The Skinny June 2023

Fringe of Colour Returns

The Skinny's favourite songs of 2023 so far

Dai Freyr — Whole Again

MUNA — One That Got Away

JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown — Steppa Pig

Eyes of Others — Big Companies, Large Tentacles

Caroline Polachek — Smoke

Overmono — Good Lies

The Joy Hotel — Jeremiah

Mura Masa — Whenever I Want

The Oozes — DBSAC

Town Centre — Maybe I'm Alone

Sho Madjozi — Chale

Peach PRC — Kinda Famous

Pangaea — Installation

Young Fathers — Holy Moly

Listen to this playlist on Spotify — search for 'The Skinny Office Playlist' or scan the below code

Issue 209, June 2023 © Radge Media Ltd.

Get in touch:

E: [email protected]

The Skinny is Scotland's largest independent entertainment & listings magazine, and offers a wide range of advertising packages and affordable ways to promote your business. Get in touch to find out more.

E: [email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the explicit permission of the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within this publication do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the printer or the publisher.

Printed by DC Thomson & Co. Ltd, Dundee ABC verified Jan – Dec 2019: 28,197

Championing creativity in Scotland

Meet the team

We asked – Name an artist/ filmmaker/ musician/ author/ comedian who more people should know about...

Rosamund West

Editor-in-Chief

"Laurie Presswood (genre as yet to be determined)."

Peter Simpson Deputy Editor, Food & Drink Editor

"Mainline Magic Orchestra –Spain's premier situationist performance art group-slash-live techno band."

Anahit Behrooz Events Editor, Books Editor

"This question makes me feel like a basic bitch and I won't respond to it."

Jamie Dunn

Film Editor, Online Journalist

"Joan Micklin Silver! Her 70s/80s dramas are wonderful, but they've fallen through the cracks. MUBI has a JML season right now and her masterpiece, Chilly Scenes of Winter, is on YouTube. Seek them out!"

Tallah Brash Music Editor

"LCD Soundsystem. But also Shelina Permalloo - her super speedy Middle Eastern-inspired recipes on IG are *chef kiss."

Heléna Stanton Clubs Editor

"So many to choose from but, Nida Manzoor who directed Polite Society, was incredible. She also directed We Are Lady Parts, again amazing TV. Excited to see what else she does, she’s just starting her journey into directing."

Polly Glynn Comedy Editor

"There are so many people I want to shout about here, but the person who sticks out is actor Hammed Animashaun. He’s currently one of the leads in Black Ops (BBC iPlayer) – an undercover cop comedy written by Gbemisola Ikumelo and Akemnji Ndifornyen."

Rho Chung Theatre Editor

"Ezra Furman makes music about trans joy and rage and liberation, which feels especially vital at the moment."

Business

Harvey Dimond

Art Editor

"I'm loving the poetry of Oluwaseun Olayiwola, who is a poet and choreographer based in London. His poem Simulacrum might be the best poem I've read."

Editorial Sales

George Sully

Sales and Brand Strategist

"@petey_usa on Instagram does lightly surreal, weirdly meditative, often wholesome and sometimes quite dark comedy sketches. He also fronts an unrelated indie band!"

Lewis Robertson Digital Editorial Assistant

"Synth pioneer and first trans woman to recieve a Grammy, Wendy Carlos!"

Laurie Presswood General Manager

"No-one's ever believed in me before. It's too much pressure, I don't like it."

Eilidh Akilade Intersections Editor

"I'm unfortunately not as edgy as I'd like to think – but I'd say I'm more in the know than my sister, who asked if I'd heard of Lizzo in 2020. (I indeed had.)"

Production

Dalila D'Amico Art Director, Production Manager

"The Joy Hotel, my talented friends. Shoutout to all the sidewalks for keeping them off the streets! x"

Phoebe Willison Designer

"Well obviously I can't give away my secrets like that, otherwise how would people know I was cool at parties when I reference obscure things no-one else has heard of."

Tom McCarthy

Creative Projects Manager

"Everyone should listen to The Oozes."

Sandy Park

Commercial Director

"I do not know anyone cool and unknown. I am not down with the kids."

Editorial

Words: Rosamund West

The June issue celebrates Fringe of Colour, returning to the live setting with a hybrid festival of events in Summerhall at the end of the month. They have taken the wise decision to move away from the oversaturated hysteria of Edinburgh’s August (other festivals should think about this) to deliver a programme by and for Scotland’s communities of colour. Anahit Behrooz meets founder and technical director Jess Brough to learn more about the evolution of the festival, the centrality of community and the challenges of operating within a funding landscape that is predicated on white audiences.

This year’s presentation includes a newly commissioned work from artist Ashanti Harris. We talk to her about the development of Black Gold, a visual poem exploring extractive practices and colonial through the lens of oil which she describes as an “ancestral condensing of time.”

Art is central to the June issue, as we gear up for summer exhibitions and the commencement of this year’s Scottish degree shows. At the heart of the magazine you will find a special 16-page supplement on the Glasgow School of Art’s 2023 Graduate Showcase. Written by GSA students, the publication offers a first-hand insight into the artists and works on display across the sites this June.

Sebastián Díaz Morales’ Smashing Monuments is currently on display at Edinburgh’s Collective. We explore the work which questions the function of monuments in our collective memory, and consider its resonance in the context of an Edinburgh skyline dominated by the untempered statue of Henry Dundas.

Dundee has a brand new Art party launching this month, playing host to the first Art Night to take place outside London. Saturday 24 June will see the staging of events across the city, including ten major commissions by internationally significant artists including performances, film and exhibitions. One writer travelled to Belfast to gain an insight into one of the works, an experimental opera-film by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, History of the

Present

Our design correspondent also took a trip to Venice for the launch of this year’s Architecture Biennale. She offers an insight into A Fragile Correspondence, Scotland’s collaborative presentation which explores alternative perspectives and new approaches to the challenges of worldwide climate emergency.

Film meets director Tina Satter to learn more about the development of Reality, her real-time thriller about NSA whistleblower Reality Winner based on transcripts of her FBI interrogation. Director Tom Hardiman introduces Medusa Deluxe, his murder-mystery set at a hairdressing competition. We also take a look back at the highlights of our Film editor’s visit to Hawick for the Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival.

This year our Music editor has curated not one, not two, but three full days of the Pyramid Stage (not that one) at Kelburn Garden Party. We’ve got a rundown of the full line-up, get your tickets now. Le Tigre are returning to a Scottish stage after a near-enough two decade hiatus. We meet them to talk DIY culture and their mission to be the dance party after the protest. Hull four-piece bdrmm, newly signed to Rock Action, discuss their second album, I Don’t Know, and being mentored by Mogwai.

Books meets Chinese author Yan Ge, whose Englishlanguage debut Elsewhere is released this month. The nine short stories of the collection range across the world, from contemporary Stockholm to ancient China. Intersections looks at the feminist developments in town planning, and explores the Arches DIY, a handbuilt community skate park.

Clubs talks to some of the promoters who’re adapting their practices to keep the nightlife industry running through the latest cost of living challenges. Comedy meets one woman who is working to make stand up more accessible, reaching deaf audiences through BSL interpreting.

The magazine closes with a nod to local brewery Pilot Beer’s tenth birthday and 1000+ brews – co-founder Patrick Jones takes on the Q&A to see if he can translate the brand’s noted Twitter bantz into a print setting.

Cover

Heedayah is an illustrator and designer who loves to capture playful vibes in bright-colourful work. She enjoys illustrating food, female figures and still life. She loves going to cafes and sketching her next personal projects in her spare time, or watching horror movies.

Love Bites: Teenage Foundations of Decay

This month’s columnist reflects on rediscovering My Chemical Romance, teen angst, and the power that comes with both

Words: Roshni Gallagher

When My Chemical Romance announced their reunion in 2019 and subsequent tour in 2022, I hadn’t listened to them in years. But as a teenager I loved MCR.

I loved the melodrama and theatrics. I loved the unrestrained passion in Gerard Way’s singing. I loved the vulnerable, furious lyrics. Lyrics that are sincere in a way that makes them mockable to those with harder hearts.

The first time I saw them live was in 2010, and I had the date circled in every calendar in the house. I was a shy teenager – I felt different because I was mixed race and brown. But at that show, it didn’t matter how quiet or shy I was. In that inky black space, Gerard was vocalising everything I had felt. He was screaming it out for me. And I was in amongst it, crushed by the crowd, singing at the top of my lungs. MCR connected me with my strength at a time when I felt I had no voice.

And in 2022, MCR were what I’d been missing. At the Milton Keynes stadium, standing in the shirt I’d bought at that first MCR gig, I had my whole heart in my mouth. It was electric. Tens of thousands of fans had flooded the arena – all of us past our teenage years. I was worried that the magic of a collective, youthful passion might have been lost. But when they opened with their newest song The Foundations of Decay, a growling, resonant, and mournful anthem, it was pure emotion on a magnificent scale. Re-emerging amid a period of intense global loss, MCR returned as explosively powerful and even more poignant than before. It was my first gig after the lockdowns, and in that crowd, there was a sweeping feeling of hope.

Since then, MCR have shot back into my top-played artists on Spotify. Rediscovering my love for them has reconnected me with an essential part of myself. One that has big messy emotions and wants to shout at the world that whatever life throws at me I am not afraid.

Heads Up

Architecture Fringe

Various venues, across Scotland, 2-18 Jun

This year’s Architecture Fringe programme is themed around (R)Evolution, examining the ways our built and urban environments intersect with ideas of political and social change. Events in the programme include exhibitions (including one on Glasgow’s inner city motorway), walking tours on embedded imperial histories, and a core programme looking at autonomous spaces and radical planning.

Hear that? It’s the sound of the summer baby, with music festivals, pride club nights, and the very best performing arts festivals in the business setting up camp across Scotland.

Compiled by Anahit Behrooz

Peaceophobia

Tramway, Glasgow, 15-17 Jun, various times

In a car park in Bradford, three British Muslim men gather to find sanctuary and solidarity. Part car-meet, part immersive theatre set against the background of the Bradford Riots and a post-9/11 Britain, Peaceophobia unpicks the narratives of Islamophobia and racism that undergird these men’s lives, examining how networks of community and love can be traced even amidst hostility.

Femmergy

The Bongo Club, Edinburgh, 22 Jun, 9pm

It’s Pride Month baby, and what better way to celebrate than with the allfemme DJ crew at Femmergy. Head to The Bongo Club for an evening of high camp, including a drag show hosted by the iconic Groundskeeper Fanny, and pop, disco, and R’n’B-heavy DJ sets from Annafleur, Rianna and Arusa Qureshi.

Hidden Door

Folk Film Gathering

Various venues, Edinburgh, 12-29 Jun

The world’s first festival of folk cinema returns with a focus on rare Ukrainian cinema. Heading the programme is 1929 silent film Arsenal, an unflinching exploration of revolution and uprising, now with a brand new live score by Scottish electronic duo Dalhous. There’s also a screening of The Evening of Ivan Kupala with a live musical introduction by the Edinburgh Ukrainian Choir and eerie folk horror Pamfir

Art Night Dundee

Various venues, Dundee, 24 Jun, 7pm

For the first time ever, contemporary art festival Art Night moves out of London, taking over ten of Dundee’s spaces for one late night extravaganza. Turner Prize-winning artist Tai Shani presents a series of filmic tableaux; folk electronica artist Nabihah Iqbal stages a musical takeover of the RSS Discovery; and Dundee-based Saoirse Amira Anis extends her solo exhibition at DCA with an experimental performance.

Jala Wahid: Conflagration

Tramway, Glasgow, 23 Jun-10 Sep

First Date: Edinburgh’s Romance Fiction Festival

Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh, 25 Jun

Modern Studies

The Old Hairdresser's, Glasgow, 15 Jun, 7:30pm

Former Scottish Widows, Edinburgh, 31 May-4 Jun

Every year, Hidden Door takes over an abandoned Edinburgh building for several days of music, visual arts and sneaking around creepy corridors and basements. This year, they’re setting up shop in the old Scottish Widows building (you know, the sinister looking one): expect live sets from the likes of Brighton punk outfit Porridge Radio and Highlands art-pop artist Josephine Sillars, late-night performance from Maranta and Free Love, and art from Chell Young and Soorin Shin.

Kelburn Garden Party

Kelburn Castle, Fairlie, 30 Jun-3 Jul

EHFM Presents: Finn + Nina Stanger

Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, 3 Jun, 11pm

Manchester-based DJ, radio wizard and head of record label 2 B REAL, Finn heads over the border for his debut in Sneaky’s wee box. Known for his eclectic, wide-ranging taste, expect a mixture of 90s house, garage, and hardcore – everything to get you moving fast –with support on the night from Aberdeen rave queen Nina Stanger.

Haru Nemuri

The Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 2 Jun, 7pm

Tokyo rocker Haru Nemuri pushes the bounds of musical genre, experimenting with hardcore, rap, and punk to craft a baroque kind of J-pop. Treading the line between nihilism and optimism, her music stays true to the roots of riot grrrl pop, finding something expressionistic and beautiful amidst the darkness of, well, everyday existence (we’re doing fine we promise).

Missing Persons Club: DJ Gigola

The Berkeley Suite, Glasgow, 9 Jun, 11pm

The Berkeley Suite’s Missing Person’s Club welcomes Berlin punk techno princess DJ Gigola for a highoctane night of back-to-back tracks with fast electronica wizard MCR-T. Support on the night comes from techno and ghetto house DJ VXYX and Missing Persons Club regular DJ Smoker.

Fringe of Colour

Summerhall, Edinburgh, 23-29 Jun

After two years of delivering one of Scotland’s most exciting performing arts festivals online, Fringe of Colour is going hybrid for the first time, with a dynamic programme of moving image works screened in its new home at Summerhall, as well as entirely online. With pieces by film legends Campbell X, Ashanti Harris, and Natasha Ruwona, the programme covers everything from narratives of queerness and displacement, speculative futures, and generational Black memories.

SZA

OVO Hydro, Glasgow, 15 Jun, 6:30pm

SZA’s debut Ctrl was a masterwork in confessional R’n’B, crafting intimacy from raw, soulful lyricism. With her sophomore album SOS, SZA maintained her signature vulnerability, pushing the bounds of R’n’B’s generic possibilities through jazz and grunge influences and a distinctly collaborative approach (cue the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Travis Scott). There’s no better place for her big heart and big sound than the wide landscape of the Hydro stage.

All details were correct at the time of writing, but are subject to change. Please check organisers’ websites for up to date information.

Riverside Museum, Glasgow, 3-4 Jun

Tarek Lakhrissi: I wear my wounds on my tongue (ii) Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 24 Jun-1 Oct

Exploring themes of queerness, desire and language, French visual artist and poet Tarek Lakhrissi’s new exhibition draws inspiration from the writings of writer and performance artist Justin Chin, and his positioning of the tongue as an instrument of pleasure rather than rebuke or judgement. Locating queer joy through a series of alien-like tongue sculptures, Lakhrissi invites us to discover the emancipatory possibilities of physical and linguistic expression.

Spit

Various venues, Glasgow + Edinburgh, 16-25 Jun

What's On

Music

Edinburgh’s Hidden Door festival takes us across the threshold of June. After Porridge Radio play their opening night on 31 May, Bemz, Goodnight Louisa, Eyes of Others, Rozi Plain and Max Cooper see us right through the first weekend of June. Meanwhile, at the end of the month, you’ll find us at Kelburn Garden Party – which kicks off on 30 June – floating us gently into July with a stage all our own. More on that on page 34.

In between all of that, highlights of the Glasgow Jazz Festival (14-18 Jun) include Andrew Wasylyk at Saint Luke’s (14 Jun), Radiohead Reimagined at Òran Mór (15 Jun), JSPHYNX at The Rum Shack, presented by Glitch 41 (15 Jun), and sonic explorer Tara Lily at The Glad Cafe, with support from Kapil Seshasayee (16 Jun). As part of multi-arts festival Spit It Out (16-25 Jun), catch Hak Baker at King Tut’s (17 Jun) as he celebrates the release of his debut album, Worlds End FM Festivals aside, some pretty big artists pass through Glasgow this month. On the Barrowlands’ iconic sprung floor you’ll find feminist party band Le Tigre (6 Jun), dancefloor-ready electro-pop from CHVRCHES (10 & 11 Jun), and experimental hip-hop from Death Grips (21 & 22 Jun). The OVO Hydro sees the mighty Wu-Tang Clan bring da ruckus (as well as Nas) on the 12th, before SZA, whose stage name was influenced by the Wu’s RZA, stops by a few nights later (15 Jun). On 20 June it’s the turn of Philadelphians The War On Drugs, before Arctic Monkeys bring their massive show to Bellahouston Park for one of the first big outdoor shows of the summer (25 Jun).

Smaller venues bring even more familiar faces to Scotland. The Moldy Peaches’ Kimya Dawson plays Glasgow’s Mono (13 Jun), while Paris Is Burning and My Delirium hitmaker Ladyhawke plays King Tut’s (27 Jun). Ratking rapper Wiki also returns to the capital to play The Mash House (27 Jun), for what we hope will be another bouncy set, before playing Glasgow’s Audio (28 Jun). If you love local, ahead of releasing their debut album, Glasgow’s Current Affairs play The Old Hairdresser’s (2 Jun), NANI celebrates their debut Honey EP at Sneaky’s (9 Jun) and Moni Jitchell bring the noise to Leith Depot (23 Jun) and The Old Hairdresser’s (30 Jun).

For something more experimental, promoters 1.5 Months host a noise and electronic-themed night at The Old Hairdresser’s (9 Jun) with Lauren Sarah Hayes, while at the end of the month in Edinburgh, catch her alongside Lomond Campbell and SHEARS at Summerhall for a glimpse behind the music-making curtain at You’re Not Supposed to Do That, a unique showand-tell gig (30 Jun). [Tallah Brash]

Film

The Folk Film Gathering (12-29 Jun) is back in Edinburgh with a sharply curated lineup celebrating community, place and people. Running through the programme you’ll find what the organisers call “a dialogue of solidarity” between Ukraine and Scotland, which draws connections across the rich cinematic heritage of both countries. One highlight speaking to this dialogue is a screening of Alexander Dovzhenko’s blistering war film Arsenal, which plays with a newly minted soundtrack by Scottish electronic duo Dalhous.

Elsewhere you’ll find a brace of docs exploring the phenomenon of second sight in the Outer Hebrides and several rarely-screened Scottish classics from the BBC’s Play for Today series.

Pack yourself some sandwiches, a two-litre bottle of Irn-Bru and a multipack of Haribo, because Cameo in Edinburgh has three all-nighters planned on 17 June. The pick of the bunch is Blockbuster Anime, which is serving up masterpieces Akira and Perfect Blue alongside recent anime faves Belle, Your Name and Promare. For the adventurous, there’s Pot Luck – five mystery films. And finally, there’s the frankly insane movie marathon 24 Hour Wes Fest, which lets you enjoy the whimsical world of Wes Anderson for a day, with all ten of his films playing in chronological order.

June is Pride month, and Glasgow Film Theatre have a couple of queer classics on its roster to celebrate. First up, on 3 June, is Jennifer’s Body, a razor-sharp feminist horror that was much misunderstood by critics on its 2009 release but has since been embraced, not least by the LGBTQ community, for Diablo Cody’s deliciously camp script (“she’s, like, actually evil; not high school evil”) and the sapphic intensity of the teen friendship at its centre. That’s followed on 16 June by the cult 1969 feature Funeral Parade of Roses, an anarchic celebration of homosexuality and drag from avant-garde genius Toshio Matsumoto.

Also look out for Film Knight, a new dine-and-view night at Knight’s Kitchen, the ace, African-inspired neighbourhood bistro on Leith Walk, Edinburgh. This month they’re screening Somali film The Gravedi er’s Wife, which was much acclaimed on its limited release last year. Other film highlights this month include Highlander on 35mm at DCA (10 Jun); a 4k screening of The Wicker Man: The Final Cut at Cameo (21 Jun) to mark the 50th anniversary of that classic horror; and a pay-what-you-can screening of the wonderful Limbo at GFT as part of Refugee Festival Scotland (17 Jun). [Jamie Dunn]

Clubs

Ponyboy is back curating another extravaganza at the legendary Art School in Glasgow, headlined by London’s Inferno icon Lewis G Burton. Expect A LOT for this degree after-show party (1 Jun).

At The Berkeley Suite, Hang Tough presents Facta & K-Lone on 2 June. The duo perform a pre-club show and also a peak-time DJ set. On 4 June, Shoot Your Shot X T4T LUV NRG present Eris Drew, Octa Octa, Bonzai Bonner, and Mi$$ Co$mix, a night with a lot of euphoric nostalgia and high BPMs. On 9 June, MPC has a huge Scottish debut, with Berlin’s Live From Earth Klub artists, DJ Gigola b2b MCR-T. Loose Joints is back for another summer party with Club Fitness and a B2B from Nurse and Wheelman (10 Jun).

Riverside celebrates 10 years of the festival with a stacked lineup including Palms Trax, Mall Grab and Avalon Emerson, plus multiple local DJs. The festival also has a select number of after-parties occurring across Glasgow at SWG3 (3 & 4 Jun).

At The Flying Duck, Giant Swan’s Harry Wright brings his Mun Sing live show – expect visceral, discombobulating club music (9 Jun). Stereo presents footwork legend Jana Rush with support from Manchester’s BFTT (17 Jun).

Over in Edinburgh, Miss World invites Fliss Mayo (2 Jun) to Sneaky Pete’s before Heaters bring Oakland-based Bored Lord for a mid-week party (7 Jun).

Saturday 10 June sees rising techno star Azyr perform for promoters TECHCLUB at The Liquid Room. On 22 June, Femmergy starts Pride 2023 with a huge opening party at Bongo Club Edinburgh. DJs include Sweet Philly, Annafluer and many more. [Heléna Stanton]

Art

The first Art Night to take place outside London will unfold across Dundee on 24 June. Highlights include a film installation by Tai Shani at The Little Theatre, an art video game by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley at the Arthurstone Library and performances by Saoirse Amira Anis at various venues across the city. Following a recent screening in Belfast in April, Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon will present a reiteration of their opera-film The History of the Present, which will screen from 7pm in the Dundee Rep Theatre.

June also marks the return of degree shows. The Glasgow School of Art’s showcase takes place 2-11 June, with a concurrent online showcase opening on 1 June. Edinburgh College of Art’s degree show takes place on the same dates, also with an online platform.

Two new exhibitions open at Collective in Edinburgh this month. Rabindranath X Bhose explores queerness, transcendence and death through the symbolism of bog lands from 10 June. Meanwhile, Tarek Lakhrissi’s newly commissioned sculptural installation I wear my wounds on

my tongue (II) (opening 23 Jun) explores the power and danger of language for racialised and queer people.

At nearby Fruitmarket (from 24 Jun), Portuguese, Berlin-based artist Leonor Antunes will inhabit all of the gallery’s spaces, presenting sculptures that engage with modernist art, design and architecture.

Spit It Out Festival, which brings together workshops, talks, exhibitions and screenings, will take place online and in person during June. Catch the festival across various venues in Glasgow between 15-18 June, online from 19-21 June, and in Edinburgh from 22-25 June.

From 10 June at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, Monster Chetwynd will present a new project which focuses on moths, a recurring motif in her performances and installations. For this commission, she will re-purpose materials from her 2011 work Folding House to create a Moth Hub, based on research undertaken into species of moths on the island. [Harvey Dimond]

Theatre

Following on from its successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2022, Peaceophobia comes to Tramway (15-17 Jun) for a unique theatrical event exploring Islamophobia, faith, masculinity and community. A co-production between Common Wealth, Speakers Corner, Bradford Modified Club, and Zia Ahmed, the show will be accompanied by Sisterhood, an exhibition celebrating feminine solidarity from young women in Speakers Corner Collective. Over at Summerhall, the Anatomy Lecture Theatre will play host to Sex Education Xplorers (S.E.X) by Mamoru Iriguchi (3 Jun), a fun-filled, time-travelling expedition through the history of sex based on lived experiences from its LGBTQIA+ creative team. Summerhall will also be the new home for the now fully hybrid (in person and online) Fringe of Colour festival from the 23-29 June.

Dear Billy, National Theatre of Scotland’s storytelling celebration of Billy Connolly by Gary McNair, will embark on its tour of the country this June across venues in Kilmarnock, Edinburgh, Ayr, Dundee, Dumfries, St Andrews, Cumbernauld, Perth, and Glasgow (to name a few). Pitlochry Festival Theatre will host Martin McCormick’s well-received The Ma ie Wall (9-28 Jun), delving into the Scottish witch trials and insular, patriarchal communities. At the CCA in Glasgow, the Village Storytelling Centre presents Sangs an’ Clatter - Emerging Voices (8 Jun), celebrating the work of three new emerging storytellers for an evening of listening and sharing. Tricky Hat productions explore aging and all its complications through a mix of music, film and performance from people over 50 in FLAME UP!, also at the CCA on 10 June.

Books

It’s a spoken word extravaganza this month. June kicks off with Hidden Door Festival (31 May-4 Jun) in Edinburgh, featuring performance sets from a host of Scottish talent including Janette Ayachi, Edwin Morgan Poetry Award winner Alyson Kissner, Patrick James Errington, Annaliese Broughton, Bibi June, Fiona Robertson and Oliver Robertson, who has just received the first Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award for Spoken Word. This year the performances will all centre on the themes of interiors, exteriors, Scotland and beyond.

Spit It Out Festival returns with a huge range of events in Glasgow, Edinburgh and online, including some delicious poetic offerings. There’s Twaano: From Zambia to Scotland (20 Jun, online), an evening of spoken word featuring Scottish and Zambian writers, and the launch of Sophia Bharmal’s exhibition Coming Home (22 Jun, Summerhall) with performances from poets including Hannah Lavery and Etzali Hernandez.

Two new poetry nights are starting up in Glasgow – at SWG3 on 14 June the first iteration of Leyla Josephine and Friends takes place, hosted by Amelia Bayler and featuring Bee Asha, Eyve, Kate Ireland and Sara Mostafa. The Acid Cabaret is Glasgow’s new variety night (24 Jun, Old Hairdressers), where both musicians and poets will be performing – Stephen Durkan and Annie Muir are on the inaugural bill. The classics are still happening in Glasgow too, don’t worry – Poetry at Inn Deep is on every Tuesday evening, The Poetry Experiment is the last Wednesday of the month at The Alchemy Experiment, and June’s Candlelight Open Mic at the Old Toll Bar (5 Jun) is a Pride special. Those on the lookout for more bookish events should head to Category Is Books in Glasgow (7 Jun) for the launch of the formidably talented Heather Parry’s debut short story collection, This is My Body, Given for You. The latest issue of Extra Teeth magazine is launching at Portobello Bookshop (22 Jun), and Juno Dawson’s up in Scotland to launch her new book The Shadow Cabinet (9 Jun, Edinburgh). [Nasim Rebecca Asl]

Features

20 As Fringe of Colour returns with a hybrid programme, we talk to founder Jess Brough about claiming space for communities of colour.

22 Artist Ashanti Harris introduces her Fringe of Colour commission, Black Gold

24 Sebastián Díaz Morales –Smashing Monuments, statues, and collective memory.

26 The first ever Art Night Dundee arrives on 24 June, taking over the city for one night only.

30 A Fragile Correspondence: a tour of Scotland at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

32 Director Tina Satter on Sydney Sweeney-starring NSA whistleblower thriller Reality.

33 Yan Ge on her debut Englishlanguage collection Elsewhere

34 We’ve curated all three days of Kelburn Garden Party’s Pyramid Stage! Here’s everything you need to know.

37 A 16-page guide to The Glasgow School of Art Degree Show 2023, written by the students themselves.

56 We talk DIY culture with Le Tigre as they return to UK and European stages for the first time in 18 years.

58 Hull four-piece bdrmm (pronounced 'bedroom') introduce their latest album, I Don’t Know

59 Tom Hardiman discusses oneshot whodunnit Medusa Deluxe. On

Our weekly Spotlight On… new Scottish music interview series is back! A bunch of film reviews from Cannes, and a report from Alchemy Film Festival in Hawick! Our fortnightly film podcast, The Cineskinny!

Shot of the month

Across

1. Does a bit of everything – a clad jerk floats (anag) (4,2,3,6)

9. Casually mention alleged celebrity friends (4,4)

10. Custodian – valuable thing or person (6)

11. Nap (6)

12. Words 'n' stuff (8)

13. Extreme anger – apex ploy (anag) (8)

15. Underappreciated (6)

16. Traits (anag) (6)

18. Beginner (8)

20. Sacrifice – donation (8)

22. Make official (6)

24. Opposite of an acid (6)

25. Innovative – first (8)

26. Home business (7,8)

Down

2. Video game company –A.I. art (anag) (5)

3. Party (5-2)

4. The heavens – mint frame (anag) (9)

5. British singer, songwriter and producer (b.1996) – sly plea (anag) (7)

6. Symbolic – voucher (5)

7. Ways (7)

8. Arrival (9)

14. Collection – toil proof (anag) (9)

15. Not anxious (9)

17. Not precise (7)

18. Cocktail (7)

19. Defeats by being smarter (7)

21. Best bit of a cake? (5)

23. Gift – panache (5)

In this month’s agony aunt column, a friend won’t shut up about their new squeeze

A friend has become insufferable talking constantly about a new partner. It’s been months. We’ve been diligently smile/ nod/look-ing interested when we want to say – I’m so happy for you but you have to shut up because everyone finds this annoying. How do we tell her we love her but it’s enough!?

Hi anon. The advice I’m about to give you is good and healthy and I stand by it. It’s what you should do. It’s what I should do! But I want to be very upfront that, when faced with this situation historically, I have simply said nothing and instead complained non-stop to my other friends. And they (presumably) wrote into an advice column about why their friend won’t shut the fuck up about her other friend. Such, I believe, is the circle of life.

Anyway, obviously you have to talk to her about it. That could be the answer to every question I get sent, to be honest. I should get a rubber stamp made. But firstly, some things to consider before you take a much-needed baseball bat to her rosy little world. Is this her first relationship in a while? Has she found relationships difficult or traumatic in the past, and is this word vomit mere sheer relief? Is she, in fact, dating Phoebe Bridgers? These may at least give context as to why she’s behaving like this, and allow you to move forward with some grace.

