Barbican Guide
December 2021
Hello!
The pandemic was a period of reflection for many, as restrictions threw into sharp focus some things that might have been taken for granted. Composer Jake Heggie and mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton contacted their friends to find out what they were missing during the lockdowns, and the results have become a wonderful song cycle which premieres here this month.
Freedom of speech is certainly something that many of us don’t always appreciate, so our screening of Alone is an important reminder that not everyone enjoys such liberties.
Also this month, find out about artist Isamu Noguchi’s incredible sculptured spaces around the world. Our exhibition highlights the breadth of this influential artist’s work.
Get ready for some thought-provoking and stimulating films, as we welcome T A P E Collective back to our Cinemas for a series of screenings that will prompt a conversation, while musician and producer Alfa Mist tells us what inspired his new album.
As we come out of the most stringent Covid-19 restrictions, it’s a real pleasure to have so many people coming here again. We look forward to seeing you this month.
Exploring identity and heritage on film
T A P E Collective’s screenings are cross-arts extravaganzas. It’s all about sparking conversation, explains co-founder Isra Al Kassi.
Angie Moneke, Isra Al Kassi and Nellie Alston met on the Barbican Young Programmers scheme and – putting into practice what they learned – founded T A P E Collective to improve representation on screen. So their return here is like coming full circle.
Since 2017 the trio has curated a number of screenings that bring together film, art, music, and talks into one space for events with a focus on representation, identity and heritage. The collective’s online cinema platform Good Wickedry shows a film a week, with a particular focus on people of colour and female filmmakers.
Following their first screening in October, they’ll be bringing their typically crossarts approach to two further events here.
Trippin’ Over My Tongue, which takes place this month, is about ‘exploring language beyond the mother tongue, it’s about learning and losing language, the significance of language and what it does to our confidence when we don’t feel like we comprehend or can express ourselves’.
January’s event, Call Me By My Name, explores the significance of names, changing names and how often people might get your name wrong. ‘We also wanted to include the idea of having to actually define a label, having to find the right label and the right identity label, and the right definition by also exploring ideas of home and belonging,’ says Al Kassi.
One of the events will feature a spoken word performance, the other a creative workshop. ‘We are so naive as an industry in terms of what it is that keeps an audience engaged,’ says Al Kassi. ‘It’s not just about keeping an audience engaged in terms of “buy the ticket and pay attention”; it’s actually about how to keep an audience feeling safe. And that’s something that you can get from a cross-arts event. Because some people need three hours before they want to say hi to you. And that’s OK.’
When it comes to films that provoke discussion, these more rounded experiences enable audiences to share their thoughts and feelings afterwards, making the events more inclusive, and creating a more rounded experience. ‘It’s about promoting a conversation,’ explains Al Kassi.
There’s one thing we’re curious about: how did the group settle on the name for the collective? ‘People think it’s an acronym, but it’s not,’ smiles Al Kassi. ‘It’s more about the physical feeling of film that goes beyond the usual sort of cinema screenings. Both Angie and I are real film nerds. We’re massive Marvel fans and love cult classics from the 80s. So the name was about reclaiming this idea of retro cinema that I don’t think people really wanted to associate with young women of colour.’
T A P E Collective Presents takes place Wed 20 Oct 2021—Wed 26 Jan 2022
How you can help young artists
The end of the year is often a time for reflection. Despite the massive challenges of the past 18 months, we’re proud to have been able to continue to offer accessible development opportunities for young people. And that’s thanks to people like you who have given donations, become a Member, or joined our Patrons scheme. Their generosity has enabled us to continue to work with young artists, mentoring them and commissioning new work, even during the lockdown.
Stephanie Francis-Shanahan, 26, joined the Young Visual Artist and Young Curator programmes. ‘For me, it was completely transformative,’ she says. ‘I don’t think my progression of how I made my work would have existed without these programmes. It’s completely made me able to exist, artistically.’
