Adjunct (issue #2) by Cambridge Junction

Cambridge Junctionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s zine issue #2 autumn 2013 free

Welcome Thanks for picking up Adjunct and welcome to the autumn arts season at Cambridge Junction. Popular culture, arts, and creative learning make up our programme and we are particularly interested in their intersection and crossover. “Art meets life” reflects this and it is also the focus of Adjunct, our zine, which is full of contributions by and about artists. Through the season (and in Adjunct) there is a strong theme of generations and futures. Both Tim Etchells and Chris Goode write about how we – as children and adults – think about futures and how they present this to audiences in Tomorrow’s Parties and Monkey Bars. Other works in the season, which explore relationships across generations, include Bryony Kimmings’ Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model and Ira Brand’s A Cure for Ageing. Another distinctive strand of the season is the influence between street and stage. Avant Garde Dance’s The Black Album is an exciting, physical and innovative coming together of hip hop and contemporary dance, while the international double-bill of K’Boum and Oversees is a celebration of BMX cycling, break dance and parkour. Wordsmiths shouldn’t miss Poets vs Rappers and should check out the extracts of poems and raps here in Adjunct. Our audiences continue to enjoy shows which sit somewhere between a gig and an art event. This season don’t miss Public Service Broadcasting, Tina C., and RashDash with Not Now Bernard in The Ugly Sisters. We’re also excited to present David Rosenberg and Glen Neath’s Ring which is a theatrical sound journey experienced in complete darkness. There’s a whole lot more exciting theatre and dance in the season including shows from NIE, Caroline Horton and Lost Dog (the cover stars of this season’s Adjunct). Look out for events that form part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas including While You Wait, a series of podcasts created by artists, stationed in our foyer. And make sure the whole family come to Thumbelina’s Great Big Adventure, our action packed Christmas show for brave people of all sizes, created by Dancing Brick. I hope you enjoy reading Adjunct and come along to shows in the season. If something catches your eye, then seek out more online at junction.co.uk. You’ll find full descriptions of shows, videos giving a sample of the work and links to artists’ websites. Daniel Brine Director, Cambridge Junction

Cambridge Junction Autumn Arts Season Calendar September Season Launch Night

A riotous magazine-style evening hosted by Hunt and Darton, featuring Figs in Wigs, Brown Council (Australia) and Total Arts film screenings, live music from I Strip for Couples, more to be announced and free drinks! Wednesday 4th September 7.30pm J2 + J3

A Cure For Ageing Ira Brand

A one woman show about being young and foolish, and becoming old and wise, or being young and wise, and becoming old and foolish. Wednesday 11th September 7.30pm J2

Masterclass with Chris Goode and Company Four day intensive workshop on writing for performance.

Monday 16th – Thursday 19th September J3

Monkey Bars Chris Goode and Company

The words of children talking about being scared, getting lost, being brave, and growing up - spoken by adults. Tuesday 17th September 7.30pm J2

Ring David Rosenburg & Glen Neath

A sound journey in complete darkness that plays on the senses, creating a unique theatrical experience. Wednesday 25th September 7.30pm J2

September/October While You Wait Presented by Fuel, Roundhouse and King’s Cultural Institute

Podcast installation featuring Victoria Melody, Lewis Gibson, Caroline Horton and Brian Lobel. In association with Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Wednesday 25th September – Tuesday 22nd October J2 foyer

October North North North New International Encounter (NIE)

Physical theatre, projection, storytelling and live music combine to tell the exhilarating tale of a legendary attempt to reach the North Pole. Tuesday 1st October 7.30pm J2

David Gale’s Peachy Coochy Nites Presented by Only the Lonely

One projector, 20 images, 20 seconds to talk about each image. Compered by David Gale. Network event for artists.

K’Boum and Oversees (circus double-bill)

Wednesday 23rd October 7.30pm J2

Wednesday 20th November 7.30pm J2

Poets vs Rappers

Mess Caroline Horton

Iconic theatrical innovators imagine a multitude of hypothetical futures, carrying the audience along on a tide of conjectures and dreams.

