Andy and I arrived yesterday Wednesday July 3 to attend our sixth Manchester International Festival. Every two years for 18 days Manchester hosts an extraordinarily impressive and powerful festival of art and culture, featuring events conceived to premiere at MIF, emphasizing multi-genre, multi-media, collaborative, immersive, interactive, and sensitively site-specific productions, exhibitions, and performances. Andy and I are both proud and enthusiastic members and supporters of MIF and have been since immediately after our first MIF, in 2009. Much else always transpires in Manchester at the same time as MIF and this is a city replete with attractions and happenings of multiply diverse kinds so we can only attend to a small fraction. But we do what we can. Today July 4 is the opening of MIF 2019 and we have two events later today. Earlier today we visited multiple exhibitions across the city commemorating the 200th anniversary of the infamous but ultimately enormously transformationally influential Peterloo Massacre in Manchester. As our time at MIF 2019 and in Manchester proceeds I will share more here.
Yesterday, Day One, we attended the opening free event “Bells for Peace,” at Cathedral Square, conceived and led by Yoko Ono (talking to us and singing with us via satellite). We all rang bells, following various broad instructions, for close to a half hour after viewing two short films about efforts working for peace in Greater Manchester and short speeches explaining the motivations behind and objectives for this event. 4,000 specially designed bells organizers distributed to attendees, for free and to keep, while over 500 people cast their original bells and numerous others brought bells of special significance in their lives and that of their families and communities; a number spoke to us about those bells of theirs and what peace meant to them. According to Yoko above all else “peace is power.” It was a fun interactive and participatory opening–short, simple, and sweet. It made me think of how much more I can yet deliberately and consciously strive for inner peace in order to contribute all the more effectively and powerfully to outer peace. Multiple thousands attended and I can only hope at the least the memory of us all coming together to ring bells for peace will make some positive difference in a world all too full of violence, hatred, deprivation, destruction, and war.
https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/bells-for-peace/
Later we attended “Invisible Cities” at the cavernous former Mayfield depot, a multi-media, multi-genre adaptation of Italo Calvino's novel of the same name (theatre in the octagon as opposed to theatre in the round). The novel has long been considered altogether beyond theatrical adaptation but, typically of MIF, the challenge was accepted bringing together an array of writers, actors, theatre directors and designers, dancers and choreographers, video and lighting artists, and musicians. It is a highly abstract work, although evidently less so than the novel, involving Marco Polo describing a series of imaginary cities to Kubla Khan while in between discussing what constitutes the relationship between imaginary and real. Many other ‘big issues' are addressed as well while no conclusive answers are offered despite Khan's frequently repeatedly restless demands for the latter. Dangers of seeking to know all and strive for perfection are likewise strongly emphasized. Patterns can be tentatively and tenuously glimpsed and powerfully felt but not fully understood and certainly not fully mastered. Ecological crisis and the destructive effects of restless consumerism and a culture of accumulating rubbish are emphasized especially strongly in the closing, sixth, scene “Despair,” twice as long as the five preceding scenes (“Questions,” “Language,” “Desire,” “Health,” and “Longing”). I found the dancers and the music particularly compelling; the dancers engaged in complicatedly intimately interactive geometric configurations, suggestive of a dramatic exploration of and inquiry into what specific imagined cities might in essence be like as well as into the meaning of the section theme as embodied in these cities, while the music encompassed a distinct range of dominant timbres, densities, volumes, pitch intervals, figures and movements in each scene yet maintaining a notable level of consistency and precise inter-articulation across scenes. I am not quite sure what to make of this production, as I was unfortunately previously unfamiliar with Calvino's novel, but the idea of cities within cities within cities on ad infinitum and the magical to marvelous bending of the imaginary into the real-/and vice-versa–is intriguing. How much of a city is down to what is and can be remembered as well as how so and by whom? How are cities all alike and yet different? How many cities exist within cities and in what kinds of potentially infinite layers? How have human beings been reconstructed ourselves into who and what we are by way of the cities we form and in which we live out our lives? What is and what should be the relation between the material and the ideal within any city?
