Hey everyone!
It’s warm and sweaty and I feel like I’m walking through tar.
Summer 2k21 is here.
Burning Ocean Summer. Real hot earth shit.
Below is this weeks selections.
Enjoy and keep safe
5th-9th July
Free
Five years ago, Jamie Wood walked for 10 days between Coventry in Warwickshire and Treherbert in South Wales.
It was a homemade pilgrimage in search of roots, retracing the movement of his ancestors. He spread his grandparents’ ashes along the way and recorded the sound from the unfolding adventure.
This downloadable audio podcast is an invitation for you to get lost in that sound, whilst you give yourself an hour outside and reconnect to where you came from.
There is More Hurt in Healing by Monica Kamara and Stace
10th July
Pay What You Can
There is more hurt in healing is a cosy evening curated by Monica Kamara, who invites fellow female artists to share their experiences of getting hurt and the healing process that follows. Her goal for this evening is to create a safe space where artists can express themselves through music, visuals and poetry. Additionally, she would love to include the audience in this process, by inviting them to dialogue and to a group meditation. Her message is that healing is a process which happens within, but does not have to be done alone.
Death Spells by ongoing project & Mena El Shazly
9th July
€4
We finally present our cooking-talk-show ‘Death Spells’ in collaboration with Mena El Shazly as an online video. A show exploring the longing for immortality and the sense of dread towards the feeling and thinking of our ‚disappearance’ that is today as strong as it would be to the people of Ancient Egypt.
Death Spells created a show that questioned the parallel promise made by ancient rituals and social media- all about desiring to live forever and facing death as a part ofour lives. Local perspectives from Cairo and Mannheim where shared in a live- streamed show, happening at the same time in Germany and Cairo.
The Return of Danton by Collective Ma'louba
until 17th July
from £0
A collective of German-based Syrian actors is rehearsing a contemporary adaptation of Georg Büchner’s Danton’s Death. A shattering, political drama, at its centre is a conflict between two giant figures of the French Revolution, Danton and Robespierre.
It is considered to be one of the greatest revolutionary works of European theatre. It is also terribly complex and convoluted, and the translation into Arabic from the German isn’t particularly good.
The company’s director believes this adaptation of a German classic will secure them funding. But the playwright turned dramaturg was more keen on writing a new play about the everyday lives of Syrian refugees living abroad.
As the company wrestles with Büchner’s manically intense play, life mirrors art as the two lead actors are caught up in the arguments between the writer and director.
Between catastrophic line runs and overlong cigarette breaks, the four lock horns about their conflicted views on the Syrian revolution and their roles as artists in exile.
Rehearsals progress and the tensions and disagreements grow as the company - almost unknowingly - engage more deeply with the themes of the play: What is a revolution? When does it end? Ten years after the Syrian revolution, do they really understand what happened and how they can tell their story?
Return of Danton is a new play by Syrian playwright Mudar Alhaggi and directed by Omar Elerian. Written and performed in Arabic, the play is a contemporary exploration of how the dynamics of political revolutions - from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring - can be reflected within the politics of the rehearsal room.
8th July
Pay what you can from £3
What makes some foreigners more ‘acceptable’ than others? What is the cost of belonging?
Set in a landscape of social distancing, social media, WhatsApp and Zoom calls, iMelania is an audio-visual experience that takes place on your phone and desktop. Varjack-Lowry use Melania Trump as an avatar to blur their narratives and participants’ stories; sharing, obscuring and questioning experiences of being foreign in post-Brexit Britain.
iMelania was due to preview at the Barbican in 2020. This is a digital development of that work, set in the borderless land of the internet. With the overwhelming nature of the global digital landscape, how do we use social media to engage with current affairs and connect with one other? How do we use it to escape?
A playful, dizzying, online exploration of impossible twinning between a duo of dual heritage women investigating borders and belonging.
Keeping it brief this week becuase I AM TIRED. Next weeks is going to be a bit different so that means it’ll probably be a bit delayed. There will be one next week. Will it be on a Monday? maybe, who knows. I certainly don’t!
See you soon
drink water
Josh xx