Abridged 0-777 – Art Arcadia

Abridged 0 - 777

Forget The Many Steps To Heaven

Forget The Many Steps To Heaven

Digital residency

8 - 21 January 2024

Abridged 0 - 777

Hope keeps us going and Hope destroys us… Dante really should’ve written ‘Keep A Little Hope All Who Enter Here’ if he really wanted to torture the lost souls. Using Google Earth we’ll sample contemporary faith and contemporary hopelessness. This will be an introduction and companion piece to ‘The Tower, The Moon, The Gun’ which will appear later in 2024.

Abridged aims to publish and exhibit contemporary/ experimental poetry plus contemporary art. We encourage poets/artists to investigate the articulation of ‘Abridged’ themes. These themes focus on contemporary concerns in a rapidly changing society. We are offering an alternative and complete integration of poetry, art and design. We experiment continually. We also stray into the exhibition format producing contemporary, innovative and challenging work accompanied by a free publication.

www.abridged.zone

The Art Arcadia Residency Programme is funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Derry City & Strabane District Council.

Instagram takeover

Jan 22

🖤Thank You 🖤

As ‘Abridged 0-777: Forget The Many Steps To Heaven’ digital residency comes to a close, we wish to take the opportunity to extend our gratitude to @abridgedmagazine for taking residency with us.Their posts have been an unconventional comfort during the extreme weather of January and we'll miss reading them, but we are sure we'll work together again soon.

Stay tuned for more Art Arcadia announcements soon.

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#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @lottogoodcauses

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Jan 21

‘The Tower, The Moon, The Gun’ *

‘Is this our ultimate pyjamas? Is this our final dressing gown?’ **

Just a short last post, as last posts tend to be. This last couple of weeks have been fun. Yes fun. It’s not the thing to enjoy yourself in the contemporary arts world but we do and we have. It’s an opportunity to ramble through Google Earth and to ramble generally. Thanks to Art Arcadia, one of our favourite arts organisations and a very valuable addition to the Derry arts scene despite what the Church of Ireland might think.

This last couple of weeks have been a kind of introduction to our Arts Council of Northern Ireland Commission ‘ The Tower, The Moon, The Gun’ which will occur later in the year. Keep an eye out for it and see you soon.

* PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.

** PPS We also like to quote Half Man Half Biscuit.

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 20

‘You don't have to say you're sorry
To look on further down the line’ *

I’m old (not that old) and I remember a time when things existed in society because they should and were seen to be of benefit to people. Community centres and football pitches for examples and of course public libraries. I loved libraries. You could take out 4 books without having to pay for them. And when you didn’t have much money that was brilliant. I read everything, most of which (probably quite rightly) is seen as questionable these days. Enid Blyton’s Famous Five in which anyone poor or of an ethnic minority was highly suspect was of course one but for me they were still great books. The Adventures of Tintin by Herge was another series that was ‘very much of it’s time’ as the phrase goes. Tintin in the Congo even then was horrifically racist plus Tintin’s treatment of animals is appalling and was unofficially ‘banned’ for quite a while. Interestingly it’s reappeared with a new introduction explaining its ‘colonial’ attitudes. Asterix still is a work of genius even in translation though again the depiction of black people in particular is problematic. I read some US translations recently who felt that some of the pun-ish character medical names modern American kids wouldn’t get so they changed them. If a 1970s Derry kid could get them I’m pretty sure contemporary American kids too. Publishers regularly underestimate children. At any rate, as they song says ‘libraries gave us power’. We weren’t aspirational (a terrible word), we just liked reading. Libraries gave us power to imagine. The stifling of the imagination is a terrible thing.

A million years later and the Abridged is distributed around Northern Ireland libraries. It’s something we’re very proud of…

* PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.

Thanks to Art Arcadia!

