BEATS OF LOVE 

151. Find Your Eyes by Benji Reid

IN 2019, ahead of the A Thousand Words retrospective, Benji wanted his work unpacking as he felt wrongly that dyslexia held him back. As part of the writing team tasked with that, our mission was to turn a fraction of his Instagram followers into attendees. 

Volunteering was tough, finding it difficult to write for commercial ends and not simply offer jejune opinion. After the opening night drew on the usual pool of art connoisseurs and affiliations, I felt a sense of failure. Justified after returning to the gallery shortly after to find all his photographs had gone and deciding then that the unpredictable nature of gallery life wasn't for me. 

I also promoted Antoine slap bang in the middle of the Manchester International Festival that same stressful summer. Seeing that big dream evaporate, too. That it has taken this long to attend Benji's Aviva show isn't surprising, then. What is, is how utterly enthralling it is. John McGrath needs thanking for getting Benji back on the stage. A stage that comes alive as the artist narrates his lowest ebbs and inbuilt structures that surround black masculinity to create in real time some of the most captivating photography you'll see all year. Transforming these dark themes over three acts into a challenging triptych of hopeful wonder. 

the Missus and Benji

Interplay between photographer, director and performer is now made explicit. Articulating his multi disciplinary practice as a Choreo-Photolist, better than anyone, demystifies elements of his practice. The process is the performance. It evolves autobiographically, taking us on a journey from sharp monochrome intensity to a gliding colourful vibrancy. There's still a self restricting quality which is trademark Benji but the three graceful performers, themselves defying gravity, transcend all limitations.

I was nudging the missus as she clapped with his star performer mid-flight, but it became infectious and a responsive part of the show. Probably exclusive to tonight. After Benji even gave us a few moves, basking in his artistic identity, and no doubt spotting his pre-imagined Instagram attendees.  

BEATS OF LOVE 

150. Studio Electrophonique : The Sheffield space age, from The Human League to Pulp By Jamie Taylor. 

FEEL I know a lot more about Sheffield thanks to reading this. 

I loved reading about Southport and Blackpool in Bedsit Land: The Strange Worlds of Soft Cell by Patrick Clarke. The roots of their unique style and drive, plus a vivid look at bold teaching in Leeds that gave the group the courage to perform. Then it unravelled. 

James Young’s handling of Nico is a masterclass in dark comedy, wrapping the grim realities of drug waste and decadence in laugh-out-loud irreverence. Clarke keeps the characters at a distance, draining the subject of any potential intrigue. This book is masterful. Everyone and everything is fair game for Taylor's observant wit. Every page is a work of wonder that is both provocative and warm. His tendency to apologise prior to snipping at his prey is very effective. 

Refreshingly, everyday folk are every bit the equal of artists which help when making the goings on in Ken Patten's Sheffield council house the thread, but other peripheral places and people also fascinate. He has a gift for sitting you in the room to really convey memorable sensory perceptions on fellow obsessives without allowing sensitivity. Obsessives unafraid of hard work and standing out from the crowd. 

Keeping Sheffield as his focus creates unlikely asides and bedfellows; Ken Patten's daughter Michelle, hobbyists and academics, fanzine culture and indoor markets, decline and invention, Brutalist architecture and glam styling, to name but a few. Less reliant on maverick teaching methods while counterbalancing economy with imagination, gave folk the front to repurpose past art movement's ideas and really push themselves over the edge, often toward the mainstream. 

The great challenge was to bring them back toward a nondescript council house. That there's no unravelling, just a riveting read from start to finish, is a minor miracle. 

BEATS OF LOVE

149. Blush by Wilson Tanner

NOT AT all sure what Starmer's modus operandi is. 

The depth of anger disabled people feel is now entirely clear to me. For a decade, our labour MP stood by us as we navigated tory hostility. We anticipated social justice to heal years of harshness. Yet, Yvette Cooper has introduced new punitive policies. Rather than a softer approach, we have simply been handed the same bitter cup.

