England Art And Culture

Run by the Family Folk-up gang, Liverpool Folk and Roots Festival, last seen in November 2011, makes a welcome return today. This year’s festival takes place from Thursday 19th June to Sunday 7th July at venues across the city and features concerts, music sessions, and free gigs. Festival Curator, Will Hughes, says that Liverpool is a city of music and tradition. But what is Liverpool’s traditional music? “There are many answers to this question. Liverpool is such a musical city because of the open arms with which it welcomes new people, culture and music and so it is continually creating a new and enriched community. That is why traditional music in Liverpool today consists of everything from English folk songs, traditional Irish music and sea shanties to old-time country music, blues, ragtime and Dixieland.” “When compiling the festival programme this year we have attempted to bring together and include everything that demonstrates and exemplifies the magnificent wealth of traditional music of all styles and genres still being performed, appreciated and adored by scores of people all over the city, every week, every month or every now and then…” “Liverpool is blessed with a host of exceptional artists, committed promoters and unique venues that keep the wonder of traditional music alive.  We hope that you find something new to whet your musical appetite, tug at your heart strings or get your toes tapping.” The full programme of events, plus any changes or updates, can be found at the festival’s website liverpoolfolkandroots.co.uk FREE GIG Wednesday 19th June Liz Green at The Caledonia, Caledonia Street Eccentric and rather magical; an extraordinary voice and enchanting mix of muddy blues-tinged folk songs From 8pm – FREE CONCERT Thursday 20th June Mellowtone and Ceremony Concerts present… Nancy Elizabeth at Leaf Tea Shop, Bold Street Nancy Elizabeth is an astounding folk singer and multi-instrumentalist. Touring in support of her album ‘Dancing’ – it is her lightness of touch as a musician, songwriter, producer and performer that sets Nancy apart from the crowd. While the adventurous sounds she conjures conspire to create a mesmeric physical effect, the emotional purity of the lyrics is just as powerful. Doors 8pm. Tickets £6.50. CONCERT Saturday 22nd June Liverpool Folk and Roots Festival presents… An Evening of Sea Shanties and Maritime Songs at The Nordic Church, Park Lane featuring… Hughie Jones – Former member of The Spinners and the most admired Maritime singer-songwriter performing today Lizzie Nunnery – A captivating new voice in British folk Loctup Together – Astounding close harmony singing duo with an amazing repertoire of folk and maritime songs Bob Conroy – Founding member of US maritime group ‘Stout’ and acclaimed banjo player Dave Owen – A charismatic and talented singer and guitarist with an expert knowledge of traditional songs Doors 7:30pm. Tickets £5 – on sale soon. CONCERT Sunday 23rd June Liverpool Acoustic Live presents… Martyn Joseph at Sefton Park Palm House Martyn Joseph is as performer like no other. Touring in support of a brand new studio album “Songs for the Coming Home”, shades of Springsteen, John Mayer, Bruce Cockburn and Dave Matthews there may be – but he stands in his own right, built on a reputation for giving what thousands have described as the best live music experience of their lives. Doors 7pm, 7:30pm start. Tickets £15 from here. FREE GIG Sunday 23rd June The Loose Moose String Band at The Caledonia, Caledonia Street Liverpool’s one and only bluegrass supergroup From 8pm – FREE MUSIC SESSION Monday 24th June Traditional Irish Session at The Edinburgh, Sandown Lane From 8pm – FREE FOLK CLUB Wednesday 26th June Everyman Folk Club presents Bob Conroy and Bob Wright at Osqa’s Sports Bar, Oldham Street From 8pm – FR

Why would anyone say Leeds was the "best city"? @philkirby has a better idea ...

