Laurence Hill, Director of Brighton Digital Festival, has blogged for us on his curation of The Messy Edge, which takes place in our venue on 13 October. The conference will bring together a mixture of speakers and artists work, including Tabita Rezaire, Usman Haque, Pinar Yoldas, Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke. 

He told us…

“The speaker and artist list for the Messy Edge is essentially a who’s who of the people that are doing interesting work at the frontiers of digital culture that I have come across in the last year. I am so happy to be bringing all of them to Brighton for our conference and I’m particularly happy to be staging it at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, which is one of my favourite spaces. 

The conference grew from two interconnected things. Firstly, my very simplified take on Donna Haraway’s book Staying with the Trouble in which she talks about the impossibility of technology providing a golden future unless we deal with the pressing issues of the present; racism, homophobia, mass extinctions and climate change amongst many others. 

And secondly, from my day to day interest in exploring the politics of technology; the uneven spread of digital privilege, the way prejudices are exposed in the work of Silicon Valley and beyond, the myth of a global, borderless internet, the blind faith in big data and ‘technofixes’. I’m also interested in how the past casts long shadows across our present and into the future in the form of (digital) colonialism.”

Here at ACCA we are looking forward to welcoming The Messy Edge, which will be a day of discussion and provocation. The different speakers and artists will explore what it means to live in the digital age as well as challenging and confronting the frontiers of digital culture to make us question how we communicate within this era.

The talks will explore the joys as well as the pitfalls of living in the digital age and the influences we are securing for our digital future. They will also confront dominating perspectives and provide room for interpretation and new ideas. All of the guests are well versed in the different areas of digital art, discussion and research, so we are looking forward to being challenged with these discussions. The speakers range from artists to activist.

Brighton Digital Festival takes place across Brighton & Hove from 14 September - 13 October.

The Messy Edge - Friday 13 October - 11am-5pm

Some quick fire facts about Wayne McGregor. His full length film Atmos, will be screened in our venue this Saturday at 6pm, to conclude the British Science Festival at ACCA.

1- Wayne McGregor is a CBE for his services to dance. 

2- In 1992 McGregor founded Random Dance and later changed the name to Company Wayne McGregor. 

3- He was the Movement Director for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

4 - He choreographed a dance in real time for a Ted talk.

5- McGregor said that watching John Travolta when growing up showed him exactly what he needed to be when he was older.

6 - For the Royal Opera House’s Winter 2016/2017 season, McGregor created Woolf Works, a piece that was based on several of Virginia Woolf’s novels.

7 - He is most interested in the science of movement and how the body can move in a multi-disciplinary way.

8 - He is very interested in the use of technology in performance and the jigsaw this can create. 

9 - McGregor studied in both Leeds and New York.

10 - In March 2014 McGregor was appointed Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

The gloriously eccentric Rachel Mars will be with us in October with her fascinating show, Our Carnal Hearts. It explores the deepest, ugliest emotions and parts of us we rarely show but are still very much present. The production is a raucous chorus of original music that uses the space to explore these deeper parts of the human condition.

Mars has consistently sold out across the UK and the US with her previous shows and this one has proven to be no different. She is currently impressing audiences at the annual Edinburgh Festival gaining some fantastic reviews from The Stage and Lyn Gardner at The Guardian.

Mars doesn’t hide away from the more taboo subjects, she nurtures and exposes them to show that we are all similar. Our Carnal Hearts is about jealously and the power of such destructive emotions when we witness someone else’s success. Mars describes her show as a place to whoop at our own fragility and delight against our better nature. A toast to our competitive spirits and a rumbling dance for the ugly gutter-tramping parts of our soul.

Previous shows have followed this pattern with performances surrounding love letters and tinder, communal contentment and the power of Margaret Thatcher’s speeches when mixed together with female 80’s pop music.

On her website, Mars says of Our Carnal Hearts, “I’ve been obsessed with the state of envy across the personal and the political for the past few years. It remains a very shameful taboo emotion…The show is a passionate act of exorcism, reimagining envy aside from the humiliation and guilt that it has been imbued with by religion, and the contortions through which politicians mangle envy to serve agendas of wealth accumulation.”

We are looking forward to having Rachel with us October 21 at 8pm.

Have a look at her wonderful reviews from Edinburgh and decide for yourself…

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/aug/19/our-carnal-hearts-review-rachel-mars

4 Stars from Lyn Gardner

https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2017/carnal-hearts-review-summerhall-edinburgh/

4 Stars from Natasha Tripney

This week artist Felix Thorn is working in our auditorium, creating new work to be part of the ACCA Digital week performances (September 19-23). We spoke to him as he was working on his newest installation and structure, getting it ready for the September showcase, which will be a collaboration with electronic duo Plaid.

Thorn is an artist who creates music using audio-visual sculptures he designs and constructs. He has currently been here working in our beautiful building for four weeks. In this time, he has been creating a new arrangement, which he has never attempted before. He has also been closely collaborating with Plaid in order to explore their mutual love of music.

Felix said, “The structure is made out of recycled old instruments, broken instruments, dismantled pianos, and customized drum kits, a few random household items in there, anything I could find really.”

Plaid are an English electronic music duo, composed of Andy Turner and Ed Handley. Felix said that he met Plaid at a festival 8-9 years ago when he was making an installation and they were playing.

“I’ve always been a massive fan of their music and shortly after meeting them we started a collaboration, and that’s now been going on since about 2009.” Felix told us.

“I saw Plaid here about 15 years ago when it (ACCA) was still the Gardner Arts Centre.”

“They write music, I write music we put it all together and it’s nice to have an alternative perspective on the machines.”

Plaid and Felix’s Machines will be with us on September 19 at 8pm. 

We are looking forward to welcoming South East Dance with their new show, Dad Dancing. Come along this October and watch three brave fathers dance with their daughters, exploring what it means to them to be a part of a parent/child relationship. Joined by a supporting cast of father-figures and daughters of all ages, watch as you see the ever changing notion of growing up together, the trials and tribulations of such a relationship.

You can also be part of the show.

South East Dance will be holding workshops throughout September and October in Brighton for all ages to come and see how the company works. You will also get the chance to figure out what it means to be a father or child and how you communicate within this bond. Led by professional dance artists, workshops culminate in the chance to create and perform in a professional show at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts.

Head to http://southeastdance.org.uk/whats-on/dad-dancing-workshops/ for more information as to how you can get involved in such an exciting project.

The performance will take place on Friday 27 October at 8pm here at Attenborough Centre from Creative Arts and we cannot wait for you to immerse yourself in this exciting new project. 

We were lucky enough to have Anna Meredith in residence with us earlier this summer.

Anna has shared her thoughts on her time in residence at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts. 

“I was so lucky to have had some writing and development time at the brilliant Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts. its so rare to be able to get away and focus on creating new material - and in the perfect surroundings. I was lucky enough to have my band come out to join me too and we all found the time invaluable to experiment with new ideas and work in a focussed way that just wouldn’t be possible in our day to day.”

The brilliant Rosie Powell also shot some pictures of Anna in our cafe-bar and we will be sharing more of these in the coming weeks. 

At Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts artists are welcomed into our spaces during the quieter summer months to create new projects, spend time using our beautiful Steinway piano or simply to use the many studio spaces on offer in our space, nestled on the South Downs. Many of the outcomes from these periods of time you will see peppered through forthcoming seasons or as part or larger touring projects both nationally and internationally. 

The following artists will join us this season:

Action Hero

Anna Meredith 

Felix Thorne (Felix’s Machines) 

Lauren Barri Holstein

Selina Thompson

Zoe Svendsen 

Stay tuned for behind the scenes insights, ACCA Conversations, digital residencies and more as the summer progresses.

#ACCAResidencies