And, armed with this grace, you can just gently let it slip that while you’re DELIGHTED for her and yes don’t we ALL wish we could find someone so dreamy, and of course it IS fascinating that he/she/they bikes to work, that you want your friendship to pass the Bechdel Test (gendy neuch) and speak to the many complexities of your lives. You want to know everything about her, not just her partner, because you love her so much! As, ahem, Eleanor Roosevelt once said: only small minds discuss other people/their stupid partners (if you relate it to feminism people will find you deeply tedious but they won’t be able to argue). Ultimately, it’s about framing it as concern for your intimacy because it matters so much to you, rather than resentment because she’s being annoying. And yes, of course, between me and you, it is mostly because she’s being annoying x

Fringe of Colour

Community Access

Fringe of Colour pushes the possibilities of performance through a hybrid format and focus on community

Words: Anahit Behrooz

Midway through Sheena Patel’s novel I’m A Fan, the unnamed narrator – half-crazed for a man who has abandoned her – interrupts her spiral of self-consuming lust for a monologue on obsession, broadly conceived. Unrequited desire spills into a different need for validation: namely, the invisibility of people of colour in structures that have little interest in them; the desperation to be seen, only to find the gaze insufficient and careless. “For an algorithm not built by us, for a platform not designed for us to attract a cultural system which excludes us, do we commit further harm by performing our Otherness?” the narrator asks. “What are the effects of this alienation, do we even care?” To be a person of colour working within the cultural sector – as artist, as writer, as administrator – is very often to perform, without choice, to an audience that cannot and will not understand you, within paradigms that will never love you back.

Fringe of Colour, founded in 2018 by thenstudent Jess Brough and now co-directed alongside writer and editor Tomiwa Folorunso and curator and producer Carmen Thompson, well understands the limitations of these paradigms and has, since its beginnings, sought to tear them down. Starting as a spreadsheet that collated shows centring people of colour at the 2018

Fringe, Fringe of Colour blossomed into a free ticket scheme in 2019 and then, amidst the frenzy of the pandemic, an online festival called Fringe of Colour Films, featuring everything from dance and experimental performance to a chaotic in-conversation piece between Nish Kumar and Rose Matafeo. Having taken a year’s hiatus in 2022, Fringe of Colour Films is now back, running this year as a hybrid festival with a new home in Summerhall and a new time slot in June.

“August is very oversaturated in Edinburgh – there’s so much going on and its implication is tourism,” Brough says of the festival’s calendar shift. “We wanted to do something where the focus was on the local community.” The online element, they explain, is crucial to staying connected to the festival’s broader audience, and ensuring no one is left behind. “But the in-person is to take up space in the city, which a lot of art organisations run by Black people and people of colour, or for those communities, don’t necessarily always have.”

The notion of community has always been integral to Fringe of Colour, an organisation that, at its heart, has always been about connecting performers and audiences in order to craft spaces of mutual recognition. “One of the main pillars of the festival in 2020 was that these long-lasting

white institutions were not serving artists of colour,” Brough says. “The alternative to that is communities supporting each other. Artists can feel like they’re making work knowing that the people [to whom] their work is speaking will engage with it. They don’t have to explain certain experiences because they’re not making it for a white audience.” In this way, Fringe of Colour resets, or entirely dispenses with, the algorithm, rejecting the alienation of performing for a white gaze and building the performance space back up from scratch.

In its hybridity, Fringe of Colour also pushes the generic possibilities of performance, something that festivals like the Fringe – largely bound to the traditional confines of liveness-astheatre – still stru le to do. Pieces such as Black Gold, the specially commissioned moving image work by Glasgow-based visual artist Ashanti Harris, straddle the line between film,

“We wanted to do something where the focus was on the local community”

performance and art, interrogating not only the slipperiness of artistic categorisation, but the ability of a festival to experiment with what creative conveyance means. “[She’s] a very textual artist,” Brough explains. “The interesting thing for me is what happens when that is translated to film. Like how do you translate a sculptor? A textile maker? How do you put their process and imagination onto the screen?”

There’s a loose kind of freedom that has always defined Fringe of Colour’s output; a fuck-itwe-move abandon that recognises the limitations of the Scottish arts industry-as-is and, instead of feeling bound by its constraints, faces them head on. At the outset, these limitations took the form of the myopic programming of the festivals, then

the willingness of venues to truly commit to a hands-on accessibility through the free ticket scheme. Now, in the organisation’s third year of festival production, Brough and their team remain in a constant state of negotiation with the restrictions of the funding landscape, and the mechanisms of white capitalism that continue, in Brough’s words, to keep people working in the arts “incredibly stressed and overworked and unhappy.

“There is always a gate with anything in the arts,” Brough says. “It’s really, really frustrating. Scotland just needs a better system of arts funding: the people who run these funding bodies don’t understand what we do. Or maybe funding bodies themselves have to answer to such strict limitations, so that then impacts how they engage

with the artists who are applying for funding. It’s like a trickle down kind of bullshit.”

Across the UK, this means that funding applications continue, implicitly, to be aimed at white-led organisations, treating the creative interests of Black people and people of colour as a value-laden metric rather than a form of decolonial and political practice. It speaks to a broader tension that has long been at play in the UK arts scene, and that has started to show its cracks in the wake of the pandemic: that value and profitdriven models of funding are, fundamentally, incompatible with art based in emotional and social rather than monetary enrichment. That the algorithm is, simply, not built for us.

“You always get these elements [of the funding application] that are like, ‘How does your project speak to diversity and inclusion?’” Brough explains. “And can you imagine having to answer that for a festival that is run by people of colour, for people of colour? It’s like, this is just not for us. It’s frustrating that we all get set against the same standards, when you just can’t think about arts projects in that way.”

And yet, for all the gates it runs up against, Fringe of Colour has been an unstoppable ju ernaut in the Scottish arts scene since its inception: it constantly remakes itself according to what its audiences and artists need; it constantly seeks to reform the conditions of its existence. Its shift to early summer and a hybrid format encapsulates the ways in which it has always carved out its own identity in a saturated, yet simultaneously barren, landscape – experimenting with form and positionality to create something distinct from the festivals from which it sprang.

“There’s definitely some pressure because I think people are expecting live performance in an arts festival,” Brough says. “And obviously [in] our programme, that’s not the focus at all. But it’s not just what we’re showing. It’s the way people are going to be interacting with things: the events around the screenings, the team of writers we have writing about the films. All of that is performance.” Brough pauses, and smiles. “Everybody is their own performer in the festival.”

Fringe of Colour, Summerhall and online, 23-29 Jun

“Scotland just needs a better system of arts funding: the people who run these funding bodies don’t understand what we do”

Colonial Oil

Ashanti Harris’s new Fringe of Colour commission explores extraction practices, colonialism, and our connection to the environment

Words: Nyeleni Superville Blackford

Glasgow-based Ashanti Harris is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher, whose work is often inspired by interesting materials and the movement of landscapes and people. Describing her work as a “sonic dance sculpture,” her most recent piece is a visual poem called Black Gold, commissioned as part of the upcoming Fringe of Colour festival this month. Black Gold delicately examines the interaction between extraction practices, coloniality, and our connection as humans to the environment.

Harris speaks of materiality: “My background is in sculpting and I think I just get kind of obsessed with the material and its texture and what it evokes.” The film represents this with a combination of layered soundscapes, visuals, and movement that coalesce to create a unique projection of oil and its conceptual function in our society.

When asked what inspired the piece, Harris says “pressure” and laughs. In talking about the development process, she says that being given such an important platform was an honour, and that she knew she needed to say something important. After trying out some dance workshops and film ideas, she found her inspiration for Black Gold in the words of Foluke Taylor, who su ested that she “stop interrupting the ancestors.”

After reading this, Harris says, the film began to flow more easily. “Since 2019, I’ve been doing a

lot of research into historical, but also contemporary colonial relationships and how they continue to exist within capitalist structures. In 2019, Georgetown, Guyana was twinned with Aberdeen after oil-producing sandstone was found on the island.” She emphasises how oil is linked to colonial history, and specifically to Black history.

“The oil has been something that I’ve been thinking about a long time,” Harris says. In her eyes, it is “what occurs after transformations happen over and over again, more times than you could possibly imagine.” It forms under pressures, hidden in the earth like a life force, and it is representative of a pattern both inside the earth and enacted upon it through post-colonial extraction arrangements. Black Gold evokes the nature of oil as not just the environmental evil that we have come to perceive, but as another aspect of the environment that we should look after. She calls it an “ancestral condensing of time” that runs “like veins through the earth.”

Harris’s work of understanding the movements of people and ideas comes from the incentive of reimaging narratives from a Caribbean diasporic perspective. The film consists of images and video footage collected from Tanzania, Guyana, and Scotland. When asked if this was intentional, she says, “Sort of… There is so much overlaying and overlapping of culture, of landscape, of

history.” She gives me the example of a dandelion she once saw on Mount Kilimanjaro. “I had been walking around and seeing all these amazing, beautiful plants – things that are so unfamiliar to my landscape, and then I saw a dandelion.” From street names to plants, “there is a ghost of one landscape in another landscape.”

This layering of landscape is diasporic in its inspiration, and is represented in the layers of sounds, images and visuals; the images are from different places but converge to create a unification, even temporarily. “I sort of layer them and overlap them. Take the sound from one place with an image from another, and create this new world.”

Black Gold, Fringe of Colour, Summerhall and online, 23-29 Jun

“[Oil is] what occurs after transformations happen over and over again, more times than you could possibly imagine”

Fringe of Colour Films Picks

This year’s offering, in a new hybrid format, showcases tantalising theatre and film by artists of colour

Words: Anahit Behrooz

Still We Thrive (2021)

Directed by Campbell X Summerhall, Edinburgh, 27 Jun, 8:15pm + online

A gorgeous work of archival retrieval and remixing, this short film by renowned filmmaker Campbell X cuts and collages footage from Black histories across the Caribbean, Africa, the UK and the US alongside a collective narrative voice delivered by Black actors, articulating the ongoing legacies of resistance that transform into cultural memory.

Pagpapa(-)alam: To Wish You Well, So You Know (2022)

Directed by Cecilia Lim Summerhall, Edinburgh, 24 Jun, 2:30pm + online English, Spanish and Bangla intertwine in this mesmeric, joyous audiovisual poem that reflects on the ways that women and femme workers of colour in Queens honour and memorialise ancestors and ancestry. Drawing on the translation of the title To Wish You Well, So You Know, Pagpapa(-)alam visualises the often unnoticed acts of care – from prayer and dance to bowls of warm chai – that keep communities tethered to their pasts and futures.

Batería (2016)

Directed by Dami Sainz Edwards

Summerhall, Edinburgh, 25 Jun, 7pm + online

The camera slips and slides around the walls of an old Havana military complex, now a gay cruising site, in this tender confessional piece of queerness amidst hostility. Interweaving personal testimonial with the materiality of the half-ruined environment where these men meet, Batería explores ways of carving out joy and intimacy as a means of small revolution.

The Perfect Knight (2023)

Directed by Stephané Alexandre Summerhall, Edinburgh, 27 Jun, 8:15pm + online One for the gooey romantics who also think dating should die in a ditch (hello, hi), The Perfect Knight is a romantic comedy for the modern, cursed era. When hopeless romantic Allie gets set up on a blind date by her friend, her evening goes miraculously, suspiciously, well. For fans of Chewing Gum and Rye Lane

Inspired by the life cycle of a plant, this year’s Fringe of Colour Films programme is concerned with ways of growing, cultivating, and existing in relation to our environments and each other. Programmed across five different strands –Nourish, Symbiosis, Soil, Seeds and Rooted – their rich selection of films spans from experimental visual poems to cute romantic comedies: check out our favourite picks below.

GRIN (2021/2022)

Directed by Mele Broomes

Summerhall, Edinburgh, 28 Jun, 8:15pm + online

What looks like the night sky, or a glittering cityscape, shudders as a dancer covered in gold stands and moves through it. A stunning blend of choreography, soundscape, and performance, Scotland-based dance artist Mele Broomes’ GRIN confronts and subverts social conceptualisations of African and Caribbean dance as hypersexualised. Here, instead, the body becomes a site of community and friendship: a place where gestures of solidarity and Black love are allowed to blossom.

(Tending) (to) (Ta)

Directed by April Lin (2021)

Summerhall, Edinburgh, 24 Jun, 7pm + online

Part of the festival’s Symbiosis strand, which looks at the ways we can exist in community with each other and our surroundings, (Tending) (to) (Ta) is a speculative fiction film imagining a conversation between two people across different realms. Framed through a series of letters across dimensions, April Lin’s hour-long film considers the ways we can transcend Western conceptions of race and gender and find new ways of being together in harmony.

Monumental Loss

Words: Harvey Dimond

Acolossal, monolithic LED screen fills Collective’s circular City Dome space, sitting amongst the scattered monuments atop Calton Hill. Raucous music erupts, stomping feet threatening to crush everything, luminous details of the subject’s shoes and socks filling the screen. What follows are five segmented filmic portraits – each with their own dedication to a monument that inhabits the streets of Indonesia’s sprawling capital city Jakarta. The preface to each person’s testimonial shows only their feet walking, running, charging along the pavement, blown up to colossal scale – as gigantic and imposing as the statues that are the subject of the film. It features stunningly epic (and sometimes near-vertigoinducing) aerial and drone footage of Jakarta.

Sebastián Díaz Morales’ radical and revelatory experiment with scale here is one of the most alluring and hypnotic aspects of viewing his film. The running time of 50 minutes feels more like 15.

The film follows five members of the Indonesian art collective ruangrupa as they

wander the streets of Jakarta, pausing to engage with the various monuments that stand high above them. These half-improvised dialogues make reference to the rapid social and economic changes that the city has experienced and how these changes have informed post-colonial Indonesian personal and collective memory. Originally screened at documenta fifteen in Kassel, Germany in 2022 (which was curated by ruangrupa), the collective invited Morales to make the film in response to the collective’s activities. Founded in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2000, the collective’s work is based on a holistic social and spatial practice strongly connected to Indonesian culture. Friendship, community and solidarity, sustainability are central to their practice.

Most of the monuments depicted in the film were erected in the 1960s, following Indonesia’s independence from the Dutch in 1949, after a turbulent independence movement that was deeply entangled with the global power stru les of the Second World War. They have remained a consistent and steadfast presence in a rapidly changing metropolis. The members of the collective engage with a range of these monuments, including the Pembebasan Irian Barat Statue (which celebrates Indonesia’s independence from Dutch colonial rule) and the Pancoran monument, which celebrates Indonesia’s aviation industry. Each member of ruangrupa addresses their respective statue as if they are alive and breathing. This animation of the monument provides an interesting contrast to discourse in the UK, where monuments are often depersonalised, with the focus instead on their particular historical context. One of the collective’s members, Gesyada Siregar, relates the Tugu Tani Statue to her own youth and her mother’s youth, an ode to the recent passing of her mother. The monument remains the only static thing amidst the transient flow of cars and people – but also amidst the transience of life and death.

The timing of the film’s creation feels particularly potent in more than one way. Indonesia is currently preparing to move its capital from Jakarta to Nusantara, which is currently being constructed, from scratch, on the island of Borneo. This is partially due to the fact that

Jakarta is sinking – rising sea levels threaten to inundate one-third of the city by 2050. It is also a move to de-centralise the island of Java (which is home to many of Indonesia’s largest cities) and to share economic opportunities amongst the thousands of islands that form this vast archipelago. In the wake of the climate crisis, and its detrimental effect on our urban spaces, this decision makes us consider whether the contemporary city really meets the needs of its citizens – and whether they will be able to continue meeting these needs in the future. The film forces us to consider whether our cities’ civic architecture and spaces really reflect the values of the society we live in.

While in Morales’ film, the legacy of Dutch colonisation in regards to Indonesian contemporary urban spaces seems rather limited, Britain’s colonial legacy is alive and well in our civic spaces. While the cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine has drawn our attention away from the issue of problematic monuments, it’s easy to forget how animated and divisive the conversation became during the pandemic. While conversations had been happening for years in activist circles –accelerated by the Rhodes Must Fall movement that started in 2015 at the University of Cape Town in South Africa – the colonial legacy of our public monuments was disturbingly absent from mainsteam political discourse until 2020.

Morales’ film infuses Edinburgh’s dense network of colonial monuments with an intense poignancy. One of the monuments in this network is the controversial statue of Henry Dundas in St Andrew Square, an 18th-century politician partially responsible for delaying the abolition of the slave trade. In June 2020, protestors graffitied the statue, and in response in 2021, Edinburgh City Council installed a plaque commemorating enslaved Africans who suffered because of the prolonging of slavery into the 19th century. However, Scottish academic Sir Tom Devine and some of Dundas’s descendants criticised the content of this plaque as being historically inaccurate and overplaying his role in delaying abolition. Regardless of whether Henry Dundas did delay abolition or not, he was still a fervent imperialist – his involvement with the East India Company saw the pillaging and exploitation of Indian resources on a mass scale.

In March 2023, Edinburgh City Council stated they would remove the plaque dedicated to enslaved Africans from the monument. To this day, the statue of Dundas still stands, high above the streets of the New Town, unchanged since 1821.

The UK premiere of Sebastián Díaz Morales’ film Smashing Monuments questions the functions of monuments in our collective memory – but also whether our cities can really meet our everyday needs

Present Tense

In the lead up to Art Night in Dundee on 24 June, The Skinny speaks to Maria Fusco, Margaret Salmon and Annea Lockwood about their commission: an opera-film titled History of the Present

Words: Rachel Ashenden & Harvey Dimond

On the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, as police lined the streets of Belfast and world leaders amassed at Queen’s University to commemorate the agreement which sought to end The Troubles, the opera-slash-film History of the Present premiered around the corner. Titled to reflect the “‘presenttense-ness’ of collective and personal trauma”, it is similarly clear from Belfast’s defence architecture that the city still lives and breathes the effects of The Troubles: steel security gates close in the evenings and throughout the day on Sundays to separate nationalist communities from the unionists. During the premiere of History of the Present, these ‘interfaces’ closed. The peace lines, some paradoxically dressed with razor wires and others painted with colourful murals, stand still and upright, cutting through communities. Reflecting on the existence of these peace walls, Annea Lockwood’s first question to Maria Fusco at the film’s screening was: “When the wind blows, do the peace walls make sounds?”

Opera might strike some as an unusual medium to forefront working class women’s voices. Yet, in countries like Italy, Fusco notes that the art form is “more integrated into everyday people’s

lives.” The Belfast-born writer saw in opera “the capacity to hold and share complex emotional registers in non-representational ways.” She reminds us that History of the Present is not strictly limited to the opera form: it’s recorded on 35mm film, too. The voice and sound that is so integral to History of the Present speaks to Fusco’s oral memories of The Troubles as a wee child. She grew up beside a peace line and when riots broke out, she and her family took shelter inside, distancing themselves from eyeshot but still within earshot. Recordings from Fusco’s childhood have been incorporated into the opera film; most notably, a clip from when she was learning how to speak by following the notes of her mother’s voice without understanding the meaning behind the words.

In contrast to the amateur nature of childhood recordings, Annea Lockwood collaborated with the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University. Using microphones designed to pick up vibrations from all sorts of surfaces, initially Lockwood’s team made “gorgeous” recordings of the traffic along the peace lines to sonically ground History of the Present. When Lockwood returned to Belfast, she learned “how to play the

walls [...] like [...] an instrument.” This kind of sonic improvisation is epitomised in Héloïse Werne’s soprano voice – as the only identifiable figure in the opera-film, noise viscerally reverberates through her. The libretto is equally formidable. Fusco points us towards one line in particular: “our futures are a matter of seconds.”

Unpacking this, she sheds light on the disjointed passage of time for those who have grown up during The Troubles or experienced living in a conflict zone. “History [...] casts a long shadow into an individual’s future,” she reflects, “time can become confused and confusing.”

Like a phantasmagoria, History of the Present makes use of split screens, double exposure and blurring – cleverly achieved by smeared Vaseline across the camera lens. Early on in the process of making the work, Fusco pulled in the filmic expertise of Margaret Salmon. In her experimental approach to filmmaking, Salmon was conscious not to “extract images” from Belfast. Instead, her process was elaborately site-specific; she spent time getting to know certain areas of the city and the people who live there. Only when Salmon felt familiar with the site on her third visit, did she start to film. Collaboratively, Fusco and Salmon were determined not to lean into the visual landscape of Belfast (which would have been “easy to reproduce”), so as to avoid visually duplicating archival footage from The Troubles, which has been broadcast on countless occasions.

History of the Present is just one of a plethora of artworks commissioned for this rendition of Art Night, taking place across Dundee on 24 June. Elsewhere, exhibitions, performances and screenings will unravel across the city’s traditional venues, but also in some unexpected locations. Saoirse Amira Anis, who is based in Dundee, will present a series of dynamic performances that respond to their current exhibition symphony for a fraying body, which is currently on display at Dundee

Contemporary Arts. Drawing on watery mythologies

from Scotland and Morocco, the amphibious creature that features in the film at DCA will emerge from the screen and break free from the gallery as it seeks the waters of the River Tay. Traces of Anis’s exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts will inhabit the deck of the HMS Unicorn in Dundee’s harbour, and will be open to view until the final segment of the performance. Breach of a fraying body will start at DCA at 7pm before moving through the city in a carnival-like procession, finishing around 11pm at the HMS Unicorn.

Taking place across two venues, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s THE LACK: I knew your voice before you spoke asks Art Night’s audiences to collaboratively imagine new worlds together. In their installation at the historic Arthurstone Library, the artist has created an interactive art video game, through which they alert us to the meteoric changes currently taking place across the globe. The decisions and movements visitors make will influence every element of the world that will be created during the course of the evening. In a concurrent event at the Keiller Centre, audiences will be invited to engage with the artists’ proposed new world through zine-making and poster printing. Both venues will be open to visitors between 7pm and 1am.

At The Little Theatre, Tai Shani will present My Bodily Remains, Your Bodily Remains, And All The Bodily Remains That Ever Were, And Ever Will Be, an installation that takes the form of a series of filmic tableaux centered around four key characters. Two of these protagonists are named ‘Them who Love’ (who speak of love in a profound and spiritual way) who co-exist alongside ‘The Ghost for Revolution’ (who recalls devastating histories of fascism) and ‘The Reader of The Book of Love’ (who recalls those involved in direct non-violent action). This series of characters are based on Shani’s ongoing research into historical resistance movements – with a focus on those who promote the emancipatory power of love and pleasure as a catalyst for radical change. Screenings will take place from 7pm.

Emma Hart, straight off the back of curating Poor Things at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery, will present a sculptural installation titled BIG UP – a celebration of rave culture, an integral part of the artist’s life. Hart usually works in ceramics, a protracted and intensive process. For this commission, however, the use of more malleable and lo-fi materials such as cardboard has liberated her from this more demanding way of working. The series of sculptures will have their hands

raised in ecstatic joy, and will be accompanied by a live soundtrack by DJ Lucy Jam Tart and DJ Arty Harty Party. Check Art Night’s website in the coming days for confirmation of a venue.

Heather Phillipson, nominated for last year’s Turner Prize, will open her exhibition Dream Land at Cooper Gallery a few days prior to Art Night, on 16 June. Phillipson’s film installation will work with two innovative wildlife documentaries from the 1980s and will adopt the artist’s recognisable splicing, revoicing and remixing of audio and visual materials. Its protagonists will shapeshift between species and environments, taking on the roles of interlocuters, storytellers and guides. On the evening of Art Night the artist will present a one-off audio event titled Mourning Ritual – composed by the artist with the intention of communicating with the spirits of departed animals. The exhibition will then be on public view until 9 July.

History of the Present, Dundee Rep Theatre, from 7pm, 24 Jun, as part of Art Night (artnight.org.uk).

History of the Present will open the Edinburgh Art Festival, 8pm, 11 Aug at the Queens Hall (edinburghartfestival.com), the world premiere performance screening of the work

Flipping the script

Disability Arts Online’s Assistant Editor introduces the Diverse Critics programme, which aims to rewrite the script of arts journalism for emerging writers

Words: Joe Turnbull

Readers with a keen memory may recall an article we produced for The Skinny’s March 2020 edition, introducing the first iteration of Diverse Critics, a career development programme for disabled arts writers. Spoiler alert. turns out, unless you were a toilet roll manufacturer, a trainee dog breeder or were thinking of getting into making substandard PPE and knew a government minister, March 2020 wasn’t exactly an ideal time to be launching a new venture.

Yes, 60% of COVID deaths were amongst disabled people. Yes, if you are Black you were three times more likely to die of COVID. And yes, the arts and culture ecology as we know it came to the brink of extinction.

But the pandemic did teach us some valuable lessons. For society at large, the outpouring of outrage and then white guilt (if we’re being honest) following the murder of George Floyd reminded those of us who had conveniently forgotten that racism is actually a thing and maybe (just maybe) the long entrenched impact of colonialism and its resultant human rights abuses should be explored with more depth and gravitas. For the arts, we discovered that the digital provision which disabled people have been screaming for for decades could be implemented almost overnight. And for our humble programme, we found that workshops for disabled arts writers are actually more accessible when delivered online.

So here we are, three years on. I’d love to say we changed the face of Scottish arts criticism in the interim. Not quite. We did support the original cohort to have their work published, and one of them even secured an article in The Independent. But the arts in general, and particularly arts criticism is still too much of a monoculture, with too many perspectives relegated to the margins. A situation arguably exacerbated by the pandemic.

“Professional arts criticism is an important element of the creative cycle and so it’s vital those voices are representative of the diversity within our society,” says Graham Reid, Equality and Diversity Officer at Creative Scotland. “Building on the success of the 2020 pilot project, we’re so pleased to continue support towards removing some of the barriers met by diverse emerging writers and recognising the rich diversity of perspectives held by readers, audiences and artists.”

So, with support from Creative Scotland and The Skinny, we’re doing it again. But different. As well as disabled people, we’re also supporting aspiring writers who are Black and People of Colour (BPOC). We’ve got an amazing cohort of eight writers, each of whom has something truly original to say about arts and culture. They’re all getting a bursary, training, mentoring and

publishing opportunities. We’re trying to teach them the ‘script’ – industry secrets, tools and methods – but in the full hope that they’ll rewrite it.

“There are so many structural barriers that hinder Black and People of Colour writers from thriving in the arts journalism world, particularly when we face multiple marginalities,” says writer and anti-racist educator Titilayo Farukuoye from Scottish BPOC Writers Network, who we’ve brought in to co-lead the programme. “This is why I am so keen to work with Disability Arts Online on their Diverse Critics programme, which is an ethical, supportive way of giving very talented disabled, Black and people of colour an enthusiastic welcome to the art journalism world, and a fair chance to hone their craft and learn how to navigate a system that is designed to exclude them. And the crazy thing is, it will really serve us all – imagine the creative sector represented in its full variety and diversity, reviewed, and engaged with by people who have a nuanced understanding of the works – currently we are just missing out!”

In planning this programme, we were delighted to have secured an additional partner in gal-dem (a new media publication, committed to telling the stories of people of colour from marginalised genders) – one of the few beacons of hope and diverse-led brilliance in an otherwise bleak media landscape. Alas, as is symptomatic of how desperate these times are for publishing in general, last month gal-dem sadly announced they would be closing down after eight years at the forefront of the UK’s radical media.

With the collapse of such an incubator of diverse writing talent, this programme is perhaps more needed than ever. We’ll be supporting our writers to get published in The Skinny’s hallowed pages and other culture outlets, foregrounding

artists, ideas and perspectives that are too often ignored. But we’ll also be nurturing conversations about how we can do things differently across the arts and culture sector, informed by anti-ableist and anti-racist ideas.

How can it be less exploitative (looking at you, Fringe), less competitive, more empathetic, more radical and just generally more vibrant? We hope it won’t take another global catastrophe to find out. No matter what the future holds, you can bet it’s those people who have to navigate barriers and discrimination on a daily basis who will have the most creative solutions to these questions. Working with this bunch gives us hope for change. So here’s to embracing it.

Work from the Diverse Critics programme will be published over the summer in The Skinny, at theskinny.co.uk and at disabilityarts.online

A Fragile Correspondence

Our design correspondent heads to Venice to explore Scotland’s presentation at the Architecture Biennale

Words: Stacey Hunter

How can a closer relationship between land and language help architecture be more attuned to the environment in which it operates? Highlighting cultures and languages that have a close affinity with the landscapes of Scotland, A Fragile Correspondence explores alternative perspectives and new approaches to the challenges of worldwide climate emergency at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale.

The 2023 Biennale opened to an enthusiastic consensus about what its curator – the ScottishGhanaian architect Lesley Lokko – has achieved, a strikingly original and politically engaged festival where contributions are as diverse in presentation as they are in concept.

Some of the most exciting and successful projects seek to explore decolonisation and decarbonisation at a deeper level than we have become accustomed to. Many focus on hopeful futures, such as Francis Kéré’s West African examples where this quote resonates: “Just because our history was interrupted by others, does not mean our future has to be.”

The Giardini features national pavilions where each country advocates for their take on what matters most in architecture. This is traditionally the most Eurovision part of the Biennale and 2023 does not disappoint. France exhibits a giant disco ball aimed at ‘reawakening our desires for utopia,’ while Finland declares the ‘death of the flushing toilet’ with a practical solution and a very nicely considered presentation.

Over at the Arsenale, the powerful aesthetic coupled with the rigour of Lokko’s immersive

curatorial approach, delivers a more sombre, contemplative experience. In many respects, Lokko’s theme The Laboratory of The Future is characterised by a narrative of loss; the destructive consequences of colonialism, the literal erasure of cultures – as well as the intention to erase in contemporary Xinjiang. This is tempered in a wider sense by the many contributions from Lokko’s ‘Guests From The Future’ who embody just how incomplete the story of architecture has been historically, presenting new visions and approaches. Nestled in between the Giardini and the Arsenale is A Fragile Correspondence, Scotland’s contribution to the 18th International Architecture Exhibition. It is one of nine international Collateral Events, and the Scottish team have curated and designed a distinctive, multi-layered, meditation on the imbricated relationships of language, landscape and architecture.

The diversity of voices that characterises the exhibitions of the wider Biennale is mirrored here with a curatorial team and participating practitioners that bring together a variety of experiences and perspectives. The exhibition is a collaboration between Architecture Fringe, led by Neil McGuire and Andy Summers; -ism magazine, an independent publication based in Glasgow where Kristina Enberg, Amy McEwan, Aoife Nolan and Alissar Riachi all share a desire for bold and critical reflection on the built environment; and /other [pronounced ‘slash-other’] a collective of POC architecture graduates and creatives including Alyesha Choudhury, Carl C.Z. Jonsson and Mia Pinder-Hussein, who centre the marginalised individual within architectural discourses.