On 19 July, the Cassini probe will take our portrait from Saturn. Let's make it a good oneEarth, are you ready to have your picture taken? On 19 July, the Nasa space probe Cassini will take a photograph of Earth from its vantage point "a billion miles away", in the words of Carolyn Porco, who is in charge of the robot craft's cameras.Porco wants everyone to wave for this cosmic portrait. We have been told in advance the date and time it will be taken (between 21.27 and 21.42 GMT), so, as she says, "people can celebrate and join in".Why not make this the ultimate global celebration? After all, it's not every day you have your picture taken from the region of Saturn. To send Cassini so far and control it from here is as amazing an achievement as it was to put humans on the moon.This picture will be another milestone in our changing perspective on ourselves. Images of Earth from space have changed the way we imagine our world, and our relationship with it. They are about to change human consciousness again.The manned space missions of the 60s were a revolutionary moment in how we see our planet. The first photo of Earth from space was actually taken by a V2 rocket in 1946, when the US was experimenting with the interplanetary possibilities of captured Nazi technology. But it is the iconic colour photographs taken by astronauts that changed our sense of who and where we are.In 1968 the crew of Apollo 8 took the captivating photograph Earthrise, in which the blue and white sphere of our planet hangs in the blackness above the gnarled surface of the moon.Seeing Earth as this island in space was a profound moment for humanity. It intensified our sense of living on a rich and magical astral object. In the photograph, there's an intense contrast between our living planet and its dead moon. This new vision of our home undoubtedly influenced the emergence of green politics, giving a visual punch to theories of the living planet, such as James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis.Images of Earth as seen by astronauts still fascinate us – witness the recent popularity of Chris Hadfield's snaps from the International Space Station. But a stranger and more distant image of our planet is taking shape, and will soon enter popular culture, as Nasa's robot explorers take more and more images from far across the solar system.In 1990, Voyager took the first great picture of Earth as a distant speck – a tiny dot in the macrocosm of space.It has been said that the achievement of science is to show us how small we are in the big picture of the universe. Photographs make that decentering visible. They put us in our place.Let's all wave for Cassini's picture, though it will show us to be small and insignificant. Just don't think you're at the centre of the universe when you pose.PhotographyNasaSpaceAstronomyJonathan Jonesguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Iain Martin and Dan Hodges have both posted excellent blogs on the banking report, but there is one thing to add, which is that the House of Commons’ committee’s recommendations contain a contradiction. On the one hand the Committee calls for punishment of any bankers found to have engaged in “reckless mismanagement” of their bank. [...]

Nature Around the world in the pursuit of toxins: "Zoltan Takacs is an adventurer with a mission. He travels to the far corners of the earth, sometimes flying a small plane, sometimes trekking through remote jungles and wading swamps. In the course of his travels he’s been threatened by pirates, chased by elephants, menaced by crocodiles, sprayed with venom by a cobra, dodged civil wars and seen the inside of a Bulgarian military jail. "All this in pursuit of his passion and profession, to collect the venom from creatures as different as snakes, scorpions and stonefish — and there are an incredible number of them, he says — and develop drugs from the venom which can be used to treat life-threatening conditions. "So far he’s been bitten by venomous snakes no fewer than six times. This is a man who is well aware that he is allergic not only to snake venom but to the antivenom used to treat bites, but that doesn’t stop him from pursuing and capturing them to take tissue samples or collect the crude venom from fangs and stingers." Zoltan. Wow.

Dan Potts (@danpotts78) was astonished by the Opera North production of Wagner's Siegfried on Saturday.

Suzanne de Toit's portrait of her 35 year old son Pieter has won the £30,000 BP Portrait Award 2013.  As indicated in my previous post, BP Portrait Award 2013 - The Shortlist, the two top prizes both... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

TV Well, Eve, is it? You'll have to watch the clip of Eve Myles on BBC Breakfast yourself. But it is only a minute and brilliant and completely within the tone of the series itself, in that it never did really know what it was doing. Spot the moment too when the fan lexicon intrudes into the real world, or as real as that day glow set can be and Bill Turnbull once again about ten years behind everyone else. Covertly here, too, because it feels wrong to leave this at that, on the subject of the news which is going around at the moment, you know what I'm talking about, I'm oscillating between Gwen's reaction to the plot machinations of Torchwood's Miracle Day and the Fox Mulder side of the camp, leaning more to the latter. I want to believe.

