop gun. When it came to the<br />
moment where she had to kill the bad guy she kicked him in the shins and exclaimed ‘now<br />
you will die from the poisoned dagger hidden in my shoe!’”
Dog Day Care<br />
Dog Hotel<br />
Hydrotherapy<br />
Training<br />
Grooming<br />
T. 01273 463 223<br />
www.houseofhugo.com
THE WAY WE WORK<br />
Nina Sarfas, Theatre Assistant at the Marlborough Theatre<br />
“Watching a DJ I had booked be escorted out of the venue for drunk and disorderly behaviour...<br />
definitely the most embarrassing moment of my career so far. I guess you live and learn.”
IMAGINATION<br />
It’s what sets us apart from the<br />
merely good.<br />
It’s what makes the ultimate<br />
difference to a construction project.<br />
It’s what turns a great job into an<br />
excellent one.<br />
It’s what our clients expect.<br />
It’s what we deliver.<br />
If you have a building requiring<br />
renovation, restoration or<br />
reinvigoration, and you want the<br />
end result to look stunning -<br />
call Nutshell on 01903 217900<br />
info@nutshellconstruction.com<br />
www.nutshellconstruction.com
THE WAY WE WORK<br />
Lex Hollingworth, Production Manager at Komedia<br />
“It actually happened backstage; a member of our staff brought a performer a banoffee pie for<br />
the interval, and left it on a chair in the dressing room. The performer came back and sat down<br />
directly on their pudding. They still had the second half of the show to perform.”
SATURDAY 25 JUNE<br />
from 11am - 8PM<br />
&<br />
sunday 26 JUNE<br />
from 11aM - 5PM<br />
STADE OPEN SPACE, OLD TOWN, HASTINGS<br />
FREE EVENT<br />
Kick off your summer with tasty fish, food and drink!<br />
The whole family can enjoy the treats on offer with non-stop<br />
live music from the best local talent, demonstrations<br />
by chefs and fishermen and craft activities.<br />
www.hastingsfestivals.com<br />
Except<br />
assist
Food & Drink directory<br />
ADVERTORIAL<br />
Black Radish<br />
If you’re looking for<br />
something a ‘little bit<br />
different’ and have<br />
a passion for quality<br />
food, visit Black Radish.<br />
Organic fruit and<br />
vegetables, handmade ice cream, fresh bakery<br />
bread, it’s an artisan ‘food boutique’ with a<br />
small but creative café serving dishes with an<br />
emphasis on flavour. If you love food, you’ll<br />
love Black Radish.<br />
149 Portland Road, 01273 723392, blackradish-organic.com<br />
MAW<br />
MAW Pop Up restaurant<br />
is open Thursday, Friday<br />
& Saturday nights serving<br />
an eight-to-ten course<br />
tasting menu by chef Mark<br />
Wadsworth, in the heart of<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Lanes.<br />
£40 per person and BYO.<br />
Bookings through tabl.com<br />
Also open as a café during<br />
the day, closed Mondays.<br />
14 <strong>Brighton</strong> Square, BN1 1HD, maw-restaurant.co.uk<br />
Edendum<br />
Edendum is a slice of Italy<br />
transported to <strong>Brighton</strong>, with authentic flavours,<br />
fragrances and freshly-cooked recipes that will<br />
give you a chance to discover some less known<br />
Italian dishes, a selection of Italian wines and<br />
artisan beers and a range of traditional products.<br />
A part of our menu will change according to the<br />
time of year, so that seasonal ingredients are always<br />
included in our recipes. The new summer<br />
menu will be available from mid-<strong>May</strong>!<br />
Italian & genuine: better eat better.<br />
69 East Street, <strong>Brighton</strong>, 01273 733800, edendum.co.uk<br />
Terre à Terre<br />
‘Big and Bravas, Brekkie in<br />
a Bun, Sweet and Savoury,<br />
Run Rarebit Run, Arepas,<br />
Patatas a Scrunch and a Munch, Grapple our<br />
Granola it’s time for Brunch!’<br />
Terre à Terre is now open for ‘BrunchyLunchy’<br />
daily from 10am–1pm, where diners can pick<br />
from a selection of hearty brunch dishes from<br />
‘Brunchy Rosti’ to ‘Big Muffin Butty Buns’ or<br />
enjoy tea or coffee with a sweet side like Pastel<br />
de Nata. Dishes start at £6.<br />
71 East Street, <strong>Brighton</strong>, 01273 729051, terreaterre.co.uk<br />
Market<br />
Situated in the heart<br />
of Brunswick village,<br />
Market, now open nearly<br />
six months, serves modern tapas, innovative<br />
