Ann Scott

roggernaut | Everything about music | May 31, 2010

This month in our skills exchange culture blog we’re delighted to have Ann Scott as our musician of the month

Written and recorded during a mixed period of solitary downtime and hectic traveling Flo is Ann Scott’s third independent album release and her most personal work to date.

From bare bones acoustic to lush piano, via orchestral percussion, dulcimer, vibes and auto harp, Scott navigates to new musical depths on this installment, which she describes as ‘a bunch of songs about being lost and how to get there’.

This is something the Dublin songstress should know, having spent the last few years haphazardly touring the UK, Europe and the USA, lingering a month in Chicago to play the coffee shop scene and snatching three day’s studio time at Electrical Audio, where some of the album’s core moments were captured.

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Essays on literature, intellectual emancipation and the function of place

roggernaut | Book reviews and writers | May 31, 2010

Signs and Wonders: Essays on Literature and Culture by Marina Warner

Since the early 1970s, when Marina Warner reported from Vietnam and America, in startling essays like ‘The Crushed Butterflies of War’, she has been one of the most challenging, subtle and profound commentators on the culture of past and present, unravelling our webs of images, ideas and beliefs. This remarkable, resonant collection draws together essays written over twenty-five years, offering a wide-ranging retrospective of her changing ideas on literature and culture – on fiction, drama, religion, language and fairy tale. The different sections range from explorations of our taste for the miraculous, whether it be the Virgin Mary and angels, or voodoo and showers of toads, to our need for heroes and villains, from Joan of Arc to Myra Hindley. Finding unexpected links between the images of literature, art and politics she turns her attention to Caliban and the Caribbean, and to fairies, myths and magic. She listens attentively, in unexpected ways, to some of the strong voices of our time, from Lewis Carroll to Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood; she unravels our fascination with language and obscenity, and questions the way we think about our bodies and minds. Penetrating, perceptive and enlightening, “Signs and Wonders” is not only a book of essays, but a collection of original marvels.

Marina Warner has an international reputation as a critic, historian and a novelist. Her recent non-fiction works include The Beast to the Blonde, No Go the Bogeyman and Fantastic Metamorphoses, while her fiction includes the novels The Lost Father (shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Indigo and The Leto Bundle, and most recently a short-story collection Murderers I Have Known.

The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation by Jacques Ranciere, Kristin Ross

This extraordinary book can be read on several levels. primarily, it is the story of Joseph Jacotot, an exiled French schoolteacher who discovered in 1818 an unconventional teaching method that spread panic throughout the learned community of Europe. Knowing no Flemish, Jacotot found himself able to teach in French to Flemish students who knew no French; knowledge, Jacotot concluded, was not necessary to teach, nor explication necessary to learn. The results of this unusual experiment in pedagogy led him to announce that all people were equally intelligent. From this postulate, Jacotot devised a philosophy and a method for what he called ‘intellectual emancipation’ – a method that would allow, for instance, illiterate parents to themselves teach their children how to read. The greater part of the book is devoted to a description and analysis of Jacotot’s method, its premises, and (perhaps most important) its implications for understanding both the learning process and the emancipation that results when that most subtle of hierarchies, intelligence, is overturned. The book, as Kristin Ross argues in her introduction, has profound implications for the ongoing debate about education and class in France that has raged since the student riots of 1968, and it affords Ranciere an opportunity (albeit indirectly) to attack the influential educational and sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu (and others) that Ranciere sees as perpetuating inequality

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Generate, Generous, Generations: an art performance workshop

hilary williams | Art and design | May 31, 2010

So an other month has whipped by…..
“You young people of Ireland” The Pope when he talked years ago.
Now is now and its so moved on and complicated…

Last night found me performing in The Project Art Centre amongst a really mixed bag of individuals. A production called Generations.
It was the final dish of tasty tapas presented by us all.

Right back to the beginning, “make it clear to your readers Hilary”

As is my way I peruse the possible landing place for my Performance art practice, so I sent a proposal off to Projectbrandnew who are Louise Lowe, Lynnette Moran, Jody O Neill and Dee Roycroft.
PBN is part of Project Catalyst and supported by The Arts Council and Dublin City Council.

This was a residency where a collective of varied generations, nationalities, and genre were tossed around in very interesting melting pots.
It was part of the Bealtaine festival but, although an elder participator, I was not considered such and was happy to be there as a performance artist /Dublin woman with Histories to share, explore and experiment with.

We each presented a proposal, which, when we all met up on the first day broke down into four groups of four with a facilitator to each group and a venue.

The range of backgrounds was very interesting; dancers, writers, visual artists, actors, physical theatre practitioners, performance artists, cultural studies lecturers, musicians and so on.

