Barbican Guide
November 2020

© Harry Cory Wright. First reproduced in Barbican Centre (Pocket Photo Books series) by Harry Cory Wright, published by Thames & Hudson in 2019.

© Harry Cory Wright. First reproduced in Barbican Centre (Pocket Photo Books series) by Harry Cory Wright, published by Thames & Hudson in 2019.

Hello

Our Centre may be closed due to the latest government guidance, but we still have a packed programme of arts for you to enjoy.

Read on to discover what’s coming up this month, both on demand and live, for you to enjoy at home.

November brings a wide range of film festivals, and we’re still livestreaming concerts from our Hall. Theatre-lovers can watch exciting new productions from Guildhall School of Music and Drama students, while a new generation of artists shares their work, despite Covid-19 challenges. And although you may not be able to get here in person, find out the best spots to visit when we re-open as our Architecture Tours guides reveal their favourite places.

Stage to small screen

From fairies to killer whales, Guildhall School of Music & Drama has a packed programme of arts this month, all available to watch for free online.

Promotional image for A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Promotional image for A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Coming up this month will be a triple bill of Italian operas, a drama production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (26–28 Nov), and a new theatre work based around clubbing culture.

Artistic director of High Tide Theatre company, Suba Das directs the School’s production of Shakespeare’s fantasy comedy.

A University of Cambridge English graduate, Das says the Bard is ‘in my DNA’, and originally planned for the production to be fairly traditional. However, as viewers will discover, it quickly became apparent that the play had a considerable amount to say about the times we’re living through, so this version became very contemporary.

‘A year ago when Greta Thunberg delivered her “how dare you” speech, it reminded me of Titania’s speech to Oberon, which is very much about humans’ relationship to nature. I’ve kept that in the back of my mind since then, and now – particularly with Covid-19 – that feels even more relevant. Plus, the students in the production were all in the year that requested to go on climate change marches, so activism is very much part of their world.’

Describing it as ‘[TV series] Succession meets Extinction Rebellion, meets something that feels like an Alexander McQueen rave, while keeping people two metres apart’, Das says this production is set in very modern times. But in keeping with the current mood and our reality, it also invites us to question whether the play’s ‘happily ever after ending’ really is all it seems.

You’ll have to watch it when it’s streamed to find out how that’s achieved, but until then, Das says being able to start rehearsals again and create a work specifically for livestream (rather than a filmed theatre production) is a joy. ‘We’re getting to make something that really says something about this moment, that feels necessary. That’s what it is to be an artist.’

Also coming up this month is Pod (30 Nov–2 Dec), a new concept reuniting director Jamie Bradley and choreographer Vicki Igbokwe after their production of Provok’d: A Restoration which showed at the School in December last year and was broadcast online in May.

Pod is about club culture, relationships, and … killer whales? ‘Yes,’ Bradley grins over Zoom, laughing at an understandably incredulous reaction. ‘In fact there are correlations. I read a book called Of Orcas and Men, about these incredible animals. It explains how they live in communities, show compassion, spend all their lives with their mothers in the same pod [or family group], and even have been seen to come together in sub-pods to leap out of the water together, and groom themselves on rocky beaches – a bit like parties.’

Promotional image for Pod

Promotional image for Pod

So how is the production navigating the current virus restrictions? ‘We’re seeing them as creative challenges, and are turning them into positives’ says Igbokwe, founder and creative director of Uchenna Dance. ‘Everyone involved – the creative team and the technical team – are going on this journey together, which is really good in terms of support. We’re finding that by being open and saying to each other “we don’t know how this could work”, by expressing vulnerability in that way, it really brings us all together to overcome or resolve the challenges.’

Borders and Brexit

What effect does being an island have on our mentality? Find out at a new art work.

Flying over the British coast at drone height in a perpetually looping virtual tour – what thoughts does it spark in you? There’s chance to find out at an installation on Level G.

Insulae [Of the Island] (until 4 Apr) is an artificial construct, created by artist Nye Thompson using Google Earth. It uses the impact of the fact Britain is an island to prompt us to think about what that means in the age of Brexit. Artefacts and glitches are incorporated in the six-hour long footage, which has been digitally filtered and enhanced. The deeply emotive concept of the national border is re-framed as aesthetics through the distancing ‘godgaze’ of the satellite imagery.

Thompson’s work uses data-generating artist software systems to explore new technology, with a particular focus on the machine gaze and its underlying power dynamics.

