:00:11. > :00:15.Hello and welcome to The Culture Show, coming to you from the 2011
:00:16. > :00:21.Manchester International Festival, the biennial event committed to
:00:21. > :00:26.premiering world-class new work across the city and across the arts.
:00:26. > :00:33.Coming up: Victoria Wood on choirs and overweight insurance men in her
:00:33. > :00:36.new show That Day We Sang, Damon Albarn's latest creative odyssey
:00:36. > :00:40.culminates in Doctor Dee: An English Opera. The self-stifled
:00:40. > :00:45.godmother of performance art Marina Abramovic presents the story of her
:00:45. > :00:49.own life with a little help from Willem Dafoe and Anthony Hegarty.
:00:49. > :00:55.30 years after its release, Rickie Lee Jones tells us how she feels
:00:55. > :01:01.about returning to her breakthrough album Pirates for a special
:01:01. > :01:10.performance at The Bridgewater Hall. Plus, Alastair Sooke experiences 11
:01:10. > :01:18.rooms of art and Ben Lewis takes a tour of the outdoor artworks,
:01:18. > :01:22.Manchester's new mical -- musical Wu Lyf breaks the myth about their
:01:22. > :01:28.mistaoeubgs. First, a show about how the power of music can revive
:01:28. > :01:34.your love of life, played out against a backdrop of Wimpey Bars
:01:34. > :01:38.and Piccadilly Gardens, That Day We Sang is the work of Victoria Wood,
:01:38. > :01:43.inspired by events in 1929 when the Manchester Children's Choir
:01:43. > :01:47.recorded their celebrated version of Nymphs and Shepherds. Singing
:01:47. > :01:53.guru Carrie Grant has been speaking to Wood and the new Children's
:01:53. > :01:57.Choir she's created especially for the event.
:01:57. > :02:01.In 1929 the Manchester Children's Choir released a record that would
:02:01. > :02:07.change the lives of those involved, offering hope in the midst of
:02:07. > :02:11.depression. MUSIC
:02:11. > :02:16.in 1979, the BBC broadcast a documentary that brought the now
:02:16. > :02:20.middle-aged members of the choir together again. And a Young Vic are
:02:20. > :02:24.toia wood -- Victoria Wood happened to be watching.
:02:24. > :02:28.The seed of a story stayed with her and over 30 years later the
:02:28. > :02:38.nation's favourite musical comedian has written a play with songs based
:02:38. > :02:42.
:02:42. > :02:50.# I want to make you proud # I want my song
:02:50. > :02:54.# To let you see who I can be # When I belong. Writing it, did it
:02:54. > :02:59.just flow? It didn't exactly flow. The problem I had with it was that
:02:59. > :03:03.I had to write the strapline for the poster before we wrote the play.
:03:03. > :03:08.So I was sort of stuck. I had the boy on the poster, so I had to have
:03:08. > :03:13.a boy running in the play. How does it feel for you to be writing and
:03:13. > :03:16.directing, but not appearing? great. I am delighted. It's a
:03:16. > :03:21.complicated thing to put together because it's got an orchestra, a
:03:21. > :03:27.choir, a child star who can only work every 20 minutes every fifth
:03:27. > :03:37.Tuesday, it seems to me. We have an adult cast. We have filmed bits,
:03:37. > :03:39.
:03:39. > :03:42.it's a complicated show to put # We would glide by as if we're
:03:42. > :03:47.tied by a thread # We would have an amorous and
:03:47. > :03:51.glamorous affair... The power of singing is immense.
:03:51. > :03:55.It's fantastic. The power of music is immense, the power of music to
:03:55. > :03:58.move you and evoke emotion in you and that's what the story is about,
:03:58. > :04:01.it's about somebody hearing themselves sing and thinking I
:04:01. > :04:07.could have a different life. I don't need to live like this, coy
:04:07. > :04:14.have more e-- I could have more emotions in my life than I have.
:04:14. > :04:23.Sorry, did you say you sang or didn't sing, I got distracted?
:04:23. > :04:33.sing?. No. Do you sing? No, I never sing. I never sing. I don't think I
:04:33. > :04:37.
:04:37. > :04:45.ever did sing. Was that me? Did I sing? Did my voice once soar?
:04:45. > :04:48.Am I still that boy? For the original Nymphs and
:04:48. > :04:53.Shepherds, whose childhood recording sold a million copies and
:04:53. > :04:59.entered local legend, the power of singing has sustained. From the
:04:59. > :05:03.mid-1920s the Manchester Children's Choir united 250 children from
:05:03. > :05:07.disparate local communities in song. Florence was one of the original
:05:07. > :05:17.school children who sang in the choir's pioneering concerts and
:05:17. > :05:19.
:05:19. > :05:22.recording at the Free Trade Hall. Nymphs and Shepherds... That's it,
:05:22. > :05:28.that's the one they sang mostly, because it was going to be recorded
:05:28. > :05:36.so we had to be sure about it. never thought it would be anything
:05:36. > :05:40.big, just thought go along with it, yes all right. And lo and behold,
:05:40. > :05:44.it's grown and grown. It was the highlight of our lives. I was a
:05:44. > :05:51.quiet person, but after a period in that I seemed to get more
:05:51. > :05:59.confidence in myself. Imagine the shepherds are over there and the
:05:59. > :06:02.nymphs are there. OK. Now Victoria Wood's new play has
:06:02. > :06:12.brought children from several local schools together to sing as a choir,
:06:12. > :06:12.
:06:12. > :06:16.like in 1929. These kids perform as the original
:06:16. > :06:25.choir and breathe new life into Purcell's Nymphs and Shepherds on
:06:25. > :06:29.stage. That's beautiful, well done.