Continuing this important work relies on contributions from you. Find out more about how you can support young artists through our programmes below.
Supporting the Barbican by becoming a Patron helps our programmes like Young Curators. © Catarina Rodrigues
Davóne Tines © Bowie Verschuuren
What did you miss the most?
Composer Jake Heggie and close friend, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, wanted to know what people missed during the first lockdown. What they discovered inspired a new song cycle that will premiere here this month.
It was shortly before March 2020 that Tucson Desert Song Festival invited Heggie and Barton to write a song cycle about whatever they wanted. So when that fateful first lockdown hit, Heggie admits to some naivety. ‘We kept thinking, “Oh, we’ll be back open in June”,’ recalls the renowned composer over Zoom from San Francisco. ‘We had no idea what was lying ahead of us. I just thought, “this is an opportunity to capture a very special moment.”’
So the pair reached out to around 30 people they knew to ask them to write something about what they missed the most. While all were touching, Heggie says he narrowed down the submissions to the five that really spoke to him creatively. The result is a very personal new song cycle, What I Miss The Most, featuring moving texts by some well-known friends. It will have its UK premiere here this month as part of a concert that celebrates the human connection of live performance.
‘[Mezzo-soprano] Joyce DiDonato wrote something that was very strong and a little frightening about the orders that were coming from above, and a lack of order,’ says Heggie. ‘[Actress and singer] Patti LuPone – I was expecting something very brassy and fun and from her, and she was so blissed out being at home with her family that she said, “I really don’t miss much” because she felt her life was so rich. [Nun and death penalty abolition campaigner] Sister Helen Prejean also wrote about her joy of being at home, but also this thing inside of her that relentlessly felt the call to civil justice.’
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – who died not long after sharing her thoughts – wrote a short piece about missing music in person, which Heggie describes as ‘one of the most beautiful, meaningful songs in the whole cycle’. And the final movement is from pianist, poet and conductor Kathy Kelly, who writes movingly about wanting to reach through the computer screen to the person on the other side. ‘It just made me weep from the beginning,’ smiles Heggie.
‘The five poems covered a gamut of feelings from anger and outrage, to yearning to peace to sorrow. It all sort of fell together very naturally.’
The rest of the programme at this concert celebrates the human connection of live music. Chosen by self-described ‘die-hard feminist’ Barton, it champions the voices of women. She says: ‘When Jake and I were coming up with this programme, we knew that What I Miss the Most would be the centrepiece. We started thinking about what we miss the most, and both of us really missed the sort of connection one can only really experience through live music. Ultimately, that idea became the backbone of this recital. The first half is a celebration of music itself – some are the literal embodiment of that concept and others are just a celebration of the chance to tell some of our favourite stories together with an audience in the house (Gretchen am Spinnrade and Von ewiger Liebe come to mind).
‘With the second half, I just had to ask Jake to let us showcase him, because his music has been such an integral part of my life since I started falling in love with art song. In addition to the new song cycle, we do Of Gods and Cats (which was the first set of Jake’s songs that I ever sang), and his magnificent Iconic Legacies. There’s nothing quite like ending a recital singing as Barbara Bush on Sesame Street!’
Heggie and Barton have long had a friendship. The composer is effusive in his praise for her talent. ‘Her personality and her voice are inextricable. She embodies joy and a breadth of emotion and human experience. And you hear it in every part of her voice. Her voice itself, first of all, has remarkable colour. It’s huge. And it is incredibly flexible, from a very soft, almost pop style to a very Wagnerian sound. And she’s comfortable in all of it.
‘I think I’ve always responded to her sound from the first time I met her in 2007 when she was the third lady in The Magic Flute in Houston. I met her backstage, and we just started laughing, became fast friends and decided it was time to work together right away.
‘There’s just an emotional core to her that I respond to. It’s very authentic. And there is great beauty to her sound. But she’s not afraid to make an ugly sound if the text demands it or the emotion demands it. She’s just about being truthful. She’s incredibly brave and vulnerable. Those are qualities in her colleagues such as Joyce DiDonato that have to be there for me, or I’m not interested, because that’s how I try to be.'
