Saturday night/Sunday morning, 18 November 2007
2.10am, BBC4
The BBC documentary Classic Britannia that immortalised moments of Rational Rec’s New Rational Music event (February 2007) is being repeated: www.bbc.co.uk/music/classicbritannia/episodes/3/

Monday 19th November 2007
8pm
Cecilia Wee is taking part in a panel discussion about music on Claire Fox News, broadcast on internet TV station 18 Doughty Street: http://18doughtystreet.com/

Thursday 29th November - Saturday 1st December 2007
Cecilia Wee will be MC at the London Musician’s Collective international festival of experimental music, improvisation and sound art at the Cochrane Theatre: www.l-m-c.org.uk

Tuesday 4th December 2007
Rational Rec returns to its spiritual home, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club for Three Winter Potatoes – Music, Film and Bingo: www.rationalrec.org.uk

Rational Rec Goes South
Saturday 10 November 2007
Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer, Southbank Centre, London
Doors open at 7.30pm, first performance at 8pm.

For one night only, Rational Rec drops into the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre for a special night of film, performance, music and sound art. In another first, the first Rational Rec of season three will take place on a Saturday – 10 November 2007. And in a third first, if you still follow us, you can buy your ticket for Rational Rec in advance! Still £5, still available on the door, but those of you who are more organised can make sure you can get in to what promises to be Rational Rec’s most popular night so far.

In the Front Room, we present a new work by live artist Marcia Farquhar, and Plus Minus ensemble performs Louis Andriessen’s iconic ‘Workers Union’.

The Soft Space is home to a programme of experimental film and video curated by Mike Sperlinger, Assistant Director of LUX.

Elsewhere, boundaries between stage and audience are challenged with the psychedelic spectralism of Fausto Romitelli’s ‘Trash TV Trance’, ecological redemption brought to you by The Vacuum Cleaner, roaming one-to-one live art performances by Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, hands-on activities and games with a riverside view and a specially commissioned iPod audio guide to London’s South Bank by London-based architect Celine Condorelli.

To take advantage of the iPod audio guide, bring your iPod to the event or download it from this website when its ready.

The Southbank Centre is on London’s South Bank, next to the Royal Festival Hall.

Battle of Ideas, Saturday 27th October, Royal College of Art, London
Turn that racket off! Part of the Battle for Music
1.30 - 3.00pm, Seminar Space

Cecilia Wee took part in a panel discussion on the relationship between music, silence, noise and society as part of the Battle of Ideas weekend of debates.

The other panellists were:
- Professor Colin Lawson, director, Royal College of Music
- Professor Stuart Sim, professor of critical theory, University of Sunderland; author, Manifesto for Silence
- Bill Drummond, artist; founder, No Music Day, a five year plan to promote debate about our ever-shifting relationship with music
- Dr Claudia Molitor, composer; director, Soundwaves Festival; participant in spnm’s 2006/7 Adopt a Composer scheme

It was chaired by Dolan Cummings, research and editorial director, Institute of Ideas; editor, Debating Humanism and www.culturewars.org.uk

Here is a synopsis of the discussion:
Music is everywhere, but do we really listen? With high-tempo dance music in shops and computerised Mozart as we wait for a phonecall to be connected, it seems impossible to escape the relentless soundtrack to modern life. Indeed, with shopping centres piping classical music to scare off hoodies, and bored kids blasting tinny R&B from their phones on public transport, music often seems to be a weapon, used to mark out territory rather than played for the joy of it. Some argue that we are forgetting how to listen properly, and that ever-present jingles and mood music are contributing to ever-shrinking attention spans. Many champions of classical music even hate Classic FM, while MTV is accused of turning music into wallpaper.

Frieze Art Fair, Saturday 13th – Sunday 14th October 2007, Regents Park, London
Where is art? Where is it going? 12noon-1pm

As part of Resonance FM’s residency at Frieze Art Fair Cecilia Wee presented and produced two discussions about the current state and future of contemporary art practice.

In two wide-ranging, anecdotal, playful yet informative sessions, artists and critics discussed topics such as art’s ability to reach a wider community, the impact of ecological concerns on cultural production, current aesthetic trends and the international art market.

David Burrows, artist and writer, Simon O’Sullivan, art theorist and Colm Lally, director of E:vent Gallery participated in the debate at Frieze Art Fair on Saturday 13th October.

