Mixing It Up: Queering Curry Mile and Currying Canal Street/ Sept-Dec 2007

Google Earth map: Canal Street to Curry Mile, Manchester, UK (Dec 3, 2007). Click on image to enlargen.

Email: mixingitupmanchester@gmail.com

PRODUCED by Alpesh Patel, Independent Curator, and co-produced by Lisa Beauchamp and Jaheda Choudhury

PROJECT PARTNERS:
Sangam Restaurant,
9-19 Wilmslow Road M14 5TB, Curry Mile
(http://www.sangamrusholme.co.uk/);
The Whitworth Art Gallery,The University of Manchester,
Oxford Road M15 6ER
(http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk);
Contact,
Oxford Road M15 6JA
(http://www.contact-theatre.org/);
Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester,
Oxford Road M13 9PL
(http://www.museum.manchester.ac.uk);
Cornerhouse,
Oxford Road M1 5NH
(http://www.cornerhouse.org/art); and
Taurus Bar and Restaurant,
1 Canal Street, Gay Village M1 3HE
(http://www.taurus-bar.co.uk)

ARTIST PROJECTS: Generosity Cake Project, Paul Stanley & Lisa Beauchamp; Sphere: dreamz, Sphere (http://sphere.org.uk/); Queer, Urban Performance, Beyond da Box; and Queer, Urban Walking Project, Doorstep Collective (http://doorstepcollective.blogspot.com/).

PROJECT SUMMARY: “Mixing It Up” presents a series of aesthetic projects by Manchester-based artists and collectives that challenge the perceived “identities” of some of the city of Manchester’s most well known and trafficked urban spaces—Curry Mile, named for its many South Asian restaurants and shops; Canal Street, the epicenter of the Gay Village; and the area that connects the two, the Oxford Road Cultural Corridor, the latter named for the concentration of cultural institutions along the eponymously named road. Artists question the homogeneity of urban spaces by subverting, confusing, or “mixing up” our now habitual expectations of them. In turn, this mixing up shifts expectations about the people generally found in these spaces, potentially transforming preconceptions about “gay,” “South Asian,” and other kinds of Mancunian subjects. This project also mixes up expectations about art, enriching the aesthetic experience by including artwork and educational projects in a range of venues—sometimes unexpected—from Curry Mile to Canal Street, including cultural institutions, bars and restaurants. In turn, mixing venues will encourage a mixing of viewing audiences. All projects interrogate the citizen’s role in (re-) shaping individual and collective urban identities. Here is a listing of venues and projected dates for every artist and educational project that will be held from September to early December of this year and that are all a part of “Mixing It Up.” Details of each project follow in forthcoming blogs.