Ultimate Holding Company | Press Archive

Época

2011-03-14T11:31:00.000-07:00

We are extremely excited to see the extInked project featured on the website of Época, a weekly publication in Brazil. To see the finished article entitled 'Tatuagens para salvar a natureza' (Tattoos to save Nature) please click here, alternatively you can visit the extInked blog for a translated version.

Corridor 8 Magazine

2010-05-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

We were surprised to find ourselves included in a new publication, Corridor 8, this month included amongst artists such as Freee Collective and Superflex.

We're in the Manchester cluster in the Magnetic North map of artist led groups designed by dust and Laura Mansfield. It's the centrefold, on pages 31 and 32 and the magazine costs £10.99. We bought it at the Cornerhouse, but you could buy it from Amazon if you fancy it.

Exam - CityLife

2010-05-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

by Sarah Walters

"...threatening to overshadow almost everything else [in the Queer Up North Festival] on the calendar is the return of Ultimate Holding Company, an art group best known for previously recreating Guantanamo Bay in Hulme for 10 days. Six years later, it invited 100 volunteers to be tattooed with the names of endangered species in Extinked.

The group returns with Exam, the brainchild of Joe Richardson and Jai Redman, developed with local community groups. What is it? Well, your guess is as good as ours, but frankly we’re terrified by the brief: ‘One thing is certain,’ it warns, ‘you will be tested’."

Read the original article at: www.citylife.co.uk

Exam - Gathering Speed!

2010-04-29T02:09:00.000-07:00

The preparations for Exam are well under way, candidate places are booking up fast and all elements of the day are coming together brilliantly. We are extremely excited about our beautiful range of eflyers and wanted to share them with you. To download the full range of flyers please visit the Exam webpage.

Ext Inked article in this months issue of Chimp.

2010-02-16T05:29:00.000-08:00

Ext Inked features in the February 2010 issue of Manchester's Chimp Magazine, unfortunately the article is not online so if you would like to have a read you will have to pop out and buy a copy.

ExtInked Press

2010-02-16T03:25:00.000-08:00

Amelia's Magazine by Adam Sutcliffe
Amelia's Magazine by Grace Beaumont
BBC Manchester
Discover Magazine by Andrew Moseman
The Guardian by Jenny Jones
The Guardian by Hugh Warwick
New Scientist by Jessica Griggs
The Mule by Samantha Bradey
South Manchester Reporter by Amy Glendinning

Chimp Magazine Manchester by Martin G-H

Art Not Oil Diary

2009-10-07T02:54:00.001-07:00

Art Not Oil has included two pieces of ours in their diary for 2010, and with 33% of the profits going towards the Art Not Oil campaign, and 67% going to communities resisting oil and gas extraction in the global south, we are proud to support the project.

Arnolfini Exhibition: C Words

2009-10-07T01:41:00.000-07:00

The well-travelled Carbon Map, commissioned by Platform, has been included in another show at Arnolfini running from 3 October to 29 November. The image of the map (below) was used to promote the 50 day investigation of the C Words: carbon, climate, capital and culture by 60 artists, activists, campaigners and educators.

Joe Richardson in the Observer

2009-09-13T01:13:00.000-07:00

Ultimate Holding Company artist Joe Richardson gets a mention in Sunday's Observer from comedian Mark Thomas, for an artwork featuring Princess Diana. The work, shown above in the bottom right-hand corner, is cited by Thomas as one of his most treasured possessions in a tour of his study for the 'My Space' column of the lifestyle magazine:

"Diana Spencer print: I'm friends with a Manchester-based art collective called UHC. A few years ago they were showing me round their studio when I saw this and thought it was brilliant. I've forgotten how much they sold it to me for, £40 or something"

Click here for the full article.

NB. The work is not a print, but a unique mixed media art work.

Filter Magazine

2009-09-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

Filter Magazine, a publication by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), recently went online and amongst some of the other great work on their website they also showcase some of our older projects (including a couple of projects we don't have on our website); the Spring Shrouds, H.O.B.O and the Parking Meter Mourning Hood.

EXT INKED hit the radio waves!

2009-09-09T09:37:00.000-07:00

106.1 Rock Radio Manchester invited Jai Redman and Timo Ten Feld to join Steve Berry on the breakfast show to talk about EXT INKED the forth coming UHC project celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday.

To download and listen again to this interview please see the EXT INKED profile page.

The Carbon Map

2009-09-03T06:44:00.000-07:00

The Carbon Map created by UHC in 2007 as a commission for Platform for the Transport Planning Society will soon be on show at Arnolfini, a centre for contemporary arts in Bristol.

Artist-activist group PLATFORM and their collaborators propose C Words, a two-month investigation into carbon, climate, capital and culture. Based on PLATFORM's 25 years of research, art and action, C Words cross-examines the present and looks to the next two decades. How did we get here? Where are we going? Who's deciding? Who's made invisible? Whose future matters? PLATFORM members will be in residence at Arnolfini throughout the project.

Over 25 events, installations, performances, actions, walks, courses, discussions and skills-sharing will build towards the moment of public departure to the protests at the contested COP 15 in Copenhagen. This isn't art which merely describes the problems of climate justice. C Words investigates how everything from carbon offsets and transport, to racism and bank accounts play their part in the carbon web. How will culture be produced in a low energy future? Can we imagine our way from here to there?

The Carbon Map will form part of the exhibition entitled - C Words: Carbon, Climate, Capital, Culture, How did you get here and where are we going? The show will open on Saturday 3rd October 2009 through to Sunday 29th November.

Dyeing Breeds

2009-07-06T05:21:00.000-07:00

Ext Inked has received further acclaim in the August 09 issue of Bizarre Magazine (UK). The article features information about UHC's latest and most controversial new art venture which invites 100 volunteers to become 'ambassadors' for a threatened species of insect, animal or plant and have a picture of it tattooed on their skin. Bizarre have also been given an exclusive peek at several of the designs including the Great Yellow Bumble Bee and the Erratic Ant created by UHC's co-founder Jai Redmen.

To find out more about Ext Inked or to register your interest in becoming an ambassador please visit the UHC website.

One and All

2009-06-24T04:37:00.000-07:00

Our very own Joe Richardson was one of eight artists invited to take part in the 'I Don't Know About Community Networks But I Know What I Like' project organised by Alison Kershaw. The works were featured in the One and All exhibition at the Castlefield Galley, which ran from 3 April to 17 May 2009.

