Shape & Situate: Posters of Inspirational European Women at Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention

Leeds-based zine maker Melanie Maddison will be bringing her poster series of inspirational European women to the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention in May, and what more appropriate place to display them than around the balcony space overlooking the former female pool?

The series, drawn from Melanie's collaborative zine Shape & Situate: Posters of Inspirational European Women, comprises the 75 plus A3 posters that have featured in the zine so far. The posters have been created by women all over Europe, using collage and mixed media, illustration, photography, commix, digital work, hand-sketched drawings, text and everything in between. The Shrieking Violet spoke to Melanie to find out more.

SV: What is Shape & Situate, and how long have you been making it? 

MM: Shape & Situate: Posters Of Inspirational Women zine has been going for three years, and three issues. Each issue has contained around 25 A5 original posters made by artists and DIY creative people from within Europe. The posters feature artwork and information on an inspirational or radical European women of the poster maker’s choosing. The aim has been to highlight the (often hidden) history and lives of radical inspirational women and collectives from Europe, as a way of connecting us with the past and the present through a cultural (re-)articulation of these women’s lives.

There’s no life that does not contribute to our collective history, yet conventional history books show us that it’s rare for women’s lives to be documented as readily as men’s, especially women in more underground, domestic, or radical spheres. I hate to think that in years to come it’ll only be the ‘elite’ people on the top of the pile who’re remembered, creating a void and mass forgetting of the great work and lives of so many people within our social, cultural and political makeup, communities, and lives. Women such as those who are collected in the zine (and many, many more besides) are important to our collective history, women who have helped shape and situate our lives whether we know it or not. I wanted to try and make a zine to honour and celebrate and inform others on some of these women.
 The zine aims to activate feminist cultural memory, to inspire in the present, and to visually bring women’s social and political history to life and into view.


SV: Have you made other zines? 

MM: Shape & Situate is the only zine I’ve got the time to make at the moment, but I’ve made many zines before these ones. My favourite zine to work on, and the one that I was probably most proud of, was Colouring Outside The Lines. Colouring Outside The Lines collected together interviews I did with a huge selection of seriously amazing contemporary female artists from all over the world. It ran for five issues between 2005 to 2009, and is a project that I plan on going back to at some point. I miss making that one but it sure was time consuming to fit in the 70 plus interviews!

I also edited the zine Reassess Your Weapons, and have made other zines, such as: Taking Cultural Production Into Our Own Hands, With Arms Outstretched, UK Ladyfest Artwork Zine, and I'm Not Waiting: Doing It Yrself Now. Plus I’ve had a hand in many other collective zines.

SV: Why did you start Shape & Situate, and what made you decide to do a participatory project? 

MM: I started the zine as I have a huge amount of love and respect for poster projects hailing from the US such as Celebrate People's History, Inspired Agitators and Firebrands: Portraits of the Americas. I love what these poster makers were creating and sharing, and how they were educating with their work. I got to thinking though that I’d love to see a more European perspective, and a wider selection of female subjects, and from there Shape & Situate was born. I’ve since shared the zines with those involved with some of the projects I mention that had inspired the zine, which was a great way to start to complete the circle. My respect for the enormous amount of creative social history projects that are being made across the world is why I include such a big list of further reading in the intro to the zine, in a hope of directing readers towards projects beyond Shape & Situate alone.

I don’t think this zine could have been anything other than collaborative (plus sometimes I think it’s the only way I like to approach making zines – who wants to only hear their own voice and ideas? I know I don’t!). It had to be collaborative as I wanted to bring together ideas of who contributors from across Europe found inspirational. To collaborate is to situate yourself within the community that you’re working with and sharing with. I wanted to learn myself about inspirational women myself, not just dictate a huge bunch of posters on who I already knew that I found inspirational myself. I learned a great deal from putting this zine together; many of the women in this zine were unknown to me before I was approached by contributors with their ideas. And, this is all part of the point really, to share knowledge and experience of women who have been hidden from mainstream history. I couldn’t have made the zine without the knowledge and desire from the contributors to tell the lives and tell the story of these women’s lives, women who had individually and uniquely shaped and situated them.

SV: How do you find contributors for Shape & Situate? 

MM: The zine has been open to anybody from Europe who wanted to make a poster. To start with the first issue was made up of friends and friends-of-friends who I approached with my initial idea and people ran with that idea. I’m lucky to know a huge amount of crazily talented and creative people (not only conventional ‘artists’, but also cultural producers who approach and make ‘art’ in a more DIY way and would never refer to themselves as ‘artists’ even when in their own ways they are), and I’m thrilled to be able to work with as many of them as I have on this project. After the first issue came out word spread a little, and I was lucky enough to have people approach me to be involved too, which worked out great.

Finding people I’d love to contribute is the easy bit (I am a huge admirer of people’s creative talents and am always on the look out for folks I’d love to work with on one thing or the other); twisting their arm into making a poster when I know that these people have 101 more pressing things to do, and ample projects of their own to be working on, is the tough bit! Which is why I’m so grateful every time a zine actually comes together and is filled with so much great work. I’m in awe of my contributors and have a lot to thank them for!

SV: What type of women are featured? Are a lot of them lesser-known? 

MM: It’s the poster makers that decided to feature them, not me. There’s a mixture of lesser-known, and more well-known women. The original brief was to focus on lesser-known women, but it’s hard to draw that distinction when it would have been unfair to omit some of the more well-known women in a project that looks at inspirational women. I didn’t want to enter into some distorted ‘popularity contest’ and refuse contributions on women who are already well-documented just because of that fact, because clearly all of these women are inspirational, and thus worth being part of this project.

The women featured come from all sorts of social, cultural and political backgrounds, and include authors and writers, scientists, teachers, sports women, political and social activists, visual artists, musicians, zinesters, performance artists, globetrotters, cartoonists, architects, aviators, actresses, film makers, strike leaders, comedians, and organisers and reformers. Amongst others!

SV: Shape & Situate: Posters of Inspirational European Women has previously been exhibited at the Women's Library in London. How did that come about and how did it go?

MM: My dear friend Red Chidgey organised the 2011 Zinefest! at The Women’s Library in London and asked me if I’d like to be involved again. I proposed to get posters made up from Shape & Situate (there were only two issues at the time) and put them on the walls. It was as simple as that! Ever since I first started getting submissions for issue 1 of the zine I knew that I’d love to see the posters in a larger format than the A5 zine alone, so when Red asked me if there was any way I’d like to contribute to the Zinefest I knew exactly what I’d like to see happen. The fine folk at Footprint, Leeds, did a great job at laser printing A3 posters of each page of the zines for me.

I’d been involved in the 2009 and 2008 Zinefests at The Women’s Library, again, due to Red’s organisational skills and vision. In 2009 I curated an exhibition of Comix Zines made by UK female creators. It was such a great project to work on. There was a huge amount of work on the walls (and hung from the ceiling!) in that exhibition and it was really well received, hence, in part why I think Red asked me to be involved again in 2011. I’m so grateful for what Red, and the staff at the Women’s Library have allowed me to get away with doing in that building!

Incidentally, please sign the petition to save The Women’s Library from closure. 

SV: Are you going to keep adding to the poster series and making more Shape & Situate zines? Do you plan to exhibit the posters in more places? 

