AVALANCHE

 ⁘ ⁙ ⁚ ⁛ UPCOMING EVENTS ⁘ ⁙ ⁚ ⁛

To coincide with Avalanche’s group exhibition - 🌱Living Works ~ a screening on the revolutionary work of Lynn Margulis | tbc AUTUMN/WINTER 2023/24

"Symbiotic Earth: How Lynn Margulis rocked the boat and started a scientific revolution" is a documentary series created by award winning filmmaker John Feldman. It weaves a complex story about how the radical ideas of scientist Lynn Margulis are fostering a new approach to understanding life which encourages a symbiotic and sustainable lifestyle. It strikes at the very core of the mechanistic, neo-Darwinian world view that success comes only through competitive struggle - which has fostered extreme capitalism.

‘Its momentous news that all biological life (including ours) succeeds not by competition but by collaboration, offers ways to resolve even our devastating global climate emergency.’
Bill Blakemore, Veteran journalist and ABC foreign correspondent, climate change expert

“We get an unparalleled primer on Margulis’s path-breaking work on the primacy of symbiosis in cellular and planetary evolution in the wider context of the controversies her ideas stirred up. Along the way, we learn that science itself is no dispassionate enterprise but a lively scene of diverse practices infused with cultural and institutional politics where competing ideas are driven by strong personalities.’

Bruce Clarke, Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Literature and Science, Texas Tech University

⁘ ⁙ ⁚ ⁛ PAST EVENTS 2015-2022 ⁘ ⁙ ⁚ ⁛

ΛVΛLΛNƆHE ⁙ HΛLLOWEEN SƆREENING ⁙ FRIDAY 28 OCT ‘22 ⁙ REFRESHMENTS & TREATS ⁙ RSVP -> help!

DOORS OPEN 7pm ⁙ FILM STARTS 7.30PM SHARP

Jordan Peele's directorial debut 'Get Out'. A 2017 American psychological horror film written, co-produced, and directed by Jordan Peele, starring Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, and Catherine Keener.

ΛVΛLΛNƆHE ⁙ HΛLLOWEEN WEEKEND SƆREENINGS ⁙ REFRESHMENTS & TREATS ALL WEEKEND ⁙

⁙ UNINVITED ⁙ SAT 2-6 SUN 4-8 ⁙ 30-31 OCTOBER 2021

⁙ Lumen Prize Gold Award 2021 ⁙

The world’s first horror movie for and by machines. An emergent Network Organism scans and breathes in the world for the first time through millions of virally abused CCTV cameras. Zoom. Enhance. Rekognise. Fear. Nothing makes sense. Data cannot be (p)arsed. Machine Learning Nothing. Hallucinogenic & locked down, vulnerable and oscillating between instability, lust, and aggression the Monster strains to define its own existence and distributed agency. Birth of a nation & auto-requiem. And you are, Uninvited. Counter to the hubristic anthropocentric narrative of the lab-nurtured Strong AI, the UNINVITED Monster emerges messily, spontaneously and unnoticed. It's the unplanned spawn of a massive botnet (probably Mirai aka Future). Millions of IoT devices and systems around the world became virally infected by the botnet - the vast majority of them surveillance cameras - and out of this sick hallucinating critical mass something new emerged - a new distributed network organism with camera eyes everywhere - frantically striving to comprehend itself and its environment and to protect itself. The first version of this film was shown as part of a non-human-accessible gallery installation operating in total isolation during the winter of 20/21, and only viewable remotely via a website. Here the images swept across the walls, projected and responded to by a robotic ‘Monster’ - an avatar of the UNINVITED network.

HORROR FILM screening with Jordan Peele’s Us ⁙ FILM STARTS 8PM SHARP ⁙ SUNDAY 31 OCTOBER 2021

Us is a slasher movie from Jordan Peele, set in the 1980s.

The film follows a young woman (Lupita Nyong'o) and her family who encounter a group of violent doppelgängers.

 DONNIE DARKO ⁙ POPCORN ⁙ TREATS ⁙ DOORS OPEN 7.30 ⁙ FILM STARTS 8PM SHARP ⁙ 31 OCTOBER 2019

More of a psychological thriller than a horror, the film follows troubled youth, Donnie Darko, and his hallucinated(?) friend called Frank, who sports a creepy bunny suit.

