For this year’s Flatpack festival we are teaming up with Scott Johnston from filmficciones to produce ‘Outersight Overnight’ – an all-night sleepover/film showing.  The theme will be a kind of Jodowrosky-inspired faux shamanic ritual on a mystical Peruvian mountaintop – as you do.  We’re looking for a troupe of ‘performers’ to improvise the parts of shamans and mountain peasants and also act as ‘spirit guides’ to the small (20), selected audience.  You don’t need any previous experience as a performer, we’ll train you in our mystical ways – though the ability to maintain an unconvincing Peruvian accent is essential.  If you’re interested you’ll need to be available for a rehearsal/workshop next Thursday, the  8th, from 7pm, which we are hoping will be part-hosted by the internationally renowned improvisers, the Nomadic Academy of Fools (we haven’t asked them yet), who will be in residence at the Edge – and of course for the performance on the 17th – anytime between 7pm and 11am the next day (but not nercessarily all of it).  If you’re interested, please get in touch with Marta, here at Friction HQ.  Both the performance and the rehearsal will be here, at the Edge in deepest Digbeth.  S’gonna be a lot of fun.

Next Friday, 17th Feb,we are proud to be hosting the first Birmingham gig by cult indie/punk stalwarts Milky Wimpshake – see below.

Fantastico!  First gig in the city in 25 years or something, so well worth putting in your filofaxes!

Also, announcing the first Sonic Asylum of 2012 -

Professional Incredibles & Friction Arts present…

SONIC ASYLUM
sonic sanctuary for music asylum seekers

Friday 2nd March
8pm-late
@ The Edge, 79-81 Cheapside, Digbeth
£3 entry

Charles H. Wolfenbloode
traditional Chinese Guqin player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC3Pj_qsgNU&list=UUMXa4Rn56HioUAeT1sQawLA&index=1&feature=plcp

Arkala
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9Im8b9gTWo

DJ set by a Magpie & a Pirate

and a surprise headliner!

Sonic Interactions & sounds to mess with ya minds, drinks, cake, live art + resident Dr Soesmix with her sonic remedies…
just the tonic to start your friday night!

ya mums not here now kid!

Finally, this Friday at Bantock House in Wolvo is the first ‘conference’ type thingy for West Midlands Participatory Arts Forum – see www.wmpaf.org for more details

Skyward ho!

http://rocketupyourarts.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/milky-wimpshake-choose-art-studio-for-first-birmingham-gig/

We are inviting artists/creatives to come and join us for an exploratory evening here at our HQ, The Edge on Thursday 16^th February, (2012);  We recently advertised a post here at Friction and were overwhelmed by a stunning volume of very passionate and creative people, mostly from our region, that we were unaware of.  Therefore we decided to have an evening where these people and other interested creatives could come and spend some time with us, meet other like-minded people and explore the possibilities of how individuals and groups might want to engage with Friction and our space ‘The Edge’.

We’ve never been good at accepting help, we always want people to get as much out of any work they do, as they put into into it – and we can’t afford hordes of staff on our very tight budgets.  What we can offer, however, is a wealth of experience in project and event management, art and participation, arts in the public realm, a very special venue and lots of fun.  Back in the day, Vivid, then more of a film-makers support agency than it is now, had a great system.  Volunteers would work for them, earning credits, which could then be used towards using their production facilities, equipment hire, etc, and we are putting together a similar system here.

What we need:

• Administrative help
• Project and event management help
• Venue maintenance and development help
• Project delivery help
• Interviewers for our two-year oral history project
• Artists and makers to help us build exhibitions and installations
• Performers – (in the widest sense of the word) for our events and interventions
• Front of house staff – for our events

What we can offer:

• Training in all of the above (we’ve been doing this stuff for 20 years)
• Credits towards equipment hire
• Credits towards hiring our venue, the Edge
• Credits towards training and mentoring (our artist/directors have had a hand in designing training initiatives such as Fierce’s Metapod and Creative Alliance’s programmes and we’re founders of CA), career and personal/practice development
• Credits towards developing your own events, festivals and projects (helping you throughout the process)
• Credits towards help in developing funding bids
• Credits towards anything else we can help you with

So, if any of this interests you, and you’d like to find out more, we’re hosting a volunteers event on Thursday 16th February 2012, from 6.30 at the Edge, 79-81 Cheapside, Deritend, B12 0QH.  We’ll be telling you more about all the exciting projects that we’re doing this year, more about the ‘volunteer offer’ and we’ll be providing refreshments of course.  You may have your own ideas – bring them with you!  If you’d like to attend, please RSVP to info@frictionarts.com, so we have an idea of how many chairs to put out.

see you there!

Friction Arts & Professional Incredibles presents:

SONIC ASYLUM
sonic sanctuary for music asylum seekers.