A review of this exhibition featured in the June issue of A-N Magazine.

Limited Edition Sushi

2009-06-24T03:35:00.000-07:00

UHC has had the pleasure of working with Greenpeace for the Limited Edition Sushi Campaign, the aim of which is to stop trendy restaurant Nobu selling endangered species on their menu.

We are happy to see this campaign featured in the London Evening Standard newspaper and hope that through generating awareness for this issue people will realise that serving endangered species in restaurants such as Nobu is not cool!

To find out more about this campaign please visit www.greenpeace.org.uk/nobu and watch www.endoftheline.com.

EXT INKED - en4m.org.uk

2009-03-03T03:20:00.000-08:00

100 tattoos for conservation

"EXT INKED aims to show that our generation cares about the future of all species and is prepared to prove it in blood, sweat and tears", explain the organisers.

The project is launched today, on Darwin's birthday. "We really feel that Darwin would appreciate our desire to creatively celebrate evolution, the sheer beauty of these species and the human effort needed to save them," a participating artist writes.

EXT INKED is a new art project from Ultimate Holding Company, in conjunction with the Marine Conservation Society and Buglife (The Invertebrate Conservation Trust). Ultimate Holding Company is an award-winning, radical art and design collective operating in the heart of Manchester since 2002.

Volunteers will be permanently tattooed with the image of their chosen mammal, invertebrate, bird, reptile, fish or plant.

To keep EXT INKED free and avoid sponsorship, they are aiming to raise £5,000 from the public. They want the event to be free to attend and hope that it will attract a new wave of interest in conservationism.

With every successful free tattoo the project will create a new ambassador for another threatened species - a living exhibition of Charlie’s other angels!

If you think EXT INKED is a good idea and would like to help then sign up to the newsletter on their website linked below.

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, are dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us...” -Charles Darwin 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection'

Arts Council News

2009-01-05T07:25:00.000-08:00

UHC water table recieves futher acclaim in the August issue of Arts Council 'News'. The article highlights the success of The Water Table grabbing bronze prize in the prestigious Show Garden Catagory, adding to its 'already impressive tally of horticultural awards'. Being described as innovative and beautiful, the project recieved a glowing report from the executive Director of Arts Council England,

"Congratulations to all those who have brought this innovative project together. The Arts Council is delighted to support ventures which have such a creative reach into the commnutiy. We feel sure Metal's partnership with southend will grow from strength top strength."

Creative Review

2008-10-06T02:47:00.000-07:00

UHC has been mentioned for our work with Climate Camp in Jody Boenhart's article, In The Front Line in this months Creative Review (October 08):

Design at the Climate Camp

Each year the camp has worked with the Manchester-based studio Ultimate Holding Company (UHC) to create an integrated campaign (website, posters, flyers, stickers, etc.). The leading image for the 2008 camp was a Swiss army knife, out of which all the tools of activism extended: here is a wrench, book, wind turbine, loud speaker, rubber boot, carrot, and flower. The camp also produced a newspaper, You Are Here, in an edition of 20,000. Subtle headlines, text and images draw you into the issues slowly. Climate change is not even mentioned or alluded to until several pages into the paper. John Jordan worked on the paper and is one of the key design activists at the camp. The intention, he claims, is “to make publicity materials which have the slickness of corporate media yet the punch of rebel flyers, the poetic writing of literature yet the political analysis of radical theory, the desirability of capitalist design, yet the subversiveness of anarchist thinking”.

The crisp design produced by the Climate Camp is removed from the typical anarchist/Marxist/revolutionary visual codes of earlier activists movements. The Climate Camp’s graphic identity aims to be attractive to everyday people; it is accessible and asks everyone to participate. Gone are the stencilled or dirty grunge fonts that are identified with your counter-cultures. In an era when our rebellion has been sold back to us for so long that the aesthetics of rebellion are virtually meaningless, the Climate Camp has avoided positioning itself with any of the counter-culture based identity politics of earlier activists movements that could never escape the anarchist ghetto. So far, the camp has stayed clear of old ideology-based rhetoric and imagery, but is a constant battle to maintain a fresh perspective and communications strategy.

How does the relationship between the designer and client differ from a commercial situation? Here the client is the networking group of the camp. UHC describes the dynamic: “We begin from their starting point, that is to say – the brief is ‘to save the world now’ and the target audience is ‘everyone’. It can be hard pleasing everyone, with such a vociferously non-hierarchical, decentralised, voluntary and deeply committed group. Every year we nearly have to start building relationships from scratch, because the client is a shifting group. After three years we now have a good relationship with one or two people who have remained constant and are design savvy.”

The Independent

2008-09-22T06:08:00.000-07:00

Included in the The Independent's special supplement for the climate clinic at the Labour Party Conference is our "e.on f.off" slogan as used by activists in their battle against the company's efforts to paint itself 'green' whilst building an unsustainable coal power plant at Kingsnorth in Kent.

Water Table on BBC

2008-09-16T01:13:00.000-07:00

UHC's Water Table, commissioned by national arts organisation Metal, was beautifully showcased in the BBC's footage of the Hampton Court Flower Show. As a common point of interest for all involved, the garden took climate change and its effects as the starting point of the design, but also aimed to reflect the social potential of a shared space.

The table, which first appears at 0:27 seconds in the youtube video, takes a leaf from the low water brassica family as the central design, and imagines it as an abstract map of the Thames Estuary. The veins of the leaf feature three very different sets of information: names of key foods in the Brassica family, the hidden underground rivers of London and the names of the Vicotian engineers that provided the ideas, the skills and the labour, to make access to clean water possible.

2008-09-09T03:35:00.000-07:00

Creative Times: Best of Manchester - shortlist announced

Debbie Smith

Published 31.07.08

After an eight week competition, hundreds of entries and a panel of judges led by Peter Saville, Urbis reveals the shortlist for the Best of Manchester Awards 2008.

The annual awards – now in their second year – celebrate innovation in three fields: art, music and fashion. Entry was via an open competition, with entrants encouraged to submit work that was genuinely new, exciting and innovative. Over 250 creative professionals entered – an increase of 65% on last year’s inaugural awards.

Some of the biggest names in art, music and fashion joined Peter Saville at Urbis to sift through the entries, including the broadcaster and critic, Miranda Sawyer; Luke Bainbridge (Observer Music Monthly); Caroline Elleray, Head of A&R at Universal Music Publishing; the Castlefield Gallery’s Kwong Lee; David Mallon, the fashion brains behind Ringspun and Elvis Jesus; and Tim Thomas of Manchester’s Blueprint Studios.

