blankpagesIssue 24July 2010

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ContentsGET IN TOUCH 4wElCOmE... 5COVER ARTIsT 6blANkVERsE 10spOTlIGHT 12FICTION 14THIs mONTH’s mp3 20FEATURE 22blANkpICks 26blANk mEdIA RECCOmmENds 28 CREdITs 30

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welcome...Welcome to July’s blankpages. This month we’ve expanded the Blank Media

Recommends... section, in order to highlight even more of the vibrant emerging arts events that appear on our collective radar. If you’ve got an event; an exhibition, a performance, a film screening or anything artisic you’d like to promote, send us an email and we’ll include it in next month’s recommends...

blankpages copyright ©2006-2010 Blank Media Collective unless otherwise noted. Copyright of all artworks remains with artist. blankpages Editor

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“I consider myself to be an illustrator primarily and a painter second. Although I often work in acrylic on canvas, I more usually work in ink, marker pen, wax crayon and pencil. I am an avid keeper of sketchbooks, and have even made my own from scratch; pressing and binding pages made from found paper. I collect all sorts of paper ephemera for inspiration and use in my art – playing cards, envelopes, postcards, stickers, fliers, wrapping paper, etc, which all sit piled up in old shoe boxes, awaiting rediscovery.”

“Artists that inspire me include Cy

Twombly, Paper Rad, Jon Burgerman, Hokusai, R. Crumb, Jan Pienkowski and Urs Fischer. My life is full of books, music and paper, and through my art I hope to be able to connect all of my disparate interests. Particular areas of interest are evolution-ary biology, secular democracy, octopuses, electronic music, heavy metal and food; anything else is a bonus.”

“In my painting I use the contrast between the swirling colourful back-ground/environment and the stark mono- or dichromatic colouring of the subject to express the interlocking, co-dependant quality of nature.”

“All the Kingdoms of life affect and rely upon their environments. Scientists call these phenomena extended phenotype and symbiosis. New Agers and some ecologists call it the Gaia hypothesis.”

“When one looks to observe an individual it becomes impossible to see clearly without also observing its back-ground, its environment, and its history. This is true universally across all walks of human endeavour, from biology to physics to art and philosophy.”

“I take my inspiration for my animal paintings from books like Climbing Mount Improbable and The Selfish Gene by Richard

Dawkins and On the Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin, and the documentaries by David Attenborough.

My aspirations in life are to create many more paintings and exhibit them, to publish a few children’s books, finish my novel, make my t-shirt business profitable, learn Japanese, go into politics, gain a science qualification, buy a big house, and to have the time and energy to do all these things.

Kevin completed his degree in Contemporary

Arts (Visual Arts and Creative Writing) at MMU

with a 2:1 in 2006, then spent most of 2007 teaching

English in Osaka, Japan. After returning to England he

endured some hideous retail jobs, but has recently

regained his sanity and creativity.

He is currently working on expanding his portfolio,

and has recently completed a commission for

Amelia’s Magazine.

For more information go to

kevin-bradshaw.blogspot.com

kevin bradshaw

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Tom HardingTom Harding currently lives in

Northampton. His work has appeared in various places including Identity Theory, Unlikely Stories and Nth Position. He also maintains a website at www.tomarianne.net

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monica metsers

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Email: mmetsers@hotmail.com

Phone: 07974340278

Website:www.myspace.com/monicametsers

Monica Metsers was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1980, but has lived in the English Lake District for the majority of her life. Monica graduated from the University of Dundee with a Masters Degree in Fine Art in 2005 and has been steadily exhibiting and selling her work since then. In 2007 she was short-listed for the Celeste Art Prize and has participated in exhibitions in London, Sheffield, Newcastle, Cumbria and Swansea among others.

Through her practice Monica aims to explore ways in which subconscious fantastical experiences may be visually manifested. Her work reflects a lifelong love of fantasy and escapism. Primarily she make objects, which are quick to realise, using existing objects as a basis upon which to intuitively build with various materials, in the hope of achieving interesting and unpredictable results. These are all painted white and then photographed with different colours cast onto them, depending on the effects she wants in a particular painting. Paintings are based on these arranged photographed com-positions of the objects. Monica works in layers of oil paint, building up different thicknesses to create a sculptural effect. Her intention is to create dreamscapes or mindscapes that are subtly suggestive of imaginative and fantastical experience.

