Suppose I should write a little bit more.
I´ve sat on the beach. I´ve been dragged to tat filled markets. I sat on the beach some more and I´ve had a few beers.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Spain
I am in Spain. It is cloudy and windy. I have a hangover which is steadily getting worse as the day progresses. Yesterday I took a trip to Barcelona and did touristy type things. Tomorrow I have a long coach journey home. Oh joy.
Back to shitty work on Monday. 1 and a half weeks for each year worked is the "enhanced" voluntary redundancy package. What a load of shite who is going to take that?
Back to shitty work on Monday. 1 and a half weeks for each year worked is the "enhanced" voluntary redundancy package. What a load of shite who is going to take that?
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Manchester Weekender
I arrived in Manchester far too early to check into my hostel by also too late to take part in Bill Drummond's performance art piece so instead after a bit of weighing up my options and general faffing around I decide to walk down the the Manchester Art Gallery to see the rather cool Recorders exhibition. The exhibition has a range of artworks that explore surveillance technology, they also do cool stuff, one of them allowed you to place a wallet, set of keys or whatever onto a conveyor belt which was then magically joined by other ghost objects that other people had previously placed on the conveyor belt. Another videoed you
ask you walked into a big room and then rotoscoped your image onto a massive wall, if you stayed in the room long enough your image was displayed all over the place.
My next port of call was at CUBE, the exhibition here was interested in potential future technologies and whether they were feasible and if so desirable. One of the artists in this exhibition attempted to build a Argos £4.99 toaster from scratch, it cost him tens of hundreds of pounds and many man hours and looked an utter mess. There was also some drinkable whisky made from diabetic wee, a chair that allowed you to explore the wonder of space flight and a device that allowed men to go through the feelings of the menstrual cycle.
With some time to go before I was allowed into my room, I headed to the Cornerhouse to watch a short film about ex-FDR Marxist Leninist lecturers and economists talk about their experiences since the fall of the Berlin Wall - a great film with a soundtrack from Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab. Highly recommended - Socialism by Phil Collins.
Checked in, bags dumped I head back out to see more galleries although by this point I'm becoming a little museumed out and when I walk through the door of the Manchester Museum to a cacophony of screaming children I decide that it's probably time to sit down and have a pint and watch young ladies walk up and down the road.
After an hour or two relaxing with a beer I decide to check out the Plan C thing made from salvaged things collected in Chernobyl. A big soviet swingy thing. Strange.
Then it was time to go to see old shellac being played alongside housey music in the
Whitworth Gallery. It is here that I discovered the delights of ginger beer, lime juice and Havana Club Rum. Yum! The music and funny noises coming from the gramophones were great.
After this performance I head up the road to and grab a pint in a rock bar, I speak to a funny girl with navy blue hair for a bit before she heads off to go rock clubbing which I'm not really into.
Another short stroll up the road brings me to a bar where there appears to be a private party, not that anyone seems to mind me being there, I chat to a lovely girl called Neela for a couple of hours until the bar runs out of beer and I realise that I am too pissed to decide what other drink I want. I say goodbye to Neela and stagger out and back to the hostel and to bed.
Next morning I awoken with the sounds of Germans swearing at each other. A rather
inconsiderate woman decides that at 8.00 a.m. on a Sunday morning if she is awake then so should everyone else be. Now awake I have to struggle out of bed and go for the world's longest piss. Thanks German Lady.
Back to sleep for a bit, hiding from the pouring rain.
My agenda for Sunday was the reason that I decided to go to Manchester in the first place but it went slightly skew whiff. Initially I was planning to go to a performance of classical music and electro acoustic electronica, this I did and it was very good. However I was due to join a workshop on networking art media, this however didn't really happen. I waited around for a while before realising that I was the only person who wasn't one of the festival organisers there, I waited a couple of hours and still nothing seemed to be happening. I decided to knock it on the head.
So the rest of the day involved sitting people watching at the Manchester Oktoberfest and then staying out of the cold in a pub with no-one to talk to waiting for my bus.
ask you walked into a big room and then rotoscoped your image onto a massive wall, if you stayed in the room long enough your image was displayed all over the place.
My next port of call was at CUBE, the exhibition here was interested in potential future technologies and whether they were feasible and if so desirable. One of the artists in this exhibition attempted to build a Argos £4.99 toaster from scratch, it cost him tens of hundreds of pounds and many man hours and looked an utter mess. There was also some drinkable whisky made from diabetic wee, a chair that allowed you to explore the wonder of space flight and a device that allowed men to go through the feelings of the menstrual cycle.
With some time to go before I was allowed into my room, I headed to the Cornerhouse to watch a short film about ex-FDR Marxist Leninist lecturers and economists talk about their experiences since the fall of the Berlin Wall - a great film with a soundtrack from Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab. Highly recommended - Socialism by Phil Collins.
Checked in, bags dumped I head back out to see more galleries although by this point I'm becoming a little museumed out and when I walk through the door of the Manchester Museum to a cacophony of screaming children I decide that it's probably time to sit down and have a pint and watch young ladies walk up and down the road.
After an hour or two relaxing with a beer I decide to check out the Plan C thing made from salvaged things collected in Chernobyl. A big soviet swingy thing. Strange.
Then it was time to go to see old shellac being played alongside housey music in the
Whitworth Gallery. It is here that I discovered the delights of ginger beer, lime juice and Havana Club Rum. Yum! The music and funny noises coming from the gramophones were great.
After this performance I head up the road to and grab a pint in a rock bar, I speak to a funny girl with navy blue hair for a bit before she heads off to go rock clubbing which I'm not really into.
Another short stroll up the road brings me to a bar where there appears to be a private party, not that anyone seems to mind me being there, I chat to a lovely girl called Neela for a couple of hours until the bar runs out of beer and I realise that I am too pissed to decide what other drink I want. I say goodbye to Neela and stagger out and back to the hostel and to bed.
Next morning I awoken with the sounds of Germans swearing at each other. A rather
inconsiderate woman decides that at 8.00 a.m. on a Sunday morning if she is awake then so should everyone else be. Now awake I have to struggle out of bed and go for the world's longest piss. Thanks German Lady.
Back to sleep for a bit, hiding from the pouring rain.
My agenda for Sunday was the reason that I decided to go to Manchester in the first place but it went slightly skew whiff. Initially I was planning to go to a performance of classical music and electro acoustic electronica, this I did and it was very good. However I was due to join a workshop on networking art media, this however didn't really happen. I waited around for a while before realising that I was the only person who wasn't one of the festival organisers there, I waited a couple of hours and still nothing seemed to be happening. I decided to knock it on the head.
So the rest of the day involved sitting people watching at the Manchester Oktoberfest and then staying out of the cold in a pub with no-one to talk to waiting for my bus.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)