The Front
1 hiqhfive
NIKKI MILICAN, artistic director
of New I Territories, casts her mind back and chooses her five most memorable performances.
1 Raimund Hoghe - Lettere Amorose . . . or any other piece he is creating at the moment. Elegiac and poetic, Raimund's is a singular voice that matters.
2 Alastair MacLennan - Mael A six day installation that summed up the futility of the violence that has led to so many innocent deaths during the Troubles in Ireland.
3 Derek Jarman The installation he did for the NRLA against the Thatcher government and its pious laws against homosexual expression.
4 Catherine Diverres - L’Ombre du Ciel A post- apocalyptic nightmare, it was, nevertheless. a rare occasion where a dance piece has kept me totally enthralled for an hour and a half.
5 Jean-Pierre Perreault - Les Ephéméres An installation that summarised the world of Pearrault over a six hour cycle: one inhabited by the elemental and metaphorical.
SITE OF THE FORTNIGHT
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theOpinion
Niqh on h
Could you be doing more after dark?
Now that cultural life in Scotland’s cities is as good as anywhere in the world, it’s time to improve what’s on offer after midnight. Words: Mark Cousins
measure of the cosmopolitanism of a place is how well it passes the 2am test. Those who are
still awake at that time and desirous of
stimulation. cluster in cities where we can indulge our Dionysian instincts into the heart of the night. Scotland doesn‘t score too badly on this front. Glasgow clubs are good and sometimes open until live. You can buy groceries 24/7 from lnverness to Dumfries these days. Our cities do not sprawl so much that you can‘t get ottt of them in half an hour and sit on a beach and look at the stars. And lidinburgh. for example. has hills near the centre of town from which you can watch the beauty of the dawn. While neither London nor New York. Bombay. Berlin nor Tehran can claim either of the latter pleasures. tnost of Scotland’s late shifters will still admit to being frustrated by the deadness of the night. What you could call the velvet creativity that overtakes people at Earn. the yearning for new experience. is not sufficiently served. If your main option up and down the land is to go to a club. binge drink and take pills. then that‘s what you will do. Nothing wrong in that. perhaps. except that doing the same thing every weekend leads to boredom. resentment and worse. In one scene in the British rave film Human 'I'rrtffit'. a whole bar room of clubbers sings a song which asks the question ‘Have we run otit of ideas'.” liach generation should interrogate itself in
‘IMAGINE ROOFTOP POOLS SO PEOPLE COULD SWIM NAKED IN THE NIGHT'
this way but those of tts who work in the fields of culture. entertainment and. yes. ideas. must ask whether we are providing enough options.
It‘s not hard to imagine how things could be. What if one book shop in each town or city stayed open through the night‘.’ lrnagine if you could go and sit in Poussin‘s Seven Sacraments room in lidinburgh‘s National Gallery. at 2am. ()r if Arlington Baths started 3am swimming classes‘.’ ltnagine if the architects of those office buildings which are sprouting tip everywhere built public. heated rooftop pools so that people could swim naked in the chill of the night. overlooking the skylines of Dundee. (ilasgow or lidinburgh. The liilmhouse in the capital is. frorn I2 March. screening underground films at midnight and staying open until 3am. This is great — and it‘s one of the few cinemas in liurope to be doing this — btit better still would be to show a second film and stay open until dawn.
Of course defeatists will say that our drinking culture would kill such things. that security guards would be attacked. that there would be sick in the pools. But the truth is a matter of chicken and egg. 1 love going out drinking. but that‘s in part because the Poussin rootn and the bookshops aren't open and there are no rooftop pools. If there was a Lubitsch film on. a political event. or a great writer reading one of her books. then l'd do that instead. Sometimes.
n Franz Ferdinand, Virgin Records. Glasgow. 9 Feb 2004
Harry
Student
They're a band that you wouldn't expect to be so big. but have rejuvenated the Glasgow scene. I met the bass player on a flight to New York — we talked about Star Wars.
6 THE LIST 19 Feb/t Mar 2003
Funkle
Student
The band are fucking awesome. Al. great. They're quite arty. but not in a pretentious way. When I first heard the singlel was really impressed by it.
Matthew
Ar.’ Student lhls performance was the best thing I‘ve seen in Glasgow for a long tin‘e. lhey‘re (itiile geeky. but that's cool too.
Fiona
Student Fantastic. thought the lead singer was gay.
but apparently he’s not. And see their hairdos v my boytnend's geing to get one jtlSl like It.