MM: I’ve genuinely no idea. I’m one of those people who can’t really think into the future (I’m perpetually petrified of the future), and am usually just driven by ideas that come to me at 3am instead of planning anything out properly. Maybe there’ll be a fourth issue of the zine, and even more posters to add to the exhibition, I’ll wait and see how well received issue 3 is first, and wait to see if I get any offers of contributions to another issue – I hate badgering people into contributing. At the moment though I’m trying to focus on hopefully getting the exhibition shown in as many places as I can this year; I’d love for more people to be able to see all the great work that’s been made for this project, and also to spread the word about all the subjects that this project has managed to give voice to.

http://remember-who-u-are.blogspot.co.uk

Interview: Craig John Barr, director – Self-Publishers of the World Take Over

From enthusiasts scribbling alone in their bedrooms to professional design collectives, fanzines are made by people of all different interests and backgrounds. A film made by Salford Zine Library, a growing archive of self-published material, brings together the stories of fanzine makers from around the world, showing who they are, what motivates them and how they go about getting their work out into the world.

Self-Publishers of the World Take Over was conceived a couple of months before a recent exhibition at Salford Art Gallery and Museum which put on display the Library's diverse collection, ranging from football fanzines and science fiction pamphlets to photocopied free sheets and hardbound artists' books which cost £50 per copy. What all of the material in the library has in common is that it is all independent and self-published – and that it was all donated. The documentary consists of talking heads of the makers behind the collection, aiming to create, says the film's director, illustrator and designer Craig John Barr, a “focus point that tied the exhibition together”.

Craig had to find a way of making the film cheaply – and quickly. As well as showing clips of fanzine makers talking about their work, the film needed to go back to basics and act as an introduction to fanzines. Craig explains: “Lots of the people who went to the exhibition hadn't really seen zines before and they were just there to visit the museum, but I couldn't really find a film about fanzines that hadn't been shown in Manchester before.”

The film is constructed around questions about the zine-making process, featuring responses recorded by Craig and cameraman Luca Rudlin around Manchester and Salford, or footage shot on SLRs and webcams by zine-makers in other countries including Brazil, America and Australia. Craig and Luca visited several design studios in Manchester, including DR ME and OWT Creative in Hope Mill, Ancoats, and Manchester Municipal Design Corporation, who are based in Hotspur House, as well as zine-makers such as Vapid Kitten and the Shrieking Violet. Craig also made stop motion animations using a webcam gaffa taped to his ceiling.

He explains: “I never, ever thought I would make a film. At first I thought it would be easy – I would just interview people and cut and paste it together – but then I realised it needed to have a structure.” 

Footage was recorded over a month and then Craig had the job of sifting through around twenty hours of film. Despite the challenges of making a film from scratch – and having to learn new software and enduring a bout of flu during the editing process – Craig says the film “does what it set out to do”.

He says: “It's satisfying seeing people watch it and go away knowing what zines are. Some have since gone and bought zines.” He continued: “I wanted to get as wide a range of people as possible, from professional graphic designers to people making zines in their houses and show the different backgrounds that people who make zines.”

He explains: “Zines aren't just about design or about counterculture. They can be about anything politically, or they can be completely unpolitical. There was one girl who just made a zine about volcanoes. She has been making it since she was seven and now she's in her mid-twenties and still getting her parents to photocopy it. Another takes photos of people asleep who she has encountered on her travels.”

Self-publishers of the World Take Over has now been shown at a zine fair in Tooting, as well as Leeds Print Fair, and is soon to have its first airing in America. Craig has observed that viewers of the film particularly enjoy the 'How to make a zine section'. Craig says: “People like the message that you could go away and make a zine yourself quite easily and duplicate it quickly. A lot of people found ways of distributing unrealised projects and sharing things with their friends. Several even went away and made a zine and then sent it to me. A lot of people were also interested in the discussion of online versus digital.”

Craig started Salford Zine Library in January 2010 when he and fellow illustrator and designer Matthew Walkerdine were living in Salford, and the collection was initially housed in the city's Islington Mill arts venue. Craig and Matthew both made zines and, after contributing to zine libraries in cities such as Los Angeles and Toronto, realised that Manchester and the North West lacked a zine library.

The Library has a steady stream of donations, which arrive at the library via Craig's postbox, and contributions now number around 1,500. Craig explains: “Zines are everywhere – everywhere there is an element of counterculture people are making zines. There are hundreds and hundreds of contributions that come into my mailbox from everywhere. India, Tokyo, Taiwan, Latin America – Chile, Brazil etc. In India, zines are mainly graphic design. In Sao Paulo they're linked to the punk scenes which goes back decades. I get some really odd zines. People seem really happy I've asked them to contribute to the library. They are happy their work is getting seen.” In future, Craig would like to classify the material in the library and create a catalogue.

It's not uncommon for visitors to turn up at Craig's flat with boxes full of zines. He said: “People come up to me and say they've got a load in the loft and every now and then someone comes and knocks on my door with a box.” One box came from a printers who, every time they were asked to do a print run of a zine, printed one extra and added it to the box.

Salford Zine Library co-founder Matthew has since moved on to Glasgow, where he was a co-founder of Good Press gallery and Craig has been looking for a permanent home for the collection where it can be seen seven days a week, which he has now found at Nexus Art Cafe in the Northern Quarter, Manchester City Centre. Salford Zine Library will be based at Nexus from May and the Library has launched a fundraising appeal to help bring the space up to shape. Find out how you can help:
Self-Publishers of the World Take Over will be screened at the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention on May 19 at 12.30pm upstairs in the committee room in the former superintendent's flat, followed by a director's Q and A.

Extracts can be seen on Salford Zine Library’s Youtube channel at www.youtube.com/user/salfordzinelibrary.

http://salfordzinelibrary.blogspot.co.uk

Have zines, will travel: Caribou caravan at Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention

Visitors to the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention in May will be able to step inside one of the country's more unusual zine stores – a zine shop inside a vintage caravan, which will be pulling up outside Victoria Baths for the day.

Nottingham-based artist and zine-maker Annie Atkinson set up Caribou in 2011 as a shop and gallery inside a small vintage caravan to showcase and sell the work of artists, writers and musicians working with an independent and DIY ethic. Annie makes the zine Flick my Ankle, as well as other mini-zine boxes such as Ultra Horse Fags and an ET mini-comic box.

Annie was originally going to open a bookshop in Nottingham selling unique art books, zines and furniture but decided to scale down the project and go back down to an idea she'd had a few years before of opening a teashop in a caravan. She explains: “I saw some other people in Canada, Australia and America were doing a similar thing and I thought it’s okay to do it now, because if there are others doing it then I’m not completely insane…so instead of a teashop it’s become a travelling art shop! But the potential for tea will never die.”

The caravan was acquired after a long hunt. Annie admits: “I wish it was a romantic story but I bought the caravan from a man on Gumtree! I had been looking for ages for the perfect one and this one came along and so we drove across the country to get it.”

Caribou is filled with artists' work, records, found mix tapes and a ‘listening booth’ in the form of a Fisher Price tape player. Annie also has an illustration photo booth, where visitors can sit and, instead of having their picture taken, have a picture of their face hand drawn by Annie. The caravan is kitted out to incorporate seating when the shelves are folded away, so there is room to do small workshops and activities such as zine-making. As well as stocking fanzines, hand made books, cards, jewellery, mix tapes, records, prints and ceramics, Annie sells reconditioned typewriters that she has lovingly repainted.

