The Pool of Life
Mathew Street was once the epicentre for all of Liverpool’s finest freaks and seekers. This gradually faded however, and the street diminished into a husk of its former self, now standing as a bleak caricature of soulless tourism, brashly cokey revelry and painfully cheesy music.
Events/Happenings
One of Liverpool’s favourite sons is to be honoured on January 17th, on what would have been his 89th birthday. A very special exhibition at one of Arthur’s favourite places in the city forms the centrepiece of the latest annual ‘Dooleyday’. Inspired by the world famous ‘Bloomsday’ held in Dublin and around the world every year on June 16th, in honour of James Joyce, ‘Dooleyday’ is fast becoming a feature of Liverpool’s cultural landscape. This year’s celebration will centre on The Florrie in the Dingle, reputedly a favourite building of Arthur’s. Co-curated by The Florrie, the event will feature films, presentations, talks, a book reading, and an exhibition of original Dooley work, loaned from a mystery benefactor.
Arts Labs
On 15th December we’ll be hosting a live reading of Alistair Fruish‘s monosyllabic masterclass ‘The Sentence‘ – a groundbreaking novel that contains only one sentence with no punctuation. When read aloud, it reportedly has quite the hypnotic effect.
Back in January Daisy Eris Campbell – the force behind the recent adaptation of Robert Anton Wilson’s ‘The Cosmic Trigger‘ – directed a reading of ‘The Sentence’ at The Cockpit theatre where she’d later stage the second run of her seminal play, Robin Ince was amongst the readers, whilst Alan Moore assisted in the Northampton reading.
Events/Happenings
There are many undercurrents running beneath the surface of Liverpool, intermittently emerging to influence the course of the city’s culture before ebbing to allow the next to lead the way.
Certain areas of the city have proven pivotal in the development of these currents and there’s one particular place that’s served, more than any other, to incubate Liverpool’s modern culture, and more importantly its counterculture. To understand the place we have to look back…
Arts Labs
Taking inspiration from the Arts Lab movement of the psychedelic sixties counterculture, which is beginning to show signs of revival, and following the lineage set by Liverpool’s creative underbelly, the newly launched Liverpool Arts Lab looks to form a network that allows artists of all different fields to feed off each other’s ideas and push the city’s culture forward.
The Pool of Life
“I found myself in a dirty, sooty city. It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining. I was in Liverpool. With a number of Swiss—say half a dozen. I walked through the dark streets.
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