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expectations to the point where disappointment

was the only foreseeable outcome. However, if

he calmly, and usually quite reasonably, predicted

she’d hate something, she’d shoot him down for

being negative. He said he felt pretty much like he

was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

Katherine said that was his whole problem, and

the fact that he couldn’t see what a problem it was

was itself part of the problem. She said why did

he have to make a prediction either way? Why did

he have to throw his opinion into the ring before

she’d asked for it? It was like receiving a running

commentary on things that hadn’t happened yet

and left her with the feeling that she didn’t know

if something was happening as it appeared to be

happening or if it was in fact only appearing to happen

in the way he’d already told her it would happen

because he’d filled her head so full of predictions

A Typical Argumentby sam byers

Daniel read a book and passed it on to Katherine,

urging her to read it, telling her the ending was just

great and he’d loved it. Katherine became angry,

saying the book was ruined, saying Daniel always

did that. Daniel pointed out that he hadn’t told

her anything about the ending, about what might

happen, or even really given any hints. He’d just

said he liked it, and he’d said it with the intention of

encouraging her to read the whole book. Katherine

said she didn’t care what actually happened, the

simple fact of him saying he liked the ending gave

it a certain promise which it would now, almost

certainly, fail to keep. She said she resented the idea

that she needed to be told the ending of a book was

good in order to encourage her to get all the way

through it as this implied she had a tendency not to

get all the way through books. Now, she said, the

whole book was going to feel like a chore because

she’d have to finish it no matter what just to show

him she was capable of finishing it, and when she

got to the end it would have Daniel’s smug face all

over it and reading it would be sort of like eating

a chocolate cookie someone had been holding in

their hand until it went soft and slimy.

It would still probably taste good,

but it would definitely be tainted.

Daniel then speculated out loud as

to when the idea of him enjoying

something, or admiring it or thinking it was good

in some way, had become so repellent that it then

prevented Katherine from enjoying it herself, as if

appreciation was finite and he’d used it up ahead of

her. It was more like, he said, someone leaving you

a cookie in the packet, and offering it to you, and

you then refusing it because you’d already seen the

person enjoying their cookie too much. He said

he felt this whole attitude, this difficulty Katherine

had with other people’s enjoyment, went right to

the heart of their relationship and constituted a

major flaw, since it seemed to prevent them ever

enjoying the same thing at the same time. He cited

other incidents. He said it seemed like if he told

Katherine she’d enjoy something she was bound to

hate it, and to practically crucify him for building her

Katherine actually used this metaphor. She had an uncanny ability to

insert metaphors and similes into her speech, particularly when arguing,

and the effect was surprising and faintly unsettling, giving as it did the

impression that Katherine had scripted some of her exchanges in

advance. Which, of course, she often had.

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she couldn’t tell reality from prophecy any more.

She said she got the feeling that actually it wasn’t

about her enjoying or not enjoying anything at all.

It was actually, when you looked at it, about Daniel

being right. He had to get his prediction in so he

could enjoy the feeling of being right, because being

right after the fact wasn’t being right at all it was

just stating the obvious. Daniel said she was right,

this was all about him being right

but what it was really about was her

total inability to accept the times he

was right, so she’d cut off her nose

to spite her face and waste precious

time and energy proving him wrong.

What was it, he wanted to know,

about him being right that was so

difficult to take, and didn’t she think

there was something malignant

going on in their relationship if she couldn’t bear

him either to enjoy anything or be right about

anything, because what, really, did that leave him

with? Then Katherine asked him how he felt when

she enjoyed something and he said he didn’t know

because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d

actually seen her enjoying anything, or not openly

admitting to enjoyment anyway, because she was

too busy trying not to enjoy things he’d suggested

she might enjoy. She said he didn’t know her at all.