Together, the judges agreed a shortlist for each category:

MUSIC

Music promoter Richard Cheetham is the brains behind independent label, club night and fanzine, High Voltage. Cheetham began High Voltage as a student and, over the past five years, has gone on to publish music by bands including The KBC, The Answering Machine and Nine Black Alps. It’s this entrepreneurial spirit – and his support of new music in Manchester – that won Cheetham praise from the judges.

Taking a similar entrepreneurial tack is Duncan Sime. At the forefront of the folk scene in Manchester, Sime developed the club night and independent label, Red Deer Club. Sime has published twelve releases by artists such as Sara Lowes, Sophie Pigeons, George Thomas and David A Jaycock. Red Deer Club is now attracting attention from music lovers across the UK – it was recently feted by Word magazine as the ‘Manchester hub’ of the nu folk scene – and it is his commitment to new music that ensured Sime a place on the shortlist.

Jasper Wilkinson, as part of multimedia collective I Am Your Autopilot, fuses music, animation and visual art to create visually and musically arresting new work. In the shortlisted entry, a music video entitled Smokescreens, I Am Your Autopilot blend hard-edged electronica with choral sounds, using synthesizers, guitar and multi-layered harmonies to create what Wilkinson describes as ‘sonic landscapes’. Smokescreens was produced in collaboration with Manchester-based TV and film producer, DeathtothePixels.

ART

Artist Paul Harfleet’s practice combines installation, photography and an interest in the peculiarities of everyday urban life. His work includes The Pansy Project, a series of interventions at sites of homophobic attack or abuse. Beginning as a small-scale autobiographical work in Manchester, The Pansy Project has gone on to appear in London, Liverpool, Egilsstaðir (Iceland), Berlin and New York. Harfleet is also behind The Apartment, an artist-led exhibition space inside a one-bedroom council flat. It is his contribution to the arts in Manchester that secured Harfleet a place on the shortlist.

Conceptual artist Naomi Kashiwagi has long been interested in obsolete technological objects such as manual typewriters and gramophones. Her past work includes turning gramophones into record turntables and employing a piano as a drawing instrument. The work for which Naomi was shortlisted is ‘||: Repetition :||, Fugue No.1 in QWERTY for 8 Typewriters’, a music and text score composed for typewriters that saw four pianists and four percussionists ‘playing’ the typewriters. Kashiwagi’s originality won particular praise from the judges.

Jai Redman is creative director of artists’ collective and design studio UHC (Ultimate Holding Company). UHC first came to attention thanks to the 2003 project This Is Camp X-Ray. Here, UHC installed a fully operational, life-size replica of the US internment camp at Guantanamo Bay – in Hulme. Fusing Redman’s interests in politics, direct action and contemporary art, This Is Camp X-Ray was followed up by other projects including the Thin Veneer of Democracy, a 16-foot table whose surface is decorated with a ‘power map’ of Manchester’s corporate and political movers and shakers. Redman’s role as director of UHC particularly impressed the judges.

FASHION

Fashion entrepreneur Simon Buckley runs vintage boutique Rags to Bitches. Much more than a run-of-the-mill second hand store, Rags to Bitches offers a bespoke dressmaking service; has its own label; runs sewing, pattern-cutting and dressmaking courses; counts celebrities such as Celine Dion among its fans; supports up-and-coming local designers and was recently voted by The Daily Telegraph as one of Britain’s best boutiques. It was the venture’s potential for expansion that won high praise from the judges.

Nabil El-Nayal is a designer whose dramatic, monochrome collection immediately caught the attention of the judges. A graduate of Manchester School of Art, El-Nayal designed a seven outfits inspired by the Elizabethan era. While the clothes are visually arresting, El-Nayal’s work is also commercially viable, with his collection ranging from the extreme (a dress with six sleeves, for example) to outfits that are capable of making the leap from the catwalk to the high street.

Another graduate of Manchester School of Art, Hasan Hejazi has focused his creative energies on establishing his own womenswear business. As well as creating beautiful, bespoke clothing, however, Hejazi is an experienced stylist and offers a personal shopping service for his Manchester-based clients. It is Hejazi’s entrepreneurial spirit, alongside his talent as both a designer and a stylist, which secured his place on the final shortlist.

The nine shortlisted entrants’ work will be shown in a special Best of Manchester exhibition at Urbis, which opens on 8 August. The category winners will be revealed live at the Best of Manchester awards ceremony at Urbis on Thursday 7 August.

Winning the Best of Manchester 2008 Award is about more than accolade: each of the three winners will walk away with a cash prize of £2000 and a tailored professional development package, drawn up by the judges, designed to help further their career and ensure they become Manchester’s future art, music and fashion stars.

See the article on the Creative Times website.

eye magazine

2007-12-08T03:06:00.000-08:00

Contemporary art open to all

2007-10-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

A major exhibition of contemporary art is opening at Barrow’s Art Gene gallery in Abbey Road.

Every two years Art Gene invites professional artists from the north east and the north west to enter Art Gene Open Exhibition for a prize worth £6,500.

This includes a £2,000 artist’s fee and a two-month, research and development residency at Art Gene working from one of the centre’s large studio spaces.

Barrow’s John Hall and Steve Massam from Kirkby Stephen are among the entrants whose work is on show. Others are Eric Bainbridge, Darren Banks, Sally Barker, Cath Campbell, Joe Clark, David Conroy, Charlotte Dawson, Leo Fitzmaurice, Matthew Holding, Joe Hillier, Rachel Lancaster, Camilla Lyon, Paul Merrick, Miles Thurlow, William Titley, UHC Collective, and Wolfgang Weileder.

The exhibition is curated by Paul Moss and Miles Thurlow, cofounders and directors of Workplace Gallery in Newcastle.

The exhibition investigates the recent tendency towards the use of architecture, urbanism and built environment as a subject for art.

As Barrow undergoes one of the biggest regeneration projects in the UK, the exhibition is a timely showcase of work about civic bureaucracy, architectural models, precarious sculptural interventions, and cut and paste video clips video clips of domestic horror film interiors.

The gallery is open Wednesdays to Saturdays between 12:30pm and 4:30pm and until 6pm on Thursdays.

Admission is free.

The winner of the prize will be announced tomorrow night and the exhibition will run until November 30.