:06:29. > :06:35.How do you feel about thinking that 80 years later you are now the next
:06:35. > :06:40.set of children that are going to sing? I am actually excited that I
:06:40. > :06:46.am going to be singing such an old song, that's the first time I ever
:06:46. > :06:52.heard that song. Do either of you want to be singers or actors?
:06:52. > :06:58.might want to be an actor, singer, but I don't know yet.
:06:58. > :07:05.That Day We Sang isn't simply a re- enactment of the 1929 choir moment,
:07:05. > :07:10.the play with songs takes the story further, fastforwarding to 1979
:07:10. > :07:15.when nymph Enid and shepherd Tubby who wanted so much to sing as
:07:15. > :07:20.children meet again in middle-age. Why isn't it just a play? It's
:07:20. > :07:25.about music, it's about singing, whether you do or don't sing and in
:07:25. > :07:28.my play the singing expresses the things they can't say. They can
:07:29. > :07:34.talk about decimalisation but sing about love. Why can't they just
:07:34. > :07:37.call it a new shilling? Because then they wouldn't really have
:07:37. > :07:45.changed anything. It has to be something to be divided by 100 to
:07:45. > :07:51.be decimal. I think people are going to be very cross. # Middle-
:07:51. > :07:59.aged, buttoned up # It's safer to ignore
:07:59. > :08:07.# Who we were # When we sang before
:08:08. > :08:15.you often use middle-aged characters in your work. Guess why!
:08:15. > :08:18.Because I'm middle-aged. That's why. Truly? I used to write about girls,
:08:18. > :08:23.and now I am writing about people in their 50s, because I understand
:08:23. > :08:29.it. It's often in that middle age where we have the opportunity given
:08:29. > :08:33.to us to make a massive change for some reason. Yes, I think in 1969
:08:33. > :08:36.when the play is set 50 was probably perceived as older now.
:08:36. > :08:41.Nobody wants to be old now, people would not think of themselves as
:08:41. > :08:45.old, but then I think people perhaps expected that the exciting
:08:46. > :08:49.part of their life, their romantic part of their life was finished, so
:08:49. > :08:54.this is somebody saying, either of them, have never had a romance in
:08:54. > :09:01.their life and they're going to have it now.
:09:01. > :09:11.# If life were movies, we would know all the words
:09:11. > :09:20.
:09:20. > :09:24.I just want them to have a fantastic night and feel that
:09:24. > :09:30.something's happened, that they've been entertained. That's all I am
:09:30. > :09:35.ever trying to do, to 10.00, that's when the kids have to get back on
:09:35. > :09:39.the coach so we have to stop then. That Day We Sang continues at the
:09:39. > :09:44.opera House until the end of the Festival on Sunday. Next, musician
:09:44. > :09:50.Damon Albarn likes a challenge. He has enjoyed chart domination with
:09:50. > :09:52.blur and huge popular success with Gorillaz but he's also been a
:09:52. > :09:58.committed contributor to every Manchester International Festival,
:09:58. > :10:04.kicking off with the hit Chinese opera Monkey, creating music with
:10:04. > :10:10.Punchdrunk and Adam Kurtis and now working with Rufus Norris on Dr Dee,
:10:10. > :10:13.it's been marketed a -- as an English opera but Albarn muse it is
:10:13. > :10:20.might be better described as a melancholy. Michael Smith has been
:10:20. > :10:25.finding out more. History is full of forgotten men.
:10:25. > :10:30.Brilliant, strange, complex men whose influence has reasonated
:10:30. > :10:36.through our culture in ways that may have have become obscured.
:10:36. > :10:43.One such man was the Elizabethan thinker and occultist Dr John Dee.
:10:43. > :10:48.John Dee is a shadowy obscure figure at the heart of the English
:10:48. > :10:54.rennaissance. Elizabeth I called him her philosopher and he was the
:10:54. > :11:04.inspiration for Shakespeare's Prospero and Marlowe's Faust. A
:11:04. > :11:04.
:11:04. > :11:10.crypt owe graphier -- cryptographer whose codename was 007. He's the
:11:10. > :11:16.man who came up with the idea of a British empire, the idea that
:11:16. > :11:20.England could become a maritime power. He lived in an age where the
:11:20. > :11:24.line between science and sorcery was blurred. Mathematics, like
:11:24. > :11:29.magic was still considered to be an uncanny art, the work of the devil.
:11:29. > :11:34.Dee plummed the mysteries of both. I never found any man living nor
:11:34. > :11:40.any book I could yet meet with all, was able to teach me those truths I
:11:40. > :11:45.desired and longed for, he wrote. Instead, Dee searched for these
:11:45. > :11:50.truths through supernational communication with angels. --
:11:50. > :11:53.supernatural. This was a step too far, even for the Queen's
:11:53. > :11:58.philosopher. His reputation tarnished he fell out of favour
:11:58. > :12:02.with the Royal court. In 1596 Dee was made the warden of what is now
:12:02. > :12:04.Manchester cathedral and he lived here in Cheetham library, the
:12:04. > :12:08.oldest public library in Britain. It was somewhere he was free to
:12:08. > :12:15.continue his occult research and tongues wagged that he was
:12:15. > :12:21.conjuring up the devil. The legend has grown up that this burn mark
:12:21. > :12:26.here was caused by the devil's hoof. Dee supposedly summoned him up one
:12:26. > :12:31.dark night. The life of John Dee provided the
:12:32. > :12:41.in-- proved the inspiration for Damon Albarn's latest opera showing
:12:42. > :12:49.
:12:49. > :12:54.I caught up with Albarn between performances and asked what
:12:54. > :12:58.attracted him to the character of John Dee. I have always been
:12:58. > :13:02.fascinated with history, it was one of the few things that I kind of -
:13:02. > :13:08.history and music were the things at school that I was interested in.
:13:08. > :13:11.OK. It's everything about him was elegant and I am a great fan.