Deacon Martin
‘The man they couldn’t corrupt’
http://www.deaconmartin.ecrp1.com/index.html

Jonny Marks
Throat Singer Extraordinaire
http://www.myspace.com/jonnymarks77

Mahmutt
A unique multi-instrumental sonic experience
http://www.myspace.com/bet4mahood

Honeyfeet
Manchester based, Whisky drenched, foot tapping, rhythm blues jazz
http://www.honeyfeet.org/

First 20 people in get a signed copy of attached flyer by artist Krystian Garstkowiak.

Please spread the good word!

Props to Scott and the gang for the return of Outersight last Saturday.  Scott worked incredibly hard despite severe back pain to treat us all to his usual eclectic and inspired mash up of shorts, clips and sounds, this time with an American Gothic type horror theme, followed by a feature about a homicidal bed! Re, as they say, spect.

We’re busy as ever, juggling current, future and past projects like a circus octopus.  We’re working on what, hopefully, will be a long-term project on Castle Vale, for Active Arts, where we’re hoping to ‘lift the vale’ on this overlooked part of our city.  It’s early on, but we’re intending to create a series of projects and interventions to take people to the Vale and vice versa.  Watch this space.

Sandra is off to Brussels next week to speak at Banlieue’s D’Europe’s annual shindig, they’ve asked her to present the South Africa project to an audience of artists and arts professionals from across Europe, which will be nice.  Next year, all being well, she’ll be telling them about our adventures in Brazil.

One of the reasons we find (or make) life difficult, is our naive optimism, and belief in the inherent goodness of humanity.  We get stung over and over again, as we tend to trust first and ask questions later.  We have been described as militant optimists, and i suppose that is fairly accurate, we couldn’t really be any other way.  We do tend to wear our ethics on our sleeves, as it were, and we know this can make people uncomfortable.  Somehow, showing your moral standards publicly makes people think that, maybe you are judging them – fyi, being judgemental is something we are aware about and try very hard not to do. 

Now, one of the reasons we have survived so long (20years so far, how’s that for sustainability?) is that we have stuck to our guns.  Everything we do is debated, examined, discussed before we do it. We’ve got the luxury of being around each other 24/7, and being obsessive (or committed, delete as applicable) about what we do, we tend to pretty much discuss ‘The Work’ constantly and this has meant that ‘it’ has been the focus of our lives.  So, yes, we do tend to display our morals, ethics, our views and our politics pretty openly, we do tend to say what we think, and we are not scared to upset the applecart in the process.  It’s a dirty job.  But we never judge people on what they think, what they say, believe, feel. Only on what they do.  Mentalists we may be, but not judgementalists.

Where we get into trouble is that, in our lovely 21st century (we’re living in the future!), there is a tendency for there to be a gap between what people say and what they do.  This is fuelled by a sensationalist media and an obsession with PR – it’s more important to be famous, than to be famous for something (see X factor, Heat magazine, etc, etc).  So we are often told in the arts that image, branding (which always makes me think of branding slaves, for some reason), logos, etc are all important.  Indeed, there is now a whole sub-genre of artist who’s practice is all about that self-promoting approach, and many do very well at it.  Problem is, that often people get so tied up in the words, they forget what the words are supposed to be describing.  The map is not the territory.  One of our main articles of faith, or guiding principles or whathaveyou is: ‘If you are not doing what you say you are doing, then change what you are doing or change what you are saying’.  So we try hard not do so, and consequently tend to challenge it when we hear it.  Which gets us into trouble, because, well, people would often rather go along with the lie than remove a piece from the house of cards.  Where would be then?  Reality perhaps?

Disclaimer:  We claim no high moral ground here – we f*ck up, just like everybody else, we’re quite as capable of hypocrisy as anyone, we just ask that we all try harder.  This blogpost was authoured by Lee Griffiths.  Lee is only 50% of Friction arts and his thoughts and opinions may not be those of the other 50%, Sandra Hall.  They probably are though, we agree on most things, but are not joined at the hip, so maybe not, she’s more patient than me, generally speaking.

So, the other morning we got a cab in to work.  The driver was all , Hi, how you going.  Turned out he was Somalian and San had had a chat in Swahili with him before, possibly after a ’debrief’ session at the Anchor (Five Star cabs just have the most interesting drivers, for some reason, we’ve had many 45 minute chats, sat outside our house).  Abdul was well happy, things have been moving on back in Mogadishu and he was in an amazingly upbeat mood.  He cheerfully regaled us with stories of death, murder, gunshot wounds to the head, children caught in crossfire and the loss of countless family and tribal members. A nice bit of perspective, when you’re stressed out about putting in yet another funding application, or how to pay the gas bill.  I think it should be compulsory that, at least once a week, you get a chat with someone like Abdul, get a reality check – or whatever the equivalent might be.  Never forget to count your blessings.

Psynematic psychos, Outersight, are making a return to the Edge for Halloween shenaniganisation.  Expect the usual mix of fun, frolics and filmic goodness, great music, great visuals - all with that special, Outersight je ne c’ai bloody what?