Digbeth First Friday 4th July: Home for Waifs And Strays (Live Art Initiative)
Find their work here: http://hfwas.co.uk




Concrete Urban Hello
Digbeth First Friday 4th July: Home for Waifs And Strays (Live Art Initiative)
Find their work here: http://hfwas.co.uk
Digbeth First Friday: 4th July.
Links:
Digbeth First Friday: http://digbethfirstfriday.com/
VIVID projects: http://www.vividprojects.org.uk/
A3 Projects Space: http://a3projectspace.org/
Record Player Orchestra Website: http://recordplayerorchestra.com/
Trevor Pitt at Pod Projects: http://www.podprojects.org/about
Ashok Mistry: http://ashokdmistry.com/
Weeds are organic rebels. They grow where they want to grow. They are hardy and relentless. They seem small and conquerable but ask a gardener how much effort he or she has to spend fighting them. You will see how formidable they are.
On the day I took these photographs, the sunlight hit them in such a way that I could respect and admire them for the first time. And it made me question whether this, like most other wars, was a war worth fighting. The images I saw answered my question for me. I expect nobody else will agree, but maybe it’s time to make peace with weeds. I hate false dichotomies, straw men and making enemies where they are not needed. So I decided that I didn’t want to wait for the obliteration of my green crack-dwelling friends before I could fully enjoy how beautiful it was to be in my garden bathed in light, sitting on a badly constructed patio.
This made me realise that we should never wait to feel joy at being alive and sharing particles or structures with all that surrounds us.
We are all one big simultaneously smelly, ugly, beautiful, broken, delicate, intelligent, contrary, wilful and mysterious bunch of things lumped together in this world so we may as well like and respect one another.
Here are some photographs of Digbeth on a special sunny day. They were taken a couple of weeks ago, you could probably guess when.
If you’re ‘Mad about Mod’, go to Urban Village at the Custard Factory. If not, go anyway and meet some colourful and friendly folk. Their website is here: http://www.urban-village.co.uk/.
Here you get the Edwardian Police Station reflecting on its much younger commercial neighbour, Smithfield House.
Bollards.
As I snapped this quiet grey building, I was reminded of many other underused buildings. It’s a shame, especially in the current financial climate, that we are not getting the full value of our assets as a city. Of course, I’m really talking about my beloved library (again).
My meditations were soon interrupted by these chaps indicating that they wanted a photo.
Conclusion: Brummies are great and we should make the best use of what we have.
This is a video I made from random scenes filmed during a bus journey. The bus route is the forty five, the music is by Elliott Smith. It’s my homage to the original song and video for Angeles, which I was listening to whilst filming.