Matthew Poole, curator and co-director of Pilot and Colin Guillemet, artist and co-founded of Pilot participated in the debate at Frieze Art Fair on Saturday 13th October.

I’m part of an exhibition and performance project taking place and celebrating 15 years of the Magazin 4 Kunstverein in Bregenz, Austria. It is curated by Wolfgang Fetz and Peter Lewis.

4’33” starts on Saturday July 14th and runs until Sunday 22nd July 2007.

Works by Martin Creed and band, Fabienne Audeoud, Marcia Farquhar, Salomé Voegelin and David Mollin, Szuper Gallery, Rosie Cooper, Patrick Courtney, Mark McGowan, Peter Suchin, Disinformation, Celine Condorelli & Beatrice Gibson, Artists Anonymous and Jo Mitchell and guests will form a spectacle that unfolds throughout the 10 days in installations, performances and structures of participation including a party.

Check here for more information on the programme: http://www.bregenzerkunstverein.at/english/m4_4_33.htm

Together with three UK based artists, I’ll be initiating a programme called ‘the Black Box Project’ in a small room on the ground floor of the Magazin 4 building on Wednesday 18th, Thursday 19th and Friday 20th July.

On Wednesday 18th, Simon Bookish will perform lectures in the style of John Cage’s lectures (on the subject of John Cage).

On Thursday 19th, Rachel Gomme invites you to contribute your silence to a collection of silences in a performance interview called audience.

On Friday 20th, Rachel Gomme and John Levack Drever present an audio-visual installation whose materials consist of silences from previous presentations of Rachel Gomme’s work audience.

I’ll also be presenting a daily programme of artists sound works for the local radio station Radio Proton - das freie radio from Wednesday 18 - Sunday 22nd July, 19:00-20:00 BST. (Check the Radio Proton website for live streaming possibilities)

Its the end of an era, another chapter closed, as I give up smoking cigarettes on 30 June 2007. Michael Garrad and I will be documenting this historic moment for the last episode of our last radio series about smoking ‘Fag Break‘, by a visit to the New Sheridan Club.

To be broadcast on www.resonancefm.com on Monday 2 July 16:45-17:00 (BST).

You can also catch up with previous shows on www.myspace.com/fagbreakshow

Tuesday 3 July 2007

Organised by Cecilia Wee in collaboration with the London Musician’s Collective

[ See also our STOP PRESS below…]

Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club
44 Pollard Row, London E2
(5 mins from Bethnal Green tube)
£5 on the door
Doors open at 8pm, first performance 8.30pm
www.rationalrec.org.uk

Rational Rec is a monthly inter-art social occasion based at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, incorporating sound, music, text, performance, film and dessert into a damn good night out.

Final Rational Rec of season two! For the last time in our 2006/2007 season, come along and be artistically, intellectually and alcoholically stimulated.

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Tuesday 5 June 2007
Organised by Andrew Infanti and Matthew Shlomowitz

Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club
44 Pollard Row, London E2
(5 mins from Bethnal Green tube)
£5 on the door
Doors open at 8pm, first performance 8.30pm
www.rationalrec.org.uk

Rational Rec is a monthly inter-art social occasion based at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, incorporating sound, music, text, performance, film and dessert into a damn good night out. Come along and be artistically, intellectually and alcoholically stimulated.
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The OuLiPo - an acronym that translates as “workshop of potential literature” - was a post-war French literary movement that included Georges Perec, Italo Calvino and Raymond Queneau. The tenet of the OuLiPo is to create literature via constraints such as palindromes and lipograms.

The event Features:

– An OuTraPo performance (Workshop for Potential Tragi-comedy)

– Interview with Stanley Chapman, the first exponent of OuLiPo in the UK in the 1960’s

– OuLiPo like music pieces by Tom Johnson and Damien Ricketson

– Oulipean activities and games for the audience

– “Documentary Saga of the OuLiPo” - a new multimedia work by Rees Archibald, Andrew Infanti and Matthew Shlomwowitz that promises to explain everything you need to know about OuLiPo.

– Book stalls by Bookworks, Artwords Bookshop and Strange Attractor.

Stanley Chapman (b. 1925) was a British architect, designer, translator and writer. He became a member of Oulipo in 1960, founded the Outrapo, and is also a member of the French Collège de ‘Pataphysique, and the London Institute of ‘Pataphysics and the Lewis Carroll Society. His English translation of Hundred Thousand Billion Poems was received with “admiring stupefaction” by Raymond Queneau.