East End Review

Tag: Red Gallery

  • How the Berlin Wall became a catalyst for creativity

    Ben de
    Wall politics: Total Demokratie by Ben de Biel

    When the Berlin Wall fell, the whole city was reborn. Artists flocked to the capital, creativity flourished, social groups merged and politics shifted radically. Clubs, galleries, squats, studios and workshops quickly sprang up in the many disused buildings. The free space, a sense of jubilation and the prevalence of ecstasy made it just the fertile ground needed for techno and its scene to flourish.

    And it is this moment in history that After the Fall depicts. The exhibition features work by photographers, writers and musicians that captures the zeitgeist of Berlin in the early 1990s. Ernesto Leal, the curator, says: “I wanted to bring together all these things that represent Berlin at that time. People were able to experiment with new people, there was new music around, East and West were able to meet. It kicked off the whole regeneration of East Berlin.”

    If you’ve ever wondered why Berlin is the epicentre of dance music, this is for you. The exhibition features extracts from Der Klang der Familie (The Sound of Family) an oral and written history from those present in Berlin at that time. Sven von Thülen, one of the authors, says: “Our aim was to let the people who lived the early years of house and techno in Berlin tell the story of the scene’s development rather than us. The many different perspectives and personal – and sometimes contradictory – opinions make for an intimate and close look at what happened back then and why.”

    Loveparade 1992. Photograph: Ben de Biel
    Loveparade 1992. Photograph: Ben de Biel

    Von Thülen says the exhibition shows a singular period in history. “Post-Wall Berlin is kind of an historical accident. It shows a city as a temporary autonomous zone. An anarchic time filled with a unique sense of freedom and possibility, which was embraced in a very creative and positive way. And with techno as its prime soundtrack.”

    Visitors can study arresting black and white photos of the disruption, building sites and sometimes-bizarre fashion of the time. The photographer, Ben de Biel, studied photography in West Germany between 1989 and 1990 and says his studies of reportage inspired him to document what Berlin was like in the early post-wall years. “When I came first in February 1990 I recognised that Berlin after the fall is a unique time in history and the first people who came from West to East as I did were also artists like me. So my pictures deliberately came from this point of view.

    “My studies were about photojournalism and documentary. Traditionally this genre is black and white. But especially by taking pictures of people you realise their characters much better in black and white.”

    Leal hopes visitors will draw parallels between East London and Berlin. “There seems to be a connection between the two cities,” he says. “In 1992, there was nothing here in East London. People came to warehouse parties and discovered a new place and new people. I could see the connection between club culture and the resurgence of an area.”

    After the Fall is at Red Gallery, 1-3 Rivington Street, EC2A 3DT until 18 October.

    redgallerylondon.com

    The opening night, which featured live readings by Sven von Thülen, a documentary screening and music, was recorded and can be listened back to via bloop.

    After the Fall
    Time to go home… Berlin ravers. Photograph: Ziet Machine

     

  • William Burroughs in Hackney: photographs of Beat writer go on display at Red Gallery

    William Burroughs. Photograph:
    William Burroughs. Photograph: James Hamilton

    In his 1964 novel Nova Express, a pitch-black social commentary about a dystopian future, William S. Burroughs writes: “I am primarily concerned with the question of survival – with Nova conspiracies, Nova criminals, and Nova police. A new mythology is possible in the Space Age, where we will again have heroes and villains, as regards intentions towards this Planet. I feel that the time of writing is in Space, not Time.”

    It was another five years until Apollo 11 first touched down on a lunar surface, and another decade after that until the Nova Convention was held, a multimedia retrospective of his work in New York City. By this point, the diabolical American genius Burroughs, variously a Harvard University alumnus, drug savant, pioneer of the gay liberation movement, gun enthusiast and creator of the “cut-up technique”, had garnered widespread praise. In attendance were cultural giants from Patti Smith, to Philip Glass, Frank Zappa, John Cage and Allen Ginsberg.

    An exhibition organised by Ecstatic Peace Library at Shoreditch’s Red Gallery entitled William Burroughs: Nova Convention, will mark the artist’s centennial with photographs of the event taken by James Hamilton of the Village Voice, who captured this celebratory and historic meeting of minds at The Entermedia Theater.

    One of those in attendance that day was a 19-year-old Thurston Moore, scraggly and raw, who is now a co-curator of the Red Gallery show alongside Eva Prinz. He recalls in a “teenage potted reverie … a palpable excitement of the importance of Burroughs’ return to NYC”. These days, Moore travels each year from his home in Stoke Newington to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics of Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, just as Burroughs taught there many years ago.