small plates (great for sharing), freshly landed<br />
fish and a great choice of steaks and burgers. At<br />
weekends you can also pop in for brunch and/or<br />
Sunday lunch. Sit at the kitchen bar overlooking<br />
the chefs, take a table or book their fabulous<br />
private dining room and be cooked for by your<br />
own private chef! Open all day every day.<br />
42 Western Rd, Hove, 01273 823707, market-restaurantbar.co.uk<br />
The Better Half<br />
The Better Half pub has<br />
put the heart and soul back<br />
into one of the oldest public<br />
houses in the city, just off<br />
Hove seafront. There’s a<br />
superb wine and spirits list and some great ales<br />
and ciders on offer, as well as a hearty and wholesome<br />
menu to enjoy, making the best of local<br />
ingredients. The Better Half is relaxed, friendly<br />
and easy-going, making all feel welcome and<br />
comfortable when you visit.<br />
1 Hove Place, Hove, 01273 737869, thebetterhalfpub.co.uk
FOOD REVIEW<br />
...........................................<br />
Lord Nelson<br />
Fish soup on Trafalgar Street<br />
As I put my fork<br />
towards a mussel<br />
that I spot in the<br />
abundant fish stew<br />
that sits before me<br />
I think: “Bloody<br />
hell, I’m in the<br />
Lord Nelson.” I’ve<br />
chosen the fish stew<br />
over the vegetable<br />
jambayala or the<br />
pan-fried gnocchi with wild mushrooms and<br />
blue cheese because it includes rouille, that<br />
difficult-to-perfect sauce made from egg yolk,<br />
garlic, saffron and red pepper.<br />
I have eaten in the Nelson before. I must have<br />
tucked away a bag or two of pork scratchings<br />
during post-match post mortems, supping ale<br />
with Albion or Rooks fans on an early Saturday<br />
evening. I once went to a 50th there, and there<br />
were some rather nice sandwiches. But fish stew<br />
with rouille? Pan-fried gnocchi? The place has<br />
had quite a makeover.<br />
What happened was this. Harveys, who’ve<br />
owned the pub since 1980, bought out the two<br />
adjacent shops immediately down the road and<br />
converted them into a couple of ship-themed<br />
restaurant rooms. The place already had three<br />
different bar areas, so they’ve managed to keep<br />
the pub as a pub – just as well as it was a great<br />
boozer, well loved by CAMRA-types – and add a<br />
decent-sized ship-themed eatery on the side, too.<br />
It’s Maundy Thursday, the city’s winding down<br />
for Easter, and the place is packed.<br />
We get a seat by the big window – the best in<br />
the house, we’re lucky a couple are leaving as we<br />
arrive – and mull over old times, sipping Moretti<br />
as we wait for the food.<br />
I’m with my oldest<br />
friend, which means<br />
we’ve got 46 years of<br />
acquaintance to chew<br />
over. He reminds me<br />
of a time he hitchhiked<br />
from Zurich, where<br />
he lived, to Bologna,<br />
where I lived, getting a<br />
lift over the Alps on the<br />
back of a motorbike. We realise nothing like that<br />
will ever happen to us again.<br />
The food arrives, and neither of us are disappointed.<br />
I try a couple of his gnocchi - a bit<br />
chewy for my taste - but don’t let him anywhere<br />
near my fish, which seems less shareable, somehow.<br />
It’s tasty soup, especially when I’ve added<br />
a dose of salt, with squid, prawns, mussels, cod,<br />
spinach and potatoes swimming in a pinkish<br />
sauce. The rouille adds an umami dimension.<br />
The Nelson is two weeks into its new incarnation,<br />
and the waitressing is more enthusiastic<br />
than skilful – I’ll never forget the face of the<br />
hipster who watches in dismay as his Harveys<br />
hop and ale sausage and spring onion mash is<br />
dropped onto the floor before it gets to him.<br />
No matter – after a delicious lemon and ginger<br />
tart (served with a beautifully chopped strawberry)<br />
and a filter coffee, I’m asked by the card<br />
machine if I want to add a gratuity and the two<br />
girls serving have been so sweet and the food<br />
so good I push it over the 10% mark, turning<br />
£47 into £52. More than I’ve ever spent in the<br />
Nelson before, but hey.<br />
Alex Leith<br />
36 Trafalgar Street, 01273 695872<br />
....99....