PHANTASM  ⁙  POPCORN  ⁙  TREATS  ⁙  8PM SHARP ⁙  31 OCTOBER 2018

‘Inventive DIY horror with a berserk plot involving homicidal space midgets, heroic ice-cream men, flying spheres which drill into the brain and the terrifying Tall Man.’

A screening of Don Coscarelli’s bizarre 1979 sci-fi horror, Phantasm

SUSPIRIA  ⁙  POPCORN  ⁙  TREATS  ⁙  8PM ⁙  31 OCTOBER 2017 

'The only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92'.

A screening of Dario Argento’s classic, pink-hued 1977 horror, Suspiria. 

Artists' Union England

London Branch Meeting | November 2017

Richard Whitby and Millicent Hawk will introduce Artists' Union England and discuss our campaigns, objectives and how the Union is working alongside other cultural unions towards gaining fair pay and better working conditions for artists.  Members and non-members are invited.

Artists’ Union England is a new trade union for professional visual and applied artists.  Unlike other cultural professionals, artists have had no collective voice in the form of a trade union, to represent them at work and to lobby and advocate on their behalf.  As a trade union, run by volunteers, we represent artists at strategic decision-making levels and positively influence the value and role artists play within society.

Apply online to become a member or find out more on our About page.

BOYCOTT OR NOT

Failing Criticality: white cube as whitewash

Sunday 12 June  12-1.30pm

Avalanche at The Field, New Cross SE14 5HD

Part of AntiUniversity Now Festival 9-12 June 2016

TICKETS THROUGH EVENTBRITE

At the level of the individual, how can responsibility for a political stand become effective, and, when organised, might solidarity between artists and individuals - united during austerity - bring about mobilisation, a consolidated push both for human rights internationally and for functioning public services and funding that have been marginalised here in the UK?

Art sponsorship, Collections and Trusts frequently appear to legitimise, through cultural acceptance, corporate interests with questionable ethics that further compound the problems citizens face through their lobbying of government for corporate/personal gain that have ramifications on local, national and international politics.  Human rights, our environment, our education and our health are all at stake.

In openly questioning individual and collaborative interests around the funding of art and the lobbying of government, Boycott or Not aims to discover the level of duplicity that artists as individuals and as a group are willing to engage.  And - failing criticality - is art a PR and marketing strategy for a wealthy elite and ruling class that increasingly fail us all?

Boycotts are generally understood as a public manoeuvre to empower citizens through organisation by way of non-violent political expression.  In this open discussion the ever-increasing problematic enmeshment of ethics and the politics of art funding will be raised - sighting arguments from ‘philanthropic’ donations to a Tory government that's championing the cuts to the widely discussed Boycott Zabludowicz (BDZ Group) following PACBI guidelines and boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, as well as to consider compassion for individual needs to meet basic financial obligations - 'My poverty, but not my will, consents.'*

Introductions will include artists representing political groups and unions - Artists for Palestine, BDZ Group, Art Not Oil Coalition and Artists' Union England - before discussion is opened to the room.  Critical discussion will include the implications of, and the resistance against, exclusively wealth-based interests, seen by many to engender power through binary and division - by class, race and sex.  Here, the important movement is the public one - to challenge corrupt and exploitative business practice and forms of governance - by de-legitimising elite interests.

Related:

Dispatches: Inside Britain's Israel Lobby

e-flux Conversations Why Boycott the Zabludowicz Art Trust?

Verso - The Case for Sanctions Against Israel

Tory Donor Linked to Panama Firm The Times, 17 April 2016

Morgan Quaintance Right Shift

Documentary Take The Money And Run?  Ethics, funding and art

Jodi Dean Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel – PACBI Statement

Brian Eno Apollo Magazine

Mute Magazine BOYCOTT THE ZABLUDOWICZ FOUNDATION!

Jodi Dean The Anamorphic Politics of Climate Change e-flux

Artquest's System Failure - a series of recorded conversations

Previous discussion Decolonise Goldsmiths: Boycott Zabludowicz

Democracy Now! 100 Writers Call on PEN to Reject Israeli Embassy Sponsorship

Arts Strike Now! By BDZ Group

 * From Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet   Gif. Tesseract ϟ 5D. Millicent Hawk