Sunday 28 June 2015

Sat 4 July - Philip Mansel, Napoleon's court and Revolution and the News

The Vanity of the Eagle: Philip Mansel goes inside the court of Napoleon
 
'Where News Meets Arts': A hybrid show curated by Jude Cowan Montague and team
Napoleon has been cast by British newspapers as the enemy of the world. Fear of revolution led him to be described in London as a dangerous revolutionary ogre. We go behind the scenes to find out more about the domestic character of his rule. After the Terror, he took control of French governance and moved into the Tuileries. An army leader who denounced artificial pomp he now found himself in the centre of conventions of royalty. Author Philip Mansel talks about how Napoleon's rule looked behind the caricature.
 
Philip's book, which is published by IB Tauris is called 'The Eagle in Splendour: Inside the Court of Napoleon'
 
'An eloquent and original study of the Bonaparte family' David Gilmour The Pursuit of Italy
 
With Jude Cowan Montague

Monday 22 June 2015

Sat 27 June - City of Irisjude

Iris Garrelfs and Jude Cowan Montague build a city. Markets, streets, offices, shopping centres, parks, public transport are all imagined in an improvised soundscape. Using found sound, experimental vocals, dramatic techniques and visceral vocals, Garrelfs and Montague explore ideas of city spaces and investigate the squares and ways of urban life. Garrelfs is intrigued by change, fascinated with voices and definitely enamoured by technology. She often uses her voice as raw material, which she transmutes into machine noises, choral works or pulverised “into granules of electroacoustic babble and glitch, generating animated dialogues between innate human expressiveness and the overt artifice of digital processing” (Wire Magazine). Montague mixes and matches worlds of text, drama, reality, broadcasting and community theatre. She is a vocalist and likes to improvise experimental, playful song.

Jude also introduces her new book of poetry and sketches, Springfield Olympics, about living on a narrowboat in Springfield Marina during the Olympics, 2012. 
In association with Rebecca Feiner's curated mutli-artist urban installation DEN-City.

Sunday 14 June 2015

Andreas Lang on Radical Cities / March against Austerity


Andreas Lang talks Radical Cities and the sharing economy, DEN-City (27-28 June Fish Island, Hackney Wick) curated by Rebecca Feiner and the common shop mini residency programme. He is a current and founding member of the Public Work Groups which produces socio-special, architectural and discursive spaces. Alice Foster cheerleads and connects with the march against austerity in London via web-news.

http://www.publicworksgroup.net/


From the public works group website:

'We are an art and architecture practice working within and towards public space.
All public works projects address the question how the public realm is shaped by its various users and how existing dynamics can inform further proposals. Our focus is the production and extension of a particular public space through participation and collaborations. Projects span across different scales and address the relation between the informal and formal aspects of a site.
Our work produces social, architectural and discursive spaces.
Outputs include socio-spatial and physical structures, public events and publications.
public works is a London based non-for-profit company. Current members are Torange Khonsari, Andreas Lang who work with an extended network of project related collaborators
The practice has been growing organically since 1999, with its initial founding members Kathrin Böhm, Sandra Denicke-Polcher,Torange Khonsari, Andreas Lang and Stefan Saffer working in different constellations until 2006 before formally coming together as public works.'

with Alice Foster

Saturday 6 June 2015

Sat 13 June - Heidi Kingstone and Dispatches from the Kabul Cafe

Heidi Kingstone: 'Dispatches from the Kabul Café'

Kabul is one of the fastest growing cities on the world, and over 3.500 years old. It is full of stories of women which are rarely heard. Journalist and author Heidi Kingstone shares recollections of conversations and incidents from  her time reporting from Afghanistan from 2007-2011, the last years of ISAF-controlled Kabul. Her book, 'Dispatchs form the Kabul Cafe' is a personal narrative over a four year period, living and working as a foreign correspondent in the capital of the Islamic Republic, and its nuanced, hard-hitting anecdotes are informed by Heidi's passionate support for women's rights.
with Jude Cowan Montague