{"id":1124,"date":"2011-07-11T13:10:44","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T13:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/?p=1124"},"modified":"2011-07-13T09:17:55","modified_gmt":"2011-07-13T09:17:55","slug":"manchester-rooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/manchester-rooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester Rooms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/bjork2_1935663b.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-1110\" title=\"bjork2_1935663b\" src=\"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/bjork2_1935663b-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Late blog this week as we just spent 27 hours in Manchester, where we saw the opening of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.manchestergalleries.org\/whats-on\/exhibitions\/index.php?itemID=80\">11 Rooms<\/a>, the group show at Manchester Art Gallery, where Marina Abramovi\u0107&#8217;s naked crucified woman was the final and most memorable room we saw. In the first, a guy tried to exchange my hat for a stale croissant. I think the swap shop concept needs a bit more work before it becomes a work of art, or he ends up with anything decent at the end of the day.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At the Whitworth, we happened up Atom Egoyan&#8217;s amazing installation, which appears in hardly any of the publicity and is accompanied by his 2002 film of Beckett&#8217;s Krapp&#8217;s Last Tape. 35mm film spools out of a side room based on the film set, then rolls across the main room in myriad manners before it feeds through an editing machine. Mesmerising. We were also absorbed by a huge exhibition of Francis Alys&#8217;s videoed London walks. Fascinating work, which I&#8217;ll be returning to. Some of his earlier stuff can be downloaded <a href=\"http:\/\/www.francisalys.com\/public.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And, finally, Bjork, performing in the round in an intimate former market hall, where we stood by Sean from Coronation St and a famous Northern actress who Sue instantly recognised from her voice. It&#8217;s a fantastic, crazy, theatrical show, with a full Icelandic choir and a different setlist every performance, though at its core is her forthcoming album <em>Biophilia<\/em>, narrated by David Attenborough. Kitty Empire describes it in detail <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/music\/2011\/jul\/03\/bjork-biophilia-manchester-festival-review\">here<\/a> to save me the effort and it&#8217;s as good as she says. Too early to discuss the new songs, although Crystalline, which I&#8217;d heard before and which you can download below, was a highlight. There&#8217;s one performance lcft, after which it will doubtless tour arenas. Here&#8217;s one of the handful of old numbers she played.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/02-Joga.mp3\">Bjork &#8211; Joga<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Late blog this week as we just spent 27 hours in Manchester, where we saw the opening of 11 Rooms, the group show at Manchester Art Gallery, where Marina Abramovi\u0107&#8217;s naked crucified woman was the final and most memorable room we saw. In the first, a guy tried to exchange my hat for a stale croissant. I think the swap shop concept needs a bit more work before it becomes a work of art, or he ends up with anything decent at the end of the day. &nbsp; At the Whitworth, we happened up Atom Egoyan&#8217;s amazing installation, which appears in hardly any of the publicity and is accompanied by his 2002 film of Beckett&#8217;s Krapp&#8217;s Last Tape. 35mm film spools out of a side&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1124"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1127,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124\/revisions\/1127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}