Commissioned by the Scotland + Venice partnership, the exhibition is situated at the old Arsenale Docks where the Venetian waves lap against the gently fading terracottacoloured buildings. It’s a fitting site for a show that acknowledges how international forces of trade and extraction shape our land. The curatorial proposition centres on the question ‘by re-establishing our dialogue with the land, how can we value

exchange over extraction and equality over dominance; how can we create a more reciprocal connection with the land?’ It demonstrates in what ways our landscapes are constantly transmitting information – if we choose to see and listen.

From the forests around Loch Ness, the seashore of the Orkney archipelago and the industrialised remnants of the Ravenscraig steelworks, the project takes us on a journey through three Scottish landscapes; the Highlands, Islands and Lowlands. Selected writers, artists and architects, in correspondence with these landscapes, have explored topics distinctly rooted in place. This thoughtfully composed exhibition outlines how these issues share a global relevance to the cultural, ecological and climatic issues that we face.

The creative responses to the questions posed by A Fragile Correspondence are displayed throughout the exhibition in the form of sculpture and installation, photography, film and sound. The materials used reflect aspects of the various landscapes with timber supporting the work exploring Loch Ness; straw and a palette of natural materials helping to frame Orkney, and an emphasis on metalwork contextualising Ravenscraig.

The curators propose that through an expanded way of thinking about language and land, designers can approach issues like climate emergency with a new vigour. As co-curator and editor of -ism magazine Aoife Nolan explains, “A Fragile Correspondence celebrates and shapes the way in which we see the world highlighting some key words from some diverse languages that have an affinity with the Scottish landscape and offer alternative perspectives, and world views.”

For example, the 19th century Scots word barescrape means very poor land yielding little return for labour. Thinking of this at Ravenscraig where vegetation grows on “the scraps and scrapes of post-industrial clearance” prompts Dr Amanda Thomson to ask: “How might we find ways to encompass, even celebrate what might at first appear incidental, accidental?” She notes that the pioneer birches and other species of trees that cover the site are so important for carbon capture and research has found that silver birch leaves can filter out particles from polluted air.

Organised into four distinct areas, the installation firstly introduces representations of Loch Ness and explores ideas about alternative forms of ownership and land stewardship. It begins with the premise that the Highlands are the genesis of a romanticised modern world tourism, and asks “how does internationalised capital and commercial extraction affect the biodiversity,

cultural identity and environmental sustainability of the land in a local context?”

Moving to Orkney, the focus is on the space that is both water and land, the foreshore. The exhibition highlights the foreshore’s historic use by humans stretching back to the neolithic era describing how Orcadians have, for centuries, negotiated with local forces of nature and in particular, the sea. With references to Norn and Orcadian Scots, precious and reciprocal forms of communication are celebrated.

The Lowland site of Ravenscraig explores the erasure of the contemporary landscape through the lens of flora and fauna. Stories of labour, community economy, regeneration, dereliction, and memory are condensed in its history. The exhibition presents Ravenscraig’s current condition, and a more nuanced relationship and understanding between a human-made and resurgent natural landscape.

A fourth space brings together materials from all three locations in The Lexicon; a physical wall display and digital touchscreen interface where audiences are invited to interact with the text and resources, and contribute their own words and descriptions for land or places that are important to them. Throughout the installation audio speakers transmit vocal narrations and field recordings from all three locations.

This poignant and impactful exhibition succeeds in elaborating how our existence relies on a close relationship with the landscapes that sustain us. It also outlines how our understanding of the natural world around us is fragile, and su ests how a closer relationship between land and language can help architecture be more attuned to the environment in which it operates.

Ultimately, most of the 2023 Biennale is, in one way or another, about resources, which makes the announcement that Scotland’s future participation is being paused for a period of ‘review and reflection’ worrying. Scotland + Venice has been a powerful driver of perceptions of our culture over its 20 year run. It has a proven track record of increasing opportunity and access to professional development for those who participate. As Lesley Lokko notes in her introduction at the Arsenale, “participation in the Biennale is predicated on two things: imagination and the means to display it… individuals, through the state, control the circumstances in which creativity flourishes.”

A Fragile Correspondence, until 26 Nov, Tue-Sun 11am-7pm, Docks Cantieri Cucchini S. Pietro di Castello, 40, 30122

afragilecorrespondence.org

The Art of the Real

Life proves stranger than fiction in Reality, Tina Satter’s gripping real-time thriller about NSA whistleblower Reality Winner. Satter tells us why she wanted to dramatise Winner’s life by using verbatim transcripts of her interrogation by the FBI

Words: Patrick Gamble

“It wasn’t a big story at the time. Certainly nothing compared to Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning,” explains playwrightturned-filmmaker Tina Satter when asked about the first time she heard of Reality Winner, the subject of her gripping docudrama Reality “Obviously her name stood out, but if you’d asked me what she’d done, I couldn’t have told you.”

On 3 June, 2017, Winner, a 26-year-old former USAF Airman who was working as a translator for an NSA contractor, returned home from grocery shopping to discover the FBI waiting for her. After a lengthy interrogation at her home in Augusta, Georgia, she was eventually arrested for leaking a secret government document concerning potential Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. “I was reading the New York Magazine online and stumbled across this article about her,” Satter tells us over a Zoom call. “It included a hyperlink to the website Politico where there was a transcript of the interview. I was like; ‘What is this!’”

A curious mix of real-time thriller and avantgarde experiment, Satter’s tense and unnerving film – which features Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney in the lead role – is based on the events of that day, and scripted verbatim from the FBI transcript. “It listed all the participants as if they were characters in a play,” Satter tells us. “It read just like a script except there were all these odd conversations about Reality’s cat or her CrossFit routine”

The decision to use the raw and unedited dialogue from the FBI’s interrogation – including every “um” and stutter – creates a surreal atmosphere that not only conveys the psychological

strangeness of Winner’s situation, but also forces the viewer to question the reliability of narrative truth. It’s a bracingly original approach, and one that flies in the face of cinematic representations of reality, but Satter believed it would work the moment she read the transcript. “It was an instinctual thing,” she explains. “I just felt this constraint could create something really interesting and give the film this fascinating integrity.”

One reason Satter was so confident this approach would work is because she’s done it before; when she first dramatised Reality’s story in the hugely successful stage play Is This a Room However, adapting the transcript for the big screen came with its own challenges. “When we did the play we treated the transcript like it was canonical literature, and gave it the same respect we would Shakespeare,” Satter says. “However, for the movie, we had to remove some sections to stop it turning into this sprawling 120-minute film. I never manipulated lines or moved their order, but some sections, like the conversation on the lawn, were just too long! They just kept asking her about her neighbourhood and her CrossFit routine. The challenge was working out which of those lines to cut, while still maintaining that sickening sense that this isn’t just chit-chat. We’re just waiting for the hammer to drop.”

Another challenge Satter faced while making the film was what to do with the sections of the transcript that were redacted by the FBI. “Those were weirdly exciting,” Satter tells us when asked how she decided to acknowledge these omissions with brief moments of visual distortion. “We did a

fair amount of experimenting in post-production before deciding we’d make whoever was speaking disappear from the shot. When you encounter those black bars on the transcript It’s so shocking. You’re literally seeing power being connoted on the page.”

Due to her incarceration, Satter wasn’t able to meet Winner during the development of the play, but they have since spoken on Zoom. What was it like for Winner to revisit such a traumatic moment of her past? “Reality still hasn’t seen the film,” Satter tells us. “But she feels it’s important her story is told; mainly because this kind of thing happens a lot, especially to people who aren’t white and don’t have the same support network she had.”

Satter speaks about Winner with real warmth and admiration, but throughout the film she’s nearly impossible to read. “When I first read the transcript, and she mentioned that she had three guns in the house, it totally threw me!” Satter explains. “She’s this young American woman who worked in the Air Force and owned automatic weapons, but who also teaches yoga, and bakes vegan brownies. She did this huge thing that affected geopolitics because she believed we shouldn’t be lied to, and she did it wearing jean shorts, a top knot and yellow Converse. I’ve become a very cynical person, who’s often humiliated to be from the United States, but when I encountered Reality I was like, ‘Oh; this person really believes we could be better.’”

Reality is released 2 Jun by Vertigo

Nowhere and Everywhere

Chinese author Yan Ge introduces her debut English-language collection Elsewhere

Words: Xuanlin Tham

‘Elsewhere’ is rooted in absence, a location defined by where it is not; a word in search of something, an orientation that anticipates displacement. It is the perfect title for Chinese author Yan Ge’s much-awaited English language debut, a collection of nine short stories that somersault between modern-day Stockholm and ancient China, colonial-era Burma and postTroubles Dublin, yet which all retain a fascination with negative space. The perfect title, however, didn’t come easily.

“I was annoyed by how different the stories were,” Yan says, recounting her arrival at Elsewhere. The collection is vibrant in its unpredictability, albeit haunted throughout with familiar echoes: these are ravenous tales about hungering bodies. A story about a group of writers feasting after the Sichuan earthquake gives way to a story about a marriage plagued by post-colonial ghosts. A story about negotiating autonomy in a lactating body (while dealing with “horrible literary men”) exists alongside an epic piece of “speculative historic fiction” about a power stru le between Confucian disciples. This last one, Hai, is over 100 pages long; it reads like a season of Succession via an ancient Chinese philosophy symposium. The inspiration for it? “Boris Johnson and Prime Minister Questions on TV,” Yan laughs.

“When I sent this [collection] to my agent, it was called Nine Stories. He was like, ‘Nine Stories is not going to be OK.’ I kept pitching titles to him, and kept getting rejected. At one point I said, ‘Why don’t we just call it Elsewhere?’ This was me giving up,” Yan says. “He said, ‘Oh, I like that!’ I was like, ‘What?’”

Yan’s moment of frustration translated into a title of perfect resonance. “If somebody who grew up here read a story that took place in China, they’d say, ‘that’s elsewhere’. But to me, all the stories that took place here were my elsewhere,” she explains. “Elsewhere is dependent on who’s looking.”

Named one of China’s 20 future literary masters by People’s Literature, the oldest literary magazine in China, Yan has been “published for quite a while,” to borrow her understatement. But Elsewhere is her first work in English, a linguistic transition that promised an “enticing” opportunity for self-reinvention. “What intrigued me was what kind of writer I would become in this new language,” she says. “I had started to write in order to comply or rebel against the concept of the Chinese Yan Ge.” But English released her into “the wilderness; the pure excitement of being reborn as a new writer.”

Yan is a writer fascinated with writing – its intellectual practices, its social spheres, the

contested processes of narrativising and translation. All nine stories in Elsewhere feature writers of some kind. “I’m not proud of it,” she says, laughing sheepishly. “It’s like giving in to your bad habits. I’ve been a writer since I was really young, so this is my one identity. I’m a person with really narrow interests, and I love literature and narratology.” In similar fashion to a character in the story Stockholm, Yan admits she quotes Foucault when drunk, then feels “embarrassed for being socially inappropriate”. When she went into labour, the book she brought with her was Jacques Rancière’s The Aesthetic Unconscious. “Philosophers, literary theories – those things genuinely soothe me. I’m not proud of it,” she repeats. “But in this particular collection, I completely gave in.”

But Yan’s stories are wild cards, necessary and seductive subversions of the canon. When Travelling in the Summer, a story spun from an itemised packing list written by academic Shen Kuo in the year 1095, was stylistically inspired by Marguerite Yourcenar’s Oriental Tales. But Yan reimagined Yourcenar’s Western Imagination of the Orient, and “gave it back”. During her MFA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, this story received the following feedback: “I don’t know why I should care about a story that took place in ancient China.”

“I thought, challenge accepted.” Yan smiles. “So I wrote the Confucius story.”

Appropriately, Elsewhere explores translation as a process of approaching commonality on both a linguistic and political level: be it between women and men, East and West, writers and non-writers. Why this fixation on the gaps? “As somebody who writes fiction, I think I worship the unattainability of human communication,” Yan says. “That’s something I celebrate. Because if language was efficient enough to express ourselves – and I’m going to quote Confucius now – then we don’t need fiction.

“We need an image that is a bit blurred, a bit ambiguous, and then we interpret it.” Here returns that idea of traversing negative space: the work of reaching understanding, bridging the chasm between you and me, writer and reader, fictional milieu and a present place and time. “I really believe stories transcend language. I think those kinds of things, the miscommunications” – the way people are like two comets chasing each other, to quote a story in Elsewhere – “are quite beautiful.”

Triangle of Radness

We’re back at Kelburn Garden Party this summer curating all three days of The Pyramid Stage. ICYMI, you’ll find more on our full lineup below

Words: Tallah Brash

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll already be well aware that we’re back curating The Pyramid Stage at the iconic Kelburn Garden Party this summer. We first helped with the stage’s programming in 2018, when we took over the Saturday with Annie Booth, Future Get Down and Kobi Onyame all performing. 2019 then saw us welcome Heir of the Cursed, Pleasure Pool, Makeness, Callum Easter and Bossy Love to the party. Postpandemic, we returned to the glorious grounds of Kelburn Castle and upped the ante to three days and nights of programming, with Swiss Portrait, Bikini Body, Kapil Seshasayee, Free Love, NOVA and Bemz all playing our triangle of radness. This year, we’re back curating once again for the whole shebang, and the lineup is magnificent, even if we do say so ourselves.

On Friday night, we have the honest and eloquent wit of Bee Asha kicking off proceedings; no stranger to Kelburn, perhaps you’ve caught her there before performing with her band The Honey Farm. You can also catch hip-hop harpist Queen of Harps, a finalist for this year’s BBC Introducing Scottish Act of the Year accolade after we dubbed her one to watch at the start of the year. Following on from his nomination for the 2022 Sound of Young Scotland at The SAY Award, rapper Psweatpants also joins us for the opening night. If you were with us last year, you might remember his guest turn with NOVA. And headlining night one, be sure to come check out the incredibly talented AiiTee. Nominated twice now in consecutive years for The SAY Award, we can’t wait to welcome her authentic R’n’B sound to Kelburn.

After playing our 200th issue party back in December, we couldn’t not invite Djana Gabrielle to open our stage on Saturday. Now part of the award-winning songwriting collective Hen Hoose, Djana’s sound is rooted in folk and her voice is sure to soothe even the mightiest of hangovers

from going too hard on the first night. The countrypop stylings of Hailey Beavis will surely offer the same healing balm later in the day, before Glasgow’s number one Game Boy duo King Wine bring the mid-afternoon party with sunshine-ready songs like Sad Dance Party, Hot Broadcaster and I Ride My Bike In the Summer.

As the day goes on, the summer vibes keep coming as Sean Focus will bring his unique brand of dancehall to Kelburn. We also have a trio of popstars in the making set to play with half-girl, half-android singer-songwriter KLEO, and two more Hen Hoose affiliates – musicians and producers SHEARS and AMUNDA. You might remember AMUNDA from headlining our stage in 2019 as part of Bossy Love. Headlining our Saturday this year are sibling duo comfort, who are making music that honestly sounds like nothing else being made right now. Their new album, What’s Bad Enough?, tackles everything from capitalism and grind culture, to singer Natalie’s own lived experience as a trans woman. Over bubbling glitchy electronics, crunching synths and metallic drums, comfort are exhilarating and their live show is not to be missed.

Opening the stage on Sunday, rising folk and country-tinged singer-songwriter Alice Faye will bring her gorgeous storytelling to life in the early afternoon light. “Purple poetry-psych

collective” Acolyte are no strangers to Kelburn; fronted by poet and singer-songwriter Iona Lee, they’ll present their witchy brand of spoken word music. Later, Glasgow “threepiece suite” BIN JUICE deliver their thrashy and oh-so hungry indie-pop to Kelburn (see song titles: Hungry for Toes, Chippy Tea and Cookie Coma for proof), while NANI is our Sunday sunshine hero, bringing their laidback hazy pop vibes to the Pyramid.

As day turns to night, we’re delighted to have two Last Night From Glasgow acts playing on Sunday evening; cold wave duo Casual Worker and pop-punk numpties Slime City, fresh from releasing their debut album, Slime City Death Club. We’re also dead chuffed to be welcoming Glasgow’s answer to Sleaford Mods, Doss, to our stage this year – after hearing The Mullets Are Moving In earlier this year, we had to invite him to the party. Performing as a duo, we’re promised that the live show packs a real punch.

Finally, we are beyond excited to be welcoming the mighty Sacred Paws to Kelburn Garden Party this year; former winners of The SAY Award in 2017 for their album Strike a Match, the music that Ray A s and Eilidh Rogers make together is nothing short of joy-filled and life-affirming and will be the perfect way to close our stage in 2023.

So that’s the lineup. We’ve everything from pop and R’n’B, to hip-hop and folk, to post-punk and afrobeat, to electro and dancehall and everything in between. It’s going to be a rare old time and you won’t want to miss it.

Degree Show

Welcome to this preview of The Glasgow School of Art Degree Show 2023. The GSA Degree Show – the annual exhibition of graduating undergraduate and postgraduate work – is one of the highlights of the Scottish arts calendar, and as ever our graduating students have put on a show that represents the ingenuity and bold, inquisitive spirit of our creative community.

The features in this special supplement explore some of the works on show at the Degree Show across our five specialist schools: the Mackintosh School of Architecture, the School of Fine Art, the School of Design, the Innovation School and the School of Simulation and Visualisation. Our writers are all students in their third year of study who have a better insight than most on the materials, concerns and approaches that underpin the GSA creative community.

As ever there are works in this show that are reflective, as well as works that are provocative; works that respond to some of the most urgent concerns of the modern world, and works that ask us to connect with deeply personal and intimate worlds. Our graduates continue to present work that illustrates their commitment to shaping perspectives, problem solving and foregrounding ethical approaches to material, art and design. The features explore these commitments in more detail, and expand on some of the methods and materials that underpin them. Each offers an informed and interesting starting point for exploring the Degree Show.

Once again, the launch of the physical Degree Show will coincide with an online showcase. The digital platform offers

Welcomevisitors to the exhibition, as well as audiences across the world, the opportunity to delve deeper into the work of this year’s graduating cohort. It contains pages curated by GSA graduates, which offer insights into their work and practice, often beyond their degree show presentation. It also offers students the chance to group their work and practice by theme, meaning that digital visitors can explore works that respond to particular concerns, ideas or approaches.

This year we have expanded our range of themes, and hope that these additions offer more opportunities to engage easily with different kinds of work, offering the possibility of fresh perspectives on the traditional degree show exhibition. The Showcase for this year will launch on 1 June at 4.30pm and will continue to be developed by our graduates for the next year to help support their professional practice.

If you are interested in finding out more about The Glasgow School of Art, check out the Heads Up section at the back of the supplement, which highlights some of the things we’re looking forward to in the months ahead.

Finally, we hope you enjoy this exclusive look at this year’s Degree Show. A huge thank you to our student writers who have worked hard to bring the supplement together, and congratulations to The Glasgow School of Art Class of 2023.

The Glasgow School of Art Degree Show 2023 runs from 2-11 Jun IG: @glasgowschoolart | T: @GSofA | gsashowcase.net

Features

40 Students at the Mackintosh School of Architecture focus on the challenges of climate change, biodiversity, engaging communities and breathing new life into forgotten infrastructures.

42 From sustainable solutions to rebellious approaches to fashion, a closer look at some of the students’ work from the six main programmes which make up the School of Design.

44 Students from the School of Fine Art have been experimental in their approach to material enquiry, producing works of art that are critical yet romantic, dystopian yet hopeful.

46 Students from the School of Simulation and Visualisation have created fully formed, imaginative immersive spaces, with shared interests in sustainability and audience engagement.

47 With topics ranging from contraception to new ways of creating a cultural connection, students from the Innovation School demonstrate a fiery commitment to solving realworld problems with design.

49 Pushing the material potential of mediums, research, investigation and theoretical thought, the graduating Master of Fine Art students share an interest in the personal and experiential.

50 For a Heads Up on many of the goings on at the GSA this summer and beyond, a twopage guide to special cultural events, parties, exhibitions, courses and more.

Architecture

Words: Lewis Hall

This academic year has seen the Mackintosh School of Architecture, in its home at the Bourdon Building, operating at full capacity once more. The graduating student cohort have addressed the challenges of climate change and biodiversity in their responses, exploring how design can provide solutions to pressing societal issues and focusing on the benefit of the people who inhabit the spaces, both in the communities of Glasgow and Europe.

Students have also had the pleasure of being able to attend a Friday lecture series, organised by Stage 4 students, that explored ‘Re-establishing Identities’. The series highlighted ways practitioners are engaging, collaborating, and co-creating architecture through alternative creative processes. MASS, the School of Architecture's Student Society, also championed student engagement. Throughout the year the team, comprised primarily of Stage 2 and 3 students, organised several successful social events, some of which focused on developing the relationships between students and staff.

Stage 3 students imagined new ways of cohabitation and engaging communities in the form of an Urban Food Exchange (UFEx), the low-energy home of food growth, production, and education. Through re-establishing a function for the Forth and Clyde Canal, an arterial remnant of Glasgow’s industrial past, Stage 3 looked to breathe new life into forgotten infrastructure that celebrates our city’s rich urban fabric and vibrant history.

Rachel Houston’s Vertical Factory emerged from a synthesis of context and community where place meets people. Within a glazed circulatory atrium at the building’s core, Rachel’s vertical assembly line is inspired by the need for food education and transparent food production that promotes individual wellbeing and the building of community. The building itself acts as a beacon of light within the landscape, has a locally sourced and low carbon material palette and is a physical representation of circular economy.

Donnie Reid draws on the history of a place and how industrial vernacular may inform future urban development. His response seeks to provide flexible and interconnected spaces through the freedom of open plans. Terraces create horizontal connection between spaces despite the steeply sloping site and reinterpret the existing landscaping enhancing the link between canal and community. The result is a building that, embedded in its landscape, enhances the relationship between people as well as the urban and rural realms.

Kirsten McCall seeks to connect food with architecture. Her project Slate Six Ways refers to an experience in a Michelin Star restaurant and explores how architecture can be interpreted and experienced. On her ‘material menu’ she gives us slate chips, tiles, slabs, walling, clay, and gabion baskets, all sourced from pre-existing stocks, reusing slate commonly found in Scotland on roofs and as country boundary walls. The food in focus within this dark building is produce that favours shady corners, all grown, prepped, sold, cooked, and eaten on site. Kirsten’s response creates an immersive experience that educates communities about food and architecture.

Anthony Di Gaetano intends to connect the public to food, the arts, and horticultural education in his Urban Sanctuary of Horticulture and Conviviality. An interplay of masonry and timber expresses sacred typologies through ornament and form which create architecture with atmosphere. Sacred spaces are intended to evoke a sense of tranquillity and transcendence in the user that create a sense of connection and meaning between user and their context.

Calum Paterson sought to reimagine the potential of the Forth and Clyde Canal as a means for better and healthier living. His UFEx acts as a multifunctional building typology that aims to revive

the canal as a biodiverse, low carbon hub for the transportation of food to the wider city. He explores community exchange and believes the right to a healthy lifestyle should be universal. His building seeks to transform its local context creating a landmark that will foster the re-emergence of the canal as a place to serve your community.

Stage 4 have had a focus on reinvigorating culture, education, and the arts within the community. By focusing on deprived areas of Glasgow the cohort explored how developing a sense of place and bringing people together can be a catalyst for local change and progression.

Nirali Bhatts-Roberts looks to develop multiculturalism in Dennistoun in Glasgow’s East End by creating a multi-faith place of worship. By uniting people of all faiths under one roof the building celebrates people’s similarities whilst still allowing for individual worship in smaller rooms that cater for the needs of each faith. The natural material palette and ventilation create a sense that the building is born of the earth, deepening the spiritual connection people experience within its walls.

Beatrice Rogojan’s housing development seeks to attract young families to Dennistoun in a bid to transform it into a vibrant and thriving community. She does so through various housing

Students at the Mackintosh School of Architecture focus on the challenges of climate change, biodiversity, engaging communities and breathing new life into forgotten infrastructures

typologies that are interconnected by a winter garden, and which display vernacular design elements. The Earth Housing project focuses on ecological and economical design aspects through circular materials in the hope that their use is reflected in how occupants live their lives.

The final year students in Stage 5 undertook their own interpretations of ‘The Ethical City’, and after a trip to Brussels have produced some breathtaking work. This work, as well as Stage 3 and 4, will be available to view at gsashowcase.net from 4.30pm on 1 June.

Rachel Crooks’ project, Quarrying the Ruinscape to Bring the Palais to Justice, draws on Kengo Kuma’s essay on the Anti-Object alongside the concept of ‘Ruin-lust’ as captured in the etchings of Piranesi. Her thesis has the intent of reinvestigating the potential to reignite a global circular economy, by setting up a framework to identify redundant buildings as pre-emptive ruins to be quarried and recirculated. With a focus on the Palais de Justice in Brussels, its spolia would be harnessed to initially construct a network of material workshops to aid material flow, reworking a realignment to circular practices.

Olivia Bissell’s project explores the themes of cultural protection both conceptually and physically in the form of an archive for the city of

Brussels. The theme of protection is symbolized in the heavy floating structures encapsulated within a light ethereal skin. Her concept aims to allow for public engagement with the archive, whilst protecting and celebrating the objects and information within. The building itself sits as a beacon within the city of Brussels, nestled in the diverse and rich districts of Molenbeek and Anderlecht, aiming to engage and connect a diverse population through the landscape it creates as well as the space within.

Adam Cowan’s project responds to the slightly claustrophobic density of Brussels’ historic territory, Marollen. Themes of repair, connection and collective resource were identified and used as the architectural thesis, leading to the

design of a climate campus – an international hub for institutions and activists, drawing on Brussels’ political significance in Europe. Unpicking the patterns of Marollen – from the urban scale to the city block, down to the block interiors – reveals intimate, organic spaces of surprisingly varied use. He aims to create new civic spaces while maintaining the intrigue of the historic blocks’ streets, thresholds and interiors.

Myia Robinson’s thesis presents itself as a holistic and multicultural masterplan proposal for an underutilised site beside the canal’s edge in an area of Brussels between Molenbeek, Anderlecht and The City of Brussels. Led by a strong interest in organic architecture and from the recognition that there is a general lack of accessible, green, public spaces around Brussels, her thesis proposes an expanse of new urban landscaping and natural pools which reshape the existing canal’s edge and utilises its water source.

For any reader interested in design, architecture, model making, illustration or indeed the development of Glasgow, please do take the time to visit this year’s Degree Show. Having the opportunity to see this amazing body of work in person is not to be missed!

Design

We take a closer look at some of the students’ work from the six main programmes which make up the School of Design

Words: Zina Russanova, Militsa Milenkova, Lindsay Mahood and Claudia Langley-Mills

The Glasgow School of Art has generated another exciting cohort in this year’s School of Design, most of whom began in the midst of the 2020 pandemic. Graduating in 2023, they join the world of upcoming designers, following in the footsteps of world-renowned alumni.

Communication Design

This year, Communication Design took a playful route to exploring popular cultures from around the world. The theme opens up a variety of perspectives and technical approaches, and allows students to experiment with any medium. They are a group confident in expressing their strong concepts and proficient making skills. This year, many fourth-year students take advantage of the opportunity to explore and expertly tailor the moving image format.

Nancy Heley, a designer for Glasgow University Magazine, demonstrates her capacity to master skills in numerous fields by showing her short film How To Drink Irn Bru, which depicts Scots’ passionate and humorous relationship with the iconic drink. Dusty Watts explores the potential of humour by creating a light-hearted story in a mockumentary-style film about Brad ‘The Butcher’ Benson, a fictional character who unravels the mysterious theatricality of World Wrestling Entertainment through an analysis of the wrestling culture’s everchanging aesthetics. Sport, being an important component of culture in general, remains a major focus of the students.

Eliza Hart, who is interested in cultural identity and contrasts past with contemporary, juxtaposes English football with the Church of England, both ritualistic English groups, and evaluates both through the prism of the increasing tendency towards secularisation. Eliza's project resulted in a variety of outcomes, including a Conservatoire singer participating and chanting in his chorister’s garments and a football scarf, which she considers a highlight of the process.

Culture is also studied from the standpoint of social issues. Chloe Dalziel’s charcoal animation, To Fuel The Fire, draws on the experience of being a domestic abuse victim and focuses on rage fueled by the Scottish courts’ failure to provide support. This project exposes the hopeless state of the court system through the hideous bodily transformations of the animation’s main character and attempts to provide a sense of relatability to anyone living a similar situation.

Malcolm Allan, who grew up in North Lanarkshire, also reflects on his experiences in his

research series titled Along The Periphery in which he provides a glimpse into a world that many, including some Glaswegians, are unaware of. He collects stories about the city shedding its working-class identity and becoming touristic by documenting Glasgow’s outer ‘overspill’ housing structures with his digital camera.

In conversations with MDes Communication Design students, they expressed their highly hopeful and enthusiastic attitude about their time at the GSA, where the tutors’ persistent support allowed them to fall in love with their exploration process.

Shawna Li, for example, learned the value of visualisation through her work with abstract graphics and geometric shapes. Food culture was a connecting point for others. Megan Park creates T-shirt print designs as a celebration of Italian cuisine, while Yucheng Chen’s illustrations discuss the presentation of Chinese diaspora culture mixed with her childhood memories.

Interior Design

As students asked larger-scale cultural questions, they were also thinking with care about a place they love, particularly about the sustainable solutions in their hands, and Interior Design students are no exception. Aino Larvala, in her studio practice, is interested in creating easily accessible spaces that strive to prolong the life cycle of household objects by repairing and upcycling them in one convenient spot. Her Glasgow City Workshop project rethinks the purpose of department stores and replaces the notion of purchases with repair and remaking by proposing a community space where people can come together in a non-consuming and creative way to demonstrate that an inner city sustainable lifestyle can be affordable, easy and fun.

Product Design Engineering

Product Design graduate India Hay’s work takes an intriguing approach towards the enhancement of user experience. TacTILE is a haptic floor tiling system, designed to be used in theme parks. It uses low-frequency vibration to provide a unique sensation and helps create a memorable experience for theme park visitors. Its modular tile system is fully scalable and the vibrotactile sensation of each individual tile can be customised. Making a positive impact on people’s lives is at the centre of Katherine Hancock’s work. Her Universal Stretcher Wheel Unit is designed to aid Mountain Rescue teams by reducing the time

needed to attach and detach their stretchers onto it. Its lightweight aluminium structure and wide bike tyre provide easy, quick and efficient transportation and descent over any terrain.