He agreed, but added that he got the feeling she

liked it that way because she was still in thrall to

the ridiculous idea that being unpredictable and

failing to admit to the most

common of human emotions

made her somehow more

interesting and mysterious

whereas it actually just made

her even more

p r e d i c t a b l e

because whatever

the majority of

people liked or

felt or held to be true it was pretty

much guaranteed that Katherine was

going to go haring off in entirely the

opposite direction. He said the real

problem was that she, Katherine,

was so hell-bent on being overwhelmingly original

and unpredictable that she’d somehow managed

to completely divorce the things she genuinely

felt from the things she wanted to feel or thought

it would be cool or interesting to feel. The end

result, as far as he saw it, was that she didn’t feel

anything at all but just responded in a calculated

to fashion to given situations and stimuli. If she

wanted to be unpredictable, he said, she should try

actually feeling things rather than thinking about

them and then artificially constructing her feelings

as a response to what she’d thought. Katherine

then said that she couldn’t actually believe that he,

Daniel was less inventive with

his imagery than Katherine, par-

ticularly when mid-argument, so

he actually said cutting your nose

off to spite your face. The sneer it

elicited from Katherine only served

to anger him even further and,

ironically, to bolster the very feelings

of inadequacy and emasculation that

drove him to prove himself right all

the time in the first place.

Both Katherine and Daniel argued by continually defining and re-defining

‘The Real Problem.’ It was a recurring theme and they had come to think of

it as being capitalised and possibly italicised. Once, Daniel had had a dream

where he was drinking in a bar called The Real Problem, and the name was

written in neon above the door. Whenever either of them said it they gave

it heavy stress. Katherine sometimes waggled the first and middle fingers

of each hand in the air to indicate quotation marks, but only when Daniel

had just said it. The Real Problem was never something that was clearly

defined, but was a flexible, shifting term that took on different character-

istics depending on the nature of the disagreement and stood in for the

actual, genuine Real Problem which was that they no longer agreed about

anything and were making each other miserable to the point where they

actually resented each other for systematically siphoning the joy out of each

other’s lives.

Yes, he said hell-bent too, and yes, Katherine sneered

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Daniel, had the audacity to accuse her, Katherine,

of not having adequate feelings. She said what he

couldn’t understand was that he regarded her

feelings and responses as odd and inappropriate

only because he was so bound up in his stupid

ideas of what most people normally

did and was so keen to keep his

own responses and reactions in line with these

broad and basically quite mis-guided notions of

normality and conformity that the minute anyone

had any sort of genuine, from-the-gut response to

anything he rejected it out of hand. Furthermore,

she suggested, Daniel’s whole concept of what she

should or shouldn’t be feeling was itself bound up in

what she saw as his apparently relentless insecurity,

meaning that her happiness, or the appearance of

her happiness, was of concern to him not because

he cared about her happiness but because of the

way her happiness reflected and impacted on him.

He needed her to be happy, was the basic gist,

because that way everything, namely them, was

OK, and this was, she said, a pretty oppressive

pressure to live with, this dictatorial approach to

her happiness. Sometimes she couldn’t be happy, it

was as simple as that, and if he was going to start

going into some spiral of concern and doubt every

time she appeared to be unhappy or expressed

unhappiness in any way then clearly everything was

going to fall apart because the very pressure of

being happy was in itself making her unhappy, just

as the very pressure of building towards the

ending of a book which was supposed to be

great would in itself not only ruin the

book because she’d be overly-hasty

in rushing through it to get to the

supposedly great ending but would

also utterly ruin the ending because it

could only ever be a disappointment.

So, she said, if Daniel wanted her to

be happy and, in turn, wanted them to

be happy or at least wanted them to

appear to be happy the simplest thing

was just to leave her alone and let her be unhappy

or happy or whatever the fuck she wanted to be

without his needy and emotionally domineering

and, when you got right down to it, actually pretty

pathetic ongoing-attempt to control her every

thought and fucking feeling. Daniel then said that,

OK, yes, that was as maybe, but what about his

Big finger-waggling

here, for this point.

Katherine was highly skilled at bringing arguments back to their original

frame of reference, primarily because she was much better at arguing than

Daniel. It was a useful tactic because it not only made her sequence of

logic seem utterly unbroken and without flaw, but also implied that Daniel,

who rarely referred back to the originating kernel of the dispute, primarily

because they were often arguing about something he didn’t want to argue

about and so had usually spent much of the argument steering it towards

something he did want to argue about and had forgotten what they were

actually arguing about and thereby had constructed a position that made no

sense and was untenable.