    There, too, was a London connection. “At the Nova Convention he read this poem that he introduced by saying it had been inspired by a trip to London,” Moore recounts. “He had this whole connection to the London underground of radical poetry, people like Jeff Nuttall. He was living on Drury Lane and being part of the scene around the Indica Bookstore that Barry Miles had. He was a big part of the London scene, hanging out with Ian Sommerville, Iain Sinclair and all those guys. For me now living in London it’s something I really relate to, Burroughs’ time here, as an American in London.”

    On the day of the convention itself, the poet Eileen Myles supposedly performed the so-called William Tell act where in 1951 Burroughs tragically sent a bullet through his wife Joan Vollmer’s skull, killing her instantly. But Moore explains there was plenty to revel in. “Glass’s idiosyncratic high-speed minimalist pianistics was natural, gorgeous and sublime. Zappa came out and read a Burroughs excerpt ‘The Talking Asshole’ which seemed appropriate and was mildly entertaining. Patti hit the stage in a glamorous black fur trench, purportedly on loan from some high-end clothier.

    “There was always some magic in the air in NYC and it seemed like there could be no other world in 1978. Burroughs coming back to the city where he predicted the urban energy and flash lightning of punk rock was matter of pride and integrity. We owned the future.”

    William Burroughs: Nova Convention is at Red Gallery, 1-3 Rivington Street, EC2A 3DT until 13 July.

  • The Nine O’Clock Slot – review

    Poster for The Nine o’clock slot. Courtesy of Ice&Fire
    Poster for The Nine o’clock slot. Courtesy of Ice&Fire

    “Welcome to the low-budget slot, the low frills, low grade, high shame, 9 o’clock slot,” intones the hospice chaplain John, having beckoned us from the edgy and industrial Red Gallery bar, through an ante-chamber of trees, soil mounds and angels, and on to the theatre, walled by versatile, but non-descript looking cardboard boxes.

    The Nine O’Clock Slot is impressively conceived: the audience begin as an (unusually large) crowd of mourners, gathered unwittingly for a paupers’ burial. In a Brechtian move we are forced to confront the play’s themes head on, not allowed to hide behind the veil of disengagement that often typifies theatre.

    Hannah Davies and Annecy Lax’s production with human rights theatre company ice&fire weaves through the lives of four individuals, all very different from one another, but who end their lives in the same way – an anonymous paupers’ burial.

    Margaret, an articulate old lady mourns her husband Clive: talks, dances, drinks, plays cards with her beloved husband who is no longer there. This is a particularly strong performance from Anna Barry, who lights up the stage with her quick wit and jaunty liveliness. Whilst Margaret carries her own story compellingly, you can’t help but feel that it doesn’t fit in with the other interlocking narratives, though perhaps this is the point: loneliness, and isolation is all pervasive, and what typifies these individuals’ very different backgrounds and experiences.

    Not all the acting is as sharp however, and the post mortem analysis by the mortuary assistants is not only gruesome but also does not ring true. They are talking to the audience partly, sharing insights: “Black pepper lungs tells me he lives in the city…Office monkey? Disaffected data hacker.” “This man was 278204 – the body of an unidentified male,” one mortuary assistant adds, as he peels back the skin of the imaginary body before him. The cruel anonymity of death in London’s underbelly is drawn to our attention, but the acting here is crude, though the lines well drawn.

    Chu Omambala shows great versatility, playing chaplain John, the laddish Marcus, and finally a didactic auctioneer, peddling graves to the sombered audience. The number of parts played by a few of the actors also emphasises the anonymity of those passing under the city’s radar.

    A highlight of the performance was a heated argument between John and carer Kay (Thusitha Jayasundera) about how to treat someone towards the end of their lives. This debate achieved that fine balance of narrative and didacticism – informative without being preachy, which some of the other scenes on occasion veered into.

    Connor (Gary Cargill) is a charismatic, ebullient drunk who held up a persona that was angry, witty and lonely.

    “None of this wanky, good practice, tick box bollocks”, he says to his carer Kay when discussing the end of his life. This relationship between carer and patient is raw and touching, highlighting the struggles not only of those whose lives are ending, but those who are tending to those ending lives

    The play makes for uncomfortable viewing. Melding video, dance, music and acting, sometimes you feel a simpler set-up would be more effective. Scene changes and some performances could be sharper, but its message resonates loud and clear: thousands of people are dying on our streets, left for uncared for and untended in life and in death, and we prefer to turn the other way. The Nine O’Clock Slot urges us to do otherwise.

    The Nine O’Clock Slot is at The Red Gallery, 3 Rivington Street, EC2A 3DT until 19 April.