The V&A will house the latest in a series of community takeovers, as artists and designers based in Shoreditch take up residence in the Museum for one night for July’s Friday Late. Members of Shoreditch’s established creative and technology communities will present a programme of installations, music and workshops. For the first time, Friday Late will continue outside of the V&A for an extra evening, relocating to the BL-NK space on East Road in Shoreditch for a range of talks, workshops and performances on Saturday 26 July.
On Friday Campus, Google’s Shoreditch space for startups, will be recreated in the Museum with an Entrepreneur Speed Dating service. Campus will offer the chance to be among the UK’s first to try out Google Glass in a specially set up Glass Photobooth. Startups working from the space will talk about their concepts, from pet matching service Borrow My Doggy to short term home finder Flat Let and company founders will be on hand to workshop new business ideas.
Online music and radio streaming service Mixcloud will present a plethora of guests in the Grand Entrance and John Madejski Garden for a range of specially-curated podcasts, music mixes and radio shows. Two episodes of Music Nation, a five part documentary series screened online by Dazed and commissioned by Channel 4, will be on show in the Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre. The first screening, Jungle Fever, explores the UK’s vibrant jungle music scene, featuring interviews with artists Fabio & Grooverider, DJ Hype, Kenny Ken and Broackie. The episode is followed by Brandy & Coke, in which photographer and author Ewen Spencer charts the story of UK garage.
Elsewhere, installations will include will a series of woodcut sculptures by street artist Malarky, whose work often appears in the Shoreditch area, and artwork by digital artist Nicolas Sassoon. Sasson’s work Pandora explores the representation of everyday space through computer based processes and appears in the form of animated GIFs. The work is presented by Opening Times, a digital art commissioning body for artworks which are presented online.
Shoreditch design studio Method will demonstrate their Drawing Machine, which will analyse the patterns of prints in the V&A collection and translate them into a series of digital drawing instructions. Visitors can interpret the instructions by drawing out William Morris patterns onto a bespoke canvas. In the Paper Wearables workshop, Designwarm will lead a workshop
inspired by wearable technology, with visitors invited to make their own DIY futuristic product.
On Saturday at BL-NK there will be music from Mixcloud, plus another chance to take part in the Paper Wearables workshop and to see work by Malarky. The programme of talks will include V&A curators speaking about the Museum’s computer art collection, digital design, and the newly launched Rapid Response Collection gallery.
Friday 29 August 2014 August’s Friday Late will feature performances, music, workshops and installations focused related to or inspired by the Museum’s Disobedient Objects exhibition.
V&A Friday Late: Shoreditch Takeover 25 July 2014 at the V&A; 18.30 – 22.00 26 July 2014 at BL-NK; 17.00 – 23.00 Admission Free; some events may be ticketed