:13:11. > :13:16.you see a lot of threads between that Dee's time and our time like
:13:16. > :13:23.was there a reasonance? The two Elizabeths was an easy starting
:13:23. > :13:30.point for that. I am sort of an Englishman alive in the last embers
:13:30. > :13:37.of the fire and he was an Englishman who kind of... Stoked
:13:37. > :13:40.it? Stoked the fire, exactly. melancholy score features the BBC
:13:40. > :13:45.Philharmonic Orchestra and a mixture of African and English
:13:45. > :13:51.musicians, including Fela Kuti's legendary drummer and frequent
:13:51. > :13:57.Albarn collaborater Tony Allen. I got a real sense watching the opera
:13:57. > :14:01.that there's disparate things like African instruments and medieval
:14:01. > :14:07.English things that could not easily have gelled. It really felt
:14:07. > :14:13.they were tapping into some kind of force, if you like. Yeah, a force
:14:13. > :14:17.that, you know, if you talk about intangible things like vibrations,
:14:17. > :14:24.stuff you can't see or hear necessarily, I think absolutely.
:14:24. > :14:28.They come from a same place and they all come from a very sort of
:14:28. > :14:33.different sound world, you know. I mean, all those instruments sound
:14:33. > :14:40.amazing together with no amplification. It's really nice
:14:40. > :14:44.just to sort of leave the amplified world, although I couldn't leave my
:14:44. > :14:48.microphone. Why did you put yourself in the opera, why did you
:14:48. > :14:54.want to star in it? I never wanted to star in that, that's more a
:14:54. > :14:59.marketing - I never really comfortable with that. It's been an
:14:59. > :15:03.amazingly corroborative process and -- collaborative process and I was
:15:03. > :15:07.singing some of the stuff myself and it's like I really love this. I
:15:07. > :15:11.am completely comfortable being in this world and in a way it's kind
:15:11. > :15:14.of - it's an opportunity to say something about England, which
:15:14. > :15:24.there's no other frame I can imagine that I would be able to say
:15:24. > :15:42.
:15:42. > :15:46.# The sun out of the valley # Comes the song of our aaccord...
:15:46. > :15:53.I find something strangely moving about John Dee. I think it's
:15:53. > :15:59.because he embodies an esoteric current that runs through English
:15:59. > :16:02.culture. It's in the myths of king Arthur of stone hedge. It's
:16:02. > :16:07.something that our artists channeled. It's in the words of
:16:07. > :16:12.Sheikh or the pibtuers of Blake. More recently it's in the songs of
:16:12. > :16:22.Syd Barrett or Nick drake. A strange sense of the magical that
:16:22. > :16:31.
:16:31. > :16:36.Doctor Dee will form part of next year year's Cultural Olympiad
:16:36. > :16:39.playing at the London Colisseum. Now, one major contributor it this
:16:39. > :16:45.year's festival programme has been known to remain silent for hundreds
:16:45. > :16:49.of hours at a time, to lie naked on a cross of ice, even to slash her
:16:49. > :16:55.own skin with a razor blade, Marina Abramovic is nothing, if not
:16:55. > :16:59.committed. Her work forms part of the group show, 11 Rooms. He is
:16:59. > :17:05.presenting her own story, The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic
:17:05. > :17:15.produced and directed by Robert Wilson, starring Willme Defoe and
:17:15. > :17:26.
:17:26. > :17:30.by music by Antony Hegarty. I went along to take a look. -- One famous
:17:30. > :17:35.early performance dared the audience to utilise an array of
:17:35. > :17:44.objects including noose knives and a gun as she stood passive in front
:17:44. > :17:49.of them. Last year she sat opposite members of the public every day for
:17:49. > :17:55.three months in one of the longest pieces of performance art on record,
:17:55. > :18:01.attracting over half a million visitors. Her offering at this year
:18:02. > :18:05.marks a first in the career of the now 65-year-old artist. In Marina
:18:05. > :18:09.Abramovic has always been careful to retain absolute control, here
:18:09. > :18:14.she's done the opposite. She's given the director, Robert Wilson,
:18:14. > :18:18.her life in the form of notebooks, memoirs, confessions and say, make
:18:18. > :18:24.of it what you will. Stage me. In a rate me. Tell the story of my life
:18:24. > :18:34.as you see. It it's an eccentric theatrical experiment in the
:18:34. > :18:36.
:18:36. > :18:43.surrender of control. Having fun. We are going to talk about dying,
:18:43. > :18:47.apparently? Lovely moving for to die. The Genesis of the project
:18:47. > :18:52.came from Abramovic's wish that Wilson would design her funeral
:18:52. > :18:59.while Antony Hegarty would provide the music. Though it begins and
:18:59. > :19:04.ends with a funeral ceremony, the play also takes a surreal episodic
:19:04. > :19:10.journey through her life, especially her early years in post-
:19:10. > :19:13.war Yugoslavia. What I call this piece is, Robert Wilson's The Life
:19:13. > :19:18.and Death of Marina Abramovic, it's his vision. He has freedom to
:19:18. > :19:21.recycle as he wants. I don't have any control of. It that not having
:19:21. > :19:24.control is the most liberating feeling I have for a long time. I
:19:24. > :19:28.have complete control about my own work. I didn't want to have any
:19:28. > :19:34.control about my life. There is so many different things, like, you
:19:34. > :19:39.know the me is played by the Carlos, Carlos is this man who is quite
:19:39. > :19:46.small size with moustache, I can't believe he cast me, I said, "who is
:19:46. > :19:51.this" he said, "this is Carlos, this is you" I said,, "who am I
:19:51. > :19:58.going to be?" He said, "you are mother of course" that is a crazy
:19:58. > :20:08.twist. I had a problem with my mother all my life. I play myself
:20:08. > :20:08.