The installation was created in partnership with Lumen Art Projects.

Still from Nye Thompson's Insulae [Of the Island]

Still from Nye Thompson's Insulae [Of the Island]

Clark The Collaborator

Pioneering choreographer Michael Clark’s work roams across graphic design, film, visual art, fashion and music.

Michael Clark in publicity photograph for Mmm… , 1992 © Hugo Glendinning

Michael Clark in publicity photograph for Mmm… , 1992 © Hugo Glendinning

Clark said ‘I try to make dance that isn’t about dance, not just for other dancers to see’. Part of this appeal to people who might not be familiar with dance is how he has worked with other art forms. Our major exhibition looks across the last four decades of his work, and shows how he is drawn to similarly ground-breaking creatives. Here are just a few of the relationships he has forged during his career to date.

Michael Clark & Company with The Fall in I Am Curious, Orange, 1988 Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London. © Richard Haughton

Music: The Fall

Music is an important part of Clark’s work, but he forged a particularly significant relationship with post-punk band The Fall and its leader, Mark E Smith. Smith and Clark worked together throughout the 80s, and one of their most significant collaborations was for I Am Curious, Orange. The whole soundtrack was composed by The Fall, who performed it live on stage, a crucial part of the staging of the work.

Charles Atlas's, Because We Must, 1989. Courtesy Charles Atlas, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

Fashion: Leigh Bowery

Already established as a fashion designer, club promoter and performance artist – Bowery first started designing costumes for Clark in 1984. The costumes in the image above were created for a sequence choreographed to ‘Venus in Furs’, the 1971 song by the Velvet Underground. Clark and Bowery’s friendship developed through a shared desire to provoke and challenge societal norms of gender, sexuality, and beauty. Clark encouraged Bowery to perform in his productions and was interested in the contrast this created against his trained dancers.

Lorena Randi and Victoria Insole in Before and After: The Fall, 2001 Hebbel-Theater, Berlin. © Andrea Stappert

Visual Art: Sarah Lucas

It was the sculptural quality of Bowery’s garments that found its counterpoint in work by artist Sarah Lucas. Lucas’s interest in sex ‘as a driving force’ attracted Clark, for whom eroticism and sexuality were important parts of His choreography. She created this ‘wanking arm’ for his 2001 work, Before and After: The Fall.

New Puritans, 1984, poster, 76 × 100 cm. © Jamie Reid, courtesy Michael Clark Company

Graphic Design: Jamie Reid

Reid is probably best-known for designing the cover for the Sex Pistols’ album, Never Mind the Bollocks. In 1984, he was invited by Clark to make the poster for New Puritans, which was inspired by The Fall’s song.

Michael Clark in Charles Atlas’s Hail the New Puritan, 1986 Still, 16mm film transferred to video, sound, duration: 84:54 minutes. © Charles Atlas, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

Film: Charles Atlas

The pioneering video artist, Charles Atlas, conceived this work as an anti-documentary where ‘everything in the film is constructed reality’. Clark and his friends were directed to exaggerate their behaviour for the camera, blending art with life. Atlas shows a fictional day-in-the-life of Clark as a young dance prodigy on the cusp of fame. Atlas has called the film ‘a love letter to London’, providing a unique insight into the creative scene and underground queer subcultures that Clark emerged from.

Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer takes place in the Barbican Art Gallery until 3 January 2021.

Supported by Bottega Veneta. This exhibition has been recognised with a commendation from the 2019 Sotheby’s Prize

Michael Clark & Company with The Fall in I Am Curious, Orange, 1988 Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London. © Richard Haughton

Michael Clark & Company with The Fall in I Am Curious, Orange, 1988 Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London. © Richard Haughton

Charles Atlas's, Because We Must, 1989. Courtesy Charles Atlas, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

Charles Atlas's, Because We Must, 1989. Courtesy Charles Atlas, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

Lorena Randi and Victoria Insole in Before and After: The Fall, 2001 Hebbel-Theater, Berlin. © Andrea Stappert

Lorena Randi and Victoria Insole in Before and After: The Fall, 2001 Hebbel-Theater, Berlin. © Andrea Stappert

New Puritans, 1984, poster, 76 × 100 cm. © Jamie Reid, courtesy Michael Clark Company

New Puritans, 1984, poster, 76 × 100 cm. © Jamie Reid, courtesy Michael Clark Company

Michael Clark in Charles Atlas’s Hail the New Puritan, 1986 Still, 16mm film transferred to video, sound, duration: 84:54 minutes. © Charles Atlas, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

Michael Clark in Charles Atlas’s Hail the New Puritan, 1986 Still, 16mm film transferred to video, sound, duration: 84:54 minutes. © Charles Atlas, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

The Long Read

Summer may have been a wash-out for festivals, but this month we’re more than making up for it with a bumper crop of treats.