The Director of the Bealtaine Festival (Celebrating creativity in older age)

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Album reviews of I Am Not Lefthanded, Mugger Dave, Ed Harcourt and Turin Brakes

roggernaut | Everything about music | May 31, 2010

I am not lefthanded: Time To Leave EP

I am not lefthanded are a London based, two third Irish one third UK act, and are my guilty pleasure- I love these guys, apart from their awful name…. They have a great image and have a great understated, delicate honesty to their approach to a song.

The Ep combines tracks that are beautifully arranged, leaving each instrument room to breathe and fulfil itself onto the next track.
From the piano led “Lifelines’ and its subtle cello governed by front woman Katherine’s’ pitch perfect offering- it makes for simply great post grungy music that I think is very rare nowadays.

The thing about this band is that they have a definite sound that is ‘their’ sound, and they do it so very well.

Mugger Dave: What’s She Doing Here?

‘What’s She Doing Here’ is the type of album you would find playing rather loudly at student party, whether it will surpass that existence, is another question.

One could see how this album would do well on the local circuit but it lacks considerable direction, continuity and good standard production, well basic production really. The first song is called .. ‘Intro’ and it is actually lovely, it has a slow drone to it but it quickly changes in direction. There’s a couple of low tempo songs similar to the sound of Elliot Smith and at large its recorded so roughly that it just may have passed as lo-fi only there is obvious full band noise going on in the mix. The lack of ability to stay on form and on key is something that simply should not have passed by the ear of a good producer. The pitch doesn’t suit their lead singer’s (Simon Noble) vocal range and at times the harmonies are so way off that you actually just switch to the next track.

There is however, one track on the entire album that is just so radio friendly, that it may give this band hope. It is called ‘Got A Lot On My Mind’. This should have been the obvious direction they should have went with.

Here is a band that you would love to hate, but find yourself liking, due to one incredible song.

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A picture of two halves

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 31, 2010

Last Thursday, at a weekly gig I host, I was sneaking out for a quick fag just before doors opened when I overheard a young couple explain to someone that although they were from Kerry and Cork respectively (for those of you not from Ireland the counties of Cork and Kerry are great rivals in sport, especially Gaelic Football) they didn’t play football. As they said themselves, “but we don’t follow football, football is for losers”.

It struck me then that the perception people have of you is as much defined by what you do know as by what you don’t, by what you are as by what you’re not, where you are from as from where you’re not. I know, I know, not exactly the profound revelation of the century but nevertheless an interesting thought when you consider that your being, your essence is as much part of something as it is part of nothing. No not nothing, that is wrong. Nothing implies stillness, inertness, a vacuum, a uniform grey, a cloud, fog when really nothing is as robust and has as much affect on us as something (this is starting to get confusing).

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The World Will Cease To Spin

Mark Kelleher | Short fiction and poetry | May 30, 2010

Everything falls apart. This, I feel, is finally it. There will be no return from the skies by the birds who trundle themselves across the manicured lawns below; the stench of burnt lamb and hard carrots will no longer waver about the room; the intermittent beeps of the medical machines, and the hallow clop as the nurses pace the corridors, will dissolve, too, along with everything else. The heart, I am afraid to say, will cease to beat. And with that, the world, too, for me, will cease to spin.

I don’t know how long I have been lying here like this. The clock on the far-wall, with its small face, and plain white cover and its terribly consistent ticking, has become an almost illimitable motion. It started with a chest pain, I know that much, but the rest has been lost on me. The minutes, like the hours, weeks, months, have all fallen into one, as consistent in their rigor as the impenetrable pain traversing across my body’s bones. I lie here without motion, dead save for my senses- a bag of bones waiting to be turned to ash and scattered where they choose.

The process is slow, an irritant. It has yet to fully consume me. But I see it, all right, feel it, even. I witness it in the carved features of Nurse Flynn, escaping from the sad cynicism of her lazy eyes, thinking I won’t notice it, as I appear catatonic. And I feel it, too, embedded deep within the marrow of my bones, throbbing at my temples, and up my legs – those sad sticks cocooned in the warm fabric of the hospital blankets.

This all started long before this room imprisoned me, before these drip-wires, punching small wounds into my sore skin, ever took hold of me. It gripped when my retirement finally ensued, and soon became a permanent feature of my days. After 35 years service to Clancy’s furniture fittings, I was made redundant, forcing me into retirement. I had reached the standard age years previously, but took no interest in giving up to sitting by the fire until it arrived.
I lived for my working days. A quadrant of working-stations flanked the rear-walls of the factory’s foyer; clusters of drills, hand-saws, bevel chisels and slide-rules cluttered every man’s space. And though the environment was dark and enshrouded in an insufferable stuffed heat, we went about our business diligently and with good humour. Young apprentices loitered around their elder lecturers, before taking the places of the men whom they inherited their trades from.