:20:08. > :20:13.and then it's all mixed up. There are so many Marina's on the stage.
:20:13. > :20:18.Robert Wilson is regarded as a visionary in the theatre world. He
:20:18. > :20:22.has previously collaborated with Tom Waits and Philip Glass. You
:20:22. > :20:27.have taken a performance artist. She delivered you her life. You
:20:27. > :20:32.have turned it back into a work of art which you formalised using a
:20:32. > :20:36.lot of devices drawn from the language of art That's true. I
:20:37. > :20:42.didn't want to take her life and just illustrate it. We know what
:20:42. > :20:47.she has done as a performing artist. For me to reproduce that on stage
:20:47. > :20:57.stage would be totally wrong, I think. First of all, performance
:20:57. > :21:06.
:21:06. > :21:12.artist is different that theatre. - than theatre.
:21:12. > :21:16.# Why must you suffer? # It's a collision of very strange
:21:16. > :21:25.personalities. Willem Dafoe is more psychological, naturalistic actor,
:21:25. > :21:29.I'm trying to formalise him. When I think of Marina's life, this dark
:21:29. > :21:36.stories about how terrible her mother was, and how terrible her
:21:36. > :21:46.life was a -- as a little girl. You hear this ethereal voice of Antony.
:21:46. > :21:59.
:21:59. > :22:07.Watching rehearsals I was really struck by how Robert looks at the
:22:07. > :22:10.stage as much as an artist and as a lighting designer and as he does a
:22:10. > :22:17.theatrical producer? One of the things I've always loved about his
:22:17. > :22:22.work, he's a sculptor. He plays with light and he bends time. His
:22:22. > :22:26.instruction to sometimes to me is, make it less natural. I share his
:22:27. > :22:31.sensibility that way. The theatre is the theatre. It's a heightened
:22:31. > :22:40.language. I'm a little bit of the opinion of, you yeah, you wanna see
:22:40. > :22:50.life, go to the diner. Tell me about your role, your role seems
:22:50. > :22:51.
:22:51. > :23:01.very important? I'm part of the glue, I'm part of the structure.
:23:01. > :23:01.
:23:01. > :23:08.1972, she stops using -- she starts using her body as material. Pushing
:23:08. > :23:18.her body to its physical and mental limits. Part in a rator, part
:23:18. > :23:23.
:23:23. > :23:29.chorus? Yeah. I'm like the old stinky actor element in the art
:23:29. > :23:33.world. With this play marking her furthest move yet away from
:23:33. > :23:41.traditional perance art, has Abramovic left her old radicalism
:23:41. > :23:46.behind? You used to say that you hated the theatre. So how come this
:23:46. > :23:50.is all right? I always like to do things I'm afraid and I don't know.
:23:50. > :23:55.You go to another dimension and you learn so much about doing it. It's
:23:55. > :23:58.so easy to do things you like, you never change, but when you don't
:23:58. > :24:02.like, that's the really interesting, to give up control that's a really
:24:02. > :24:10.liberating experience. In that way, your life always looks new to you.
:24:10. > :24:16.It's a good trick. The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic continues
:24:16. > :24:21.at the Lowry until Saturday. There will be more on 11 Rooms later in
:24:21. > :24:23.the show. Manchester is a hive of cultural activity at the moment.
:24:23. > :24:32.The success of the third international festival is another
:24:32. > :24:42.sign of it. The other is the BBC's new home, media city. Sefton
:24:42. > :24:45.
:24:45. > :24:50.Samuals has been documenting changes and his collected works
:24:50. > :24:56.have just been published in a new book, Northerners. What does it
:24:56. > :25:00.mean nowadays to be a northerner? What makes a Mancunian from
:25:00. > :25:08.Manchester in anyway distinct? It's all used to be so straight-forward.
:25:09. > :25:15.Growing up in Manchester in the '80s and '90s you were part of a
:25:15. > :25:19.tribe. After living down in London for years, I myself have become the
:25:19. > :25:24.softest ever southerners and barely recognise the city I grew up in.
:25:24. > :25:28.Challenge me nowadays to put my finger on what makes northerners so
:25:28. > :25:35.northern and I haven't really got a clue. I have come back to
:25:35. > :25:39.Manchester on the hunt to find the essence of northernness. This is me
:25:39. > :25:46.and my dad, Sefton Samuals. He is a famous photographer with pictures
:25:46. > :25:50.held at the National Portrait Gallery and V apbld A. If anyone
:25:50. > :25:53.can help me define what it is to be a northerner, it's him. Sefton has
:25:54. > :26:02.spent five decades photographing Manchester, the north of England,
:26:03. > :26:07.and its people. In black-and-white, he captured their approachability.
:26:07. > :26:14.Their sense of humour, their straight-talking swagger. I was
:26:14. > :26:18.always struck by the soul of something he captured. I spent the
:26:18. > :26:25.last decade asking him to bring together the collection of his
:26:25. > :26:29.northern photographs as a book, which is being published as
:26:29. > :26:34.Northerners, portrait of a no nonsense people. I am used to being
:26:34. > :26:39.around your photographs, I haven't asked you about the ethos behind
:26:39. > :26:44.them. No nonsense, that does that reflect your artistic style? Yes,
:26:44. > :26:50.it does. I try to take pictures of life. Straight-forward depictions
:26:50. > :26:55.of life. I'm happy for a photograph to look like a photograph. I don't
:26:55. > :27:01.want it to look like an artistic painting. I don't go in for
:27:01. > :27:11.pictures that are setup. I think they look very false anyway. I try
:27:11. > :27:20.to be a, sort of, hidden observer of life. Sefton strategy has won
:27:20. > :27:30.him the trust of some awkward characters. Sam's Chop house is
:27:30. > :27:31.
