You can listen to the following tracks:
- Blue Heartbreak
- Love For The Things Yr Not
- Fallen
- Cemetery Moon
Plus an interview with the band over here on the Hello Goodbye show. We’re on around 60 mins in.
Author: Dee Sada
Paper birch
Glaswegian musician, Fergus Lawrie of cult band Urusei Yatsura and London-based musician, Dee Sada come together as Paper Birch to share their mutual feelings of despair, fragility and hope in this collection of nine songs. The album, MORNINGHAIRWATER was written under lockdown between May and June 2020 as a result of the fervent correspondence of lyrics, ideas and sounds.
The album will be released in August on TAKUROKU, the new digital label from underground arts venue, Cafe OTO.
There will be a preview of 3 tracks and live interview with the band on Saturday July 11th on the Hello Goodbye show on Resonance FM.
Track listing:
Summer Daze
Love For The Things Yr Not
Elegy (As We Mourn)
Curse Us
I Don’t Know You
Hide
Blue Heartbreak
Cemetery Moon
Fallen
Artist: Paper Birch
Title: MORNINGHAIRWATER
Label: TAKUROKU
Release Date: August 2020 (digital)
Teenage Superstars
The plans were inacted; Saturday August 15th at Cafe OTO – an evening dedicated to Grant McPhee’s documentary, Teenage Superstars, conversations with Grant, live performances…it was all happening.
In light of the universe coming to a painful standstill, there will be an online screening and live chat with Grant and musicians such as Duglas T Stewart from BMX Bandits and Eugene Kelly from The Vaselines which I will host via my humble Twitter account: @deesada1 at 6pm GMT on Saturday May 2nd.
The film will be available to stream via the Raindance Film Festival website.
And the chat will start on Twitter.
More musicians will be announced…See you there x
A Life Between Two Islands, Cafe Oto, October 6th and 7th
A still from Peter Davis’ 1965 insightful documentary, Immigrants. The film is a fascinating examination of post-war migrant communities in Britain. Through a series of interviews with immigrants who had recently moved to the UK, we’re given insights into the role race and immigration played in mid-1960s British society.
I have worked with Peter on a few events at Café OTO as he has made a number of documentaries on RD Laing and he was a speaker at our Dialectics of Liberation Reconvened event in 2016.
We will be screening the film at our Stuart Hall event at Café OTO in October.
More details and a full line-up soon!
Out of the Shadows: Penny Slinger
Cafe Oto: 25th March 2018
Photo by @mikemodular
Photo by @mikemodular
Grimm Grimm & Dee Sada
Counter | Culture
Counter | Culture takes place on Sunday 8th October at Cafe Oto:
AN EXPLORATION OF COMMUNITIES, ISOLATION, MENTAL HEALTH AND ACTIVISM.
– Screening of ‘Estate’ dir. by Andrea Luka Zimmerman (2015) 85 mins and Q&A with Andrea Zimmerman.
Filmed over seven years, Estate, a Reverie reveals and celebrates the resilience of residents who are profoundly overlooked by media representations and wider social responses. Interweaving intimate portraits with the residents’ own historical re-enactments, landscape and architectural studies and dramatised scenes, Estate, a Reverie asks how we might resist being framed exclusively through class, gender, ability or disability, and even through geography…
– Shy Radicals: The Anti-Systemic Politics of the Introvert Militant (2017) Hamja Ahsan book talk
Shy Radicals are the Black Panther Party of the introvert class, and this anti-systemic manifesto is a quiet and thoughtful polemic, a satire that uses anti-colonial theory to build a critique of dominant culture and the rising tide of Islamophobia. Shy Radicals author Hamja Ahsan is an artist, curator and activist based in London. He is the Free Talha Ahsan campaign organiser.
– Screening of ‘Lift’ dir. by Marc Isaacs (2001) 24 mins
A quietly fascinating meditation on the mundanities of London life. Installing himself inside the lift of a high-rise block of council flats, Isaacs and his camera patiently observe the residents as they go about their daily business. As each of his subjects enters the lift, it’s interesting to note their reactions to him being there; some are suspicious, others curious, and then there are those who seem more comfortable in his presence.
LIVE:
ORAL ORAL formed via a request from artist Wolfgang Tillman’s to perform at his annual end of summer party in September 2009 What started as an ‘art happening’ evolved over a period of time.
Initially Princess Julia wrote a ‘monologue’, which questioned the structure and landscape of change, both on a physical/mental level and in an architectural sense with references to Wolfgang’s work. Our repertoire expanded to include subjects which deal with various (un)comfortable zones of flux and interaction within the human condition.
We work within a framework of minimal preparation but with a true sense of direction.
Oral Oral is a collective, current members are Dee Sada-drums/bass/electronics, Max Allen-vox, Princess Julia-vox.
Dialectics of Liberation: Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann and I had numerous discussions between 2015-2016 regarding the lack of visibility of women at the original DoL conference and the negative treatment she received around her Dialectics performance.
In this conversation, Carolee discusses the original Dialectics congress, feminism, activism and her current works.
The Legacy of the Dialectics Congress by Dr Leon Redler
The Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, in July, 1967, sought to demystify violence in all its forms. The need for demystification and clarification of our situation is no less needed today than it was in 1967. Many of the speakers nearly 50 years ago were right on the mark for what would ensue if we continued on the ignorant and often perverse paths.
We’re recalling the Congress tonight, perhaps a preliminary to really reconvening a new Congress, to address the ongoing if not even more mystifying and violent world today.