Three poets and three rappers are stripped of their music, props, bands and beats, leaving them with only their words. You decide who the true lyricists really are. Thursday 24th October 7.30pm J2

World Factory: A Conversation in Progress METIS Discussion panel with academics exploring the global textile trade. Monday 28th October 6.30pm Hot Numbers Coffee, Gwydir St

Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model Bryony Kimmings

A provocative protest against the sexualisation and commodification of childhood for profit by Kimmings and her nine-year-old niece. Wednesday 30th October 7.30pm J2

Wednesday 2nd October 7.30pm J3

It Needs Horses & Home for Broken Turns Lost Dog

Blackly comic and highly physical Place Prize winning dance theatre double-bill about desperation in a circus. Wednesday 9th October 7.30pm J2

The Ugly Sisters RashDash

Thumping drums, clanging keys and violent voices. RashDash tell the real story of Cinderella a sinister and sensuous cabaret. Featuring live music from Not Now Bernard. Wednesday 16th October 7.30pm J2

Tomorrow’s Parties Forced Entertainment

November

French and British contemporary circus collide with BMX cycling, tomfoolery, break dance, jumps, swirls and stunts.

A new play with songs from 2013 Olivier Award nominated Caroline Horton. It’s about anorexia. But don’t let that put you off. Wednesday 27th November 7.30pm J2

December Thumbelina’s Great Big Adventure Presented by Cambridge Junction and Dancing Brick

An action-packed Christmas show for adventurous people of all sizes! Christmas is coming! Huge in attitude but small in stature, join Thumbelina and her cast of animal friends on their whirlwind adventure to the big bad city. But will she be able to find her way home? A brand-new, brightly-coloured, actionpacked musical retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale. Saturday 14th December – Saturday 4th January various times J2

Views from The ‘Bridge

A brand new night of contemporary performance made by Cambridge-based artists, selected by application. Wednesday 6th November 7.30pm J2

The Black Album Avant Garde Dance

A triple-bill of effortlessly stylish dance where innovative contemporary hip hop styles are seamlessly woven together. Wednesday 13th November 7.30pm J2

Junction University

Three courses each month, exploring the intersection of art and life. Consider your collections over three months with Joshua Sofaer, dance in public with New Art Club, overcome boredom with Hunt and Darton, programme sound with Sonic Pi, document with Dan Canham, clown with Jamie Wood or map with Filipa Periera-Stubbs. Saturday 14th September Saturday 12th October Saturday 2nd November 10.00am – 1.30pm

TWO FUTURES TIM ETCHELLS

I’m here in the future, looking back at a project that Hugo Glendinning and I did ten years ago, titled Looking Forwards. For the images, we asked a small handful of individuals to sit for a while and think about the future, and asked them afterwards to indicate if they’d identify themselves as being either optimists or pessimists.

TIM ETCHELLS

Looking at the images now, people in them seem doubly or even triply far away. The kind of contemplation they’re in, the alwaysstrange state of posing to be photographed plus the time that has elapsed since these slices of reality were separated from its general flow, all seem to multiply the distance. It’s odd to think that these images were taken on a film camera, shot at a moment when black and white home-photo-darkroom was a way of working rather than an Instagram filter. Interesting also to note, that all of the people who sat for the project described themselves as optimists. Looking at their faces it doesn’t quite show. But then how would it? Plus who would agree to have a photograph of themselves with the self-descriptive title of pessimist? I know enough depressives who’d nonetheless somehow balk at that. There’s something warm about the presence of these thinkers-aboutthe-future though, something generous, despite the contradiction of their distance. Perhaps it is because this state of thinking, privately, (or of trying to think privately), produces such an interesting tension with the situation of composing oneself or performing for the camera. They are pictured trying to be elsewhere, instead of trying to be there, back there in the past, with Hugo and me, and the camera. Or perhaps it’s because, sitting there, in the past, they are anyway thinking themselves towards us here in the future, composing themselves in anticipation of this moment. In any case, a dynamic energy, made of folds and circuits of time, circulates around these images. Pushing and pulling, forwards and backwards, the whole of it contained in these 1/125 second slices. What will happen? What has happened? What is to come? What has already arrived? 4