Chip power cooks up a festival treat

2007-07-16T06:57:00.000-07:00

Cooking oil powers eco-friendly event

DEAN KIRBY

A CHIP fat-powered sound system and pedaling machine were among unusual eco-friendly devices on show at a pioneering carbon-free festival.

More than 600 visitors got a locally-grown carrot and an energy-saving light bulb at the Party Without Pollution in Wythenshawe Park - thought to be the first event of its kind.

It also featured a solar-powered cinema and art made from recycled rubbish. People saved energy at home and work to offset the carbon emissions required to stage the event.

Phil Korbel from Manchester charity Radio Regen, which partnered the project, said: "The event couldn't have been more different from Wembley and Live Earth.

"The generator was powered by chip fat and there were no limos or private jets. But it was great to see local people enjoying themselves and helping the environment. We're hoping to organise a similar event next year."

The event at Kirkup Gardens, Simonsway, was organised by radio station Wythenshawe FM, as part of a project called Wythenshawe Forever. It aims to encourage residents to save energy and protect the environment.

The focal point was a Soft `power station' made from five shipping containers, which contained a bike-powered photocopier and other energy-saving devices.

Residents experimented with household energy surveys, food growing and carbon-free publishing in the run up to the festival.

getting agitated with art

2007-07-14T03:35:00.000-07:00

the urban holding company is intent on waking up the world, one art attack at the time. Here bob asks a founding director of the creative co-op what they’re all about.

Jonathan Atkinson isn’t interested in making friends, but he does want to influence people.

Over the course of his chat with bob the 31 year old Middlesbrough-born Mancunian berates BP and Manchester Airport for their “green-wash” agendas (“tiny concessions in comparison to their huge environmental impacts”), the University for its links to BNFL and British Aerospace, while reserving his strongest criticism for the “neo-liberal cabal” that hold the reigns of power over our city.

They, he believes, are deliberately misleading us.

“There’s a party going on in the centre of town,” he observes, through glasses that are seemingly tinted with fertiliser rather than flowers, “but go a little bit outside the city centre, and it’s a different story.”

He explains; “The city council and various partnerships that run around it present Manchester as this booming city, as a city reborn. But actually if you look at the rwality of the situation Manchester has the highest death rate in the country, the highest levels of pollution in the country, it has extremely poor educational standards and the same goes for the transport network.”

“The facts tell you that it has a population that are really suffering, yet the PR just says how great it is. We’re trying to expose the truth behind that and encouraging people to decide for themselves what they genuinely think.”

If Atkinson is a dissident voice amongst the hoards of advocates for modern day Manchester, then it must be nice to know that he’s not alone.

The reason that he knows this for sure is that he works alongside six other co-conspirators at UHC, the arts co-operative he set up with three friends in 2002, and some 25 collaborators, all of whom wish to “effect social change through the creation of artwork and design.”

The neo-liberal junta are but one of their many targets, but one they’ve managed to score direct hits against with projects such as their OpenCity Repository (see www.opencity.org.uk) and last year’s mischievously provocative ‘Thin Veneer of Democracy’.

Here’s Jonathan to explain the latter: “A lot of our work is about creating debate and uncovering hidden information, so the Thin Veneer encapsulates what we’re all about.”

“It’s a 16ft long board table made from hand-made English oak. It depicts the relationships and networks at work within Manchester. The great and the good, in terms of companies and individuals, that form the cabal at the heart of the city; the people behind the market-led regeneration.”

“It doesn’t say anything damning in itself,” he continues, “it doesn’t say ‘this is a list of bastards in Manchester’. Its just a list, but some people seem to find that inherently threatening and it’s proved quite controversial.”

It could be argued that UHC’s stance is quite controversial in itself, railing against the process, namely that of regeneration and private investment, that is ostensibly designed to improve the city’s environment. But Atkinson won’t be swayed.

“The fundamental problems the city suffers from are exacerbated by the market-led development that’s happening at the core. Instead of tackling unemployment in the outlying wards we have jobs for university people that are coming form outside the area and buying flats in the centre of town. Most of the existing population are left with the jobs of security guards or working on the tills.”

“We’re concerned about some of the assumptions that are being made – that private capital is good, that public services can be filtered off and that the real social and environmental problems of the city can be ignored.”

Whether you agree with UHC’s far left of leftfield politics or nor, their determination and passion demands respect, and the same has to be said about their art.

Looking over the groups portfolio, 9 times out of 10 the work is hard hitting, impassioned and governed by something all too often missing from modern day artistic output: powerful ideas.

Take the pictured Spring Shrouds for example, a job UHC carried out in conjunction with the firebrand comedian Mark Thomas and some 45 volunteers. Sporting the natty legend ‘tree breathe – adverts suck’ the co-operative produced 100 of the sheaths and one bright Spring morning, May 4th in fact, slipped them over every JC Decaux six sheet poster site in the city centre.

The effect was stunning, the motivation simple – as Atkinson elucidates:

“It was a gift that we could give to Manchester’s commuters. To give them a temporary respite from the barrage of advertising that everybody who comes into the city suffers from.”

“It had a nice little idea at its heart and well received, but the company were quick to realise what was happening and take appropriate action. By the end of the day there was only a few left.”

Atkinson seems proud of the reaction that JCD were forced into, rather than upset at the transient impact of the campaign. But not all of UHC art and design is so short-lived. Two recent projects in particular have been developed to have lasting effects at both local and national level, with our interviewees’ first love – the environment – being the fulcrum of the activity.

“There’s an event called the Climate Camp that is going to take place in August at Heathrow and we’ve done their posters and design work for free.”

“We’ve centred on a bold statement,” he imparts with his now trademark, “it’s ‘you are not fucked.’ The idea being that you can have a positive influence and make a difference, which is better than leaving environment issues to the politicians and businesses. That’s been a real success so far.”

By the time bob hits the street UHC will be hoping that they’ve notched up another success with the second of their planet protecting initiatives, Wythenshawe Forever. This is a project they’ve produced with Wythenshawe FM and DEFRA to communicate climate change issues to ‘hard to reach’ communities. This will have been achieved with a ‘party without pollution’ on July 14th, where amongst other things, their container crate power station (pictured) will be creating clean, green energy for the revellers.

“It’s a way of reaching out to a communicating a problem that may be beyond the every day issues that they face. It’s collaborative, so we’re not being dictatorial and saying ‘right, climate change is happening. You need to be giving up this and doing that.’ We are working with people on an equal basis. That we can effect change form within rather than imposing a view from outside.” Another bold idea with conviction, passion and a positive agenda at its heart.

