FryingPanFire

Artists and activists will gather in the saunic sweat of Dalston’s Cafe Oto this Friday to revive “Cafe Carbon“, a musical devised by The Gluts for the COP15 demonstrations this past winter in Copenhagen.

The Gluts are Gina Birch, Kaffe Matthews and Hayley Newman. Gina’s a founding member of The Raincoats, I once lay in Kaffe’s sonic bed in Aarhus, and Hayley’s a polymath live artist. They call their style “eco-electro. George Monbiot meets Lady Gaga and her twin sisters.” Whether I’ll be treated to a neosocialist knees-up or a trio of women screeching their way through their forties remains to be seen. But as a fan of pre-grrl rock punkstress tunes of the The Raincoats and having once dabbled in sound art, I’m erring on the positive.

Also on the bill are: John Jordan’s Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, The People Speak (and their Planetary Pledge Pyramid), Question Time, photographer and great Dane Kristian Buus and filmmaker Emily James. Hosted by Mikey Weinkove, people will get to take home a live-press zine, designed and printed on the spot by The Ladies of the Press.

Of course, I did not attend the demonstrations in Copenhagen. And my cynicism behind environmental pressure groups remains the same, if not reinforced by my recent trip to Haiti. This doesn’t preclude me from engaging with the issues – it just means I’ll most likely be found at the back with my arms crossed mocking the I Only Fly To India brigade. Like the middle-class art-school wanker I am.