FOOD<br />
...........................................<br />
Edible updates<br />
Foodies for thought<br />
The month starts in the best possible way for<br />
food lovers in <strong>Brighton</strong> – the Foodies Festival<br />
kicks its countrywide tour off, as ever, on Hove<br />
Lawns between April 30th and <strong>May</strong> 2nd. There<br />
are celebrity chefs galore – including MasterChef’s<br />
Ping Coombes and Tony Rodd – as<br />
well as stalls offering concoctions from round the<br />
world, booze tents of all sorts and, of course, the<br />
famous Chilli-Eating Challenge.<br />
We’re delighted to welcome the latest branch<br />
of Mexican street food purveyors Wahaca in<br />
the space Strada used to trade, on North Street.<br />
Wahaca was started by 2005 MasterChef winner<br />
Thomasina Miers, whose mission is to sell genuine,<br />
seasonal Mexican street food to Brits who’ve<br />
been brought up on greasy tortillas.<br />
Sampling a good pop-up before it becomes a<br />
fully-fledged restaurant is the culinary equivalent<br />
of watching a band before they became big,<br />
which is why we urge you to try out Maw (on<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Square every weekend throughout <strong>May</strong>,<br />
see tabl.com) to sample chef Mark Wadsworth’s<br />
(formerly of Ginger Man) amazing tasting menu.<br />
Look out too for imaginative themed nights<br />
(which started with a 30s Berlin event in April)<br />
from the Secret Door Supper Club, and, in June,<br />
the Polygon Pop-up in Seven Dials.<br />
And finally, another chain that’s done well in<br />
London and sees <strong>Brighton</strong> as the logical first<br />
step in a colonisation process. Baker & Spice specialise<br />
in artisan bread and home-madey cakes,<br />
and set up in up-market destinations. So it’s<br />
Selfridges, Maida Vale, Chelsea, Belgravia and,<br />
um, East Street. Plus ca change.<br />
you order<br />
online and<br />
Sussex we deliver<br />
farm to your door<br />
sourced:<br />
Veg & fruit<br />
Meat & charcuterie<br />
Milk, cheese & yoghurt<br />
Juices & cordials<br />
Raw honey<br />
Oils & vinegar<br />
Sussex beer & wine<br />
Locally packed small batch spices<br />
See detailS on our webSite:<br />
www.finandfarm.co.uk
FOOD REVIEW<br />
...........................................<br />
Dog Haus<br />
Happy days at Patterns<br />
“The last time I was here, it was The Escape,” I<br />
say to Pauline, as we approach Patterns, on Marine<br />
Parade. It’s 6pm, we’re going on to a show,<br />
and we’ve come for one of their ‘Dog Haus’ hot<br />
dogs, and a beer. “I remember it as Ted Potters<br />
Jazz Bar,” she lies. She doesn’t go back that far.<br />
The upstairs bit has changed some: at this time<br />
of day it looks like an adult youth club, with a<br />
table-tennis table centre stage, above which,<br />
attached to the ceiling, there’s a strange circular<br />
mirror, like an inverted wok. We are invited to<br />
play musical bingo. We decline.<br />
Pauline goes for a ‘Hand of Dog’ (a veggie<br />
option, oddly, with tofu, metsovone cheese and<br />
chimichurri, £6). I go for the classic ‘Happy<br />
Days’ (‘a pork frank stacked with caramelised<br />