:27:31. > :27:36.where Lowry once popped up the bar. Rare pictures, thanks to to a
:27:36. > :27:40.concerted charm offensive on Lowry's house keeper. We found we
:27:40. > :27:44.had something in common. We had worked in a mill in her younger
:27:44. > :27:49.days. She said, "I will drop you a line as soon as I know when he's
:27:49. > :27:55.coming in. Give him a couple of days to settle in. Don't mention my
:27:55. > :28:02.name, whatever you do". So, I said, "fine", she was as good as her
:28:02. > :28:08.thwart. It was the foot in the door my dad needed to get his pictures
:28:08. > :28:18.of Lowry. He said himself, "the best portraits I've ever had lad,
:28:18. > :28:20.
:28:20. > :28:24.lad". That's me aged 13 with my teenage hero Morrissey in 1989. I
:28:24. > :28:29.tackled him outside his Manchester home to see if he would do an
:28:29. > :28:35.interview for my school newspaper. To my utter astonishment he agreed.
:28:35. > :28:39.My dad took the snaps. Maybe I had inherited some of that dogged
:28:39. > :28:48.determination that had seen him track down some of the North's most
:28:48. > :28:53.famous faces. One of the most widely used set of photo that is
:28:53. > :29:00.Sefton took needed almost no struggle for access. Footballer
:29:00. > :29:06.George Best used to run a Men's Wear shop on Bridge Street. He was
:29:06. > :29:11.leaning against the door post. Enjoying the spring sunshine. I was
:29:11. > :29:17.walking back from lunch, I spotted him. I came over and said, "would
:29:17. > :29:23.you mind if I took a few pictures, gorpbl?" He was obliging and
:29:23. > :29:26.relaxed and said, "that's fine". It was only a few moments. I didn't
:29:26. > :29:36.realise then I'd get such significant pictures. These would
:29:36. > :29:38.
:29:38. > :29:44.end up in the National Portrait Gallery, Paul Weller's covers. Who
:29:44. > :29:49.is the equivalent to George Best. Rooney. You would never get near.
:29:49. > :29:55.Mirroring the change in football, it's a parallel that goes from
:29:55. > :30:03.being George's boutique to now a big chain here? From a star to
:30:03. > :30:07.Starbucks. Have you rehearsed that Everything in Sefton's photos
:30:07. > :30:11.appears older than it really is. The 60s' images feel almost
:30:11. > :30:21.Victorian. But I think they reflected a
:30:21. > :30:26.tendency the north itself once had to look a decade or so out of date.
:30:26. > :30:32.Come on, quickly please! It would take an act of violence to shake
:30:32. > :30:37.off Manchester's timelag. The 1996 IRA bomb in the heart of
:30:37. > :30:45.Manchester shook the city to the core.
:30:45. > :30:51.From the pull srerised shopping precinct sprang a determination to
:30:51. > :30:54.renew and re-invent. The torrent of regeneration with Salford the
:30:54. > :30:59.harvest, the back streets documented by Sefton, the character
:31:00. > :31:04.which inspired the birth of Coronation Street, swept away for a
:31:04. > :31:07.shiny future. Back then when you were taking
:31:07. > :31:10.these photographs of Salford how would you have felt to show
:31:10. > :31:15.Manchester is going to have an International scan festival and
:31:15. > :31:20.Imperial War Museum, the BBC is moving here? I wouldn't have
:31:21. > :31:26.believed it. It's so totally unrecognisable today. It changes so
:31:26. > :31:32.rapidly that sometimes I have a job to find my way around.
:31:32. > :31:36.Sefton's north is the north of Joy Division, coronation street and the
:31:36. > :31:40.Smiths. I wonder if that north is gone forever now, and whether it's
:31:41. > :31:46.still clinging on? For all the changes afoot here,
:31:46. > :31:49.coming back does seem there's still a distinct culture, a way of
:31:49. > :31:53.viewing the world up north. For me the essence of being northern is
:31:53. > :31:58.best bottled by the photographs I grew up around. Frankly, it would
:31:58. > :32:01.be impertinent to argue with something your dad has spent five
:32:01. > :32:05.decades defining. Northerners was published last week.
:32:06. > :32:09.Next, for over 30 years Rickie Lee Jones has been a musician who's
:32:09. > :32:15.defied classification and she was at the Festival to give a rare UK
:32:15. > :32:20.performance of her classic album Pirates At The Bridgewater Hall on
:32:20. > :32:26.Sunday. We sent Clemency Burton Hill along to meet her.
:32:26. > :32:31.Aged 14 she ran away from home and hitchHicked around California. Aged
:32:31. > :32:36.21, she had major major record labels vying for her signature. Not
:32:36. > :32:44.long after she was on the front cover of Rolling Stone and won her
:32:45. > :32:48.first Grammy. She might be best known for her single Chucky in Love.
:32:48. > :32:54.But it's Pirates fans still Cherish the most.
:32:55. > :33:02.Pirates was released in 1981 and is considered the definetive sound of
:33:02. > :33:06.Rickie Lee Jones. It's eccentric, witty and a bit soulful. But 30
:33:07. > :33:11.years on, do these youthful songs of love and lust still pack a
:33:11. > :33:20.punch? Do you have any inkling this would be a record that would stand
:33:20. > :33:24.the test of the time in the way it has? Yes. Yes. Why do you think
:33:24. > :33:29.it's such a special album? Why do you think it still speaks to us
:33:29. > :33:33.all? There's no song I do that I don't love and inhabit totally. If
:33:34. > :33:39.people love this record so much, let's do the whole thing. There are
:33:39. > :33:49.pieces I haven't done in 28 years, they're fun, they're hard and you
:33:49. > :33:54.
