'My log has something to tell you'

Twin Peaks. The drama. The flannel. The unearthly blend of mawkish and surreal that could only come from the dark, dark mind of one David Lynch. And, of course, the pie.

I'm not sure exactly how watching the weekly adventures of The Bookhouse Boys, Agent Dale Cooper, the Log Lady and the rest of the gang as an adolescent warped my mind, but I think it was in a good way. Nobody's ever figured out how the TV execs agreed to let Lynch loose on prime time, but thank god they did. The first season is some of the best TV ever. The second season... well, really, it's kind of a mess but still miles more interesting and original than 99 percent of the crap on television.

If you've always secretly longed to don Laura Palmer's prom dress, you're in luck: Islington Mill in Salford will be turned into the town of Twin Peaks for one night only on Sunday Dec 13. Come in character. There will be a Miss Twin Peaks 2009 pageant, live music, performances and djs. £11 (advance only here, limited capacity) gets you in with a slice of cherry pie.

I'm also going t'mill tonight to catch the amazing Mayming and World Sanguine Report. Some really great gigs coming up there.

Club Brenda, the big hearted club night renowned for its eclectic playlist, is the subject of a limited edition book. Strange Trees. The book is getting a proper DJ-assisted launch Dec 1 at Urbis 7:30-10 (free entry). The book "moves through the history of Club Brenda, using a series of classic narratives to form a dark urban fairytale, alongside a series of commissioned photography and artwork" from the likes of Rachel Goodyear and David Hoyle, who will also be selling art on the night. Enjoy your Urbis while you can, kids.

And closer to home (well, for me and those of us who live in the farthest reaches of North Manchester, much further for everyone else) Horse & Bamboo's Deep Time Cabaret comes to the Boo in Waterfoot on Saturday, 28 November. Looks like fun.

To Do: Homelife, food fest and blogger treats

The ever-changing Mancunian musical collective Homelife are launching their new album Exotic Interlude (out Oct 5 on Humble Soul) with a gig at Sacred Trinity on Friday. The band's latest incarnation has shrunk to founders Paddy Steer and Tony Burnside (pictured above). I've listened to the album and am really impressed with the new more mellow and folky sound emerging, but there's plenty there along the lines of their older sound, a ramshackle goody bag of surprising noise, tiki grooves and snatches of melody. This is sure to be a popular show as live Homelife appearances are rare as hen's teeth, so get in there.

Manchester bloggers are invited to join Havana rum for a shindig to launch their Havana Cultura twitter campaign/new mix CD at Cord on October 8th, preceding a Havana club night at Odder, which they will take you along to. And yes, they're handing out some booty in the form of CDs, photo books, drink mixers and free rum. Yo ho ho! If you're a blogger who's interested in attending email Krista AT theneonhub dotcom.

Any Manchester bloggers interested in covering the upcoming Conservative Party Conference should speedily contact Craig Elder (craig dot elder AT conservatives dot com) Don't think they'll be doling out free grog there, though. Oh, and in other digital gathering news, Social Media Cafe is back at The Northern, Tib Street on Tuesday October 6. FYI, I'm posting stuff like this here now but will likely move these blogger-relevant announcements over to the MCR Bloggers Facebook group, so sign up if you haven't already.

The Food and Drink Festival is set to yummify Manchester October 1-11. This year brings a brand new independent wine festival, foodie hubs at St. Ann's and Albert Squares, and all manner of special meals, food tours, talks and cocktail hours. They have a shiny new website too. Go forth and nosh.

At Urbis, 'Show & Tell' opens today and runs until Oct 12. It's an exhibition by the Urbis Creatives art collective. The exhibition will give the Urbis team a chance to show their work and tell the visitors about what they do outside of the creative environment of Urbis. It will comprise of many different disciplines from photography to illustration, painting and also projects the members are involved in such as community work and music events. For more information about the collective visit the website at www.urbiscreatives.org.

In other art happenings, the big Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism exhibition has opened at Manchester Art Gallery. And the famously difficult to please Jonathan Jones has called it "magical."Am going to this soon and will report back with a full review.

To Do: Hobopop, Mixed Up North, Umbro Industries

This summer is officially OVER. Don't know about you, but I am so over it. (Glances out window, shivers.)

So what happens now? Now we get overrun with students, overloaded with festivals, and overwhelmed by tasty offerings from cultural venues freshly awakened from their summer siestas. Happens every Autumn.

One interesting recent discovery of mine is Kirsty McGee (that's her above) and the Manchester-based Hobopop Collective. I'm really digging their rootsy, old-timey stomps, rags and torch songs. McGee has the kind of voice you can expect great things from. And it turns out they're recording a live album over at Contact (This is October 10, not Thursday as I wrote before, sorry peeps! But hey - more time to get tickets.)