https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/invisible-cities/
Andy found a scene depicting an ostensibly ‘perfect city' inexorably becoming a ‘city of monsters' striking. Indeed much of the production seemed to once more advance a by now long familiar critique of the aspirations of the European Enlightenment in which the pursuit of the ‘perfection of knowledge' with the steady advance of reason, science, and technology leads not to ‘the perfection of man' but rather to a great many hugely destructive consequences for all life on this planet, as well as considerable disenchantment concerning Enlightenment hopes and dreams.
More photos from our first two full days next.
Tonight's event (5 July 2019): a performance of “Alphabus,” an original hip hop dance and poetic spoken word performance recounting a new myth explaining the origin and development of human language and its interelations with other sign systems, notably dance. A collaboration between FlexN and Young Identity. The extraordinary dexterity and fluidity of the dance moves and the flow of the poetry in alignment with the dancing and the beats I found the most impressive. The crowd was extremely enthusiastic and they, FlexN and Young Identity, gave us an appreciatively spirited encore performance.
https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/alphabus/
One other feature long impressing me concerning MIF involves the effort to engage with topical issues and to spark discussion and action to address matters of social and political urgency, including by seeking to involve many Mancunians from diverse and especially all too often marginalized populations and communities. Today we attended a special exhibition by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, “Parliament of Ghosts,” at the Whitworth Art Gallery. Mahama specializes in recovering and reassembling building materials and materials from schools and railroads in British colonial times and in the immediate heady days of independence and hope under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. As well as close shot photographs and strip fabric collages representative of a kaleidoscope of Ghanaian life-experiences and life-passages as well as dreams, hopes, worries, and fears. In rural North Ghana as well as in the capital city of Accra massive efforts have been underway for some time to repurpose decaying structures and furnishings to meet pressing contemporary needs.
This afternoon, Saturday 6 July, we attended an hour-long performance of ‘Protest Music' in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre and carrying the spirit of protest forward in direct connection with immediate and pressing focuses of need for protest today. A collaboration among MC Fox (Levelz, Swing Ting), Che3kz, performers from arts and homelessness charity Streetwise Opera, electronic composer/producer Mandy Wigby (aka Architects of Rosslyn), and the Ignition Orchestra, led by Katie Chatburn. Here's a link to further details:
https://www.rncm.ac.uk/production/protest-music/
One early observation, based on events so far and reviews of others I have read: artists and audiences, especially younger, are eager to invent new myths to help explain where we are at, from where we have come, how we got to where we are at, what possibilities can we pursue ahead and what needs to be done in order to even begin to hope we might realize what we want and need. The mythopoetic imagination is alive, at least in Manchester July 2019, even as the immediate future appears fraught and frightening.
Some more recent photos:
The Manchester International Festival, for me, always emphasizes how we are globally interconnected and interdependent and long have been, as well as how much can be gained, indeed created, by working across divides that separate, segregate, and hierarchically distinguish groups of people–as well as the importance of knowing our history, including that which is difficult, painful, and even outrageous and shameful, and owning it. Britons all need to be taught in depth and detail about the British Empire, what it was like, and about all those who resisted it, valiantly, including a great many Britons.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/06/britains-story-empire-based-myth-need-know-truth?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Today Sunday 7 July ANU Theatre Company are doing a host of street theatre performances all around Manchester City Centre, inspired by Peterloo, yet focusing on today's challenges. Characteristically Manchester Immersive and Interactive and Ingeniously Site-Specific. A common theme concerns the huge costs, in the Brexit era, of divide and conquer along lines of race, ethnicity, and nationality, as well as potential for resisting and overcoming the same.
One of another of the many outstanding features of MIF involves the foregrounding of the experiences, identities, perspectives, and indeed literal voices of homeless people/rough sleepers, migrants and refugees, and Muslim British women of color. The closing event, “Shibboleth” as part of ANU's “Anvil” series today is especially exemplary in this regard: deeply moving in blending past and present struggles of ‘the many against the few'.