:33:54. > :33:57.do something that's hard it makes # I say this is no game of chicken
:33:57. > :34:05.# You are aiming at your best friend
:34:05. > :34:15.# You wear that like a chain around your neck
:34:15. > :34:16.
:34:16. > :34:18.# Like the one you got from your # One more way, you can't play this
:34:18. > :34:21.scene twice. You mentioned that each album for
:34:21. > :34:26.you is like a movie of your life at the time that you were making it.
:34:26. > :34:35.Yes. How is it to revisit that former self? When I did the Pirates
:34:35. > :34:40.tour it was a pretty wild tour. People who had been sober, just
:34:40. > :34:44.fall off the sober wagon tour. It ended up in disarray. I don't any
:34:44. > :34:49.more, but I always had a drink before I went on stage. I think the
:34:49. > :34:54.stage fright became really intense for me and I started bringing a
:34:54. > :34:59.glass on stage. Then one day I just brought the bottle on stage. They
:34:59. > :35:06.took a picture and put it in the LA Times. Almost the whole page.
:35:06. > :35:10.Suddenly I became associated with this thing that's been difficult to
:35:10. > :35:18.shed, you know. Are you the same? Are you the same Rickie Lee Jones
:35:18. > :35:26.now as you were then? When I first did Pirates a year ago at the Pier
:35:27. > :35:32.in LA it was a really big crowd. I stepped on stage, in my leather
:35:32. > :35:37.jacket, and she was waiting just as she had always been there, the
:35:37. > :35:42.Rickie Lee of the Pirates time, I was ready to... I wasn't aggressive
:35:42. > :35:46.but I felt her there, you know. you have to reinhabit her? I didn't
:35:46. > :35:52.do it on purpose. You know, I didn't expect anything like - I
:35:52. > :35:58.just said I am going to do Pirates but this other living persona is
:35:58. > :36:01.part of that music. It's incredible, you know. When you were very young,
:36:01. > :36:06.in your early 20s, you got famous very quickly. What was that like?
:36:06. > :36:13.It's like being in a tidal wave, yeah, so, of course the tidal wave
:36:13. > :36:18.is a shock, but it was also something I always hoped to have.
:36:18. > :36:28.It was pretty wonderful, it was really difficult, but it's hard to
:36:28. > :36:32.
:36:32. > :36:40.say because life wasn't that easy # Chuck E's in love
:36:40. > :36:46.#. Are there any big female artists working today who you really admire,
:36:46. > :36:52.who you think are doing good work? No. Not a one? There are single
:36:52. > :36:57.songs I like or single performances, but maybe that thing of being
:36:57. > :37:01.captivated is an age thing, you know, because it's part - being a
:37:01. > :37:05.part of your peers, and it doesn't happen so much when you get older.
:37:05. > :37:09.You are captivated by your children or the thing, you know, the person
:37:09. > :37:12.you love. Because you do spend so much time on tour and you are
:37:12. > :37:16.performing all the time, do you still feel now that you still need
:37:16. > :37:26.to be performing, that you need to be playing live to an audience?
:37:26. > :37:42.
:37:42. > :37:46.I like to write, but there's nothing like performing and I am
:37:46. > :37:54.blessed. There's something that happens in the magic of performance
:37:54. > :37:58.that can't happen anywhere else. People come ready to have that
:37:58. > :38:06.experience. To me it's it's closest thing to a true Church. Are you a
:38:06. > :38:16.pirate? Yeah, yeah, in that I liked having a crew and in a way because
:38:16. > :38:42.
:38:42. > :38:44.In its short history this Festival's developed a reputation
:38:44. > :38:49.for commissioning some extraordinary live art and this
:38:49. > :38:59.year's no exception. Alastair Sooke went to experience some of the
:38:59. > :39:08.
:39:08. > :39:12.encounters on offer in 11 Rooms at Behind the stiff neo classical
:39:12. > :39:22.fasade something daring is under way. The doors are about to open on
:39:22. > :39:24.
:39:24. > :39:28.a show existing exclusively of So, this is the dress rehearsal. I
:39:28. > :39:36.have myself a plan. The first artist I wanted to show you was
:39:36. > :39:42.someone called Joan Jonas, a pioneering firm firm -- feminist
:39:42. > :39:48.performance artist. In this piece - - in this room, you can see please
:39:48. > :39:56.be aaware this room contains nudity. Don't worry, ever the intrepid
:39:56. > :40:02.reporter, I will just take a look. I think we should move on.
:40:02. > :40:06.But that does look like a very interesting voyeuristic strange
:40:06. > :40:10.piece about desire. There's another piece I want to see. It's confusing
:40:10. > :40:20.actually, I feel like I am in a school corridor or something. There
:40:20. > :40:26.
:40:26. > :40:30.are two artists, they have been a big hit in Venezuela. Their work
:40:30. > :40:34.often contains an element of absurd humour, I vent to Venice and I saw
:40:34. > :40:38.outside the pavilion they had overturned an enormous tank and
:40:38. > :40:42.they had an athlete running on top of a treadmill making one of the
:40:42. > :40:45.tracks go around. The tank was a British tank. I am not sure about
:40:45. > :40:51.what that says about the special special relationship between
:40:51. > :41:01.America and Britain. In here is a piece called Revolving Door.
:41:01. > :41:31.
:41:31. > :41:41.Oh, that's a bit sudden. I think I am going to see you on
:41:41. > :41:58.