All photographs by Hugo Glendinning

TIM ETCHELLS

Re-looking at Looking Forwards I am also thinking about a more current project, the performance Tomorrow’s Parties, which I directed as part of my long-running work with Forced Entertainment, and which is at Cambridge Junction this October. Tomorrow’s Parties is also an attempt to think about the future although here the contemplation is more articulated. In the performance, the guessing game of the Looking Forwards project – reading silent photographed bodies and faces for clues – is replaced by a playful public attempt to put our future thinking into words. Two performers take the stage and, standing side by side, proceed to name as many possible versions of the future as they can think of – from workless utopian idylls to post-technological disaster zones, from socialist paradises and democracies that respect difference to worldwide corporate shopping malls and brutal robot dictatorships. From science fiction scenarios through half-baked idiosyncratic fantasies of what’s to come, to the familiar terrors and dreams we ingest daily via the news media, the project jumps from angle to angle, weighing up the different stories we tell ourselves about where we might be headed. At the heart of this game are two performers, whom we get to see clearly moment by moment, taking turns, competing, riffing off each other, out-doing each other and at times supporting each other. Like the people we photographed for Looking Forwards, they are not experts on the future, nor students of it. Instead, like the rest of us, they are interested amateurs with a serious but small vested interest – humans whose daily existence is intrinsically bound up with the ebb and flow of bigger narratives – transnational and national, scientific and political, banal and larger than life – which change and mark the globe, sometimes transforming things slowly, sometimes shifting them with sudden violence.

Tomorrow’s Parties Forced Entertainment Wednesday 23rd October 7.30pm J2 Join us for a post-show discussion. If you like this, then you’re going to love: Ring David Rosenberg & Glen Neath Wednesday 25th September 7.30pm J2 It Needs Horses & Home for Broken Turns Lost Dog Wednesday 9th October 7.30pm J2

Jedd O’Sullivan meets Tina C. written by Christopher Green Jedd O’Sullivan is a cultural critic from New York. He lectures in popular culture (PoCu) and specialises in mass media with a specific interest in multiple murders (PoCuMaMeMuMu). His latest book is his Twitter feed from 2012 entitled And The Tweet Goes On. Tina C. is a 9-time Grammy award winning country music singer, and global icon for peace. Tina C. presents Where The Hell Were You? at Cambridge Junction on Thursday 28 November. TINA C. 10

Jedd: Thank you so much for agreeing to FaceTime with me today. Tina: I am delighted to talk to you. It means a lot to me and it was scheduled so … Jedd: I’m just gonna dive right in … Tina: Well, hell yeah, why wouldn’t ya? Why would you bother with pleasantries and small courteous flatteries that mean so much and get so much reward for so little effort? Dive. Right. In. Jedd: I’m not great at picking up hostility so I’m gonna do just that… Tina: I love you. Jedd: Sure. Is it possible for an artist like yourself to have a private life? Tina: I was talking to Beyonce about it whilst I was helping her with her home movie. We have to drip feed the world with just enough personal information to keep them interested, without going so far as to reveal anything that is so private it is painful for us. Jedd: Should your pain be in the public domain? Tina: Let’s just say that my therapist’s bills come out of the marketing budget. I’m a country music singer, that’s what we do, we express our – and your – pain. It’s part of the job description. Me being all kinda private and hung up about boundaries would be like an evil dictator wanting to tell you about his emotionally barren childhood. It ain’t part of the deal. 11

Tina: Are you a trained therapist? Jedd: No, I’m a popular culture critic. Tina: And this qualifies you to probe me in this way? Jedd: It’s what the public wants to know. Tina: Do you ever lie on Twitter? Jedd: What? Tina: Apparently you tweet 440 times a day. Do you ever lie? Jedd: Of course not. I express myself within the confines of 140 characters. Tina: Exactly. I express myself in the context of 140 country music characters who have gone before me, from Mother Maybelle to Mindy McCready. I am squeezing myself into the box the world has given me. I don’t whine about whether or not it’s the real me. It’s Tina C. OK? Now my wig-stylist, spiritual advisor and press agent Rita-Bob is hovering. You got one last question…. Jedd: Really? Ok. Is the meta-textuality of your best selling song, No Dick’s As Hard As My Life, telling us that in a post-feminist, postliberation theology of many kinds including same sex equality, race, personal identity, post-Arab spring, post-post-Arab slash Egyptian summer, that the personal is political, and that freedom is individual choice, and that the old battle-lines of oppression are powerless in the face of the empowered freed mind, expressed through three chord and the truth of a country music verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle 8, chorus structure and a witty pun? Tina: No. OK. I love you. Thanks for your time. Buy the album. Bye bye – and buy! THE OTHER CALLER HAS HUNG UP.