and crispy onions, classic ketchup and Frenchies<br />
Mustard, pictured, £5). Because it’s Happy Hour,<br />
we get a free portion of chips with our frothy<br />
pints of Estrella.<br />
Whilst we’re waiting we have a go on the<br />
PhotoBot machine we’re sitting next to. The<br />
subsequent fifteen minutes (constituting giggling<br />
at the photos and videos and gorging on our<br />
dogs) count among the most entertaining I’ve<br />
spent this year, though a word of warning: don’t,<br />
whatever you do, try to eat one of these numbers<br />
on anything approaching a first date. The combination<br />
of pork and mustard and gherkin and<br />
ketchup and bread and beer and salty chip is a<br />
taste sensation, but it doesn’t half leave you with<br />
a messy face. Eating a Happy Days and looking<br />
smooth? Even the Fonz would struggle. AL<br />
A new dining experience for<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> and Hove<br />
Fancy an East End Knees Up or being<br />
transported to 1920s Berlin?<br />
Join us this summer<br />
facebook.com/SecretDoorSupperClubs<br />
twitter.com/SecretDoorSC
for the very best in European engineered e-bikes<br />
urban.ebikes<br />
electric bike sales & hire<br />
Hove Manor Parade, Hove St. Hove<br />
01273 206091 / urbanebikes.com<br />
18-04-16 <strong>Viva</strong> Mag 66mm x 94mm .qxp_66mm x 94mm 18/04/20<br />
More E-power to<br />
your pocket.<br />
FREE!<br />
accessory bundle<br />
worth<br />
£36.50 *<br />
䘀 甀 氀 氀 礀 爀 攀 最 椀 猀 琀 攀 爀 攀 搀 䌀 漀 洀 瀀 氀 攀 洀 攀 渀 琀 愀 爀 礀 吀 栀 攀 爀 愀 瀀 椀 猀 琀 猀 甀 猀 椀 渀 最<br />
瘀 愀 氀 椀 搀 愀 琀 攀 搀 琀 攀 挀 栀 渀 椀 焀 甀 攀 猀 昀 漀 爀 㨀 猀 琀 爀 攀 猀 猀 Ⰰ 愀 渀 砀 椀 攀 琀 礀 Ⰰ 瀀 栀 漀 戀 椀 愀 猀 Ⰰ 椀 渀 猀 漀 洀 渀 椀 愀 Ⰰ<br />
眀 攀 椀 最 栀 琀 氀 漀 猀 猀 愀 渀 搀 愀 眀 栀 漀 氀 攀 爀 愀 渀 最 攀 漀 昀 氀 椀 昀 攀 挀 栀 愀 氀 氀 攀 渀 最 攀 猀 ⸀<br />
刀 攀 最 甀 氀 愀 爀 最 爀 漀 甀 瀀 眀 漀 爀 欀 猀 栀 漀 瀀 猀 愀 氀 猀 漀 愀 瘀 愀 椀 氀 愀 戀 氀 攀 ⸀<br />
䘀 刀 䔀 䔀 䤀 一 䤀 吀 䤀 䄀 䰀 䔀 堀 倀 䰀 伀 刀 䄀 吀 伀 刀 夀 匀 䔀 匀 匀 䤀 伀 一 伀 䘀 䘀 䔀 刀 䔀 䐀<br />
䘀 漀 爀 洀 漀 爀 攀 椀 渀 昀 漀 爀 洀 愀 琀 椀 漀 渀 漀 爀 琀 漀 洀 愀 欀 攀 愀 渀 愀 瀀 瀀 漀 椀 渀 琀 洀 攀 渀 琀<br />
挀 愀 氀 氀 㜀 㤀 㠀 㠀 アパート アパートアパート 㜀 漀 爀 瘀 椀 猀 椀 琀 眀 眀 眀 ⸀ 猀 愀 渀 愀 眀 攀 氀 氀 戀 攀 椀 渀 最 ⸀ 挀 漀 洀<br />
Flatten hills and stretch horizons,<br />
discover your e-bike today.<br />
As battery and motor technology improves,<br />
electric bikes prices are coming down and the<br />
move is being led by us, the UK’s number one<br />
online e-bike specialists. We are a ground<br />
breaking company committed to bringing<br />
you the greatest value and the biggest range.<br />
We want e-biking to be the most fun and<br />
affordable form of powered transport in the UK.<br />
www.e-bikesdirect.co.uk<br />
Tel: 01580830959<br />
Unit 6. Midicy Oast. Bodiam Business Park.<br />
Bodiam. E. Sussex TN32 5UP.<br />
E-asily the biggest UK super store<br />
offering E-bikes at the lowest prices<br />
E-asily the most comprehensive range.<br />
E-asily delivered and pre-assembled.<br />
E-asily the best finance.<br />
E-asily arranged demos available.<br />
*On all bike purchases. Offer ends June 1st <strong>2016</strong>. Terms and conditions apply. Please Quote: VIVBO16
WE TRY...<br />
...........................................<br />
Unicycling<br />
Wheely wobbly<br />
To get in the mood for festival season, I’m trading<br />
