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Friday, June 29, 2007

an invitation 


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Thursday, June 21, 2007

phoenix-fest for the basement 

By the time my head gets to phoenix

Sunday July 22nd 2-10pm (bands from 3pm) somewhere in manchester

A very special festival featuring the uks finest americana / alt.country musicians coming together in aid of the basement rescue fund


This is the rather wonderful line up so far: quiet loner, liam dullagan, (nee havenot) stuart warburton, sparkwood & 21, kait devoy and the reaper man

Plus there will be scrummy free food, cowboy art, between band entertainment and a few surprises.... and at least 3 more ace bands tbc…

Suggested donation on the door is £10 but please give what you can.

Tickets are limited due to the exclusive venue; please reserve your space at what promises to be top notch event (and get details of the location) by emailing twangorama@yahoo.co.uk

The day is a benefit for the basement, manchester ’s not-for-profit social centre and community hub. It was severely damaged during the recent northern quarter fire and the volunteer collective are raising funds to help us reopen as soon as possible.

The basement latest: www.thebasement.clearerchannel.org/new
For more details of the kind of music we like see www.americana-uk.com

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Wednesday, June 06, 2007

at the carwash 

i don't play round here very much anymore, as you've probably noticed. Somewhere else I've just been told psychogeography is pretentious intellectual codswollop and i should go and wash cars instead. It's hard to disagree with such a potent critique.

I wanted to post a few people festival programmes but i don;t have any left so i'm reprinting the introduction here:




View subject to change but this is what we can see now. It’s a few hours before the festival starts so please excuse our poor grammar and giddy bewilderment

When I first heard the word psychogeography I had a wonderful turnaround moment of clarity, a little epiphany. It encompasses lots of things I’m fascinated by but I still find the best way to explain it to you is with a picture.

Names have such power – they give life and strength and meaning although that’s something different to everybody of course. But they limit too and it’s the same with maps – its hard not to be seduced by boundaries, Perhaps I like making maps because I’m useless at following them, A straight a-z misses out all the splendid wonkiness of life. If you asked 20 people to draw a map of the basement they would all make something different and I bet none of them would resemble the ordinance survey or a fire plan.

I’ve always loved aimless wandering and exploring, my favourite pastimes include catching random trains and finding secret passages across town and (best of all) watching urban wildlife… but hey! I’m not just an idler, I’m a flaneur and this is a derive… disorientation as experiment, play as an artistic statement…

The Loiterers Resistance Movement is about this and more. We got our name from Phaedra who was lamenting the lack of uncommercial public space in Manchester; she said having fun in Brisbane gives you a suntan but in Manchester all you get is as ASBO.

Sometimes it feels like its all about money and power in our post bomb nirvana. Every space has an advert on it and why is Canal Street the way it is? Why aren’t there any nurseries or greengrocers or haberdashers in the village? Who made gay a business opportunity? How does that make you feel and what if it’s meant to be your space but you don’t feel welcome? But there’s still magick too if you want to find it.

Did you know the grass mounds by Urbis are designed to make you want to play – but are deliberately to small to hide behind? I like that bit of town, all the kids making it their own territory. Legend has it there’s a medieval street somewhere underneath the triangle – its where the great Elizabethan alchemist John Dee lived when he was sort of banished to Manchester. I imagine his ghost finds the museums shiny glass surface an excellent scrying stone. (You can see the arse mark of a devil conjured by Mr Dee on a chair in Chethams but that is another story)

Anyway, I was thinking about all this on Sunday. We were taking pictures for the launch night quiz. The autumn light was glorious, everything was glowing and a friend and I were rushing about showing each other favourite haunts before the sun set… I’d love to tell you what we saw but then you’ll know all the answers and the quiz will be no fun… there’s some great prizes by the way, all treasure I’ve found on the city’s pavement… its amazing what you can find when you’re looking but I really ought to stop. Too much stuff is suffocating.

We walked home through the park, eating falafel and laughing at how beautiful it was and how peaceful – mostly because everyone’s too scared to go there at night. I would be too if I was on my own (that’s another map I want to draw, a collaborative one about street harassment but I can’t quite figure out how to make it work, what do you think?) It felt like the only place in town the modern panoptican couldn’t see us – cameras everywhere these days and don’t get me started about the beetham tower, there’s not room. We discovered new constellations amongst the stars whilst a fox watched us trespass on his land. Back on the street halogen glowed and litter blew around us as we passed the old factory and a roadside shrine. There was some barbed wire on the kerb – a morag trap – I fell and cut my leg.

As above, so below

I hope you like the exhibition (mmm.maps are sexy) and enjoy the accidental festival. It should evolve over time, there’s some great work coming to us soon from 56a via Italy that I’m very excited about, plus reports from the various expeditions and explorations. Please add your own embellishments, stories, maps and musings. The LRM are planning further actions and some point soon we might even publish our manifesto.

Its central tenet will probably be that we like flowers growing out of the side of buildings and yuppification makes us sad.

Glittery love and golden apples
The Loiterers Resistance Movement, December 2006 xxx

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Friday, June 01, 2007

this sundays derive and basement news 

hello, becuase its first sunday its psychogeography time again - this months derive will be about, erm, dunno actually but will probably involve pianos and fire. we're meeting 2pm in cafe pop, all wlecome, if you're late or lost please call 07974929589 afterwards we'll be at burn baby burn, the festival in stevenson square.

if you don't fancy a walk and the ear to the ground music festival in stevenson square some friends are launching a (very excellent) record label thingummie with an event at the contact theatre all afternoon - highly recommended, although of course i'd rather you were with us

and tomorrow all the cool kids will be here.... its another cut and paste job i'm afraid so apologies for cross posting

love morag x

**************************************************

WORKDAY from 12 noon, saturday 2nd june at the basement

sadly the basement social centre is going to be shut for 4ish months
due to the state of the building above us. We need to get everything
out as soon as possible...

we urgently need:
O cars and vans to help transport stuff
O places to store things (attics, cellars, spare rooms etc)
O people to help pack and move
O boxes!!!

if you can help with any of the above please call the basement mobile
07925771017
email mustsocial@... or pop down to 24 lever street on
saturday afternoon and get stuck in

over the summer we will also need help fundraising and plotting to
make sure our phoenix like resurrection is truly splendid.... watch
out for details....


love and industrial packing tape


the basement collective

*******please forward shamelessly to anyone who might be able to
help******

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