You Are Here 50th anniversary Gulbenkian event

17th June 2019
Gulbenkian Theatre Cafe, Canterbury

This went better than expected. It was based on the You Are Here-related multimedia piece that Sean Williams, Will Glanfield and Oli Chilton did months ago at Free Range and Waterstones, but this time with a tie-in to the Gulbenkian's 50th anniversary celebrations. So the usual historical Big Bang → 12:00:00.000GMT 15/07/14 sequence was split by an interlude/bardo where the history of Canterbury, the University and the Gulbenkian around 1969 was explored. The musicians were joined by Sam Bailey on piano and synth, and pulled off versions of Hopper's "Memories", Soft Machine's "Out-Bloody-Rageous" and Wyatt's "Sea Song", while Oli projected images of Canterbury in the late 50s and 60s. A Q&A followed and then a multimedia DJ set where I played Canterbury sounds, Oli projected images of the the artists, and I typed relevant factoids furiously into projected textboxes. It all went down rather well, to a full house, and there was a nice little gathering in the UKC Labyrinth afterwards to watch the full moon arcing over the Cathedral with Juliet, Cameron, Will, et al.