Among the more unusual items are flexagons: small, illustrated paper pieces that fold in on themselves three times to reveal different images. Annie says: “No-one seems to really get them! I have one with the characters of the Royal Tenenbaums, with different hairstyles in each folded image. You have to see it really to understand what I mean. Come into the caravan and you’ll see!” Annie's best seller is the Plastic Knife series comprising zines sent from Australia which come with a plastic knife stuck to the front cover. Annie says: “People go wild for them!” Japanese cut and paste zine Kosho Kosho, where the reader can cut out and make things like an illustrated paper iPhone, is also popular. Other big sellers are moustache teacups Annie paints herself.

The caravan was based inside Hopkinson Gallery in Nottingham until February, and since then it has been to various locations around Nottingham, including North Sherwood Street on Sundays, where it is open to passers by. Annie says: “We’re hoping to take it to more places around the UK, and then hopefully conquer Europe (in a non war sense)!”

Annie describes the experience of running Caribou as “immense”. She says: “People have got in touch from all over the world wanting to sell things in the shop, help out with volunteering and get involved in other ways. I’ve been invited to do talks about the zines at writers' clubs, and I’ve been invited to book festivals and events. It’s been really great and I hope it continues to get people excited!”

Visit Annie's blog at http://caricaribou.tumblr.com.

Step inside Caribou caravan at the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention, Hathersage Road, Manchester, Saturday May 19 between 10am and 5pm.

Revisiting the Irwell Sculpture Trail

Exercise, muddy feet and fresh air are among the less celebrated benefits of viewing works of art, but visiting the Irwell Sculpture Trail is a chance to experience all three at the same time as seeing works by locally and internationally renowned artists. The 33 mile sculpture trail, which follows the River Irwell from Salford Quays all the way to Bacup in Pennine Lancashire, has been around for over a decade now, but recent reinvestment means that, as well as restoring some of the sculptures to prime condition, new, interactive features make the experience far more than just looking at art and going for a walk.

The sculpture trail started in Rossendale in Pennine Lancashire following a lottery bid and gradually expanded to reach as far south as Salford Quays, with artworks leading the visitor through the history of the industrial towns and cities that grew up alongside the River Irwell and the changing uses of the river and surrounding areas. It's a story not just about the Irwell, and the trains, canals and mills that follow its course (the trail regularly meets other waterways such as the Manchester and Bolton and Bury Canal, and the clusters north of Bury can be conveniently reached on the East Lancashire Railway), but local people, incorporating memories and experiences into several of the sculptures. However, some of the artworks on the sculpture trail fell into disrepair over time, and have only recently been restored. Diana Hamilton has been project manager for the Irwell Sculpture Trail since 2007 and is setting the direction for its future. She explained: “It's a really unwieldy project as four local authorities are working together. In the past there was a lack of thought when commissioning and a lack of understanding who would be responsible for maintenance, and that's a problem right across public art. Now there's a new mindset when commissioning public art of making sure there's a maintenance plan.”

Working with the Arts Council, an audit of the trail was carried out, looking at the state of the sculptures, the pathways and the access to the trail, and a five year plan developed. Diana explained: “We discovered some sculptures no-one knew about and incorporated them into the trail. Some people had walked past a sculpture for years and not known what it was. Some of the sculptures melted back into nature and naturally disappeared. Some had been vandalised and some were never meant to have a longer lifespan than they have.” The lack of public information previously available had also meant that some sculptures were very hard to find, and some of the trail went through private land or land that flooded. Suggested routes have now been changed to avoid private land, and the Environment Agency is looking at the land that floods. Diana said: “The trail has gone through a real period of change. It all happened organically. We heard people's frustrations about not being able to find the sculptures so turned the trail from a linear trail into clusters.”

A consultation was also held and, while there had been opposition to some of the sculptures at first, Diana says the artworks are now part of their communities: “There was so much local opposition to Tilted Vase in Ramsbottom, and Halo in Halsingden when they were planned, but people love them now.” Each area has a steering group, including representatives from tourist information and community groups, and they have a practical role commissioning temporary artworks alongside the trail. Some of the sculptures came about through the Section 106 planning clause, and councils along the trail made a commitment to spend the money on the arts, often involving the community.

Many of the artists lived in the area where their contribution to the trail is based, and artworks reflect local stories. In Whitefield, near Bury, the artist talked to park rangers and discovered there used to be 'fancy birds' in the park in Victorian times, leading to a simple but effective artwork entitled Canaries in the Park, which comprises still, hard-to-spot model birds sitting still on the railings, and acting as silent spectators in the bowling green. The colour scheme was drawn from tropical sweets from the local sweet factory. Some of the birds have also been adopted by the community and adorn the town's rooftops.

Other artworks give a sense of place. Diana describes Lee Quarry, near the Stacksteads cluster, where bikers interact with the sculptures and use them to perform tricks, as “an amazing performance space”, saying: “It's like being on the moon. You can use the sculptures to find your way around. They give you a sense of where you are.”

New signs and interpretation will help visitors make the most of their visit to each cluster, and QR codes have been added to the sculptures which anyone with a smartphone can scan to hear local stories as well as recordings of the artists and videos of events which have been held alongside the sculpture trail. Diana gives a macabre example: “An old mill owner used to throw children into the river in Salford when they were no longer needed and you can still see the gravestones along the river. There are little nuggets of stories like this to bring the trail alive. Children love gruesome stories; it adds another layer to the experience.” Visitors can also take part in a monster hunt in Rossendale and a geo treasure hunt.

However, you won't need a fancy phone to enjoy the trail. Diana says: “It's all very well if you have a smartphone to use a QR code but we also want to satisfy the rambler in their sixties and seventies. There's a really wide audience, from families with small children to ramblers on their annual expedition. We're keeping all these audiences happy.”

The Irwell Sculpture Trail works closely with other venues along the trail, and sculpture trail activities will tie in with events such as Bury Light Night and the chocolate festival in Ramsbottom, as well as the Olympic torch passing through Rossendale and Bury. An exhibition in light boxes at Piccadilly Station is currently linked up with the Ghost Cam at former stately home Ordsall Hall in Salford, one of the attractions which hosts sculptures along the trail, and performers from Salford's DIY Theatre Company have been bringing alive the Salford section of the trail. It's hoped future events will also include guided walks.

Diana said: “The sculpture trail is a free day out that gets people out and about and walking outside. Because each cluster of sculptures is part of a bigger project, people visit other areas they might not have been to before. Visitors might pick up a sculpture trail leaflet in Salford and end up in Rossendale in Lancashire to see more sculptures. Some people just go to visit a particular sculpture, but others might want to make a day of it and go for a walk.” Among the most popular sculptures are those at Clifton Country Park in Salford, which draw on the park's past as the site of a colliery. Diana said: “So many people don't know there's a country park in Salford, but the park treats the sculptures as an asset.”

With the relaunch of the sculpture trail website, and publication of a free, 32-page brochure in March, there's no better time to visit. The brochure, which will be available from local tourist information points, features information on each sculpture, including road names, parking, bus stops, toilets, places to eat and nearby attractions such as museums, and the website will host a route planner, ordnance survey information, news about events around the trail and resources for schools.
The sculpture trail works with other organisations involved with the environment and public art, and Diana is looking forward to collaborating with the Environment Agency. She said: “We want to experiment and challenge the idea of public art and public art commissioning. The Environment Agency is working on the Irwell and getting rid of the weirs, but they're not allowed to get rid of any of the material from the site so it needs to be reused, which gives us an opportunity to work with environmental artists. There is so much potential along the trail.”