Katherine had suggested more than once that Daniel didn’t actually care about whether or not they were happy as a couple, he just

cared very deeply about the idea of anyone looking at them and thinking they were unhappy. Happiness, she’d once suggested, was, to

Daniel, a way of showing off. Because this had been argued about several times in its own right, Katherine now didn’t need to go into it

here, but could simply insert it as a suggestion, thereby both strengthening her current argument with further evidence and also subtly

weakening Daniel’s resolve as she knew it was an issue he hadn’t entirely gotten to grips with. Note that although Katherine used this

point in much the same way as they both used the idea of The Real Problem, it was dissimilar in the fact that Daniel never threw it back,

meaning it was not bounced around and dissected and recycled in the same way as the concept of The Real Problem. It was therefore

a big weapon for Katherine and a safe concept to deploy at any time because she knew Daniel would not follow it up, so it was an easy

point with no risk of being steered off course.

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happiness? Wasn’t it perfectly natural that

if you loved someone you wanted them to

happy and that in consequence a big part of

your ability to be happy and relaxed was tied

up in their happiness? It seemed to him, he

said, that this was in fact perfectly normal

and not something he had to justify in order

to answer her frankly fairly predictable

arguments about normality. Moreover, he

said, did she have any idea how selfish her

argument sounded? What if he was happy,

and enjoying something, and either wanted to

share that with her or didn’t, whichever, and

her non-enjoyment or general unhappiness

Because Daniel knew that a great part of Katherine’s self-image was founded on her idea that she was different from (meaning better than)

everyone else, he was keen to use words like predictable and dull as often as possible when arguing with her, particularly when implying

her “unpredictability” [Daniel himself used the finger-waggling technique for this word] might be forced and fake and basically completely

predictable. He had, in previous arguments, extended this to imply that Katherine’s whole effort to portray his, as she put it, “obsession” with

normality as somehow in itself abnormal or philosophically misguided was in itself an old and tired argument used primarily by people who

knew they were just like everyone else but deeply wished they were not, but also, of course, deeply wished they were more like everyone

else. External eccentricity, he said, was frequently a mask for a deep-seated internal conservatism that the individual found repellent and

which caused much self-hatred and self-denial. Knowing Katherine as well as he did, Daniel knew that for all her arguments about hating the

idea of normality, part of what drove her was a desire to be more like everyone else, whose lives she regarded as simple, uncluttered by the

thoughts and feelings she was convinced that only she experienced. By questioning the way she questioned normality, Daniel could needle

away at Katherine’s secret fear she was weird and isolated and had something wrong with her. Because he’d played this line of argument

out several times, and had explicitly implied there was Something Wrong with Katherine, he could now insert it in much the same way as

Katherine inserted the Daniel-Caring-About-People-Seeing-Them-As-Happy argument. In some ways it was a stronger weapon, but also,

Daniel knew, a considerably crueller one too, because Katherine’s feelings of isolation could at times spill over into something dangerous

and genuinely sad-making, and using this knowledge to win an argument felt to Daniel, morally, pretty dubious. In the heat of the argument,

however, he could never resist.

A common accusation from Daniel, and a carefully constructed question. Daniel had, over time, accused Katherine of

selfishness a great many times and knew that it hurt her. It had, however, become a somewhat over-used weapon in that

Katherine had built up considerable defences against it and had even, once she was well-versed in the argument, begun to turn

it back on him. Daniel had therefore started to insert it into arguments not as a direct question regarding selfishness as such,

but as a question that questioned her ability to diagnose selfishness in herself, usually with a face that implied, as far as Daniel’s

not-particularly expressive face would allow, utter, disbelieving incredulousness. This was effective because it simultaneously

implied that Katherine’s selfishness was so advanced she was unable to stand back and look at it objectively and also palpated

another of Katherine’s deep and not-often-discussed fears: that her self-awareness was completely misguided and she was not at

all the person she thought she was. This was usually expressed by Katherine suddenly breaking the silence and looking up from

a book or magazine with a profoundly concerned ‘have-I-just-left-the-gas-on’ expression and saying something like ‘oh my God,

am I actually just completely self-obsessed and awful and impossible to be around?’

impeded on his enjoyment and happiness? Because

that was, he said, how he felt, every day, all the

time. Like the minute he was happy about anything

she’d go and suck the joy out of it until it was just

a dry husk, and it was making him miserable, all

the time, every day; and she wanted to talk about

him being megalomaniacal about HIS feelings? This

coming from the person who whenever she was

pissed off had to make sure everyone else was

pissed off too, preferably more than she was?

