We are going to breathe visual life into our songs and make some viral videos for t’internet. The Gluts are preparing for a short artists residency at Camden Arts Centre, where we will have the opportunity to dress-up in green metallic body suits and spend a fews days shooting and editing video.
We are going to be making viral videos for our songs: Roast of Greenwash, Spaghetti Carbonorama, GMNO, OilY, Fresh Worm Salad (can’t remember its real name) and Arctic Roll. Prep is going well. We will also be screening our musical documentary The Gluts Go To Copenhagen on the evening of Wednesday 18th August (7-8.30pm) – the event is free and all are welcome.
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Newsflash…Cafe Press! at Cafe Carbon the publication produced by Ana Čavić and Renée O’Drobinak aka The Ladies of the Press* on the night of our Cafe Oto gig is now available to download from their site.
The Gluts are thinking and planning at the moment. We are working out what to do with our video The Gluts go to Copenhagen, and spending time listening back to recordings, preparing to mix them down. We have also been asked to take part in an exhibition titled Farmers Market and are hoping to show The Gluts go to Copenhagen there. The premise of the exhibition is that participating artists have to use ‘materials’ found in supermarkets local to the venue. The Gluts have thoughts to organise a Life Knitting event – knitting, crocheting and crafting a still life of skipped food. In anticipation, Gina (queen of knitting and all things crafty) has booked us in for a crocheting course at Prick Your Finger in Bethnal Green. I’m hoping to learn how to crochet a matching teacup and saucer.
We are also thinking about organising a Cafe Carbon bicycle tour this summer. I think it will just be a mini tour, around the London and South East area – probably cycling no more than 30 miles per day for 4 or so days. I think we would play in the evening when we arrive. Pubs, houses, youth clubs, allotment societies… thinking to head out of London on the Sustrans route 6 toward Reading.
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The People Speak have posted the Cafe Oto gig on archive.org… where you can now partake in presentations by The People Speak, Question Time, Labofii, Emily James and of course The Gluts. You can also find a review of the night in the art section of Kunstblog.
Stripes and Cheers from the Dollies @ Cafe Oto
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I saw these three beauties in a local vintage shop yesterday. I think they are perfect for The Gluts, but they are incredibly expensive 1950s originals, so I think we may have to make some DIY versions. I wonder where they were worn originally? On the beach?
Email us if you think you can help with construction!
Ice-cream cone hat
Sandwich hat - yum, yum!
Would you like some more cake for your hat madam?
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The Gluts were invited by The Vacuum Cleaner to a Copenhagen Climate Summit show-and-tell event “What difference does it make?” at the Stanley Picker Gallery in Kingston (Stanley Picker marketed and sold Miners and Outdoor Girl make-up brands he also had a passion for collecting contemporary art). The discussion was the last event in The Vacuum’s week long residency at the gallery.
I really enjoyed the presentation by The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, who had posted a box of rubbish generated on their trip to COP15. In the box was a letter that itemised and accounted for everything the family (2 adults and 3 children) had consumed while visiting the summit last december. At one point in the letter The Institute for the Art and Practice for Dissent at Home requested that The Vacuum Cleaner be showered with their accumulated rubbish, which was duly done. Here is a bit of a shaky photo of the reading.
Other presentations included Emily James (see Kaffe’s previous entry about the Cafe Oto gig) and Gavin and Hannah from the Bike Bloc. I enjoyed hearing Gavin and Hannah speak about their experiences in Copenhagen, about the bike-workshop and police presence. Gavin’s account really put a lot of things into perspective for me, particularly his thinking around aesthetics and protest – that by using the aesthetic of protest, artists remove its radicalism. I wonder where The Gluts are in relation to this? Serious absurdists? We may not be radical, but we are serious and want to take part in and contribute to this social movement for change. The final presentation was by Transition Heathrow, who have squatted land on the proposed 3rd runway site in Sipson. They spoke about the recent court success which has ruled that expansion should be looked at again and called for a review “of all the relevant policy issues, including the impact of climate change policy”.
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As promised to the fabulous audience at Café Oto on Friday 19th March, I have endeavoured to make a vegan Arctic Roll. Overall result, delicious. Sponge density/texture? 1 out of 10 if you are looking for airy fluffiness. 8 out of 10 for flavour and texture if you are looking for not too sweet nut like fudginess. Immediate thoughts for v.2 would be to add ginger to the sponge and NOT use the egg replacement, but to go for it with a simple Rose Elliott sponge, (see her Vegan Feasts book), baked fast and short in a swiss roll tin on greaseproof paper.
Ingredients. v.1.
1 x tub Swedish Vanilla Glacé soya ice cream.