Plan your visit to the Irwell Sculpture Trail at www.irwellsculpturetrail.co.uk.

This interview with Diana Hamilton took place during the writing of an article on the Irwell Sculpture Trail for Creative Tourist, which makes more detailed recommendations of some of the highlights along the trail in Greater Manchester: www.creativetourist.com/features/get-dirty-look-at-art-the-irwell-scupture-trail

Antonia Low: White Cube Longing, Chapel Street & Hope United Reformed Church

Berlin-based artist Antonia Low's work exposes what she sees as the 'impossibility of the white cube', a supposedly neutral place in which the visitor forgets their surroundings to concentrate on what is in the space, rather than the context in which it is displayed. In the past, she has used white cubes as starting points for installations that show up inevitable imperfections, exposing the infrastructure – a lift mechanism or wiring – hidden behind surfaces that are seemingly free of detail.

For White Cube Longing, Low has created a single focal point in a room where once there was none. The basement space in which White Cube Longing is displayed in Salford's Chapel Street and Hope United Reformed Church has numerous distractions relating to its multiple uses, from a netball basket to balloons hanging from the ceiling to a girls' brigade logo. White Cube Longing is a pristine white room, viewed from a serving hatch, that is cut off from the rest of the space (and now, due to the false walls and floor of the installation, only accessible via the serving hatch). Illuminated in neon, the room looks almost surgically clean and new, appearing to stand independently of time and space, yet the installation was only made possible because of the space's obsolescence as a kitchen for preparing and serving food. The kitchen did not meet hygiene standards because the lack of a dishwasher meant cups could not be washed at the required temperature for public use. Eventually the kitchen will be refurbished, but until then the church's minister is content to let the installation remain as a 'step in the middle, a quiet space'.

Low's installation draws you in, a glowing light among the basement's gloom. It also draws you into an institution which is in need of an attraction and a new purpose to get people through its doors. Once, churches were focal points for the community – places for routine and regularity, physical reminders among the rooftops of a common, unifying belief. Because of their scale, it's hard not to feel a sense of awed reverence and smallness in a church. As congregations dwindle, and ageing churchgoers are not replaced by younger generations, churches are shutting down and the buildings are left to face dereliction. Many are magnificent, but it's hard to find a new use for buildings so crafted and specific in their original intent and expensive to maintain.

White cube galleries have been accused of imbuing artworks with an air of sacredness, or imposing a formal distance between the exhibition and the viewer. The one object on display in White Cube Longing is a cupboard, the oldest of several which had been added to the kitchen over the years as the building's use evolved. The lack of activity in White Cube Longing makes you notice the varied life of the rest of the building, a place associated not just with worship but the diverse people who use it for non-religious purposes. The basement of the United Reformed Church is usually accessed through a separate, back entrance, but the curators and artist made the decision to bring visitors to White Cube Longing in through the main church itself, and past a new cafe area which has replaced the one in the basement. Low's installation makes you ponder the building's adaptability and wonder what these places are for now, which have been around for so long, and what is lost if they disappear.

White Cube Longing is the sixth in a series of performances, installations and interventions into the everyday around Manchester and Salford that comprise the Seven Sites project.

Visit White Cube Longing at Chapel Street & Hope United Reformed Church, Lamb Court, Chapel Street, Salford, M3 7AA daily from 11am-4pm until March 30.

'But First Maintain the Wall': Paul Nash's Dymchurch

"Serve God Honour the Queen
But First Maintain the Wall"
Romney Marsh motto

A frontier land facing the English channel, the coast of Romney Marsh has long been the last line of defence against foreign invaders. Strong fortifications — the round, brick masses of Martello towers, a redoubt fort atop a grassy mound at Dymchurch and, closer inland, a military canal — still stand, centuries after they were built to withstand the advances of Napoleon, an enemy who never came. It was this lonely, windswept stretch of coast, on the edge of the country and on the way to nowhere, where the painter Paul Nash chose to recuperate after witnessing first-hand the brutalities and destruction of the first world war, first in the trenches at Ypres and then as an official war artist.

When peacetime came, Nash took a small house, Rose Cottage, in the sleepy seaside village of Dymchurch, Kent. In the 1920s, he produced a series of paintings of the sea wall which stretches around the bay, built to defend the Marsh from the ongoing and ever-present threat of the sea. In front of the wall, at low tide, the sands stretch out into the horizon, a thin surface of water creating a reflective sheet that catches the changing colours of the Marsh sky. The sea’s ripples etch themselves into the sand and small streams spread as if stretching out networks of roots. At high tide, waves churn against the rocks shoring up the wall and submerge the steps that take walkers down onto the beach. The other side of the wall lies Dymchurch, at the edge of the vast, flat Marsh, scattered with sheep, occasional settlements and winding country roads.

It's thought that the sea wall which dominates this stretch of coast dates back to Roman times. In the fifteenth century, a ‘scot tax’ was demanded of all local landowners. If they lived above sea level they were let off — scot free. Later, in the eighteenth century, the wall was repaired with earth and branches from the Marsh. At the start of the nineteenth century, a three mile-long section was constructed using Kent rag stone and concrete. Today, you can see where the wall has been added to and extended in the different shades of concrete, which is flecked brown with the same shingle that collects at the edge of the beach below. The wall curves inwards around the coast, mimicking the rolling of the waves beneath and acting as both a shelter/windbreak for holidaymakers underneath it (from sand, from rain) and a barrier to contain the waves, scooping them up and sending them back out to sea.

On the bleakest of days, the grey of the sea wall reinforces the grey of the sea beneath and the sky above. Nash’s seascapes are often empty and stark, their colours hyperreal (see the dark greens, mustard yellow and forceful black of ‘Sea by Night, Dymchuch/Night Tide' or ‘Wall Against the Sea’, which casts the bay in the type of ominous, sickly glow that only occurs preceding a storm). Forms are simplified and suggested; the manmade and the natural merge into one. In ‘The End of the Steps’, a quiet scene dominated by the bulk of an impenetrable-looking concrete defence, the sharply angled sky looks as much of a construction as the manmade object. In ‘Winter Sea’, a fragmented sea sets out in massive slabs, shaded grey, black and white, towards a faint moon, like the regular descent of stone steps. When figures appear, as in ‘Promenade’, they turn their backs to the viewer, just as the wall turns its back on the village. In ‘Night Tide, Dymchurch’, the solid back of the solitary night time walker appears as just another line in the defence. It's this sparseness that makes Nash's seascapes the most powerful of his paintings: the emptiness of the sands amplifies feelings of solitude and loneliness, emphasising how small the human is in relation to the vast natural world, and brings to mind the strange semi-silence in the air, found only by the seaside, that multiplies the lone walker's thoughts, doubts and preoccupations into a background roar as inescapable as that of the sea.

Nash was of a generation that fought and suffered for the right to make a modern world, to sweep away the old and, out of chaos, build stability. In Romney Marsh, it’s as if time stood still. The view around the coast has changed little, save from the odd holiday park, new residential development and the sizeable bulk of Dungeness power stations in the distance. Nash left Dymchurch after a few years, moving a few miles across the border to East Sussex. The next decade, the world was at war again and Nash painted propaganda, before dying young after suffering years of ill health. The Romney Marsh coast once again played a part in the war effort: the Martello towers and the redoubt fort which, with each decade, grow closer to crumbling into the sea, were requisitioned as lookout points and stationed with anti-aircraft guns.

