Manchester dérive

Psychogeography is an interesting idea thought up in the 1950's and could be decribed as "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape". Although it has morphed over time, it essentially revolves around the principle of a dérive (or drift) through a city to see it from a different perspective - taking an unusual route, finding links and themes not ordinarily seen and generally being inspired by an alternative look at that part of the city.

For this Sub, we will conduct a dérive through a part of Manchester city centre to find a new spiritual inspiration and wend our way to a public house for further reflection on that journey and also on the Sub presence at Greenbelt 2011. We will meet at 2pm by the cash machines inside Printworks (near Norwegian Blue).

The dinner party

This month we returned to Sacred Trinity, to share food and drink together. Thanks to Effie for arranging a wonderful Greek Meze inspired lunch. It was a good time to relax together, share stories and thoughts, reflect on the past 6 months at Sub and eat cake :)

Surveillance, legacy, memento mori

We met at Manchester Art Gallery and spent time with the Recorders exhibition, investigating the artworks and listening to Steve Reich (New York Counterpoint: Fast) in the Pulse Room. After these we went down to Studio 2 for drinks and biscuits over which to pull out many themes, such as surveillance, legacy and memento mori. You can read up on what we discussed here (46Kb).

Death and the afterlife - what happens next?

We met at Manchester Museum where Effie and Richard were our guides to the afterlife. Seeing dead bodies over 3000 years old, reflecting on ancient practises and beliefs and playing games about what happens to us when we die! All this with a nice bit of cake. You can read up on what we discussed in Effie's Notes (89Kb).

Mirrors, reflection & perception

The source bible verse for this is 1 Corinthians 13:12 "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as also I am known" (King James Version).

It's been the inspiration for many creative expressions, in film, literature, music and so on. Expanding on this, we looked at how mirrors have impacted the human psyche, what they reflect and how we perceive ourselves and others through them.

I have written up the presentation that guided the discussion so that you can see what we did - Through a Glass Darkly (78Kb).

Also, I've included 'small' versions of the A1 pictures used in the smoke and mirrors section - poster1, poster2, poster3, poster4, poster5 (between 306-560k each).

Finally, I've included photos of the mirror pictures we created (not the easiest thing to photograph) - mirror1, mirror2, mirror3, mirror4, mirror5, mirror6, mirror7 (between 55-116k each).

Greenbelt 2010

The Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham happened during August Bank Holiday weekend and several Sub members went to that. I hope you all came away with some fresh ideas, inspiration and challenge. Feel free to comment about the thing that meant most to you this year.

First meeting

Sub met for the first time on 12th June 2010, discussing what it was all about, how to run it, what issues we needed to think about and so on. It was good to see everyone and catch everyone's excitement about the possibilities.