:41:58. > :42:07.the other side of that. This is really quite unsettling and
:42:07. > :42:10.class troe phobic -- claustrophobic. To begin with they're really slow
:42:10. > :42:14.and there's a rapid increase like that, which makes you want to move
:42:14. > :42:17.out of the way rapidly. I guess that's a piece all about
:42:17. > :42:21.the relationship of the individual to the masses, to the crowd,
:42:21. > :42:26.because suddenly you feel like you are an autonomous agent going in
:42:26. > :42:32.there and you are not any more and you are forced to move in different
:42:32. > :42:39.ways. It's kind of funny. The expressions the whole time are
:42:39. > :42:44.deadpan, to be honest I felt unsettled. You can probably tell. I
:42:44. > :42:50.went in thinking I was going to explain the piece and I was like,
:42:50. > :42:55.oh my God, I better move this way. I am going to digest that. It's
:42:55. > :43:05.kind of military, as well. In the meantime, let's look in here. This
:43:05. > :43:06.
:43:06. > :43:11.is a piece by Simon Fujiwara. He is not a part of the piece normally.
:43:11. > :43:18.You see a clock. It's called Playing The Martyr. There is an
:43:18. > :43:28.enormous bed. The price is there's someone in it.
:43:28. > :43:31.
:43:31. > :43:36.-- surprise is there's someone in I don't know if you can see, the
:43:36. > :43:46.title of the book is The Lives of St Simon. A half naked bloke
:43:46. > :43:48.
:43:48. > :43:58.reading a book in a big enormous pha hog -- mahogany bed. Do you
:43:58. > :44:08.
:44:08. > :44:18.I quite want to know what's in the book.
:44:18. > :44:28.
:44:28. > :44:32.Maybe we have to come back later What I love about this place is you
:44:32. > :44:36.go into these rooms, these different rooms, and as happened
:44:36. > :44:40.there, you are suddenly phrupb pblged -- plunged into a totally
:44:40. > :44:47.reality. A guy in asleep in an enormous bed, there is a -- there
:44:47. > :44:51.is a clock and he has a book about St Simon, who is Simon? He seemed
:44:51. > :44:54.to be asleep, there was a hushed silence. You feel like you don't
:44:54. > :44:58.want to break the spell, you are suddenly taken into a very
:44:58. > :45:07.different place. Not sure what I make of that one,
:45:07. > :45:17.it's all baffling. Over here, though, this is a piece by a
:45:17. > :45:22.
:45:22. > :45:27.Spanish artist called Santiago Sierra. I guess if we take it at
:45:27. > :45:30.face value, we are going to see a man who is presumably a veteran of
:45:30. > :45:36.one of these wars, who almost as if he is being punished for something
:45:36. > :45:46.is standing in the corner facing the corner, is he whispering, is he
:45:46. > :45:51.No, he looks very somber, as if he's really done something quite
:45:51. > :45:56.bad. I guess that's the point of the air that you are made to
:45:56. > :46:00.reflect upon what he might have done, is he atoning for something
:46:00. > :46:05.for some act he might have transgressed in Afghanistan, or
:46:05. > :46:11.Iraq or Northern Ireland. That is an unsettling thought. It summon as
:46:11. > :46:16.whole sense of enormity and violence in an otherwise quite
:46:16. > :46:25.sterile usual gallery experience of just a white cube. It's quite
:46:25. > :46:30.powerful thing. I have a theory, I think that performance art is
:46:30. > :46:35.having a big moment now because it's the perfect art form for these
:46:35. > :46:41.economic times. Usually, the art market trns art into a commodity a
:46:41. > :46:45.product. The artists featured in 11 Rooms aren't interested in that.
:46:45. > :46:52.You can hardly buy any of the work that I've seen today and easily
:46:52. > :46:58.nail it to your wall. I really respect that. 11 Rooms continues
:46:58. > :47:01.until Sunday. Now, for some music that stops traffic. On Saturday,
:47:01. > :47:10.local band, Wu Lyf, that is short for World Unite! Lucifer Youth
:47:10. > :47:14.Foundation, will be playing perform bsh performing to an AUDIENCE:Ience
:47:14. > :47:20.of 2,000 people in the road tunnel on Great Bridgewater Street. They
:47:20. > :47:26.told us about their disregard for Manchester's musical legacy as well
:47:26. > :47:31.as their desire to break the mystique surrounding the band.
:47:31. > :47:35.There is hype we could have monopolised done every gig. We
:47:35. > :47:41.didn't want to do the hard sell. Treat it as a fresh new taste. Get
:47:41. > :47:47.it while it's hot. We got a reputation as the mysterious Wu Lyf.
:47:47. > :47:55.Which, I don't know, we all found a little, kind of, boring and a bit
:47:55. > :48:02.cheesy. The internet has moved everything on to a completely
:48:02. > :48:08.global scale. It's the easest free exhibition space. It's like a big
:48:08. > :48:12.blank wall that people can graffiti all over. You can record music for
:48:12. > :48:22.very cheap. You can make your own art work. You can build your
:48:22. > :48:37.
:48:37. > :48:41.website, which we just did # Spitting blood #
:48:41. > :48:45.I don't think Manchester's past really holds much relevance to what
:48:45. > :48:51.we are doing, maybe obl only in the fact that we dapbt to do things our
:48:51. > :48:58.own way. That is just a Manchester thing. We take more inspiration
:48:58. > :49:02.from SS it in America than we do factory records. I dapbt want to
:49:02. > :49:12.make cheap little digs. Obviously, it means a lot to a lot of people,
:49:12. > :49:12.
:49:12. > :49:57.Apology for the loss of subtitles for 45 seconds
:49:57. > :50:04.just for us personally, it's not Three records, done one, two more,
:50:04. > :50:08.aged 25. Before we are 25. Then we retire age 25. It's a favour to the
:50:08. > :50:18.public so they don't have to listen to washed out people playing music.
:50:18. > :50:18.