The war was won but the fight against the sea goes on. In the past decade, the sea wall has undergone extensive renovation, using precast and poured concrete and steel reinforcement, and was reopened in 2011. It’s a battle that will never finish: the metal has already started to rust and bleed into the wall, and the concrete is taking on the sea’s bright green, mossy sheen and dappled black and yellow bloom.

Related but unrelated:

Some Pathe newsreels of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, a miniature railway between Hythe and Dungeness in Kent (via Dymchurch), which was put to use during the second world war:

TOY TRAIN GOES TO WAR

WORLD'S SMALLEST TRAIN DEMOBBED

Daniel Fogarty's Totem: Work, leisure and the art of being useful

In March 2011, during the Merz Man festival that celebrated all things Kurt Schwitters and related, dance professor Valerie Preston-Dunlop led a walk down Manchester's Oxford Road reminiscing about running away from home to study under Rudolf Laban, who developed a new form of dance notation called Labanotation, which she described as being like a 'grammar' for dance¹. She recounted how Laban helped factories apply his theories of movement to mass production – an example of how the arts can overlap with and be useful to industry. By teaching workers how to co-ordinate themselves in the most effective ways, and making the most of their repeated movements, he could help maximise production in the factories and enable the workers to be productive for longer, at the same time as humanising their labour. She said that workers could also be taught to move in a certain way to do things they might not be used to doing – for example, women could unload heavy goods from containers on the ship canal.

The artwork of Daniel Fogarty is preoccupied with repetition and prolonging production. He applies multiple processes in the creation of one work, carrying on adding layers and corrupting the original until what started as one thing becomes something else and takes on an entirely new medium and existence. Among the works on show at Totem, Fogarty's first solo show in Manchester at Bureau gallery, is 'Cottage industry', a photographic print of an unfocused computer screen displaying a digital drawing. Another, 'and... and... and...', is a print of a photograph of a set of pinned up photocopies of a blow up digital drawing. 'Stammer' is a series inspired by digestive systems which started as sculptures made of unfired clay, which have been photographed and then painted over. Any one of the digestive systems series could be viewed as three works in one – each has elements of sculpture, but also photography and painting. More work is created for the artist, who keeps producing after what could have been taken as a finished product has been created – and, just like the constant, efficient churning of the digestive system, this reworking could keep on going indefinitely. However many times you repeat something, there are endless variations.
However, repetition has not bred perfection. All, rather than achieving a smooth, sleek finish, are roughly done and imprecise. Sometimes, roughness or a lack of precision is seen as a mark of a product being underfinished or carelessly made. In Fogarty's work, it's the opposite: it's the result of a work of being overfinished, or laboured over beyond the call of duty. Several of the works in Totem are made of concrete, including 'Plant Plant Plant Plant', a series of sculptures made by pouring concrete into moulds created using bricks, which were inspired by the patterns of suburban lawn edging and borders. Concrete, which is commonly associated with building work undertaken on an industrial scale, is generally a material that is valued more for its usefulness – its ability to be hardwearing outdoors in public places – than its decorative properties or suitability for craftmanship on a small scale. A concrete plant pot that was produced during Fogarty's residency at Bureau in summer 2011, part of the 'Helmet/shelter' series, is an object that is both beautiful and useful and has a function within and outside the gallery.

Laban tried to standardise ways of moving, or find a way to teach a common way of performing certain movements, despite movements being highly individual and differing naturally from person to person. One of Fogarty's interests is the imposition of standardisation through subtle graphical languages, especially motorway planting and the language of motorways. For example, before standardisation was imposed through road signage, silver birch trees were planted near junctions as a psychological reminder to the car driver that they were approaching a turning point in the road. We're surrounded by these hidden markers and symbols.

Even though Fogarty's works are created using moulds, or repetition of movements, actions and labour – methods typically used for mass production – he has corrupted any standardisation that might be expected to result from these processes and the marks of the artist have slipped through, visible in the finish of the artworks (just as the stammer is a highly individual movement, an involuntary utterance that slips into controlled movements of speech and language). Whatever material is used, whether paint, concrete or clay, there's always some kind of human presence visible, from the artist's brushstrokes to the pinching of clay. Unlike mass production, in which the efforts of the individual are subservient to the whole and are not visible in the final outcome seen by the consumer, the gestures and actions which have led up to Fogarty's artworks are a part of the finished product.

The theme of work (explicitly referred to in the title of the set 'Cottage Industry, Leisure Industry, Modern Industry'), and utility and usefulness, recurs throughout Totem, along with the tension between work and leisure (in cottage industries, this is the fact that production in cottage industries took place in people's homes, thereby blurring the distinction between leisure/living spaces and places of work and labour). In the set of gardening-inspired concrete sculptures 'Plant Plant Plant Plant', similarly, there's a clear crossover between work/utility and leisure (as well as an overlap between the decorative and the useful).

Typically, gardening is an activity associated those who spend a lot of time at home, for example retired people, as they have the time to devote to what can be quite a labour-intensive hobby, or weekend gardeners keeping busy on their days off. At what point does a gardener's labour cross over the fine line between work and leisure and start to become pleasure rather than toil? Production such as gardening is only defined as 'work' or 'leisure' depending on its context. The term 'gardening leave' is used to refer to a time of not-quite employment (it usually means an employee has left their employment but is still being paid by the previous employers for a period to prohibit the former employee taking up new employment), implying that gardening is the next most productive way of keeping busy to employment. Perhaps this is also why gardening appeals to retired people – it must be hard going from being productive eight hours a day, five days a week, for most of your working life, to not being expected to be useful for the best part of the day and not being watched over to ensure a certain level of production is maintained. As with Laban's factory workers, whose movements were made to conform to patterns and certain ways of doing things, work is a form of control and conditioning through repetition and routine.

If the meaning of 'totem' is taken as an emblem or symbol upheld as epitomising the values of a society, work could be seen as a totem of our society. Whatever right-wing scaremongers say about 'benefit scroungers', we are still a society built around the cult of work: a person's social worth, status, and often self-hood, is defined in terms of their employment, productive output and salary, rather than their hobbies, interests or leisure activities (think about how often you're asked what you 'do', and how you go about answering). Indeed, leisure and spare has become an industry in itself, including exercise. Whereas people would once have gone for a walk or a cycle ride (or been engaged in physical work throughout the day), we are now sold gym membership and personal trainers, an example of how work and 'doing something useful' is encroaching into our increasingly regimented leisure hours (going to the gym is commonly a chore or a duty rather than a pleasure).

For many young artists, art is something they are forced to fit into their spare time. Young people often find it difficult to make a career out of being an artist and artistic production has to be squeezed around the pattern of day jobs. In the context of the current economic and political climate, and cuts to the arts, it's time to look again at the value of artists and the arts. It's interesting to look at programmes such as the Federal Art Project, a depression era government scheme in the United States. Artists were employed as part of the New Deal to work painting murals in public buildings such as schools and post offices. The project, part of a wider scheme called the Works Progress Administration, provided accessible, inexpensive entertainment. It also acknowledged the value of artists, recognising professions such as 'artist' (along with 'playwright', 'musician' and 'writer', pursuits supported by parallel projects) as viable career paths, and the potential uses for art and culture to boost morale and be a force for public good.

Totem previews at Bureau, 60 Port Street, Manchester, on Friday February 10 from 6pm-8pm. The exhibition continues from February 11-March 17, opening Wednesdays to Fridays from 12pm-6pm and Saturdays from 12pm-5pm.

