CCA: Autumn/Winter 2022

images courtesy of the artist, Roger Palmer, 2022

ABOUT CCA

CCA is a multi-arts venue in Glasgow. We curate national and international contemporary art in our gallery space, as well as commissioning and hosting new projects in our online platform CCA Annex, and providing the Intermedia gallery space for emerg ing artists. CCA hosts cultural events year-round on an open source model, sharing our building and resources with artists, individuals and organisations to create a citizen-led programme. We are also home to Glasgow Seed Library, an extensive Archive and the Creative Lab, a space to provide residencies for creators. CCA is supported by Creative Scotland and Glasgow Community Planning Partnership.

CCA is located in the heart of Glasgow city centre. Our address is 350 Sauchiehall Street, next to the Dental Hospital. You can find us online at our website, and at CCA Annex, on our online platform. www.cca-glasgow.com / https://cca-annex.net

Highlights from the next few months at CCA. You can visit our website for a full and up-to-date programme.

Majd Abdel Hamid

23/09/22 - 05/11/22

WHAT’S ON

A solo exhibition of the work of Palestinian artist Majd Abdel Hamid. Hamid’s practice borrows from the history of embroidery in Palestine. This new body of work emerged from the aftermath of the 2020 explosion in Beirut.

Roger Palmer

18/11/22 - 23/12/22

A solo exhibition of the work of Glaswegian photographer Roger Palmer, largely focused on the River Clyde as a site. Palmer’s work forensically examines traces of human habitation and industry.

Core Programming Open Source

CinemaAttic Short Film Nights

CinemaAttic — 23/09/22, 27/10/22, TBC- Nov, 17/12/22

Films calling out capitalism, toxic masculinity and colonialism whilst celebrating resistance and preservation.

Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival

27/09/22 - 01/10/22

Glasgow’s first film festival dedicated exclusively to modern and classical Eastern European cinema. samizdatfest.co.uk

Visit pages 11-13 for more…

Queer East 2022: On the Road

07 - 08/10/22

Queer East is an LGBTQ+ film festival that showcases rarely seen queer cinema from East and Southeast Asia.

Cryptic Nights: EYVE

Cryptic — 13/10/2022

A singer, songwriter and rapper from Zimbabwe, based in Glasgow. cryptic.org.uk

Visit pages14-15 for more…

BODIES, PROXIMITY, PLACE pamphlet launch

MAP Magazine — 14/10/22

Pamphlet launch of editor-in-residence MAP Magazine commis sioned series. mapmagazine.co.uk

Double Thrills with Rhubarb Festival

//BUZZCUT// — 19 - 20/10/22

BUZZCUT collaborates with Rhubarb Festival (Toronto, Canada) to bring a night of radical international performance art to Glasgow. glasgowbuzzcut.co.uk

Weird Weekend

Matchbox Cine — 28 - 30/10/22

Matchbox Cine’s cult film festival, presenting strange and unseen cinema from around the world. makeitweird.co.uk

Cryptic Nights: Lene de Montaigu

Cryptic — 02 - 03/11/2022

A French/American artist and recent graduate of GSA, Lene de Montaigu wraps up this year’s Cryptic Nights programme with her Sonic Sculpture, an interactive installation and performance piece. cryptic.org.uk

Visit pages14-15 for more…

Don’t Stop Me Now by The Flames

Tricky Hat Productions — 05/11/22

Live theatre from The Flames, Tricky Hat’s performance company for over 50s. trickyhat.com

WHAT’S ON?

Havana Glasgow Film Festival 2022

08 - 13/11/22

A showcase of Cuban cinema and culture, screening the best Cuban documentary, feature and short films. hgfilmfest.com

The Limits Of... Artist-led Spaces

Nothing Personal — 10/11/2022

The first of two roundtables on topics important to artists in Scotland. Featuring Nothing Personal editor Calum Sutherland, Katrina Brown, Anika Ahuja, and Rabindranath X Bhose. nothingpersonalmagazine.com

Ocaidich / Improvise!