The climactic event of the day, 7 July: the premiere of the oratorio, _The Anvil_ at The Bridgewater Hall, inspired by and reflecting on the legacy of Peterloo. This is a 45 minutes long work performed by the BBC Philharmonic, the Hallé Choir, the Hallé Youth Choir, Hallé Ancoats Community Choir, and soloists Christopher Purves, Baritone, and Kate Royal, Piano. Michael Symmons Roberts wrote the libretto, Emily Howard composed the music, and Ben Gernon conducted. It was quite rousing and vividly conjured the sense and feeling of crowds in motion, and collision, at a momentous historic moment. An after-performance conversation with Roberts, Howard, and ANU Theatre Company Director Louise Lowe, by the BBC Philharmonic's Simon Webb was highly informative in attesting to and explaining the lengthy and complicated process of collaboration today's _Anvil_ series involved as well as what kinds of research and cognition the entire multi-stage work demanded. I appreciate the emphasis here at MIF and at Manchester on daring and novel and significant collaboration greatly.
Some more recent photos:
Sometimes, on long trips abroad, I really need some down time because my hyper-sensitive digestive system can all too easily struggle despite strenuous efforts on my part to vigilantly anticipate and respond to any problem. It generally takes me a lot to experience dissatisfaction with a haircut. I have long gone repeatedly to the same place for years on in, not ever really knowing what to ask for and always simply hoping whatever they recommend would suffice. But I did feel unusually dissatisfied with my haircut from my regular stylist in Eau Claire, which I got right before our trip to Manchester. So today, on an off day in between Manchester International Festival events, besides walking widely about and attending to some other errands, I decided to get my 2nd ever haircut in a major UK city. The photos show the result. According to my Manchester stylist, “whoever just cut your hair before made a right bollocks of it so we need to go extremely short.” The shortest my hair has been in many years.
Tuesday 9 July we took time to tour “My Head is Disconnected” at HOME, an exhibition of David Lynchs's paintings, drawings, lithographs, sculptures, and mixed media collages as part of a special ‘Lynch residency' during MIF and extending into September. Throughout this time films and TV show episodes created by Lynch and inspiring of Lynch as well as talks via satellite with Lynch, directly here in Manchester about Lynch and his creations, and more besides is taking place. Lynch's lesser known visual art is impressively conceived and executed, clearly overtly surrealist and frequently fusing the cartoonish with the weird. “Chapters” include Nothing Here, City on Fire, Industrial Empire, and Bedtime Stories. Definitely fits with Lynch's work in film and television and definitely deeply and strangely oneiric. Here are some examples:
And here are some other images from our walk about Manchester earlier today:
Late last night, Tuesday the 9th of July, as part of MIF 2019, we attended “TREE,” which was another immersive, interactive, multi-media, multi-genre, and extensively collaborative original production. The show explores the ongoing struggle to come to grips with substantial inequity in land ownership and access to material advantage in supposedly post-apartheid South Africa, as well as complexities involved in making sense of multi-racial and multi-national identities. It was especially impressive as spectacle, and for all of the energy invested and involved; the form is the substance with this show. We were in the midst and participants within the unfolding of the drama. Here's a link to more information:
https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/tree/
We try to take some reasonably long walks in different directions each day while here. Today we ventured quite a ways into Salford. Here are some photos from today and shortly before that:
The UK today maintains serious problems with socio-economic inequality and in particular poverty, destitution, homelessness, and an outrageous lack of affordable housing. Manchester right now is about as close to any place in the UK deserving to be identified as a ‘boom city'. In the two years since we last spent three weeks here an enormous amount of construction, and indeed of quite amazing skyscrapers, has begun; unfortunately far too much of this seems to be for ‘luxury housing'–one thing neither the UK nor Manchester really needs. I sincerely hope a genuinely socialist Labour Party will be elected into government soon. I hope such a government will show the necessary courage to expropriate substantial amounts of currently ‘privately owned' investment ‘luxury housing' to house those who truly need it and are in genuinely desperate straits. A minimum 25% of all units in all new housing projects should be dedicated to helping house those in serious need: 12.5% for homeless people and for all the support services they need to get their lives in order, and 12.5% to help those not (yet) homeless but who could otherwise hardly afford to rent (let alone buy) just about anywhere.