For more information visit www.bureaugallery.com.

www.danielfogarty.co.uk 

This text was written concurrently with an exhibition text comprising an exchange between the writer and the artist that took place in January 2012. This exchange will be available at the exhibition and online.

1Laban and Schwitters were both refugees from the Nazis and, in the 1940s, discussed collaborating on a Modern Dance Opera.

The Shrieking Violet issue 17

The Shrieking Violet issue 17 accidentally turned out to be an architecture fanzine (or at least, if there's a theme it would be buildings and the built environment), possibly a subconscious influence from visiting the Archizines exhibition in London in November. Pavilions run through the issue (and I have written about my favourite pavilions in architecture and art).

South Manchester-based illustrator Andy Carter was inspired by pavilions to create the cover. He says: “The inspiration for it came from when you said you were writing about pavilions, although I may have mistook that to mean 'bandstands'. So I just thought about what happens on bandstands like brass bands, street performers and chavs/tramps hanging around.” Andy is equally inspired by everyday life and more subjective narratives. His work is heavily reliant on line, shape and texture. He enjoys screen-printing and margaritas. I've wanted to ask Andy to do a cover ever since he illustrated a double page spread on Channel swimmer Sunny Lowry for the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention Souvenir programme.

Stuart Wheeler has kindly allowed me to reproduce a selection from a set of photos he took of Victor Pasmore's Apollo pavilion in Peterlee (currently top of my wish list for daytrip destinations), which has recently been listed. Stuart is an Architectural Assistant at 3DReid in Manchester and graduated from [Re_Map] unit at the Manchester School of Architecture. He tweets @stuwheeler.

Following the excitement of last year's Festival of Britain 60th anniversary year, Joe Austin has written about the spin-off Live Architecture exhibition that took place in Poplar in 1951. Joe is a qualified Architect, originally from the Midlands but a naturalised Londoner for the last 22 years or so (he lives just up the road from the site of the Live Architecture exhibition). Joe's interests are wide (his blog best illustrates his scattergun mind), but generally revolve around writing, design, architecture, art, culture and history. He likes nothing better than learning new aspects of things he thought he knew about. Joe is a fellow William Mitchell fan, and lover of twentieth century art and design, which is how I discovered his wonderful blog.

Kenn Taylor has contributed an article about the 'boom and bust' of social housing, with specific reference to the Woodchurch Estate in Birkenhead. Kenn is a writer and journalist based in Liverpool with a particular interest in the relationship between culture and the urban environment.

Liz Buckley has reviewed Lost is Found, an exhibition currently showing in gallery 1 at the Cornerhouse. Liz is a final year Art History student from Salford. She studies at Manchester University and is going to start an MA in Gallery Studies in September. She loves post-war art and is an aspiring curator and art critic in her spare time.

Jessica Mautner has written up a recipe for 'Liverpool Corpse Cakes' – biscuits inspired by both the local Chinese community and Victorian funeral rituals which were handed out to passers-by in Liverpool city centre in November. Jessica is a multidisciplinary artist based in Manchester. She makes temporary, site-specific encounters which are a political response to place, space, history and community. Her materials-based, experimental practice explores sensoria, particularly through texture and taste, and she is interested in the negotiation and subversion of built and planned environments by flexible organic forms. In the past few years, she has taken part in exhibitions, residencies and festivals across Europe and the UK; in January she made a new piece in Newcastle commissioned by Situation Rhubarb, and her short film Phi is showing at Bangkok Experimental Film Festival.

Richard Howe has written about Alfred Hitchock's classic film Spellbound. Richard is a Manchester-based filmmaker, caterer and musician (google Realitease@vimeo.com, Devilsorange@youtube.com, Tremors@vimeo.com). Look out for Dream Bubble, Realitease Feature and Frankenmovie projects. Hear his music here.

Steph Fletcher has drawn inspiration from Escher to illustrate Richard's article. Steph recently started an MA in art at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, and helps run the North West-based zine Twigs and Apples. She enjoys drawing, writing, cycling and vegan cooking.

Nick Mitchell has contributed two short stories. He was born in Bradford in 1975 and has lived in Manchester since 1999, working as a musician, writer and record label owner (Golden Lab Records). His musical projects have included Summum Bonum, I Had An Inkling, Beach Fuzz, A Wake, The Gamecock, Float Riverer and Chalaque. His stories and poems have been published in both the UK and the USA.

Read the Shrieking Violet online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Download and print your own copy of the Shrieking Violet here.

Very badly photocopied copies will can currently be found at Islington Mill, Salford and Cornerhouse, Manchester and will left around various places around Manchester city centre next week, including Piccadilly Records, Good Grief! shop (in the Soup Kitchen), Koffee Pot, Oklahoma and Nexus Art Cafe.

To request a copy in the post (free) or to contribute to future editions email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com or join the Shrieking Violet Facebook group.

Also recommended

Your City Is A Public Orchard is a new guide to foraging in the city made by Hotspur House-based Textbook Studio. It's a book with a handcrafted feel and plenty of pictures, which folds out into a page full of recipes for nettles, rosehips and much more! Best of all, it's free and can be picked up from various locations around the city.

Pavilions: Building for pleasure

When I was growing up, I had an usual pin-up on my bedroom wall; a sight to gaze at longingly and incorporate into the daydreams I constructed around my future. The pin-up was the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. To my teenage self, with its domes which appeared to glow softly golden in sunlight and extravagant details like no building I had seen before, the Pavilion represented a world that was exotic and glamorous. It was also tantalisingly within reach and grounded in the familiar English environment of the seaside town. I vowed that, as soon as I was old enough, I was going to move to Brighton and start an exciting new life in a flat in a Regency terrace within walking distance of the Brighton Pavilion. Living the building’s distinctive shadow would surely imbue my life with excitement and adventure.

Although I didn’t end up moving to Brighton, the Royal Pavilion sparked an interest in pavilions that stays with me today, from temporary structures and pavilions as works of art, to permanent and now iconic buildings.

Pavilions, which are defined as buildings dedicated to pleasure, encompass structures ranging from humble sports pavilions housing changing rooms to Mies Van der Rohe’s Barcelona pavilion, which provided a setting for his now famous Barcelona chair.

Pavilions have often been used to showcase and show off technical innovations, from the succession of World’s fairs, held throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which dazzled consumers with everything from automobiles to the latest products for the home (and wowed audiences at the 1939 New York World’s Fair with the highway-based model city of Futurama, a display sponsored by General Motors), to the 1951 Festival of Britain which was held to celebrate the centenary of Great Exhibition of 1851. The main Festival of Britain site was on the South Bank of the Thames in London, where 22 pavilions told the story of the British people and their achievements in science, technology and industrial design, themed The Land of Britain, The People of Britain and Discovery.

Pavilions still give nations a chance to show off their innovation at EXPOs (or world’s fairs) today. British designer Thomas Heatherwick’s spectacular pavilion for the 2010 Shanghai EXPO, a twenty high foot structure inspired by seeds which was designed to sway in the breeze, comprised acrylic sections each holding a seed from Kew Gardens’ Millennium Seed Bank.