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Poetry by Alan Maguire and Melissa Newell

roggernaut | Short fiction and poetry | May 29, 2010

My Cat Parsnips by Melissa Newell

My cat parsnips has one ear I don’t know why. mommy says cos he got into a fight with a dog. daddies friends hate parsnips one time they came to our house with their dog .his name is Gobles, gobels wanted to eat parsnips but parsnips is clever parsnips just ran up a tree and didn’t come back for a week .one time parsnips had no food ,so late one night me and him went down stairs and found some left over pepporoni pizza. parsnips likes pizza I like pizza we always sleep together I feel really safe with parsnips parsnips and me are best friends.

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Online reputation management

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 29, 2010

Online Reputation management is a growing field affecting all businesses and individuals with an online presence. Everyone with an online presence should at least be aware of it. The massive growth in review sites, such as TripAdvisor www.tripadvisor.com, LouderVoice www.loudervoice.com, Yelp www.yelp.com, means that no matter how big or small your business is, everyone can publish a comment, a review, a status update to vent their frustrations at poor products or bad customer service. This could possibly tarnish your reputation. And the worst bit? This can all be ongoing without you even knowing it! These conversations about your product could also be happening on www.Boards.ie, www.Facebook.com or www.Twitter.com. So how do you keep an eye on all these sites to see who is talking, and what they are saying?

The best thing to do is take some preemptive steps. Bring the comments you you.

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Living in brand Ireland

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 29, 2010

Have we been totally subsumed by brand? Is everything we do now subject to a tagline, a catch – all, a niche, a marketing statistic? When Failte Ireland (the Irish state tourism authority) were making a speech at a recent launch I was at – for an upcoming festival – their representative peppered her speech with words like brand and culture, sales and legacy. Standing, listening to the representative I was struck not so much by what she said but by what she omitted to say. The general thrust of her speech was typical of a tourism official, after all tourism boards are all about turning place into brand into money. However, she failed to mention the one thing that creates place, makes a space unique, gives it character, colour, energy, namely people. There was no mention of people – lots about potential, much about legacy, money, funding and so on, but people? Nope, not a thing.

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The Zapatistas and Social Revolution

roggernaut | Culture and politics | May 27, 2010

This video, gives an insight into how there are other ways in which we can take control of our own space, place, community. That there is always the possibility of redefining, of making possible, of changing what is considered the inevitable. Of creating a new way that speaks out against the consensus, the system, the construct. With new technology and access to information we can make, create real change.

What you’re going to be watching is a short speech given by Subcomandante Marcos (Date of birth unknown), spokesperson for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a Mexican rebel movement.
I have also included a great documentary called ‘A Place Called Chiapas’. It’s well worth taking the time out to watch it

Please add your comments, let us know what you think below.

Subcomandante Marcos (Date of birth unknown), is the spokesperson for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a Mexican rebel movement. In January 1994, he led an army of Mayan farmers into the eastern parts of the Mexican state of Chiapas in protest of the Mexican government’s treatment of indigenous peoples. He is an author, political poet, adroit humorist, and outspoken opponent of capitalism. Marcos has advocated having the Mexican constitution amended to recognize the rights of the country’s indigenous inhabitants. The internationally known guerrillero has been described as a “new” and “postmodern” Che Guevara.

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Diary of a Punk poet: an empty page

wasps vs humans | Short fiction and poetry | May 26, 2010

in our culture blog this month wasps versus humans, a skills exchange member and Irish punk poet, gives us a small look into the difficulty of writing, of the empty page

Staring at an empty page, waiting for it to make its mind up, looking at it, full of possibilities. Could be a song, poem, story, letter, even a list of future plans and possibilities… but no, it stays there stubbornly smirking, laughing at me, blank with nothing to say. “You can’t think of anything to write” it will say, “You’re rubbish.” Its emptiness represents everything I am yet to be, achieve or become.

I walk away. “Screw you!” I say.
“You can’t make me”
“Maybe I’ll just screw you up into a ball and kick you about the room, that will show you. I’ll kick you for all of us that can’t think of anything to write, the uninspired.”

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Mad proud to know you

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 25, 2010

I was in Killarney, Co. Kerry over the weekend working. It was one of the good jobs that we do, one of the jobs that means more than marketing, selling, branding culture, one of the jobs that has significance, reaches out, looks to communicate a truth, an honesty. It was a project that my partner and I have been involved in for the last 2 years. It’s called Mad Pride.

Mad Pride is the brainchild of a wonderful man, a great man called john McCarthy who has been campaigning voraciously for the last number of years in the area of mental health. At the heart of the fight is the battle over stigma, over false belief, fear, ignorance and prejudice. In his efforts to counter the established view, to weigh in against the orthodoxy John decided to go straight to the community and create a fun family day out, a Mad Pride day, in which people could have a laugh, a good time and perhaps, hopefully, come to realise that love and community spirit were a stronger force than fear and prejudice.