Jamie Barton & Jake Heggie takes place on 5 Dec
You’re not alone
Showing on International Human Rights Day, Belarus Free Theatre’s new film is a powerful reminder of the impact people can make if they come together
There’s a moment in the film Alone, where multi-platinum-selling Ukrainian musician Andrei Khluvniuk invokes a huge festival crowd to chant the name of Oleg Sentsov, a Crimean filmmaker imprisoned by the Russian government after it annexed the region.
Afterwards, he’s asked how he feels. ‘I don’t feel comfortable,’ he replies. ‘I wish I didn’t have to say what I said. I wish I could remain a simple hip hop rock musician who plays his music. But I can’t stay silent because it’s connected to me.’
This extraordinary film charts Khluvniuk’s journey from stadium-filling hip-hop rock star to activist. It’s made by Belarus Free Theatre, the foremost refugee-led theatre company in the UK and the only theatre in Europe banned by its government on political grounds.
We follow as Khluvniuk talks to dissidents and campaigners around the world. He wants to raise awareness and motivate his fans to join him in taking a stand against the war in the east of Ukraine and the hundreds of political prisoners held in Russian jails.
He is the most famous Eastern European artist to be involved with such an overtly political campaign. ‘At the beginning, he felt very uncomfortable about it, but now he feels much better about it,’ says Belarus Free Theatre co-founder Nicolai Khalezin. ‘It’s an interesting transition where a creator sees the outcome of their activism, and they see that it produces results.’
With the war in Ukraine becoming a footnote in the media, the musician plans an ambitious personal statement on a huge logistical scale: a stadium-size rigged concert to nobody but the land where the illegal military border established by Russia now lies with the annexation of Crimea. He hopes the move will put Ukraine’s plight back on the media agenda, and help secure the release of Sentsov. ‘The concert at the Crimea separation line was very important for all of us,’ recalls Khalezin. ‘When the concert finished, everyone was crying. It was very emotional.
‘It was a very strange feeling knowing that the first thing past the stage was a minefield, and then after that were Russian snipers, watching. But the President of Ukraine came onto Facebook to congratulate everyone for the work, and all the newspapers wrote about it. So it was very emotional.’
Alone is a powerful and moving documentary that is lent a sensitivity by being the directorial debut of Belarus Free Theatre’s co-founders, Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada, who bring their personal experience of being forced into exile by Belarus’s dictator Alexander Lukashenko to the process. ‘Documentary film is a different way of presenting what we do in the theatre,’ Kaliada tells us. ‘When you put a play on stage, even if it’s based on personal stories, it gets shaped by actors and playwrights. With film, you’re capturing specific moments in time. It’s beautiful because when you see a person crying, it’s happening right there. It’s very real. That was an interesting discovery for me.’
Alone takes place on 10 Dec
1. UNESCO Gardens, Paris, 1956–58 © INFGM / ARS – DAC
1. UNESCO Gardens, Paris, 1956–58 © INFGM / ARS – DAC
2. The Billy Rose Art Garden, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1960–65, © INFGM / ARS – DACS
2. The Billy Rose Art Garden, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1960–65, © INFGM / ARS – DACS
3. Sunken Garden for Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 1960–64, Imperial Danby marble, Photography by Ezra Stoller ESTO, INFGM / ARS – DACS / Ezra Stoller/ Esto
3. Sunken Garden for Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 1960–64, Imperial Danby marble, Photography by Ezra Stoller ESTO, INFGM / ARS – DACS / Ezra Stoller/ Esto
4. Sunken Garden for Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, New York, 1961–64, photograph by Arthur Lavine © INFGM / ARS – DACS
4. Sunken Garden for Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, New York, 1961–64, photograph by Arthur Lavine © INFGM / ARS – DACS
5. Playscapes, 1967, Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Georgia, (left) photograph by Martha Clifford © INFGM / ARS – DACS / Martha Clifford
5. Playscapes, 1967, Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Georgia, (left) photograph by Martha Clifford © INFGM / ARS – DACS / Martha Clifford
5 unmissable Noguchi gardens
As our major exhibition shows, Isamu Noguchi believed sculpture could be a ‘vital force in everyday life’ and he created extraordinary designs for outdoor spaces. Curatorial assistant Andrew de Brún shares some standout places.