If UHC go on like this they’ll have to be careful. They might just end up making more friends than they think.

The find out more about UHC go visit www.uhc.org.uk. To be scared by one of Jonathan’s facts about Manchester read this… “Being stood outside Piccadilly Station for a day is the equivalent of smoking 22 cigarettes in terms of the pollution you’re exposed to.” There’s more of this kind of stuff at www.opencity.org.uk.

POWER FROM THE PEOPLE

2007-06-22T06:45:00.000-07:00

A unique climate change project was launched this month as a thirty foot steel structure in Kirkup Gardens in Wythenshawe opened its doors to the public. 'The PowerStation' has been made from five shipping containers and is the HQ for the 'Wythenshawe Forever!' (w4e!) project that is engaging local residents in producing a 'Party Without Pollution' on Saturday 14th July. People living and working in the area are being asked to save enough energy so that the area can host the UK's first ever public festival that will not contribute to climate change. Household energy surveys, local food growing, zero-carbon publishing and knitting warm clothes are just some of the activities on offer.

Painted white and green the PowerStation reads 'We need your energy' and has been designed by a team of artists, architects and local people. There was the opportunity to use the worlds only bike powered photocopier, see solar oven demonstrations and the opportunity to visit a food miles project on Woodhouse Park allotments on Maismore Road.

Run by community radio station Wythenshawe FM 97.2. Wythenshawe Forever! is working with people all over Wythenshawe to help save energy or to create new energy in clean, renewable ways. The project will be adding up how much saved power has accumulated and in July will use it to put on a festival called "The Party Without Pollution". The more energy ‘generated’, the better the party.

The Party Without Pollution will take place on Saturday July 14th 2007 12pm-6pm at Kirkup Gardens, on Simonsway, opposite Parklands School. Everyone is invited and entry is free of charge. There will be fun activities and performances, showing how we saved and created enemy to power the The Power Station is the base for Wythenshawe Forever! and the venue for the Party Without Pollution. Leading up to the Party in July there will be a variety of activities going on at the Power Station. find out more about the project and how you can get involved ring Eleanor on 436 4165.

Why we need guerrilla craft

2007-06-06T02:05:00.000-07:00

Craft has political roots that run deep. Now, in an age of climate change, craft – or the act of making rather than unquestioningly buying into the consumer treadmill – is taking on a particular political significance.

it was the human-scale of craft that inspired the Art and Crafts movement towards the end of the 19th Century. The social reforms set out by people like John Ruskin and William Morris saw a return to handcraft as the means for restoring individuality and quality into the work process, destroyed by the industrial revolution.

Craft hasn’t only inspired reformers, it has also inspired revolutionaries. India’s independence movement did not have a weapon as its symbol, but craft – the charkha (spinning wheel).

And in the UK, we don’t need to look too far into the past to begin to unearth the importance of craft. The ‘make-do and mend’ ethos in response to the shortages of the second world war played a major role in reducing consumption.

Recycling old clothes, unpicking the wool from pullovers to darn socks became second nature in many homes. Ask almost anyone, and a memory of craft of some description will play a significant role in family folklore.

From my mother sitting by the fire with my grandmother on cold winter evenings learning to make rag rugs, to my friend Judith’s memory of the excitement she felt choosing fabric with her sister for their annual party dresses. Memories of craft are generally warm and happy ones.

But craft has recently regained its ‘cool’. There are craft-inspired club night around London. Radical reformers in the world of knitting and lace-making have already overthrown the status quo, providing a model that other crafts can follow. Knitting clubs meet in cities from San Francisco to Stockholm.

There is even a group of activists that stage knit-ins in the London underground.

Artist and ‘radical knitter’ Shane Waltener clearly expresses the political edge implicit in contemporary craft: “On the one hand, I am celebrating this tradition that I really believe in. On the other, its about self-sufficiency. By knitting you are resisting capitalism and consumerism. You are not responding to the fashion industry; you are making your own decisions.”

The practice of craft has many of the characteristics that the science of well-being tells us has the greatest influence on our happiness. Craft tends to be communal, it involves learning and sharing new skills – or flourishing.

And, according to Karl Marx, craft – alongside music and art (arguably both crafts in themselves) – are the only forms of labour that allow people to truly be themselves. In an ideal world, says Karl Marx, “Our product would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.”

Today, as companies look to technical fixes as ways to sell us more stuff in the name of combating climate change, perhaps part of the real answer lies in returning to our crafty roots and rediscovering our ability not just ‘make do and mend’, but make for the pleasure of making.

Craft is also displaying an activist edge. In Manchester, the graphic collective UHC celebrated their fifth birthday by indulging in a little light guerrilla craft.

Incensed by the invasion of Manchester’s public space by adverts, UHC took crafty action. Constructing carefully woven white shrouds, UHC shielded Manchester’s public space from un-needed, unwanted advertising hoardings.

On each shroud, the roots of a tall oak tree bear the legend ‘trees breathe, adverts suck’. As we try to find our way in a warming world, if the future is crafty we may well find that we can live good live without costing the earth, and even have a little fun along the way.

Ruth Potts

MANCHESTER'S ADVERT BREAK

2007-05-14T02:56:00.000-07:00

HAZEL HEALY

A ghostly parade of hooded advert hoardings met Manchester commuters on their way to work last week, in place of the usual promotions for Fila, Nokia and Loyd Grossman's sauces.

Every single one of the city centre's 88 free-standing ads communicated instead the anti-consumerist slogan "trees breathe ads suck", stencilled on to made¬to-measure calico covers.

A team of volunteers installed the ads early on Friday morning. They offered to pimp their city with the environmental message after hearing about the idea by word of mouth.

Manchester-based arts collective UHC was commissioned to produce the temporary artworks by McDemos, the "protest solutions company" set up by comedian Mark Thomas and artists Tracey Moberly and Tony Pletts.

Thomas described the event as a "poetic gesture for the city of Manchester".

UHC has authored numerous street-based art interventions including a replica of Guantanamo Bay in Hulme in 2003.

UHC said in a statement: "We feel this presents those travelling to work with a gift of peace and beauty in place of the incessant noise of advertising."

IT consultant Matt Atkins, 31, from Hulme, was one of the volunteers who had been up since 7am de-commissioning the ads. Fear of climate change had motivated him to take action.

"There's too much rubbish in the world already and the problem with consumerism is that it's all about 'more' and not 'better'," said Atkins.