:50:18. > :51:18.Apology for the loss of subtitles for 45 seconds
:51:18. > :51:22.# Now spitting blood # Spit on blood... #
:51:22. > :51:26.Wu Lyf will be performing in the Great Bridgewater Street on
:51:26. > :51:30.Saturday. There is much more of the fest fst that isn't taking place
:51:30. > :51:35.behind closed door. Art is springing up all over the city. Out
:51:35. > :51:42.door events needn't talk cost you a penny. Ben Lewis took to the
:51:42. > :51:47.streets to see what he could discover. One of the big ideas at
:51:47. > :51:52.this year's Manchester festival is to exhibit art works in out door
:51:52. > :51:56.spaces across the city. I'm here to explore some of the new art and see
:51:56. > :51:59.how it is intervening in the city and altering our experience of. It
:51:59. > :52:04.something that gallery curators like to call, rupturing our
:52:04. > :52:08.perceptions. I don't have to go very far. I have hopped off the
:52:08. > :52:16.train from London. The first place is right here in Manchester's
:52:16. > :52:23.Piccadilly Station. This is a sound work designed to play through head
:52:23. > :52:27.phones while the listener wanders around the station. What are the
:52:27. > :52:31.voices people will hear inside their heads? I wanted to do a sound
:52:31. > :52:36.version, to make people aware of quite how much they are taking in
:52:36. > :52:41.of what they overhear and people around them. I spent a lot of time
:52:41. > :52:46.here at Manchester Piccadilly observing people. Was it only
:52:46. > :52:50.observing or was there a fair amount of snooping? There was a
:52:50. > :52:55.fair amount of snooping as well. Once you start you can't stop. All
:52:55. > :52:59.these people are waiting. I tried to capture in the piece the kind of
:52:59. > :53:03.things they are thinking about. Who knows what drama are going on in
:53:03. > :53:13.their lives. Can I try it out? We will give you head phones and
:53:13. > :53:16.
:53:16. > :53:26.send you off. Choose a number. please. 13. Off you go. Listen. The
:53:26. > :53:27.
:53:27. > :53:33.heart of it. Socks, water rate, nail, scissor, birthday card, God,
:53:33. > :53:39.the garden. I don't speak, it's not because I'm dumb or mad,. I'm not
:53:39. > :53:45.stupid. I make an effort, you know. Lunch money... You shouldn't talk
:53:45. > :53:55.about it. Sometimes I want to go back. I want you to know that
:53:55. > :53:56.
:53:56. > :54:00.someone has seen. Simple, cinematic, a little bit spooky. I like it.
:54:00. > :54:05.Normally, when I go around in my every day life the only voice I
:54:05. > :54:10.hear inside my shaed my own strange one. It's nice to get a load of
:54:10. > :54:13.other peoples. I feel like I've been dropped into a fish bowl. I'm
:54:13. > :54:19.looking out at this strange world of humanity around me. Any work of
:54:19. > :54:25.art that makes me feel like a goldfish is OK. Time for me to move
:54:25. > :54:33.on. Next up, is Lincoln Square in the city centre where a new project
:54:33. > :54:40.is being installed. Irish artist John Gerard using 3D technology to
:54:41. > :54:45.create his unique art works. His latest piece shows a soldier making
:54:45. > :54:52.strange movements and springs an Iranian landscape to the heart of
:54:52. > :54:58.Manchester. What is that man doing in your film? He is, in a sense,
:54:58. > :55:03.dancing, in one sense. But, more specifically, he is mimicking the
:55:03. > :55:06.actions of soldiers responding to mortar fire in military exercises.
:55:06. > :55:12.They have this very particular precise and curious set of actions
:55:12. > :55:20.that they do. How did you transform these photograph noose a
:55:20. > :55:26.computerised Avatar? I showed them to a random dance in London. We
:55:26. > :55:31.brought them to a motion capture studio in Prague. He looked at the
:55:31. > :55:36.images and mimicking them. We used a motion capture system to capture
:55:36. > :55:46.the actions. It uses the same technology as video game. In a
:55:46. > :55:47.
:55:47. > :55:52.sense, it's a temporal sculpture which you can emerse oneself in and
:55:52. > :55:58.it will be evolving and changing. This is a strikingly original
:55:58. > :56:01.iconic work of art about the way we wage warfare today. It's all done
:56:01. > :56:07.by simply abstracting the mortar fire posture that is a soldier
:56:07. > :56:12.might assume in training or in battle. What does that do, this
:56:12. > :56:15.endless loop of... It creates a sense of futility. A sense of
:56:15. > :56:19.something without end. A sense of ritual. All this is only possible
:56:19. > :56:23.because he is using the technology of the age of information. At the
:56:23. > :56:30.same time, this is also quite a tradishal work of art. If you look
:56:30. > :56:36.at it one way, it's something ancient, it's a war dance. As the
:56:36. > :56:42.sunsets in this simulated desert, elsewhere in Manchester, a few
:56:42. > :56:52.hours later, a ghoulish installation is about to come to
:56:52. > :56:57.life. Hello Mr Splitfoot. Little girl snap her little fingers.
:56:57. > :57:07.park is being transformed by this projection work The Influence
:57:07. > :57:08.
:57:08. > :57:18.Machine. No, I have to recover from a nervous break down. Black is the
:57:18. > :57:19.
:57:19. > :57:28.colour of my eyes. Oi! Tony is the master of illusionistic projections.
:57:28. > :57:36.He has a galley of ghostes who rant and rave about everything from
:57:36. > :57:41.their futures to their mummy. This piece ruptured my senses. You can
:57:41. > :57:44.experience all of these outside events until July 17th. The Culture
:57:44. > :57:48.Show will be back in August with three programmes from the Edinburgh
:57:48. > :57:56.Festival. We will take our leave tonight from Manchester with one of
:57:56. > :57:57.this year's highlights, a series of stunning shows from Bjork,
:57:57. > :58:03.encompassing musical lightning generators, harp-playing pendulums
:58:03. > :58:07.and a 24-piece all-female Icelandic choir. Bjork calls her latest