1 UNESCO Gardens, Paris, 1956–58
In 1956, Noguchi created the gardens for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, transporting large stones from Shikoku and Okayama in Japan. Inspired by the communal experience of the Japanese gardens, Noguchi planned a tranquil space where people could congregate among the plantings, rock formations and ponds, all linked by a sloping path.
2 The Billy Rose Art Garden, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1960–65
In 1961 Noguchi was commissioned to create a sculpture garden for the archaeology and art museum planned to open in Jerusalem in 1965. He created what was his most ambitious sculpting of the landscape in the hillside of the Neve Shaanan (‘place of tranquillity’), adding triangular stone wall sections as backdrops for the museum’s sculpture collection, as well as a large water fountain.
3 Sunken Garden for Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 1960–64, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Noguchi’s Sunken Garden at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was initially inspired by sand mounts in Japanese temple gardens, but he later adapted his design to exist as a unified, immersive sculpture environment. Individual elements of the sculpture include a sun, a cube, and a pyramid rest installed on a geometric pattern, all composed of white marble.
4 Sunken Garden for Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, New York, 1961–64
Noguchi’s Sunken Garden for Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza was commissioned to sit alongside a 60-storey skyscraper in Manhattan. He decided to create a water garden in a circular well using black rocks from the Uji River near Kyoto which he personally selected for the garden. Unlike his other sculpture environments, this garden was designed to only be seen from a distance, inspired by the renowned Ryoanji temple garden in Kyoto.
5 Playscapes, Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Georgia, 1975–76
The Playscapes in Piedmont Park, Atlanta, are the first commission Noguchi realised in the US for a sculpture environment dedicated entirely to play. Since his early career as an artist, Noguchi saw play as one of the best ways in which to engage with sculpture. He made play equipment based on models he created the previous decade that allowed children to play while also learning about physics using swings with varying swinging points and long seesaws.
Noguchi Until 9 Jan
Playing by his own rules
Growing up without access to formal music education, Alfa Mist taught himself to make beats and play the piano. He says not having a prescribed way of doing things gave him a creative freedom.
The title of Alfa Mist’s album Bring Backs is named after a rule in a card game he played as a child. If you won, you’d have to survive a further round without someone playing a card that would bring you back into the game.
‘I apply that to life,’ explains the producer and pianist who’s a key player in the UK jazz scene. ‘It’s a thing I developed growing up in a poor background. My mum came here from Uganda and did what she could to work and raise us. We lived in a perpetual state of positive things happening, but wondering for how long? That’s seeped into me, so I feel it’s tough to celebrate wins because I can’t see what’s around the corner. I used to live in a perpetual state where it’s hard to celebrate today, because tomorrow, everything could be gone.’
Growing up in Newham, Mist programmed grime and hip hop beats as a teenager – a path that led him to discover jazz through producers such as Hi-Tek, Madlib and J Dilla. Falling in love with the genre, he taught himself piano so he could dissect the records’ secrets. After releasing his own music on Soundcloud in the early 2010s he developed a network of collaborators such as Tom Misch, Barney Artist, Kaya Thomas-Dyke, Emmavie and Dornik Leigh. Then in 2017 came breakthrough album Antiphon, which has had over 7million plays on YouTube alone.
Did he find that coming from a non-traditional “jazz background” gave him a sense of freedom? ‘I guess it did, but it’s not like I don’t respect that way of learning. I didn’t know what a Conservatoire was. When I left university I was like, “Wait, you mean there’s a place I could go to do music?”
