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BRIGHTENING FLAIR ROADMAP Michael McDermott SOUND
OF SUMMER Pen it in… Ben Walsh is a designer who makes pens in his city workshop. His latest range is called Skittles Twist. “I’ve tried to create a pen that will bring a smile to my customers faces, a pen to make people happy in these troubling times.” He’ll be donating a portion of profits to two charities, Belong To and LGBT Ireland. gravitaspens.com 4 On heavy rotation on our beatbox will be K3:lu (pronounced Curlew) which is the solo project of musician and composer Patrick Hatchett. Lead single Kush on Anon has all the sonic sass we’ll need when swaggering back after that interlude, mining ‘70s new age spirituality and the early day optimism of cult gatherings in its video. Hatchett taps up UK Bengali musician Idris Rahman on flute and Irish musicians Seán Mac Erlaine (bass clarinet), Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (fiddle) and Justin Grounds (violin) on this 33 minute 49 second, Loop the Loop, ass shimmer. Of course, Hatchett is based in our very own Wild Wild Country - West Cork. @k3lumusic As we emerge blinking into the light of normality again, hopefully, we will adjust to doing things and seeing things and meeting people. As the shutters come up, there are plans afoot. Conceived amid the ping-pong uncertainty of lockdown vs re-opening, Brightening Air is a festival in hybrid form distilled from a call-out for project ideas earlier in the year. It encompasses scope and ambition whether that is in multimedia dance pieces in handball alleys or light installation on barges floating down the Shannon. Closer to home, we can enjoy A City and a Garden which interweaves narratives and soundscapes in the Botanic Gardens or a live stream of Mespil in the Dark which promises “a sensitive, surreal, voyeuristic investigation into the lives of eight artists who live in the same complex of flats.” The Corner of Scotsman’s Bay will be a visual, art-based interpretation of the former Dun Laoghaire baths and if we’re leaving the pale for one thing then the mammoth artistic response of Woman in the Machine, in the old Braun factory in Carlow, will be first on our list. Brightening Air runs from June 11 to 20 brighteningair.com ENTANGLEMENT Stuff is happening in real life again. Get excited. Irish architecture collective Annex (Sven Anderson, Alan Butler, David Capener, Clare Lyster, Fiona McDermott, Donal Lally) are curating our representation at the Architecture biennale in Venice this month. Entanglement is an exploration of a producing a space from a range of material related to data infrastructure which also embodies our history as a strategic node in global communications and data infrastructures, dating back to 1866 when the first subsea transatlantic telegraph landed on Valentia Island as well as Marconi’s transmission of the first wireless radio messages. “We’re creating a physical space and spatial experience from the material objects that usually only mediate digital worlds.” From May 22 labiennale.org/en/architecture/2021