2 oz Muscovado sugar finely ground
2 oz self raising fine wholemeal flour
2 egg replacement things
Water
Homemade strawberry jam (by sister VikVik, Malvern Hills)
The sponge/outer shell:- preheat oven to 200˚C. Whisk the finely ground sugar with egg replacement and water until light and smooth and creamy and doubled in volume. Fold in sieved flour with metal spoon. Pour onto parchment on greased baking sheet(7″x11″) and bake for 8-10 mins/when pressing in your finger, the surface bounces back.
Then, tip out sponge immediately onto a baking parchment sheet, roll up and cool. Once cool, spread the inside with the jam, and roll your pre-roll shape ice cream block inside. ( How will you do that I wonder?) Re- freeze, at least 50 mins. Let sit on side for 5 before cutting and loving with neighbours.
Expect version 2 news next week.
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Photo: Kristian Buus.
So we finally play our first night in London. The arriving audience were greeted by four of the brilliant Dollies cheerleading our Passion Fruit Pie with bunches of bright green coriander outside Oto. It was just dark and the street was quiet so the effect was amazing. Mikey Weinkove of The People Speak, our compere for the night, then kicked off the night and we leapt into action, performing Cheap cheap chicken and Oil_Y and Stone Cold Soup and some more, all selected by the audience you understand from our dispersed menus. Planetary Pledge Pyramid was presented, and it took a little time to get some discussion going around, “Was the summit at Copenhagen worth it?” and “What can we do?” and “What are you doing?” “Is climate change real?”, but Mikey persisted and we responded and Question Time came up to present their more conceptual texts. It’s difficult keeping audience’s (participatory?) attention between clusters of wild songs and pic and talk based presentations. Maybe we could do it differently next time, but it was somehow very inspiring to reconsider what we all went to Copenhagen for at the end of a March week in London 2010. Labofii and Kristian Buss ‘s work showed the reality of the summit, from the bicycle blockade action and the take a peek at the reality of the delegates inside the Bella centre. We leapt up and down in-between finding that Locally Grown Worm and Potato Salad and Spaghetti Carbonorama were hot favourites. Shame no time for Skip Soufflé and Bin Burger.
Emily James showed her film based around the arrest of a colleague, raising issues around the personalisation of direct action, and the gloriously glamorous Ladies of the Press bashed away at the back of the café all night, producing a 12 paged zine of the night. Please check for downloads. You might still be able to print out your own copy.
Finally, a special mention for the Special on the menu that night. Helen McCookerybook, performing her “Baked Alaska” with ukelelé, inspired by our pre Cop rehearsal, which inspired our own Arctic Roll. We were not too bad on backing vocals, although our penguin vocals were to die for.
Question…is it possible to make a vegan B.A.? Please let us know if so.
This was a fabulous night. Many thanks to all the contributions, and Sherry Ostapovitch on the mixing desk.
Onwards Gluts. This is great work.
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NEWSFLASH: All female dance troop The Dollies will be Cheerleading lyrics to our song Passionfruit Pie outside Cafe Oto as people arrive on Friday night.
Will they be sporting coriander or parsley pom-poms?
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We are getting moves and outfits as well as the songs ready for our AV 10 show at the Star and Shadow on Saturday. Inspired by Devo’s Whip It, Sarah has made pot hats for the Allotment song. More words to learn for Arctic Roll but the dance routine for Roast of Green Washing pumps like mustard. Are you ready for us Newcastle?
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An evening of performance at Café Oto, 19th March 2010.
18 – 22 Ashwin street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL
Time : 8pm
Tickets : £5 / £3 concs
In December 2009 artists, musicians and activists took their creativity to the streets of Copenhagen for the Climate Summit. The Gluts (Gina Birch, Kaffe Matthews and Hayley Newman) performed their eco-electro** climate inspired musical Café Carbon there too. For this one-night-only event they will perform songs from Café Carbon interspersed with presentations by invited artists and activists; The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, The People Speak (and their Planetary Pledge Pyramid), Question Time, photographer Kristian Buus and filmmaker Emily James will all share stories of the summit with room for thought and chat hosted by Mikey Weinkove. The evening will also include a take-away live-press zine, designed and printed on the spot by The Ladies of the Press*.
Come enjoy a drink (or two) at our COP15 Café and choose songs from a menu of starters, mains and desserts. Dipped globalised food production, roasted carbon trading, seared hunting and gathering, tossed gluttony, squeezed famine with lashings of passion are all on the menu tonight. Join friends and scoff up some delectable music, art and activism; a veritable cornucopia of the out of date/time and tune, but we bet there won’t be any leftovers on your plates.
**But what kind of music is this new eco-electro genre? Think George Monbiot meets Lady Gaga and her twin sisters.
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