JC Decaux, the advertising company that owns the hoardings, has built hundreds of free-standing adverts across Manchester. They are situated strategically on busy roads in the heart of the city and are championed by the firm as the best way to expose audiences to outdoor media.

A spokesperson from JC Decaux said they had sent teams out to take the covers down later that day.

Confused commuters stopped to stare at the newly decorated hoardings, some taking photos with mobile phones.

Passerby Mike Potts, 24, from Levenshulme, was positive about the art stunt.

"I really like them," he said. "It's refreshing to see trees instead of ads."

The Big Issue

2006-12-11T02:51:00.000-08:00

XFM DJ Dave Haslam mentioned UHC as his 'heroes' in 2006 for highlighting social inequality in Manchester. Click on the image above to see his full comments.

'Heroes and Villains' By Emily Pykett and Kelly Foran in The Big Issue In The North December 11-22, 2006 No. 649

City on new mission for peace

2005-11-25T03:20:00.000-08:00

by Paul R Taylor

A NEW peace policy has been adopted by Manchester Council to mark the anniversary of the city de¬claring itself a nuclear-free zone.

The council agreed to promote so¬cial inclusion, social justice, good citizenship and peace between the people, cultures and faith communi¬ties it serves. It has distributed post¬ers and leaflets about the new policy.

Cllr Neil Swannick, council plan¬ning and environment chief, said: "Manchester has a long-standing commitment to peace and it is a cor¬nerstone on which Manchester's quality of life is founded.

"Peace cannot be taken for granted. It is hard earned. Those who lost their lives in the first and second world wars did so for peace - not more war. The new peace policy aims to promote the value of peace in our lives, and in our engagement with the wider world.

"I hope people will react positively and be motivated to do something in their community to make peace a lit¬tle more real for them and their neighbours."

On November 5, 1980, the city de¬clared itself a nuclear-free zone and led an international campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Film highlights Guantanamo disgrace

2004-12-09T12:48:00.000-08:00

By Lawrence Smallman

Thursday 09 December 2004, 15:48 Makka Time, 12:48 GMT

Reigniting the debate over the morality of holding prisoners indefinitely and without charge, abritish filmmaker is to screen a documentary highlighting what he calls absolute disgrace that is Guantanamo.

Damien Mahoney’s This is Camp X-ray will be viewed for the first time ever at Manchester’ Dancehouse Theatre on Sunday and will be immediately followed with an open forum for the public to express their reactions.

Commissioned by the UHC arts collective, the documentary features the build up to the creation of a life-size working replica of the Guatanamo Bay detention centres where volunteers were imprisoned in October 2003.

A testimony to the shocked and bewildered responses of the local community, the film also explores the range of emotions felt by the volunteer detainees and the guards during the nine-day project.

’Blatant injustice’

Mahoney told Aljazeera.net on Thursday that his own feelings of the “blatant injustice of holding people without charge for years” has intensified.

“How can the US and UK preach about democracy in Iraq and elsewhere when they can deprive people found guilty of absolutely nothing the most simple of basic rights?

”We are not talking anything complicated here, I mean basic rights like … the right to know what they are charged of and a right to defend themselves in courts. It is absolutely disgusting,“ Mahoney said.

The dramatic prison reality of the estimated 600 held at Camp X-ray becomes all the more real with participation by the sisters of Jamal al-Harith, the Manchester local who was held without charge for two years before being released.

Inspiration for film

The film is based on Jai Redman’s This is Camp X-ray installtion, which became one of the most critical acclaimed art events to take place in 2003, receiving widespread international press coverage.

The controversial installation – a meticulous working replica of the original camp in Cuba – stood for nine days in Hulme, an inner suburbs of Manchester.

The nine volunteers incarcerated in the life-size camp symbolically represented the nine British detainees then held in Cube. Featuring live prisoners and guards, it ran 24 hours a day and stuck rigorously to the regime of the actual camp.

Mahoney said a few people who had never heard of Guantanamo Bay believe tat US soldiers really had set up a similar prison in Britain and had poured a shower of verbal abuse on the voluntaeers.

”Others were just shocked out how the American government can treat human beings,” he added. “But the scary thing is this type of thing is happening in the UK’s Belmarsh Prison too.”

Al-Harith’s story

Four years ago, Manchester resident Jamal al-Harith was in Afghanistan and was seized by the Taliban on suspicion of being a British spy.

After his incarceration in Kandahar he was freed by the Taliban, only to be arrested by US forces almost immediately. Now suspected of being a member of the Taliban, Jamal was flown to Cuba.

He remained there for two years. No charges were ever brought against him.

Al-Harith and three other former detainees in the UK are currently in preparation to have their cases against the US administration heard in the Federal Court in Washington DC.

The allegations against the administration include torture and other violations of human rights.

The US Federal Courts have also halted the proceedings of a controversial military commission involving an associate of Osama Bin Laden. This could stop all further court proceedings at the camp from taking place.

Aljazeera

Metro

2004-12-09T03:35:00.000-08:00

FILM
This is Camp X-Ray

Amnesty International refers to it as a ‘human-right scandal’ and the otherwise studiously neutral International Committee Of The Red Cross has diplomatically raised concerns about ‘significant problems regarding conditions and treatment’ there. But Maerica still keeps hundreds of prisoners in Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay.

Jai Redman is part of the Manchester based UHC radical art and design collective. Last year, in the unlikely surrounds of Hulme, he created a working facsimile of the camp (pictured), containing nine prisoners (representing the nine British ‘detainees’) and guards.

Film-maker Damien Mahoney decided that this was something which needed recording so, suing a variety of cameras and borrowed equipment, he filmed the nine-day project. The resulting documentary, This is Camp X-Ray, receives its first public screening on Sunday at the Dancehouse Theatre.

interviewed in the film are two sisters of Jamal al-Harith, a Mancunian who was arrested in Afghanistan and who spent two years in captivity without ever being charged. Originally, he was going to provide an introductory voiceover to the film but, with his legal action on the US pending, had to withdraw.

For Mahoney, the film was a case of maintaining the public profile of something that flickers only occasionally on to the news media and thus easily fades from public consciousness. The issues raised here will be addressed in a panel discussion, which will follow the screening.

Rob Hayes

Sun, Dancehouse, Oxford Road, Central Manchester, 7.30pm, £3. Tel: 237 9753, www.uhc.org.uk

Inside View

2003-11-27T06:56:00.000-08:00

While the rest of the media camped outside Hulme’s very own Camp X-Ray last week, a Big Issue in the North reporter spent 24 hours as a prisoner inside the compound sampling US style military hospitality.