two wheels for one and learning to unicycle.<br />
There aren’t as many unicycling schools in<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> as I’d imagined, so I call Oddballs on<br />
Kensington Gardens – the place to go for unconventional<br />
modes of transport – to ask for advice.<br />
Zak, their resident unicycling pro, says, “Just come<br />
down to the shop, I’ll teach you.” I’m reassured by<br />
his claim to have taught a 64-year-old to unicycle<br />
in just two hours. How hard could it be?<br />
“First I’m going to show you what you shouldn’t<br />
do” says Zak, bringing out his own unicycle which<br />
I’m going to be learning on. Standing with the<br />
unicycle upright in front of him, the pedals jutting<br />
out at diagonals, he explains that usually people<br />
naturally want to step onto the front pedal. But if<br />
you do that, the unicycle rolls forward and away<br />
from you. It’s also tempting when stepping up onto<br />
the pedal, to take a bit of a jump onto it, but this<br />
will send you flying over the top. He demonstrates<br />
all of this while rolling effortlessly around the<br />
shop, never actually falling off the unicycle.<br />
Here’s what you should do: stand the unicycle up<br />
straight, with the back of the saddle just touching<br />
you. Line the pedals up so that the pedal you<br />
naturally want to step onto first is angled straight<br />
downwards, parallel to the seat post. Standing still,<br />
you have to roll the unicycle forward enough that<br />
you can slide the saddle underneath you. Then the<br />
tricky bit, you step onto the pedal, slowly, so that<br />
the unicycle rolls backward and lifts you up.<br />
It doesn’t look nearly as cool when I try it, clinging<br />
onto the shop’s wall of skateboards for balance. It<br />
takes a few goes for me to actually get up onto the<br />
seat, and once I’m there I’m reluctant to let go.<br />
But with a bit of encouragement, I manage to turn<br />
away from the wall to face the other side of the<br />
shop, take a deep breath, and…<br />
Fall. Flat on my face. This isn’t a success story<br />
– I spend much of the next hour falling down.<br />
But when I finally manage two complete pedals<br />
before toppling over, it all seems worthwhile. You<br />
need perseverance, Zak says, but if you spend five<br />
minutes a day practising, it’ll get much easier. So<br />
that’s my goal: five minutes on each of the 21 days<br />
remaining before the Fringe launches. Keep an eye<br />
out for a wobbling one-wheeler coming to a stage<br />
near you this month: that’ll be me.<br />
Rebecca Cunningham<br />
24 Kensington Gardens, oddballs.co.uk<br />
....103....
䈀 䔀 䄀 唀 吀 䤀 䘀 唀 䰀<br />
䠀 䄀 刀 䐀 圀 伀 伀 䐀 䘀 䰀 伀 伀 刀 匀<br />
氀 漀 挀 愀 氀 漀 愀 欀 ∠ 挀 漀 渀 琀 攀 洀 瀀 漀 爀 愀 爀 礀 漀 爀 琀 爀 愀 搀 椀 琀 椀 漀 渀 愀 氀<br />
挀 栀 漀 椀 挀 攀 漀 昀 ǻ 渀 椀 猀 栀 攀 猀 ∠ 挀 甀 猀 琀 漀 洀 挀 漀 氀 漀 甀 爀 猀 愀 渀 搀<br />
戀 漀 爀 搀 攀 爀 猀 ∠ 搀 漀 洀 攀 猀 琀 椀 挀 愀 渀 搀 挀 漀 洀 洀 攀 爀 挀 椀 愀 氀<br />
˻ 漀 漀 爀 爀 攀 瀀 愀 椀 爀 猀 ∠ 猀 漀 甀 渀 搀 ⴀ 瀀 爀 漀 漀 ǻ 渀 最 猀 攀 爀 瘀 椀 挀 攀<br />
攀 砀 瀀 攀 爀 琀 氀 礀 ǻ 琀 琀 攀 搀<br />
䜀 攀 渀 攀 爀 愀 氀 焀 甀 漀 琀 攀 漀 瘀 攀 爀 琀 栀 攀 瀀 栀 漀 渀 攀 漀 爀<br />
漀 渀 氀 椀 渀 攀 攀 猀 琀 椀 洀 愀 琀 攀<br />
匀 琀 愀 爀 琀 氀 攀 搀 䔀 氀 欀 䌀 愀 爀 瀀 攀 渀 琀 爀 礀<br />
㈀ 㜀 アパート ㈀ 㘀 ㈀ 㤀 㤀<br />