Thursday night Bolton Octagon raises the curtain on Mixed Up North, a provocative play that revisits the Burnley race riots. Director Max Stafford-Clark and the wonderful Out of Joint theatre based the play on interviews with Burnley residents. Some blistering comments in the Burnley Citizen suggest there is strong resistance to the idea of reopening any kind of discussion about the riots there. Seems to me that's just what this kind of theatre is for - making it possible for us to talk about and think about difficult things, and consider different people's perspectives on the past. Kudos to the Octagon for having the chutzpah to mount this production, which runs from Thursday to Sept 26.

Umbro Industries is a pretty impressive new project from the Manchester-based manufacturers of athletic gear: a rolling fund of bursaries to support Manchester-based creative industries. If you have an idea for a club night or an art exhibition, want to make a book or record an album or create a pop-up fashion line, or want to do something else creative that will cost less than £10,000, go to the site and submit it and you could get the money. While people who view the site can give ideas a thumbs up, their votes have no impact on who gets the dosh. That's decided by a somewhat Hacienda and football-heavy judging panel.

Speaking of soccer, there's been some interesting news about Urbis today. The Football Museum is moving in, and Urbis' programme of changing exhibitions is moving out, or at least into much smaller quarters (I'm sure if I've got the wrong end of the stick on any of this one of Urbis' team of eagle-eyed blog readers will write in to correct me...) This might be great news if you're very enthusiastic about football, but not such great news if you're more excited about art and popular culture exhibitions, and like me were enjoying Urbis' new wide-ranging programme of events. Times are tough and needs must, I suppose. But for me, it's Art 0, Football 1. And the goths are NOT going to be amused.

(Photo Graham Smith)

Iain Sinclair and Corridor 8 launch at Urbis

Ever wondered whatever became of that whole SuperCity thing? Ah, doesn't the very phrase make you yearn for a faraway time when Manchester's urban march seemed unstoppable? When the pots of money to build fantastically coloured and fancifully designed buildings upon acres of scorching urban blight seemed bottomless? When people camped out overnight to simply have the chance to buy an upside-down terrace or a scandalously overpriced flat in an aged tower block with a twee ladies' name in Salford and it seemed perfectly normal? Well, almost.

Things are rather different now. But here comes Corridor 8. It's an arts annual billed as "The new cultural voice of the north." It will showcase "the best in contemporary visual art, architecture, writing, photography and more." And issue 1's theme is ... wait for it... SuperCity. And as much as I don't really dig the whole SuperCity concept, I very much dig what writer and psychogeographer Ian Sinclair wrote when Corridor 8 commissioned him to create "a literary documentary that explores the ordinary and extraordinary lives and landscape of the North."

I got a sneak peak at this piece the other day and I have to say, it is just wonderful. It made me want to go out and buy everything he's ever written (if you have the same reaction, a friendly Sinclair scholar I met recently says to start with Lights Out for the Territory). It's the best kind of poetic ramble through our city, through the idea of Manchester and through Sinclair's mind-bogglingly overstuffed brain: ‘Wandering Deansgate was like finding yourself in the middle of some dark fantasy for which you had no instructions. Cliffs of unreason. Deansgate as a river of human traffic, the Irwell its liquid margin.’

And the really good news is that Sinclair will be talking about the work at the Corridor 8 launch at Urbis this Thursday at 6:30 pm. Places are limited, to register email si at corridor8.co.uk. Though a little bird told me someone might be liveblogging the event if, like me, you can't make it. What's more, a modified version of the piece is available as a podcast you can download from the Urbis website, and listen to on the hoof. A route map should be up there shortly I'm told.

So now I'm looking forward to reading the rest of Corridor 8. Look out for it later this month.

Bewilderbliss, Best of Manchester, Apartment

Some odds and ends I've been meaning to mention:

Bewilderbliss (love the name) is a new literary magazine which launches next month. It showcases the poetry and prose of Manchester and MMU postgrad creative writing students. There's a launch party starting at 8pm March 2 in the basement of The Deaf Institute with readings from the magazine and an open mic slot.

Editor Willow Hewitt says she received over 70 submissions for the first issue, on the theme of 'The Guilty'. She reports that "the magazine will be available at outlets around town including Blackwells and the Cornerhouse, and you can stop a girl with orange hair in the street to buy an issue because chances are it's me."