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 19

‘It's a semi-automatic, get in the car’ *

Traditionally you could kill a vampire by beheading them, or staking them in the heart. Traditionally you could kill anyone by beheading them, or staking them in the heart. Presumably they’d be much easier to despatch by modern methods. A rocket launcher would do the job I’d reckon. We like our traditional goth literature and film of course, though some of Dracula is turgid and there hasn’t been much improvement since Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of the Drac (Bauhaus’s anthem to Bela is very groovy it should be said). Christopher Lee was a cool Count of course. To be fair to Bram (in a manner similar to that you can’t blame Jesus for American Evangelicals), it’s not his fault that lots of vampire literature is terrible. Anne Rice’s work got worse as it went along and Interview With A Vampire is one of the few times in which you can say the film is better than the book. The whole Twilight Saga wasn’t our sort of thing but to be fair it had teenagers (well teenage girls) reading on the bus. By choice. And we have to say that Buffy was great. Even the film. Richard Matheson’s ‘I Am legend’ we can recommend of course (as you’d probably expect) though were the ‘monsters’ vampires? We’re not that familiar with contemporary vampire writing. We’d hope there’s good stuff out there.

Abridged is to a (perhaps large) degree gothic. But in a way that the Cold War is gothic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is gothic or The Exorcist is gothic or nuclear weapons are goth. We’re not that interested in graveyards either. We’re much more scared of the living, especially those that have their fingers on the button. And the ghosts of the past that terrify us tend to become politicians and drive in motorcades. The bombs are raining down again. That should be enough gothicness for anyone.

* PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.

Thanks to Art Arcadia!

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 18

‘Are you living for love?’ *

There’s a scene in Salem’s Lot (a film based on a Stephen King novel (ask anybody of a certain age about the kid vampire at the window and we guarantee they will shudder)) in which the vampire (or more accurately the vampire’s lackey/familiar, a chilling James Mason) challenges a priest to put down his crucifix if he truly believes his faith will save him. You can probably guess the outcome…The first Abridged issue cover, likewise had a church behind a fence indicating to us at least though definitely practical in these days a distinct lath of faith. We seem to have a thing about fences and there’s something fence-like in most issues. It probably says something about us. ‘Would you like to tell us about your childhood?’

We’ve been Abridged for twenty years. That’s a long time for most things and especially a poetry/art magazine. We started it because we believed it was needed. The whole instrumentalization of the arts was beginning to kick in not to mention the whole pseudo-spiritualist feel-good fascism was on the social media horizon. We could see the way the wind was blowing. We wanted to create a world that was not quite real, in the same way that reality and the real are not quite the same, two steps on the water so to speak. Even we didn’t think that our exaggerations and distortions would become general everyday occurrences that quickly. Unusually perhaps for a literary magazine, we didn’t want to tell you what literature should be. There’s too many people telling you what things should be. We just wanted you to lose and perhaps find yourself in its pages, in the smoke and mirrors. We still want you to do that.

* PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.

Thanks to Art Arcadia for inviting us to be part of their Digital Residencies once again.

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 17

‘And the idiot wields the power’ *

I mentioned in our 0 – 91: Waterside Art Arcadia Residency a few years ago that you were (for some reason) able to buy Pravda (for our younger viewers Pravda was the mouthpiece of the Soviet Polit Bureau) in one of the most Loyalist (for our foreign viewers extreme Protestant) areas of Derry. Internet ‘Pravdas’ are now ten a penny and have an audience of potentially millions. I scrolled through the ‘Irish’ Twitter (X) for want of a better expression. An X (ahem) rated experience it has to be said and not in a Saturday Night Swingers (see a previous post) way. Of course it’s easy to dismiss extremist loons on a very troubled social media platform but what’s polluted the internet sphere (Andrew Tate for example) often overflows into the ‘real’ world though (as we said in another post) ‘reality’ and ‘real’ are beginning to become indistinguishable and not in the way they’re supposed to be.

This is evident in what is happening in the Republic of Ireland which if you’d believe Twitter is getting invaded (they always use the word invaded) by millions of migrants and is now full. This despite the fact that Ireland’s population at the start of the famine was about eight and a half million or so and is now if you include both the Republic and Northern Ireland about six and a half million. This agenda is being pushed by extremist right wing elements at home aided by Trumpian Irish America and whatever the National Front in England call themselves now. They can spread rumours and misinformation online and easily intimidate people. Again, despite the fact that the entire contemporary Irish mythos is based on (mostly economic) migration. You can’t if you have soul celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Washington whilst burning down hotels at home for migrants. But that’s where we’re at it seems…

* PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.

Thanks to Art Arcadia!

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 16

‘I’ve been under the gun.’*

Us Cold War Kids that looked at an odd book knew where Moscow was, where Washington was, where Berlin was. Basically anywhere that would get fried if the three minute warning sounded. Added to the ‘Troubles’ (which seems an even more ridiculous name for it) the Cold War gave us a certain fatalism. Apparently there was a Russian missile aimed at Derry, at the American base up the road to be exact. It kind of puts things in perspective. There’s Russian (and lots of other) missiles aimed elsewhere now of course.