Brighton’s Royal Pavilion is very much in the tradition of showing off, albeit the wealth of a private individual. It was completed in the early nineteenth century on the site of an earlier Marine Pavilion. Designed by John Nash, it exuded Oriental influences, inspired by India externally and using China as the basis for its decor. The Pavilion was the seaside home of George IV (then Prince Regent), where he could live a life of pleasure and excess far from the constraining influence of his parents. As Jonathan Meades put it in his 2005 TV documentary about the Pavilion, it was a place for George to live, entertain and pose, ‘the stage for a perpetual party’. The Pavilion is completely out of place in the town and is an especially striking sight at sunset and at night when it is illuminated. It is now such a symbol of the city that a simplified version appears in Brighton and Hove council’s logo.

Tastes change, and now I’m a bigger fan of the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea, just around the coast from Brighton in East Sussex, which was built in the International Modernist style. The sleek, streamlined Pavilion faces out to sea and has an escapist glamour, incorporating a sweeping staircase, sun terraces and big windows. Its sleek curves help the Pavilion settle into its surroundings: the bay windows of traditional seaside houses.

Whereas the Royal Pavilion was exclusive, extravagant and fanciful, however, the De La Warr pavilion is clean and unfussy, pragmatic and democratic, a public building that aimed to bring culture and leisure to the people of Bexhill, originally designed to incorporate an entertainment hall, restaurant and reading room. Like the Royal Pavilion, which featured gas lighting and flushing toilets (even for the servants!), the De La Warr was at the cutting edge of modernity when it opened in 1935 and was the first building in England to be constructed with a welded steel frame. It, too, was associated with a member of the aristocracy. The Pavilion was funded by the 9th Earl of De La Warr, who was mayor at the time. 

The De La Warr Pavilion was designed by young architects Erich Mendelsohn (who came to Britain shortly beforehand to escape the Nazis) and Serge Chermayeff. During the war the building was used by the military, and fell into disrepair. The Pavilion narrowly avoided becoming a Wetherspoon’s pub, but, after restoration in the late twentieth century, is now back to serving its original purpose bringing leisure and entertainment to the people of Bexhill, from exhibitions of nationally and internationally renowned artists to concerts and film screenings.

Another Pavilion that has seen its fortunes change since it was built is the Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee, County Durham, which was back in the news in late-2011 after it was awarded Grade II* listed status. Built in the Brutalist style out of reinforced concrete, and originally functioning as a bridge over a lake, it was designed by renowned abstract artist Victor Pasmore to be the focal point of a new town in a former mining area. As well as acting as a giant, outdoor public artwork in itself, it incorporated murals by the artist. Pasmore was used to collaborating with architects (he designed a mural for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and another for Kingston Bus Station) and was appointed Consulting director of urban design with Peterlee development corporation, where his role went beyond that of mere artist to have an input into the design of houses and other buildings. Pasmore envisaged ‘a synthesis of architect and artist in which common factors…were pooled in the interests of a common end’, and wanted the Pavilion to be named Apollo after the 1969 moon landing. Like the innovative design of the town itself, the Pavilion symbolised a brighter future of hope, optimism and adventure.

Unfortunately, the Pavilion soon became neglected and vandalised (though, reportedly, Pasmore welcomed graffiti as he thought it ‘humanised’ the structure) and, in the 1980s, a local councillor mounted a campaign to demolish the Pavilion.

I first became fascinated by the Apollo Pavilion a few years ago after I saw artists Jane and Louise Wilson’s four screen video installation Monument (Apollo Pavilion, Peterlee) at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. Made in 2003, it shows local children clambering over the structure and using it as a giant climbing frame. It’s an image that has stayed with me ever since: the fusion of art and the everyday, the practical and the decorative. Though the post-war architectural optimism the Pavilion epitomises has long since evaporated, the Pavilion itself has stood the test of time and underwent a major restoration 2009.

Among my favourite pavilions are those designed by the American artist Dan Graham*. Since the 1980s, Graham has been constructing two way mirror pavilions that sit somewhere between art and architecture, acting as kaleidoscopic halls of mirrors to be explored by the public. Two way mirror glass is both reflective and transparent, and Graham’s pavilions raise questions about corporate architecture and surveillance: who can see in and who can see out? The audience is spectator but also performer, highlighting the gap between the way we are seen by others and the way we see ourselves. Installed in towns and cities around the world, often in public spaces and parks, Graham’s pavilions question boundaries and reflect their surroundings but also corrupt them, reinterpreting the everyday day environment as a place of play and leisure, a space where the real becomes real and the natural unnatural (and vice versa). They’re places to people watch and watch the world go round, or just observe the changing sky. Play is important to Graham’s pavilions, from those designed especially for children and old people to watch cartoons, such as the drop-in daycare centre Waterloo Sunset, an installation at the Hayward Gallery from 2002-2003, to his 1989 Skateboard Pavilion.

Another pavilion which makes you look more closely at your surroundings is Luke Jerram’s acoustic wind pavilion Aeolus, which visited Salford Quays in 2011 as part of a tour that  also took in sites as diverse as Lyme Park, Cheshire, and the Eden Project in Cornwall. The Pavilion consists of stainless steel tubes that emit a low murmur when wind hits strings attached to the pavilion at the right frequency and causes them to vibrate. Press your ears to ears to the tubes and they hum different notes, speak into them and your voice bounces back at you.

An accompanying exhibition in the University of Salford explained that the pavilion was influenced by the concept of a room where the silence is so complete you can hear your own blood, and the beauty of the pavilion is that it makes you stop and listen and makes you more aware of what’s around you, whether it’s trams and cars or passing people. The structure also reflects and highlights the light outside.

One of the most impressive clusters of pavilions is in Venice, where the canal-side Giardini (gardens) holds 30 national pavilions built to to show off the talents of their countries at the city’s famous biennial art show (the city is also scattered with pavilions in old palazzi and churches). They were built in different styles over the twentieth century, from elaborate and neoclassical to solemn white cubes and light, airy modernist masterpieces, by some of the most important architects of the twentieth century including Alvar Aalto. Exploring the different pavilions is often as exciting as seeing the art they contain within – especially when the artwork transforms or disguises the building itself, for example Mike Nelson’s 2011 British Pavilion which turned the space into an uncannily lifelike recreation of a Turkish house. At the 2011 Biennale, the festival hosted for the first time para-pavilions – pavilions within pavilions curated by different artists – which comprised some of the most interesting exhibitions.

Since 2000, leading architects who had not hitherto built anything in Britain have been commissioned to create temporary pavilions, lasting for six months, outside the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Hyde Park. Architects have interpreted the brief in different ways, from Daniel Libeskind’s scrap metal-esque pavilion to Zaha Hadid’s marquee. Rem Koolhaas built a gas-filled orb, which was used for his regular collaborator Hans Ulrich Obrist’s 24 hour interview marathons, whereas Peter Zumthor envisaged a garden within a garden, installed in 2011. The Serpentine Pavilions can be purchased and reused, though they are generally not reinstalled in public places.

In Manchester, we have our own small bit of star architect. Tadao Ando was commissioned to design the Japanese Pavilion in Piccadilly Gardens as part of the redesign of city centre Manchester that took place after the 1996 IRA bomb and in the run up to the 2003 Commonwealth games. The Pavilion, which takes the form of a concrete wall separating the gardens from the bus interchange, has long divided Mancunians, who often see it as stark and unwelcoming. Ando has done some spectacular work, incorporating light and water into buildings such as museums and churches elsewhere in the world, but maybe there’s something lost in translation under the frequently grey skies of Manchester. My main complaint, though, is the use of the Pavilion: far from being an open public space for pleasure and enjoyment it holds, rather unimaginatively, a chain coffee shop and chain restaurant (neither of which I’ve ever felt any urge to pay to visit). With the city noticeably lacking bandstands from its public parks, couldn’t it at least be put to use as a space for performance and recreation, a stage for buskers?