Michael Gartside’s main goal is to develop a machine to ease small-scale waste management. In order to ensure it can be applied anywhere in the world, the manual compaction mechanism is designed to be simple and economical. The box structure is created by welding the steel sheet components, and the key mechanism involves steel gears, which multiply the force applied by the user through the crank handle by four times on the compaction plate.

Silversmithing and Jewellery

Inspired by brutalist architecture and her admiration for contrasting materials, Lucy Johnson’s final collection, titled For the Love of Concrete, includes both wearable and sculptural objects. She uses techniques such as scoring and folding, texturing and oxidising metal which she combines with cast concrete objects to create sharp, geometric shapes that deceive viewer perception. The pieces consist of multiple, modular components resembling the external structure of buildings.

Alice Biolo’s collection, Under the skin, is comprised of nine hollow, silver brooches, each incorporating a hidden compartment of spiky steel pins. The work focuses on pain and trauma and aims to start a conversation about mental health. This is achieved by hiding the pins and allowing them to be visible only from the back, giving the wearer the choice to share this detail with an audience.

Niamh Wright delves deep into her thoughts and emotions and takes inspiration by needlework and handweaving which help her to self-soothe when overwhelmed. She utilises laser cut acrylics and mother of pearl, and combines them with neon threads, silver details and handwoven wire to create evocative, complex structures. The collection identifies the positive effect the process of needlework has had for women throughout history and celebrates free-thinking and the ability to understand oneself.

Interaction Design

Vytautas Bikauskas’s work is a response to the daily notebooks his aunt Dalia kept for the past 20 years and acts as an homage to her life of transition. The work is a growing multimedia collection of responses to Dalia’s labour including prints, calendars, photographs, interviews, audiovisual and interactive media, sculpture and performance.

Collaboration is of fundamental importance to Vytautas and the performative elements included are interpretations of students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Inese Verebe creates a sound installation inspired by the limitations people were faced with due to strict censorship within the Soviet Union. This resulted in illegal recordings populating the black market and even pirate radio stations appearing. By limiting sounds able to be produced at the installation, creating simple, fun interactions, such as a pirate broadcast to a Soviet radio, Inese is hoping that users will reinvent themselves.

James Robinson’s work seeks to give users an opportunity to utilise cybernetic systems as a creative space by embracing the advantages of the digital world. Inspired by the process-oriented approach of the New Brutalism movement, the simple structure of the welded steel frame encasing a shuttered concrete block accentuates the work itself. Participants are urged to interact with the installation using the touch-plates to establish a feedback loop that is informed by light and sound, increasing the system’s entropy and producing individual experiences.

Fashion

Lydia Budler’s work celebrates lesbian artefacts, and their research centres around the Glasgow Women’s Library’s Lesbian Archives. They place a high value on the message conveyed through textiles. The use of elaborate beading and hand embroidery provides a personal flavour to the work, almost like handwriting alongside whichever tale they convey. They regard their work as art to educate and challenge conformity. Their art expresses a strong narrative and creates a story throughout this endeavour.

The Kallipyga collection showcases Scarlett David-Gray’s rebellious approach to fashion, inspired by Hans Bellmer’s Les Jeux de la Poupée series. This delicate and bold collection explores the sensuality of the human body by revealing what is typically concealed. The designs feature distorted sharp suiting lines and a thick, hand-stitched drape emphasising the waist of dresses and skirts while paying attention to the stomach and back. The focus is on revealing what is often hidden.

Fine Art

Experimental in their approach to material enquiry, while also revisiting traditional methods of making, this year’s final year Fine Art students have produced works of art that are critical yet romantic, dystopian yet hopeful.

Sculpture & Environmental Art

Sculpture & Environmental Art sees a lot of thematic overlap, with this year’s students producing work which sits at the intersection of art, science and faith. Much of the work feels primordial and ritualistic, harkening to the past whilst looking forward to oftentimes dystopian-seeming futures. Perhaps this fixation on the past, both real and imagined, is the result of navigating the collective trauma of an uncertain future, which makes this body of sculptural works all the more mysterious and romantic.

Rich in quasi-religious symbology, Ditte Krøyer’s bold, monochromatic linoprints explore the parallels between the unknown of the afterlife and the crippling anxieties of our climate crisis. Installed in a sea of sheer blackness, Ditte rejects the notion of binaries, exploring liminal spaces and in-betweens which, for her, mimic the unknown of the subconscious mind.

This liminality is explored further by Lizzie Munro who presents us with work intrinsically linked with the natural world. Investigating wilderness within the city, Lizzie uses locally foraged willow and teasels to create objects which aid the crossing of thresholds. Collected from miniature ecosystems nestled off motorways and tennis courts, the materials Lizzie uses come from grey areas in terms of ownership. These in-between spaces are a politically charged no man’s land which she seeks to reclaim. Woven masks and a burial chamber consider ritual, mortality and deep time, with a focus on the rhythmic embodiment of traditional methods of making.

Similarly examining space and ownership, Yolanda Sneddon’s moving image work presents us with an object reminiscent of the cityscape and the rigidity of public life in such a metropolis. Yolanda juxtaposes this coded, autonomous object of urban architecture with the stillness of the countryside, giving the work an absurdist yet eerie, post-apocalyptic feel.

Further dichotomies are explored with Nadia Zhaya’s sculpture Explosion from within, an object that simultaneously looks like an unearthed ancient artefact as well as a hyper-futuristic interplanetary tool. Nadia has created a ‘timeless capsule’ in everlasting plastics, exploring the universal and elemental through an encased explosion, eternally frozen within the plastic.

Sadie Downing’s body of work, Dreams Do Come True, laments her past experiences as a ballerina, and explores mental health through this lens. Merging kitschy aesthetics with clinical materials, Sadie comments on the precarious nature of ballet dancers’ health and safety when pushed to the limits of perfection, and the homemade finish of her saccharine display possesses an insidiousness underneath the frills and fringing of pageantry.

Words: Claudia Langley-Mills, Holly Allan and Connie Woods Gundry

Centred around an imagined space voyage, Max Longhurst’s work acts as a dialogue stretching through time, presenting a critical evaluation of the past and aiming to articulate a proposal for the future. Restaging a 19th Century photograph of Danish-Norwegian astronomer Sophus Tromholt,

Across its three disciplines, the School of Fine Art has produced a dynamic body of work reflective of the turbulent landscape ahead

Max has preserved the theatricality of the original image, fashioning clothing and objects which appear both medieval and otherworldly.

Probing visceral and bodily reactions is the sculptural work of Breagh Reilly. Birthed from a stranger’s retainer found on the street, Breagh’s work is evocative of a nightmarish dental visit complete with oversized ceramic teeth. Interested in tangible, knee-jerk reactions, Breagh investigates the somatic and abject through universal experience.

Fine Art Photography

This year’s Fine Art Photography cohort have produced an impressive body of work spanning familial ties, 24/7 surveillance culture and the natural world. Collectively, they produce the feeling of examining the role of documentation in a time of crisis.

Incorporating photography, moving image and performance, Alan Bell’s work documents restriction and surveillance in contemporary culture. Capturing the textures of the cityscape in 35mm, Alan’s images spotlight the grainy shadows of the metropolis, commanding the image and manifesting as the narrators of this critique of public space. Documenting signs and semiotics, Alan explores the control we relinquish in the public domain compared to the data we surrender in cyberspace.

Documenting a landscape in flux, Nikoline Hoeberg Sonasson’s work Falljökull poignantly captures glacial melt in Iceland. Juxtaposing a charged freeze frame of slick, glossy ice with an image of a yellowing, arid environment, Nikoline creates a harrowing dialogue between the two landscapes, leaving us to think about the human impact on the space between the two.

In a similar fashion, Haneen Hadiy’s intimate project The Mother of The Motherland explores the non-human through an anthropomorphic lens, spotlighting the Iraqi date palm and its rich symbolism. Haneen’s interdisciplinary practice explores her own cultural heritage and familial history, whilst commenting on the concept of time, inviting us to ruminate Iraq’s history and status as the Cradle of Civilisation.

Fine Art Photography also sees an immersive, installation-based approach to the discipline. The antithesis of a white cube space, Heather S Robert’s dark, khaki-toned walls speak to the dominant nature of her work. Experimenting with

alternative method photography, Heather’s images are liquid emulsion darkroom prints on steel. Through these as well as moving image, sound and sculptural works, her self-portraiture explores the duality of femininity.

Aura East’s project, AFT3RF0RM, archives Glasgow’s alternative tattoo scene with a series of intimate darkroom prints. Exhibited alongside floral sculptures which correlate with each subject, the sculptures act as an extension of each image, forming a kind of cohesive human/non-human portrait. Rejecting the singular authority of the photographer, Aura champions image-making as a collaborative process, and an accompanying phonebook showcases both the tattoo artists and the glitchy yet ornate style they are pioneering.

Shot both digitally and on Super 8 camera, Hannah Turner’s moving image work utilises archive footage from the closure of a factory where her grandfather had worked for 25 years. Weaving together family history with a wider community narrative, Hannah explores both public and private memory. Projected onto a suspended dual screen set-up, Hannah establishes a conversation through time, as the floating films mirror one another, and the past is recontextualised.

Painting & Printmaking

Finally, this year’s Painting & Printmaking class have spawned a luscious and varied body of work. Through expressive mark-making and textured, dimensional work, the paintings explore acts of decadence, the impact of repetition, and humankind’s entanglement with technology.

Katherine Scheibli’s work is concerned with the impact of technological influences on humanity, utilising abstract, expressive marks to argue and converse with her references to Teletext and technical error. Life is a constant battle between the analogue and digital over which serves us more.

The daring painter Teodora-Silvia Modoi approaches a large canvas destined for detail and depth with enviable confidence. Teodora-Silvia depicts scenes of a dark, laborious nature and describes them with dulcet palette tones and application. Narratives of obstruction, construction and entrapment are fed to us via dark, looming skies and objects capable of causing scathing harm.

Ted Tinkler explores notions of care and sentiment in their practice, which is centred around traditional methods of craft – quilting, spinning and knitting. The integration of their work with the landscape su ests a notion of comfort in transience and personification of soft, homely, handmade material. You can imagine the material as part of a river running through rich, fertile hills and contemplate the connection humans have with land.

Poppy Pearce works paint into variable surfaces to create luscious textures which illicit velvety, illusive sentiments. These stories envelop the viewer like warm ocean waters, with figures that question your role in their scene via subtle, interrogating glances which invite without intimidation.

Misra Balkan creates confident, inventive work in the expansive field of painting, permeating the notion of a two-dimensional landscape. This artist’s work leads you to believe that further debauchery lies beyond the scene in the foreground, and the wonderlands in the deep of the forest call out for our imagination to feed their existence.

Liv Fox is dedicated to handling repetition of motif and format in their work. Symbolic of versatility and material awareness, the transcription of her work in different contexts develops a language which concerns the simplicity of shape and colour, and morphs to their environment.

Cat Tams is a sensitive and vigilant observer of her environment and is gifted in her ability to apply painterly techniques – the layering of pastels and oil paint with sophisticated motion creates a lush quality. With particular attention to light, colour and form she creates an interplay between volume and surface. Capturing the influence of her environment, Cat translates it into figurative works with intellectual response.

Dora Padfield’s canvas invites a conversation with us, speaking an instinctive language through soft, felt-like marks and messages bleeding through the canvas. The paint journeys purposefully on the surface of the canvas, despite melting and dissolving within the fabric.

Simulation and Visualisation

Students graduating from the School of Simulation and Visualisation have a shared interest in sustainability, and approach to audience engagement

The School of Simulation and Visualisation’s studios are based at Pacific Quay, a media hub for Glasgow, and students graduating from BDes Sound for Moving Image and BSc Immersive Systems will be exhibiting work in the Haldane building. The practices of graduating SimVis students illustrate a shared interest in sustainability, in their choice of materials and approach to audience engagement. A range of digital media, sound, and programming has been utilised to create fully formed, imaginative spaces for an audience to be immersed in. Reflected in the work are the concerns of an emerging generation of artists and designers. Ecological and political issues are discussed confidently, alongside creative narratives that address complex topics.

Michiel Turner’s experimental, painterly animation Seaweed incorporates 3D collage materials which may have been found washed up on a beach, or in a scrap box. The disjointed nature of stop-motion animation marries with glossy and untroubled sound. Reminiscent of King Krule’s deep vocals paired with Shlohmo’s Bad Vibes; unphased guitar compositions and reverb add a depth synonymous with echoes of an ocean landscape. The narrative is ambiguous and possibly untrue, though any watchers of Attenborough’s Blue Planet will understand that its idea is undoubtedly plausible. Investigating the probability of finding ecological equilibrium between materials and organisms, Michiel uses hallucinatory visuals and proposed reality to incite a world of utopian balance.

In Owen Burn’s practice, famous paintings are recreated in 3D images and animation, translating the historical into a reimagined accessible form, relevant to the contemporary. Kandinsky’s Joyous Ascent is animated to music by Ezra Collective, cyclically returning to the original artist’s intent to marry shape and sound. The animation is energetic, and intricately deconstructs the painting into shapes that communicate with one another. Owen is graduating from Immersive Systems, and they will also exhibit an educational reconstruction of the 16th century Tantallon Castle, situated in East Lothian. The interactive environment was made using Autodesk Maya and Unity, and allows the viewer unrestricted access to a heritage site.

Comparatively, there is a cyclical thread running through Eve King’s work, as they explore the feedback loop that consumer, mineral resource, and waste are trapped within in the electronics industry. Eve describes using data as material in their audiovisual installation, Obsolete

Components, which aims to “create meaning amongst chaos”. It employs the use of ten analogue televisions and a six-channel speaker system, alongside images referencing planned obsolescence in consumer technology. Symbolically, stark cobalt blue emanates from the television screens, and dually, this same mineral is implicated in the industry under critique. Eve’s practice is both introspective, and aware of the interdependence of human behaviour on nature and consumer capitalist society.

Andy Speirs recreates accurate renditions of architectural spaces and urban environments, which are 3D modelled and textured in Blender and 3Ds Max. Andy’s dissertation investigates the question: Do immersive systems enhance spatial awareness in architectural visualisation? It references The Pond House, an award-winning design by Technique Studio. In the artist’s studio project, they explore humans’ connection to artificial, built-up or urban environments. Andy chose to create a detailed virtual copy of a street from the route he took to work, whilst living in Hong Kong. In turn, Andy reflects his own attachment to the landscape, through the intricacy of the recreation.

Keira Mccombie’s sonic sculpture, Echo’s Reflection, readdresses the audience’s role as participant. We can become immersed in our own sound, in turn formed by our interaction with an instrument. Keira dissects the term ‘generative music’, coined by Brian Eno, to su est that sound can occur in response to a person’s touch, rather than generated by a system, therefore asserting power to the listener. The instrument, fabricated sustainably from scrap metal, is suspended with speakers on either side, to reflect the sound back into the space. Within this self-reflective environment, a participant can use utensils, or their hands, to physically engage with the sculpture, using sound as a therapeutic tool.

Similarly, Alexandra Bell explores sound as a medium for respite and escapism. In The Wave is not the Water, an immersive sound and light installation, Alexandra has generated imagery in response to vibrations from composed sound. The viewer is invited to leave behind any anger and politics associated with their perception of society, momentarily. The space is transformed into a visually and aurally meditative environment, separating the reality of everyday stresses and tribulations through the use of solfe io frequencies. Graduating from Sound for the Moving Image, Alexandra describes this as “the primordial cosmic tones of mental and physical healing”.

Innovation

With topics ranging from contraception to designing new ways of creating a cultural connection, the fourth-year exhibition from GSA’s Product Design students provides a glimpse into the future of design

Words: Cate Crutcher

immune systems. This led to designing Liang Fang, a medical restaurant that incorporates parasites into its menu. The speculative restaurant hopes to allow customers to use parasites to regulate their health in the long-term by providing them with exclusive wellness recipes.

The fourth-year Product Design Degree Show is an outstanding display of the best and brightest in product design. These graduates demonstrate a fiery commitment to solving real-world problems with design, using their practices to rebel against the myriad challenges to our freedom in the past few years and the obstacles facing us in the future.

Whether for Scottish independence or against the coronation, many people (maybe even you) have involved themselves in protests this year, often facing resistance from police forces in the process. Doug Kennedy responds to the needs of protesters with Design for Disobedience

A spiked black wearable, the project aims to increase participation in acts of civil disobedience. Through his work, Doug hopes to draw attention to the ongoing suppression of citizens’ rights and freedoms and emphasize the need for as many people as possible to take part in activism, protest and democracy.

The number of people living with chronic illnesses is expected to be more than one in five by 2030, so Nilanjana Mannarprayil has created a speculative experience for dealing with uncertainty and enhancing methods of giving care. By observing people’s home environments and conducting interviews, Nilanjana discovered that support systems dwindle with age. Nilanjana sees it as time for society to leave the Get Well Soon! card behind and learn how to provide proper care, so the product Looped In helps people communicate how they would feel cared for, whether that’s by picking up a prescription or grocery shopping. Less-clinical packaging for prescriptions and customisable care stickers enhance this concept by making care personal. By changing these rituals around providing care, people can begin to care for their chronically ill friends and loved ones in a truly helpful way.

Rebecca Lee’s project, ComeAround5, is a shared Chinese cultural sampling experience which aims to build stronger relationships with food through multi-sensory experimentation. The dining experience pushes for authenticity and does this through the sensorial connection of individual ingredients to final assembled meals. In this experience, a chef cooks a traditional Chinese meal for the diners but doesn’t reveal what he’s cooking. Instead, he presents the main herbs, spices and sauces as experimental samples that look nothing like their original form, leaving diners to use their senses to deduce what the meal is before it even arrives.

As social globalisation increases, linguistic barriers will become more common across social, economic, political and technological sectors. Focused on resolving these barriers, Mio Nevin has created a social design project that uses a game-like format to teach English-speaking people about Japanese culture. The strategy Mio took with this project is inspired by the ability of children to communicate and connect through play before the use of verbal language. So, learning about another nation’s culture can help people overcome language barriers.

Patrick Sheffield’s project helps people focus and concentrate in the workplace. He has designed a focus aid box containing various tools to keep people working. The focus aid kit includes hydration sachets, caffeine drops, oil rollers, glasses with coloured lenses, fidget spinners, a die timer, to-do lists, earplugs, chew stims, focus flashcards and sleep masks, all with the sole purpose of improving focus and productivity in the workplace.

Guo Xintong’s project deals with the significant increase in human allergies due to food contamination. Guo imagines a future where humans cooperate with parasites to boost their

Lexi Wieck’s project, Soundshells, is a sensory extension instrument that can enhance, explore, create and enrich an individual’s sonic environment. Acting as acoustic headphones, the Soundshells can create a new and distinct soundscape from the existing one. Unlike traditional headphones, Soundshells can create a unique spatial experience that invites users to engage in a recreational auditory activity rooted in a particular time and place. This creates an aural experience that immerses the listener in the surrounding soundscape. By finding a middle ground between awareness and enjoyment, Soundshells enable users to enjoy a more immersive auditory experience.

Margarida Sabino’s project, The Plan.o Experience, focuses on creating a space that allows for easier access to contraception, using a playful brand identity to reduce the stigma around it. Margarida sees contraception as taking care of yourself and your future, so it’s something to be happy about. The project involves a colourful bus that provides high-quality contraception products in public areas in the city to make contraception a non-threatening, joyful topic.

All of these projects are testament to the creativity, innovation, and hard work the students have put into their years at the GSA. We’re excited to see where their careers take them, and we know they’ll continue to push the boundaries of product design in exciting and unexpected ways.

The Innovation School Degree Show runs 2-11 Jun in the Haldane Building, 24 Hill Street, Glasgow. It is also available to view online at gsashowcase.net

Master of Fine Art

The graduating MFA class share an interest in the personal and experiential, and the wider cultural intersections of the two

Words: Connie Woods Gundry

Pushing the material potential of mediums (whether organic, found, analogue or digital), research, investigation and theoretical thought form an integral part of the MFA graduates’ practices. The old school building on the south bank of the Clyde which hosts the MFA Degree Show offers varied spaces for graduating students to exhibit work, including in the retired science laboratory, or suspended in the central stairwell.

Hayden Judd has stitched together a tenmetre sail by hand, using techniques learned from specialists. It repurposes discarded fabrics collected from sailmakers in South Queensferry and Ardrossan. Through researching historical industry based around the Clyde, notably shipbuilding in Partick, Hayden has learnt about his own family’s connection to nautical activity. A hierarchy of labour is mapped out, as a symbolic family tree, with ancestors’ names listed alongside their role – “first mate”, “fisherman”, “diver”, and lastly, Hayden establishes himself as “unskilled worker”. The making process imperfections reflect Hayden’s distance from a simultaneously individual and wider local history.

Historical investigation is also central to Chih-Kang Hsu’s practice. Chih-Kang has constructed a monument from cast bricks, fixing a white board where a plaque would ordinarily sit. Viewers are invited to write on the board, naming the monument. In turn, the spectator is dually involved as a narrator, questioning the established notions of memory and truth – who gets to write history? The subtle agitation in Chih-Kang’s work is reflected in the physical processes of his photography, in which the past is tampered with; photographs are cut into and scratched away.

Ritu Arya’s tangential making process reflects the transitional nature of her practice; working with photography previously, and now

primarily using clay, she explores material reacting to tension. Ritu crafts bodily clay forms that deal with the physicality of “untended trauma” observed personally, and in everyday life. Ritu’s writing describes an ache that is “more destructive with each tri er” and asks, “What does it taste like?” The internal and sensory are portrayed in the clay’s varied states; some raw, and others fired, or glazed in Jesmonite. Ritu materialises disruption, in the use of ferrofluid and magnets that respond to a room’s movement.

Nanjoo Lee uses painting as a vehicle for translation, embracing the imperfections that are inevitable to recreating an image. In Translating Practice, Nanjoo makes sense of the disorder and beauty involved in understanding a relationship. A photograph of Nanjoo’s mother is split into 60 numbered squares, and ordered in rows to create a cinematic, unreliable chronology. In Nanjoo’s video work, soap is a metaphor, used to critique stereotypes surrounding women in domestic settings. The imagery is intimate and evocative, whilst asking wider questions about labour, allowing us to consider our own close relationships.

Phyllis Mcgowan’s work with film, narration and writing similarly explores the complexity of communication. The spoken text piece, Dear Christina, is self-referential, and speaks on what the audience can and cannot know, as Phyllis reads an email aloud written to an unknown receiver. The sea is a recurring backdrop in Phyllis’ work; using found footage of women on the beach, or as projection, from the perspective of a swimmer. Thinking in Shapes narrates Phyllis’ relationship to her mother, presenting non-linear autobiography as thoughts that must be externalised in surreal, poetic, rhythmic form.

A viewer first begins to understand James Epps’ installation by stepping into it. They must

navigate the large letter forms physically, and choose at which angle to approach. You begin to pick out familiar words, and others slot in as illegible visual code. This slippage is integral to the literal, and conceptual, reading of James’s work. The letters are multilayered, as paper is torn and then screen-printed, and torn again. James utilises found and bought material, playing on collage’s ability to remind us of things in the world we associate with, whilst appealing to the viewer’s imagination with abstract form.

In Mutual Work, Jiyoon Lee reflects on the bond with her sister. The disconnect felt in digital communication is performed through movement, evoking the pace and distance of a phone call. Jiyoon’s work is influenced by ideas of telepresence and the “non-place”, as well as the impact of technology on Jiyoon’s generation in South Korea. The technology under critique is also the primary medium, demonstrating its infiltration into human life and behaviour.

Christian Bronstein’s animation and audio pieces (Jump, Squeeze and Whipping BoyDrowning) are the culmination of two years autoethnographic research, and explore the individual and generational shame felt growing up as a gay man. The video-based work, made using 3D programming such as Blender, captures the private bodily perspective, and allows the viewer to enter temporarily, understanding the weight of the narrator’s existence. Christian has described the role of the videos as “social agents”, with a historical significance as digital artefact. Abjection, as a physical and emotional experience, becomes material and medium, in which to analyse the cultural and psychological drivers behind gay shame.

Heads Up

Race, Rights Sovereignty Glasgow and online, throughout the year

Open Studio Summer Courses

The Glasgow School of Art, throughout Jun and Jul

The GSA’s Open Studio team are running courses for anyone interested in developing their skills in practices across art and design disciplines. From expressionist portraiture and life drawing to introductory courses in jewellery design and painting, Open Studio offers a range of opportunities to people interested in developing their art, design and craft skills at all levels. Please visit the Open Studio pages on the GSA website for a full programme of activities.

Open Studio Summer Exhibition

Fleming House, Glasgow, 2-11 Jun

Running as part of the summer Degree Show, this exhibition showcases work made by young people across several different access and communityfocused projects at the GSA. This includes work by High School pupils in Widening Participation portfolio courses, the GSA’s Community Engagement creative residency at Garnetbank Primary School, and Castlehead School of Creativity and Articulation from Further Education colleges in Scotland.

Portfolio Preparation Course

The Glasgow School of Art, Aug 2023-Feb 2024

Are you thinking of applying to art school? The GSA’s Portfolio Preparation Course gives you the time and space to develop your portfolio in a collaborative, dynamic studio environment. The course is structured to help you choose a specialist area to study, and has a track record of getting students places at top art schools across the UK. Please see the course pages on the GSA website for more information. Taster courses for those interested in the Portfolio Preparation Course are also available from the GSA Open Studio; find more info about that on the GSA website.

The Students’ Association and the GSA exhibition curate this public event series, exploring the relationship between race, place and creative practice. Since 2022, Race, Rights and Sovereignty has been programmed by Natasha Thembiso Ruwona. Events in the last year have included public lectures and discussions with Furmaan Ahmed, Claricia Parinussa and Hussein Mitha, as well as workshops with Martha Adonai Williams and Clarinda Tse.

Graduate Degree Show 2023

Glasgow and online, 1-10 Sep

Hot on the heels of the summer Degree Show, the Graduate Degree Show showcases the work of students on Postgraduate programmes across the school. From fashion collections to innovative service design, medical visualisation to painting and sculpture, the Graduate Degree Show explores the rich work of our students on many of our Postgraduate programes. To view the Graduate Degree Show online, visit gsapostgradshowcase.net

GSA OPEN

Glasgow and online, throughout the year

Whether you’re just starting to consider coming to art school, or you’re almost ready to hit ‘send’ on your application, GSA OPEN offers events to support you at whatever stage you’re at on your application journey. Our year-long programme encompasses campus open days, online open house events, student-led campus tours, portfolio advice sessions and one-to-one sessions with staff.

GSA Open House

The Glasgow School of Art, 27-28 Oct

At Open House, our studios and workshops are open for prospective students interested in studying at The Glasgow School of Art at Undergraduate or Postgraduate level. Programmes across each of our five schools, as well as our support departments, put on programmes of activity to help you find out more about life and study here, from visiting our Student Halls to exploring different parts of our campus and facilities. Attending Open House gives you a great insight into the GSA’s unique studio culture as well as the specialist facilities which support student learning.

From summer courses to graduation celebrations, here’s a look at what’s in store across the GSA in the months ahead...

The GSASA and GSA Teaching Awards The Glasgow School of Art, 7 Jun

This June sees the return of our Teaching Awards, a joint partnership between the GSA and our Students’ Association. Every year students nominate staff and their peers who have contributed to the GSA community. The awards are student-led and celebrate the staff and students who contribute and enrich our creative learning communities at the GSA.

GSA Exhibitions

Reid Gallery, year round programme

The Glasgow School of Art Exhibitions Department curates an innovative yearround public programme that links into the GSA staff research, teaching and learning, student experience, creative network, our communities, contemporary practice and heritage. Our crossdisciplinary programme of exhibitions, performance, seminars, talks, off-site projects, publishing initiatives and outreach aims to explore the creative, social and educational nature of contemporary practice. Follow the GSA on Eventbrite, Instagram and Twitter to keep up-to-date with our programmes and events.

GSASA Degree Show After Party GSA Students’ Association, Glasgow, 1 Jun

The GSASA Degree Show Afterparty comes home to The Vic Bar, celebrating the graduating student cohort. This year they’ve teamed up with PONYBOY for a night of music, art and performance that will transport you to a night of make-believe.

The Vic Reopening in 2023 GSA Students’ Association, Glasgow, TBC

The GSASA have been working hard on their plans to reopen The Vic Bar over the summer months in time for Freshers’ Week in September. Much loved by students, staff and the wider communities around the school, the GSASA look forward to welcoming you all in for drinks and food again soon.

London Design Biennale and Eureka 2023

Somerset House, London,

1-25 Jun

The Glasgow School of Art Pavilion at the London Design Biennale presents Undercurrents: Art and Ocean in Africa and the Pacific, an interdisciplinary and international research project showcasing the creative outputs of eight community-based art projects that surface cultural and emotional connections with the ocean in Ghana, South Africa, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. This is a DEEP Fund project, led by the School of Simulation and Visualisation’s Professor Stuart Jeffrey and Dr Lisa McDonald for UKRI-funded One Ocean Hub.

On Not Knowing: How Artists Teach Conference

The Glasgow School of Art, 9-10 Jun

Hosted jointly by The Glasgow School of Art and UniArts Helsinki, this conference will take place in person at The Glasgow School of Art, featuring an international cohort of artist educators. Within art schools, academies, departments of art and across the range of environments in which artists teach or facilitate learning, there has been a sustained questioning of the values and assumptions that have underpinned various aspects of teaching in the arts. This conference sets out to determine what is special about the way artists teach.

European Academy of Design Conference: Extreme Making

The Glasgow School of Art, 16-20 Oct

This conference hub explores the present and future possibilities of doctoral research and education in design through creative practice research, located in making and materials, critical theory and history, and by identifying ways in which new knowledge emerges in studio-based inquiry. We use the term ‘extreme making’ to su est the breadth of practices in design, from established craft skills and techniques, through to smart technologies and materials, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and systems design.

Mapping with Intent

Who are our cities built for? And how does this impact our daily lives? One writer explores Scottish cities’ recent move towards feminist urban planning and unpacks what this should look like – in policy and in public

Words: Aditi Jehangir

Illustration: Lauren Morsley

In May, Scottish Greens Councillor Kayleigh O’Neill successfully passed a motion to promote feminist urban planning in Edinburgh. The motion looked at gender equity in town planning, following in the footsteps of fellow Greens Councillor Holly Bruce’s motion in 2022 calling for feminist town planning in Glasgow. These motions reject the apparent gender neutrality in urban planning because often marginalised genders are disadvantaged, their experiences excluded in the design. Glasgow was the first UK city to make this pivotal step, with Edinburgh now joining the ranks – it’s clearly an exciting time for Scotland, allowing us to truly question how we want to live.