TINA C.

TINA C. 12

Jedd: But if your pain is what you’re selling, what does it feel like when nobody’s buying? Tina: I don’t know, honey. Ask Shania. Jedd: Is country music a metaphor? Tina: You tell me, what’s it a metaphor for? Jedd: It’s a metaphor for the struggle of the white working class to be heard in multi-faith, multi-cultural America. It’s a metaphor for the dispossessed psyche… Tina: And it sells a lot of product. I prefer to focus on that. Jedd: OK. In my book which looks at the hermeneutic relationship between popular culture and popular music entitled Critique, Criticism and Crimpolene: sub-titled Liberation Theology, The Feminist Dialectic & Abba. Sub-sub-titled Ignominy, Irony and Eye-shadow. Sub-sub-sub-titled Thank You for the Musak… Tina: Hey, how come you’re pluggin your product? You ain’t even mentioned my new album yet! Jedd: … I propound the theory that the celebrity walks a dangerous tightrope between having massive success and having to be seen to not be made happy by it. Tina: I know, right! I wrote about it on my new album called Love Is A Four Letter Word available Monday. It’s a song called Unsatisfied. It starts [she sings] “I’ll sing to you my pain, and you can hum it while you work, for minimum wage.” Jedd: Exactly, and … Tina: … and continues “I’ll sing of how the rape of my privacy, ain’t worth the money, but that might just slip my mind at CD promotion time” Jedd: It’s post-modern… Tina: … and continues “Every magazine will help me confide, that though I’ve got mansions, I often think of suicide”. And the truth is, I’m totally fine, but the public won’t let you have all that wealth if they think you are actually enjoying it. Jedd: This is the dark underbelly of capitalism. Tina: It’s complex, it’s tricky to negotiate, but I don’t think it’s dark. It’s only dark for those poor celebrities who actually fall for it, and really are miserable. And really do engage in life-span termination facilitation. But then again, it’s often good for their career. CD sales go up, box office goes up. Like I said, capitalism is pretty damn complex. Jedd: Who is the real Tina C?

Tina C. Where The Hell Were You? Thursday 28th November 8.00pm J2

London Can Take It - similarly, this girl being carried into an air raid shelter is my ‘girl in the red jacket’ Schindler’s List moment equivalent. It stays with you.

ROYGBIV - I used this footage of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon to mirror the emergence of colour television as a new and exciting medium, slightly ham-fistedly.

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING

Everest - it’s always the faces in these videos that get me most, and I think this says a lot about the challenges they faced when climbing Everest in 1953!

Spitfire - A shot of the test flight sequence as David Niven’s character pilots the Spitfire above, and the top brass look on in admiration. J. Willgoose Esq. Public Service Broadcasting. Watch and listen at publicservicebroadcasting.net

Public Service Broadcasting Monday 18th November Doors 7.00pm J1

Deanna Rodger, Hollie McNish, Inja and Mark Grist On 24th October in J2 of Cambridge Junction, three rappers and three poets will be given ten minutes to represent the best of their art form. No music, no beats, no props. Just words. Our question is – what’s the difference between rap and poetry and which do you think you prefer? Here is an excerpt from four of our performers: Deanna Rodger, Hollie McNish, Inja and Mark Grist. We wonder – can you tell which lyrics are from which side of the coin? POETS VS RAPPERS

I hear the news People say what the price is for leaving this world lifeless because our leaders are mindless. Flipping fools, This started as a love letter, now my heart is broken and won’t fit back together. I’m frozen dissolving in the open emotion, floating, my heart’s in pieces. How are you coping? I wish my friends and family burnt pure, because everywhere I go you know I die a little more. Tobacco’s my war, it’s everywhere and passive, it’s not as if we don’t know the damage, casualties are massive.