㜀 㜀 㐀 㜀 㤀 㘀 㜀<br />
猀 琀 愀 爀 琀 氀 攀 搀 攀 氀 欀 䀀 礀 愀 栀 漀 漀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀<br />
圀 攀 愀 爀 攀 瀀 氀 攀 愀 猀 攀 搀 琀 漀 愀 渀 渀 漀 甀 渀 挀 攀 琀 栀 愀 琀 倀 愀 爀 欀 攀 爀 䈀 愀 琀 栀 爀 漀 漀 洀 猀 ☀ 䬀 椀 琀 挀 栀 攀 渀 猀 愀 爀 攀<br />
昀 椀 渀 愀 氀 椀 猀 琀 猀 椀 渀 琀 栀 攀 䬀 椀 琀 挀 栀 攀 渀 䐀 攀 猀 椀 最 渀 攀 爀 伀 昀 吀 栀 攀 夀 攀 愀 爀 䄀 眀 愀 爀 搀 猀 ⸀ 吀 栀 椀 猀 瀀 爀 攀 猀 琀 椀 最 椀 漀 甀 猀<br />
瀀 爀 椀 稀 攀 爀 攀 昀 氀 攀 挀 琀 猀 琀 栀 攀 漀 甀 琀 猀 琀 愀 渀 搀 椀 渀 最 眀 漀 爀 欀 倀 愀 爀 欀 攀 爀 ᤠ 猀 栀 愀 瘀 攀 愀 挀 栀 椀 攀 瘀 攀 搀 猀 椀 渀 挀 攀<br />
漀 瀀 攀 渀 椀 渀 最 漀 甀 爀 匀 攀 瘀 攀 渀 䐀 椀 愀 氀 猀 猀 栀 漀 眀 爀 漀 漀 洀 樀 甀 猀 琀 琀 眀 漀 礀 攀 愀 爀 猀 愀 最 漀 ⸀<br />
圀 栀 礀 渀 漀 琀 倀 漀 瀀 椀 渀 愀 渀 搀 猀 攀 攀 琀 栀 攀 搀 攀 猀 椀 最 渀 椀 洀 瀀 愀 挀 琀 眀 攀<br />
挀 愀 渀 愀 挀 栀 椀 攀 瘀 攀 眀 椀 琀 栀 椀 渀 礀 漀 甀 爀 戀 甀 搀 最 攀 琀 㼀<br />
㘀 㐀 ⴀ 㜀 䐀 夀 䬀 䔀 刀 伀 䄀 䐀 Ⰰ 䈀 刀 䤀 䜀 䠀 吀 伀 一 䈀 一 アパート 䨀 䐀<br />
吀 䔀 䰀 ⸀ ㈀ 㜀 アパート 㠀 㜀 㔀 㠀 㜀 ⼀ ㈀ 㜀 アパート アパート㈀ 㤀 㠀 ㈀ 㤀<br />
䤀 一 䘀 伀 䀀 倀 䄀 刀 䬀 䔀 刀 䈀 䄀 吀 䠀 刀 伀 伀 䴀 匀 ⸀ 䌀 伀 ⸀ 唀 䬀<br />
圀 圀 圀 ⸀ 倀 䄀 刀 䬀 䔀 刀 䈀 䄀 吀 䠀 刀 伀 伀 䴀 匀 ⸀ 䌀 伀 ⸀ 唀 䬀
BRICKS AND MORTAR<br />
...........................................<br />
Angel House<br />
Gorgeous Georgian venue<br />
My first encounter with Angel House was in<br />
2013’s <strong>Brighton</strong> Fringe when its high-ceilinged<br />
Regency grandeur was the backdrop for a series of<br />
events so booze-soaked that I’ve always questioned<br />
my memories of the place. There was a<br />
harpist on the landing (I think) and moustachioed<br />
gents in Victorian attire in the upstairs drawing<br />
room. I feel there could have been a peacock in<br />
the courtyard.<br />
It transpires that this slightly hallucinatory<br />
experience was just one of many incarnations No<br />
1, Brunswick Terrace has been through since it<br />
was built nearly two centuries previously, the first<br />
house on the Hove side of the <strong>Brighton</strong> and Hove<br />
border. Current owner Phil Haiselden, who has<br />
restored the building, knows these previous lives<br />
better than most.<br />
He’s dealt with the alarmingly flimsy construction<br />
that comes of the house’s origins as an upmarket<br />
showhome, one of six built in 1825 as part of<br />
Charles Busby’s Brunswick Town development.<br />
He’s battled the unpredictable plumbing installed<br />
when the house was turned into nine bedsits in<br />
the 1960s. And he’s confirmed that yes, this is the<br />
place where Nigel Richardson wrote his brilliant<br />
if unreliable 1998 travelogue Breakfast in <strong>Brighton</strong>,<br />
which detailed his stay in a louche seafront lodging<br />
house run by a theatrical landlady allegedly<br />
called Fredda Hayworth.<br />
Haiselden originally rented a room in the house,<br />
then owned by a pair of antique dealers who had<br />
bought it from Richardson’s theatrical landlady<br />
– actually the Z Cars actress Sidonie Bond. A businessman-turned-singing<br />
teacher, Haisleden spent<br />
a happy period sharing the house with a yogi<br />
and a Feldenkrais practitioner before the owners<br />
announced they were intending to sell. He joked<br />
that he might be interested and ended up the<br />
owner of a slightly faded seafront townhouse.<br />
Life continued much as it had before until the<br />
ceiling of his neighbour’s house collapsed, nearly<br />