The new episode of #A.I.L - artists in laboratories, the weekly radio programme about art and science i present on ResonanceFM, is aired this Wednesday afternoon at 4pm (London time.) HeHe, Fracking Futures, 2013, Installation at FACT HeHe, Fracking Futures, 2013, Installation at FACT My guest tomorrow will be Heiko Hansen who, together with Helen Evans, forms the art & design duo Hehe. Heiko is not in the studio with us, alas! I met him last week in Liverpool where FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) was celebrating its first decade of heralding art & technology with a new exhibition called Turning FACT Inside Out. Part of the anniversary involved commissioning new works to artists such as HeHe. And HeHe took the invitation to turn FACT inside out literally. Their new piece used the exhibition space to extract gas from the ground underneath the gallery and suggest that in the future we might want to bypass big energy companies and extract our own fossil fuels ourselves in our back garden. The artists have filled the space with heavy machinery that extracts shale gas through a process called fracking. Fracking is short for 'hydraulic fracturing', a process that consists in pumping a highly pressurised mixture of water, sand and chemicals underground to extract gas. The process opens fissures in rocks, releasing the gas trapped beneath the earth's surface. The plan brought forward by the artists is to use the gas to ensure the future operation of FACT and to export the energy directly to the local community. The experimental drilling site looks like a mini inferno: it's noisy, it is filled with red lights and flames, the furniture is shaking. And there's even a filthy looking water pit. HeHe, Fracking Futures, 2013, Installation at FACT The objective of the Fracking Future installation is to highlight the relevance of the debates surrounding the fracking process, which are not only significant environmentally, but also economically. Fracking Futures is a fairly ambiguous piece. First of all, because the work does not intend to take a clear stand: it only illustrates the potential dangers of the process. At the same time, it considers the fact that fracking might offer citizens an opportunity to produce their own alternative source of energy. It is also an ambiguous project because the visitor is left to decide whether the fracking experiments at the FACT gallery is indeed genuine or whether it is merely a provocation from HeHe. HeHe, Fracking Futures, 2013, Installation at FACT HeHe, Fracking Futures, 2013, Installation at FACT HeHe, Fracking Futures, 2013, Installation at FACT HeHe, Fracking Futures, 2013, Installation at FACT The show will be aired this Wednesday 19th of June at 16:00. Early risers can catch the repeat next Tuesday at 6.30 am (I know...) If you don't live in London, you can listen to the online stream or wait till we upload the episodes on soundcloud. The amazing soundtrack & field recordings which we mention in the programme is by Dinah Bird & Jean-Philippe Renoult. Nicolas Triscott (from the Arts Catalyst which co-commissioned the installation) wrote an insightful blog post about the art work. Many stories about or mentioning HeHe's work.

Pussy Riot in prayer position. Illustration by Linus Nystrom. Don’t miss this summer’s hottest documentary films. Here’s our pick as seen at Sheffield Doc/Fest, including all the trailers. Fuck For Forest Gives direct action a whole new meaning How far would you go to save the planet? Fuck For Forest is a green non-profit which raises money online through home-made blue movies and photos. The content can only be seen by participation or donation. So far, so hippy porn site. But as you find out why the group do it, and how they’re handling the money, the film becomes eye-opening in unexpected ways. Watch to challenge your ideas of charity, pornography, the body, and how we find our place in the world. Available for download now, on DVD from 17th June The Act of Killing Movies, morals and mass murder With Werner Herzog involved, you know this film could go anywhere. Two men at the heart of one of the worst genocides of the 20th century are given the opportunity to recreate their killings on film, in the style of popular movies. Making movies about the murders means addressing their actions, and the result is an award-winning clash of fact and fiction. In UK cinemas from 28th June The Man Whose Mind Exploded The surreal world of a man without memory Salvador Dali once worked with him, but since the 1980s Drako Zarharzar’s life has taken a turn for the surreal. A string of accidents, breakdowns and comas have left his memory ‘not recording’. Film-maker Toby Amies documents Drako’s world, including the inside of the flat that functions as his mind. Imagine Memento and 50 First Dates rewritten as a Brighton bromance, and you’re halfway to this unforgettable film. Next screening on 30th June Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer Extreme courtroom drama The story of Russian female punk activists Pussy Riot, complete with rehearsal room footage, childhood photos, performances, court appearances, family interviews, and all the media mayhem that followed their performance in Moscow’s biggest cathedral. Three members were arrested and two are still serving time in a penal colony. Nadia, Katia and Masha’s court statements alone are worth seeing on a big screen to remind yourself why they became feminist superheroes, and why Pussy Riot matters. In UK cinemas from 5th July Blackfish Mommy don’t take me to Seaworld Blackfish is something of an accidental save-the-animals film. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite started by investigating the death of a whale trainer at Seaworld, and uncovered a long history of ‘accidents’. The horror stories and footage pile up, heaping shame on Seaworld without tipping over into viewer voyeurism. By tracing the story of a whale called Tilikum from capture in 1983, through multiple incidents, up to his sad situation today, the whole bloody mess is laid out as clear as water. In UK cinemas from 26th July Project Wild Thing An unusual nature trail Self-deprecating dad David Bond is on a mission to save nature. His children’s attention spans will become as tiny as their underused wellies unless he does something serious. David appoints himself Marketing Director for nature and sets out on a rebranding mission, which at first seems like a joke, until he starts pulling in advice and favours from the world of marketing. The result is a hip and funny film you can’t help liking, about the oddness of branding and our often awkward relationship with nature. Released in late July Particle Fever See scientists swearing If you still don’t understand the Hadron Collider or the Higgs boson – so that’s most of us – then this film will help you get your head around the most stunning human discovery of the century so far. It’s beautifully shot, very funny, brings out the real personalities of scientists, and includes women in key positions who make links between science and art. The physics is explained so well that it sti