You might be wondering – what is a feminist city? A feminist Edinburgh, for instance, could look like a city where women can access everything inclusively and safely, from healthcare to transport, from childcare to mobility needs. It could present a radical shift in how we view urban planning. Even aesthetically thinking about our city, there are only five statues in Edinburgh of women – and one of them is Queen Victoria.

For those of us who aren’t long-dead monarchs, access to healthcare is key. Recently in Scotland, the topic of access to abortion healthcare without protest has come up. Thousands having abortions every year end up attending a clinic or hospital targeted by anti-choice groups. The brilliantly run campaign from Back Off Scotland has put buffer zones on the table, but it’s been a hard-won process. These zones – already in place

across England and Wales – would prevent protestors from gathering within 100 metres of a clinic or hospital. The proposal for the legislation should be published by July. A feminist city should enable access to all healthcare without stigma or protest. But we should also feel safe in our homes. The ‘gender rent gap’ means that often women earn less and therefore spend a greater proportion of their salary on rent. In January 2022, SpareRoom ran a survey that found almost a third of women reported spending over 50% (classed as severely rent burdened) of their salary on rent, compared to only 14.4% for men. Scotland’s recent rent freeze ended in March 2023, so now landlords can increase their rents by 3%; however, this is meaningless for anyone moving or changing tenancies, allowing rents to skyrocket. The Scottish Government has committed to rent controls within this term but we need them immediately. We also desperately need more public housing: without it, marginalised genders will be priced out of the city. Living in this city for over nine years, often moving every year, I can attest to how brutal the housing market here has become –it’s why I became involved in Living Rent, Scotland’s tenant and community union. Meanwhile, our public spaces and services have been stripped bare through austerity. Across Scotland, communities are organising around this injustice: Living Rent branches are campaigning around park lighting in Leith, public toilets in Gorgie Dalry, and broken streetlights in Govanhill.

Many of these issues affect marginalised genders disproportionately, unable to feel safe in our streets or access a free toilet. With wins at the council level, it is clear communities care deeply and will not rest until we have livable cities for us all. A feminist urban planning approach would centre the experiences of marginalised genders within the design of our public spaces and incorporate safety as a key feature.

And when it comes to safety, transport is a vital part of examining who our cities are built for. Latenight travel is poor, with infrequent night buses and expensive taxis. Women, particularly in Scotland where the dark begins at 3pm in the winter, are more vulnerable to the risk of assault. Unite the Union’s ‘Get Me Home Safely’ Campaign calls for employers to pay for transportation to get workers home after a late shift. The successful campaign has already been backed by Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other Scottish councils and workers are already starting to see the benefits of safe and free transport home past the last public transport. After working in several hospitality venues, I can attest to how unsafe getting home can feel late at night. Nevertheless, there should be more options for marginalised genders to get home safely from work without relying on often unreliable employers to pay for taxis.

The last Edinburgh council budget was mired in controversy and party political clashes – aside from the drama, there were massive cuts in the budget for the council. How far can any council deliver a feminist city when there is barely enough money to keep the city running as it is?

Our public services have been decimated through cuts and austerity, and there are no signs of this slowing down. Post-pandemic, as the town centres recover and we face an ongoing housing crisis that shows no signs of stopping, can we dare to dream of a more equitable and radical path for our cities? I truly hope so.

“It is clear communities care deeply and will not rest until we have livable cities for us all”

Skating Up Space

The Arches DIY is more than just your average skate park: it’s a hand-built community. We chat to them about re-imagining space, constructing on multiple legacies, and the power of skate culture

Just north of Glasgow City Centre is a roofless relic of a building that’s become home to dozens and dozens of skate ramps and obstacles. This is the Arches DIY, a grassroots, concrete paradise built by local skaters and community members. Nestled on Sawmill Road, the ‘ground floor’ skatepark, technical and gnarly, is connected by a man-made hill to the first floor observation deck – if you will – with a graffiti wall, fire pit, pissing bushes, and beautiful views of the city. The Arches is more than just a skatepark: it’s a secret hiding place where skaters, and anyone else who wants to join, can gather and break free from everyday surveillance.

I sit down and chat with C*, one of a few skaters who started the Arches DIY. I ask C if he knows what the site was before it became the Arches. “There’s been several phases of dilapidation – the site of the Arches was originally a sawmill, hence the name Sawmill Road,” he explains. “When the sawmill fell apart, the site then became a building called the Cleansing Department where road workers and cleaners brought refuse back from the streets and public bathrooms.

“The site was later taken over by a cohort of artists who created murals and sculptures there. They built the hill as part of a Stolen Spaces programme to create access to the upper level of the building. It was also them that built the gates. Now it’s the Arches,” says C. “We called it the Arches because of the building’s Victorian, brick, arched windows. Plus, when you’re building ramps, everything’s an arch in one way or another – a radius, a diameter, a curve – the arches are everywhere.”

When the site of the Arches was discovered, it was not an obvious site for a skatepark, to say the least. “I discovered the space when I was doing a course about reimagining public spaces. When we found the Arches it was a total mess; you couldn’t even see there was concrete on the floor,” he says. “It was just debris, rotten wooden boards that had stacked up and rotted, overgrown weeds, needles.” But from weeds and waste there was potential for a concrete wonderland, it just took a skater’s eye. “Underneath all the shit that was there, I could just see that it was a special place,” says C. For him, it had the same feeling of privacy as the old Bristo Square in Edinburgh – a very special, but now demolished, Scottish skate spot – because of its enclosed nature. “The ground was rough, but it was sheltered from the wind and there was lots of rubble and building material already there.”

Carrying on its Cleansing Department legacy, discarded items and waste at the site are used to fill the ramps before being covered in concrete. Fittingly, they’ve built the space using a fair few weird found objects over the years. “There’s definitely a couple of Nextbikes, a trolley, and a fridge in the ramp in the corner,” says C. But whose land is this that the Arches is being built on? C explains: “The land is privately owned. The people who own it want to demolish it. They’re quite detached from the land. I think they live in a different city in the world, and for them, it’s maybe more of a figure than a thing.”

Urban spaces are extremely policed: there are noise limits, structures designed to stop sleeping and skateboarding, to restrict how we behave and interact with public space. At the Arches, communities can break free from this. They can participate in these surroundings because they’re involved in its construction. There’s a distinction between the land that is privately owned and the space that’s been created. C is clear: “The principle of the Arches is I don’t own it, nobody does, and anybody can pretty much do what they want there. Design processes are open to participation and people use it very regularly of their own accord. People hold self-defense fighting classes there, boy racers photograph their cars there, wedding pictures, kids’ birthday parties.” The list goes on. C adds, “I laugh sometimes because I’ve turned up to this space that isn’t mine and then just started telling people it’s theirs.

“People really care about the space,” says C and it makes my heart warm. “I have a funny story, actually. One April Fool's Day, I said on Instagram, ‘Right, the bulldozers are here, they’re going to demolish the Arches,’ and we got hundreds and hundreds of messages: mothers literally telling us they were going to chain themselves and their children to the gates of the Arches to stop them taking the space.”

Skateboarding is so many things, but at its heart is a culture of camaraderie, which is clearly shown at the Arches DIY. Skateboarding has made the site of the Arches alive again – not just for skaters, but for everyone – as people build there like the sawyers did; transform waste like the cleaners did; create murals and sculptures like the artists did. That’s what you call skating up space.

Support or get involved with the Arches DIY via their Instagram @arches_diy or email [email protected]

*Name has been changed to protect identity.

“When you’re building ramps, everything’s an arch in one way or another – a radius, a diameter, a curve - the arches are everywhere”

C, the Arches DIY

Hot Topics

While a wave of new bedroom beatmakers might’ve racked up the awards in their absence, Le Tigre’s outspoken singalongs have never felt more relevant. We chat DIY culture with the trio ahead of their return to UK and European stages

Words: Cheri Amour

“When we made the first record, I didn’t think anybody would listen. I thought everybody would hate it!” jokes Kathleen Hanna from her home in California. She’s joined on our video call by fellow bandmates JD Samson and Johanna Fateman who together formed self-pe ed “feminist party band” Le Tigre in the late 90s.

You might be familiar with Hanna as the lightning rod leader of riot grrrl band Bikini Kill. With the group’s imminent dissolution in her sights, Hanna decided to shake things up, moving in 1998 with zine-maker Fateman from their hometown of Portland, Oregon, to New York City to form the band. Although it wasn’t until 2000 when the lineup of the Le Tigre we know and love today came to be, with JD Samson replacing filmmaker Sadie Benning.

Despite the early lineup changes, the band’s mission remained fixed: to write political pop songs and be the dance party after the protest. These seismic moments in their city, but also the

globe, punctuated Le Tigre’s timeline, as Fateman recalls. “The attack on the World Trade Centre happened on one of our press days for Feminist Sweepstakes. When we released [that record], we entered a period of endless war.” Hanna continues: “I remember we were going to perform at a drag show and we were in a cab when they first started dropping bombs in Afghanistan,” she says, clearly moved by the retelling.

one-woman-iteration of her solo project, The Julie Ruin, after Bikini Kill’s dissolution (for a far more extensive debrief of this brilliant story, dig out a copy of Sini Anderson’s documentary, The Punk Singer), it felt essential to lean on like-minded souls. “We wanted each of us to have the same technical abilities so that we could each have ownership and contribute when we wanted to. Having that combination of each of us having our own time to work on the record by ourselves, where no one’s looking at you, no one’s listening to you sing the bad part that you decide to erase, meant we were able to get so much further.”

In the early noughts, those moments only continued to dominate the headlines. Le Tigre’s third and final album, This Island, landed the month before George Bush won a second term as President of the United States. At the launch party of its release, the band posed against a backdrop of records mounted on a hot pink wall in matching outfits emblazoned with the slogan Stop Bush. They weren’t the only recording artists passing comment on the current state of the world. Some tackled matters in a more explicit fashion (see Green Day’s scathingly entitled, American Idiot), others more subtly (Björk’s Medúlla countered outbreaks of racism and patriotism following the 11 September attacks three years prior).

“With the title, and specifically with that song [The Island] there was almost this feeling of ‘We have to create an island on an island that we can survive this through’,” says Hanna. “We made a video for that [to play behind us when we played live] and we had all our friends dancing in the back. We knew we needed our community.” Their desire to lean on their fellows wasn’t without conflict at the time though as This Island was the band’s first release on a major label, Universal. (The rest of their discography came out via San Franciscan queercore indie label, Mr. Lady.) Hanna admits they knew it was a risk. “That was a time when people were not very forgiving about bands going from an indie to a major label. For us, it was an interesting experiment. It wasn’t a contradiction or hypocritical to try something and then decide what you like best.”

Moving into a more commercial setting wasn’t the only leap that the band was taking though. This Island found the trio using the money from their last tour to create and produce over the internet for the first time, setting up individual home studios with Pro Tools. All pretty progressive at the turn of the millennium, as they boast in stalwart indie club number Nanny Nanny Boo Boo: ‘You’ll never get it / I guess this shit is too new’.

The step up was particularly noticeable for Samson. “It was actually the first time I had a computer. I didn’t even have WiFi!” The process began remixing each other’s early explorations of songwriting; one member started a beat or refrain. Then, they would send it over the internet for another to add a vocal line or melody part. “It gave us all a sense of collaborative energy over every song and made us feel really connected to the songs and the work on there,” adds Samson.

For Hanna, fresh from exploring the early

This pioneering patchwork model wasn’t just propelling their own careers forward though. While, the now infamous, audio workstation Pro Tools was actually launched in the early 80s, its integration with Windows and 24 mix in the early aughts (i.e. the ability to have 24 tracks of unique audio incorporated into your mix) coincided with the band’s own explorations into the platform. Their tentative approach to virtually stitching a track together in this ethereal, online space proved to be hugely influential and continues to inspire a legion of fellow bedroom beatmakers worldwide. Gen Z has embraced the band’s stand-outs like Deceptacon and Phanta, sending them viral on TikTok. Those colourful outfits (both in look and in language) now look timeless thanks to the latest wave of nostalgic fashion thinking, indie sleaze.

From beadbadoobee to Billie Eilish, bedroom beatmakers have made a huge name for themselves in the last decade alone. They’ve become a genre – bedroom pop – in their own right. Eilish herself even highlighted the rise in her recent Grammy’s acceptance speech gushing: “This is for all the kids who are making music in their bedroom today. You’re going to get one of these!” How does this new generation of artists expressing themselves with online tools like GarageBand and social media sit with some of its original creators then? “Well, I teach at the Recorded Music department in NYU so it’s kind of my life!” jokes Samson, as she gestures to the office space surrounding her in the Zoom frame. “For the most part [the students] all come in knowing how to use a digital audio workstation. It’s punk in a lot of ways. They’re learning stuff on their own and then they’re learning how to put it into context. The internet really has done a lot for DIY culture.”

Hanna nods but is quick to express the commonalities with Le Tigre’s longstanding efforts to do the same, not just in writing and recording but also in their live shows. “Nowadays, you get your phone out and sing or play something into it. Then [you] transfer that into Pro Tools and start messing with it. We’ve always done that.” In the last two decades, the internet has enabled DIY culture into even bi er, virtual communities. But nothing beats sidling up alongside your favourites in the throng of a festival pit to really find those fellow free spirits. So, when Le Tigre announced they would be reuniting on stage for the first time in 18 years at last summer’s This Ain’t No Picnic festival in Oak Canyon Ranch in California, there was more than a little fanfare.

For many tastemaker acts, the decision to regroup could fire up fractious debates. Hanna, Fateman and Samson rolled right into it. “I live like a mile away. How could I say no?’” laughs Hanna. The feat wasn’t just a short drive down the hill in the end though, as she acknowledges. “That’s part

of the reason we’re going to come over to you [in the UK] because we did all this work. Jo and JD really revamped a bunch of the music. We have new videos. We have new costumes and all for one show. It seemed totally ridiculous to not take it to other places.” Samson agrees: “We all got off the stage at the This Ain’t No Picnic show and were like, ‘Wait, that’s it? That’s the end?’”

Rather than a finale, their This Ain’t No Picnic performance brought Le Tigre further towards their origin story. Nearly 20 years had passed since their last performance but their outspoken singalongs and danceable revolution have never felt more relevant, as Fateman attests. “When we originally said yes, it was right before the 2020 election here [in the US]. We had all this nervous energy [but] felt like it could be the cathartic thing to rock the vote. But more so to be there, to be together, and have that as a morale booster.”

Depressingly or not, Le Tigre’s legacy to be that boost has stood the test of time. Their music continues to bring a community together, creating a welcome world without war and violence. And, with so many of those subjects rife right now, their electro-pop sermons are the perfect antidote for ailing indie heads everywhere. Sure, they might not be able to shake up our world leaders but they’ve got the perfect ammunition to set about future change, as Fateman concludes: “What will people like in 300 years? Obviously, they’ll still like Deceptacon!”

“It’s punk in a lot of ways [...] The internet really has done a lot for DIY culture”

JD Samson, Le Tigre

“When we made the first record, I didn’t think anybody would listen”

Kathleen Hanna, Le Tigre

Family Values

Ahead of releasing their latest album, I Don’t Know, on Mogwai’s Rock Action label, we catch up with Hull four-piece bdrmm

Words: Tony Inglis

It seems almost cruel to begin our conversation with bdrmm with reference to lager, considering how hungover they are from a raucous, surprise homecoming show at the Adelphi in Hull the night before. Jordan Smith is looking astonishingly fresh-faced despite a late night, while his brother Ryan, bdrmm’s frontman, could perhaps do with a little more sleep. Guitarist Joe Vickers is calling in from the venue (with a canine companion called Clyde), looking the most alive of the bunch, breaking down their gear and chastising drummer Conor Murray for leaving his kit standing.

Yet here we are, because a Scottish magazine talking to a band who have just signed with Mogwai’s label Rock Action absolutely needs to know why Ryan was previously in a band called The Tennents – spelled, crucially, like Scotland’s national drink. “It wasn’t even my idea. It was the boy who started the band who chose it.

A homage to old uncles,” he explains. “I could probably do with one now to be fair.”

It’s not a surprise Ryan and his bandmates are in a celebratory mood. They are on the brink of releasing their second record I Don’t Know, an epistle from minds simultaneously constrained and expanded in recent years. It began to come together during lockdown, but some songs date from a while back, and others only came to fruition afterwards. It’s a testament to finding new experiences by looking inward.

“You were forced to find other means to inspire yourself [during lockdown],” says Ryan, pointing out the positives that it brought to the writing process. “I was able to listen to so much more music and broaden the way I was approaching the songs.”

Jordan says: “You can hear moments on the record where we’re quite fragile. But you can chart the development of the sound. The record really works well to provide a snapshot not of one particular time, but several moments over the course of the years.”

The band’s self-titled debut record was a product of excavating the soul, with Ryan writing about, among other things, his brushes with substance abuse and mental health stru les. But ultimately, Bedroom worked because it wrung emotion out of noisy catharsis. Its expressionistic layering of loudness earned it the title of “modern shoegaze classic” by NME, a genre tag that now seems wholly earned but somewhat limiting. On I Don’t Know, bdrmm explore electronic textures inspired by di ing deep into Kid A, Autechre, the Warp back catalogue, graphic scoring, and other innovative ways to interpret music. If they are a shoegaze band, in the great pantheon of those types of records, this is their Soon, their Pygmalion

“It’s dangerous to think that you’re part of just one idea or genre because then you close off so many possibilities for anything else you could do,” says Jordan. “It’s whatever sounds good to us at the moment and if we can fuse these ideas, different styles of music that we all

love and appreciate together, then it sort of works perfectly. We’d be lying if we said we ever thought about genre; I feel like that’s up to music people to decide what we are. And we just have fun making it.”

All three agree it was a journey through self-doubt before they arrived at their second record, discarding three attempts before getting there. “There were times it felt easier to bow out and have one really fucking good record because there were periods where we were just getting on each other’s nerves and no one had any money,” says Jordan.

“After the first [album], I felt a bit lost. It was uncharted territory,” says Ryan. “I didn’t even think we’d release one album. So then from there, it was like ‘what the fuck do we do now?’” Joe continues: “But we worked our arses off for years to get to that point, to even slightly break even. We owed it to ourselves to get it done. It took some false starts but it was worth it in the end.”

One of the major reasons they came out the other side was the support of Mogwai, who took them on tour and then put a label contract in front of them which, despite being in a happy place with previous stewards Sonic Cathedral, the foursome jumped at due to the nurturing attitude the band showed them while on the road. Ryan recalls a time asking Barry Burns sheepishly about the band’s work film-scoring, and being moved by the attention he dedicated to answering such questions. He says it made the band feel like they’d “joined a family”.

Jordan says: “To have such brilliant people that you consider your friends, but also be mentors to you and look after you in such a beautiful, selfless way – it feels like a true honour.”

I Don’t Know is released on 30 Jun via Rock Action Records bdrmm play Monorail, Glasgow, 5 Jul; Edinburgh Psych Fest, Summerhall, 3 Sep; Classic Grand, Glasgow, 12 Nov bdrmm.bandcamp.com

“It’s dangerous to think that you’re part of just one idea or genre because then you close off so many possibilities for anything else”

Jordan Smith, bdrmm

Hair We Go

Medusa Deluxe, a delirious murder mystery set at a hairdressing competition, is the most original British film of the year. We chat to director Tom Hardiman about his ingenious whodunnit, which seemingly unfolds in a single-shot

Words: Nathaniel Ashley

When Tom Hardiman joins our Zoom call, he’s out of breath and apologetic. His bike had a puncture, he explains, and his mobile ran out of charge. He’s a charming combination of enthusiastic, polite, and slightly chaotic. He’d make for a great character in his breathless murder mystery Medusa Deluxe. Shot to look like a single take, it follows the entrants in a hairdressing competition when they discover one of their number has been murdered and brutally scalped. Bitter grudges and rivalries are unearthed as the camera follows the action, snaking along the corridors and through the dressing rooms of the building in which the competition is taking place.

The Skinny: This is almost an anti-murder mystery, where the death is the instigating incident but the mystery isn’t the point. Were you aiming to subvert those tropes?

Tom Hardiman: That’s the entire point of the film! I wrote it as a deconstructed murder mystery. I guess I was approaching it knowing that I was going to do long takes. Traditionally, if it was Frost or Morse or whatever, you have your red herring, your plot beat, and then you cut over here to something else. Whereas if you’re staying with the characters it suddenly becomes a character-led

drama, and you can be much more playful with the context. I was thinking about taking it apart as a genre almost, removing the detective, removing the exact nature of the murder. It was about subverting the conventions, trying to be playful, and actually just developing the genre, thinking about new places to take it. We’re storytellers, we want to break new ground and see where things can go.

The film is shot through with a wariness of artistic obsession, but how do you balance that with your filmmaking?

Yeah, that’s probably half the reason I’m interested in it. My first short film is about the history of British carpet making, and it’s got two characters who are obsessed with carpets. I think this through-line of passion verging on obsession is something I’m interested in. I’ve been around the creative world for a while now, since I came out of uni, and I’ve seen people who were on sets, brilliant at what they do, but it is a total life destroyer. There’s not many industries like it. I don’t know, cookery, maybe if you join the military. It really grabs you by the head, it’s like a headlock your entire life. I think you start to identify with that level of passion where it becomes all-consuming and you see it in all these ways. I think there’s another side

to it – we’re making drama, and it allows you to go to extremes and push the boundaries of that.

What was it that drew you to the art of hairdressing specifically?

It’s the entire culture around it. You’ve got the high – it’s how we see and present ourselves to the world. From that side, culturally and individually, it’s incredibly important. And then you’ve got the low, where it is this hairdressing culture, the jokiness and the fun of it, and for me that’s how comedy works.

I feel like creativity is flat. We’ve got all these hierarchies, art here, film here, literature here. And hairdressing isn’t there, and people don’t respect hairdressing the way they should. I came from a background of contemporary art. What I started to notice, about 2012 or 2013, is they basically just made collages of pictures – they pushed together all these different references, they broke down the sculpture itself. So you suddenly saw the pillar, the artifice of the sculpture became apparent. And Eugene [Souleiman, renowned hairstylist and the film’s hair designer] has been doing that in hairdressing for 30 years. He’s literally done the exact same thing, and yet because it’s hairdressing – the fashion industry knows how good he is, the hairdressing industry knows how good he is, but not everyone else does. And I want to bring the expertise and the skill of it to a wider audience. I think if Medusa could do that for hairdressing, make everyone go ‘bloody hell, it’s amazing’ I would be over the moon.

Why did you choose to use the one-shot format, and how did you achieve it?

It’s only really become possible recently, but it actually opens up options for you as a filmmaker. It poses questions to you – in the sense of what I was saying to you earlier, a murder mystery, staying with the character longer than you would traditionally, and how that changes the genre. You can get into a person’s space and really connect to them as a character. It’s almost more true to life. I feel like when you meet someone, you build a picture of them through what they say, rather than getting their entire backstory. That’s how I want to write characters, but I think that’s also how you approach it with the camera if you’re doing a longer take. I’ve seen other filmmakers, they’ve been doing it for years and taking it on. I love it, I’m desperate to see what the next ten years brings from all these filmmakers who have grown up with the internet.

Medusa Deluxe is released 9 Jun by MUBI

The Skinny readers can see Medusa Deluxe early at The CineSkinny Film Club; free preview screenings on 6 Jun at Summerhall, Edinburgh and on 7 Jun at CCA, Glasgow. theskinny.co.uk/tickets

Sunshine in Scotland

The Stand

Exactly a quarter-century since it was established in 1998, The Stand Edinburgh and its sister venue in Glasgow have become synonymous with Scottish comedy. Once called ‘arguably the world’s most perfect stand-up room’ by Edinburgh Fringe behemoth Stewart Lee (whose show returns to The Stand’s New Town Theatre on George Street this year), the basement setting and cabaret style seating is often imitated. Frankie Boyle and Kevin Bridges often grace its stage, upon which they and every name on the circuit have performed for years, and not just during the Fringe. Weekly pro and newcomer nights run year-round from £5

5 York Pl, Edinburgh / 333 Woodlands Rd, Glasgow

@StandComedyClub @StandGlasgow

The Queen's Hall

Built as a church in 1823 and transformed into a beloved independent venue in 1979, The Queen’s Hall has an interesting history that makes it a live performance space unlike any other in Edinburgh. Situated a short walk from the city centre close to the Meadows, it’s a fan favourite and the place artists love to play, with the intimate stage having been graced by Nina Simone, Nick Cave, Coldplay, Adele, Self Esteem, Lewis Capaldi, Courtney Pine, Chrissie Hynde, Steven Osborne, Robert Plant, Tori Amos and many more. If you’re looking for good vibrations in Edinburgh, you’ll nd your happy place here.

thequeenshall.net

Bonnie & Wild

Have you been to Bonnie & Wild yet? The Edinburgh Food Hall has an unrivalled choice of food and drink for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner. Indulge in the freshest Scottish seafood, Chinese ne dining, Sri Lankan and Cantonese street food, the UK’s best burgers, artisanal gelato, pillow-soft pancakes, sourdough pizzas, fried chicken, a deli, bottle shop, café and more. There's also, cocktails, mocktails, and a curated selection of Scottish craft beers and spirits. Plus there’s a stunning landscape photography exhibition, private dining room and bar, a ceilidh every month, and heaps of space for you and ALL your mates. bonnieandwildmarket.com

St James Quarter (Level 4), EH1 3AE

A selection of exciting venues and brands looking to welcome you this summer

The Garden at Teviot

The Garden at Teviot – the Edinburgh beer garden o ering an impressive range of cocktails and sharing drinks, fresh food from local suppliers, and live music every Friday and Saturday night. The Garden at Teviot is an amazing spot to pass the time with its open, covered and heated seating areas, delivering festival vibes all summer long. Food and drink deals include £10 Burger and Beer, Garden Booze and Brunch, 2-4-1 Pizza Mondays and more.

Open seven days a week, all summer long. Book your table or beach hut today!

Potterrow, 5/2 Bristo Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9AL eusa.ed.ac.uk/eatdrinkshop/ ndaspace/thegardenatteviot @thegardenatteviot

Culture Perth & Kinross

Perth Art Gallery is now open from Thursday to Monday, and as part of the phased approach to the reopened galleries, visitors can now explore two new permanent displays. Modern Scots tells the story of in uential modern Scottish artists and their contribution to 20th & 21st-century art. The works on display demonstrate new and innovative ways in which Scottish artists were working and taking inspiration from the past and Europe. The display includes key players in the story of Scottish art, such as Joan Eardley and Sir William MacTaggart, alongside renowned contemporary artists Calum Colvin and Alison Watt. A New Perspective in the Sculpture Court showcases artworks from 16th to 17th-century Europe.

Admission is free, donations welcome.

Wasps

Wasps is a registered charity that’s provided studio spaces across Scotland to support artists, makers and the creative industries for over forty years. Established in 1977 in Dundee with the rst building at Meadow Mill, today we manage twenty buildings – from Shetland to Selkirk – and are the creative home to around a thousand artists and thirty-three organisations. As part of our remit, we redevelop historic yet redundant buildings by converting them into facilities for artists, creative industries and social enterprises.

Wasps runs a year-round arts programme at creative hubs in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth and Inverness.

Visit waspsstudios.org.uk/programme for full information.

Royal Botanics Garden Edinburgh

Festival of Flavours, a celebration of fabulous seasonal food, will be held at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on ve selected weekends from 9 June to 20 August. Enjoy tasty tempting treats and refreshing drinks from food trucks and cafes while enjoying the beautiful surroundings.

Food on o er will include freshly baked pizza, Greek gyros, plant-based street food and wa es. Festival of Flavours will be held from Friday to Sunday on 9-11 June; 30 June-2 July; 14-16 July; 4-7 August; 18-20 August from 11am to 6pm.

rbge.org.uk

Interpret This

Disabled access to the arts is severely lacking, particularly in comedy. We speak to Karen Forbes who has a passion for reaching deaf audiences through BSL interpreting

Words: Yasmin Hackett

Illustration: Holly Farndell

Anyone familiar with the UK comedy circuit may recognise Scottish comic Ray Bradshaw, known for signing his own stand-up sets. As his audiences have grown, so has the overwhelming demand for more disabled access across the arts. That’s where his trusty British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter, Karen Forbes, steps in.

“I grew up with sign language. And it’s been a real passion of mine, right through my life,” Karen tells us. Her background in BSL interpretation is extensive in the theatre world and through that, she and Ray go way back. Our conversation with her paints a lovely picture of a friendship borne through a shared desire to open up access to the arts for deaf people.

“I was brought up in the deaf community: my mum was deaf, and I have aunts who are deaf as well”. As a CODA (child of deaf adult), Karen learned to sign before she could speak, much like Ray.

From the age of seven Karen was interpreting her mum during GP visits, as the access simply wasn’t there for basic services, let alone arts provision. “My mum used to take me to the theatre, even though she couldn’t access it, because there were no interpreters back then. But she knew that I loved theatre, and the arts.

“That’s been a passion for me for years and years, making sure that deaf people had [and have] access in any shape or form,” she tells us.

Ray and Karen had a mutual connection growing up: his dad and her mum were friendly

through a deaf club in Glasgow. They also became good friends through their work for the same deaf youth theatre, but it wasn’t until slightly later that they began working together across Ray’s standup career.

“I went to see Ray a number of times at his comedy shows, and I just loved them. I thought the access was really good, and the fact that he was signing his own shows was fantastic.” Sign interpreters are not commonplace at your typical comedy gig – much less a comedian signing while telling jokes. But after performing a show back in 2019, Ray made Karen a proposition: he wanted to have the entire run of his upcoming Edinburgh Fringe show BSL interpreted. It was an opportunity which Karen simply couldn’t refuse.

“It was fantastic. We had a huge number of deaf people who came to see it, and the feedback was great.”

Anyone who’s been to a comedy show, though, might wonder how easy BSL interpretation for stand-up comedy might be. After all, the structure and shape of shows are often in flux and constant development, particularly over the course of a month-long festival where your audience is more or less different every day. “Comedy is hard to interpret because there is no script.

“You may have points throughout the show where you know that that comedian is going to talk about certain things, but you don’t know which direction it’s going to go. The thing about Ray is he loves to interact with the audience. He

has a really special bond with his audience, and that has grown over the years.”