taking the rest of the terrace with it. “The structural<br />
engineer said it was a known fault in these<br />
properties – they were notoriously badly built and<br />
were never expected to last more than 60 or 70<br />
years.” It was a wake-up call that the house needed<br />
serious attention and Haiselden embarked on the<br />
daunting process of restoration. “We thought it<br />
would take twelve months. Three-and-a-half years<br />
later, poorer and wiser, we’ve emerged.”<br />
Using information produced by the nearby<br />
Regency Town House and library resources,<br />
Haiselden pulled down walls and pulled up carpets<br />
to return the house to a close approximation of<br />
its original glory. Amazingly, many of its original<br />
features had survived over the decades, including<br />
fireplaces, fitted cupboards and an elaborate plaster<br />
bedhead in the master bedroom. In 2014, the<br />
house was reborn as a wedding venue - couples<br />
can marry in the drawing room and spend their<br />
wedding night upstairs - and this month it will<br />
have a starring role in the <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival show<br />
At Home, when its rooms will host music, poetry,<br />
theatre and art. Haiselden feels his work is nearly<br />
done. Nione Meakin<br />
angel-house.com<br />
....105....
INSIDE LEFT: BRIGHTON FESTIVAL, 1967<br />
...............................................................................<br />
The first <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival, in 1967, was a fairly highbrow, often avant-garde affair, with<br />
debates about the future of art, performances by the likes of Laurence Olivier and Yehudi<br />
Menuhin, a ‘kinetic labyrinth’ on the West Pier, and, most strikingly of all, a trail of ‘concrete<br />
poetry’ installations, curated by Stephen Bann. Concrete poetry, all the rage in the<br />
late 60s, set text in an unconventional manner to turn it into the framework of visual art<br />
pieces. This example, Ein Text Passiert (‘A Text Happens’) by West German artist/dramatist<br />
Claus Bremer, was installed in the Pavilion Gardens; other examples included random<br />
three-word poems framed in the windows of <strong>Brighton</strong> buses. The Festival put <strong>Brighton</strong>,<br />
by then largely known as a ‘dirty weekend’ destination, on the cultural map, though we<br />
imagine much of what was going on went above the heads of many of the townspeople.<br />
Sadly we can’t interview these three locals, to find out their opinion on concrete poetry.<br />
....106....
7–29<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
Our city streets come alive for the<br />
50th year with art, music, theatre,<br />
dance, debate & more...<br />
VerTeDance / Jirí Havelka / Clarinet Factory<br />
Correction<br />
Imagine a world where you can’t progress<br />
despite your best efforts. The multi-award<br />
winning Czech dance company present a<br />
poignant piece about our lack of freedom<br />
Tue 24 & Wed 25 <strong>May</strong><br />
With over 150 events, look and then look<br />
again. You won’t want to miss a thing<br />
brightonfestival.org<br />
01273 709709<br />
brightonfestival<br />
brightfest #BF<strong>2016</strong>