clair056

SP23 (formerly Spiral Tribe) are putting on a rare event in London on 19 April, at Village Underground, London EC2. They say: 'In the early 90s, members of SP23 were all working with the Spiral Tribe Sound System. A creative collective that openly aligned itself with the free party and free festival movements. At the core of the free music scene were values of sharing, openness and inclusion. Values that should have a place in society, but in a country ruled by the ideologies of Thatcherite privatisation, they were not to be tolerated. After a year of organising events in remote locations, the Spiral Tribe Sound System learnt this the hard way. As opposition from the authorities grew to the free festival and free party movement, members of Spiral Tribe began thinking of leaving the country. Though key figures within the group had been arrested and bailed (for allegedly organising the famous Castlemorton Common free festival) the sound system (and a mobile recording studio) managed ...

This weekend is the last chance to see 'A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance' at Tate Modern in London. The exhibition 'looks at the dynamic relationship between painting and performance since the 1950s'. I must admit in places the connections seem rather tenuous, but who cares when there is this much iconic radical/feminist/queer film, photography and painting in one space. Viennese Actionism, Derek Jarman (his film 'Miss Gaby, I'm ready for my close up'), Cindi Sherman, Ana Mendiata, Jack Smith, Hélio Oiticica - all present and correct, along with the following:  Sanja Ivekovic, Make-Up Make-Down (1978) - the film features the make up ritual to a soundtrack that includes 'Fly Robin Fly' by Silver Convention.   Yayoi Kusama, from 'Flower Orgy', 1968   Zsuzsanna Ujj, With a Throne, 1986  Gunter Brus walking through Vienna in 1965 painted white with a black stripe down his face and front - for which he was arrested  Luigi Onta...

In the last weeks before he was drowned in 1822,    Percy Bysshe Shelley  wrote a series of poems inspired by his friend Jane Williams   and her musical talents. Among other things she sang and played the guitar, and indeed a guitar Shelley gave to her still exists in the Bodlean Museum in Oxford (pictured below). The poem's romantic linking of 'music and moonlight' has been repeated many times - think of Irving Berlin's 'There may be trouble ahead, But while there’s music and moonlight and love and romance, Let’s face the music and dance' and all those 'Dancing in the Moonlight' songs.  To Jane: The Keen Stars Were Twinkling The keen stars were twinkling, And the fair moon was rising among them, Dear Jane! The guitar was tinkling, But the notes were not sweet till you sung them Again. As the moon's soft splendour O'er the faint cold starlight of Heaven Is thrown, So your voice most tender To the strings without soul had then given Its own. The ...

Dancing in Lost River Cave , Bowling Green,Kentucky in the late 1940s 'shared conviviality could be seen as a kind of communistic base on top of which everything else is constructed. It also helps to emphasize that sharing is not simply about morality, but also about pleasure. Solitary pleasures will always exist, but for most human beings, the most pleasurable activities almost always involve sharing something: music, food, liquor, drugs, gossip, drama, beds. There is a certain communism of the senses at the root of most things we consider fun' (David Graeber, Debt: the first 5000 years, 2011)

The Workers Film and Photo League  (sometimes just 'The Film and Photo League') was a 1930s organisation associated with the Communist Party. I came across an article about them recently: 'England: the (Workers) Film and Photo League' by Terry Dennett, published in Photography/Politics: One' - a journal/book published by Photography Workshop in 1979. A League document quoted in the article set out its mission as being: 'to provide and popularize film and photos of working class interest, giving a true picture of the industrial and social conditions of the workers today and of their organized struggle to improve their conditions'. Another text states: 'There are thousands of workers in this country who own cameras, but who only use them for taking an occasional snapshot. If even a number of them were to photograph the conditions around the - in the factories, workshops, railways and countryside, in their streets - we should have an invaluable record of wo...

No sooner has a dance craze exploded over the internet than it seems to emerge as a global protest meme. Protestors have been doing it Gangnam style since Psy's Korean pop track became an international hit last year. For instance, last October the dance featured in a demonstration at Marineland in Ontario protesting against keeping dolphins in captivity. In January, construction workers in the Chinese city of Wuhan danced Gangnam Style outside the nightclub they had built in protest against delayed wages ( Guardian 23 January 2013 ). Also in China, in Henan province, there has been an ongoing campaign against the clearing of graves by the Government, including last month a mass movement to restore graves that had been partially destroyed. One local blogger complained: 'The so-called “grave clearing for agriculture” is just an excuse to get the land and sell it to developers for industrial purposes. The movement is de facto land encirclement. They use the graves of people...