We are bored with the city. It is now a set of signs and signifiers, bits skimmed off and
reappropriated which are meant to represent a trace of Manchester’s past. These elements
are now empty and meaningless.
We exist the way we are because of the Hacienda. Remembering through our experiences of
our Haçienda, we see there is no Haçienda, it must be built.
Its traces, references and influences propagate the city from where it came, long after the
building has gone. We refer back to the original Situationist text, which the founders of
Factory Records used as the methodology to underpin what could exist in the space that
would become Fac51 the Haçienda.
The use of a warehouse space reflected a city whose industrial heritage was in decline, to
be replaced by a new leisure economy. Ben Kelly’s postmodern visual aesthetics for the club
introduced ‘the abject’, surreal elements that used authentically raw industrial fabrics unfamiliar
to the context of what was a playground. It was understood by those who entered into this
community that this environment expressed the vibrancy of a new productive age.
Can we trace the spirit of the Haçienda by our series of posters which refer back to Situationists
text and include triggers to allow the visitor to become aware of how important this space was
to the city and to also see the surface elements that exist without the context and authenticity.
We to expose the need to become active practitioners in the urban environment and not to be left as tourists.
The exhibition will be displayed on the windows of the openspace (bar) Office foyer.
So this exhibition can be constantly viewed from the outside, to view from the inside: Opening times for the openspace (bar) are Wednesday to Friday from 5pm until at least 11pm and on Saturday from 6pm until at least midnight.
Outside of these weekday opening times the exhibition can also be viewed by appointment, please contact the Box Office on 0161 615 0500 for further details and to arrange a viewing.
*TRIP - Territories Reimagined: International Perspectives
Between June 19 and 21, 2008, TRIP brings together artists, academics, movers, shakers, do-ers and dissenters in a unique event combining an interdisciplinary conference with a citywide series of actions, interventions and exhibitions.
TRIP’s theme is psychogeography, and will explore many of the avenues this field of action, theory and research is currently entering, including neogeography, deep topography, urban intervention, locative media and collaborative mapping. TRIP enables the previously separate worlds of theory and practice to interact, initiating new approaches and energies, and furthering techniques to take on and alter the physical environment.
Beginning as a reaction to the industrial revolution, the re-imagining of the city by romantics, bohemians, and avant gardists evolved into a diverse range of strategies, practices and arguments, from the psychogeographic drift or derive to the artistic intervention. By the 1990s these were being utilised by artists, writers, activists, and historians, attempting to negotiate urban and rural space in the postmodern world.
But practices developed in the twentieth century encounter a different world in the twenty first - a more observed and policed world on the one hand, a more corporate, globally-connected world on the other. Increasingly the body, social, individual and political, is the site of contradictory demands - the demands to consume versus the demands of control.
TRIP’s artist-led events will take place throughout Manchester, in public spaces and leading galleries including greenroom and Urbis, with TRIP’s academic conference will be based at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Other TRIP events at greenroom
| Wed 28th May to Sat 21st June |
The Abandoned Buildings ProjectJane Samuels : FREE : exhibiting as part of TRIP* |
| Wed 28th May, 8pm |
Get Lost and TRIP Opening EventFREE |
| Thu 19th June, 2pm to 3pm |
Manchester, Mythogeography and Mobile MachinoekiPhil Smith : FREE : greenroom openspace* |
