London agenda for Friday 6 July 2012
1. View original press photos of war and peace [Le Cool]
2. In London Pleasure Garden, a stately music fest decree Orbital, Gary Numan, Squarepusher, Four Tet and Ellen Allien feature at Bloc [Run Riot]
3. Have Sex & Travel [Don’t Panic]
4. Journey into the Lost World of Bohemian Soho at Sohemian Rhapsody [Ian Visits]
5. Hear the music of Norman Long [Tired of London]
06 Jul 2012
London agenda for Thursday 5 July 2012
1. Attend the office party of the year at Sh!t Theatre Presents Job Seekers Anonymous [Le Cool]
2. Kidnap a banker in Hackney [Run Riot]
3. Watch a Japanese punk masterpiece made by an Iranian director in-exile, Cut [Don’t Panic]
4. Watch four teams of London’s most Londony compete in the Londoner Challenge [Ian Visits]
5. Watch the Shard light up the sky [Tired of London]
05 Jul 2012
Police stations to be closed to the public across London
Police station front counters will be closed across London with just one left in each borough, Boris Johnson’s Deputy Mayor for Policing announced today.
Stephen Greenhalgh told the London Assembly’s Police And Crime Committee that while he had not personally signed off any closures yet, “they were in the pipeline.”
He claimed that many front counters were barely used by Londoners:
“we have to accept that the old fashioned front counter provision is probably not the solution for the twenty first century, even though we will retain a 24 hour front counter in every London borough”
Greenhalgh raised the prospect of sharing front counters with libraries and accident and emergency units and even manning counters with volunteers.
He was joined by Assistant Commissioner Simon Byrne who insisted that Londoners would only ever be “ten minutes by car” from a police station front counter.
A number of Assembly Members pointed out that many of their constituents were already more than ten minutes from a station.
The announcement comes after the Met announced that nine police stations in London would close altogether.
It also comes after a £233 million hole was revealed in the Mayor’s policing budget.
Greenhalgh yesterday told the Evening Standard that the shortfall was in reality even larger.
05 Jul 2012
London agenda for Wednesday 4 July 2012
1. London agenda knows that you are not watching the best imported TV show but one of it’s stars, and writer for 30 Rock, Donald Glover, is performing his rap persona Childish Gambino at Xoyo tonight [Le Cool]
2. Celebrate four years of Hackney WickED [Run Riot]
3. Watch the inaugural Kino London’s open-mic short film night at CAMP [Don’t Panic]
4. Let’s kill Hitler [Ian Visits]
5. See Scott’s Last Expedition [Tired of London]
04 Jul 2012
NY art gallery Pace will move into the Royal Academy, chasing London's artists and super rich
New York art gallery Pace will move into the Royal Academy, reports Gallerist NY. The exhibition space will open in October with a Mark Rothko and Hiroshi Sugimoto show.
Why is London somewhere Pace wants to expand? It’s not about you or me.
Artinfo.com spoke to Marc Glimcher, Pace’s president:
“London is a place where citizens of certain regions come to really live, not just to visit,” Glimcher said, when asked about the city’s appeal as an art market. “Just look at the nationalities of the kids in English schools. People from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Russia, and India — they are all committed to London.”
These are the global rich, the 1%ers. They buy the art, and London has a lot of them.
It also has a lot of artists. Again, from Artinfo:
““There certainly is fierce competition over artists,” [Glimcher] said. “It’s become extremely brutal, and for a small group of galleries, having a space in another city gives them a foothold that they will try and utilize with the artists” — in other words, to poach them.”
This isn’t art. It’s business.
04 Jul 2012
Is going to watch the Shard opening ceremony at 10.15pm on a Thursday night really a thing?
The Shard opens is inaugurated [see comments] on Thursday night at 10.15pm. Apparently this is perfectly normal and not something we should be batting any eyelids about. After all, why shouldn’t an office building open be inaugurated at 10.15pm on a Thursday night? It’s just common sense.
I know this is happening because a friend of mine has been invited over Facebook to go and watch it with some friends. Apparently there’s a laser show and some music from the London Philharmonic.
Music and lasers notwithstanding, I struggle to comprehend how this is a social thing. I know it’s a tall building, but…it’s an office block! Why is it a thing to go and watch it open be inaugurated? Why?!
In other Shard views, published author Simon Jenkins comes up with this corker in the Guardian:
“The Shard is thus an adjunct of Tony Blair’s foreign policy, a cure for erectile dysfunction.”
Lost. It.
And the BBC has a more respectful, sympathetic, you might say sane, facts and figures rundown here.
See also:
Events uncut – Laser light opening of the Shard
Simon Jenkins in the Guardian – The Shard has slashed the face of London for ever
Andy Dangerfield at BBC London – London’s Shard skyscraper rises above its critics
Snipe – Why does the Shard intimidate us
Snipe – Watch The Shard’s architect Renzo Piano talk about creating his ‘vertical city’
04 Jul 2012
Lello // Arnell - Echo Chamber
Lello // Arnell – Echo Chamber
Beers.Lambert Contemporary, ECI
Until August 12th
Jørgen Craig Lello & Tobias Arnell are a leading duo, currently making waves on both the Norwegian and wider contemporary art scenes.
Beers.Lambert present the pair’s first solo exhibition in the UK. This challenges what viewers expect to see, deconstructing shapes and motifs from everyday life.
The exhibition combines photography, collage and painting to do this, resulting in a monotone, modernist aesthetic. On closer viewing we realise this is highly reductive and quite political. For example a world map is reversed, rendering it loaded with commentary, perhaps on its Western bias, yet useless.
What appears to be a lamp is presented as a dark deformed and useless sculpture. Their work frustrates and is disquieting at times. This makes the viewer appreciate the value of ergonomic design and the political potential of objects.
03 Jul 2012
Tree Drum by Gatekeeper
Part ambient, part Casio rainforest psychedelia (look mum, I invented a new genre!), Tree Drum is taken from the New York duo’s forthcoming debut LP Exo, released July 17 on Hippos in Tanks (home to the equally otherworldly Grimes).
03 Jul 2012
Pinemarten - I Can See
We’ve been getting email about Pinemarten for a while and not getting around to clicking on the links. The fact that it was presumed to be mumbly campfire folk music tells you we didn’t get to reading the press release either. But lo and behold, turns out it’s not folk, but rather down-tempo, pulsing electronic pop – when the plaintive vocals kick in, it sounds every bit like a contemporary update for the pristine Anglo-pop of The Pet Shop Boys.
And as a little bonus, here’s a youthful indie-pop love song from Young & Lost signings Being There, on which the singer sounds like he has a mouth full of Haribo worms throughout.
03 Jul 2012
London agenda for Tuesday 3 July 2012
1. Spend the day watching the entirety of the Great Gatsby in Gatz [Le Cool]
2. Talk to Nicola Peel at Passing Clouds about her documentary, Blood of the Amazon [Run Riot]
3. Win the East London Ping Pong championship at Rich Mix [Flavorpill]
4. Listen to Terence Conran discuss his career as a designer and restauranteur at the V & A [Ian Visits]
5. Eat at the Red Art Cafe Bar [Tired of London]
03 Jul 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- Punk brewery just as sexist and homophobic as the industry they rail against
- The best church names in London, and where they come from
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- Diary of the shy Londoner
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
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