Who found, when she was unhappy, not only no

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relief being around people who were happy and

trying to make her happy, but actually just found

it irritating and nauseating? And if she wanted to

go back to the book and the ending of the bloody

book if she really wanted to be pedantic about

it, her near-vitriolic dismissal of everything he’d

enjoyed about the book and the fact that it had

been his very enjoyment of something so simple as

a good ending to a book which had started such a

sprawling argument in the first place, actually made

him think he didn’t like the book so much after

all, or that he was stupid for liking it. At the very

least, his enjoyment of it was now counterbalanced

by the associations it had taken on with a lot of

very negative feelings and reminders. And honestly,

he said, even if you accepted that they were both

somehow tyrannical about their emotions and

both wanted other people, particularly each other,

to feel what they individually were feeling, wasn’t

the fact that he wanted her to be happy far more

defensible and in many ways admirable than the fact

that she just seemed to want him and everyone

else to be as miserable and fucked up as she was?

Then Katherine went quiet, and stared at him

coldly, and gave her thin smile and cock of the head

and told him in her most cutting and bile-filled yet

still oddly calm and polite voice that not everyone

was able, or willing, as he seemed to be, of

going through the whole of their lives constantly

selecting the appropriate emotion from a fucking

drop-down menu. Then she walked away, as she

always did, while Daniel just stood still and hoped

there was dignity in silence.

Then Katherine went quiet, and stared at him

coldly, and gave her thin smile and cock of the head

and told him in her most cutting and bile-filled yet

still oddly calm and polite voice that not everyone

was able, or willing, as he seemed to be, of going

through the whole of their lives constantly selecting

the appropriate emotion from a fucking drop-down

menu. Then she walked away, as she always did,

while Daniel just stood still and hoped there was

dignity in silence.

Which of course there wasn’t, because just as their

arguments were all about happiness, their silences were

all about sex, which was another story entirely.

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Sam Byers was born in Durham in 1979. He is a graduate of the UEA masters course in Creative Writing, and is now studying for his PHD. He is currently at work on a novel, entitled Idiopathy, which will be published by 4th Estate.

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(tHIs MontH’s Mp3)

Poet-singer and storytelling songwriter BLACK JACK BARNET performs self-penned witty-ditty’s, naughty nursery rhymes, torrid tales, tongue-twisters and verses of vice and villainy sung to a suitcase stompin’, tambourine tappin’, banjo pluckin’, uke strummin’ soundtrack. Bringing to life a cartoon world of prostitutes, pirates, perverts, strippers, witches, and various other comical unsavoury characters, Black Jack Barnet casts his whimsical eye upon society and makes light of its many ills. Black Jack Barnet’s unique performances are uplifting, laugh out loud, sing-a-long’s for grown up boys and girls of all ages to enjoy.

“You may be amused, you may be moved, but you won’t be bored” - Manchester Art Gallery

“Add, Stir, Cover and Bake...

is ready to serve”

Jimmy Blakeley is an Illustrator based in Chorlton, South Manchester.

His style is a mixture of block colour and found images creating a certain 1960s graphic look while retaining a contemporary feel.

He has created a range of products such as celebration cards, posters and limited edition prints which are sold in a brilliant little independent shop in Chorlton called “WOWIE ZOWIE!”

Jimmy is currently creating a series of surreal little stories and accompanying Illustrations from a world called Inkkland a land full of strange creatures and characters.

blaCk JaCk baRnet - blood & brineIllustration by Jimmy blakeley

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(tHIs MontH’s Mp3)

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What is Centrepoint Collective?

Centrepoint is a platform for photographers to showcase their work.

We are a group motivated by similar objectives and goals, such as to promote and exhibit the work of emerging photographers as well as our own. We look for exhibition spaces, curate other people’s work and carry out activities for the endorsement of photography as an art form here in the UK and abroad.

How did it begin?

Five graduates from different universities and backgrounds got together to initially develop a project that would work as a platform to launch our practice.

Living in the UK for several years left us rootless. Not belonging here nor to our countries of origin. We started exploring concepts such as identity, cultural loss and

adaptation. Then we came with the name Centrepoint Collective as a meeting point. Being from different places and trying to fit in the melting pot of cultures that UK’s big cities are made of, cultural identity became the gravestone of the project.