Off the hoof Blairisms without the charm offensive. Mentally we go, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, after two minutes of his News 24 cabinet clones speaking to the media. One week they're paraphrasing the Clegg/Cameron alliance by falsely insisting the economy runs like a domestic household, the next, the harsher tones of the insidious Farage by cutting foreign aid. Sadly, when labour comes to power, accepting the wrongheaded notion that politics has distended into a state of emergency, they adopt tories statute.

Without rhyme or reason and in next to no time at all, they've become the very people they vociferously opposed but still wooing no bigots and racists, and that is terminal. The NHS will have to be totally world-beating to win back voters. Voters who disliked tory U-turning dislike labour hypocrisy more. What could be more hypocritical than pledging 28 billion for green initiatives one month and abandoning net zero targets the next? I know, campaigning with Waspi women one month, then abandoning them the next.

Starmer's modus operandi is to make an absolute mockery of us by tinkering with the austerity designs of his predecessors instead of even attempting to win an argument. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

148. Hamlet Hail to the Thief  by William Shakepeare Adapted by Christine Jones with Stephen Hoggett, Music by Radiohead, Orhestrations by Thom Yorke

THAT THIS 424m building is host to some of the most precariously balanced hats I've ever seen is no surprise. We're still dressing like teenagers. Shakespeare's play needs no introduction. It resonated with my younger self as I went mad after my father died. And resonates still.

The correlation Christine Jones makes between Radiohead's spiked existential angst and Prince Hamlet is as opportunistic as inspired. With Yorke on board to orchestrate their work with fresh players and dialogue sacrificed for dark choreography, it could be called a dumbing down exercise.

That said, would I rather be in a smaller theatre watching a faithful three hour production? My answer is a resounding no. The play will still do the rounds five hundred years from now, but this deconstructed version is of its time. Edited for its overworked audience, it provides a sugar rush rather than great depth. Yet Samuel Blenkin's bereaved prince is utterly captivating and convincing. Spinning around the smoky austere set with pathos and energy in equal measure, he helps concentrate on the mind, emphasizing his most resonant words with an idiosyncratic thump. 

The music interjects at the right time and Yorke occasionally cleverly chops the vocals, which allows for meditative phrasing. Something a faithful reproduction doesn't permit. To hell with plot development. What the peripheral characters lose in dialogue they make up for in expressive movement. The music is a device to prize open what is timeless and weighty, re-contextualising it to accommodate the hurts and betrayals of the everyday. The democratization of culture means a big trade off. With so many of us now able to read and write, so few of us actually read and write what endures. 

Preferring instead fragmentary manicured noise, the effect of too much invigorating choice, and this adaptation is perfect in celebrating that. And for this reason, it gets a thumbs up. 

 

BEATS OF LOVE

147. How to Disappear Completely by Radiohead   

LIKE FARAGE, the NHS has failed me.

Unable to afford Harley Street, I spent six agonizing months being misdiagnosed, all the while knowing something was deeply wrong. Eventually, I was referred to a private clinic. I arrived at the hospital before my medical files did, only to find that the promised bedside morphine drip didn't exist. Another six months of waiting followed before I finally received the news: my testicular cancer was not life-threatening.

Some time later, a specialist at Christie's told me I was susceptible to cancer, so better quit smoking. I did, unlike Farage, who's still adamant in public that the doctors have it wrong. After five years of follow-ups, finally getting the all-clear was a great experience with the NHS. Again, unlike Farage, who hasn't forgiven the NHS and Indian doctors for misdiagnosing in the early stages, I still feel a deep gratitude. 

I once romanticised being born earlier, but thank God I wasn't. Medical mortality rates were dangerously high before the 1970s. This utterly dismantles Farage’s angry rhetoric, claiming the NHS nearly killed him. He is simply weaponising public ignorance to spin a non-story into a political headline.

A familiar pattern emerges; folk who didn't know the survival rate is now over 90% probably think stopping a few thousand people from building a life here will make everything great again. Convinced again, wrongly that there has ever been a point in history when the working poor ever felt great. Farage exploits all ignorance, controlling the political temperature with falsehoods.

Like his idea of deregulation won't lead to working in poorer conditions for worse pay and longer hours, or replacing an unreformed NHS with an insurance-based model for us all won't cause controversy and death.