So we’ve started. Trashing culture is happening now with a lunchtime poetry and harp recital gig while later on this evening we have the opening of an art exhibition based on text messages by Gary Baus and then onto a gig with the slackers symphony and Meadhbh Boyd. So all good. Last night we did our Arena Arts show live programme  in the RTE Studios in Cork which was alot of fun (despite the fact that I’m on painkillers and antibiotics). It’s always an exciting moment walking into the green room of the studios as it is often the first time I meet other mutantspace members in the flesh. Everyone so different, from different backgrounds, different ages, different ideas but all bound up in the collective idea of what we do as a co – operative. It is, I admit, very satisfying. It’s working, it’s happening, it’s real, it’s fantastic. On my way home last night I started forensically going over what I said on radio; did I sound okay? Did I get the message out there? Did I sound like a complete twat? Was I convincing? It’s difficult…you spend so long waiting to get onto the national airwaves that you have to make it count, it has to matter, it’s your only chance. Without a machine behind you, without money, without institutions it’s almost impossible to get the space to announce yourself, to let people know what you’re up to, what you’re fighting for.
When I got home I had a quick look online to see if there were any new members on the strength of the show, on the strength of what I said, on the strength of the performances. And there was. Job done, kind of, I don’t know? It’s very hard to be objective about it. I could have been better but perhaps you can always be better?

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Three days to go before we kick off another Trash Culture Revue, a time when we at mutantspace get together and produce our own DIY festival. It is an affirmation of our collective will, co-operation and what is possible when people from many different backgrounds with very different skills come together under one umbrella and work towards one common goal.

Yes, the gigs are important, for without them there would be no festival, but what is most important is the coming together of people to create their own space, on their own terms, through the collective resources of our online resource. The entire festival is run on a zero budget with designers, volunteers, venues, sound engineers, journalists, pr and performers all taking action, stepping up, stepping forward and grabbing the moment to make something out of nothing. Not an easy thing to do. It is all very well to produce work within a space that already has predetermined parameters; a space that has funding and budgets and staff. It is an
entirely different matter to just do it for pig iron, because we can, because we want too.

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