screenzine - Bren O`Callaghan

SCREENZINE
April 2008
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Elsewhere we’ve had a rash of dancing in the
streets, from global showcase moves to the flashmob outbreaks of Guerilla Dance. Even Her
Royal Oddness Queen Yoko of the Plastic
Ono Band dropped by for a typically kooky twirl!
YOU MAY NOW REMOVE THE BLINDFOLD
Get ready, set... and they’re off! From horses at
the 161st Grand National to the launch of the city’s
year-long cultural smörgåsbord, the tipping
point has most definitely been reached following a
five-year cable car climb to the top of Mount Anticipation. So grab a sack, choose your lane and
hurl yourself down the Astroglide that is 2008 as
we navigate the peaks, the troughs, the fast bits and
sudden stops.
Contents
Open Culture
Movement on Screen
Alt Valley Vision
Pocket Pictures
Grand National
Guerilla Dance
Yoko Ono
Frozen Waves
Double Dutch
BBC Bus
School Report
Holocaust Memorial Day
Keep an eye out for our exclusive 08 Big Screen
Commissions staggered throughout the year. The
first - Beneath a Cloudless Sky - launches in time
for May Bank Holiday weekend and involves a colourful collaboration with The Liverpool School
of Architecture. Soon after the city streets will
be infested with outsized insects, clambering
across the screen itself to herald the arrival of
Sizemology. Are we pulling your leg? Can you spare
one and will it grow back if we do? You’ll have to
wait to find out.
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My Thought My City is a frequent video series
spread across the year, voicing the fervent opinions
of citizens, workers, arts practitioners, celebrities
and everyday folk of the city - eventually filling the
entire screen.
OPEN CULTURE: MY THOUGHT MY CITY
Open Culture is a collaborative project between
the International Centre for Digital Content
(ICDC) at Liverpool John Moores University and an
alliance of local media including the Liverpool
Echo and Daily Post, BBC Radio Merseyside
and Radio City.
To date these have included Phil Redmond (Mersey TV: Hollyoaks, Grange Hill, Brookside), Eton
Road (The X Factor), Roger Phillips (BBC Radio
Merseyside), Pete Price (Radio City), Tina Malone
(Shameless), Young KOF (Urbeatz), Claire
Sweeney (Brookside, Chicago, Celebrity Big Brother),
Vasily Petrenko (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra), Neville Skelly (musician), Neil Fitzmaurice (Phoenix Nights, Peep Show), Andrew
Lancel (The Bill, Bad Girls) and Leanne Campbell
(Juice FM). Content can also be viewed online at
http://open.culture.org and every day on Sky Channel 167.
Led by Professor Phil Redmond and supported by
the Liverpool Culture Company, it has three direct
aims: to open a cultural conversation with, by and
about the people of Liverpool and its region to
explore who, what and where they come from; to
open up new cultural avenues through which
new talent can be encouraged and a cultural legacy
will be left beyond 2008; and to open access to
existing institutions by encouraging them to find
innovative ways to reach new audiences.
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MOVEMENT ON SCREEN
North West-based moves is the largest exhibition platform in the UK in the form of dance films, interactive
installations, animation, videogames and experimental shorts at international level. In January we hosted the
touring arm of last year’s festival, moves07, easing our schedules into a pair of bewitched ballet pumps to
coincide with British Dance: Edition 2008. Taking place once every two years in a different city in the UK,
British Dance: Edition is one of the foremost events in the dance calendar. A prestigious showcase, the four
day event provides an opportunity for selected British dance companies and independent dance artists to
present their work.
Hundreds of national and international programmers visited Liverpool in search of inspiring British
work to take to their own audiences, with the screen offering a rolling programme throughout the day and
night. Just a few months later and in April moves08 was ripe for plucking, with a new, innovative line-up that
bundles little Billy Elliot to a punishing reformatory; replacing stereotypes and sagging tights with fresh,
sexy, brooding, stylised and always painstakingly accomplished work.