We aim to support the photographic exchange between cultural identities, leading to subsequent exhibitions in each member’s country of origin and beyond and also to create a platform that enables emerging photographers to share ideas and develop collective/individual projects. On our blog we showcase emerging photographers’ work periodically and also some well-known photographers such as Boogie (NY/Belgrade) and Juan Antonio Sanchez Rull (Mexico) from time to time. Although the blog is quite recent, it is growing very quickly. More and more up and coming photographers want to be on it and this makes us feel like we are on the right path. Fe

atU

Re

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Where are you based?

We are predominantly based in the UK – London and Manchester. We are looking forward to having more members in the near future, especially photographers with mixed cultural backgrounds and from other places around the world.

Why a blog?

Blogs are a feasible way to have presence on the net. Many photography magazines, galleries and websites such as 1000Words, The F Blog, HOST and Lens Culture to mention just a few, have blogs where photographers submit their work. We realised that this was the new way of showcasing photography and we decided to go for it. We are aware of the difficulties that emerging photographers face when finding places where to display their work, so we started out our blog with the intention of giving other photographers, as well as ourselves, another space to show their projects. Blogs are much more dynamic than websites, and statistics show a much higher rate of re-visits than other forms of web content.

Feat

UR

e

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Do you show your work?

We do show our own work, but we also include the work of guest photographers in most of our exhibitions. As practitioners, we use different tools available to promote our work. We have had exhibitions in very diverse locations, from regular exhibiting spaces to more atypical ones.

Venues have responded very positively to our proposals and the spaces have been free of charge. We are very pleased by the enthusiastic response to our projects to date.

Our first exhibition as Centrepoint Collective was at the wonderful and most beloved Foundry, which has unfortunately been forced to close down a very short while ago. The following shows have been put on at one-off events such as the ‘Latinamerican Identity Conference’ at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and ‘Granville Hospital’ in Normandy, France.

If so, where can we see it and when?

We are currently at an exciting moment, with four forthcoming exhibitions. We will be exhibiting shortly at King’s College Micro

ball (3rdJuly) and on the ‘Festival of Culture’, Euston (10thJuly) and also at the MIRIAD foyer at MMU, Manchester in September and on East London’s Photomonth Festival in October/November.

For more information go to www.centrepointcollective.blogspot.com

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blankpICks26

blankpICks27

As anyone who read my obituary of him will know, I am something of a fan of J.G. Ballard. A giant of 20th century literature, his work began as science fiction, moved through a controversially explicit stage of disturbing experimental novels, before finding commercial success with the semi-autobiographical Empire Of The Sun. Hello America was published in 1981, between the latter of these initial phases and is not generally one of his more celebrated novels. This is a shame as, while it might not quite reach the heights of his best work, it is a highly effective, imaginative and amusing book. Ballard’s sense of fun is often overlooked but it comes to the fore here in what is by his standards almost a comedy. Set in a future when America has been abandoned following the disaster of the oil reserves running out, an expedition arrives to explore and discover what has happened to the legendary country. They find it not as deserted as they first thought, and soon the dreams of what America has meant and can mean drive individuals to desperate measures.

Doesn’t sound like there’s lots of room for laughs but Ballard has a sly wit which

sneaks humour in at the most unlikely moment. Effectively the whole book is a satire on America (although a very affec-tionate one) which focuses on the idea of the ‘American Dream’ and how it can be, and has been, perverted and brought to its knees. That said, the book concludes that even a near apocalypse can’t lessen the impact of the kind of thinking that made America such a super-power and caught the hearts and minds of millions the world over.

I’m always in two minds about the concept of the ‘Reader’ – a book which collates extracts from a writer’s work and puts them together in one volume. The plus side is that it acts as a literary ‘Greatest Hits’ and so could be seen as a perfect introduction to a writer for the novice. On the flip side, taking extracts out of their context can alter their meaning and disrupt the writer’s original flow of ideas.