BY MATT BAKER

I like to think I’m pretty much prepared for anything modern art can throw up nowadays. Once you’ve seen Gunther Van Hagens’ dead bodies and Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ you’ve seen it all. Right?

But when taking in a new art project involves being bundled into the back of a jeep by armed guards in military uniform you begin to wonder. I started to wonder some more after arriving at a prison camp surrounded by coils of razor wire with a machine gun bearing down on me. More still when I was handcuffed, a bag put over my head and ordered to kneel in wet sand.

By the time I’d been fingerprinted, handed a wet sleeping bag, an orange ‘rail workers’ uniform, made to wear ear muffs and blacked-out goggles and re-named as prisoner F61274 the message was sinking in. Fast. This is no budgie shooting prank or curry carton kickabout. This is performance art with a difference. The aim? To bring the shadowy world of state terrorism into more familiar surroundings. Criticised by judges and lawyers from around the world, the US interment camp at Guantanamo Bay has been slammed as a “legal black hole”. By holding 662 ‘detainees’ without any legal rights it openly violates every international law.

So when a fully operational miniature version of that black hole turns up round the back of Asda in Hulme it’s bound to make people sit up and take notice.

And that’s the beauty of Jai Redman’s madcap creation. During the 24-hours I spent in Camp X-Ray I saw late night stragglers and drunks stagger past the compound and rub their eyes in disbelief at the sight of a sniper looming from beyond an eerily lit prison camp.

I saw children and pram pushers gawping at the sight of shackled prisoners under armed guard while in the exercise yard for our daily 15 minutes of physical activity. Mothers stared quizzically and shouted: “Is this a film set?” one of the children asked: “Mummy are the prisoners going to die?”

I heard how a newsagent from Burnley had closed his shop to come and cheer Redman’s efforts. And of how a car load of lads had driven from Newcastle just to see the camp after reading about it in a national newspaper. They wanted to register their anger at American justice.

That’s justice where ‘prisoners’ are not called prisoners. They’re not allowed access to a lawyer or a fair trial. They’re kept without being charged of a crime. Their identity is not released so prisoner’s families might not even know where they were. They’re not even granted POW status or told when they might be released. They’re simply kept indefinitely in sub-human conditions as ‘detainees’.

I heard also how Jai had been besieged by requests from mothers from as far afield as Southampton to volunteer as ‘prisoners’.

They too were angry at the American concept of ‘might is right’, appalled at what could become the most distasteful enduring legacy of the Bush administration, now on show in Hulme.

No-one stumbling across something as inconspicuous as Chandler’s tarantula on a slice of angel cake could ignore it. Not even if they tried.

But what of the conditions we volunteers endured? Did they provide any insights into the Guantanamo Bay experience?

Certainly kneeling in wet sand for any length of time while handcuffed and unable to see or hear anything is far from comfortable. The overwhelming sense of powerlessness could easily be described as soul-destroying. And for may it is.

Suicide attempts are slowly rising at the internment camp in Guantanamo Bay and you can see why. May inmates have no proven terrorist connections whatsoever and with CIA Director George Tenet announcing on Newsnight earlier this year that he believe at least nine out of 12 Kuwaitis held at the internment are innocent, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that this is far from ideal ‘catch-all’ system.

Now renamed Camp Delta, many of the inmates have been held there for two years and the thought of how someone who’s innocent would handle an indefinite stay that takes in long spells of sensory deprivation, isolation and being treated worse than a dog is extremely sobering. I felt bewildered, disorientated and dizzy after just 20 minutes of kneeling in the now customary garbs of handcuffs, ear muffs and face mask. And that was with the guarantee I could leave at any time.

Yet while Amnesty International have been refused permission to inspect conditions at Camp Delta it’s highly unlikely they’d be troubled by any human rights violations if they’d paid Camp X-Ray in Hulme a visit. If the truth were told we got off very lightly. For most of the time we were allowed to freely associate with other prisoners in the compound and after an initial welcome of the quasi-brutish discipline a jovial banter started up between the prisoners and guards. “You filthy scum, you killed my brother in Kuwait,” was a common greeting from the guards, followed by a sly grin.

For most of my stay there was a palpable tension between what the guards were supposed to be doing and what they were comfortable doing. All too often an outward display of sadistic toughness gave way to an almost caring touch. “Can you not tie my handcuffs so tightly,” I asked one of the guards. “Oh alright then,” he grumbled, loosening my cuffs and asking if I wanted a cigarette. After all, these were artists, DJs and friends of Redman’s collective. Not top military brass.

But the last word goes to Redman. Dressed in his military guard uniform he’s benn busy combining the roles of camp enforcer and media spokesman over the last week. And he’s clearly pleased at the impact Camp X-Ray has made on the community.

“if we’d had more money we would have liked to put the camp in the centre of Manchester to reach more people but in may ways Hulme is the ideal place for it,” he says.

“It’s the home of Ron Fiddler (known as Jamal Udeen) who’s one of the British prisoners in the camp. Besides, most of the people in Hulme were unaware that people from down the road in Moss Side were being dragged out of their beds and sent to Camp X-Ray.”

Not anymore it seems. By bringing an issue that’s viewed by many as being an overseas problem closer to home, Redman says he hopes more people will ask questions over the validity of US style justice. “Camp X-Ray will be remembered as a terrible abomination,” he says. “And in a couple of years time all the people involved will be apologising and saying it’s a big mistake. Or at least that’s what they would do if they were truthful. But as it’s politicians we’re talking about here, they’ll probably just hope it slips off the media agenda and is forgotten about.”

History though, might not be so kind.

Scan

2003-11-01T04:29:00.000-08:00

DON’T CROSS THE LINE

2003-10-10T04:25:00.000-07:00

Various locations, Manchester
10-18 October

Of the three pieces of work in this exhibition, Jai Redman’s installation This is Camp X-Ray had the greatest intrigue factor. Redman had built a replica of the Guantanamo Bay Camp X-Ray site on unused land in Hulme, an area of regeneration in the city centre; the camp was surrounded by new housing developments and billboard adverts for exclusive city living. Most people in the UK have seen images of the Cuban camp on television or in the press, but it is impossible to gain a real sense of the place as ‘real’ – as we are always distanced by both media and military. Although I couldn’t enter the Manchester version and had to gaze through wire fencing, I managed to glimpse one of the volunteer camp guards emerging from a military-style tent – Redman had recruited volunteers via the internet to perform the roles of guards and ‘unlawful combatants’. The construction of Camp X-Ray in the centre of Manchester meant that the city’s inhabitants, whether they resided inside or outside the camp, were bluntly reminded of the existence of something they may have often tried to forget.