Ceòl is Craic — 12/11/2022

Collaboration between Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and Ceòl is Craic on the theme of Gaelic work songs. ceoliscraic.org

GIOfest XV

Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra — 30/11 - 03/12/2022

GIOfest is Glasgow’s annual festival of improvisational music. Visit pages 16-17 for more…

Glasgow Seed Library

Gathering the Seeds

25/09/22, 15/10/22, and 17/11/22

Drop-in seed harvesting workshops around the city. Visit pages 18-21 for more…

Wild Seed

Glasgow Seed Library — 24/09/22, 29/10/22, and 26/11/22

Storytelling workshops with writers, folklorists and artists.

Muscle Memory

Majd Abdel Hamid

23 September — 5 November 2022 11:00am — 6:00pm

SEP TEM BER —NOVE MBER

This new body of work by Majd Abdel Hamid emerged from the after math of the 2020 explosion in Beirut, the city in which he is based. That event occurred when a large store of ammonium nitrate exploded in the city’s port district, wiping out one-third of the surrounding city and leav ing 300,000 people homeless. As one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in history, it had a devastating and ongoing impact on the centre of Beirut.

The blast caused a chain reaction of violent bursts of an ecosys tem of “bubbles,” both private and public. These bursts have proved to be an intense factor of disorientation, a debilitating imbalance from losing the centre of mass. For the artist, the question was/is how to move forward from this event without getting sucked into the doubletrap of melancholic aesthetics and nostalgia. As large swaths of people are seeking refuge, how do we grieve the future? How do we grieve a potentiality? How do we grieve the possibilities lost in the city, or grieve an experience of a city? Cities do not die, but their futures morph, vanish and transform.

Hamid’s practice borrows from the history of embroidery in Palestine, and attempts to impersonate the autonomous historical prac tice of embroidery as intimacy, creating a set of motifs in relation to the lived experience of Beirut.

1 “The tooth of history is far more venomous than you think; we can never get away from the condemnation of time. Your cry still remains a cry of pain not joy. Destroying, we will still remain slaves of the old world; to break tradition is also a tradition…Some will build, others will destroy, because there is ‘one time for everything under the sun’ but everybody will remain a slave until a third force appears, something unlike con struction and destruction.”

From an unsent letter by Russian Symbolist poet, Alexander Blok, to the polymath Futurist, Vladimir Mayakovsky, written in the days after the October Revolution of 1918.

The Tooth of History

, Roger Palmer,

The Tooth of History

Roger Palmer

18 November — 23 December 2022

NOVE MBER

After studying painting and printmaking in the 1960s, Roger Palmer began to experiment with black and white photography when he became aware of new approaches to the medium by conceptual and feminist artists of the early 1970s. He continues to make analogue photographs, processing and printing his work in a basic darkroom.

— DECE

Palmer’s photographs are, first and foremost, visual artefacts; reflexive landscape images that foreground their status as image-host ing surfaces. Evidence of human endeavour is always present in these images, but people rarely appear.

MBER

The Tooth of History1 is centred on Palmer’s most recent body of work, Bloodstream, as Palmer explains:

‘It comprises groups of photographs presented in conjunction with other media in five previously unexhibited projects that examine landscapes as sites of cultural change and social conflict. Many of the photographs of Bloodstream were made during the first wave of COVID-19. On numerous occasions throughout 2020 I cycled to different stretches of the river to make photo graphs, but with no overall idea in mind. As the project slowly took the form of a flow of river-based images, I began to consider a parallel, but initially unrelated, studio practice – an unexpected return to experimenting with acrylic paint - as having a potential relationship with the photographs.

As a fragmented line encircling the gallery, the order of the 32 pairings of photographs and paintings is determined by the flow of river (but not the order of their making). Beginning on the eastern fringes of Glasgow, Bloodstream passes through the centre of the city and west towards the Firth of Clyde. A gradual shift of colour dominance can be discerned in the paintings as one moves around the gallery.’

CCA Open Source

CCA’s open-source programming strand is a citizen-led process, and means that we share our building and resources with a range of artists, individuals and organisations.

We’re really open to new ideas, and invite anyone who has a suggestion for an event to get in touch. You can email us to start a conversation or simply pop in and ask.. You can find more information on our website.