Still from 'Billie', screening as part of EFG London Jazz Festival.

Still from 'Billie', screening as part of EFG London Jazz Festival.

We’ve got film and music on offer from all over the world and across a multitude of genres, including online exclusives, so you can choose your own festival experience.

The EFG London Jazz Festival will be ‘living in two worlds’ this year as its programme is made up of concerts in our Hall – such as Cassie Kinoshi and SEED Ensemble celebrating the life and work of Pharoah Sanders, and Shabaka Hutchings with Britten Sinfonia – plus digital streams and workshops. We’re also showing a programme of associated films.

Festival director Pelin Opçin says: ‘We’re working with a very strong UK jazz scene, commissioning new projects, and there’ll be exclusive videos for people to watch, plus creative engagement activities.

‘The jazz community responded so positively to the festival – we’ve been in constant conversation with artists, working on exchanging ideas, and finding solutions. There’s always a wonderful sense of community around the festival, and we always feel very supported.’

Among the film festivals in November is the London Palestine Film Festival, now in its 15th year. Offering a platform for filmmakers from all over the world whose work talks about the history of and present situation in Palestine.

‘We very much seek to share films that are inventive and different,’ says the festival’s co-director, Khaled Ziada. ‘It might be a surprise to people that there’s a lot of experimental and art house cinema that looks at these issues. Palestine has such a rich history of cinema, so you’ll find everything from agitprop films to narrative to documentary to abstract. Our programme is proudly varied in content, form and tradition.’

New perspectives

‘More than a residential and cultural space, the Barbican is a piece of nature in central London,’ says Aphrodite Stathopoulou (@staphrod), who took this photo in the spring. ‘It responds changing seasons and it transforms with time. The reason why I like this picture is it captures what I see as being one of the Barbican’s greatest qualities: a real symbiotic space that brings together seemingly contrasting things. Who knew that brutalism could bloom!’


Support the Barbican

We rely on ticket sales and your enduring support and generosity to be able to present and share our programme with you and thousands of others. We’re all finding ourselves in completely new territory, which presents a real financial challenge for us and for those we work with. So, if you’re able, please consider donating to us so we can keep investing in the artists and organisations that help make this place what it is. Please also consider donating to our artistic residents and associates to support them through these difficult times.

A guide to our Guides

Meet some of the people who lead our Architecture Tours, and discover their favourite places around the Centre.

Jo Woffinden

Hi Jo! What do you do as well as being a Barbican guide? I’m a ceramic and concrete designer-maker.

How long have you been a Guide? Three years. I really enjoy opening people’s eyes to this incredible feat of architecture, engineering and urban planning, alongside the fascinating history that brought it into being. It’s one of the biggest experiments of its kind.

What’s your favourite area or design element? The many design elements subtly embedded within the architecture, such as crenulation patterns which directly reflect the history of the site as the Barbican.

What’s the best myth you’ve heard about the Barbican, or misconception people have? Many people think the textured surface concrete surfaces throughout the Barbican have been cast that way, but in fact every bit of textured concrete you see in the Barbican has been chiselled by hand. The Barbican shows how concrete can be expressive as well as structural – an important element of any Brutalist masterpiece.

Olly Slape

Hi Olly! When you’re not being a Guide, what do you do? When I’m not giving tours I work in the Barbican’s Business Events department.

How long have you been a Guide? I’ve been giving tours since May 2019. One of the aspects I enjoy most is the inevitable moment, roughly half way through the tour, when visitors who are new to the estate admit they feel completely lost. The Barbican’s brilliantly absurd pedestrian Highwalks are the physical manifestation of a Borgesian labyrinth, exaggerated further still by optical illusions reminiscent of MC Escher.

What’s your favourite area or design element? I particularly appreciate the architects’ inclusion of green space throughout the estate, from the private sunken quads, to the rooftop conservatory and the concrete balcony planters lining the terraces. Beech Gardens is a hidden gem recently redesigned by Nigel Dunnett, yet rarely discovered despite being accessible to the public.

