Culture Review 2008

by David Whetstone, The Journal

RECENTLY I have been engaged in a book project, striving to document the soaring cultural profile of Newcastle and Gateshead with the implications that has for Tyneside and the wider region.

Much stems from the realisation in the 1980s that the region was seriously short of top quality buildings where culture happens – theatres, concert venues, art galleries.

In 1996, a campaign called The Case for Capital, calling for a £200m investment in an arts infrastructure for the North East, was launched by Tony Blair, as Leader of the Opposition, at the Tate Gallery in London.

The National Lottery had started two years previously, unleashing unprecedented sums for capital projects. The Case for Capital may have looked like opportunism but it was based on sound research and backed by irrefutable argument.

Fast forward to 2008 – and skimming over an extraordinarily good job done by a number of key people in the region – and we pretty much have the buildings. But, much more importantly, they are also helping to inspire the people and ideas that will carry on getting the region noticed long after the bricks, mortar, metal and glass have lost their novelty value.

Repeatedly, during 2008, I have witnessed the flowering of projects whose roots lie – sometimes very deeply – in international cooperation and respect.

Appropriately, :zoviet*france: is an underground band based on Tyneside. For more than 20 years – long before The Case for Capital – it has been a global phenomenon little known on home turf but wildly appreciated by fans of experimental electronic music.

Early in the year I interviewed Atau Tanaka, the new professor of digital media at Newcastle University.

Born in Tokyo and brought up in the United States, Prof Tanaka recalled how, 20 years’ previously, when studying for his PhD in California, he had become a fan of :zoviet*france: when listening to cassette tapes borrowed from a friend.

“And now, some 20 years later, here I am in Newcastle,” he said.

“You have The Sage and Baltic and all this cultural regeneration but it was really to find out about the :zoviet*france: guys that I was attracted to the city. They are great artists.”

Prof Tanaka and the :zoviet*france: guys were preparing to recreate John Cage’s extraordinary Variations VII at Baltic as part of the best AV Festival. (directed, incidentally, by a New Zealander, Honor Harger).

On the night of the premiere, the accumulated noise and throb of aged domestic appliances and sounds sucked in from the outside world made the room at Baltic reminiscent of a scene from The China Syndrome. It was certainly different. Unforgettable, too.

The :zoviet*france: guys were at it again in January, but this time as established accompanists of BalletLORENT in Hall 2 of The Sage Gateshead.

Liv Lorent, a Belgian choreographer who settled on Tyneside before the rash of new cultural buildings, devised a work called Designer Body. It involved a small and dedicated troupe of dancers rotating on small spinning platforms for one hour while divesting themselves slowly of fabulous garments designed by Paul Shriek – a product of Northumbria University’s fashion school.

It was so much more than a strip show. It was a wallow in perfectly coordinated sound and spectacle achieved only through supreme discipline. Nobody fell off and nobody was sick! From Gateshead, it went to Liverpool and to Germany – and it is back at the Sage in 2009. Don’t miss it.

A whole safari park of space would be required to chart the making of Elephant, a graceful and moving piece of theatre which united performers and musicians from the North East and South Africa’s Eastern Cape.

It was devised over a number of years by Dodgy Clutch Theatre Company, set up on Tyneside by Ozzie Riley in 1982, and the Market Theatre of Johannesburg. It had been performed outdoors and in various forms before emerging fully-fledged at the Theatre Royal at the start of a national big theatre tour.

The North East performances followed the signing of an accord between this region and the Eastern Cape at Gateshead Civic Centre. In the footsteps of Elephant, more good things will come.

Leaping towards the close of the year we come to Skellig. David Almond, born and brought up in Gateshead, struggled for years for recognition as a writer and then – 10 years ago – produced Skellig, a story about a boy and a winged creature which caught the public imagination.

In the year that The Angel of the North was 10, Skellig was produced as an opera at The Sage Gateshead, a building that would have been beyond the wildest imagining of the young David Almond.

The story had crossed the Atlantic and fallen into the hands of American composer Tod Machover. Enchanted by it, he had set David’s words to music and the result was performed to ecstatic reviews in November. Like Variations VII and Designer Body, it was one of the most memorable events of the year.

Then, as Christmas approached, Yoko Ono flew in and told us that the story of Newcastle and Gateshead had reached her ears and made her keen to visit. A massive retrospective exhibition of her work carries Baltic into a New Year of great hope and promise under new director Godfrey Worsdale.

In 2008, it wasn’t only the Angel celebrating an anniversary; the Northern Sinfonia was 50, the Amber Film & Photography Collective was 40 and Folkworks was 20. All three have helped to make life in the North East special and the clue to the quality is in their longevity.

What’s really exciting is that with the arrival of new buildings have come new people who will strike up new relationships and forge new partnerships.

Somewhere out there are the Atau Tanakas, Liv Lorents and Tod Machovers of the future.

A review of the year wouldn’t be complete without a word about the Tyneside Cinema which returned from Gateshead to its fantastically refurbished home in Newcastle.

One of the highlights of my year was seeing how the place had been brought into the digital era in such a sympathetic way. Proper homage is now paid to its newsreel past. If it was a gem before, the Tyneside is even more of a gem now. It will inspire future generations of film lovers and maybe film makers too.

Incidentally, how inspiring that a respected American film man, Brian Gordon, gladly seized the job of running the Northern Lights Film Festival, an annual event at the Pilgrim Street cinema.

Another memorable event was posing – with some 300 other volunteers – at Northern Stage for the Chinese artist Wang Qingsong. His panoramic hospital scene, later displayed at Baltic, owed much to the make-up artist’s darker arts and may have caused stomachs to churn. Nevertheless, it will be seen all over China – and who knows what might come of that?