Nevertheless, the construction is impressive and is definitely changing and promising to change not only the skyline but also the broader architectural mix of Manchester quite dramatically. Here are some photos of our walk along the Chester Road well into Trafford and then back along the city centre canals earlier today.
Here's a useful article highlighting some of the most interesting of major construction projects taking place in Manchester:
https://www.dbf-law.co.uk/7-of-the-most-exciting-property-developments-coming-to-manchester-in-2019-beyond/
Last night, Thursday 11 July, we attended a performance of Maggie the Cat, a playfully subversive, gender-bending, voguing deconstruction of Tennessee Williams' is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. This show is conceived, directed, choreographed, and designed (costume, set, and sound) by Trajal Harrell, who performs (sings, beat boxes, scats, and dances) with ten other dancers. The show imagines the servants from Williams' play, marginalized to virtual invisibility in that drama, taking center stage acting out a host of cheeky performances with pillows, towels, clothing, and other household furniture and furnishings. Much of this is danced directly toward the audience, as on a fashion show catwalk, while numerous other humorous references to cats are included. It was a most impressive, ingenious, and entertaining performance, unlike virtually anything I have ever before attended. Here's a link to further information:
https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/maggie-the-cat/
A few more recent photos:
Andy and I attended the sole performance of Re: Creating Europe Friday evening the 12th of July at the Lowry Lyric Theatre as part of the 2019 Manchester International Festival. The production was directed by Ivo Van Hove and featured International Theater Amsterdam along with five notable guest performers. I wish I could obtain a video copy to share with my Fall 2019 English 459/659 students. It was primarily a series of dramatic readings of various and sundry major historical figures commenting on the meaning of ‘Europe’ and ‘The European Union’ but it was nearly through its 90 minutes run before I thought about the time; they were that captivating in their readings. And the production ended with a playing of the European Union anthem ‘Ode to Joy’ and a chance to sing along. Still, the list of figures whose perspectives these actors and writers shared included Margaret Thatcher, Nigel Farage, Anne Widdicombe, Victor Orban, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and, yes, even Ayn Rand as well as the likes of Victor Hugo, Susan Sontag, and Simone Veil—along with a most impressive opening reading from Michael Morpurgo of his own text. Definitely pro-EU, but recognizing its challenges and need for ‘recreation’. Here's a link with more information:
https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/recreating-
Yesterday, Saturday the 13th of July, or perhaps late the day before, I received a sweet email message from a student in my Spring 2019 Introduction to Critical Studies class thanking me for enabling her and another student in the same class to become BFFs. That was kind and it confirms what I in fact deliberately strive to do, in how I teach that class and all other classes as well: provide ample opportunity, and indeed real incentive and encouragement, for students to make new, and especially good, friends. It is, as I see it, a most valuable aim and accomplishment. I have been routinely receiving so many kind and appreciative communications from students recently, including almost all indicating they hope to take further classes with me and work with me further in the future, that it feels poignant in considering I will most likely retire relatively soon (and that Andy and I have already begun planning for that time). But I will be happy to go out, in this stage of my life and my work, when the time does come, on a high. And my experiences as a teacher, and a professor, will always subsequently travel with me and always remain intrinsic to whom I am and what I am about.
We continue to enjoy our time in Manchester and at MIF 2019. Yesterday my mother Marilyn, brother Phil, and sister-in-law Crystal arrived here as well. This is their fourth visit to Manchester and MIF and to meet up with us. They had a busy first day. It was great to meet up with them, as always.