Our knowledge of European geography was highly advanced by football. We knew where Dresden was, not because of bombing but because of Dynamo. Dukla Prague (who’s kit was later immortalised by Half Man Half Biscuit – a song that inspired the Abridged numbering system: ‘Come to half time and you were losing four nil, each and every goal a hotly disputed penalty, so you’d smash up the floodlights and the game was abandoned’) was possibly the only thing we knew about Czechoslovakia.

Little did we know that both of these teams were Army sides who were pretty loathed by the general populace. There was still a glamour to them that a second division Chelsea certainly didn’t have. St. Etienne was one (with a really cool kit even if we weren’t exactly sure where it was apart from somewhere in France), Torino another. You could send for old programmes featuring Eintracht Frankfurt or Steaua Bucharest (another army side- there was quite a few arms teams in eastern Europe). Violence of course, then known as the English disease was highly prevalent. Worse, the first hints that something was going very wrong in the Balkans was the madness of a Red Star Belgrade v Dinamo Zagreb. However when holidays were a day drip to Donegal or Portrush, Borussia Mönchengladbach added a bit of exoticism.

*PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.

Thanks to @art.arcadia.ltd!

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 15

‘Explosive bolts, ten thousand volts
At a million miles an hour’ *

Once upon a time (in 1977 to be exact) a killer whale got lost (or simply went looking for salmon) and found itself in the midst of the River Foyle in Derry. The citizenry of the time gave it the name ‘Dopey Dick’ displaying the dark humour and lack of empathy prevalent at the time. ‘Dopey Dick’ suggested that anybody that found themselves in the town that didn’t live there was a ‘dope’ and only the terminally stupid would come here voluntarily. To be fair, not many people did come here at the time and a dark humour sometimes is the only thing that keeps a society going. Derry Girls had it been set a decade earlier would’ve been much darker. Had people known that the whale was actually called Comet and originated in the Isle of Skye it would have no doubt caused much merriment at the time.

We vaguely recall seeing a vague shape in the water and being a bit disappointed that it wasn’t doing anything particularly interesting. We were young and for us it didn’t do anything to light up a bleak November afternoon. Not sure what we were hoping for exactly. Maybe Dopey (or Comet) would eat something or someone for instance. Jaws had been released a couple of years earlier and though we were too young to see it, we heard about killer sharks. Killer whales were surely the same. Comet would be in his 60s now. He was spotted last in 2016 and we hope he’s still alive. Dopey Dick as a name was a product of its time. Destruction Island sums up these days pretty well.

* PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.

Thanks to Art Arcadia for inviting us to be part of their Digital Residencies once again.

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 14

‘It all comes back again’ *

There’s a saying, or perhaps there should be a saying that the only people tired of democracy are those that live under it. There’s another that states it’s the least worst of the alternatives. And yet another that says the difference between authoritarianism and democracy is that in an authoritarian state you’re not allowed to speak but in a democratic state you’re allowed to speak but nobody listens. And everybody has a story and many want you to hear it.

What happens though, when there are too many stories to hear? With the advent of the social media internet everyone has a story, an opinion and potentially everyone has a massive audience. With narrative comes grievance, much of it justified, much of it imagined. A tide of stories, a tide of humanity and inhumanity. What happens when the voices aren’t heard, when nothing changes, for good or ill? They pool and fester and fall victim to the populists and snake-oil sellers. The collective memory becomes twisted and nostalgia starts to infect everything.

We don’t claim to have Nostradamus-like powers but it’s easy enough to predict what’s coming, to know which way the wind is blowing, hence our Nostalgia is a Loaded Gun, Contagion and Relapse issues. The world is as it always was in that the world is always changing. It used to be changed by the grand narratives, now the stories are legion. The results may be the same though.

* PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.

Thanks to Art Arcadia for inviting us to be part of their Digital Residencies once again.

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 13

It never happened and it ain't so hard’ *
Isn’t this something like the heaven we were hoping for? Replicant and virtual. Infinity contained. A 3D copy of everything we knew, everything we were sure of, as it was at one point in time, the time we liked it best. Somewhere like home we can fly freely around in, making visits, opening doors – weightless, safe and entertained. A make-believe continuation. A world that doesn’t change. Like living on in a photograph, but being able to feel it. No need for the body, only the memory of what it was like to be in it.