Surrounded by family until I stepped out the house It took me eight weeks to get the confidence to go into town Now the comments around me cut like a knife As I rush into toilet cubicles feeling nothing like nice. Because I’m giving her milk that’s not in a bottle Wishing the cocaine generation white powder would topple I see pyramid sales pitches across our green globe and female breasts banned. Unless they’re out just for show.

I always get asked ‘where are you from?’ My repeated reply is London The town that sheltered a mother fleeing from war torn land Baby in belly given chance to be a man City of prosperity She seeked jobs, allowing her to keep her dignity Independently Living in a state Not off it.

POETS VS RAPPERS

You kept us in check, alright. Hugged us With a thuggery unrivalled on our street. A bellow from the doorstep; you framing the fortress, Knuckling at dusters; rubbing spit upon faces; Tormenting the dishes. You were clatter, The business, and if one of us resisted, Your words had the power to Lift the spines from our backs.

Poets vs Rappers Thursday 24th October 7.30pm J2 Part of Cambridge Festival of Ideas

If you like Poets vs Rappers, then you’re going to love: The Black Album Avant Garde Dance Wednesday 25 September 7.30pm J2 K’Boum and Oversees Collectif AOC and Barely Methodical Troupe Wednesday 20th November 7.30pm J2

K’Boum and Oversees: Collectif AOC and Barely Methodical Troupe

The Black Album: Avant Garde Dance

On Sincerity Chris Goode

CHRIS GOODE

A few days ago some friends and I hit on what seems like an awfully good way of plugging the obstinate gap in the national finances: a tax on irony. Every time a Shoreditch hipster or student trustafarian picks up a set of flying ducks for their living room from Oxfam, or downloads Bonnie Tyler’s Greatest Hits for a party at which everyone will be dancing inside a giant invisible pair of inverted commas, they’re liable to Irony Tax at, say, 300%. Maybe Nathan Barley will end up saving the NHS. Irony has long since ceased to be a precision tool for thinking with. It’s become pervasive now, part of the cultural air we breathe, a constant harmonic to the tone of public and artistic discourse; and it’s felt for years like a backlash is gathering pace, though it never quite seems to arrive. When I started my first theatre company, Signal to Noise, in 1999, part of our manifesto was about our romantic desire to reclaim sincerity, at a time when British theatre felt to us like it had exhausted itself by succumbing to what the critic Andrew Gellatly once called “hip fatigue – the ironist’s love of his cage.” We wanted to tell stories you could believe in, to kiss with unforked tongues, to wear our hearts on our sleeves in a spirit not of bathos or contrived self-consciousness but of reckless urgency and delight.

speaking the words of young children, those words that we hear are all radiantly sincere. It seems children mostly don’t get excited by the technologies of irony until they’re teenagers, when rudimentary sarcasm suddenly becomes a source of inexhaustible pleasure. Everything you hear in Monkey Bars is a product of sincere thinking: even (perhaps especially) the surreal bits, the improbable and dreamlike and excessive bits, which are nothing more than a candid attempt to describe the sensational overload of real fear and real desire.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the rehabilitation of sincerity lately. I have a bit of an artistic crush right now on a young American poet / blogger called Steve Roggenbuck. He posts dozens of self-shot YouTube videos where, cut up right alongside ironic-seeming improvised personas and whipsmart one-liners and scraps of found video material, he exhorts his viewers, with all the whirlwind passion of a motivational speaker on the edge of a nervous breakdown, to look harder at the world around them, to really commune with nature, to make better love, to pay attention to the sky, and above all, to act in the knowledge that one day we will be dead but today we are alive. The wonky juxtaposition of these different registers of voice is fascinatingly potent: because Steve comes across half the time like a wise-ass Harmony Korine wannabe (albeit with better material), it’s easier to trust him when he gets all starry-eyed. He’s not some blissed-out hippie ingenu, he’s streetwise and potty-mouthed; he just happens to be channelling Walt Whitman for the Web 2.0 generation. Sincerity without the problem of authenticity.

Some of the most touching moments in Monkey Bars, and in a lot of the material we couldn’t find room for (there are at least two more shows on the cutting room floor), are about moments of change. For example, we talked to a lot of Year 5 pupils who, at nine or ten years old, are just starting to think about the big shift they’re gearing up for, not much more than a year away, of setting out for secondary school. But children face up to new things almost every day, new ideas, new challenges, and their apprehensiveness and bravery in beginning to place themselves and their futures in the adult world they’re growing inexorably towards was the emotional material I really wanted to excavate when we started making the show.

