Nighthawks: Manchester After Hours & NQ After Dark

As the sun sets this Thursday, Manchester's cultural spaces open their doors for a night of art, music and literature

Feature by News Team | 14 May 2014

This Thursday, Manchester offers its residents a nocturnal delight as the city’s museums, art galleries, libraries and other creative hubs open their doors to celebrate the wealth of culture on our doorstep for Manchester After Hours, an offshoot of the nationwide Museums at Night initiative.

Now Wave and Sounds from the Other City join forces to programme a night of music and ice cream at Manchester Art Gallery's special Thursday Late (6-9pm). Taking Joana Vasconcelos’ Time Machine installation (currently on show at the gallery) as inspiration, one-man soundscape East India Youth and American singer/songwriter Casey Dienel's live alter-ego White Hinterland deliver a sensory response to the exhibition – the frozen dessert comes courtesy of Ginger’s Comfort Emporium.

Across the road there’s more great music happening as Hey! Manchester invite The Montgolfier Brothers to rock the Reading Room at Central Library (6.30-8pm).

If spoken word is more your thing, the mighty Bad Language trade the rustic charms of The Castle for the gorgeous Portico Library on Mosley Street (7-10pm, booking required), with readings coming from South African novelist Marli Roode, Glaswegian scribe Rodge Glass and canal laureate Jo Bell, with post-punk performer Rosie Garland as the main event.

Over at The Museum of Science & Industry, there’s the opportunity to do some science and dance the night away with #HookedOnMusic (7-11pm). MOSI what to know what makes some music so catchy, and, to find out, scientists from the University of Amsterdam want to analyse your response to and memory of a variety of infectious ear worms. There’s also a quiz and silent disco.

Sticking with sound, artist Matt Pyke invades the National Football Museum with an interactive sculpture that reacts to the sounds from its audience; while sound is the subject of Testing the Echo over at the Working Class Movement Library (5-8pm), where various singers, including African-American bass singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson, will use the library’s unusual acoustics as an instrument.

While all of this is going on in the city centre, venues in the Northern Quarter get in on the act with NQ After Dark. You can catch internationally acclaimed artist Shezad Dawood's Lancaster sci-fi film Piercing Brightness at Passion Studios (7pm), play glow-in-the-dark ping pong at Twenty Twenty Two while surrounded by light installations ('literally brilliant', acording to their website), and watch Tash Willcocks demonstrate live her interactive wall installation at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art. There’s more live art over at art supply store Fred Aldous, with an evening of live printing using the shop's analogue photo booths and risograph printer.

In partnership with Manchester School of Art, Unit X take over five Northern Quarter(ish) locations – the top floor of Federation House, four floors of New Century House (the Co-op’s former HQ), Madlab, Nexus Art Cafe and Dry Bar – to displays work by hundreds of the art school's future architects, artists, designers, filmmakers, illustrators, designers and photographers.

New talent is also at the heart of Konst:ig at Hyper Island as its digital media students take part in real-time interactive art with local artists, and explore the link between the digital world and the art world (6-9pm).

There’s more art on display at Matt & Phreds as the jazz bar opens its Comme Ca Art showroom to showcase works by some of its artists, from painting and photography to sculpture and print making (6-9pm). At Terrace, Manchester’s finest street artists will battle it out, with their work raffled off at the end of the night – a hip-hop style brass band and MC Bedos provide a surreal soundtrack (6pm). And the Northern Quarter becomes an artwork in itself as photographer Dave Allen invites people to submit photographs of the area at specific grid references that will be laid out on the night (6-11pm).

There’s also a great selection of live music happening across town, with Cardiff seven-piece Slowly Rolling Camera at Band on the Wall (7.30pm) and the No Good Beatniks collective at Matt & Phred’s (9pm-12am). Elsewhere, there’s the launch of Calaita Flamenco Son’s album at Night & Day Café (8pm), and there’s Common’s regular evening of sound art, music and visuals, Stop Making Sense (9pm-2am).

Almost all of the events above are free, so it’s the perfect opportunity to venture out into Manchester'swealth of cultural space and celebrate the city’s rich (and sometimes mad) creativity.

http://www.nqafterdark.com