We’re highlighting just a few of these organisations, showcas ing their events and how they work within our open-source model. We spoke to long-term existing partners Cryptic and GIO, as well as a newly formed connection, Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival about their upcoming events at CCA.

The Staffroom,

Sonja Tarokić,

Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival

27 September—1 October 2022

CCA will host Samizdat, Scotland’s first Eastern European Film Festival. We spoke with the team behind the festival about the festival and their programme.

What is Samizdat Film Festival?

Our festival is a celebration of Eastern European cinema and its skill, diversity and creativity. The name we chose (‘Samizdat’) translates as ‘self-publication’ from Russian and refers to the Soviet-era practice of grassroots and underground dissemination of state-censored art and texts. This name reflects not only the Eastern Bloc roots of the festival but also our attempt to give the stage to unheard voices and progres sive narratives.

Another goal of our festival is to represent the visual culture of the ‘larger Eastern Europe’ – one that includes films from Central Asia and the Caucasus, whose locals have been affected by centuries of colonialism. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine this year, our festival has placed an additional emphasis on Ukrainian cinema by including extra films from the country in our programme. We hope that such an emphasis will allow us to express solidarity with Ukraine and give our attendees a chance to become more familiar with some recent films from the country, be they about the war or not.

What can people expect from your programme? Are there any films you’d particularly like to highlight?

Organising volunteer Ilia Ryzhenko says: ‘This is the first year of Samizdat, and we’re starting out by screening both contemporary and classical films, several of which might be more familiar to the larger European film festival circuit but didn’t receive enough (or any) attention in the UK. Our programme is quite varied in terms of genre and type of films: some are documentaries; some are fiction films; some are UK/

Scotland premieres; and others are classic films we’d love people to revisit. The line-up has films from many different regions – from Latvia to Tajikistan – and most of our picks have been directed by female film makers. I’d particularly like to highlight a film called The Staffroom , a feature debut by Croatian director Sonja Tarokić, which we’ll be showing as a UK premiere and the festival’s closing film. It’s set in a secondary school and follows a newly appointed counsellor who must sort out vari ous internal crises, most notably one caused by an older teacher provid ing his students with an alternative, self-authored vision of Croatian history. The relationships between the teaching staff, the students and the parents are shown to be as full of intrigue as the most dysfunctional medieval courts, and the film’s slow zooming shots and intense crimson colour palette make it a very exciting workplace thriller.’

Salt for Svanetia , dir. Mikhail Kalatozov, 1930

Samizdat

You are showing several classic films alongside more contemporary fare, what classic Eastern European films in the programme do you think are must-sees?

Festival Director and curator Harriet Idle answers: ‘My personal pick for a must-see classic screening in our programme would be Ildikó Enyedi’s debut film My Twentieth Century . While the director is now most known for her 2017 Oscar-nominated On Body and Soul , I love her 1984 film’s surreal, farcical quality. The fairy-tale-like plot seems famil iar - two twin girls are separated in childhood and raised in two dras tically different financial and social circumstances - but My Twentieth Century has a surprisingly dark sense of humour and a singularly weird and mesmerising central performance by Dorota Segda. A must-watch for sure.’

Besides the film screenings, are there any additional talks or events which you’d like to highlight?

Our screening of Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1930 silent masterpiece Salt for Svanetia , co-organised in partnership with the streaming service Klassiki, will be accompanied by a live performance of a modernised score by Georgian singer/composer Liza Kalandadze. It’s a visually arresting piece of Soviet avant-garde about the Svans people, oscillating somewhere between documentary, decolonial expression and Soviet propaganda. Aside from its aesthetic qualities, it’s a complex film invit ing further analysis, and an absolutely invaluable artifact in the history of cinema and/in the Soviet Union.

Samizdat Film Festival will take place at CCA 27 September —1 October 2022.

Cryptic

13 October and 2—3 November 2022

Cryptic (est. 1994) is an international award-winning producing artshouse based in CCA. Cryptic aims to present today’s most imaginative and pioneering artists and nurture the creative talent of tomorrow. Cryptic’s multi-media performances fuse music, sonic and visual art with digital arts, creating unique experiences that engage and inspire audiences.

