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Playgroup Festival

I'm having a quiet Sunday evening, recovering after a weekend at the Playgroup Festival. I went up after work and set up my tent in time to catch the Hammer and Tongue slam. After that I wandered around the site, enjoying the atmosphere before going to bed.

It turns out that I was the only person in our area of the site that slept. At one point in the night, someone apparently had a full-on acid freakout next to my tent, calling for his mother and pondering (in a shout) whether he was Jesus. I missed that. I also slept through the partying Spaniards who were singing and drumming all night until some time on Saturday afternoon.

Since the Chatham House rule applies to festivals, I won't name the poet who won my respect with their heroic drunken antics. They set off wandering after a superb performance in the slam. At some point in the early hours they apparently beat the loud Spaniards in a rap battle. Later they were seen walking along a ditch, reciting classical poetry. After a couple of hours spent sleeping in that ditch, they bounced back to life and started all over again.

On Saturday I found myself getting more into the festival spirit and had a great time, wandering about with friends and having the sort of heart-to-heart discussions you can only have in damp fields. Tom and Chris gave fascinating lectures (I know now more than I need to about RPS and 'millicest'). AKDK played a storming gig and I spent the hours afterwards wandering about. I lost my voice, which was replaced by the husky party version. I met interesting strangers and had bizarre experiences and kept losing people then finding them again.

It was a fun weekend. I didn't try to catch that many acts, but once I got into the spirit I enjoyed wandering about and taking in the atmosphere. I think I had more fun than I've had at a festival in a long time. It was small enough to be intimate, and substantial work had gone into strange artefacts and performances. A lot of people from Brighton had turned up, which meant I kept running into old friends. The event wasn't perfect by any means (it definitely needed better water facilities and far more toilets) but I guess a festival is what you make it. I'm looking forward to next year.

There are various (possibly incriminating) photos I've not seen yet which are sure to appear on facebook over the next few days. I'm also hoping to see some of the footage filmed of Chris Parkinson's performance of The Wasteland AK/3D, backed by AKDK.

Photos of Brighton

Some photos of Brighton from last weekend. The first is of a tree Esther and I saw on the way to the Brighton Parkrun:

Lampost near Northern Lights/Quadrophenia Alley:

Sunday afternoon, after a swim in the sea, Ellen and I found the Punch and Judy man. We arrived just in time to see Mr. Punch beat the devil:

I meant to blog about last weekend, but I suspect I may not get around to it (or, at least, to any sort of detailed account). I am frantically packing for Playgroup tonight, where I will be spending this weekend. I'm expecting to have all sorts of adventures there. I just hope the weather is better than it was today,

Clown stories volume one

Last night, Mr. Parkinson came round to visit:

We drank beer, ate curry and worked on the layout for Clown Stories Volume 1. There's still a little more work to do, but I'm hoping to finish that later this month. A few last minute bits of proofing, and a general polishing of the design and it will be ready:

The cover is by the illustrator Kate Shields. The book contains three stories by Chris and the rest are mine. They're not the worst of my clown stories – only two people have read those, and I'm not really in touch with them any more. They're not the worst of my clown stories, but some of them are not very nice.

Hularoids

Last weekend I was at the Kemptown Carnival where I bumped into a couple of friends who were taking polaroid portraits. The photo they took makes me laugh when I think about it.

Around Brighton

This Indian-style elephant sticker was on a lamp-post near my house.

The upper image is an advert for the Pavilion Gardens Cafe, which is apparently best represented by images of Jedward and Amy Winehouse painted onto milk-bottles.

Question: How come nobody told me that the garden at the Marwood was so large and so pleasant? I thought there was only the small area outside the toilets. I loved the art, particularly the portrait of Allen Ginsberg:

Miscellany: drawing carts, year zero and the vinyl Hoover

Toby Amies has put his radio documentaries online. All of them are worth a listen, but I particularly recommend 'Beatmining with the Vinyl Hoover' and 'The Man Whose Mind Exploded', the latter of which is a fantastic Brighton story.
Last weekend followed some advice from zenbullets and archived off my music collection, all 17 1/2 days of it. I currently have a more manageable 6 hours. It's proving an interesting experiment and I'm enjoying the music more.
Interesting rant by Stewart Lee about 'content', which contains some provocative points about the importance of medium. "The Tewa clowns would not be cross-platformed. Their content was developed for the pueblo square format and it would stay that way."
Lovely slideshow from Jake Spicer, showing an outdoor launch event for the Artists Open Houses that he was involved with.
Today's XKCD has some haunting alt text: "The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space–each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."

The New England Path is open

Walking down New England Road this morning, I was surprised to see that the New England Greenway Path is no longer blocked by a gate. It's been a long time (here's a discussion from July 2010) and I've noidea how long it's actually been open for. It's a pleasant alternative route between New England Road and the station.

Psychogeographical Experiment: Blindfolded walking

Guy Debord defined psychogeography as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals". The discipline is a mish-mash of ideas and experiments, many of them contradictory or in violent opposition. One common aspect is the idea of exploring one's enviroment by the means of experiments and play.

For some time I've been meaning to try a number of experiments in Brighton. It's a place I know well and one that I love exploring. It is also a very playful city, sometimes seeming almost alive. Tonight, with my accomplice Dr Evil, I tried a first experiment, blindfolded walking.

The idea was quite simple, taking turns to walk blindfolded along the seafront, with the guide suggesting course corrections and helping to avoid obstacles.

The experience was intense. Time and distance were hard to estimate while blindfolded. Above the constant noise of traffic, one could pick out passers-by, the scampering of dogs, but very few details. The sea was so quiet it could not be heard above the traffic. Dr Evil wondered about "all the silent things that you are missing."

Walking blind produced a strange relation to space. At first it felt as if one was just about to walk into something. It was very hard to judge how far away things were by sound alone. Time too changed, with the doctor estimating time passing twice as fast as it was. The subway was particularly interesting, as it distorted and focussed the sounds of the road above.

Finally, in homage to the film Intacto (video here) we took turns running blind.

Afterwards we felt tired and also more alert. We found ourselves more aware of potential trip hazards and had to stop ourselves from warning the (now sighted) other. It was an interesting way to experience a quiet sea-front. We're hoping to try this again in the town one evening.

Clowns!

Clowns are all around us:

(Photo via my sister)

(Photo via my friend Kate)

Anonymous stories near the Level

One of the things I love most about Brighton is the strange pieces of anonymous art you find about the place. Maybe such things happen elsewhere, but I don't remember much of it in Hastings, Norwich or Coventry.

I saw the first story below on Wednesday night when I was escorting Ellen to the Skiff. I saw the one below on a run earlier that day, but thought it was a strange notice rather than a story. I was pleased to find they were both still there when I went to work on Thursday morning.