Agenda

LIFE
The last few weeks have been all


and

and

and

and


and thirty-something comedy shows and theatre and other things, all in surprising combinations I won't detail here.

It's been a very very busy year for me and so I haven't really written much round these parts, about which I do not feel bad at all since I owe you nothing, as Bros sang so memorably many moons ago. Apparently Bros also informed an unsuspecting public that "you've read Karl Marx/and you've taught yourself to dance/You're the best by far": quite a strange coupla lyrics, to me.

Anyway, I've read a little Marx and I've taught myself to dance so I feel qualified, if not compelled, to offering the following morsels to Melbourne readers interested in beefing up their aesthetic guns.

DANCE
Merce Cunningham is coming to Melbourne for the Melb. Arts Festival. Awesome. But not everyone (and not every festival goer, even) really gets contemporary dance. I just love what this person has done. Watch it. But don't skip ahead, just watch it. The only letdown is the apologetic text insertions. Totally unnecessary.


ART
Last weekend I went to the closing of the David Shrigley exhibition because I heard they were going to give away all of the works. They were, for a donation, and I gave everything I had on me.

So for about $1.85 I scored a work by one of my favourite artists.

The exhibition was at Kings ARI - the ARI stands for Artist Run Initiative. ARIs are pretty sweet, as they're run by artists for, well, anyone really. If you're free, there's a bus doing a tour of some of the non-CBD ARIs of Melbourne this Saturday (tomorrow) - call 9419 0931 if you want in. Don't know, maybe it's too late.

There's also a stencil fest going on at the moment in Melbourne. The City of Yarra gave $4,000 to the project, even though most councils also consider street art with a wary eye. Still, I like that there are increasing numbers of spaces where art is encouraged, or tolerated, or turned a blind eye to - the extreme opposite (or is it?) might be Brazil's Sao Paolo, which has banned billboard advertising.

Nice, haunting images here.




MUSIC
I guess too many people had complained about ugly advertising. I'm not one to encourage a culture of complaint (lord, what a horrible term, sorry) but I like the Complaints Choirs which are popping up around the world.



Strangers gathering to are their grievances in harmony, in public. That's the Helsinki Complaints Choir, above. My fave is "Our ancestors could have picked a sunnier place to be".

From Melbourne:

"my complaints are trying to buy a tin of tuna, how many varieties and sizes do we need and when will we stop being homophobic?"

"my housemate’s boyfriend’s eyes are too close together"

"Myspace pages hurt my eyes"

"Why is nudity demonised?"

"Yes I’m a ‘pianist’ and no that isn’t funny"

"I’ve wasted my life"

The first Complaints Choir in the Southern Hemisphere will perform outside ACCA on Sunday June 3 as part of A Constructed World's "Increase Your Uncertainty". More on their time there later (especially a forum on failure that I'm particularly interested in).