Sunday afternoon update: Beth and I ran our first confidence workshop on Monday (there is definitely some irony in there). Really lovely group of women, excellent speakers and some real food for thought to take it forward. Based on feedback we’ve spent the whole day designing the future sessions and are really happy with the results. Can’t wait to run them! If you know any women’s groups that might like to be involved, please send us an email or tweet us. 🙂 Till next time xx
Hello there!
It seems pretty apparent how this is going to work.
We spend more time on our projects, improving their PR, social media platforms and inner workings, than our own. And that’s good. If not, great. Loads of consultancy firms promote themselves more than their clients and I’m not sure if that’s the best way of going about things.
So we might not post on this all the time or tweet all the time @AcuteAgency but you know what, we are trying really hard to promote one of our current organisations, Women Working Worldwide http://www.women-ww.org/ and have recent set up @WomenWorkWorld. We are finding funding to make a short film campaign, sorting out WWW facebook page and also organising a Confidence workshop including WWW in October. Busy bees.
There’s a part of me that goes on our WordPress site and gasps at the fact that our last post was about Android. So much has happened since then (Beth’s met the Prime Minister to talk about Arts funding in the North West for heavens sake!). Just because we aren’t writing about it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I could go on about how this happens a lot in lots of different media/online outlets, but that’s a different story, and another post, and I’ve got to go schedule some tweets for one of the 5 Twitter accounts we run!
But for now, check out Women Working Worldwide website and go follow @WomenWorkWorld, we’ll be back soon….Kat 🙂
ANDROID Exhibition Review 11.06.13
By Kathryn @AcuteAgency
Noam Chomsky recently postulated ‘What is the future likely to bring? A reasonable stance might be to try to look at the human species from the outside’. This perceptive phrase may be the perfect starting point to look at the recent collaborative exhibition ANDROID in the ultra-modern and sterile environment of Piccadilly Place.
A collection of 24 Manchester-based artists have come together to respond to the theme of ‘android’. Stepping into the space, you can tell that this is a sophisticated and responsible creative endeavour: a rare find. ANDROID, an exhibition realised by Sarah Sanders, curated by Julie Del’Hopital, Ian Irvine and (assisted by) John Lynch, have without doubt hit on something exciting and may have even alluded to a hopeful future. At the very least, a hopeful future in relation to the art scene in Manchester.
Cult classics and urban despotic themes resonate from each piece. The multi-sensory landscapes intrigue the viewer, from Antony Hall’s (2013) engineered Lung (prototype for breathing) to Ben Gwilliam’s (2007/2013) Empty Spiel IV, these pieces underline the idea of achievable hybrid technologies. Matthew Bamber’s (2013) Blink is reminiscent of the fictitious but extremely relevant ‘Big Brothers’ found in 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451; watching and recording passers by. Trickery and beauty collide in Evi Grigoropoulou’s (Semi Precious, 2008-9) and Ian Irvine’s (Hollywood androids, 2013) work, asking the viewer to ponder the discourses surrounding perfection in the modern world.
The performances over the weekend, by Naomi Kashiwagi (Origami Nabaztags) and Sanders (Romeo) created a provocative and subtle atmosphere of a cyborg space. A production line of origami Nabaztags and the repetitive binary call-out for love in the silent quadrangle, blurred the lines of everyday reality and fiction.
Collaboration is one of those things that I personally rate quite highly, but is often a tool that is forgotten and mistreated. Psychologists refer to the demise of the ‘groupthink’. However in the case of ANDROID, collaboration has achieved great and magical things.
On entrance to the exhibition, Denis Whiteside’s Soliloquy (2013) phonetically notates the final monologue of the Blade Runner replicant Roy Batty, quoting that “All those moments will be lost in time”. Ultimately, I hope that, this moment and the work of Sanders et al., will not be.
Great preview night at ANDROID. Photographers, interviewers, film makers. Acute Agency turned into The Press for the night! Big thanks to Sarah Sanders and everyone else involved in the making of a fab night!
Acute Agency 