It’s mushrooming, this idea: a downloadable self, a software afterlife. Our happy restlessness perpetuated, with the great threat of questions removed. Isn’t this what they always meant, what they were trying to get at? Now we’ve the tools (or someone around here does). And wouldn’t we be willing to unsee the seams and the stitches, the pixelated margins, the shadows where there shouldn’t be shadows?

Because when it comes down to it, does it even matter to us if the world we believe we are in is ‘real’? Doesn’t even grasping at the ‘real’ require more distance from ourselves than we can stretch to? Aren’t our bodies in the way? Aren’t our words? And isn’t it likely the reality of the ‘real’ is an uncertainty more gaping and enormous than we could ever hope to cope with? Wouldn’t we just fall in? Aren’t we just a bit tired for that?

There’s enough to deal with here, inside what we think is there, never mind what ‘really is’.

* PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.
Thanks to Art Arcadia for inviting us to be part of their Digital Residencies once again.
#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 12

$‘The first are last, the blessed get wired’ * In the end everything is entertainment. We can see the fracturing of society into various fandoms. Fandom suggests a mixture of adoration and fanaticism. And what are religions but fandoms? Both religion and fandoms are notoriously conservative. Both are always continually disappointed. No doubt if the Second Coming occurred it would be met with as much hostility as the latest Stars Wars saga receives from admirers of the original (so to speak) Old Testament films. The relationship between fans and their idols and religions and their God is parasocial – one sided worship and unchanging. The one difference is that the musicians worshipped for instance can always have the potential to create that ‘Experimental Side Project’ that can horrify their fans whilst Gods are ancient and don’t generally go off script. Now with the omniscience of the internet just about everything is a fandom. If you believe one thing it’s a pretty safe bet that we can guess ten other things you believe. And these fandoms are often vicious. Gamergate (an example of toxic gamers) is often seen as a herald of the Trump era – a male backlash against a female journalist and gamer. Look at the response to the Last of Us 2’s character, Abby, who had, you know muscles and therefore wasn’t a proper woman and was probably transgender (she wasn’t). It got so ridiculous that the voice actor got death threats. The one thing that this kind of toxicity has in common with religion is that they don’t really like or trust women. Which figures. * PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy. Thanks to Art Arcadia for inviting us to be part of their Digital Residencies once again. #artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses$

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Jan 11

We're worlds apart where we could meet’ *

One of the most used horror tropes is that behind the nice lawns and white fences there are all sorts of dodgy goings on that if you were in the US would see the bodies buried in the cellar and if you were in Northern Ireland would see you in the Sunday World under banners with Torrid! Shocking! in bold type. And no doubt lots of salaciousness occurs behind well-manicured hedges in excellent post-codes. We wanted a picket-fence and a million quid house. If the house at the end of the drive had a swingers party every second Saturday, we’d have put up with that. It beat somebody throwing a fire-bomb through the window at midnight. Strangely enough the houses in horror films that are inevitably built on ancient burial grounds or haunted by malevolent spirits tend to be mostly a bit upscale. It’s also as if the safest place to be in Hollywood Horror would be in a Housing Executive home (Council House in Britain/Rent controlled in the US). If we’re charitable we could say that it’s recognised there is enough trauma in working class existence and seeing them suffer more isn’t as much fun as torturing the middle-class/rich. More probably they just aren’t considered at all.

* PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.

Thanks to Art Arcadia for inviting us to be part of their Digital Residencies once again.

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 10

‘And the meek'll inherit what they damn well please’ *

Because you can buy anything, you can buy a t-shirt with a Crucifix/Kalashnikov design. It’s kind of tacky but really it’s probably more honest than just the two pieces of wood, certainly in the US of today. Flags are problematic on their own. Faith and flags tend to make things a whole lot worse. Both are somehow defensive and evangelical, to bring people in (but the right people) and keep people out. That weird St. Augustine quote that the purpose of wars is peace really should be the purpose of wars is victory. Everyone after all thinks their war is a Just War ™. Everything else is collateral damage. And we’re seeing really a lot of ‘collateral damage’ at the moment.