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POCKET PICTURES
ALT VALLEY VISION
ICDC swung another bottle of adult pop against
our steel rivets in christening not one but TWO
interactive applications focussed upon community
generated content in the same period. Pocket Pictures is a moblogging project in which local groups
produce creative content using mobile phones. Still
images generated by Powerhouse Foyer, Liverpool Arabic Arts Centre and the Greenhouse
Project populate a database of snaps that appear
in a random, updated sequence in the form of
miniature polaroids, bobbing and drifting upon a live
camera feed at the screen. Pedestrian movement
casues the images to swell and expand, so if you
were to reach out and grab or wave at a chosen
image, after a few seconds it would ‘pop open’ as
a larger version for viewing before shrinking back
to join its jealous pals. Pocket Pictures is part of the
ICDC Digital Inclusion Programme designed
to encourage diverse take-up of new technologies
to build confidence, create content, enhance skills
and encourage self-expression.
But wait! There’s still more! Alt Valley Vision is a
community web project for residents of the Norris
Green, Warbreck, Clubmoor, Croxteth,
Fazakerley and County areas of Liverpool. The
main aim of the project is to develop compelling,
entertaining rich media content with the local
community, with organisations and residents of all
ages receiving training and support in creating
video diaries, short films, animation, and
websites. The developers in the ICDC attic drew
the curtain upon their sole window to plunge into a
cold, code bath and emerge with their latest incarnation of the video jukebox, further enhanced and
polished. Short films sit in the top half of the screen
upon a scrolling carousel, with observers able to
step into a controlled zone to direct the movement
- left again, left, missed it, go right - ultimately selecting a clip of their choice via waving an arm (or
indeed any limb). The film then plays with audio at
full screen size, proudly naming the title and creators across an attached information bar.
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JOHN SMITH’S GRAND NATIONAL
Held over three days in April the world’s biggest
horse race occurs at Aintree Racecourse, Liverpool, culminating on the Saturday afternoon at
4.15pm with the heart-stopping Grand National.
Celebrating the 161st running since 1839, over
600 million viewers across the globe tune in to
watch the 40-strong field tackle 30 fences, with
pound sterling, dollars, euros, rouble and yen riding
on the result. Passionately attended by Merseyside
residents, Friday’s Ladies Day has become the
ninth wonder of the world, splashed across newspapers and TV screens as for one day, thousands
of wage-slave Cinderellas blow the overdraft
and step out in a dazzling array of outfits, shoes and
accessories... but never any sensible coats! Time
stood still at the screen during the big race itself
when over 2,000 viewers packed Clayton Square
to cheer on their office sweepstake, be it the race
favourite or a no-hope nag. Congratulations to winner Comply or Die!
A BIT OF A
FLUTTER
GUERILLA DANCE
As part of their continued coverage of the yearlong activities in this, the European Capital of Culture, BBC2’s The Culture Show staged a series of
their own secret, candid camera dance events on
the streets of Liverpool. The results of these lo-fi
guerrilla performances included a shopping-mall
mass waltz in the Met Quarter, hip hop street
sweepers in Williamson Square, suited commuters dancing in Lime Street Station and a rival
urban crew dance-off to the astonishment of
shoppers upon Church Street. The highlight for the
Big Screen involved local competitive dancers Jamie McLachlan and Philippa Amer, who took
to Clayton Square to perform a gravity-defying
quickstep on four occasions during the afternoon
shoot. We used our screen camera to broadcast the
action live, with footage subsequently cut into the
final edit alongside material from cameras at street
level. Startled Fiorentina football fans, visiting
the city to attend their UEFA Cup match against
Everton, became caught up in this display of fancy
footwork of an entirely different kind, breaking into
applause for each graceful glide upon the tarmac.
STRICTLY COME
PRANCING
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YOKO ONO
Forty-one years after her first ever paid
UK public performance, Mrs John
Lennon, the artist Yoko Ono returned
to the historic Bluecoat arts space following a £12.5 million restoration project. Peforming as part of the goup exhibition Now Then, celebrating the history
of the venue, the instant sell-out was
relayed in a live and exclusive simulcast to the Big Screen where hundreds
more gathered to view this once-in-alifetime opportunity, never sure of what
the 75-year-old doyenne of the
avant-garde might deliver next. In
1967 she had invited the audience to ‘fly’
from the top of step ladder, wrap her in
bandages and handed out shards of a
broken vase. In 2008 there were more
bandages, film projection, knitting, light
aerobics, flashlights, peace, love and a
‘Yoko Disco’ reminiscent of tipsy relatives at a wedding reception.