Last night under a densely packed Festival Square tent, in front of Manchester Town Hall, Andy and I pushed our way close to front and center to attend a short, late announced, but nonetheless highly distinctive live performance from Laurie Anderson. We were happy to do; I have been following Laurie Anderson ever since ‘O Superman’ was initially released and quickly became a surprise breakthrough hit on US ‘college radio’.
More recent photos:
I have a lot more to add, to bring this up to date, covering the last few days, but will get there soon.
The next event we attended on Sunday the 14th of July was an installation, “Atmospheric Memory,” at the Museum of Science and Industry, inspired by computer pioneer Charles Babbage's idea that all sounds leave permanent traces and can potentially be accessed through the development of technology and the cultivation of an aptly sensitive and carefully attuned mindset. This was a quite gigantic installation which involved a host of elaborate machines sharing a vast panoply of sounds, many of them convertible into physical and tactile correlatives and with many opportunities for the audience to contribute, interact, and collaborate. And to wonder. It was indeed a quite mesmerizing experience and it compellingly engaged intersections among science, art, and spirituality. Here is a link to more information:
https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/atmospheric-memory/
And here are some photos from the installation:
Monday the 15th of July was the 63rd anniversary of Ian Curtis’s birthday. It was a most fitting day to visit his gravesite in Macclesfield, which we did, for the eighth time. Multiple fresh flowers decorated the site. (We also visited the house in which Ian and Debbie lived and where he died.). I didn’t purchase any flowers myself, this time. But if I did I would have added the following written note, echoing what I said, aloud, while there: “Dear Ian. Happy Birthday. I so terribly do wish you were here to share it. To a fantastic artist; an inspirational visionary; and a dark angel.” It is absolutely incredible the extreme influence and impact that deeply troubled but extraordinarily brilliant young man has exerted and continues to exert within and upon my life. Here are some photos:
That same Monday night the 15th of July we attended The Tao of Glass as part of MIF 2019. It was the most impressive and most memorable event we have attended to date at this year’s festival. Phelim McDermott is a phenomenal, amazing, spellbinding storyteller as well as director, performer, and puppeteer and the show climaxed with Philip Glass himself entering, previously unannounced, to play his own music at the piano. The show is ultimately about itself, about its lengthy and complicated process of conception and development, about an interwoven series of eight autobiographical to mythical stories, about dreaming and its relation to reality, about deep democracy, about beauty and subliminality, about consciousness and creativity, about where music comes from, about collaboration and friendship, about life’s passages and mortality, about fundamental questions, about materiality and spirituality, and, ultimately, about the impact one musician’s music can exert within and upon the life-experience and life-praxis of a passionately devoted listener and ‘fan’, from teenage to older life (certainly an issue which deeply resonates with me personally). The production was consistently thoughtfully staged, making full use of the wonderful resources of the Royal Exchange Theater, and all the contributors, including the musicians and fellow performers and puppeteers, did a great job. It was one of those artistic productions that clearly communicated powerful life lessons as well as being deeply moving. Here is a link to more information:
https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/tao-of-glass/
And here are some more photos from Monday:
Andy and I traveled to Liverpool Tuesday 16 July by rail to first attend a major, comprehensive Keith Haring exhibition at the Tate Liverpool. It was large, colorful, and engaging. Haring is a most important artist in my life. He was a favorite of mine and of friends and comrades going through the same highs and lows of gay culture and AIDS activism in the 1980s. Recently I read a NYT article about how difficult it was for Pete Buttigieg to even contemplate coming out as gay in the 2000s, given how hostile he perceived the world around to be, even at Harvard. I do sympathize but I also thought imagine doing so in the mid 80s, which was my experience. I was already quite radically inclined but that experience of necessity radicalized me all the further; sheer survival depended on collective solidarity in active resistance and struggle.