Trawling for further information on Roggenbuck, I came across an interview which namechecks an idea I hadn’t come across before: the New Sincerity. Apparently it’s been around for years – long before my Signal to Noise colleages and I were asking for just such a movement – in music and literature especially. Sincerity, it’s suggested, is not only viable artistically, and perhaps desirable politically and ethically, but actually surprisingly dynamic as a creative strategy too. Dynamic because sincerity makes us want to tell the truth about who we are, and who we are – and what we might want to say about ourselves – is constantly changing. Our lives are mobile, our identities are in flux, our relationships are endlessly in transition: so the affordances of sincerity are always fertile. There’s always something else. One of the reasons why Monkey Bars was such a pleasure to make – and, I suspect, one reason why it’s also our most popular show to date – is that, for all of the ironies wrapped up in its basic conceit of adults

While Monkey Bars is at Cambridge Junction, Chris Goode and Company will also be leading a workshop for emerging artists, and the questions we’re hoping to open up with them are, in a way, all about the risk of being sincere: in making, in speaking, in thinking, in listening, in moving, in creating the spaces where radical reimagining might happen. The example of the children whose words we perform could hardly be clearer. Stand right on the edge of what you know how to do; say what you have to say about it: then move to the next edge and start again.

CHRIS GOODE

We thought sincerity was a pure virtue. But within a few years, George W. Bush and Tony Blair were justifying their illegal and psychopathically murderous adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq on exactly that basis: we could disagree with their actions, but we must not doubt the sincerity of their motives. This utterly dishonest (and manifestly insincere) rhetorical manoeuvre made sincerity seem every bit as toxic as the rampant postmodern gameplay that so dominated our culture at the turn of the millennium.

Monkey Bars Chris Goode and Company Tuesday 17th September 7.30pm J2 Masterclass with Chris Goode and Company Monday 16th – Thursday 19th September 10.00am – 6.00pm J3 (by application) Try Something Different, half price ticket for: Ring David Rosenberg & Glen Neath Wednesday 25th September 7.30pm J2 If you like this, then you’re going to love: Mess Caroline Horton and Company Wednesday 27th November 7.30pm J2

This autumn Bryony Kimmings brings her new show to Cambridge Junction. The show stars Bryony and her 9 year old niece, Taylor. This is the script from Taylor’s speech originally delivered by Taylor at Yoko Ono’s Meltdown Festival and at the Children’s Media Conference Summer 2013. Written by Taylor. Hi my name is Taylor. I am 9 years old, I am in year 5. I go to Westfield Junior School. I live in St Ives in Cambridgeshire. I like Irish dancing, Jessie J, Tang Soo Do and tuna pasta. When I grow up I want to be a midwife. I have been working with my Aunty Bry who is an artist. We have been working together for almost a year, when I am not at school. Our project together is called Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model. It’s a social campaign, theatre show, documentary and education project.

I chose my top 5 personality traits for a role model from a list that Bryony gave me. These were kindness, community, tradition, hard work and safety. I then created a character that had these traits. Bryony asks me 100’s of questions all the time. I am in charge. I am the manager. She then goes away and makes things come to life. It is very fun. And a bit strange. Her name is Catherine Bennett. She works in a Museum with the dinosaurs. She has a dog called Cookie She is 29. She is good at what she does. She worked hard to get there. Her favourite food is tuna pasta. Her bedroom is light blue. She has lots of friends, likes parties and being outdoors. She goes to the gym everyday and practices martial arts. She has a boyfriend called Matthew and a best friend called Chelsea. Matthew is a proof reader. Chelsea is a midwife. To relax she lays on the sofa and watches TV. Her favourite film is War Horse. She likes 80’s music. She cycles everywhere. Her favourite TV programme is Come Dine With Me.

BRYONY KIMMINGS

Taylor, aged 9 introduces her Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model

Ages ago me and my aunty Bryony had a look at the role models that were offered to kids like me on TV, in music, online. We found they were all very similar. Lots of them talked about fame and money, the girls all looked similar, the way they made you feel was the same, most also tried to sell you something. We started to think about a different role model who wasn’t like that. And we decided to make one come to life. As an alternative.

