Events > Metropólis TV Lounge @ Cornerhouse, Manchester, 2 February - 23 March 2008 < TV | |
From Friday 1 February - Sunday 23 March 2008 check out the Metropólis TV Lounge at the Cornerhouse in Manchester. This includes rare footage of Tony Wilson, Shaun Ryder, Martin Moscrop et al from a Spanish TV show called Metropólis, so it'll be a first for many people who decide to pop along to Cornerhouse to see any of the two programmes they devoted to Madchester in 1990. They are screening in the galleries as part of Metropólis TV Lounge amongst other shows from Spain's long running cultural TV programme. Metropólis, a weekly television programme about contemporary art and culture, was first broadcast on the second channel of TVE (Televisión Española) on 21 April 1985. Since its inception the show has offered airtime to many acclaimed artists (Jim Whiting, Isaac Julien, Pilar Albarracín), emerging art movements and unifying artistic themes. For Metropólis TV Lounge, producer Maria Pallier hand picked seventeen half hour programmes made since 1988 which reflect the breadth of the show's content and cult status in Spain. With programmes reflecting on topics such as video surveillance and immigration (not to mention two shows on Manchester's early 90s music scene featuring the late Tony Wilson) much of the content is provocative and challenging. Here is an extract from the programme (quotes courtesy Metropólis TV (TVE2)) Tony Wilson"This particular explosion has such bizarre origins. It has the origins of a bizarre drug culture a kind of dancing culture in Ibiza in '86 and '87. An accident of British working class youths on holiday in Ibiza meeting an American yuppie designer drug because it was a hippie island in the 60s. That's a strange thing. At the same time, why should some obscure black gay dance music being made for three clubs in America, I think there were three clubs in the mid-80s where this music was developed - "house music" - why should two DJs in England, one from Manchester and one in Nottingham, why should they start playing it? Why should, from 86 to 87, these two guys in these two clubs play this music at the same time and then in the Christmas of '87, '88 they come together. And, however impressive that was, why then do you get the rock groups, The Happy Mondays even the Stone Roses but particularly the 'Mondays creating the next phase. They're all chance; it's all chance, except these things happen every dozen years. So, it's going to happen somewhere, it's bizarre that it happened here. It's a series of strange cultural coincidences." Shaun Ryder"The London press has always been behind us. Other press where we come from, Manchester, the local press there and local disk jockeys never did anything for us. Never. It was all down to people in London, the people who write for the bigger papers in London. The people who had it under their noses, the journalists and disc jockeys in charge of shows in Manchester didn't want to know." Tony Wilson"I think Manchester came into its own when punk happened, The Clash and the 'Pistols were London, The Buzzcocks were Manchester, but somehow Manchester was the right size to be able to accept the punk culture and for it to flourish within the town. Really, since June 20th 1976 which was when the 'Pistols played to 35 people here; this place has been a very powerful world influence on music. I mean the number of groups in the world that sound like Joy Division, who sound like New Order. I mean, Simply Red almost invented yuppie soul, The Smiths invented a whole new sound of music. So, we have been generally very strong from '76 onwards I would say. Before that there was 10CC and those 60s groups and the motive remains to simply make a living out of it which is the same for groups in Glasgow, Valencia in Osaka. But, what has happened here in the last two years is something very strange. One of those crazy moments in culture. It's like when water falls on the hills, into streams, then rivers and torrents come together, we've just been through that in this city and it's left us with, without doubt, the most vibrant pop and youth culture in the world at the moment." -- More info at www.cornerhouse.org. Thanks to Cornerhouse / Metropólis TV (TVE2) for imagery and info. |
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