The second issue of Abridged had the theme ‘Damaged Collateral’, a (not so) subtle nod to the profitability of conflict. Or even the possibility of conflict. There was also an exhibition, which was actually a (not terribly effective) maze with pieces of art in dead ends. It was meant to be also a comment on the sanitisation (and somewhat ironically) weaponization of national remembrance. One of the most powerful pieces in it was a series of adverts, untouched apart from simple sad faces drawn on sawn tree trunks, half eaten chickens etc. One bowl of sad-faced half-eaten fruit was called ‘Rush Hour Bomb’. It seemed to sum things up then. It probably still does.

* PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.

Thanks to Art Arcadia for inviting us to be part of their Digital Residencies once again.

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 9

‘So the highest hand is joking wild
And the house soon fold and no one stand’ *

If there’s a deep dark hole in the middle of the road you just know there’s a substantial section of society that will absolutely feel the need to dive deep into it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s what we have poets for. That’s what we have artists for. (Malevich should’ve made his square a circle. Squares are not supreme at all, a hole in the whole would be ahem much deeper). We all need explanation, we all need a reason. That’s what religion is for. That’s what politics are for. That’s what we have scientists for.

The danger is when the deep dark hole is made the foundations of faith. Praise the Lord and Pass The Ammunition so to speak. A Void is the start of everything of course. Art either seeks to hide the void or articulate it. And that’s fine. When politics and religion seek to use the Void then we’re in trouble. When they use the structures of the Void as Gospel, high on the Apocalyptic and birth the populists and the snake oil salesmen. Mike Pence signing mortar shells. Postmodern Dispensational Premillennialism with its finger on the button is only a matter of time it seems...

* PS. We’ve nicked the title of this and future posts from the lyrics of Under The Gun by that groovy beat combo The Sisters of Mercy.

Thanks to Art Arcadia for inviting us to be part of their Digital Residencies once again.

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 8

'It never happened and it ain't so bad'*

Faith at the beginning was a tiny fragile thing, brimful of optimism and uncertainty. It was precious and silly, hopeful and hopeless. It should’ve stayed that way but it grew structures, and from structures come strictures and we end up with the Crusades and the Inquisition. We’re not even talking about religion particularly. Substitute politics and we can see how the revolution eventually becomes the old order under a different name. The clue is in the name. Everything turns and returns.
In our multi – truth age we see digital Crusades and Inquisitions. We especially see Witch Hunts. The digital is by its very nature de-human, of human of course, but essentially de-human. It allows us to dehumanise with no comeback and then to ‘re-human’, to define what society and in particular women should be. This usually means a return to some simpler and monocultural past before the (insert as appropriate) invasion of (insert as appropriate). Look at the ‘protests’ against immigrants in Irish towns and cities at the moment. Driven by rumours and myths spread online by many far-right social media accounts based mostly (but by no means exclusively) in the USA and the UK offering the dispossessed or even just the vicious a language to cling to and someone to blame. Abridged has long held that the online environment will eventually be the driver for what happens in the ‘real’ world. We can see that the ‘real’ and ‘reality’ are not the same thing. We watch ‘Reality’ for entertainment but when ‘reality’ i.e. a constructed ‘truth’ becomes a structured faith full of pessimism and certainty we see the results in the looted shops and burned vehicles of recent Dublin riots.
Abridged 0 – 777 (a heavenly number apparently, probably because 666 is the number of the beast (667 presumably must be the neighbour of the beast) explores the structure of faith and the mutation of faith. As usual it will be in our abstract way.

*Andrew Eldritch

#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @LottoGoodCauses

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Jan 8

We're delighted to kick off 2024 with 'Abridged 0-777: Forget The Many Steps To Heaven'. 🗺️

Over the next few weeks Abridged will be undertaking a digital residency with us. We're excited to welcome them back after a wonderful remote residency back in 2022.

'Hope keeps us going and Hope destroys us...Dante really should've written 'Keep A Little Hope All Who Enter Here' if he really wanted to torture the lost souls. Using Google Earth we'll sample contemporary faith and contemporary hopelessness. This will be an introduction and companion piece to 'The Tower, The Moon, The Gun' which will appear later in 2024.'

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#artarcadia #dcsdc #artscouncilni #whatsonds #artistresidency #digitalresidency #ACNISupported #NationalLottery #ThanksToYou #artaab32 #abridged @paola.bee @abridgedmagazine @lottogoodcauses

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