Perhaps this kind of book makes more sense when dealing with philosophers rather than novelists. After all, novelists usually have plots in each book that need following, and taking an extract from such a plot can render it almost meaningless. A philosopher in contrast have ideas that need following, and these ideas can sometimes be summed up in an extract, or put next to an

extract from another book that develops the idea further. The latter is certainly the approach taken in The Nietzsche Reader which is split into areas of his thought, and then extracts are selected to make a coherent argument. My previous Nietzsche experience amounts to one book (On The Genealogy Of Morality) and this book is offering a good crash course in the wider areas of his thought. No substitute for reading the complete texts of course, but perhaps not the worst way in. It also reminded me of how comparatively easy Nietzsche is to read compared to other philosophers, and indeed how immensely quotable. Recommended for anyone wanting to dip their toes into Nietzsche’s world but unsure where to start.

phil Craggs

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4°

Cube Gallery, Manchester

runs till 12th July

CUBE is delighted to be hosting a series of regional

graduate showcases ‘4°’ highlighting fresh creative

talent from the region, including Blackpool and The

Fylde College, Stockport College, Northern School of

Design (UCLAN) and the University of Chester. Recent

graduates will be showcasing a broad range of creative

skills from ten differing degree courses.

http://www.cube.org.uk/

info@cube.org.uk

A HORSE WALKS INTO A BAR

Castlefield Gallery, Manchester

runs till 8th August

Castlefield Gallery is pleased to present a group

exhibition A Horse walks into a Bar including work

by Corey Arnold, Richard Billingham, Andrew Bracey,

Lorraine Burrell, Maddi Nicholson, Dan Staincliffe, Chiz

Turnross, UHC and Mark Wallinger. Using a range of

media such as video, painting, photography, sculpture

and performance, the artists playfully examine the

parameters of human and animal characteristics and

question the evolution of the human race.

www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk

FRAGMENTS

Cornerhouse, Manchester

6th July - 15th August

Christopher Guest is exhibiting a series of original

works from recent black-and-white drawings. These

large scale ‘doodles’ demonstrate his concern with

obsessional mark making, issues of time, the fight

to cover or not to cover the entire working surface

and the impermanence of the image. He investigates

the thought that we leave a residue everywhere we

go, in our actions and in our thoughts. Guest rigidly

sets aside uninterrupted 10 hourly drawing sessions

throughout the night in a compulsive process that

draws comparisons with Horror Vacui - an obsession

to completely cover and remove any “voids”.

http://www.cornerhouse.org/

THE VIEW FROM HERE

NEXUS ART CAFE, MANCHESTER

2nd July - 15th August

Key themes of the exhibition include urbanization,

environmental utopias and childhood imagination. The

body of work as a whole draws inspiration from both

the past and present with visible influences from art

movements such as Romanticism, Futurism and Cubism.

The focus lies in the creation of imaginary landscapes

with their own emotive connotations and sense of place.

theviewfromhere2010@gmail.com

http://www.nexusartcafe.com/

UNREALISED POTENTIAL

Cornerhouse, Manchester

17th July - 12th September

Unrealised Potential is a collaborative group exhibition

instigated by artist/curator Mike Chavez-Dawson. The

show aims to explore the creative potential of artists’

unrealised projects, blurring the lines between artist,

curator, visitor and producer.

http://www.cornerhouse.org/

LIBERATION

Chinese Art Centre, Manchester

runs till 14th August

Liberation is an exhibition growing out of an ongoing

discussion with Carol Yinghua Lu and Liu Ding following

the blocked use of a selection of social-networking and

self-publishing websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and

Youtube in China. This exhibition takes the form of a

visual art exhibition as well as a series of events and a

blog discussion among the curators of the exhibition

and invited guests. It proposes a close look into the

openness and potential of the Internet world as well

as its susceptibility to power and political manipulation

and ideological controls.

http://www.chinese-arts-centre.org/

MANCHESTER JAZZ FESTIVAL

Various Locations

23rd - 31st July

Highlights this year will include Gwilym Simcock/Mike

Walker/Steve Swallow/Adam Nussbaum (RNCM, 27

July), Phil Bancroft’s “Home - as Small as the World”

(RNCM, 28 July), Stu Brown’s Raymond Scott Project

(RNCM, 29 July), a live broadcast of BBC Radio 3’s Jazz

on 3 (26 July), a jazz film season at The Printworks,

a young bands showcase series in collaboration with

Wigan International Jazz Festival, plenty of free gigs in

St Ann’s Square and at the Festival Pavilion in Albert

Square, as well as gigs at Band on the Wall, Bridgewater

Hall, Matt & Phred’s...

http://www.manchesterjazz.com/

29

HAZARD MMX

Manchester City Centre

17th July

Cheeky, thought-provoking and sometimes raunchy

sprees of eccentricity… HAZARD is a biennial festival

of intervention and sited performance offering strange

occurrences in unexpected places.