This is my first time back in Liverpool in 15 years. On the train here, reading a collection of reflections on the meaning of ‘Europe’ to a diverse array of writers, I read Sanjeev Bhaskar’s autobiographical account of his first miserable experience visiting Paris which disinclined him to want to come back for a good many years. When he finally did, more than 20 years later, he enjoyed the experience in Paris he always hoped to have. 15 years ago I worked extremely hard and with great anxiety to carefully prepare a presentation for an international conference of Irish Studies organizations. I focused on representations of Northern Ireland and ‘The Troubles’ in Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series and I examined these in connection with a complex history of relations between Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as the continuing impact of sectarianism in Scotland. In the questions after my presentation snobbery initially prevailed with commentators finding it hard to believe anyone could take seriously ‘crime fiction’ which is, at best, ‘beach reading’ and ‘popular’ not ‘fine’ or ‘high’ art. And otherwise ridiculous comments followed, suggesting because Rankin was from Edinburgh he knew nothing of Glasgow and there was not and never had been any sectarianism in Glasgow. The plenary speech was also a dreadful denunciation of popular culture and popular culture studies, while also advocating a return to examining poetry in entirely formal terms (and suggesting only a rarefied elite could ever truly appreciate poetry). And one particularly loud and obstinate woman continually bellowed at me ‘Rebus!’ whenever she was even in distant sight of me, throughout the conference, seemingly willfully oblivious to the fact I was not Rankin’s fictional character. We spent a week here and because of the conference I am afraid I developed negative associations with Liverpool. But today has eradicated those. I am now pleased with and happy in Liverpool. We next visited radical bookstore News from Nowhere before returning to Manchester. It was a most impressive, engaging, and welcome place. I am delighted to find and support this bookstore, which is community-based and community-centered as well as owner and run as a cooperative. Here is more about the Keith Haring exhibition:
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/keith-haring
Here are some relevant photos from our time in Liverpool:
Wednesday 17 July we attended Dystopia 987 as part of MIF 2019, conceived and headlined by Skepta, and taking place in some remote former mammoth industrial buildings near Mayfield Depot. Essentially it was what organizers repeatedly described it as: a rave. Plenty of effort was invested to simulate the days when raves were truly out of the way and underground. Andy and I demonstrated we are able to continue to dance quite impressively to loud, hard, drum and bass heavy electronic music better than most youngsters, and received multiple compliments on so doing, during the sets from the opening acts. Then Skepta shared a 50 minutes long set. It was certainly good to see and hear him perform live in person. But I have a couple of caveats. One, ‘dystopia’ here is seemingly simply the world outside this ostensibly temporary safe and happy place, where we are all supposed to focus solely on the music and to share our positive energy. In other words, nothing new about the conception of this rave. Second, initially in the ‘fourth level’ room we were led into for Skepta’s performance I came closer to being crushed at a gig, concert, rave, or club night than I ever have and I have attended an enormous number of these over many years; we were not adequately directed into both sides of the room opposite the giant tower from which Skepta was performing. But Andy and I managed to quickly escape to the other side just as Skepta asked us ‘if we all feel safe?’ I responded ‘now I do, but I didn’t just minutes ago’. In sum, though, I am happy to see and hear a leading grime master perform live up close and a crowd go wild with enthusiasm for his songs. Here's a link to more information:
https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/skepta-dystopia987/
Here are some more photos from Wednesday:
Thursday the 18th of July was a relatively light day, But here are some photos:
On Friday 19 July we attended The Nico Project at Stoller Hall in Cheatham's School of Music. An experimental feminist deconstruction of the dominant myths associated with Nico produced and performed by an all-female creative team. Provocative (usefully so) and powerful, especially an extraordinary final musical number which made amazing use of lighting and gesture as well as a great rendition of Nico’s own musical work. The production focuses very much on what it means to be a female artist and the many distinct challenges this continues to present. Confront your nightmares and work with them and through them; embrace and transform them into source of strength. Andy and I were pleased and grateful to attend tonight. Maxine Peake is always outstanding. Here is a link to further information about this production:
https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/the-nico-project/
Before attending The Nico Project we stopped for some kombucha and peppermint tea, and here are some photos:
