This Saturday we will be screening Babylon (1980) as part of the Brighton’s Cine-City.  The screening will be followed by a roundtable chaired by the music historian Kelly Foster with Paul Goodwin (Chelsea College of Arts) and Mykaell Riley (University of Westminster).   

In advance of the discussion, event organiser Professor Martin Evans of the University of Sussex asked Kelly and Paul why Babylon still resonates today. 

Kelly:

Babylon gives us a glimpse into the lives of young Black Londoners on the brink of the descent into a Thatcherite future. It offers the viewer a peek into the shared experiences that would fuel the resistance against state oppression and racism, in the same communities where it was shot, in the 1980s. In 1980 and 1981, in St Pauls, Toxeth, Moss Side, New Cross, Chapeltown, and Brixton  - the people rose up.

The grimy, hopeless and violent London of the film is sometimes difficult to recognise amid the shiny, gentrified streets of 2017. Soho, Brixton and Deptford all look very different now. Three years before the film was released two of the main locations where it was shot, The Moonshot Club and Albany Theatre in Deptford, were gutted by racist arson attacks. On Sunday 18 January 1981, 13 young Black people between the ages of 14 and 22 were killed in an arson attack at a 16th birthday party. “13 Dead And Nothing Said” was the slogan as 20,000 Black people marched in the Black People’s Day of Action on 2 March 1981 called by the New Cross Massacre Action Committee. To this day no one has ever been charged with their deaths. The “Warriors Charge” heard in the final scene would be echoed by a generation of young people whose refusal to be oppressed would change the face of Britain.

By the time the film in  1980, Sound System culture in the UK has about 25 years old. Babylon is a reminder, of something I often take for granted, of how Sound System culture permeated through the lives of so many African Caribbean people in the UK - from front room to church hall to shubeen (which would often take place either of the former spaces). Babylon is a document of a next generation of “sound man” finding their place in the culture.

Paul:

This film is important because it remains a seminal documentation and representation of the culture of reggae sounds systems as well as the situation of racism, police violence and working class inter-ethnic politics in the late 1970s in South London. The film’s realism - both visual and in its soundtrack - is a strong part of it’s lasting appeal: from authentic Jamaican and black English accents of the excellent cast to the incredible dancehall scenes featuring real life sound system legends like Jah Shaka.

The film essentially depicts London - or rather South London (Deptford and Brixton to be precise) - before globalisation and gentrification. This was a city that was very much ‘local’ so that the rough edges, run down tower blocks and back alleys of South London contrasted starkly with the bright lights and neons in the scenes shot in the centre of London. London back then was a collection of ‘villages’ with each area having very separate characteristics and landscapes according to class and wealth, while today’s London is very much a hub of ‘global’ culture where new high rise luxury developments and glass fronted buildings can be found in most areas of the city. 

The depiction of dancehall and sound system culture revolved around several key features: the obssession with technology and an innovative DIY culture of creating bespoke speakers, equipment and music tracks (‘dub specials’); the fiercely competitive nature of sound clashes; the ‘culture of resistance’ that emerged from the influence of Rastafarian music, culture and spirituality in the 1970s; and the constant battle with hostile and racist forces (Police, racist neighbours) that wilfully misunderstood sound systems within the context of politicised debates around ‘race’ and immigration in the 1970s and saw them as threats to ‘law and order’ and ‘respectable’ neighbourhoods.

Arts and culture publication Corrugated Wave caught up with University of Sussex’s Professor Lucy Robinson to discuss Lola Aria’s MINEFIELD, which opens at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts this week, running from 15-17 November. Lucy is a Professor of Collaborative History and has written extensively on the Falklands.  For Corrugated Wave’s full feature on MINEFIELD and much more keep an eye on their website.

How did you become involved in Lola Arias’ work? Have you been brought in to give this talk because of your expertise on the Falklands war’s trauma or were you involved earlier in the project?

I hadn’t been involved in the project earlier, but I had seen the piece previously and had absolutely loved it.  I had been deeply moved by it, and it had stayed with me. It really resonated with the work that I had done on what happens to soldiers who tell their stories about the Falklands war.  I could see the echoes of the stories that the veterans had told me, but even more impressively, Arias had truly given the veterans their own voice. It’s such a difficult thing to do ‘to give someone a voice’, and I think it’s something that a lot of us aspire to as historians but this piece actually does it, and more than that, it lets those actor participants analyse the piece for themselves.

What we would really like is to situate Lola Aria’s MINEFIELD historically through your research…

You say in a note in “Explanations of post-traumatic stress disorder in Falklands memoirs: the fragmented self and the collective body” that “the field of Falklands memoirs has been increasingly dominated by non-officers and by two groups; the Paras and the SAS.” Could you give us a brief overview of the academic work around Falklands memoirs and what you have written about yourself?

The Falklands War sits at an important place for historians. It coincided with a new understanding of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, new media technologies (like the Walkman) and the rise of new work by historians on war and the nation (people like Lucy Noakes, who was at Sussex, for example).  It also changed the way that people market their stories about war. The military memoir market is a big one, but they are usually initially dominated by officers at the top and then the stories from the ranks emerge much later.  The first Falklands memoirs were by journalists, and then by officers involved: Julian Thompson No Picnic or Nick Vaux’s March to the South Atlantic in 1985 and 1986.  Since then there has been an increase in the proportion of accounts written by ‘ordinary soldiers’.  In 1997 about two thirds of the accounts available were written by officers, since 1997 about two thirds were written by ‘ordinary soldiers’.

I studied 47 written by military personnel and published in text form as well as edited life history collections , the two published islanders accounts, those by war correspondents and artists, and reworked diaries , collections of letters ,  poetry, paintings, cartoons, etc. There are lots of different ways to tell a soldier’s story.

Could you tell us a little bit about the collective military body you discuss - the rituals, the totems, the belonging - and discuss any connections you feel this might have with the work by Lola Arias (if you do feel this)? The way you talk about the “imagined collective body” and the link between their return and PTSD’s onset are also fascinating.

The military has to train you to put the collective before yourself.  Military training breaks down the individual and instead builds a collective military body that will work together, without even questioning it. The smallest rituals, a tea break, a shared cigarette, the stories that they tell each other, the darkest jokes that they make are all ways of building a collective resilient body of men.  It is often when the individual loses that collective body that they can break down, sometimes returning from war is incredibly difficult, and evidence suggests that it is when individuals leave the military all together that they are even more vulnerable to PTSD.

Tickets for MINEFIELD can be bought here. 

Dr Diarmuid Hester (University of Cambridge), Dr Doug Haynes (University of Sussex) and Dr Joanna Pawlik (University of Sussex)  bring a series of events, As Waves of One Sea, to Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts this November, as part of Being Human Festival. 

Diarmuid tells us more about what they have planned. 

“We are very excited to present As Waves of One Sea at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts in association with Being Human: A Festival of the Humanities: three fantastic events including a live art performance devised especially for the series, an afternoon of exciting talks by academic experts, and a film screening featuring a Q&A with film director Isaac Julien. All the events draw upon the rich holdings in African American culture at the University of Sussex Special Collections.

 For the first event, ‘They Taught Me Laughing To Keep From Crying‘ (20 November, 8pm) celebrated British Ghanaian performance artist Harold Offeh joins academics Doug Haynes, Joanna Pawlik, and Diarmuid Hester as they attempt to piece together the remarkable life of Rosey Pool. A Dutch Jew who taught Anne Frank, escaped from a Nazi internment camp, and subsequently became a champion of Civil Rights for African Americans, when she died Pool left her personal papers and correspondence with many black writers to the University of Sussex. She also left many unanswered questions… Join us for a unique “performance lecture” that shatters the traditional academic talk into a thousand thrilling pieces.

The second event, ‘Treasures from the Rosey Pool Library‘ (21st November, 12.30pm) features a series of short, spotlight talks by four experts in African American culture. Lonneke Geerlings, Shima Jalal Kamali, Professor Maria Lauret, and Dr Mike Rowland have each picked a book from Rosey Pool’s personal library to talk about: see dusty old tomes come to life before your very eyes as our experts describe the horrors of the slave trade, the passion of the Black Arts movement, and Rosey Pool’s politically-radical book collecting…

For the final event, we will screen British director Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston in association with Eyes Wide Open, Brighton’s queer film strand (21 November, 8pm). Recently the subject of an exhibit at the Victoria Miro gallery in London, where large-format stills from the work attested to its prestige as an artist’s film, Looking for Langston is a classic of black queer cinema. Isaac Julien will introduce the film and stay around for questions afterwards.

Being Human: A Festival of the Humanities is a free nationwide festival which highlights the ways in which the humanities can inspire and enrich our everyday lives, help us to understand ourselves, our relationships with others, and the challenges we face in a changing world. Book via https://beinghumanfestival.org/us/

We’ve also picked out some sneak peeks of some of the archival materials reference in their projects. Follow our Instagram across the next week to see more. 

Tomorrow night Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts presents Jo Bannon’s Alba. Ahead of the show, we spoke to the artist about the creative process leading to the creation of this visual poem. Using theatre as a medium, Alba demonstrates to be a performance that uses the experience of albinism as a starting point “to explore vision, seeing and being seen”.

 
What made it a deciding factor to translate your experience with albinism into a visual poem?
 
My experience of albinism centres a lot around vision, seeing and being seen. Being a person with albinism means there is an interesting paradox between having a limited way of seeing in the world (my eyes have low vision and high sensitivity to light) coupled with having an appearance in the world which is highly visible and distinct; pale skin, white hair, pale eyes. 

So I was interested in using some of the same aesthetics and symbols of albinism; white, pale, pure, angelic, as visual motifs in the work. One of the provocations I used when making the work was to create a stage space where I could blend in, an experience that I don’t often have, so the set transforms a black space into a white space. I’m interested in how visual material might be used as a vocabulary in the work, rather than text as a language, and what the emotional potential might be in images to make meaning and feeling for an audience. 

 
What main message do you want to tell your audiences with this autobiographical visual piece?
 
 
Well that would be telling…! By which I’m only half joking… Because if I could write or speak the ideas within the work I wouldn’t have to use the mechanics of theatre to conjure them. So whilst I am clear what the central ideas in the work are I really do invite the audience to experience the work live and to make meaning from the images, sound, action and to trust their own interpretation. For me it’s not about being deliberately evasive in any way, or making a riddle to be decoded, but about setting ideas in motion and allowing for the ambiguity and varied feelings and interpretations that can afford. I think that’s what theatre can really do best and when it works it’s miraculous!
 
Your performance is fulfilled with white props and lighting. For you, what does the colour white connote, mean or symbolise?
 
All sorts of interesting and conflicting things: albinism / privilege / purity / cheap white domestic goods / Catholicism / minimalism. I hope all these things are in orbit in the work.

A few tickets are still available, including Pay What You Decide.

We look forward to welcoming you to Clod Ensemble Under Glass this Saturday, November 4.  Due to Lewes Bonfire celebrations there are some updates to travel information from Network Rail which may affect your journey to Falmer.  Trains will not call at the following stations on Saturday 4 November from approximately midday until the end of service:

• Cooksbridge
• Falmer
• Glynde  
• Lewes 
• London Road (Brighton)
• Moulsecoombe 

These changes have been made to ensure public safety at the busy Lewes Bonfire celebrations.

Southern tickets will be accepted on Brighton & Hove buses between Brighton, London Road (Brighton), Moulsecoomb and Falmer, however we expect these buses to be extremely busy and you should allow extra time for your journey. 

Please find more information about getting to Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts via bus, car or bike in this link 

This November, we host a wide selection of interdisciplinary productions for you to delve into. Programme highlights include; Thinking Queer: Bloomsbury Group (10 November), Lola Arias’ MINEFIELD (15-17 November), Cultures of Resistance: Babylon (18 Saturday) and The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein Notorious (23 November).

Presented in association with The Marlborough Theatre, Thinking Queer: Bloomsbury Group, is a discussion panel that will bring contemporary radical thinkers, to explore queer ideology in relation to the renowned Group’s legacy. Among these thinkers is acclaimed trans writer, entertainer, and public speaker, Alok Vaid-Menon.

Lola Arias’ emotive and bilingual production, MINEFIELD, will gather six war veterans from the battle of Falklands/Malvinas, to expose history from its two opposing fronts. These retired soldiers will use different mediums, to share their war collective and unravel the political causes that led them into once being rivals.

A screening of Babylon, as part of Cultures of Resistance, depicts the lives of young Black British citizens, that rise in resistance against police brutality, racism and lack of job opportunities and is part of Cinecity. The event assembles academics such as Kelly Foster - public historian and specialist on Black British music - to investigate the rise of defiance against an unjust system. There will also be reggae music in the bar as well as the film and discussion. 

At the end of the month, Notorious evokes the artistic and hybrid performance that is quintessential to our programme. On stage live art, theatre and fine art will work symbiotically to produce an experimental exploration on the female body. More specifically, how representations of the female body have been redefined through social media and consumerist tendencies. Notorious portrays the ‘female monster’ in pop-cultural terms, resulting in a witch-bitch ritual that questions public shaming and how we now relate to the female body. 

Join us! Pay What You Decide tickets are available for all of these shows. 

Due to unforeseen circumstances Factory Floor will no longer play live at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts on November 11 as part of our Metropolis screening. The band will instead provide a unique soundtrack to accompany the film, which has been arranged and mixed especially for this one off show in our venue.  

Due to this change to the original billing we are happy to give customers who already have a ticket a £5 complimentary discount to an upcoming ACCA show of their choice with proof of purchase and subject to availability. These can be claimed via our box office: 01273 678 822 or boxoffice@attenboroughcentre.com

Want to be in our remake of Brighton Rock? 

Brighton Rock: Redux will be premiered at the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts on Friday November 24 and is part of Richard DeDomenici’s The Redux Project which has been running since 2013.

The premiere at ACCA will have all the glitz of a Hollywood event, with a red carpet and glamorous outfits and all participants will be invited. 

There is still a chance to take part in the film, in the famous seaside scene with people playing in the water and pebbles. No previous acting  experience is needed and there will be a warming treat from the Regency Café after filming for those who brave the chilly climes of the sea. 

The filming takes place on Thursday 16 November, from 3pm-4pm at Brighton seafront to the right of the Brighton Palace Pier. 

If you are able to go in the water for the shoot please wear a wetsuit or appropriate swimming outfit and a bring a towel and warm clothing for afterwards.
 
We also need people to be on the beachfront area. If you would like to dress up in 1940s sea costumes or hold beach props (buckets, spades and beach balls) you are more than welcome if you have something you’d like to bring along.

For more information about the filming contact Philippa Barr at Richard DeDomenici: pbarrnz@gmail.com