Bravo
Yoko!
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digital knot, reminscent of budget-price LED strips
had they been melted down and repurposed for
Paul Snowden’s IN THE FUTURE. Mark Titchner’s Nope pauses for thought with his heavily stylisted block text, exploring the relationship between
word and action. With undertones of visual hypnosis and subliminal communication, the latent power
inherent within the written word begins to surface.
And clincher of the most fabulous title of the year
award without any doubt goes to Eva Weinmayr
for We Are Racing to God Aligning With the
Shipwrecks by the Blue Galaxies (Well, Well Do
Not Exaggerate!), apparently sourced after toying
with the title of German pop song Hey, Captain
Starlight into the online Babelfish translation engine.
Here the artist mouths a silent, impossible warning
to observers with increasing urgency, unable to
communicate, a prophecy lost in the telling.
FROZEN WAVES
Curated by Michelle Cotton and Sylvia Kouvali,
Frozen Waves is a series of newly commissioned
video art for Yama, a public art programme hosted
upon an outdoor screen on the roof of the Marmara Pera Hotel in the centre of Istanbul. Titled
after a chapter in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1937
dystopian novel, We, Frozen Waves, the five invited
artists employ visual and textual codes familiar from
the language of commerce and the information
economy. These include Babak Ghazi with
choose1.jpg, referencing Katherine Hamnet’s iconic
political t-shirts and of course, the era-defining
FRANKIE SAYS RELAX! and the retinal assault of
Mustafa Hulusi’s bold, dizzying, stop-and stare
graphics. Fragments of conversations are clipped
from their sources and instead fed into an endless
TURKISH
DELIGHTS
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DOUBLE DUTCH SKIPPING
BBC NEWS SCHOOL REPORT
HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY
BBC MERSEYSIDE BUS
The British Double Dutch Skipping Team
held a demonstration at the screen to encourage
more newcomers to this ankle-wrapping pursuit.
Due to feature for the first time as an exhibition
sport at the London 2012 Olympics, the forming
of six local teams are anticipated. Current world
champions Japan will be challenging our homegrown talent at the Brouhaha Festival.
A project that gives 12 and 13-year-olds from UK
schools the chance to make their news at school
and to broadcast it for real across television, radio,
online, red-button and the Big Screens. This year the
central base for the national transmission was at
Bosco City Learning Centre, Croxteth, with
many more local schools participating across
Knowsley, Wirral, Runcorn and Widnes.
The award-winning BBC Merseyside Bus has
sadly been decomissioned as part of funding cuts to
hit the BBC. Having proved invaluable in the wider
inclusion of all communities, regardless of age,
creed, colour or diversity, it was therefore fitting that it should provide one last bundle of inspirational content generated en-route across the region. Have Mercy, sings Welsh songstress Duffy. Alas,
too late.
Teenagers at Kensington based Yellow House
linked up with a group of young people in Krakow,
Poland, to visit the death camp at Auschwitz together. Participants recorded video diaries for the
BBC Video Nation project and Big Screen incorporating photographs of their journey. Further artwork, poetry and banners were displayed at St
Luke’s Church in the city centre - a wartime ruin
now used as a peace garden and exhibition space.
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COVER IMAGES
(Clockwise, far left to right) Philippa Amer and Jamie McLachlan for BBC Guerilla Dance, Open Culture Eton Road, Double Dutch Skipping British Team, ICDC: Pocket Pictures. Page 3 (upper, clockwise) A. P. A. A.
I, Este Silencio, A_Way_Away, Harmonics (lower) Out Of The Weeping Web, Defaced, Tea Time, Wake Up.
Page 7 (clockwise) Mark Titchner, Babak Ghazi, Eva Weinmayr (x2), Mustafa Hulusi (x2), Paul Snowden.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Got a question? Get in touch!
Bren O’Callaghan
BBC Live Events
Big Screen Manager Liverpool
Address: BBC Merseyside
31 College Lane
Liverpool L1 3DS
email: bren (dot) ocallaghan (at) bbc.co.uk
to submit city diary and listings information
visit us online at www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool
www.bbc.co.uk/bigscreens
This edition released April 2008
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