From Solveig: If you like Music, Palestine, Poetry, or Socialism, then you should buy a ticket for this fundraiser.
starring: Alasdair Roberts, Liz Lochhead, Tom Leonard, Roy Bailey, and more!
Tickets £10 -Unwaged,
£13 – Waged.
Phone 0141 352 4900 for tickets.
Poet, Playwright, and Scots Makar, Liz Lochhead, will be reading;
Singer and guitarist, Roy Bailey, (the man Tony Benn called “…the greatest socialist folksinger of his generation,”) will be playing;
The inimitable poet, essayist and activist Tom Leonard will perform;
Acclaimed folk artist Alasdair Roberts will play a solo set;
Gaelic musician Gillebride Macmillan will be singing;
And rising star of the Scottish Poetry Scene, Billy Letford, will read from his upcoming collection.
All profits will go to funding a trip for Musicians and Poets in Glasgow – including Billy, Liz and Gillebride – to go out to the West Bank, run workshops in the refugee camps around Bethlehem and perform in East Jerusalem. A return trip for Palestinian writers and musicians in planned for 2013, and hopefully we will form an ongoing cultural link and forum for Scottish solidarity with those in Glasgow’s twin city in occupied Palestine.
Networks Without a Cause, A Critique of Social Media is one of the latest books to make its way to my bookshelf. By clicking that link above you can see the author, Geert Lovink, talk about a number of the key themes in the book.
For me, the ideas around ‘weak-links’ and their exploitation are most interesting, but also rather enjoy the general disregard for and dissection of the all too pervasive hype around social media/networks. (Think that possibly takes the prize for worst sentence ever constructed on the vis com blog, but you know what I mean).
Here at the Vis-Com-Des blog we get the occasional Spam comment or two that make it through the anti-spam filters, but this one – received today – really stood out for its wild sycophancy and its uncharacteristic attention to basic phrasing and grammar:
“May I simply just say what a comfort to discover someone who genuinely understands what they are talking about on the internet. You actually know how to bring an issue to light and make it important. More people have to look at this and understand this side of the story. I can’t believe you aren’t more popular since you most certainly have the gift.”
Rick Poyner’s latest critique for Eye magazine is on the Savage Messiah zine by Laura Oldfield Ford, which may be of interest to those doing the micro-publishing project, and everyone else. Charting the neo-liberal changes in Londons East-end as a result of a partially olympics-related crusade of ‘regeneration’, the zines have been gathered together and republished by Verso. I have ordered a copy if anyone wants a lend.
Eye 82 also contains an interesting historical take on the info-graphic and should be available from all good 3/4th year vis-com-des studio magazine racks shortly.
Image: Laura Oldfield Ford
It’s been a busy term, lots of interesting things happening, but the blog has been neglected somewhat. An Easter resolution is to get some of the articles I’ve been meaning to post, online. We’ll start with data is political, an interesting looking conference and event which ties in to some of the themes that have been emerging through projects this year.
Interesting Parallel Worlds, in relation to corporate sponsorship of arts and culture.
Short notice, sorry for not posting this sooner, but Sophie Dyer and Maeve Redmond are running a Screen Printing Workshop at Repositioned Gallery, this saturday. Details of costs and booking available by following that link just back there.
In talk update news:
The talk from Nick Tweedie that was going to be on the 24th Feb has had to be rescheduled to the 11th May, Term 3, and will also feature illustrator Emily Chappell.
In addition, we’ve a talk on Monday the 5th March. The format for this is slightly different to normal in that it will talk place in the evening in the convivial environment of the Student Union (downstairs), and the point of emphasis will be slightly different, but all that will become apparent on the evening. It’s free but ticketed, and open to anyone who wants to come along, so tell your friends. It features;
—Lizzie Malcolm (Lust/NL) / http://lustlab.net/
—Found Collective / http://foundcollective.com/
—Malcy Duff (Usurper) / http://gianttank.tumblr.com/
If you’d like to come along, get tickets here: Would Work. [01]
It’s dead easy.
Pictured: Brave New Alps, Fortezza Open Archive, from Reading Forms blog
Congratulations to everyone who did such a great job with the Work in Progress exhibition. On a similar topic we were recently alerted to this Reading Forms Blog, ‘Exhibiting Graphic Design Exhibitions‘. It’s interesting to compare a range of different contexts for exhibiting design, and while there is no written narrative, it’s a really useful visual resource to reference, and seems to be fairly regularly updated.
(Thanks to Matt from GoodPress for the link)
Upcoming exhibition at Good Press; Opening 16th February 2012, 6pm.
A solo exhibition of works by Benjamin Rawson.
via DEATH BED (UPCOMING) : GOOD PRESS GALLERY.
Anja sent in this following link, from the Mobile Museum, calling for submission on the theme of money. If you a) did the currency project, b) did the banking project, or c) are the head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, you might be interested in submitting some work. Thanks to Anja for the link.
You’ve read about the exhibition, now consider the possibility of perhaps coming to the after-party.
The arrow and the frame on Click Opera manages to touch on a whole range of topics relevant to current projects; Banking, currency, wild knowledge, art archive, not to mention an interesting reflection on Google adwords. And not only does it contain some very interesting thoughts in the continued thread of good and useful arguments against ternary or binary thinking, but it is also awash with great hyperlinks.
While on the topic, big thanks to Anja and Chris for their currency workshop earlier in the week. There are some pictures below, and a link to Anja and Chris’s bookmarks on the topic here.
12 hours til our flight back home, just chillin’
— see you on monday 
GSA Pecha Kucha VIII. Follow that link there for tickets.
With; Sarah Smith, Lucie Potter, Simon Chadwick, Tony Dunworth, Donald Barr, David Reat, Edward Alexander, Fi Scott, Dress for the Weather, Kate V Robertson and Nathalie De Brie.
Wed 1st Feb. Students Union. 6pm.
Recent work by Chris Kohler.
Friday 27th January
Downstairs Space
Skypark Gallery
5 – 8pm
Announcing Glasgow School of Art’s 4th Year Visual Communication Work in Progress show!
Preview
Thurs 2 Feb. 7-9pm
The Glue Factory
22 Farnell Street
G4 9SE
Exhibition Week Opening Times:
3-9 Feb. 12-6pm
Sponsored by Williams Brothers Brewery.
More info here.
Folk might be interested in this forthcoming event: I personally have some questions about the idea of ‘occupy design’ but undoubtedly the event will be a melting pot of ideas and proposals and one which could lead to some interesting outcomes.
‘This Space Is Not For Hire’ will take place at the Bank of Ideas, an occupied former bank near Liverpool Street Station.
Running across the afternoons of Saturday the 28 and Sunday 29 January 2012, will be a range of talks on topics such as: radical forms of communication and design activism; the precariousness of design employment; and exposing and reflecting upon the ways design is used to give a friendly veneer to the worst kinds of Corporate behaviour.
via Eye blog » Higher ground. Occupy Design is an opportunity to change design, and design for change..
According to the students at NID, Seb is really Bill Gates in disguise. And Ross, obviously, is Tom Cruise. The boys seem to have survived their stomach bug and are back in school, hopeful they will be well enough for the eight hour bus ride to the desert tonight
highlights so far:
beth – cheap fags
lydia – her cheese sandwich
callum – photographing EVERYTHING
seb – becoming recognized as the worlds richest man
ross – becoming recognized as a worldwide heart-throb / scientologist
yours truly,
bill (seb) and tom (ross)
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