Cryptic Nights is presented in partnership with CCA as part of the open-source programme, Cryptic Nights began in 2009 with the aim of supporting emerging artists based in Scotland who cross creative bound aries, with live music, visual and sonic art, film and new media. Cryptic Nights show audiences new work and we think you’re really going to enjoy the next generation of artists. Stay curious...

This Autumn, artists EYVE and Lene de Montaigu will feature in Cryptic Nights. We spoke to both artists ahead of their programme.

EYVE is a singer, songwriter and rapper from Zimbabwe, based in Glasgow. She is currently working on a commission from the Scottish Refugee Council to develop and produce a new EP. EYVE has also worked closely with Musicians in Exile, SoundLab and MusicSpace.

What influences your music?

E: Ballroom culture has opened the MC in me, something that has given me so much confidence and has even improved my rapping skills. I hope to merge my African culture with my music and to mix differ ent genres together to bring a unique sound. I’m all about that realness, self-appreciation and those around me.

What can the audience expect at Cryptic Nights?

E: As a woman of science, I hope that Cryptic Nights will entice and illuminate your amygdala in every positive way.

Lene de Montaigu is a French/American Artist and recent graduate of GSA. Lene de Montaigu wraps up this year’s Cryptic Nights programme with an interactive installation and performance piece. A digitally and acoustically interactive piano rebuilt from recycled and reimagined parts.

Where did your inspiration come from?

LM: This recycled piano is a bridge between my love for machines and my love for music, and therefore acts as an instrument of both forms. It is acoustic and digital, reassembled into a collaged system for both voices. It is built to remain open for experimentation and usage – presented as such, to be interacted with as such. As I built the instrument with the goal that it would find its original voice again, I was simultaneously aware of the impossibility of this quest. So, it is an instrument in search of itself, speaking from a materially and culturally eroded body.

What can the audience expect at Cryptic Nights?

LM: To be playful. To try to infuse sounds that I didn’t even think of. As if you were in a room with other people and someone spontane ously started playing the piano. But here you have to make do with a shell of an instrument, and start something with people as a result of being in a shared space.

EYVE’s Cryptic Night will take place at CCA 13 October 2022.

Lene de Montaigu’s performance and installation will take place 2 November, with the installation open until 3 November 2022.

Sonic Sculpture , Lene de Montaigu

GIOfest XV

30 November—3 December 2022

We spoke to GIOfest about their orchestra and highlights from their upcoming festival.

Who are the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and what is GIOfest?

The Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra is a large improvising ensemble of around 30 musicians from diverse artistic backgrounds. They perform across the UK and Europe, host an annual festival of improvisation and run regular concerts, workshops and other events. GIOfest is an annual festival of improvisation, usually held at CCA.

Is there a theme or overarching concept for this year’s festival?

This year’s festival celebrates 20 years of GIO! The programme focuses on community and diversity - both our local community and the global community of experimental music that we are part of. We’ll cele brate our local musical friendships and mutual support, essential to sustain ing and developing the vibrant local artistic and musical scene during

16 GIOfest XV GIOFestXIV, photoBrian Hartley, 2021

these challenging times. We will also welcome old and new friends from abroad, getting the chance to develop work and collaborate. The festi val will explore new possibilities, present ensemble performances and embrace improvisation.

What can people expect from GIOfest this year? Are there any particular guest performers, events, or performances you’d like to highlight?

We have some very exciting guests this year. We’ve been collabo rating with Sia Ahmad online for a couple of years, and are excited to work with her in-person at this year’s festival. Ahmad is a singer, composer, and improviser and has been creating idiosyncratic sounds for over a decade. Formerly of the Sydney-based post-rock bank Tangents, she now performs solo, in collaboration with other artists and is half of the duo Spartak. Many of these projects also feature her talent as a producer and engineer, where her unique sensibility for sonic space really comes to the fore.

We’ll be welcoming trombonist Yasuko Kaneko and guitarist Yasuhiro Usui who are key players in the Japanese improvisation scene. We’re delighted that they are able to join us in-person and bring their unique and beguiling musical worlds to Glasgow.