What’s the best myth you’ve heard about the Barbican, or misconception people have? Visitors often expect cold modernist architecture. But in reality we find an eclectic blend of styles. Elegant Romanesque pillars and curves; an English Baroque taste for imposing scale and shadow; medieval gates and crenulations; nautical chimneys and portholes; ‘70s sci-fi interior features. The architects left surprises for us at every turn.

Jess Barker-Wren

Hi Jess! What do you do when you’re not being a Barbican Guide? I’m an actor, gardener and filmmaker. I also volunteer at Chelsea Physic Garden.

How long have you been a Guide? I’ve been a guide for one and a half years now. I like how enthusiastic the visitors are to know more about the place and the sense of ownership they get from knowing more.

What’s your favourite area or design element? I really love Nigel Dunnett’s planting next to the outrageously blue waters up by Trundle Court. But a particular highlight is the Alice Wall on the way down from Level G stairs to Cinema 1 and the Pit. Designed by Gillian Wise of the British Constructivist group, it consciously disorientates the visitor in a totally charming way. Most people walk past it like it’s completely normal to have infinity mirrors in a stairwell.

What’s the best myth you’ve heard about the Barbican, or misconception people have? That it was a utopian housing scheme for everyone. Originally, the Barbican project was a means for the City to retain power by bussing in a population of carefully-selected individuals in order to retain an MP – social engineering. I love the place despite that.

Discover the fascinating history of and little-known facts about the Barbican on one of our 90-minute Architecture Tours.

My Barbican: Ben Skinner

Our Ticket Sales Manager shares his favourite places around the centre.

View from outside St Giles

I travel from quite far to reach work every day so am usually in a bit of a rush when getting in. However, I always find time to enjoy the view of the Barbican Centre as I approach across the Highwalks over the lakes. If the weather is nice, I repeat the view during my lunch break from my favourite spot on the benches overlooking the centre outside St Giles Church (ideally after popping into the church to look at the book sale). It’s near enough to enjoy the scale of the building and the crowds, but just far enough away to take a little breather from it all.

The Library

If the weather is not up to visiting St Giles, my second oasis is the Barbican Library. It always impresses me that it manages to retain a sense of calm and tranquillity whatever’s going on in the Centre. I suppose that’s the joy of the building as a whole – there’s always something you can find. The music library in particular has been a place of discovery for me, although my wife is not grateful for the hordes of jazz CDs I’ve been able to bring home.

Theatre Doors

It’s not exactly a secret hideaway, but when I think Barbican, my first thought is those doors on magnets. I have a memory of going on a school visit to see Macbeth as a young teenager and I genuinely believe the Porter scene is what started my fascination with the performing arts. Having visited that theatre many times since, I still get a thrill when those doors automatically close as one – there’s magic in that moment. Ultimately, encouraging others to have similar experiences is what keeps driving me at work.

Photo: Max Colson

Photo: Max Colson

Photo: Suzanne Zhang

Photo: Suzanne Zhang

Photo: Peter Dazeley

Photo: Peter Dazeley

What's On

Our building may be closed but we're still with you.

Art, performance, film and more. Live and on-demand throughout lockdown .

With thanks

The City of London Corporation, founder and principal funder

Centre Partner
Christie Digital

Major Supporters
Arts Council England; Esmeé Fairbairn Foundation; Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement; The National Lottery Heritage Fund; Terra Foundation for American Art; UBS; Wellcome

Corporate Supporters
Aberdeen Standard Investments; Allford Hall Monaghan Morris; Audible; Bank of America; Bloomberg; Calvin Klein; CMS; DLA Piper; Howden M&A Limited; Leigh Day; Linklaters LLP; National Australia Bank; Natrium Capital Limited; Newgate Communications; Pinsent Masons; Slaughter and May; Sotheby's; Taittinger Champagne; tp bennett; UBS

Trusts & Foundations
The 29th May 1961 Charitable Trust; The John S Cohen Foundation; SHM Foundation; Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Research Grant from the Art Fund; Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

We also want to thank Barbican Patrons, donors to Name a Seat, Members, and everyone who has supported the Barbican by making a donation.

To find out more, visit barbican.org.uk/supportus or email [email protected]

The Barbican Centre Trust, registered charity no. 294282