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Variant 23 Summer 2005

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Front cover
: Jim Colquhoun

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Editorial and Letters

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Elsa Stansfield (1945-2004)
Pioneer of European artists’ video

Steve Partridge
A personal accolade to Elsa Stansfield --artist, inspirational teacher and profound thinker, closely associated with the development of video art in the Netherlands.

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The New Girl
Pilvi Takala and Lucy McKenzie
Exploratory email exchange on Takala's artist’s book 'Event on Garnethill', suggestively concerned with structures which produce identity, and individuals’ misuse of inherent rules to expose these structures.

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www.lucymckenzie.com
www.frame-fund.fi/aom/takala/index.shtml

 

Making Space for Culture(s) in Boomtown
Some Alternative Futures for Development, Ownership and Participation in Leeds City Centre

Paul Chatterton and Rachael Unsworth
Thorough and academic in its pursuit, resulting in the critical unveiling of the jarring realities of market-led inner-city 'cultural regeneration', stressing the need and means “to do things differently".

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The Saints of the Future
Gus Abraham
What’s all the fuss over the G8's July visit to a caged elite golf club in Scotland? A succinct explanation and expose of who the G8 are and counterpoint to their fictions of championing the world's poor - complete with a guide to peaceful protests and events, including an overview of some of the groups involved.

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Guide to G8 Protests:
Saturday 2nd July
- Make Poverty History March, Edinburgh, from 11am
As the leaders of the world’s richest countries gather in Scotland for the G8 summit, join tens of thousands of others in Edinburgh demanding trade justice, debt cancellation, and more and better aid for the world’s poorest countries.
Sunday 3rd July - “Ideas to Change the World”, G8 Alternatives Summit, Usher Hall, Queens Hall & Edinburgh University.
Will feature prominent speakers from around the world in eight plenary sessions and more than 36 workshop/seminars. The purpose of the Alternatives Summit is to present a serious ideological challenge to the corrupt policies and ideology of the G8. For more information including a list of confirmed speakers visit: www.g8alternatives.org.uk
Tickets £10/5 Contact Usher Hall for tickets 0131 228 1155 www.usherhall.co.uk boxofficeadmin@usherhall.co.uk
Download pdf's of the full G8 Alternatives summit programme:
http://www.g8alternatives.org.uk/admin/test/g8Mambo/content/view/149/143/
Monday 4th July - Blockade of Faslane Nuclear Weapons Base, from 7am
Non-violent direct action called by Scottish CND and Trident Ploughshares to disrupt Faslane as much as possible, primarily by blockading the entrances. Faslane is home to all four Trident submarines, Britain’s own nuclear WMD Programme.
Tuesday 5th July - “Close Dungavel, No-one is Illegal!”, mass protest at Dungavel Detention Centre, Ayrshire
Dungavel is where Scotland imprisons hundreds of people, including families and children who have committed no crime. Coaches leave in the morning from Edinburgh. Shuttle-bus service from Glasgow. For more info contact Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees: glascamref@hotmail.com
Wednesday 6th-8th July - “Another World is Possible”, convergence on Gleneagles.

For grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial reporting see Indymedia:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk
http://www.scotland.indymedia.org

 

Freedom from Seizure
Tom Allan
"Dungavel is built as prison system. It is not a detention centre. That is the first thing you should know." Dungavel Immigration Detention and Removal Centre -- the government’s crime of abducting and locking-away vulnerable people seeking refuge -- families, including children -- and the further abuses suffered at the hands of the State.

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Accompanying photography by:
Miguel Ciriza
Gareth Harper: http://www.photoecosse.net

The Other Side of History - part vii
...part of an ongoing artwork by Euan Sutherland

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www.fivetwo.net

e.sutherland artists page

Heading in the Wrong Direction : The M74 Northern Extension
"A certain narrowness of vision and circularity of thought" in bulldozing yet another 6-lane, five miles, elevated motorway through Glasgow city centre, against the conclusions of the Scottish Executive's own public inquiry. Uneasy parallels to The Hitch-Hikers guide to the Galaxy’s flatulent Vogon Captain's job, which was to do his job, which was to do his job, which was to demolish the earth...

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www.jam74.org
Read the full report from the Public Local Inquiry at: www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/transport/m74r-00.asp

 

B+B Meeting Points
Sarah Carrington and Sophie Hope
An overview of the curatorial partnership's reflexive work that emerged in critical response to cultural policy under new Labour with its underlying neoliberal agenda. And B+B's parallel conversations with groups and organisations in former Yugoslavia, finding resentment and critical response to the use of cultural 'networks' as a tool to generate 'regional' identity for practice.

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www.welcomebb.org.uk

 

Same Difference?
Tom Jennings
Thoughtful, indepth review of high-profile fictional film representations of the lives of British Muslims, 'Ae Fond Kiss' and 'Yasmin', whose production was motivated on the part of non-Muslims to depict realistic, complex portrayals of men, women, families and social networks. This is set against contemporaneous works of European cinema, including 'Head-On', with no such issue-led motivation, but whose subject matter might offer comparable, if contrasting depth.

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www.tomjennings.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

 

not simply, relations of a man
Colin Graham
Gender and the place of women in the state -- a cognizant history of the infantalisation of women in Northern Ireland politics, focusing on the McCartney sisters' confronting of their own community following the killing of Robert McCartney.

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The Conformist Imagination : Think-Tankery Versus Utopian Scotland
Alex Law
A refreshing review of Demos' publication, ‘Scotland 2020: Hopeful Stories for a Northern Nation', following a media outpouring, akin to a Holyrood sewage outpipe, calling for Scots to be more positive, happy, playful, optimistic and now hopeful -- most notably by Carol Craig, the California-style happiness guru. A truly mind-expanding dissection of "neo-liberalism’s drive to create cultures and identities around an entrepreneurial selfhood receptive to the force and needs of capital." ... "The social source of this in Scotland today is a new power elite whose shared project is to make Scotland a miniaturised version of the neo-liberal order."

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Inserts
Commons Service Group declares contemporary art a "GATS Free Zone".
Grenoble-based curatorial collective who are working with artists disseminating information on the significance of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) for contemporary art production.

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www.ecoledumagasin.com/csg/
gats free image
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