It might sound like a challenge, but it’s one that Karen seems to relish. And though Ray still often signs his own shows, having Karen there adds a different spin on it. “With Ray’s background being that he can sign, it means that we can play off one another. We have so much fun with that.”

There’s still a long way to go before accessible comedy shows are the norm. Shows like Ray’s are still pretty unique, but there’s a few pioneers paving the way. In comedy, Rosie Jones is exclusively touring to accessible-only venues, while Katie Pritchard embedded audio description in her 2022 Fringe show. Elsewhere, disabled-led theatre companies like Glasgow-based Birds of Paradise (Don’t. Make. Tea.) and Flawbored (It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure, coming to Fringe) are ensuring accessibility is embedded in their work from the off.

“I think we’ve still got a few roads to go, still a journey to take. Within the arts, I think companies have recognised that they need to provide more access, and how to do it. I think that’s really important. It’s not all about ticking a box. It’s about how they encourage deaf audiences to come to something.”

Edinburgh Deaf Festival runs from 11-20 Aug across multiple venues edinburghdeaffestival.co.uk

Ray Bradshaw: Work In Progress, 4-26 Aug (not 16), 7.30pm, Scottish Comedy Festival @ Waverley Bar, £5

Adapt to Survive

Clubs, promoters, and artists have been stru ling in light of the recent cost of living crisis. We chatted to some of Scotland’s underground club promoters, Palidrone and PLANT BASS’D, to understand ways in which they’re trying to adapt to rising costs

Words: Heléna Stanton

The current cost of living crisis, preceded by even greater governmental incompetence during the 2020 pandemic, has left underground enthusiasts unsure whether their local and national music scenes can accommodate nightclubs in the future. This problem is not unique to the United Kingdom – throughout Europe and the US similar questions have been raised over whether club music is in some way endangered, eventually facing extinction.

Surface-level analysis of the UK night-time economy’s post-lockdown state assumed that more people would actively seek out spaces like nightclubs, bars and pubs. However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that this isn’t the case. A direct effect of the cost of living crisis is that people are unable to spend as much income on club nights. Recent research from the Night Time Industry Association shows the change in spending patterns: ‘The Night Time Economy saw a drop in consumer spending from £116.1bn in 2019 to £77.2bn in 2020. This is a fall of £38.9bn (NTIA, 2023).’

With the UK’s current inflation rate at 10%, the cost of running club nights has dramatically increased. The nighttime industry association reports that 255 nightclubs have closed since 2020. Ultimately, nightclubs are at a greater risk of closure now in 2023 than during the peak of lockdown. This shocking statistic translates into the smaller lineups seen in some of the bi est clubs in the UK with smaller fees for local DJs.

The impact of lower revenue for clubs has been seen close to home – last October, Glasgow’s queer co-op club and venue Bonjour had to crowdfund due to spiralling costs from outstanding rent. Bonjour successfully secured the funds it required to remain open – thankfully the potential loss of an important LGBTQ+ venue within Scotland was avoided. Other attempts to ensure new promoters are entering the music industry have led the online music magazine, Resident Advisor, to launch MAKE SPACE, a development programme for the next wave of promoters. Consisting of mentorship and masterclasses aiming to provide the necessary tools for small club nights to facilitate their success, this is the first scheme of its kind, teaming up

with renowned UK clubs including Wire (Leeds), Soup Kitchen (Manchester), Corsica Studios (London), and Love Inn (Bristol).

Outside of nightclub closures, the cost of living crisis is impacting promoters. Small grassroots promoters are the beating heart of a healthy local scene; rising costs have a knock-on impact on DJ fees, travel and accommodation for artists. We talk to Edinburgh-based promoter and label Palidrone, with an impressive archive of events including Teki Latex, DjRUM, DJ Stingray, SPFDJ & VTSS. They say: “Honestly, the bi est one for me is to always outline your travel and accommodation budget when making offers (similar to a landed deal) – it makes sure that you’re protected against rising costs and encourages artists’ teams to arrange this early and not leave it until the last minute (we’ll sort it within our budget or the agent will). Travel/hotels are often the difference between making money and losing money, especially when you’re putting on shows in smaller capacity clubs, so making sure you don’t blow your budget on it unnecessarily is essential.”

Other options which promoters are trying out include pushing avant-garde and more experimental artists. Edinburgh and Glasgow-based PLANT BASS’D has operated multiple cross-city events since the end of the lockdown. Oisin, the founder of the club night, describes his approach to combating stagnating crowds and low turnout club nights: “I’ve felt the need to expand on the lineups I put together, be it with double headliners, stage production, artwork, etc. We need people to come. I fear that the current situation is putting promoters in the dangerous position of taking too much risk to make our events attractive enough for punters to commit, but it’s too early to know and we all seem to be getting by for now. If you can, I think you need to just keep taking the risks. They’ve always been there. See how you go.”

Although the outlook for the UK during this difficult time is slightly bleak, there seems to be hope for underground music thriving within clubs. Cherish and support them – without clubs as an outlet for creativity and social interaction, underground music labels and artists will stru le to thrive.

Movie Magick

We look back at the highlights from the thirteenth edition of Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival, where community filmmaking shone brightly. Other highlights include a celebration of the UK’s most prolific actor and a haunting portrait of teens run amok

Words: Jamie Dunn

Artistry and community go hand in hand at the thirteenth edition of Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival. This annual showcase of experimental film and artists’ moving image in Hawick would be worth celebrating in its own right, given the creativity of work on show and the warmth of the welcome afforded to anyone who makes it to this Borders town for the May Day bank holiday weekend. But what makes Alchemy a truly special film festival is the way it incorporates the wealth of filmmaking being done in the community around Hawick throughout the year.

Alchemy’s lively four-day programme includes cinema screenings, moving-image installations and additional special events, and brings world-renowned international artists to Hawick. But threaded through the programme you’ll find plenty of work comingling in a meaningful way with communities in the Borders and across Scotland. Much of it is specially commissioned by Alchemy themselves as part of The Teviot, The Flag and the Rich, Rich Soil, a project incorporating artists’ residencies and year-round community engagement projects.

Take Julia Parks. She took part in Alchemy’s six-month filmmaking residency last year, and the results were among the highlights of this year’s event. The gala Saturday night screening was the world premiere of a quartet of films Parks made around the Borders, exploring themes of nature, industry, folk traditions and community. All four are wonderfully evocative and gorgeous thanks to Parks’ tactile 16mm photography. The best was also the longest: the poetic documentary The Wool Aliens, which explores the way that the once booming textile industry of the Borders has significantly changed its natural habitat.

Julia Parks was also behind Cultivate!, a joyous installation built around work created during analogue workshops Parks ran in Hawick with a group of 16-to-30-year-olds. The films themselves consist of playful experiments. Some were shot on Bolex cameras and feature the workshop participants larking around, but the most prominent footage seems to be a curious archive documentary about a hamster, the 16mm footage of which has been scratched, destressed and animated upon during the workshops. As fun as these films are, it’s the presentation that’s the kicker. The room was a riot of flickering images and twirling film reels, with film from the three 16mm projectors spooled in haphazard diagonals across the ceiling. Two digital projectors were thrown in for good measure, and additional rotating screens

were suspended from the ceiling on chains, creating an overwhelming, heady celebration of celluloid.

Another collaborative piece that knocked my socks off was Webb-Ellis’s beguiling This Place is a Message. Made with a group of teenagers from Kent, it’s a haunting, dreamlike portrait of adolescence run amok. We follow a group of teens leaving their school prom in a stretch limo which takes them to an abandoned chalk quarry where they appear to begin their own society in the face of an uncertain future. They muse about life, create banners, they dance, their satin dresses and garish tuxedos become increasingly torn and dishevelled and they abandon language for animalistic grunts and guttural noises. These scenes are interspersed with precocious younger children as talking heads, philosophising about the future of our planet and how we can pass messages across decades and centuries to future generations. This might sound dystopian but there’s also hope in the film, the su estion that the younger generation are ready to build their own new world out of the ashes we’ve created.

Youngsters musing on the destruction of the planet also featured in Basharat Khan’s lovely short By Leaves We Live. Another community project, the film features children from primary schools in Glasgow’s Gorbals imagining what trees would tell us if they could speak. Khan filmed the kids speaking their tree thoughts – “don’t chop me, I’m here to help you survive”, “I like it when the birds visit”, and “please protect us” are some of their moving su estions – and then projected these onto trees in the Gorbals Rose Garden at night, giving these beautiful plants ghostly personification. The result is an environmental film brimming with empathy.

Elina Bry’s Walking to Connect also merged community and nature. Made as part of Inverclyde Culture Collective, the film came out of a threemonth residency that involved Bry working with Your Voice Recovery, a network for people recovering from substance abuse dependency. The concept is simple: Bry encouraged the guys she was working with to walk, not as a means of making it from A to B but to connect with the nature around their hometown of Greenock, and each taking an iPhone with them to record.

But the phone isn’t just in their hand. It’s taped to their palms, or their ankles, or to the five iron one of them is carrying around, letting their bodies become tripods that see the world from new angles. Bry has cut their raw footage and sound

recordings together in pleasingly playful ways, creating a kaleidoscope of split screens and screens within screens. Bry’s film is quietly moving; it’s heart-warming to see people who often don’t get the chance to express themselves doing so in inventive and endlessly surprising ways.

Owain Train McGilvary’s I’m finally using my body for what I feel like it’s made to do was another gem concerned with community and the importance of self-expression in our lives. It’s a vivid documentary that takes us inside the codes and mores of a group of women and non-binary wrestlers in the southside of Glasgow. The title takes its name from a line in the Netflix show Glow, but there’s something decidedly less glossy about this gym and these down-to-earth women who are clearly revelling in the transformative potential of the wrestling ring. We hear several of them explain the pleasure they get from playing ‘the heel’ – the villainous antagonist who gleefully winds up the crowd who support the good guy ‘faces’ – and another discusses the joy of having something of her own outside of her family; class, gender and friendship are also explored. Between these interviews are more expressionistic moments, including the initially disorientating ref-eye views of wrestling bouts, which play out to the film’s fantastic synth score by Comfort. Handwritten intertitles and cutout animation add to this heady collage celebrating queer community and working-class spaces.

The collaborative nature of filmmaking was celebrated, too, in the wonderful Jill, Uncredited Director and editor Anthony Ing slices together dozens of scenes from the many hundreds of movies and TV shows featuring Jill Goldston, the UK’s single most prolific actor. Despite this

ubiquity, the name – and the face – isn’t likely to be familiar to you. Goldston made her 50-year career by blending into the background as an extra. Initially, Ing’s film is a bit like playing a tricky game of Where’s Wally? Is that fussy blob over the shoulder of Tim Curry her? Or what about that brunette lying in bed at the back of a hospital ward? But as soon as you become familiar with Goldston’s distinct profile and petite frame, she becomes impossible to miss. Soon it’s A-listers like Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep who become background players to Goldston, who convinces in every one of her roles, from jury member to suffragette to guest at a Dionysian banquet. The cumulative effect of seeing this clearly talented bit-part player recast as the star is surprisingly touching, and combined with Ing’s hypnotic editing and his plaintive piano score, deeply moving.

Archive footage was also expertly manipulated in Eilan Mikkola’s Man Made. Taking a handful of scenes from a found 16mm reel that appears to be a prosaic black and white American film from the 1950s, Mikkola has crafted a wry and seductive exploration of masculinity and burgeoning queer desire. A four-by-four grid introduces us to a classic masculine image of American cinema: a man driving with the top down on an open road. Mikkola then plays with this image and the assumingly macho narrative that was due to unfold in the original film. By freezing and repeating frames, Mikkola creates something more thorny, as a young boy appears to become infatuated with a handsome young trumpet player (“he looks like a youth pastor, except he smokes!”) who’s rolled into town. Throwaway glances become intense stares and rewound faces become loaded with meaning.

As for the trumpet... well, you don’t need to be Freud to guess what that symbolises.

Shout out, too, to my favourite film of the weekend: Saul Pankhurst’s To Do. It’s a wonderful skewering of our hectic modern life and the pervasive self-improvement industry. The film follows the morning routine of a guy trying to begin his day on the right foot. After firing up his worryingly cluttered (but familiar-looking) desktop our protagonist logs into his morning meditation app, although it isn’t long before a whir of anxieties start flooding his no in – “Should I do a wild swim”, “remember to cancel Amazon”, “how do I reach 1000 followers?”... This overactive mind is brought to life onscreen with a chaotic animated collage of images that’s part Pop Art, part Dalí, part Monty Python. Anyone who can’t escape swirling thoughts just before bed or during a post-yoga shavasana will surely identify.

There were myriad other highlights, from Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s haunting performance piece To Yield to a series of free installations around Hawick and probably the coolest ceilidh I’ve ever attended. Something special is happening in this sleepy little town in the Borders, and this joyous four-day event is only the tip of the iceberg of creativity, humanity and serious hard work being done by Alchemy’s small but industrious and endlessly enthusiastic team. With their focus on community, education and inclusivity and their year-round events and programmes, Alchemy are showing how film festivals can be more than transitory parties for cinephiles and industry types. They’re building a lasting legacy for their community.

Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival took place 27-30 Apr in Hawick. For more on Alchemy, head to alchemyfilmandarts.org.uk

Released 16 June

Album of the Month

Azamiah — In Phases

In Phases marks the captivatingly stunning debut of Glasgow-based Azamiah. Describing themselves as genre-fluid and their output as ‘spiritual jazz’, the collective – led by vocalist INDIA BLUE – draw with intentionality from a range of styles. Neo-soul, Latin American rhythm and choral music meld together to create a sound both rooted in time and place, yet with distinctive character.

Top-loaded with its fullest tracks, opener and lead single Night Woman starts with saxophone, layering instrumentation to build upwards. In Phases is very much a collaborative affair, and this shines through each track as a piece and as part of a wider whole. Each individual piece of instrumentation provides a new entry point for this album to be appreciated through. Yet the true joy shines in listening to the ways the ensemble play and vibe off one another, creating a language – a spell – uniquely their own. You can imagine these tracks soundtracking night walks through the city streets it was borne of, narrating the bustle of nightlife, and elsewhere channelling the solitude and quiet possibility of the hours before dawn breaks.

The lengthy tracks Bedroom and Half-Man float along, drumbeats, bass and percussive elements improvising while BLUE’s vocals float in

and out with understated, cool timbre. Azamiah are unafraid to use time and space to their advantage, and this allows their sound to stretch out, to be fully appreciated and absorbed. As the album continues to unfold, it gradually becomes more abstracted. Naturistic and meditative moments dominate the album’s latter half, translating to airy, considered soundscapes. Minute-long fragment Monologue II gives a single harp solo space and presence. Elsewhere ocarina breathes a reedy, airy aura into purposefully minimalistic and sparse arrangements.

These fragments act as preludes to where this album truly brims with life; in the uninhibited harmonies assembled, radiating with the spontaneity and vibrancy inherent to jazz. They are playfully experimental: making space for contrasts and duality, playing with form and leaving in raw snippets. It gives this album a living, breathing feel. It is as much a work in flux and in motion as it is a final product. Indeed, it’s as if the final shape of this album is just one of the many paths it may have taken, crystallised. For what it’s worth, it’s a solid one. A sophisticated, poetic debut from Azamiah, In Phases is sure to make waves both within and beyond Scotland’s jazz scene.

Listen to: Fire

On their latest album, Tao Fire 道火, Taiwanese duo Mong Tong 夢東 create bizarre, mesmerising soundscapes which combine ambient music with a psychedelic rock twist. Utilising an eclectic polyrhythmic combination of instruments, you’re transported from the final-boss-onthe-beach energy of Tropic Sub to the humid, hypnotising determination of Naihe Bridge.

Combining Southeast Asian influence with bitty decaying synths, atmospheric nature sounds, incongruous percussion, and an impressive spectrum of guitar effects, this almost hodge-podge collection of tones and textures creates an incredibly compelling, intense, and generally dense experience that’s easy to get lost in. However, Tao Fire 道火 truly peaks in its last two tracks – Ghost Island and Rain Maker. The first paints a post-apocalyptic bleakness rooted in current reality, with an unnervingly apathetic voice stating ‘They’re lying to you, GI… / Your rich leader gets richer whilst you’re dying in the swamp’. Then Rain Maker persistently builds a storm of textures, with sustained guttural singing like opening the gates of hell, before… silence, for a minute, cut by a crunch, and a limping, haunted melody su ests that perhaps you have succumbed to the music and are now, in fact, dead. [Chlo Spinks]

Like Squid’s debut, O Monolith begs for attentive listening. While 2021’s Bright Green Field was by no means the serene countryland of its title, comparatively it was a pastoral stroll. O Monolith is a torn-up patchwork of terrain; scorching sands sutured violently into haunting forestry, sprawling ocean-scapes tidally enveloping dense metropolitan high-rises.

Listen to:

Jenny Lewis, a former child actor so synonymous with Los Angeles, is perhaps a surprise transplant to Nashville, where she made Joy’All, but the sonic impact of the move is not to imbue her songwriting with more of a country feel. Instead, it shines through in the sense of inner peace it appears to have instilled in Lewis, whose lyrical scalpel has never been sharper than on this quietly knowing set of songs reflecting on ageing and contentment.

Much of Joy’All came out of a week-long virtual songwriting workshop hosted by Beck, and while the songs feel of a piece with one another, there is subtly rich variety here, from the retro pop of Love Feel and Chain of Tears to stargazing reflection on Essence of Life and the dusky groove of Giddy Up and the title track. On lead single Puppy and a Truck, she saves us the job of setting the contextual scene for the record by doing so herself. ‘I was infatuated with an older man,’ she sings of one relationship, ‘and then I dated a psychopath’. That track is the record in microcosm, a paean to leaving emotional tumult behind in favour of a simpler life. [Joe Go ins]

Christine and the Queens’ immersive fourth studio album balances sinister and sweet sensibilities, building resplendent soundscapes that feel both distant and intimate. With many evocations of angels throughout, we get the sense this is Chris’s conversation with a celestial force.

Listen to: If You Had Seen The Bull’s Swimming Attempts You Would Have Stayed Away, The Blades

The non-hierarchical ethic of the outfit affects a wilding selection of contrasting musical ideas. For most, this tapestry of sounds would flounder and reject its connectivity, but Squid successfully stitch diverse concepts into one brooding work. The ecstatic electro-terror of Swing (In A Dream) should jar in its preceding of Devil’s Den, a woodwind-heavy number, harmonious and gentle in its infancy but characteristically explosive later. The Blades is premised on a minimalist glitch-beat evocative of Syro-era Aphex Twin, and grows to a fuzzing swirl tangling with Ollie Judge’s wailing.

The final track of the project is most worthy of being considered monolithic in its own right. If You Had Seen the Bull’s Swimming Attempts You Would Have Stayed Away provides three distinct sonic variations in its first minute alone, and doesn’t rest from thereon out. It encapsulates O Monolith, and elevates it. [Jo Hi s]

Listen to: I feel like an angel, Shine, Lick the light out (feat. Madonna)

There’s a lot going on in PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE and yet it remains remarkably cohesive. It skilfully borrows and elevates: Tears can be so soft channels Sade and Moby; there are flutters of Caroline Polachek’s yearning on True love; and the pathos of Yazoo stings on Full of life. Shine’s moodiness is like Ethel Cain if she studied abroad, and the ballsy, trudging drum in Let me touch you once is pure Gorillaz-meets-Solange. Spoken word-breaks with the delivery of camp villains festoon Track 10 and Lick the light out.

Chris’s reliably mellifluous vocals are more generative than ever here: at once delicate, like a finger tracing a marble vein, and strident. Vulnerable lyricism capturing allconsuming love adorns the record and you never once doubt his convictions – he knows the interstices of love. After an encounter with a divine messenger, it’s clear Chris has the answers. [Lucy Fitzgerald]

King Krule Space Heavy XL Recordings, 9 Jun rrrrr

Listen to: From The Swamp, Seaforth

King Krule, aka Archy Marshall, has come a long way since first introducing himself a decade ago. His breathy drawl and a ressive guitar work sprawled across his stunning debut 6, Feet Beneath the Moon His horizons have broadened since then. But with his new album Space Heavy, King Krule takes varying flavours from his unique sonic world and brings them together to create his most colourful work to date.

The guitar that’s been Krule’s crux throughout his career now conveys all manner of depth. The grungy tunings of From The Swamp and blissful reverbs of Seaforth exemplify this best on his new album. Vulnerability has also remained a career constant, and the inherent unknowns of ‘the space between’ – the notion explored throughout Space Heavy – not only expands the sonic canvas, but also equips Krule with a rich palette of stories on love and loss to paint with.

Lush song transitions, guest vocals and sharp bursts of abrasiveness all add further character. But above all else, it’s the inimitability of Krule that’s still as prominent as ever – sometimes primal with anger, others tender and subdued, nobody sounds like him. [Jamie Wilde]

Feeble Little Horse Girl With Fish Saddle Creek, 9 Jun rrrrr

Listen to: Freak, Sweet, Heavy Water

Feeble Little Horse have emerged from a Pennsylvania music scene made up of a youthful, scrappy anti-royalty. It’s a wonderful place to spend time in, as solidarity and personnel cross-pollinates creatively, whether you’re listening to They Are Gutting A Body Of Water’s modern shoegaze, or this band’s dry witted, capricious fuzz-pop.

Some of the tracks from their confident new record, Girl With Fish, channel the spirit of a band like Crying (not from Pennsylvania), guitar tones being warped through a phaser, becoming video gamified, and then reappearing given flesh again, always amping up the noise but never compromising on an infectious melody. Even when a hint of gentleness appears, like the acoustic plucking and mothership bleeps on Slide, they metallicise into wiry wool. Soft is just a precursor to loud.

Their secret weapon though is vocalist Lydia Slocum, who sings about the yearning, disenchantment, and tragedy, of relationships with equal gusto. She’ll be sidling up assuredly to a six foot five sportstar ‘Freak’ (complimentary), then later, on Tin Man, ripping apart a significant other and finding no substance. Slocum’s lyrics give this tight 27 minutes of music a literary might beyond this band’s years. [Tony Inglis]

Swans The Be ar Mute/Young God Records, 23 Jun rrrrr

Listen to: Paradise is Mine, The Memorious, Why Can’t I Have What I Want Any Time That I Want?

Beginning with 2019’s Leaving Meaning, The Be ar continues Swans’ drift away from the squalling noise and battering grooves of The Seer and To Be Kind, into something slightly gentler. The likes of lead single Paradise is Mine and Why Can’t I Have What I Want Any Time That I Want? work brilliantly well in this fashion. They use the same one riff principle Swans have carried through their whole career, but allow them to balm rather than pummel, maintaining enough growling atonality in the mix to remind you who you’re dealing with.

There is an issue with some of the tracks that are more song oriented, as in the case of Unforming, in which they don’t quite coalesce into anything much. That said, the record’s closing double of The Be ar Lover (Three) and The Memorious are classic Swans. The former, a 40-minute opus of mounting tension, bolted together from the essential Swans ingredients of ominous drone, toxic Americana and needling electronics. The latter is their trademark, one idea done with increasing intensity until the whole thing sounds like it’s going to buckle apart. [Joe Creely]

The Japanese House In The End It Always Does Dirty Hit, 30 Jun rrrrr

Listen to: Touching Yourself, Sunshine Baby, Morning Pages

No one does heartbreak quite like Amber Bain, aka The Japanese House. Her 2019 debut LP Good at Falling was a gut-punch of a record, dealing with the emotional turmoil of ending a three-year relationship. Since then, Bain has been on quite a journey: moving town, entering into a throuple, cohabiting in lockdown and having those relationships end. In The End It Always Does ruminates on falling in and out of love, with clarity and optimism, and a sense of coming full circle.

With Bain’s signature soaring melodies, hypnotic soundscapes and sultry vocals, the record is instantly endearing. She leans further into the pop style in which she has often dabbled, with vocal contributions from The 1975’s Matty Healy and George Daniel, Katie Gavin from MUNA and Justin Vernon.

It’s heartfelt and fun in equal measure, flitting between moods and styles. There’s infectious pop on Touching Yourself and Sunshine Baby, resplendence on Morning Pages and Indexical Reminder of a Morning Well Spent, and elsewhere, touches of cheesy 90s-style countrypop. But with all this exploration, the record lacks a little impact, not quite achieving the cohesion and emotional gravity of Good at Falling

Music Now

Words: Lewis Robertson

Last month, we missed EPs Iliad by Theo Bleak and Celestia Deep Diver by Pearling. May singles came from Sean Focus (Arr You Ready), Oyakhire (Until Then), Linzi Clark (Sea Song), Starsky-Rae (Sentimental Fuck), Whim (Levitation) and Chef the Rapper (Payday, ft. Katherine Aly). Siobhan Wilson capped off May with a double-album release on the 31st; Recording Of Myself In A Room Of My Own, a title which hybridises works by Virginia Woolf and Walt Whitman, makes the first half, with instrumental Seeing With Myself in Nature being the latter, a soundscape inspired by the pastoral scenes of the Scottish Borders where Wilson works.

And then, June! Kicking things off is NANI’s EP Honey (9 Jun). We’ve eagerly awaited material from the Edinburgh-based singer-songwriter after singles Search Bar and Limbo warmed up the chillier months, and the ultra-smooth stylings of the indie artist will make a cool conclusion on the Sunday of this year’s Kelburn Garden Party, where NANI is playing our Pyramid Stage.

The Foam Road (16 Jun) is the debut of Shea Martin, aka Housekind. Coming to Edinburgh from a Gaeltacht region in Ireland, where the Irish language is the most commonly spoken, Housekind’s competency with traditional Celtic sound is apparent across this EP. Light strings or percussion fade in and out to accompany Martin’s haunting performances and mystic ruminations, particularly in Salt Shield and Dear Ones. See the EP launch at Dragonfly in Edinburgh on 18 June, where Housekind is sure to deliver an arresting, spiritual recital.

Sound design fans will be well-fed this month. Nichola Scrutton’s Interzone (15 Jun) earns its experimental distinction with innovations in performance and post-production, as well as themes of liminality, or in-betweenness. In-studio, Scrutton performs idiosyncratic vocal techniques, guttural chanting and sharp intakes of breath, which are intermixed with abstract accompaniments, modulating into the notes themselves. Unfamiliar methods of distortion create the sense that this is all a distant dream, or, as Scrutton’s voice becomes more overwhelming and antagonistic, a restless nightmare.

Before you’ve had the chance to wrap your head around that record, Enymore by Josef Akin drops the following day. This intricately woven jazz album, full of inter-instrumental, improvisational breaks, gives ample turns for the synth to solo, keeping the sound high-tech while working in a very historied genre. Akin is occupied by frontiers, not just in equipment, but theme. Opener Mchaze crescendoes with a ‘blast-off’ cacophony, and closer Space Is Still The Place references a 1970s Afrofuturist anthem by jazz legend Sun Ra.

Jazz fans, June is your time. Also on the 16th, catch In Phases,

the debut by Azamiah, an ensemble releasing on Rebecca’s Records. This ‘spiritual jazz’ uses the genre’s easy-listening nature to invoke a transcendent state of mind. Gently running waters and soothing chants build a monastic tone, and tracks like Solace and Rituals make for a meditative playback experience. Spoiler: it’s our Album of the Month – read the full review on page 67. There’s also plenty of pop in time for the good weather, starting with Rudi Zygadlo’s Do erland (30 Jun). What could be a better score for beach days than an album exploring a primordial landscape as if it were something we could easily walk through this summer? The fantasy of Do erland, named after the now-submerged land bridge that connected Britain and Europe, reverses rising tides and political strife. Antediluvian environments are resurrected with sonic set-dressing, but the ambitious worldbuilding doesn’t come at the cost of playability. Zygadlo’s iconic voice slides around the scales, his elastic performance accenting the diversity of this Mesolithic ecosystem, while giving the album a radio-friendly, indie-pop/psych-rock flavour.

Releasing on the same day is The Wringer by Martha Ffion (by no means as gruelling as the title su ests). The tracks are immediately playful, with charming lyrics in a major key, full of affection, and just what we need moving into July. The peppy backing vocals and electric guitar give the album its 60s and 70s vibes, drawing comparisons to Dusty Springfield and Steely Dan.

For other highlights this month, indie composer Rianne Downey releases Method to My Madness (9 Jun). An uplifting address to the lovelorn and self-destructive, it’s as sweet as it is sing-in-the-showerable. Glasgow hip-hop heavy-hitter Texture gives us OLD BOY (17 Jun), a dark, dystopian EP made in collaboration with Supermann On Da Beat and eyesluvsu. Check Odes of Hope for Sad Bois (8 Jun), the newest EP by Aberdonian indie-pop auteur Heff VanSaint. Classical guitarist Morgan Szymanski and experimental musician Tommy Perman breach their long-distance partnership to bring us Flying Among the Trees (23 Jun), and Scottish exports Django Django release their latest, Off Planet (16 Jun), featuring contributions from Self Esteem, Stealing Sheep, Jack Peñate and more. June singles include Matriarch by MALKA, a touching open letter to the maternal namesakes, the far-out Otherworld by Celestial North, and the high-kicking Nunchucks by Crush Mouse

From experimental jazz to indie-pop concept albums, there’s so much good Scottish music flying around this summer, you’ll need a really big net to catch it all

Film of the Month — Asteroid City

Director: Wes Anderson

Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Jake Ryan

RRRR R

Released 23 June by Universal Certificate 12A

theskinny.co.uk/film

The sleepy desert town of Asteroid City has its fair share of oddities. There’s the science research centre smackbang in the middle of nowhere, an unfinished motorway ramp built stretching a measly few feet into the sky, and its namesake: an enormous crater left thousands of years ago by debris crashing from outer space. For Wes Anderson’s 11th film, the ever-inventive director takes this relatively empty canvas to explore grief, existentialism, and aliens for one of his richest films to date.

Asteroid City’s population of 87 temporarily grows when a group of intrepid young scientists are invited to the town to collect an award. Among them is Woodrow (Jake Ryan, even more of a scene-stealer than he was scoffing chicken nu ets in Eighth Grade), who’s arrived with his father and his three sisters in a rickety car that breaks down on arrival. Afraid of upsetting his kids, patriarch Augie (Jason Schwartzman) has yet to tell them that their mother passed away just three weeks ago.

Since The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson has become increasingly daring with his framing devices, and in Asteroid City, he positions the viewer as a television audience watching a programme about the creation of a play set in the titular locale. Anderson cuts back from black-and-white to vibrant colour that mimics the feeling of sunshine bearing down on you in parallel storylines about the events of the play and its behind-thescenes drama. Though disorienting at first, the device cleverly blurs the lines between performance and reality, as the ensemble troupe of actors absorb their characters’ hopes and fears.