So far, we’ve wrapped Cathedral Gardens in fluttering

yellow and black tape, brought shop-dummies to life on

Market St, unleashed dancing traffic cones and attempted

to circumnavigate the city by canoe. This year also

promises an outbreak of flashmobs and pervasive gaming

courtesy of Larkin’ About — so come out and play!

http://www.myspace.com/hazardmcr

To include your event in next month’s issue email

editor@blankmediacollective.org with your event title,

location, date and time and a short description (100 words).

Mia Darlone launches her first clean production as the first

theatre production at Manchester Theatre Royal since 1921.

Featuring a cast of professional actors, a stand up comedian

and Pizza Hut waitress, Mia is showcasing a new toned down

style of writing this year, in hope of repeating her sell out

success following her production of Below the Below in 2009.

The play, The Decision, is a dramatic comedy about a

Busker, who relocates from Middlesbrough to Manchester,

and follows the relationship with his ex-girlfriend. “The rest

of the storyline is under-wraps, in hope that it’ll spur a few

goosebumps when it’s revealed.”

Mia Darlone, Writer and Producer.

The Decision cast are lead by fast emerging Theatre

Director Charlie Mortimer, and is made up of Paul Brandreth,

Rebecca Andrews, Parisa Nikkhah-eshghi, Sharon Heywood,

Mark Rigby, Jennifer Edwards and Beth Cooper (who is also

Assistant Producer of the production). The production is at

the hands of Darlone, praised in the Metro last year for her

previous production’s “deft comic touch” and described as “a

performance which captivated, mesmerized and more than

fulfilled the definition of the word ‘entertain’” by Write Out

Loud.

As with last year, Mia has worked her poetry into the

writing of the play, this year by writing the lyrics to the

original music, written by acoustic artist Andy Needham.

The aim of the production is to showcase the work of the

production team and cast, in the hope of gaining further

opportunities within the industry. It is also an aim to make

the production accessible to a wide audience and therefore

the ticket prices have been kept low to facilitate this. As with

the use of the Deaf Institute last year and the Waldorf pub

in 2008, utilising a space which is currently not typically

used for theatre production will hopefully attract a new

crowd of people to come and see theatre, in addition to

traditional theatre-goers.

Up until 2010, Mia was gigging regularly on the stand-up

comedy and poetry circuits, performing at Edinburgh and

Jongleurs in 2009, before hanging up the microphone to

concentrate on chasing a script writing career. She has

been writing, producing and performing in her spare time

for the last four years whilst holding down a full time job

in the NHS working with neurologically impaired patients

in North Manchester.

This production is currently unfunded and is being done

voluntarily by all members of the cast and production team.

They would like to thank the Coliseum for the venue and

the boys at Rock Bottom for their help with promotion,

The Palace Hotel for the loan of the seating, fastprintuk

for the posters, Vicki Smith for the flyer design and Andy.

The Decision is being shown at the Theatre Royal

(currently run as Club Coliseum) from 26th-29th July,

6.30pm doors / bar 7.30pm start. Tickets £5 from www.

quaytickets.com | 0843 208 0500.

Please note:

• Not all tickets are seated so please arrive early if you

do not wish to stand.

• The venue can currently only allow over 18 in.

For interviews, comment pictures and/or information

please contact Mia Darlone at miadarlone@hotmail.co.uk.

Website www.miadarlone.weebly.co.uk

Event on Facebook.

THE DECISION

Theatre Royal,Manchester,26th - 29th July

blank media Collective Team:Director: Mark Devereux

Financial Administrator: Martin DaleDevelopment Coordinators: Dwight Clarke & Annette Cookson

Information Manager: Sylvia CoatesWebsite designer: Simon Mills

Exhibition Coordinators: Jamie Hyde, Marcelle Holt, Claire Curtin, Rachael Farmer & Taneesha AhmedSpecial Projects Coordinator: Victoria Jones

Live Music Coordinator: Iain GoodyearOfficial Photographer: Gareth Hacking

blankpages Team:Editor: John Leyland

Fiction Editor: Phil CraggsPoetry Editor: Baiba Auria

Music Editor: Dan Bridgwood-HillVisual Editors / Designers: Henry Roberts & Michael Thorp

blANk mEdIA Is kINdly sUppORTEd by lAzy dAIsEs &