More gentle work by Helen Knowles couldn’t compete with Redman’s installation for notoriety or scale, but was interesting nevertheless. For Growth Investment, Knowles cast instruments from a disused botany lab in paper made from plant fibre, and placed them in the Royal Exchange, a symbol of Manchester’s trade history and now a busy theatre.

Maggie Lambert’s statement was less subtle, with photographic portraits of Asyli=um Seekers positioned as billboards in ‘Little Ireland’, a former slum area of the city.

UHC Collective, who curated the exhibition, state that it’s main aim is to “to produce political art”. One could argue that all art is political and that what UHC mean is ‘issue-based’ art. But however we define it, artwork that confronts audiences with the theme of cultural imperialism in the places where they live, travel and work is bound to be provocative, and to effectively blur the boundary between art and the act of protest.

Clare Gannaway is a curator and writer living in Manchester.

The ‘enemy’ within

2003-10-08T05:02:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a group of artists and activists in Manchester, people in this country can now get a taste of the rough justice meted out to ‘unlawful enemy combatants’ at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, without even leaving the UK.

BY ALLY FOGG

Hulme in inner-city Manchester may not have the weather enjoyed by the sun-kissed Caribbean isle of Cube, but it will soon have it’s very won detention centre, just like tat set up by the US Navy in Guantanamo Bay on the southern tip of the island.

A full-size, working replica of a section of the detention centre formerly known as Camp X-Ray (now rebuilt and renamed Camp Delta) is currently being constructed in Hulme, but unlike the real Camp Delta, those incarcerated within it will be there by choice.

The camp will hold nine ‘prisoners’ at any one time (drawn from a large pool of volunteers working on a shift system), representing the nine British citizens detained by the US authorities at Camp Delta, including Jamal Udeen who was brought up just up the road in Moss Side. Volunteer ‘guards’ will man the sentry posts which flank the camps entrance and the barbed-wire topped chain link fence which surrounds it. The entire installation will be floodlit and rigged for tannoy broadcasts.

This extraordinary and audacious project, equal parts art installation, agit-prop intervention and Situationist prank, has been put together by Jai Redman and the UHC political art collective. The idea behind the project, entitles, This is Camp X-Ray, is to challenge what UHC see as public apathy over the fate of the 680-plus detainees at Giantanamo Bay and explore experiencers of incarceration and sensory deprivation.

According to Redman, “each of the individual prisoners and guards will have their own story to tell. That’s the only way political change can now be realised in this country, because voting and marching don’t work.”

‘This is Camp X-Ray’ will run 24-hours a day from October 8-18 in Hulme, Manchester.
For more information, visit: www.uhc-collective.org.uk

a little deeper

2002-07-21T02:21:00.000-07:00

Art for art’s sake, ‘eye candy’ culture, an excess of passive entertainment, sanitisation vs street art, corporate conformity swapping independent identity…stop us if you want to get off yet. And while yours head’s still spinning from the merry-go-round of the Games, prepare for the Blitz. Cue sexily subversive soundbite: ‘We didn’t want to be bad kids, TV made us do it.’

Art for those intent on kicking in their television sets and doing something far more interesting instead comes to us courtesy of the Blitz Festival this month, promising a line-up of ‘consciously creative’ cultural events intent on providing some very welcome relief from the pre-packaged novelty-lite world of entertainment happening elsewhere.

Organised by local arts collective nATo (the Northern Arts Tactical Offensive), for one week only the festival is set to launch this particular arts offensive on the city to encourage city dwellers and visitors alike to think twice about the confines of ‘entertainment’ and the possibilities of public art. Agitate – an artistic exhibition of huge scale and ambition –brashly and rather brilliantly borrows space from the soon-to-be shopping mall of the Great Northern Warehouse to sell (amongst other things) its anti-consumerist and anti-corporate ideas.

Artists involved include infamous Crass album cover designer Gee Vaucher (pictured), contemporary art installations from the likes of Dickie fom Dundee’s self-contained live sound installation Black Box (pictured) and the UHC collective’s take on the less than sound claim of the Situationist intent behind the Factory Façade (also pictured below). Local graffiti, street and stencil artists are also offered a platform for expression minus the council’s pest-control. Elsewhere, a variety of photographers, painters and performance artists, including a more mindblowing live performance than most from The Jackofficer,and alternative film, video, multimedia and musical food for thought abound. Go play with the boundaries.

HANA BORROWMAN

Running until 27 July at Units 25-28, 1st floor, Great Northern Warehouse, Great Northern Square, Deansgate, M2 and The Greenroom, Whitworth Street. Opening times of exhibition 12noon-7pm. For more info and full programmes of events/ individual event times see www.nato.uk.net (also see listings sections for information on a series of multimedia film nights co-ordinated by BeyONdTV, presenting a selection of grassroots independent media).

Manchester Evening News

2002-07-20T02:32:00.000-07:00

Read the full article which appeared in the M.E.N. by clicking on the image above.

MINED GAMES

2002-07-20T01:38:00.000-07:00

BLITZ artwork SETH TOBOCMAN

Manchester, 2002: Under the multi-logo’ed banner of the Commonwealth Games the city is in the grip of a corporate take-over, the likes of which it ha never seen. The homeless have been swept from the streets, public political protest outlawed, precincts repaved with sparkling York stone while the communities they serve suffer swinging cuts to pay for the facelift. The Free Trade Hall – Manchester’s monument to universal suffrage – has been sold off to hoteliers with barely a whisper of dissent in the local media. Sceptical? Take one of the new open-top tour buses and see for yourself Manchester’s transformation from cultural melting pot to corporate hospitality suite.

At the forefront of the resistance is blitZ!m a week-long political arts festival organised by the city’s renegade Northern Arts Tactical Offensive, timed to meet The Games – and its slew of official sideshows and festivals – head on. A celebration of contemporary subversive art, it will see America’s Surveillance Camera Players let loose in the city centre, “anarchitectual” situationistas The Spacehijackers warping the landscape, plus live music, film and comedy in the Great Northern Square.

BlitZ: Manchester runs July 20 -29.
For info call 0161 226 7192. Or call Agitate on 0161 238 8523.