‘It’s made me different. It’s meant I operate within a world with fewer rules, because I’m not really breaking down any previous historic knowledge. It’s a blessing, but also, I do respect and rate the, quote-unquote “proper way of doing things”.
Alfa Mist performs on 4 Dec
Dinosaur Christmas tree decorations
Dinosaur Christmas tree decorations
DOIY Sushi Socks
DOIY Sushi Socks
Tree Sticker Card
Tree Sticker Card
Sophia paper lamp
Sophia paper lamp
Takazawa candles
Takazawa candles
HAY Yatze
HAY Yatze
Festive gift guide
Looking for gift ideas this season? We’ve got plenty of inspiration for the arts lover in your life
Dinosaur Christmas tree decorations
Give your tree some dino delight with this selection of hanging decorations, including Santasaurus and a beautiful Christmas hat stegosaurus.
DOIY Sushi Socks
These fun and comfy socks are shaped like a tuna maki. Plus, just like at a sushi restaurant, you can buy them individually or take three shaped as a sushi tray.
Tree Sticker Card
Share festive wishes with these 100% recycled paper cards. There’s a wide range to choose from, made by Liverpoolbased design company Jot Paper Co.
Sophia paper lamp
Elegant and portable, this Japanese-inspired paper lamp easily unfolds to become a tabletop or hanging lighting solution. The LED light creates a warm ambient light perfect for your bedside or living area.
Takazawa candles
There are five different candles in the NANAO collection by Takazawa Candle, all with a motif of a different plant that grows in the Noto Peninsula. The candles are plant based - the wick is made from materials such as dried rush and washi-paper, and the wax is made from the fruit of the Sumac tree. Takazawa Candle has been creating candlelight in harmony with Japanese nature since 1892.
HAY Yatze
Bring everyone together with a game of Yatze. The fresh colours and appealing graphics by Clara von Zweigbergk add a modern twist to this classic game for all the family.
Barbican Membership
Get your loved one back to experiences they’ll treasure with Barbican Membership. With free entry to the Gallery all year round, priority booking, discounts, exclusive events and more, this is the present that they’ll be grateful for every time they come to the Centre. Plus, with twelve months to activate the Membership, they’ll have the flexibility to start enjoying the benefits whenever they’re ready. It also makes a superb last-minute gift because the gift membership voucher is sent on the date you choose.
Barbican Gift Membership
Barbican Gift Membership
With thanks
The City of London Corporation,
founder and principal funder
Major Supporters
Arts Council England
Esmeé Fairbairn Foundation
SHM Foundation
Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement
Terra Foundation for American Art
Wellcome
Leading Patrons
Crystal Amber Fund
Trevor Fenwick and Jane Hindley
Mr Gregory Jankilevitsch
Marcus Margulies
SHM Foundation
Corporate Supporters
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
Audible
Bank of America
Bloomberg
DLA Piper
Howden M&A Limited
Linklaters LLP
Morrison & Foerster
Pinsent Masons
SEC Newgate UK
Slaughter and May
Taittinger Champagne
www.designcollectors.org
Trusts & Grantmakers
Art Fund
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch)
Cockayne – Grants for the Arts
Creative Europe Programme for the European Union
Union
Edge Foundation
Europa Cinemas
PRS Foundation
The Allan and Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust
The Boris Karloff Charitable Foundation
The D'Oyly Carte Charitable Trust
The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation
The Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation
The Henry Moore Foundation
The London Community Foundation
The Mactaggart Third Fund
The Rainbow Dickinson Trust
Tom ap Rhys Pryce Memorial Trust
Tower Hill Trust
US Embassy London
We also want to thank Barbican Patrons, donors to Name a Seat, Members, and those who contribute to the Barbican Fund.
If you’re interested in supporting the Barbican Centre Trust, visit barbican.org.uk/supportus, or contact us on 0207 382 6185 or [email protected].
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