Catherine as you have seen, has shoulder length blonde curly hair. She wears glasses and a dinosaur bone necklace. Has blue eyeshadow and red lipstick. She wears knee length skirts and likes polo necks. She is quite covered up. She is quite clumsy so doesn’t wear high heels. She always has a backpack even when she is on the red carpet. She is a normal lady.

If you don’t know already, a role model is someone you admire, whose behavior inspires you. Makes you happy and want to achieve something as well as they have. 26

We decided that pop music was the best way to reach people my age. So CB became a pop star. My aunty played me hours and hours of music. She then gave me a sentence and made me fill in the blanks with musicians and bands. CB sings songs like Lily Allen, written by the B52â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and produced by The Gorillaz. I then gave Bryony and Tom (who makes the music) the things I thought CB should sing about, things that me and my friends like. Animals, Friendship, getting up and being happy. Catherine Bennett wants you to believe that anything is possible in life. She wants you to use your imagination. And she wants to make sure no one ever feels small.

BRYONY KIMMINGS

We now need to get CB famous. So we can prove that kids would like an alternative role model. We have decided that fame means: 1 million hits on YouTube. Interviews on 3 TV shows. Newspaper and magazine coverage. Celebrity friends. Radio play. And one big company to offer to buy CB (so we know they are scared and want in on our good thing!) You can help us byâ&#x20AC;Śsharing our music and telling people our story. We will give you cards with our details on as you leave or you can visit www.catherinebennett.so.

She is going to sing a song now called The Future. Bryony and Tom wrote it when I asked them what will happen in the future. Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model Bryony Kimmings Wednesday 30th October 7.30pm J2 Part of Cambridge Festival of Ideas

Photograph by Christa Holka and Alexander6

NOW. I want to introduce you to someone. Ladies and gentleman my pop star role model: Catherine Bennett.

Thumbelinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Great Big Adventure Presented by Cambridge Junction and Dancing Brick An action-packed Christmas show for adventurous people of all sizes! Saturday 14th December - Saturday 4th January

A response to the launch at SAMPLED Festival by Michael Pinchbeck

MICHAEL PINCHBECK

A lot can happen in four and a half minutes. You can soft boil an egg. You can talk about art. Or, sometimes, you can do both. We are what we eat. Brunch is a hybrid of breakfast and lunch. Breakfast is a breaking of the fast we take when we sleep. Supper is what we eat before we go to bed. Some people read cook books in bed. Some cook books read like poetry. Some TV cookery looks like pornography. In live art, there has been a recent trend for ‘performative feasts’ where performances take place between courses. However, perhaps this trend is changing. Initiated by creative producer, Claire Summerfield, Only The Lonely is an invaluable and timely opportunity for artists and producers to come together informally over food and talk about what they do and why they do it. So often networking involves searching in vain for common denominators, or shoulder surfing, or badge spotting or parking. The first Only The Lonely, hosted by Cambridge Junction as part of SAMPLED 13, was a welcome exception with two central questions: 32

1. How do you like your eggs? 2. What is the most interesting conversation about art you have had? We were advised to ask the first question of someone we didn’t know and then offer to make their breakfast. I made breakfast for Zoe, a Cambridge-based artist. We had four and a half minutes to talk while our eggs boiled. This was our common denominator. Out of 15 artists surveyed, five chose boiled eggs, five chose fried eggs and only two chose poached eggs. Another three artists were vegan, so were sticking to coffee. As the eggs were made and people started to eat, our conversations turned to the second question, and, as we dipped our soldiers, we talked about art and how we talk about it. Zoe reminded me that most audiences walk into the theatre and want it to be good. As a performer, you sometimes forget that there is a default setting of goodwill in the room. And perhaps the context of SAMPLED 13, which this year, focused more on work-inprogress, was developed to encourage this. We talked about how when someone describes a performance to us that we haven’t seen then we can relive it through their description. We talked about the best shows we have never seen. We talked about context and how a festival like SAMPLED 13 enables a different kind of audience engagement; more receptive, more supportive to new work in development with a critical framework for debate. We talked about how, at the same time, some festivals can reach saturation point and our capacity to feedback is blunted. We talked about feeling like artists and feeling like punters and we wondered whether there was a switch. We talked about how a context shapes our opinion to the point where we are unable to see where the frame ends and the show begins. I was reminded of something Jean Luc Godard said to a friend after he complained about a film they had seen: ‘What did you do to make it better?’ With Only The Lonely, Claire Summerfield has the potential to make art better, through meeting, eating and talking about it. She is breaking our fast.