If you’re terminally online, you may have noticed the frustrating scourge of AI-generated remakes imagining classic

films in Anderson’s style. In the director’s Star Wars, a perfectly centrally-placed X-wing sits in a pastel Death Star, and in his version of Hogwarts, Timothée Chalamet plays Harry Potter. Beyond the mind-numbing absence of creativity, these pastiches reduce his work to lifeless paintings, perfectly symmetrical frames and, well, that’s about it. There’s a willful misunderstanding of who he is as a filmmaker.

The beauty of Wes Anderson is that, with every film, he breaks out of the confines of his supposed rulebook. A meeting with an extra-terrestrial sets the foundations for some of Anderson’s most awe-inspiring images to date, mixing live-action, miniatures and animation in a sequence that evokes Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. When word reaches the military of the alien visit, Asteroid City goes into lockdown, inviting the locals to, paradoxically, reflect and look outward. In that sense, this is the closest Anderson may come to making a pandemic drama, as a series of wistful conversations between Augie and movie star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) speak to the perennial longing for connection in isolation.

Contrary to popular belief, Anderson’s films also carry a deep emotional complexity, their beautiful images masking the pain that characters attempt to conceal. Loss and tragedy permeate Asteroid City. Augie’s encounters with the terrifying unknowns of grief and the limitless universe go hand-in-hand. Beneath the cosmic wonder of Anderson’s luminous world is something painfully, humanly close to home. [Iana Murray]

Scotland on Screen: Simone Smith

Glasgow filmmaker Simone Smith talks us through her stunning new short The Möbius Trip and her drive to make bold, uninhibited work

Filmography (selected):

The Möbius Trip (2023), SLAP (2018), Memoirs of a Female’s Existence - Vol I (2018), XX (2017), Gum Girl Hair (2015), The Rinsing (2013), Red (2012)

w: simonesmith.org/film

i: @simone_moon_girl

t: @vjsimone

Simone Smith’s The Möbius Trip is the gnarliest Scottish film of the year – although that title could easily be applied to previous films from Smith like SLAP (2018) and Red (2012). It takes us on a claustrophobic road trip in a banged-up Volkswagon with a family of four (mum, dad, and two kids in their late teens) who’re dressed up for a wedding. From the beginning, there is a palpable tension. Like any family, each member seems expert at twisting the others’ raw nerves. As the film progresses, the familial bickering goes to increasingly hallucinatory places and it becomes clear that the quartet are unlikely to reach their destination as they trundle down a misty country road somewhere south of purgatory. Smith, chatting via Zoom from her flat in Glasgow, explains the idea of the car came first. “I think I must have been thinking of the opening of Psycho or something, but I just liked the idea of everyone being trapped inside a car. What would that feel like, cinematically? What would that look like?” After watching The Möbius Trip, one can only conclude that Smith’s answer was “fucking terrifying.”

Anyone who’s taken a road trip with their loved ones will know it can be a hellish experience, and that’s exactly what this Glasgow filmmaker has put on screen. Ironically, though, Smith was having the time of her life while creating this nightmare. “I found the writing very cathartic,” she says. “I was a new mum and being creative was very much my happy place. So I was writing from a place of joy, and making myself laugh a lot during the process. But paradoxically I can see I was definitely drawing from some dark, subconscious stuff and writing from a place of trauma. When I look back at The Möbius Trip, I feel like it is an

expression of that: a kind of encapsulation of trauma. But expressed in a surreal, experimental way.”

As is the case with most working-class filmmakers, Smith’s route hasn’t been a straightforward one; it’s involved lots of self-learning, self-funding and a hell of a lot of graft. But she knew filmmaking was what she wanted to do since she was a nipper. “There was a real focus on films in our house growing up,” recalls Smith. “It was like an obsession. There were videos everywhere, a lot of chat about films. I think I must have expressed some interest in filmmaking myself when I was really young because I remember when we were still living in the Bluevale flats in the East End, I must have been six or seven, my mum bought me a director’s chair.”

When Smith eventually headed off to uni, it wasn’t to film school. She plumped instead for a course in computer animation and digital art at Paisley University. That didn’t stop her from making films, though. “Even though there wasn’t a film module, I was making the modules become more like filmmaking because I was doing filmy stuff. It was all very self-taught, really.” At the same time, she had started VJing at venues like the Arches in Glasgow and at music festivals like Wicker Man with remixes of classics and her own film experiments made on Adobe Flash.

Her first production gig was as part of a T in the Park film crew. “I was cable bashing – like when you would go around and pick up the cables for the camera guys on stage; I loved being in the thick of it. Then the job I got at the BBC was with River City, and basically my first job was to go and clean a room that was full of computers and cables. And I just loved that too. I think I must have been the most enthusiastic runner they ever had.”

“Relentless” is the word Smith uses to describe this boundless enthusiasm and desire to succeed. “I have this drive to create and that makes me feel really happy, so I’m just following what I want to do regardless of what happens and how it’s perceived.”

Smith might not care what people think of her work, but her skills haven’t gone unnoticed. She won a BAFTA New Talent Award for Red and SLAP was nominated for Best Short Film by BAFTA Scotland. Both were self-funded and -produced but with The Möbius Trip Smith has been able to take her considerable artistry to a new level thanks to the film talent initiative Short Circuit. “I think after the BAFTA nomination the industry started to say, ‘Oh, I think we should give her some actual public support,’” laughs Smith.

This support has extended to development cash for her debut feature, which she’s currently working on. “I’ve written a treatment and it’s all written in my head, I just need to get the script finished,” she says. “It’s called It’s Too Late You Can’t Save Me and it’s about a mother trying to save herself and her son in a dystopian world. I’m sort of calling it a biblical-psychospiritual feature – I’m trying to create my own genre, basically.” Sounds gnarly. We can’t wait to dive in.

War Pony

Director: Riley Keough, Gina Gammell

Starring: Jojo Bapteise Whiting, LaDainian Crazy Thunder, Jesse Schmockel, Sprague Hollander

rrrrr

A first-time directorial effort for Riley Keough and Gina Gammell, and shot with a largely non-professional cast drawn from South Dakota’s Oglala Lakota community, War Pony is an impressively accomplished piece of filmmaking and a quietly captivating film.

It portrays life on the Pine Ridge Reservation through the eyes of a young boy named Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder) and a young man named Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) as they try to find something to do in a portion of America that has been pushed off to the side. Both of the leads make for exciting discoveries – Whiting in particular carries himself with a dozy charm that makes his rudderless, unreliable

character hard to dislike even when he’s stealing poodles or screwing over his baby mamas.

Bill takes a job with a sleazy white farmer while Matho starts selling drugs on the school ground and both of them soon start to seem bound for tragedy. The longer their two stories are kept apart, the more we start to dread the way in which they will be brought crashing together. But rather than using their hardships as a source of misery porn or contorting them into an “inspirational” tale, War Pony simply delivers an authentic, empathetic portrait of a particular way of life. The result is a film that is both unflinchingly gritty and wistfully dreamlike, mischievously funny and achingly melancholy. A film that feels alive in a full, unfiltered way. [Ross McIndoe]

Released 9 Jun by Picturehouse; certificate 15

La Syndicaliste

Director: Jean-Paul Salomé

Starring: Isabelle Huppert

rrrrr

Jean-Paul Salomé’s La Syndicaliste charts the true story of Maureen Kearney’s pursuit of justice as she do edly works to expose a corrupt alliance between the nuclear industry and the French and Chinese governments. As a union representative fighting to protect 50,000 jobs lost in the fallout of their new plans, she is branded a conspiracist and delusional liar.

The film certainly shares the critical aesthetic of recent whistleblower dramas (see Official Secrets and Dark Waters) and Isabelle Huppert’s tenacity as the central heroine is redolent of one Erin Brockovich, but the Hollywood commonalities stop there. La Syndicaliste doesn’t grip you by wrapping itself up in labyrinthine, Sorkinesque monologues. Huppert’s sustained, quiet intensity is what delivers the film’s profound impact. In lieu of one

single, concentrated and predictably hammy stick-it-to-the-Man moment, the camera simply remains fixed on her face as we watch her stoically register devastating and humiliating setbacks for months on end.

Kearney’s draining journey of being undermined, dismissed and eventually attacked is powerfully rendered. Significantly, misogyny defines the narrative, from sexist sotto voce remarks made by male executives, to the police’s fierce commitment to destroying Kearney’s credibility as an assault victim. The film’s most engaging element is its clear deconstruction of the notion of a ‘good victim’ – we see how irrelevant personal histories are manipulated to fulfil agendas and reactions micro-analysed in bad faith. As a result, La Syndicaliste perceptively speaks to the legal precedent of female rape victims not being believed.

[Lucy

Released 30 Jun by Modern Films; certificate 15

Medusa Deluxe

Director: Thomas Hardiman

Starring: Anita-Joy Uwajeh

rrrrr

Over the last decade, films such as Birdman, 1917 and Boiling Point have utilised a faux one-shot conceit for similar ends: to create heightened stakes in a heightened reality. Sometimes the effect is used to strive for verisimilitude, other times it exposes artifice. Medusa Deluxe feels like a throwback to Birdman’s flamboyant, anti-naturalistic one-shot technique as it follows a hair styling competition. Counterintuitively, the tension ratchets when the competition is cancelled: the frontrunner is found murdered and scalped, and the gruesome crime leaves no one safe and everyone still (not-so-secretly) vying for the vacated top spot.

Among an ensemble cast – who match each other’s pace and tone with flair – standout performances come from Claire Perkins and Harriet Webb as tough-talking competitors and

Darrell D’Silva as the event’s harried organiser (and former partner of the deceased, who must break the news to his new partner and infant son). The contrast of a largely sedate baby with the increasing panic and irrationality of the adults who swap turns carrying him around adds a further delightful layer of absurdity to the proceedings.

Backed by a soundscape of drums and uncanny, almost animalistic noises, the script favours quips and quick wit over character development. If the film’s coincidences and larger-than-life personalities preclude emotional connection to the mystery (the conclusion of which feels perfunctory), it moves with panache and vivacity. Unlike the intricate cages and pins securing the models’ elaborate hairstyles, Medusa Deluxe is style over substance – but when the style is this colourful, quotable, and melodramatic, style is enough.

[Carmen Paddock]

Released 9 Jun by MUBI; certificate 15

The Super 8 Years Director: Annie Ernaux, David Ernaux-Briot rrrrr

This documentary project by French writer Annie Ernaux and her son David Ernaux-Briot is a personal, self-narrated film that will surely appeal to fans of the eminent author. However, apart from its obvious merits – the sunbleached 70s imagery and Ernaux’s beautiful prose – it’s hard to imagine The Super 8 Years not feeling slight to everyone else. To fully appreciate the collage of silent home video footage that comprises the film is to view it in the context of Ernaux’s lifetime of autobiography and fiction, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature just last year.

The Super 8 Years is a snapshot of family life; one that drops us in late-20th-century France in the company of the writer, her mother and children, and her near-unseen husband, Philippe, who is behind the

camera. ‘Home video’ may admittedly be the wrong term for footage that takes us to so many exotic locations: to Corsica, Russia, Britain and Albania, where men exchange their tight-fitting flares for Chinese worker’s trousers in an attempt to ditch any and all signs of decadent bourgeois civilisation.

At just 60 minutes, the film certainly doesn’t overstay its welcome but it doesn’t quite make a strong case for itself in its own right either. The Super 8 Years is a moving epilogue to a half-century-spanning œuvre of undeniable quality. But it is still just a video montage of domestic life, which some will surely find gorgeous and others inconsequential on its own.

Released 23 Jun by Curzon; certificate 12A

LA GELATESSA, GLASGOW

Glasgow’s newest ice cream spot has great flavours and a delightful throwback vibe

Thu-Sun, 11am-7pm

Why does black pine indicate a good flat white? It has to be a matte black, with hand-painted white text on the top, the fewer words the better. I love this kind of coffee shop – you can picture it in your head, and you may even be inside it right now. Maybe we shouldn’t base our food choices around visual cues and nebulous thoughts about the vibe, but we do. And while the usual answer as to why we do anything (the word ‘capitalism’, whispered in an appropriately ominous voice) does apply here, there’s something else going on.

An aesthetic isn’t just about the shape of the glasses or the background music. It’s about ideas and concepts, realising what story it is you’re trying to tell – in short, understanding the assignment. If the place is utilitarian but chaotic, they’re

focusing too much on the cooking, so the food is probably great. Aesthetics are also great at revealing when people don’t know what they’re doing (cf. high street cafe chains smashing the ‘change fonts’ button every six months while doing literally nothing else).

La Gelatessa has all the aesthetic hallmarks of a new wave ice cream shop – the pastel pink exterior, the marbled counter, the chunky signwriting and sketched logo of a woman with a sweeping haircut. The place is a delight to look at, like it fell out of a 1950s tree and hit every branch on the way down, with Agnès Varda or Federico Fellini filming the whole thing. When we arrive, we spark just the latest in a series of queues out the door, tripping over small children on the way back onto Nithsdale Road. We’re in the shop for about 45 seconds, but the vibes are delightful.

Vibes schmibes though, it’s been 300 words – is the ice cream good? Yes, the ice cream is very, very good. First up is a fantastically creamy fior di latte, which cuts through all that patter about signwriting and takes you back to being a dribbly kid at the beach. It’s sweet, refreshing, smooth and proof that these folk know what they’re doing.

The amarena cherry and ricotta is brilliant, with sweet and bitter notes knocking back and forth, while a dark chocolate and coconut scoop isn’t the darkest but the coconut part of the team more than makes up for it. There are flecks of the stuff throughout, and that rounded, nutty flavour you only really get when you absolutely go hog-wild with the coconut. The orange and hibiscus sorbet is a beautiful shade of pink, and impressively balanced. It’s zingy without being acidic, sweet but not sickly, and it stands out completely against all of its milk-based siblings so we have to save it for last. We’re walking through Queen’s Park trying not to get dairy on our shoes, feeling nostalgic for various different bits of the past; it’s a lovely time.

In his excellent mini-history of Scottish ice cream for Great British Chefs, Craig Angus writes that, in

1903, there were 89 ice cream shops in Glasgow. By 1905, there were more than 330. Towards the end of the same article, he writes: “Everyone has a place that’s special to them, and think theirs is the best.” Why is your favourite place special? Is it the red leather seats, the old boy through the back, the history of the place? Is it the view out to sea once you turn off the main street, or the times you’ve spent with friends in the queue, feeling like an over-excited kid again? Is it the vibe, or is it literally just the ice cream? Whatever your criteria, if you don’t have a favourite ice cream place yet, La Gelatessa is well worth a place on the shortlist.

Disturbance

Set in a small town during a sweltering summer, Disturbance begins with its unnamed protagonist having freed herself from an abusive relationship. She has purposely chosen somewhere unremarkable to start again, away from the possibilities of running into either her ex or any mutual friends they shared, and her remoteworking job with unsociable hours offers her the isolation she craves. But something is amiss in the dingy flat she has moved to. Cupboard doors open and close, lights flicker, kitchen appliances click and whine. She begins to wonder if the ex she has tried to be rid of might have somehow followed her there after all.

When she sees her teenage neighbour enacting a ritual to banish an ex-boyfriend, recalling her own past relationship, she decides to dabble in the occult herself. Too late, she realises that the line between the horrors of reality and the supernatural are thinner than she thought, and her wander into witchy territory starts to have consequences she had not predicted.

Jenna Clake’s atmospheric debut novel captivates, dealing with the nuances of healing from past trauma utterly believably and never feeling over-done. Her writing is lyrical and intelligent as well as darkly comic, and her characters are utterly convincing, from teenage girls creating love spells to the awkward small talk between neighbours in a new-build apartment block with very thin walls. [Terri-Jane Dow]

Bored Gay Werewolf

Bored Gay Werewolf is a funny, unique examination of friendship, queerness, toxic masculinity and finding your community. Tony Santorella’s debut novel follows the story of Brian, a hapless young gay man trying to start over in a new city. He is wry and sarcastic but reserved, making him more a lone wolf than part of a pack, which is complicated by the fact that once a month he morphs into a bloodthirsty werewolf. When not traversing around town as a mystical beast he can be found navigating hook-ups on Grindr, dealing with obnoxious customers at the Romanesco or tanking back pints with his fellow waitstaff, Nik and Darby. But Brian’s life is upended when he meets Tyler, another werewolf. Tyler is a rich, straight, and athletic ‘tech bro’ who aims to create a lifestyle app to help kindred spirits better handle their monthly transformations. Think less Brothers Grimm and more Goop but for hairy beasts. Things eventually take a dark turn when Tyler decides to increase his brand’s reach at all costs (things get bloody).

Rural

Rebecca Smith’s debut non-fiction book Rural blends nature writing and memoir to tell a story of belonging, ownership and the changing landscapes of rural working-class life. Smith’s own experience growing up in a tied house, and her family’s continued relationship with land and forestry, are interwoven with the histories and experiences of coal and slate miners, foresters, textile workers, and reservoir builders across communities in Scotland, Wales and England.

Bread and Circus

Hachette,

Santorella’s writing is funny and brilliantly observed, but the novel does rush towards the end. Brian’s friends are a bit too forgiving of his failings, and don’t bat an eye when he finally admits his werewolf ways. But with a story full of such heart, it is refreshing to see friendship, especially queer friendships, win in the end. [Andrés Ordorica] Atlantic

At the centre of the book is something core to Smith’s own experience: as rural villages transform into playgrounds for the rich and second homes proliferate, those who for generations have shaped –and been shaped by – the countryside are priced out. What is it like, then, to belong to the countryside but be forced out and unable to return? Melding the voices of past and present through interviews, her own travels, and lives captured in historical archived documents, Smith explores the precarity of workingclass rural life, from the Highland Clearances to the building and deconstruction of industrial settlements, the coronavirus pandemic and the rise of Airbnb. The story presented is honest and at times hopeful rather than bleak, and she does not romanticise working-class histories. Rather, Smith centres the deep connections and roots to the land felt by rural communities through the perspectives of those who have created it, her rich, astute descriptions bringing landscapes and histories to life. [Riyoko

In Airea D. Matthews’ Bread and Circus, poetry is like liquid cement, spilling into gaps and silences, forming itself in solid, textured ridges. Named for the famous Juvenal axiom that sits at the front of the collection – “and every thing, now bridles its desires, and limits its anxious longings to two things only – bread, and the games of the circus!” – Matthews’ remarkably inventive collection stages an inquiry into both the materiality and spectacle of racial violence and poverty that scaffold Black life in the US, crafting a formally and politically ambitious confrontation of literature’s very ability to speak to the thick weight of personal and social history.

This weight takes the form of both Matthews’ own autobiographical recollections – conveyed at times with cool frankness, at others in a frantic rush of enjambment and broken rhythm – and the works of political economist Adam Smith and French Marxist theorist Guy Debord, extracts weaving and piling up desperately through the collection. Plastered across pages, their writing is deftly rearticulated and recontextualised: palimpsests of found poetry that inscribe the forcible impoverishment of Black Americans, long an aesthetic and political lacuna, into the academic archive. In many ways, Bread and Circus demands whether language, itself a tool of power, is capable of articulating the experiences of those it has long quietened. Perhaps not; and so Matthews breaks it apart, reassembles it, and welds it anew. [Anahit

Picador, 8 Jun

Dream Gig

Ahead of his sophomore Fringe outing, Edinburgh-based comedian Sam Lake imagines his hun-tastic dream gig

Illustration: Miranda Stuart

Imake it no secret that as much as I love stand-up, my ultimate goal is to be the next Graham Norton; the nation’s sweetheart and go-to light entertainment presenter. So it makes sense that my best gig would be the annual Eurovision show I host.

The beautiful babes at Piñata Comedy organise the show every year, and I’m lucky enough to host it. We started doing it back in 2020 when real Eurovision got cancelled and we ended up doing our own contest for musical comedy acts who all made songs in their bedrooms. We streamed them over Twitch with me talking in between songs to some 4000 people watching.

Cut to 2023, where we put on the show LIVE at the Clapham Grand and it was the most bonkers and brilliant show. Stunning songs, dancers, acrobats AND I killed Terry Wogan live on stage!

I love that we created a show for big time Eurovision fans (and plain ol’ weirdos). I love a show that brings in an audience you wouldn’t normally get in most comedy clubs, which can still be overwhelmingly male, straight and sta y. But every so often, I’ll catch a glimpse of a group of fun-loving huns, respectfully but enthusiastically enjoying the gig and I think to myself “I would actually kill for you.” So I thought “What if my dream gig is a celebration of Hun Culture?” Welcome to… Hun-tober-fest.

If you didn’t know, Hun Culture is the antithesis of Lad Culture, celebrating extraordinary women doing mostly ordinary things, and never tearing them down when they slip up. Instead, we applaud them. We meme them.

Hun Culture is Alexandra Burke confidently stating on GMTV she invented the term ‘elephant in the room’. It’s getting lit at a Slug & Lettuce bottomless brunch before doing the school run. It’s ..........Rebekah Vardy’s account.

Set in a German beer hall adorned with leopard print, Hun-tober-fest (trademark pending) is the only comedy night that takes certified huns and gives them their rightful place on stage, to be celebrated and appreciated by the people who love them (other huns).

Where is this beer hall? Tebay Services – the only place we could get planning permission to erect a corn silo filled with Chardonnay.

When is Hun-tober-fest? Middle of June, starting at a reasonable 3pm, done by 6pm (latest).

Where can you get tickets? Via a free giveaway on This Morning

Continuing to live out my Graham Norton fantasy, I host the gig standing centre stage, facing bench after bench of afternoon ‘Sauvvy-B’ bitches. My favourite TikTok hun, Danielle Walsh, is on bar duties, making everyone the most potent of cocktails before sucking them up herself through a straw from eight yards away.

There’s also one stag-do who accidentally booked tickets thinking it was the real Oktoberfest. They’re allowed in if they agree to wear the official Hun-tober-fest merch, a t-shirt that says ‘Shes, Gays & Theys for Rosé.’ They sheepishly sit in the designated stag section, their awkwardness drowned out by the cries of “Oh you are awful Jill, let’s finish the bottle!”, from the surrounding huns.

The line-up is both hunny and funny. Lorraine Kelly does a sparkling satirical set and anytime a joke doesn’t work she just goes “What was the point of that!?” as if the audience were Jennifer Arcuri. Lisa Scott Lee has jetted in from Dubai to do a tight 10, and swears if the set doesn’t go well she will quit comedy forever (classic Scott-Lee ultimatum). Ruth Langsford does some spot-on impressions, but they’re just impressions of her friends that no one knows about. OF COURSE Eamonn insists on coming on stage with her too.

The headline set is a double act: Alison Hammond and Gemma Collins. Within seconds, Gemma falls into the well signposted orchestra pit. Alison tries to help her but accidentally pushes a stage hand into the front row of benches. The set goes on this way for 25 minutes. There are no survivors. It’s peak comedy. 6pm strikes. The audience goes home. Me and the acts are in the green room enjoying a post-show natter, secretly hoping one of them will give me some industry dirt. Then Ruth, who’s on her fourth ‘seccy, says my favourite 8 words “Well, you didn’t hear this from me BUT…”. And let me tell you, the goss is JUICY.

Sam Lake: Aspiring DILF (Preview), Monkey Barrel Edinburgh Comedy, 17 Jun, 8pm, £7

Also at Edinburgh Fringe, 2-27 Aug (not 14) at Monkey Barrel (MB2), 12.05pm, £7-£12

@MrSamLake on Twitter and Instagram

Listings

Looking for something to do? Well you’re in the right place! Find listings below for the month ahead across Music, Clubs, Theatre, Comedy and Art in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. To find out how to submit listings, head to theskinny.co.uk/listings

Glasgow Music

Tue 30 May

ANDY SHAUF

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Canada.

JAKE SHEARS

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Pop from the US.

EMAROSA

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Rock from the US.

THE BETHS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Indie rock from New Zealand.

WOMBO

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Pop rock from the US.

Wed 31 May

ZAK ABEL

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00

Singer-songwriter from the UK.

NICOLE ATKINS WITH JIM SCLAVUNOS

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00

Psych folk from New York.

HOT 8 BRASS BAND

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

Brass from New Orleans.

PRAM (PEARLING)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00

Jazz pop from the UK.

MICHAELA ANNE

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00

Americana from the US.

Thu 01 Jun

CONNOR FYFE

KING TUT’S, 19:00–22:00

Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

MATTHEW HALL

SWG3, 19:00–22:00

Indie from Glasgow.

WE CAME AS ROMANS

CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:00

Metalcore from Michigan.

PET NEEDS BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00

Alt indie from Colchester.

LEFTFIELD BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00

Electronica from the UK.

ELECTRIC HONEY

30TH BIRTHDAY (SCUNNURT + LAND OF RUBBER MEN +

WINE MOMS + SOPHIE

GIBSON)

STEREO, 19:00–22:00

Local student run label celebrate 30 years.

PETER CAT + JEREMY

TUPLIN

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Pop from Glasgow.

HARU NEMURI

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00

Rock from Japan.

Fri 02 Jun

SISTER MADDS (JUNK PUPS + BIN JUICE) NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:00

Indie from Glasgow.

MICHAEL TIMMONS SWG3, 19:00–22:00

Indie from Scotland.

HAIG (THE EXHALES + THE LUTRAS) BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00

Indie from the UK.

DECEMBER TENTH (THE LACKEYS + THE MUNDOS + EMMA NAILEN) THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00

Alt rock from Glasgow.

DELPHINE DORA / SOPHIE COOPER (PEFKIN) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Experimental from Scotland.

ROGER WATERS

THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:00

Prog rock from the UK.

POZI (BRENDA)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00

Indie pop from the UK.

ONE NINE EIGHT (THE MODERN KIND + HOME FOR JOY )

ROOM 2 19:00–22:00

Alt rock from East Kilbride.

Sat 03 Jun

JON ALLEN & THE LUNA KINGS

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00

Americana from the UK.

THE MARCH VIOLETS (KRISTEEN YOUNG + VISION VIDEO)

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:00

Punk from Leeds.

FLASHER

MONO, 20:00–22:00

Rock from Washington DC.

PEDALO (RYAN'S TUNES + AVOCADO HEARTS)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:00

Indie from Scotland.

BIG COUNTRY (SPEAR OF DESTINY )

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00

Rock from Scotland.

GRACE CARTER

SWG3 19:00–22:00

Pop from Hove.

TIBETAN MIRACLE

SEEDS (MIDNIGHT ALLEYS + VIRGINIA

COAST)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00

Psych rock from Dundee.

PEAT AND DIESEL

BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00

Folk from Stornoway.

CAROLINE ROSE

STEREO, 19:00–22:00

Indie pop from New York.

ZIGGY ALBERTS (NATHAN BALL)

OLD FRUITMARKET

GLASGOW, 19:30–22:00

Folk from Australia.

ZIGGY ALBERTS ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

Folk from Australia.

NICE BISCUIT (BABY COOL)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00

Garage rock from Brisbane.

CEÒL IS CRAIC: SRADAGAN NA

SRÀIDE

CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, 19:00–22:00

Eclectic folk lineup.

ROGER WATERS

THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:00

Prog rock from the UK.

GLASS BEAMS

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00

Psychedelia from Melbourne.

Sun 04 Jun

ASUNOJOKEI NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:00–22:00

Post-metal from Japan.

XIU XIU

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00

Experimental from California.

THE BLUEBELLS

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

Indie new wave from Scotland.

SHEYNA GEE

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 18:00–22:00

Country rock from the US.

DEBASHISH SANYAL

THE RUM SHACK, 17:00–22:00

Classical from North India.

JOSHUA IDEHEN

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00

Electronica from the UK.

Mon 05 Jun

COURTEENERS

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00

Indie rock from Manchester.

SWIM DEEP (SAD BOYS CLUB) KING TUT’S, 20:00–22:00

Indie pop from Birmingham.

TRIPTIDES

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00

Pysch from LA.

FANTASTIC NEGRITO

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

R’n’B from the US.

Tue 06 Jun

ICE NINE KILLS

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00

Heavy metal from Boston.

LE TIGRE

BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00

Riot grrrl from the US.

HARRISON STORM

STEREO, 19:00–22:00

Folk from Australia.

GLAAS (SUPPORT)

THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00

Post-punk from Berlin.

IONA LANE

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

Wed 07 Jun

SIR CHLOE SWG3 19:00–22:00

Indie rock from the US.

WATSKY

SWG3 19:00–22:00

Rap from California.

DELI GIRLS (PURE BLISS) BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00

Electronica from the US. CANAAN COX STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Country from Nashville.

CHUCK PROPHET AND THE MISSION

EXPRESS

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

Americana from the US.

CLR THEORY (EMMA MILLER) THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00

Synth pop from Glasgow.

PEDRO VIAN & MANA

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Composition from Catolonia and Italy.

GRAVIS TRISTUS (CWFEN) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Doom metal.

Thu 08 Jun

DAVID KEENAN

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:00

Singer-songwriter from Ireland.

SUPERSONIC STEREO, 19:00–22:00

Jazz.

DORA LACHAISE + JONNI SLATER

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00 Indie from Glasgow.

GIUSEPPE

MISTRETTA (FELICITY

MANGAN + NATALIE KYNIGOPOULOU) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Eclectic lineup.

ROSSA MURRAY & THE BLOWIN’ WINDS

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Alt rock from Liverpool.

Fri 09 Jun

BRIX SMITH (IT MAN) KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:00

Post-punk from the US. THE KARAVATS NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:00–22:00

Indie rock from East Kilbride.

LAUREN SANDERSON

CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:00

Pop from the US.

THE BEAT (BOW WOW WOW) BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00

Ska from Birmingham.

DEAD SEA SOULS STEREO, 19:00–22:00

Indie rock from Scotland.

1 5 MONTHS

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00

Eclectic noise lineup.

THE SLOW CLUB (SMACKVAN + CALUM MACLEAN + LAURENCE LEAN) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Indie from the UK.

LADY JESUS THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00

Rock from the UK.

Sat 10 Jun

IAN MOSS

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00

Indie blues from Australia.

CRAIG EDDIE SWG3 19:00–22:00

Pop from Falkirk.

CHVRCHES

BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00

Synth pop from Scotland.

JEN CLOHER STEREO, 19:00–22:00

Folk rock from Australia.

DOVV (GARY’S RAINBOW SHOP + CHAMELEON LADY )

THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00

Indie rock from Fife.

THE STONED

IMMACULATE THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00

Rock from Glasgow.