Mario Rossi is a Glaswegian sculptor, painter and filmmaker whose work has been exhibited across the globe. GIOfest is delighted to present a new musical work devised by Gerry Rossi that brings together Mario’s celebrated work “The End,” a film consisting of 100 different film endings, with a new digital projection specially produced for the festival.

One of GIO’s leading lights is Jessica Argo. This year she will premiere a new piece that encourages the orchestra and our guests to explore memory, community and communication. The work will feature the theremin alongside dramatic performative bodily gestures designed to conjure unfamiliar synthesised timbres - a telematic music-making across time-zones.

We will also have a film programme where we will premier new films from Ross Birrell, public workshops, lectures, films and so much more!

GIOfest XV will take place in person and online from November 30—December 3 2022.

GLAS GOW SEED LIBRARY

Photos by Rowan Lear

Glasgow Seed Library

We caught up with Glasgow Seed Library, a collection of seeds and a community of growers housed at CCA.

Save a seed, grow a world

Plants and people share a history marked by constant adaptation to a changing planet. Stewarding seed over generations and birthing new vari eties of edible, medicinal and magical plants is one way that human life has co-evolved with the vegetal world.

But the current rate of climate change is happening too fast, creat ing instability and unpredictability. Plants and their companion species, like pollinating insects and fungal networks, don’t have time to respond to repeated stresses in the form of flood, drought and other extreme weather events. It is more important than ever that we sustain a wide variety of crops, build healthy and diverse gene pools, and try to adapt plants to the places we live and grow and eat. In seed diversity, we find resilience.

Unfortunately, seeds are enmeshed in a global food system driven by profit, which causes ecological destruction, famine and waste. Restrictive legislation and agriculture based on monocultures have taken seeds out of the hands of landworkers and generated a huge loss in genetic diversity. Seed breeding, patenting and markets are dominated by a handful of multinational chemical, fertilizer and pesticide companies. Gene editing, often heralded as a solution by the agri-tech industry, poses a further threat to seed sovereignty: the right of all people to grow, select and exchange their own seeds, free from control.

Community seed libraries are a critical form of resistance. When we sow and save open-pollinated seed, we are growing plants that can adapt and thrive in our unique conditions here in Glasgow. By sharing seed locally, we can nurture unique, heirloom and hardy varieties and reconnect our cultural heritage to the plants we grow, use and enjoy.

Even growing one variety and returning one kind of seed to Glasgow Seed Library is a valuable contribution. When we save seeds, new worlds grow.

Seed Saving at home

When saving seeds, select the healthiest, happiest plants and the best-looking fruit or pods. In that way, we ensure that we collect seeds that are strong, adapted to the environment and likely to flourish.

What you will need

You can save seeds using many of the everyday tools and materials found in your home.

Sieve Spoon

Coffee filter paper or kitchen roll

A jar and lid

A dry, aerated space

Silica or rice

Fabric cloth like cheese cloth or cut up cotton

Elastic band or string

Tomatoes

Pick tomatoes when they are fully ripe. Squeeze the seeds into a jar with just their own juice. Cover the top of the jar with a piece of cloth and tighten with an elastic band or string. Place the jar in a dry and shaded spot, and leave it to lightly ferment (swish the jar daily). When you notice the seeds have separated from their gelatinous envelope and fallen to the bottom of the jar, empty the seeds into a fine sieve and rinse in water. After washing the seeds, place them in a coffee filter or folded kitchen towel, peg and hang it somewhere high and let the seeds fully dry.

Beans and Peas

After fully matured and ripe, leave the bean or pea pods a week or two more on the plant. If the weather is wet, you can harvest and dry them on a surface until the pods are brown and crispy. Break pods and pluck out seeds, and let them fully dry until the pea looks dehydrated, hard and a bit shriveled.

Squash and Courgette

Let the fruit fully develop on the plant and store somewhere dry to

progress into a hard gourd. Cut in half (careful with the knife) and scoop the seeds out with a spoon. Put the seeds in a sieve and rinse in cold water until their gelatinous coating is off. Pat dry and spread them out on kitchen towel or coffee filter paper and hang in a dry spot until they are completely dry.