MICHAEL PINCHBECK

Only The Lonely produced by Claire Summerfield

Join us at Cambridge Junction for artist-led talks and networking events. Only the Lonely presents David Gale’s Peachy Coochy Nites Wednesday 2nd October 7.30pm J3 METIS World Factory: A Conversation in Progress Monday 28th October 6.30pm Hot Numbers Coffee, Gwydir St, Cambridge Part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas

Total Arts Our Total Arts workshops feature performance, music, film and story devising for disabled young people. Total Arts screened three of their short films and collaborated with Tazlie Theatre Company, a group of Year 12 BTEC Performing Arts students studying at Parkside Federation and Cambridge Junction, for WINK a showcase presented as part of the Cambridge Disability Sports and Arts Festival.

Screenshot from â&#x20AC;&#x153;Land of the Giantsâ&#x20AC;?

Some people are collectors without really knowing it: corks tossed from opened bottles of wine into a bowl, or change from their pockets thrown into a jar of coins. Other people form collections without thinking about them as a collection: vinyl records of a particular singer, t-shirts, books. We are guardians of family collections in the form of heirlooms. We all form collections by writing things down: shopping lists, letters to friends, dreams. Then there are those people who collect objects, antiques, paintings and ephemera. Practically everyone is a collector of something. Joshua Sofaer collects false noses. 452 false noses and growing. Allowing these noses to smell fresh air in Adjunct, these photographs allows us to poke our noses into Joshua’s collection. What someone collects can often tell us as much about that person as the object but here, with the collector staring uniformly back at us, animating the noses in the process, the viewer is moved to question their own identity, or even their own nose. By reconfiguring familiar forms such as museum collections and displays, Joshua’s artistic practice makes us reconsider what is often right in front of our noses and, as with this work, to find the smile just below it.

JOSHUA SOFAER

COLLECTING THINGS JOSHUA SOFAER

Junction University Three courses each month, exploring the intersection of art and life. Consider your collections over three months with Joshua Sofaer, dance in public with New Art Club, overcome boredom with Hunt and Darton, programme sound with Sonic Pi, document with Dan Canham, clown with Jamie Wood or map with Filipa Periera-Stubbs. Saturday 14th September Saturday 12th October Saturday 2nd November 10.00am – 1.30pm Limited places. Book now or miss out.

Try Something Different! “Cambridge Junction has a real knack for supporting up and coming talent” Cambridge News

Our Try Something Different ticket deal is back. Great shows at great prices, giving you the chance to take a risk and be a bit adventurous on a weeknight. Our programme balances established artists with up-and-coming acts. This autumn we’ve paired up some shows we think you may not have heard about but that are definitely worth your time. If you take the challenge to try something different and come two weeks in a row to experience our theatre and dance programme, then we’ll give you a half-price ticket deal for the second show. We also stagger our prices between £12 (£8 concessions) and £10 (£6 concessions), so any show is worth a go!

#somethingdifferent Buy tickets to:

and get half price tickets for:

Monkey Bars Chris Goode & Company Tuesday 17th September

Ring David Rosenberg and Glen Neath Wednesday 25th September

North North North New International Encounter (NIE) Tuesday 1st October

It Needs Horses / Home For Broken Turns Lost Dog Wednesday 9th October

The Black Album Avant Garde Dance Wednesday 13th November

K’Boum and Oversees (Circus Double Bill) Wednesday 20th November

book online at junction.co.uk

Available online, by phone or at the Box Office.

junction.co.uk 01223 511 511 40

Cover images: Lost Dog’s It Needs Horses, commissioned for The Place Prize for Dance, sponsored by Bloomberg. Image: Benedict Johnson.

cambridge Junction Clifton way Cambridge CB1 7GX box office 01223 511 511 @cambjunction

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