Sun 11 Jun

THE CHILLS

MONO, 20:00–22:00

Rock from New Zealand.

COHEED AND CAMBRIA SWG3, 19:00–22:00

Rock from the US.

CHVRCHES

BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00

Synth pop from Scotland.

MI MYE (FAITH ELIOTT + ADAM BEATTIE) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Folk from Scotland.

YOU ARE LOST BE CAREFUL (BRASSER)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00

Alt rock from Edinburgh.

Mon 12 Jun

PUSCIFER

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Rock from the US. AZIYA SWG3 19:00–22:00 Indie from London.

ALGERNON CADWALLADER ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

Math rock from the US.

WU-TANG CLAN + NAS

THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:00

Hip-hop from the US.

Tue 13 Jun

WILLI CARLISLE + MELISSA CARPER ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00

Folk from the US.

AMON AMARTH

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Death metal from Sweden.

NATHAN CONNOLLY KING TUT’S, 20:00–22:00

Alternative from Northern Ireland.

KIMYA DAWSON MONO, 19:30–22:00

Anti-folk from the US.

ACID TONGUE BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00

Glam-rock from Seattle.

SABRINA CARPENTER

BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00

Pop from the US.

ELOISE ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

Pop from London.

EAMON FOGARTY (MAX SYEDTOLLAN) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Composition from Scotland and the US.

WALKER LUKENS THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00

Pop rock from Texas.

Wed 14 Jun

DOPE LEMON

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00

Indie from Australia.

ISAAC GRACIE KING TUT’S, 20:00–

22:00

Singer-songwriter from London.

ANDREW WASYLYK ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

Composer from Scotland.

GLASGOW JAZZ FESTIVAL X JAZZ AT THE GLAD: (NORMAN WILLMORE)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Trad from the Shetlands.

GLASGOW JAZZ FEST:

CKTRL

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00

Jazz from London.

Thu 15 Jun

CHE LINGO SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Rap from London. MARCO MEZQUIDA TRIO ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Jazz.

MODERN STUDIES (HANK TREE + UPTURNED BOATS) THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00 Chamber pop from Scotland.

ADELA MEDE (MAN REI + DIALECT) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Eclectic lineup.

SZA (RAYE) THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:00 R’n’B from the US.

XHOSA COLE DRYGATE BREWING CO., 19:00–22:00

Jazz from Birmingham.

JSPHYNX

THE RUM SHACK, 19:30–22:00 Jazz from the UK.

GENN

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Alt indie from Malta.

Fri 16 Jun

FEDERATION OF THE DISCO PIMP

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00

Funk from Scotland.

SIXPEACE (INDOOR

FOXES + DYLAN WINTERS)

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:00

Indie rock from Scotland.

TSUSHIMAMIRE MONO, 20:00–22:00

Rock from Japan.

SCREAMING FEMALES

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:00

Rock from New Jersey.

NATION OF LANGUAGE

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00

Indie pop from the US.

THE MARS VOLTA BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00

Prog rock from Texas.

CAMILLA GEORGE ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

Jazz from London.

GLASGOW JAZZ FESTIVAL X JAZZ AT THE GLAD: TARA LILY THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Jazz and classical. THE TOMMY SMITH YOUTH JAZZ

ORCHESTRA

DRYGATE BREWING CO., 19:00–22:00

Jazz from Scotland.

CAPTAIN ACCIDENT & THE DISASTERS (RIDDEMPTION) THE RUM SHACK, 19:30–22:00

Reggae from Cardiff.

LAMBRINI GIRLS THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00

Indie from Brighton.

Sat 17 Jun

UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA SWG3 19:00–22:00

Psych rock from New Zealand.

CURDLE STEREO, 19:00–22:00

Horror punk from Glasgow.

KIDNEY FLOWERS (FAT BLACK CATS + FRANTIC LOVE) THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00

Indie from Glasgow.

BRIAN KELLOCK’S MARTY PARTY ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

Jazz from Edinburgh.

MATTHEW HALSALL ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

Jazz from Manchester.

GLASGOW JAZZ FESTIVAL X JAZZ AT THE GLAD: HELENA KAY THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Jazz from London.

ELTON JOHN THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:00

Pop from the UK.

GRAHAM COSTELLO DRYGATE BREWING CO., 19:00–22:00

Jazz from Scotland.

HAVOX THE RUM SHACK, 19:30–22:00 Indie rock from Glasgow.

Sun 18 Jun

MICA MILLAR ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Soul from the UK.

TORS (GRACE BARR) KING TUT’S, 20:00–22:00 Indie from the UK.

STEVE TURRE ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00

Jazz from the US.

MIDDLE CLASS GUILT (VOS ROUGH + G.T. ARPE) THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 20:00–22:00 Indie from Glasgow.

GLASGOW JAZZ

FESTIVAL X JAZZ AT THE GLAD: ALI WATSON QUARTET THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Jazz and folk.

ELTON JOHN THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:00 Pop from the UK.

Mon 19 Jun

NELL BRYDEN ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Indie from New York.

CIRCA WAVES O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Indie from the UK.

FRANKIE AND THE WITCH FINGERS STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Garage rock from LA.

Tue 20 Jun GOO GOO DOLLS O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Rock from New York.

AMANDA SHIRES (JARROD DICKENSON) KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:00 Country from the US.

LUKAS NELSON & POTR OLD FRUITMARKET GLASGOW, 19:30–22:00 Country rock from the US. BELLA WHITE THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Country and folk. THE WAR ON DRUGS THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:00 Rock from Pennsylvania.

Wed 21 Jun

DEATH GRIPS BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop from the US. THE HOTH BROTHERS THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Americana.

Thu 22 Jun

THE HU O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Mongolia. DRAKE WHITE SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Country from Alabama.

SHOOT YOUR SHOT X

T4T LUV NRG

THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00

Queer techno.

Fri 09 Jun

SWIFTOGEDDON SWG3, 23:00–03:00

Pop.

MCCRAE SWG3, 23:00–03:00

Techno.

BETON BRUT (STOLEN

VELOUR + BETON BRUT) STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Techno and bass.

MUN SING (SUSANNAH STARK + L + AKUMU)

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00

Experimental club.

MISSING PERSONS CLUB: DJ GIGOLA B2B

MCR-T (VXYX B2B DJ SMOKER)

THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00

Techno and house.

Sat 10 Jun

SLEEPIE 001 LAUNCH

PARTY (ELFZ + DJ FLUFFIE + PEARLING + NOBLE LEISURE & ALEXIS)

STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Trance and techno.

ACTIVITY WORLD (D4NNY +

SIMONGAMER987 & T-BRAIN + CRASH

ESTATE + POH

LARIUS + DJ ROBERT

DOUGLAS + COY

HIRN + PPOSTURE + ONEPUREEVIL + TROYVEVO)

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00

Experimental club.

LOOSE JOINTS: CLUB

FITNESS, NURSE B2B

WHEELMAN

THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00

Techno and house.

Thu 15 Jun

BEDROOM TRAXX PRESENTS: DEMI RIQUÍSIMO + LEWIS

DOHERTY + KOOSHTY THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00

House and italo disco.

Fri 16 Jun

CLTX (KANDER B2B ARKANE) SWG3, 23:00–03:00

Techno.

FUNDAMENTALS (D -LERIA + BRANDON LEE VEAR + TRSSX) STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Techno from Italy.

Sat 17 Jun

GROOVE.FM SWG3 23:00–03:00 House.

Regular Edinburgh club nights

Cabaret

Voltaire

FRIDAYS

FLY CLUB

Edinburgh and Glasgowstraddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.

SATURDAYS

PLEASURE

Regular Saturday night at Cab Vol, with residents and occasional special guests.

Sneaky Pete’s

MONDAYS

MORRISON STREET/STAND

B-SIDE/CHAOS IN THE COSMOS/TAIS-TOI House and techno dunts from some of Edinburgh's best young teams.

TUESDAYS

POPULAR MUSIC DJs playing music by bands to make you dance: Grace Jones to Neu!, Parquet Courts to Brian Eno, The Clash to Janelle Monáe.

WEDNESDAYS

HEATERS

Heaters presents weekly local crew showdowns, purveying the multifarious mischief that characterises Sneaks' midweek party haven.

THURSDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

VOLENS CHORUS

Resident DJs with an eclectic, global outlook FRIDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)

HOT MESS

A night for queer people and their friends.

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)

SOUL JAM

Monthly no-holds-barred, down-and-dirty disco.

STEREO PRESENTS

JANA RUSH + BFTT (JANA RUSH + BFTT MAG)

STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Footwork from Chicago.

SHOOT YOUR SHOT: ROI PEREZ

THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00

Techno and house.

Fri 23 Jun

BLACKWORKS: GLASGOW SWG3, 23:00–03:00

Techno.

CORNUQOPIA

STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Techno and pop.

CLUB ANYWHEN (KAPTIN BARRETT + MORPHAMISH) THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00

Bass and techno.

CURATED WAX 3RD

BIRTHDAY: JADE

SEATLE + RESIDENTS THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00

Electro and deep house.

Sat 24 Jun

PRIDESET

STEREO, 23:00–04:00

Queer club.

Thu 29 Jun

AFRICA IS NOW:

BUTHOTHEWARRIOR + JUBEMI(BEMZ) + ELANDA + DJ

ALKHEMIST THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Deep house.

Fri 30 Jun

OGUZ SWG3, 23:00–03:00

Underground. PLANTBASSD STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Dance.

EUPHORIC GROOVES

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00 House and techno.

CELESTE

THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Techno and house.

Edinburgh Clubs

Fri 02 Jun

CANDY FLIP

PRESENTS: TEKNO VS TECHNO WITH MATT:SCRATCH + M0VE

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

NIGHTS LIKE THIS (LEE MARVIN + JIMMY JAMMIN’ + MARTITIME) WEE RED BAR, 23:00–03:00 House, techno and disco.

BALKANARAMA

LA BELLE ANGELE, 22:30–03:00 Balkan beats.

TONTO TECHNO

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Hard techno.

Sat 03 Jun

SAVED BY THE 90’S LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 90s pop and disco.

SAMEDIA SHEBEEN

HAND -MADE WITH

LOVE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00 Disco.

Wed 14 Jun

QUEER FILM NIGHT

FUNDRAISER

LA BELLE ANGELE, 22:00–03:00

Drag and queer club.

Thu 15 Jun

AGORA

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00 UK techno.

Fri 16 Jun

DEPARTURE LOUNGE 20TH ANNIVERSARY

THE CAVES, 22:00–03:00 Funk and electronica.

BAILANDO

COLLECTIVE (DIMEBAG)

WEE RED BAR, 23:00–03:00 House, techno and Italo.

MEANWHILE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00

House.

ALIEN DISKO LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Techno and disco.

HASTE THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Eurodance.

Sat 17 Jun

NSA DAY CULTURE 4 CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00

Downtempo and new wave.

COMPRESSION (JASON CORTEZ)

WEE RED BAR, 23:00–03:00 Hard dance and trance.

Regular Glasgow comedy nights

Drygate Brewing Co.

FIRST AND THIRD TUESDAY OF THE MONTH

DRYGATE COMEDY LAB, 7PM

A new material comedy night hosted by Chris Thorburn.

The Stand

Glasgow

FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH MONDAY NIGHT IMPROV, 20:30

Host Billy Kirkwood and guests act entirely on your suggestions.

TUESDAYS RED RAW, 20:30

Legendary new material night with up to eight acts.

FRIDAYS THE FRIDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

SATURDAYS THE SATURDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

The Glee Club

FRIDAYS FRIDAY NIGHT COMEDY, 19:00

The perfect way to end the working week, with four superb stand-up comedians.

SATURDAYS SATURDAY NIGHT COMEDY, 19:00

An evening of awardwinning comedy, with four superb stand-up comedians that will keep you laughing until Monday.

Regular Edinburgh comedy nights

The Stand

Edinburgh

Mondays RED RAW, 20:30

Legendary new material night with up to 8 acts.

TUESDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) STU & GARRY’S IMPROV SHOW, 20:30

The Stand’s very own Stu &; Garry’s make comedy cold from suggestions.

Fridays THE FRIDAY SHOW, 21:00

The big weekend show with four comedians.

Saturdays THE SATURDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

Monkey Barrel

Second and third Tuesday of every month

THE EDINBURGH REVUE, 19:00

The University of Edinburgh's Comedy Society, who put on sketch and stand-up comedy shows every two weeks.

Wednesdays TOP BANANA, 19:00

Fridays MONKEY BARREL COMEDY'S BIG FRIDAY SHOW, 19:00/21:00

Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

Fridays

DATING CRAPP, 22:00

Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, Farmers Only...Come and laugh as some of Scotland's best improvisers join forces to perform based off two audience members dating profiles.

SUNDAYS POSTAL

Weekly Sunday session showcasing the very best of heavy-hitting local talent with some extra special guests.

The Liquid Room

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) REWIND

Monthly party night celebrating the best in soul, disco, rock and pop with music from the 70s, 80s, 90s and current bangers.

The Hive MONDAYS MIXED UP MONDAY Monday-brightening mix of Hip-hop, R'n'B and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

TUESDAYS TRASH TUESDAY Alternative Tuesday anthems cherry picked from genres of rock, indie, punk, retro and more.

WEDNESDAYS COOKIE WEDNESDAY 90s and 00s cheesy pop and modern chart anthems.

THURSDAYS HI-SOCIETY THURSDAY Student anthems and bangerz.

FRIDAYS FLIP FRIDAY

Yer all-new Friday at Hive. Cheap entry, inevitably danceable, and noveltystuffed. Perrrfect.

SATURDAYS BUBBLEGUM

Saturday mix of chart and dance, with retro 80s classics thrown in for good measure.

SUNDAYS SECRET SUNDAY

Two rooms of all the chart, cheese and indie-pop you can think of/handle on a Sunday.

Subway Cowgate

MONDAYS TRACKS

Blow the cobwebs off the week with a weekly Monday night party with some of Scotland’s biggest and best drag queens.

TUESDAYS TAMAGOTCHI

Throwback Tuesdays with non-stop 80s, 90s, 00s tunes.

WEDNESDAYS XO

Hip-hop and R'n'B grooves from regulars DJ Beef and DJ Cherry.

THURSDAYS SLIC

More classic Hip-hop and R'n'B dance tunes for the almost end of the week.

FRIDAYS FIT FRIDAYS

Chart-topping tunes perfect for an irresistible sing and dance-along.

SATURDAYS SLICE SATURDAY

The drinks are easy and the pop is heavy.

SUNDAYS

Sunday Service

Atone for the week before and the week ahead with non-stop dancing.

The Mash House FRIDAYS RESIST

A weekly techno extravaganza.

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

SAMEDIA SHEBEEN

Joyous global club sounds: think Afrobeat, Latin and Arabic dancehall on repeat.

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)

PULSE

The best techno DJs sit alongside The Mash House resident Darrell Pulse.

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Tropical beats. FUSION

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 House and breaks.

EHFM PRESENTS: FINN + NINA STANGER

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00 UK Garage.

Thu 08 Jun

RED ROOM SOUND SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00 Bass.

Fri 09 Jun

EGGSLUT (EGEBAMYASI + FOXTROT + MIRA + KAYDEE) WEE RED BAR, 23:00–03:00 Techno, acid and house.

K-POP PARTY LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 K-pop.

PARABELLVM

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00

Underground. MISS WORLD: FLISS

MAYO

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00 Bass from London.

Sat 10 Jun

DR. NO’S (DAVE + BAZ + MIGGY )

WEE RED BAR, 23:00–03:00

Ska, rocksteady and reggae.

MINGIN LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 House.

CLUB NACHT

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Electronica.

DILF

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Art and dance.

DECADE LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Pop and punk.

EPIKA

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

ETERNAL THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00

Underground.

THE MIRROR DANCE: TIA COUSINS

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00 Breaks.

Mon 19 Jun

DICE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00 Techno.

Thu 22 Jun

FEMMERGY: PRIDE

OPENING PARTY THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Pop, disco and R’n’B.

MARGINS SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00 Breaks.

Fri 23 Jun

QWIA CABARET & CLUB

WEE RED BAR, 19:00–03:00 Drag and queer club. SOUND OF SOUL

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Afrohouse and funk.

EDINBURGH DISCO

LOVERS: CORMAC SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00 Disco.

Sat 24 Jun

DILF LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Art and dance.

PULSE THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Thu 29 Jun

VAULT SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00 Techno.

Saturdays THE SATURDAY SHOW (THE EARLY SHOW), 17:00

A slightly earlier performance of the big weekend show with four comedians.

Wed 28 Jun

SUFFOCATION LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Metal.

Fri 30 Jun

JACKHAMMER PRESENTS I LOVE

ACID (LUKE VIBERT + POSTHUMAN + NIGHTWAVE) THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Acid and techno. REGGAETON PARTY LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Reggaeton. DICE THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno. NITESHIFT THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Drum ‘n’ bass. TELFORT'S GOOD PLACE SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:0003:00 House.

Dundee Clubs

Fri 02 Jun

MOTUS 010: EOSAP & TODD KINGS, 23:00–03:00 Techno and minimal.

Sat 03 Jun

CUATRO FEAT BILL BREWSTER KINGS, 23:00–03:00 House.

Catch the stars of tomorrow today in Monkey Barrel's new act night every Wednesday.

Thursdays SNEAK PEAK, 19:00 + 21:00

Four acts every Thursday take to the stage to try out new material.

Fri 09 Jun

REGGAE GOT SOUL KINGS, 23:00–03:00 Reggae.

Sat 17 Jun ABOVE TECHNO KINGS, 23:00–03:00 Techno and hardcore.

Sat 24 Jun

FLAKHOUSE PRESENTS: JXCK CHURCH, 23:00–03:00 House and disco.

Glasgow Comedy

Oran Mor

JOSH BERRY: SEXUAL POLITICS

7 JUN, 7:00PM-9:00PM

Josh Berry returns to Scotland with a brand new stand up show.

The Glee Club AN EVENING WITH STILL GAME’S PAUL RILEY

8 JUN, 2:00PM – 4:00PM

A look back at the 30 yearcareer of BAFTA award winning actor and comedian Paul Riley.

PREACHER LAWSON: LOC’D N LOADED

19 JUN, 6:30PM –

8:00PM

Join US stand up, Youtuber and TikTok star on his latest UK tour.

Saturdays MONKEY BARREL COMEDY'S BIG SATURDAY SHOW, 17:00/19:00/21:00

Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

Sundays MONKEY BARREL COMEDY'S BIG SUNDAY SHOW, 19:00/21:00

Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

The Stand

Glasgow SPONTANEOUS POTTER: THE UNOFFICIAL IMPROVISED PARODY

18 JUN, 8:30PM-10:00PM

Harry Potter-based improv. WORD UP

22 JUN, 8:30PM-10:00PM

A fast-moving, shiny new spoken word cabaret. Featuring the best poets from across the UK and beyond joining with guest comedians and musicians

JAY LAFFERTY & LIAM

WITHNAIL: WORK IN PROGRESS

15 JUN, 8:00PM –10:00PM

Two of Scotlands stand out stars and Fringe favourites preview their work in progress shows.

DANIEL MUGGLETON: WHITE & WRONG (BUT MOSTLY WHITE)

4 JUN, 8:30PM-10:00PM

Tracksuit wearing and critically acclaimed Australian stand-up comedian brings his latest show to The Stand.

MARJOLEIN

ROBERTSON: MARJ PREVIEW

4 JUN, 5:00PM – 7:00PM

Shetland Comedian and 2022 Fringe Sell out Previews her surreal new hour ahead of Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

OBSERVED FROM LIFE

1-11 JUN, TIMES VARY

An exhibition of artworks by Royal Scottish Academicians concerned with documenting the human figure.

REVEAL

24 JUN-23 JUL, TIMES

VARY

Three artists - Rowan Dahl, Alan Grieve and Derrick Guild - create responses to iconic illustrated texts: Albrecht Dürer’s The Apocalypse and Francisco de Goya’s Los Caprichos.

Scottish National Gallery

YOUR ART WORLD

10 JUN-14 APR 24, TIMES VARY

Community exhibition created by young people, examining the power of creative process.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

ALBERTA WHITTLE: CREATE

DANGEROUSLY

1 JUN-7 JAN 24

10:00AM – 5:00PM

An immersive exhibition exploring compassion and collective care as a mode of anti-racist resistance.

DECADES: THE ART OF CHANGE 1900–1980

1 JUN-7 JAN 24, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

A dramatic journey through 80 years of art and moments of significant artistic change.

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

TAYLOR WESSING PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT PRIZE 2022

17 JUN-10 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Drawing on over 4000 entries from 62 countries, this prize exhibition showcases the groundbreaking, shifting landscape of modern portraiture.

Stills

JOHNY PITTS: ‘HOME IS NOT A PLACE’

1-10 JUN, 12:00PM –

5:00PM

A reflection on Black British culture, people and geographies, examining imaginations and realities of home.

Summerhall

CREATURE COLLECTIVE: FUR, FEATHER, SCALES, LEGS, WINGS AND TAILS

1-25 JUN, 12:00PM –

5:30PM

Animals sculpted from various objects create an ecosystem that speaks to the entanglement between the human and nonhuman.

Talbot Rice

Gallery

JESSE JONES: THE TOWER

1 JUN-30 SEP, TIMES

VARY Film, performances and installation come together to explore the intersection between heresy and gendered oppression.

LAWRENCE ABU

HAMDAN: 45TH

PARALLEL

24 JUN-30 SEP, TIMES

VARY Turner Prize-winning artist presents their first Scottish exhibition, examining politically liminal spaces.

The Scottish Gallery

SIR WILLIAM GILLIES

1-24 JUN, TIMES VARY

Retrospective of Modernist landscape paintings.

DONNIE MUNRO: ON THE BAY

1-24 JUN, TIMES VARY

Exhibition of still lifes by Isle of Skye-born painter.

OLIVER COOK: MOMENTARY FLOW

1-24 JUN, TIMES VARY

Organic, white-drenched sculptures that play with light and shade.

WHITE | GOLD | PEARL

1-24 JUN, TIMES VARY

Intricate jewellery bridging the line between sculptural and elegant.

Dundee Art

DCA: Dundee

Contemporary Arts

ZINEB SEDIRA: CAN’T

YOU SEE THE SEA CHANGING?

1 JUN-6 AUG, TIMES

VARY

Working across photography, installation and film, Sedira draws upon her personal history to explore ideas of identity, mobility, gender, environment and collective memory.

SAOIRSE AMIRA ANIS: SYMPHONY FOR A FRAYING BODY

1 JUN-6 AUG, TIMES

VARY

Informed by Black queer literature, this exhibition by Dundee artist looks at rituals of personal and collective memory formation.

Generator Projects

THEY HAD FOUR YEARS

1-11 JUN, 12:00PM –

5:00PM

Generator Projects’ annual showcase of emerging artists from across Scotland’s art schools.

The McManus HIDDEN HISTORIES: EXPLORING EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN DUNDEE’S ART COLLECTION

1 JUN-30 DEC, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Exploring the McManus 20th-century collection through different positionalities, to examine the responsibility of the museum as institution in responding to history.

CASTS AND COPIES

1 JUN-30 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Examining the artistic and historic significance of copies, fakes, and forgeries.

V&A Dundee

TARTAN

1 JUN-14 JAN 24, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

A major new exhibition looking at the social, political, and aesthetic history of tartan.

ART NIGHT DUNDEE

24 JUN, FROM 7PM

Art Night will present 10 commissions by both local and internationally celebrated artists across civic and public spaces in Dundee. Full details: artnight.org.uk

CCA Highlights

In addition to its regular scheduling of some brilliant film screenings and exhibitions, the CCA will be extra lively this month with the arrival of two immersive arts festivals

Words: Lewis Robertson

About to Take Off / A Punto De Despegar

(Cinema, 6 Jun)

CinemaAttic, who curate screenings and retrospectives of Spanish and Ibero-American cinema, have arranged a showing of A Punto De Despegar, or About to Take Off, a 2015 documentary by Lorena Best and Robinson Díaz. The film explores San Agustín, a small village on the outskirts of Lima endangered by a planned expansion of the nearby international airport. In order to avoid objectifying San Agustín’s residents through their filmmaking, the documentarians become personally intertwined with their stru le, as they cover a fragile ecosystem already endangered by a sprawling, neoliberal urbanisation.

Spit it Out

(Cinema, Clubroom, Theatre, 16-17 Jun)

Returning for its second annual iteration, the Spit it Out festival is dedicated to building intersectional communities, and supporting their role in sharing information on Transformative Justice and healing trauma through creativity. Programmed by the grassroots charity of the same name, the festival reaches venues from Summerhall to King Tut’s, but regarding what’s on at CCA, you can catch events such as Fantasy and Kink with sex educator Ruth Elliot, Kwaku Adjei’s talk on allyship in anti-racism, a writing workshop by Glasgow’s female-and-nonbinary songwriting collective Hen Hoose, and loads more events and exhibitions.

Pinkie Maclure: Lost Congregation

(Gallery, 16 Jun-12 Aug)

Award-winning artist Pinkie Maclure has developed an immersive multimedia installation that will see the CCA Gallery transformed into an otherworldly church that has lost its congregation. Maclure then fills this liminal space with highly personal symbolism, utilising skills in engraving, painting and layering to create stained glass windows that depict scenes of addiction and wasteful consumerism. Maclure mourns the losses of small, rural communities, the kinds that would have filled places like this chapel, whilst revering the natural world for its power to overwhelm and reclaim territory. The significance of grassroots activism is juxtaposed with the authoritative ethos of the church, in what will be a colourful, illuminating experience.

Present Futures

(Cinema, Clubroom, Intermedia Gallery, Theatre, 22 Jun-24 Jun)

Present Futures is a multidisciplinary festival that platforms local and international artists who seek to explore the relationship between the world now and what the world might one day be. This summer’s fifth edition of the festival explores new mythologies, and the act of creating myth itself, as a natural by-product of the antagonistic uncertainty by which recent years have been defined. Things to see include Performance of Scent, where choreographer Louise Ahl and scent designer Clara Weale share environmental scents created for an experimental opera, and a screening of Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, the unfinished film by experimental filmmaker Maya Deren. There’s also The Divine Cypher, the newest performance by Ana Pi which was choreographed in response to Deren's film, and much more.

The Skinny On... Pilot Beer

After ten years, over 1000 brewing sessions, and countless folk wound up on Twitter dot com, Patrick Jones from Leith brewery Pilot takes on this month’s Q&A

What’s your favourite place to visit and why?

Tyninghame beach has become pretty special for me over the years. I go there when I need to clear my head or just for a bit of a mooch with the family. It was the first place I went with my boy when the first lockdown eased and we were allowed more than four metres from our houses. He was three and on his wee balance bike and we went rockpooling and just pissed ourselves laughing at hermit crabs. With hindsight it seems fairly clear we’d gone a bit mad.

Who was your hero growing up?

Malcolm Alker, the Salford RLFC hooker. He was everything I wasn’t: hard as nails, good at sport, a born leader etc. However, looking him up it seems he’s only two years older than me, so I must have been far far too old to be idolising a rugby league player. He’s also been locked up for armed robbery, so feet of clay and all that. I hope he’s doing alright now.

Whose work inspires you now?

Good old Mother Nature! Give me a pair of binoculars and a bird feeder and I’m happy. Birds are such angry little arseholes, I can watch them winding each other up for hours.

What is your favourite colour and why? Fuchsia. It’s joyous, isn’t it.

Which three people would you invite to your dinner party and what are you cooking?

Tim Key, Kathy Burke, Josie Long. I’m going to knock up a lovely slow-cooked lamb curry. Get all the cooking out of the way beforehand so I can concentrate on serving up some impeccable vibes. Don’t really know why I’ve said vibes there tbh.

What’s your all time favourite album?

…And Out Come The Wolves by Rancid. Music never enters your heart again in quite the same way it did when you were 15.

What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen? Transformers 2 or 3, can’t remember which. We were hungover and wanted to go to the cinema and somehow ended up seeing this. It was just utterly dreadful. Endless sequence after sequence of whirring noises and bits of unidentifiable CGI metal moving on screen. It was so obviously just a throwaway trash movie but it was like three hours long. Three hours. Who greenlit that? Why did nobody at the studio step in and say “It’s a daft film about giant robots lads, maybe an hour and a half is a bit more sensible”? Nothing made sense anymore in that cinema, neither the plot nor any of the life choices that had led us to that point.

What book would you take to a desert island?

Difficult one to answer this, trying to pitch it so you look just clever enough but not a total wank. I read an awful lot of sci-fi these days but for a desert island I’d want more of a bloodyminded page-turner. I’d probably go for something hard-boiled, The Maltese Falcon or Farewell, My Lovely, something like that.

When did you last cry?

Oh man, I cry at the drop of a hat

these days. The last time was yesterday evening driving home when I thought I’d play the song that my partner is walking down the aisle to at our imminent wedding.

What are you most scared of?

As I get older it’s really the old classic: death. My boy’s six and the thought of not being there for him as he grows up terrifies me, proper lying awake at night stuff. Honourable mention to spiders.

When did you last vomit and why?

On my stag last Saturday. It was hardly LADS LADS LADS mankini stuff, but events conspired against me and two pints of cider needed out at high velocity. There’s a bit in Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom after they’ve ridden the mine train and are clinging to the side of a mountain when the floodwater behind them absolutely *fires* out of the cliff-face and it was honestly like that, swiftly followed by the brutal realisation that I’d just vomited up booze into a pub toilet at 42 years of age.

Tell us a secret?

I prefer wine to beer.

Which celebrity could you take in a fight? Very few, if any, and it would have to be a lucky win. Maybe Professor Chris Whitty if I caught him on the hop.

If you could be reincarnated as an animal, which animal would it be?

A seagull. Soaring through the air as graceful as anything then just swooping down to nick some chips and wing it back to a chimney pot. Where’s your chips now, dickhead?

You recently celebrated 1000 brews at the brewery – which one was your favourite?

We take the piss out of it online but there’s something very funny about brewing Ultravilot, our Parma Violet hefeweizen. Just a bunch of normal guys sitting around getting paid to unwrap thousands of tiny packets of Parma Violets which we then put into a beer that reasonable people pay hard-earned money for then subsequently consume into their actual human bodies. What a world.

Catch Pilot at The Mash Up Festival, Holyrood Distillery, Edinburgh, 2-3 Jun, and follow Pilot on Instagram and Twitter @pilotbeeruk

pilotbeer.co.uk