But let’s consider the profound questions, which we can barely allude to tonight, of what forms of liberation we aspire to and require? Liberation from what and toward what, liberation from what and by who, and how?
What and who constrains our diverse possibilities of liberation, including the liberation from the ignorance and delusion we’re caught up in, until we begin to awake from a dream like state that prevalent political/economic/social systems encourage us to buy into …and we all too often collude with…Including identifying with the reflections our minds mirror, with all the distortions introduced by self and others, rather than getting to know the empty but lucid and cognisant nature of mind, akin to the clear surface of the mirror and inviting the possibility of spaciousness, wisdom and compassion, taught by prophets and poets of diverse spiritual traditions.
Today, corruption and injustice is all pervasive. We see it in our national and local politics, institutions and, if we’re honest and look closely, all too often in the far from ethical and caring ways we treat each other.
The manifestations of varieties of ignorance, including greed; dogmatic and inflexible positions; mindless hatred, as well as of corruption and injustice, include the pervasive murderous violence of nation states, militias, fundamentalist organisations as well as groups fighting for what they take to be just and necessary causes, the later particularly the case when no mediated alternatives seem open.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A RADICAL?
Radical change is needed. But what are the possible meanings, directions and ways of being radical?
Can we start with an etymological meaning, going back to the roots of the word, in this case literally meaning roots?
Can we research what might be the roots of living ethical lives, with awareness, in a ways that lead to, encourage and are ‘in sync’ with the possibility of just societies?
Can we rediscover the roots of the possibilities of living in harmony with each Other and with nature so as to really prioritise not destroying our life support systems, our ecology?
Can we discover the roots of compassion so as to say NO, ‘Not in My Name!’ to vastly unequal distributions of wealth and power?
Can we research and find the roots of speaking freely and acting openly and transparently, about all matters that people feel to be unjust, without having grounds for fearing for our liberty or even our lives, and find optimal ways to acknowledge and respond to the cries and calls of those who feel done in by whatever prevailing unjust system?
Can we do this without obfuscating the issues we’re concerned with because of our own (perhaps unwitting) attachment to our own views and needs?
There are signs that large numbers of people feel it’s time for a change. and of substantial minorities being open to the critique of our current corrupt political systems, indeed beginning to respond actively to the heavy weight of injustice impinging on their lives.
One fundamental question ought to put to ourselves and each other tonight is:
What does it mean to be in act in a radical and radically ethical manner, with profound (radical) awareness (of body, speech, mind) at this time, for those of us who can acknowledge the pervasive corruption and ignorance that prevails in and pervades our economic, political, social and other systems?
How and where can we find common ground (perhaps requiring distinctly uncommon ‘common sense’) enabling a turn in a direction that most of us can agree…IF we can…a turn in the direction of ethics, justice and compassion….and a turn toward enhancing our collective intelligence, sensibilities and responsibilities in the direction of greater vitality and, dare we say, without embarrassment…sisterly and brotherly love, enabling cooperation in working toward a world that we can say ‘Yes, Yes’ to…rather than, ‘No, not in my name’?
Perhaps the most radical starting point (but not end point!) for each of us ought to be to understand the roots of violence in me-centred, or we-centred (‘our’ nation, ethnic group, religion, subculture, etc) ways of being. But we have to continue from there to see and transcend those limitations and find ways of collective action toward which we can say’ ‘Yes, Yes!’
How can hone our individual and collective abilities for both really critical and really fundamentally naive questions… Like intelligent fearless children… As well as the intelligence, humility and responsibility to put ourselves in question.
THEN AND NOW
What social change did the Dialectics Congress set out to actualise? I think there was a lack of agreement as well as commitment re what social and political change people wanted and were committed to. That was, and likely is, inevitable.
The micro-experiments ‘in psychiatry’ that were on-going in the 60’s and into the 70’s, that the 4 organisers of the Dialects were deeply engaged with, have continued but have largely lost their radical edge. The communities of the Philadelphia Association and of Arbours, for example, have become pale shadows of the radical vision of 40-50 years ago. While there are movements like the Critical Psychiatry Network, in the UK, and Open Dialogues, which may retain their potentially radical edge, the fact is that Big Pharma and the Psycho-Pharmacological Industry, like the military-industrial complex, are stronger than ever.
So where does that leave us?
Can we deepen links with each other and others in creative ways? With what other initiatives, anywhere in the world, including in virtual space, do we want to link up with?
These are some of the thoughts and questions I have at this time.
Three Candles
Three Candles is the first sound piece from The Hollow Tree, an EP inspired by the artist Mary Barnes.
Carolee Schneemann
It’s amazing how many connections I have made since R.D. Laing 50. I feel so inspired and driven to do more events and work with more amazing people.
I connected with Carolee Schneemann via the filmmaker Peter Davis, both of whom I have just met in the last week. I am inspired to do an event based on the Dialectics of Liberation conference which was organised by Dr Joseph Berke.
As a seminal feminist artist, Carolee does not need much of an introduction. I recently read her essay about her experience at the Dialectics of Liberation conference in her book, More Than Meat Joy. She performed a happening at the end of the two week conference and there was also the UK premier of her film, Fuses.
Carolee was one of the few female voices at the conference, the other being IKON’s editor, Susan Sherman. I am intrigued by the lack of female visibility at the Dialectics of Liberation. It was an occasion where race was given a platform (with the inclusion of Stokely Carmichael) however women remained on the fringes. My research will hopefully uncover more…
Dee Sada 