Events in September–October 2019
- Lydia Lunch presents Verbal Burlesque
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Lydia Lunch presents Verbal Burlesque
A night of spoken word & music
w/ Official: Lydia Lunch, Louise Woodcock & Slow KnifeVerbal Burlesque combines the dynamic spoken word histrionics of Lydia Lunch, one of the genres most controversial performers plus Louise Woodcock & Slow Knife. This will be a very intimate seated show.
Only 50 tickets available.Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch is passionate, confrontational and bold. Whether attacking the patriarchy and their pornographic war mongering, turning the sexual into the political or whispering a love song to the broken hearted, her fierce energy and rapid fire delivery lend testament to her warrior nature. Queen of No Wave, muse of The Cinema of Transgression, writer, musician, poet, spoken word artist and photographer, she has released too many musical projects to tally, has been on tour for decades, has published dozens of articles, half a dozen books and simply refuses to just shut up.Lousie Woodcock
Spirit worker, reiki master, performer/creator and avid non-musician, Woodcock appears in whichever guise suits her purpose and has no time for limitations. Woodcock is a lynchpin of Manchester’s experimental music and art scenes, is a seasoned performer and immersive theatre actor working across venues from Manchester Gallery to pubs to glitzy bars like Albert’s Schloss, performing controversial characters including the infamous trashy glamour puss, Trish Dee. She’s agitated The Fall fans at the request of Mark E Smith and incited public walk-out’s from Manchester Gallery.Slow Knife
Slow knife are the sound of Edgar Allan Poe writing soundtracks to pagan Hammer Horror films with a jazz ensemble. Think Ed Wood and Christopher Lee in the sack with Ken Nordine. - Greater Manchester Skeptics Society present: Matt Tompkins: The Spectacle of Illusion
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Greater Manchester Skeptics Society present: Matt Tompkins: The Spectacle of Illusion
Is seeing believing? Is believing seeing? How can we hope to conduct experiments on things that only exist within our minds, and, on a related note, can scientists ever be trusted to study deception without being deceived themselves? What can scientists learn about the mind from the illusions developed and practiced by professional magicians? Join magician and experimental psychologist Dr. Matthew L. Tompkins, author of The Spectacle of Illusion, for a fascinating talk exploring the psychology of magic.
Everyone’s heard, and most of us have told, a story about an uncanny or supernatural seeming experience. Accounts of wondrous and impossible phenomena can be found around the world throughout recorded history. These extraordinary events often seem to be facilitated by extra-ordinary individuals: sorcerers, spiritual mediums, psychic sensitives. Such phenomena have even been reported under ‘test conditions’, witnessed by scientists—men professionally trained in the practice of empirical observation. To date, such events have not led conventional scientists to embrace the reality of supernatural phenomena- but they have arguably led to scientific breakthroughs how we understand the psychology of illusion.
This talk will feature a mixture of storytelling and magical scientific demonstrations to explore how scientists, past and present, have approached the study of illusion. Matt will discuss how magic played a weird but fundamental role in the in the establishment of psychology as a scientific discipline, and how he and other contemporary researchers have been using magic tricks to create new experiments in order to investigate human memory, perception, and reasoning.
- Greater Manchester Skeptics Society present: Caroline Ward: Fantastic Beasts and Why to Conserve Them
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Greater Manchester Skeptics Society present: Caroline Ward: Fantastic Beasts and Why to Conserve Them
Conservation can be magical. Literally. And this complicates things. That is why protesters in Iceland will blockade road building projects which threaten the habitat of the endemic Icelandic elf. And why in some parts of Ethiopia people will protect Hyenas because they eat evil spirits. And why Caribbean owls are endangered because people persecute them because they are witches.
Dr Caroline Ward of the University of Leeds will explore how beliefs in magic can endanger but also protect species, with important real world impacts. She'll show how this produces complex ethical and practical dilemmas for conservation, and talk about solutions.
- No Matter
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No Matter
No Matter presents New Matter feat. Bhanu Kapil, Callie Gardner, Sarah Crewe & Sascha Aurora AkhtarNo Matter is an experimental poetry & performance series. This year, No Matter has funding from Arts Council England to commission six new pieces of work, which will be performed bi-monthly alongside exciting readings and performances. This event is the fourth in our series of commissions, and will feature new work by Bhanu Kapil. Kapil is the author of 5 published works including Ban en Banlieue (Nightboat, 2015), & her work develops the intersections of poetry, performance, prose and embodiment to explore memory, trauma, racial and gendered violence, and personal and cultural histories. For more: https://nomatterpoetry.com/This event is free and unticketed