The 2009 Best of Manchester Awards are now open for entries so if you know someone who kicks some ass in the fields of art, music or fashion, or you do yourself, get those entries in before May 9. (Hey Urbis, how about adding writing? Us young writers could use a £2,000 career-building jackpot too.)

Finally, it looks like the swan song for Apartment, at least for a while. The blog-savvy exhibition space in a council tower block flat is opening its last exhibition this evening in co-curator, artist and man-about-town Paul Harfleet's home. Giorgio Sadotti is the featured artist. There are a lot of openings happening tonight, but if you've been meaning to go for a while, now's your chance.

Do try this at home

Manchester is a great city for art. Yeah, we don't have a Guggenheim or a Tate, but the full spectrum of what you can see and do here as an artist or art lover is pretty amazing. I just wrote a piece for Art World Magazine about people who start galleries in their homes and in other non-traditional places, inspired by seeing a few around these parts, and in the process of reporting it I discovered a few more.

In addition to the venerable Apartment, located in a flat in what has to be one of the most culturally-leaning council tower blocks in the land, Lamport Court (also home to a literary magazine and at least a couple of musicians who record there), we've got Twenty + 3 projects, an art gallery in the front room of a terrace in Whalley Range, and Porch Gallery, the entrance vestibule of a house in Chorlton which is periodically turned into a kind of contemporary art vitrine.

And then there are totally off the wall things, like Bog Standard Gallery: Artist and recent MMU grad Melanie Warner turned a portaloo into a mobile mini artspace. It's currently at Urbis, exhibiting a series of Warner's photographs of toilet signs around the world.

Want more? Look out for exhibitions in abandoned buildings, private homes or utterly random locations around the city ( from folks like Interval, or Forbidden Arts.) Established art institutions like Castlefield Gallery are doing and supporting off-site stuff too. They recently did a show at the grand old derelict fire station near Piccadilly. Someone had to clean up A LOT of pigeon shit.

You're not going to believe it

Are you plagued by giant albino alligators in your sewer? Did you go to school with a guy whose cousin tried to drink coke while eating pop rocks and her stomach exploded? This is your lucky day. See below for details of a verrry interesting writing competition that's happening as part of this year's Manchester Literature Festival:

URBAN MYTHS RE-TOLD

Urbis and the Manchester Literature Festival are running a national call for submissions of micro fictions that tell or retell an urban myth.

The micro fiction or flash fiction genre forces writers to dispense with the excessive, superfluous and unnecessary elements to convey a succinct idea or story. This format is particularly suited to the Chinese-whisper characteristic of Urban Myths, where partial truths are laced with fantasy as they pass from teller to teller. We invite you to create your own version of what happens in the dark alleys and night clubs of cities and towns. You can use horror, science fiction or comedy to pack your punch.

You can submit up to five short fiction works of no longer than 250 words each on the theme of Urban Myths. Participants can be any age, and must live in the UK. Entries will be accepted in hard copy by mail only (see details below). All entries must be accompanied by a covering page which details the writer’s name, mobile phone number, email address and mailing address in order to be eligible.

The deadline for entries is Friday August 17th at 5pm. The submissions will then be judged by a literary panel including Katherine Beacon (BBC writersroom) and flash fiction author, David Gaffney, who will select the ten strongest entries.

Students from the Interactive Arts degree at MMU will then interpret the successful ten flash fiction pieces and use the work as inspiration for the creation of new artworks in various genres (i.e.film,photography, sculpture, performance). This will result in a promenade performance installation piece,featuring all of the successful selections of micro-stories as interpreted by the Interactive Arts students.

The event will take place at Urbis on October 11th at 6pm as part of the Manchester Literature Festival 2007. The audience will be led around the Urbis building as darkness falls…. and the Urban Myths are re-told again. The overall winner of the competition will receive a complimentary night for two, including dinner, bed & breakfast, in one of City Inn’s stylish contemporary hotels.

Please post to:

URBAN MYTHS PROJECT
Creative Programmes
Urbis
Cathedral Gardens
Manchester M4 3BG


It's true, man. It really happened. Seriously, I am not making this up.

Goth beach party

How do you make a 16-year-old Manc goth miserable? Turn their fave hangout into an "urban beach". Unless its a grim, overcast winter beach off the North Yorks. Moors those Urbis marketing folk want to recreate with the 80 tonnes of sand they're trucking in - though, somehow, I doubt it. Beach Club Manchester looks more Bacardi Breezer than cider and black.

You can read the whole sordid tale, and get links to pro- and anti- beach campaigners' myspace pages (of course they have myspace pages) at Whathappenedlastnight.
The beach was meant to be in business June 25, but has been delayed until July. Check here for more info.