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weareswimmingcities.org

roggernaut | Art and design | May 24, 2010

SWIMMING CITIES is a diverse and evolving collaboration of artists, builders and visionaries who come together each year to embark on a challenging large-scale project. Originally united through our common friendship and talent by the international artist Swoon, the group traces its roots back to the DIY raft project on the Mississippi River, the “Miss Rockaway Armada”. Taking a new waterway each year, the project creates a vivid community of artists floating into towns to present an inspiring, interactive environment that encompasses art, sculpture, music and performance. Each year the Swimming Cities conceives new rafts and builds them with mostlyfound materials in an organic design process. The multi-layered and uncommon talents of our members inspire us to continuously lookfor new ways to materialize our style of unique living art.

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Exploiting trash culture

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 15, 2010

Today I’m using my blog to dissect and reflect on a discussion I was party to about The Trash Culture Revue, what it stood for and the perception of it in a certain persons mind within the arts community in Cork. I was told – albeit, indirectly – the other day that The Trash Culture Revue was exploitative and upset the status quo of other arts institutions in the city. Not in those exact words you understand, but that was the general thrust of the conversation. Before I go on let me first state that I wasn’t actually there. The conversation was held between my partner on The Trash Culture Revue and ‘another person’ (who will remain anonymous – infact lets call them Anon for the rest of this article).

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Fiddling at the Fair

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 11, 2010

I was in Baltimore, West Cork for the fiddle fair over the weekend. Well, actually only the one day. Myself, wife and baby went down on Sunday. It was our first time at the festival and first time to Baltimore. A beautiful place. For those of you who haven’t had the good fortune to visit the South – Western most tip of Ireland it is a splendid sight. A small village at the end of the road. Of all roads. You can go no further. A beautiful sky, a view of Sherkin Island, fields teetering on the edge of the sea. All hills, nothing flat.

It was a fine day, full of good cheer with hundreds of people drinking pints, eating oysters, crab, prawns, chips. Dogs half comatosed on the pavements, kids running around, babies crying, adults bleary eyed from the night before, musicians all over the place with instrument cases slung over their backs. We had chips and stout, saluted and nodded to people we knew in that unassuming, almost guilty way that Irish people do when they recognise someone; a flick of the head, eyes quickly moving away, moving on, elsewhere, anywhere. All very awkward, everyone wanting to move on as if some bad blood was spilt somewhere, somehow, sometime. No one wanting to stop and chat but everyone knowing that they have too. It’s a cultural imperative. It’s a tribal ritual. And everyone knows the opening gambit;

“Howya”
“Grand, Howya”
“Grand, so you here for the weekend?”
“Ah no just for the day, thought we might you know, why not”
“Ah yeah, why not”
“So……”

And on it goes until one of you figures a way of getting out of there.
For those of you not from Ireland if you ever get into a small talk situation with a paddy you’re screwed. But let me give you one piece of advice if you do find yourself in that predicament always repeat what they’ve just said and then add on a bit of your own. It adds colour. Keeps the conversation going until hopefully your mobile starts ringing, your baby starts crying or the sky suddenly falls on your head.

We did see some music but what I loved most about it was the unregulation of the festival. I’m so used to having to be sure of this and satisfying that, safety statements, event management reports, security, ambulances, police, fencing everything off, making sure there’s no possible way on earth anyone in any state of mind or health could slip, fall, create havoc. So used to having tight time schedules with no margin of error, crew members with clipboards, names ticked, duties done, job completed, satisfactorily. No one dead. Imagine that.

Where’s the fun in that? Lost. Tied up in red tape and chucked away, flushed down the toilet along with all the other fun and games I used to have at festivals, working and playing. It was clear from being in Baltimore over the weekend that a relaxed and joyful festival atmosphere – and the same goes for all venues, areas, places in which people gather to commune – is created by those that have control over all areas of their space. Those that don’t have to worry that the distance between this and that might, however unlikely, cause offense, damage, trouble. It was so gratifying, so good to feel part of an event. An event that let me in, took me in with open arms – didn’t try to trick, con, swindle, sell me cool latest trend in thing to die for best thing yet. It just was as it was. Open and unafraid to be.

Well done to all and sundry and especially Declan McCarthy who runs it

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Trash Gigs 17 – 19 May

Friday 17th May
Mutant Cabaret @ 9pm The Roundy, Cork
Hans Dens @ 8pm Gulp'd, Cork

Saturday 18th May
The Urchin Collective @ 8pm Gulp'd, Cork

Sunday 19th May
Cormac O’Caoimh and Stuart Wilde @ 7.30pm Gateway Bar, Cork

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