Arts Birthday

Jon Wakeman of Leeds based East Street Arts invites you a special party…

Leeds and Swansea… not a lot in common you might think, off the top of my head I have the mighty John Charles, Swansea born and Leeds United player during the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s… hmmm, oh and Christian Lloyd born Swansea and still tutor at Leeds College of Art. But there’s another connection, Arts Birthday!
Arts Birthday? Ha Ha, pull the other one, how old then?
Well on the 17th January, 1,000,048 actually!

Art’s Birthday was first proposed by French artist Robert Filliou, he suggested in 1963 that 1,000,000 years ago, there was no art. But one day, on the 17th of January to be precise, Art was born. According to Filliou, it happened when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water.
Filliou proposed a public holiday to celebrate the presence of art in our lives. In recent years, the idea has been taken up by a loose network of artists and friends around the world. Each year the Eternal Network evolves to include new partners – working with the ideas of exchange and telecommunications-art.

Artists have celebrated Art’s Birthday with lavish parties and gatherings, correspondence and mail art, and through Telematic networks using SloScan TV, Videophones, music composed for telephone lines, modem-to-modem MIDI connections, early bulletin board and chat systems, and (starting in the mid 1990’s) the Internet.

So Leeds and Swansea? Well, with as much, if not more pedigree than the Queens birthday, Arts Birthday is still only celebrated in two places in the UK, of course with East Street Arts at Patrick Studios, only in our 86,287th year of celebrating, and in Swansea, who are in at a whopping 402,934th year of having a good old knees up, all bucket and spades in the early years I imagine!?.

Celebrated globally Art Birthday gives artists the space to have time off, to sit around a bit and generally take part in some frivolous activity away from the serious business of creating, for as Robert Filliou says ‘Art is what makes life more important than art’

As with every good birthday party there is a theme, and this years is Holus Bolus, apparently ‘all at once; in one lump’ which feels about right looking at the schedule for Saturday 15th. ‘Lumped’ in are artists collectives Ganghut (Dundee) and Our Ideas Are Everywhere (Belfast), visiting Leeds on an fact finding mission before they return later in the year to search ‘Under the paving stones, the beach’ in Chapeltown!

Finally in the words of dear Robert “A beautiful day we hope: school vacation for girls and boys, paid holiday for the workers, museums and galleries filled with flowers, banners and lanterns all over town, bands playing, people dancing, fireworks …”

…it certainly will be in Leeds and Swansea!

East Street Arts’ Patrick Studios play host to the fun and games of artists on the Art, Event, Performance course at Leeds Met University (having been based at Patrick Studios since September), with a veritable Smörgåsbord of events taking place over the weekend of 15/16 January.

Saturday, 15 January
10 am – 5 pm
Participate in simultaneous activities around the building organised by artists from Art, Event, Performance at Leeds Met University including: Lounge singing, Live blog space, Holus Bolus Radio , Art’s Birthday TV, Fluxus Collective Sketch Book , Making noise into music with random equipment, Disco dancing and tea party and Woolly Corner’.

ALSO
Mono-karaoke and The Turk (Robo-chess) with Our Ideas Are Everywhere
If you still don’t know these guys, here is a chance! “The only limitation on reality is your ability to imagine it. We are not a secret society but a society with secrets: Our Ideas Are Everywhere.”

4.30 pm – late
Meeting Room
The ‘Holus Bolus Film Festival’
A chance to show and share your work at our Art’s Birthday mini film festival! If you would like to submit anything please don’t hesitate to contact us and come along at the weekend!

5.45 – 6.45 pm
Project Space
‘The Mystery of Absolute Fluxus’
Want to see Joseph Beuys as a popstar and hear about Fluxus curiosities? Then don’t miss this ‘historic’ lecture by East Street Art member and Patrick Studio holder Roddy Hunter.

7 – 10 pm
Project Space
PREPARTY with Birthday Cake and Live Music from Gangband
Gangband is the musical leg of Ganghut, a Dundee based artist collective

10 pm -2 am
The Common Place
HOLUS BOLUS PARTY NIGHT
organized by Art, Event, Performance at Leeds Met

Sunday, 16th January
12 pm – late afternoon
Recreational Creation
Chill out, make a zine, watch films or just be together, with us …