Nasturtiums

Easy to grow, edible and ideal for kids! Flowers and leaves are edible. Collect seeds when the flowers have fully fallen off the plant. You will see a lot of seeds fallen on the soil underneath the plant. Place them on a plate/tray and let them dry in a shaded and dry spot until they turn from light green to brown.

Depositing Seeds in the Library

If you’d like to share harvested seeds for people across Glasgow to grow, please deposit them in the seed library. To do this, place your seeds in a sealed container, like an empty jar, with some silica sachets or rice, to help absorb moisture and prevent mould. Label the container with the name and variety of plant, where it was grown, your name, a contact for you, and any other notes you’d like to share.

You can drop the seeds off in the seed library cabinet in the CCA foyer, and make a note in the logbook. You can also bring your seeds to a seed gathering event near you - check the CCA website for the next dates and locations.

Happy seed saving!

More resources

For helpful instructions and videos on how to save seeds in multiple languages, see diyseeds.org

For more information about the politics of seed saving, visit seedsovereignty.info

For workshops, and more about Glasgow Seed Library, visit cca-glasgow.com/projects/glasgow-seed-library

Film Hub Scotland’s New Promoters Scheme aims to in crease the number of marginalised people curating films for cinemas, festivals and venues within Scotland. Through the initiative, CCA offers an Associate Film Programmer role to work with us in developing a programme of screenings.

We spoke to our current Associate Film Programmer Neha Apsara about their upcoming film programme.

Your programme is centred around queer South Asian stories, what drew you to those kinds of stories and who do you hope will come to see them?

It’s quite simple, I just want to experience some authentic representation and see our stories in institutions, like the CCA, that hold such an important cultural presence in Glasgow. We are pretty hidden in the arts in Scotland. Glasgow is the hub for South Asians in Scotland, yet I hardly ever see many in these spaces. I really hope other South Asians that feel the same way will feel that they can come along.

Are there any films in particular you’d like to highlight?

The first screening will be specifically Glasgow-focused, high lighting Pratibha Parmar and her incredible work spanning the course of over 30 years. For my programme, I will be focusing on Bhangra Jig , Khush and Nina’s Heavenly Delights .

BEGANA MUS INGS ON QUEER

Nina’s Heavenly Delights is Parmar’s first feature film. It’s a surprising love story where Scottish humour meets Bollywood spec tacle! It follows the mixed fortunes of a Glaswegian family, The Shahs, and their award-winning Indian restaurant, The New Taj.

The other screening will be focused on queer experiences of the South Asian diaspora more broadly. I am planning to show Parmar’s short film Khush to start, followed by Queer Coolie-tudes. It is the first documentary feature made by a queer woman of colour, Michelle Mohabeer, on the topic of queer folk with a lineage of inden tured servitude.’

What do you think is important about showing queer South Asian stories based in Glasgow?

There’s this sense of needing to leave Glasgow and go to cities like London to be around other queer South Asians to find community and belonging. For me, this is crazy! Especially considering Glasgow is in the top ten most queer-friendly cities in the world, ranking much higher than London. I’m really asking, what is it that we need to help make us feel rooted in Glasgow? I’m showing films that are based here in the hope that we can start these conversations between us.

SOUTH ASIAN STORIES

With my programme, I particularly want to plant the seed for a space where people feel welcome to share experiences freely, putting an emphasis on holding space for differences in beliefs and heritage, exploring how to navigate that as a community with a focus on prioritising acceptance and safety.

To help establish this, I’m planning a relaxed meal a month prior to the events. If you would like to be involved please email me at neha@cca-glasgow.com.

I’m hoping the nights will have a light-hearted close-knit feel ing, allowing queer South Asians to start building a sense of commu nity and to have a space in the city where we can find solace, commu nity and safe discourse. I want folk to attend and leave feeling that they’re being considered and thought about.

Check CCA’s website for updates on Neha’s programme!

Musings on Queer South Asian Stories

How can people get involved with the community-based side of your film screenings?

What do you hope folks get out of your programme, both in terms of the films you’re showing and the space you’re working to create?