*An engaging lecture by Graham on his pavilions from the Glasgow School of Art Vimeo channel:



Dan Graham, 'Pavilions' from GSA on Vimeo.

Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention 2012, Manchester, Saturday May 19

Far from becoming obsolete now anyone can freely share anything anywhere, anytime online, the fanzine is thriving in the age of digital culture, from the simplest photocopied diary-style zine to lavish artists' books and zines created especially for Kindle. The first Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention, held during Future Everything in 2011, looked at how self-publishers can harness digital technology to enhance and work alongside the printed word, using the two formats to engage and cross-promote between different audiences.

The second Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention will look at how the virtual world is allowing networks of zine makers to share publications, news and experiences all over the world. There will be a small charge of £2 to enter the building as a Future Everything venue.

Talks 

'Making a noise: An express ride through the world of punk and riot grrrl fanzines and the UK feminist underground, 1977-2012': Cazz Blase

Cazz Blase wrote the fanzine Aggamengmong Moggie between 1993-1999, Real Girls in 2001 and Harlot's Progress between 2002 - 2006. Along with Holly Combe, she is one of two music review editors at The F-Word website, for which she has written extensively about both women and the UK punk scene and the UK riot grrrl scene. She was a contributing author to the book Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now! (Black Dog Publishing, 2007). Cazz is from Stockport and blogs about Manchester and Greater Manchester at http://toolateforcake.wordpress.com. She works as a library assistant at Manchester University.

'Pam Ponders Paul Morley's Cat: The Wired and Wonderful World of City Fun': David Wilkinson

David Wilkinson is a writer, musician, public librarian and PhD student working on the politics of British post-punk. City Fun was a Mancunian countercultural publication founded by Andy Zero in 1978. After Liz Naylor and Cath Carroll joined the editorial team, it became the city's dominant post-punk paper until it folded in 1984.

Closed Caption/Rotherham Zine Library

Closed Caption aims to make subversive content through appropriation. This new group, which now replaces Rotherham Zine Library, will make zines that twist found content to create new meaning and revel in the absurdity of social norms. Closed Caption intend to use the zine library as a resource and are looking at how they can add their collection to existing events and places to create interesting new ways to read zines. They also hope to develop the collection by trading zines with others around the world.

Film

Watch Salford Zine Library's 2011 film Self Publishers of the World Take-over, which features self-publishers from all over the world talking about their work. The screening will be followed by a Q and A with director Craig John Barr.

Tours

Visitors will be able to take tours of the building for a small fee of £2.50.

Workshops

Join the Victoria Baths fanzine-making co-operative! 

A fanzine is a small, self-published book or magazine dedicated to a subject the people who are making it love. It is usually personal and handmade and contains a mixture of drawings, writing and things like collages and photos. We think Victoria Baths deserves its own fanzine but we need your help! We want visitors to the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention to help us make a fanzine all about this unique, beautiful building and show us what they like best about this fascinating place!

Join in the workshops in the former superintendent's flat to make either your own, individual Victoria Baths fanzine or add to a Bunting Book that will be displayed in Victoria Baths as one big fanzine for future visitors to see.

Visitors will be able to use:

Selected material from the Victoria Baths Archive 
Be inspired by pictures and memories of the building's past from the Victoria Baths Archive.

Lino cutting and relief printing 
Explore simple relief printing and create unique illustrations and repeatable patterns to adorn your own hand-made zine. Looking at the decorative interiors of Victoria Baths as inspiration, use traditional lino and easy quickprint foam to make unique tile-sized blocks to print wherever you want.

Button book binding 
Discover the stitches to bind and design your very own book using buttons, thread, soft papers and card. You can decorate your book with embroidered stitches inspired by the architecture of the Victoria Baths.

Children welcome.

Co-operative printing

2012 is the United Nations' first International Year of Co-operatives. Leeds-based Footprint Workers' Co-operative are bringing along a Risograph and will discuss how to prepare material for print on a Risograph — learn about page imposition, limits on paper size and margins, two colour work and picture quality for the Risograph digital duplicator with a quick guide to communicating with printers. Footprint will help you get the most of the risograph and make your zines and fliers look better.

Co-operative working and living is creative, empowering and potentially radically anti-capitalist.

Find out:

What are co-ops and why should you be in one? Including workers' co-ops, housing co-ops, community co-ops, collective power and common ownership.

'Alice in apps land: explore your smart phone and your environment', presented by Visual Think Map in collaboration with Shift Space.

During this workshop you will discover the local landscape through digital stories and learn more about apps and the functionality of how your phone can enliven the world around you. Through an interactive and engaging tour of the area near Victoria Baths you will discover and digitally collate, using your phone, a variety of people's memories and your own as we introduce you to new apps and narratives, including old photos and memorabilia of the area. We'll finish by making an interactive map where everyone can share what they've made and then print a map. DON'T FORGET TO BRING YOUR PHONE AND WE'LL SEE YOU THERE!

'Vapid in a Day' 

Feminist duo Vapid Kitten invite visitors to contribute creatively to a special edition of the fanzine Vapid Kitten (published both in print and for Kindle). They will be constructing issue 8, themed 'Collaboration', throughout the day at the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention, aiming to include a big mishmash of experiences, words, drawings, collage and poems.

Vapid Kitten will provide some arty equipment and suggestions to get you started and would like to get as many people involved as possible. At the end of the day everyone involved will get a free digital copy of the zine.

Shop

Fanzines from across the country will be available to browse and buy. Nottingham's Caribou, a zine shop in a vintage caravan, will be setting up shop outside the building.

Food

Norwich-based Deerly Beloved Bakery is proud to be celebrating its first birthday at the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention, returning with good food that is cruelty free including vegan cakes, whoopie pies, brownies and savoury pies and pizza slices. Deerly Beloved Bakery specialises in vegan cakes, pastries, biscuits, cupcakes, muffins, breads, salads, starters, mains and desserts. It does not use any animal products. All cakes and bakes are made by hand in small batches using real bourbon vanilla, unrefined non-bone char sugars and margarines free from hydrogenated fats. No artificial preservatives or flavourings are used.

Exhibition

Posters of Inspirational European Women: Taken from the zine 'Shape & Situate' 

Leeds-based fanzine-maker Melanie Maddison will display a series of posters of inspirational European women around the balcony of the female pool, from her zine entitled 'Shape & Situate'. The posters highlight the (often hidden) history and lives of radical, inspirational women and women's collectives from Europe, connecting us with the past, inspiring us in the present and visually bringing women’s social and political history to life and into view.

If you would be interested in volunteering to help out on the day, please email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com

Facebook event

Listen to the Shrieking Violet discussing the event on All FM's Under the Pavement radio show, accompanied by musical selections from some of the speakers, here:

UtP 26/4/12 Fanzine focus by Under The Pavement on Mixcloud

See more photos from last year's event here, here and here. Poster by Kate Prior.

Future Everything events elsewhere in the building: Handmade will be a day of contemporary craft, digital hacking, interactivities and DIY culture, including a craft fair and a workshop by Manchester Craft and Design Centre. Find out what's on at http://futureeverything.org/art/whats-on-at-handmade.