Published by Verso in August, Investigative Aesthetics is a book about the theory and practices of investigation, art and politics. The book’s authors, Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman, argue for forms of investigating and presenting information aimed not just at reading but working the conjunction. This idea of a ‘conjunction’ is something that comes out…
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Last month, SVMI released his debut EP MA MOOD on Manchester-based record label NQ. In the three years since SVMI was behind the camera filming Aitch’s breakout hit Straight Rhymez, his own career and the scene in Manchester have rapidly picked up momentum. This is something he sounds at ease with when I speak to…
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On the day that Boris Johnson announced lockdown, Liam Fallon’s studio set on fire. He got out safely, but the building burnt down. One year later, Fallon received a message: Johann König, founder of the esteemed KÖNIG GALERIE in Berlin, had bought some of his work. “I was just lying in bed. At that point…
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The brand spanking new skyscrapers at Deansgate Square are enormous. You can’t miss them; walking through Manchester it feels like all roads lead to these four glass towers. If you look down Mosley Street or Oldham Street, they’re looming at the end. Inside, it feels like you’re in a hotel lobby – lots of glass,…
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In a time in which everything has felt increasingly sanitised, Manchester-based art collective Studio SCUM is returning to the idea of filth as something liberating and transgressive. FILTH is the title of their most recent project. It takes the form of a zine: fifty pages of text and imagery. There is poetry, prose, photography, sculpture,…
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Last Monday, my flatmate walked in from work looking stressed. “Twenty-two years and I woke up this morning and now I don’t even want to be a United fan.” He was visibly agitated: hoovering and tidying constantly while consuming as much commentary on the proposed European Super League as possible. The maintenance man who came round the following day to fix our ovens…
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Classical music has a reputation for being uppity, a bit exclusionary. But Manchester Collective, co-founded in 2016 by their music director Rahki Singh, and chief executive Adam Szabo, set out to be different: “We had just both got to the point where we were really sick of seeing audiences that were old and white and very affluent.” In fact, when I spoke to Adam, he was…
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Joey San has had a momentous year. In the haze of summer after the first lockdown, he was featured on BBC Radio 1’s show Introducing Dance. Joey lay in bed with his earphones in, waiting for his song MeToBe to play. It had been a long, boiling hot day and it was not until 12:30am…
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In Can’t Get You Out of My Head, Adam Curtis tackles the dark history of modern society with extensive use of archive footage, eerie audio and his own distinctive narration. It is utterly unlike anything else apart from every other Adam Curtis documentary. Maybe that’s unfair. Curtis’s key theme in this six-part series is our…
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We all need time to turn off. Nevertheless, the problems of the present don’t come from nowhere. These spaces I walk through have pasts tied to the industrial revolution, empire, and exploitation, with much to tell us about our city and society today.
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