CCA Highlights September / October 2017

From Sonica to Margaret Glaspy – our selections for the upcoming CCA Glasgow programme

Feature by Sebastian Fisher | 05 Sep 2017

The way people talk about the Edinburgh Fringe, you’d think either it or indeed the capital was the only source of culture in the Known Universe. This is not true, as the CCA in Glasgow proves month after month. Now you’ve dropped your last coin in the bin of a comedian who thinks knowingly self-aware jokes about his student life are his ticket to a life on BBC3 late-night specials, it’s time to get back to the surefooted discovery of curated art.

Sonica – Cryptic’s biennial celebration of the visual sonic arts – is the first of three festivals coming to the CCA this autumn season. Great artists are present to stretch the possibilities of sound. A spontaneous record player that snores, Robert Bentall’s nyckelharpa (a Swedish string instrument that looks like an assault rifle) and a white light evolving in time to dense arrangements by Solveig Settemsdal and Kathy Hinde are just a few of the aural rare-candies you can find. Let your ears guide you from the 26 October.

If you’re looking for a more traditional singer-songwriter, we have Margaret Glaspy. The New Yorker’s debut album Emotions and Maths is a grungy gem and she brings it to the CCA on 9 September.

New York’s music scene continues to rock at the CCA this season with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Alec Ounsworth will be in full voice as they thrash it out at the CCA on 16 September following the release of their latest album Tourist.

Set aside the weekend at the end of September for the Scottish Queer International Film Festival, which kicks off with Bruce LaBruce’s The Misandrists, a kinky satire where the Female Liberation Army tackles the patriarchy and lesbian porn is used as a propaganda tool. More than just showings of queer film’s jewels, the festival also has workshops, discussions and parties that tackle the serious issues of cultural identity behind the subversion. It closes with Signature Move, charting the story of a female Pakistani-American immigration lawyer who falls in love with Alma, a Mexican-American bookstore owner – and it has wrestling! Celebrating diversity and love in Chicago, it’s a perfect rebuke to any Trumpian vision of the world.

Speaking of said visions. and celebrating its fifteenth year, we have Document – Scotland’s longest running inquisition into Human Rights through the medium of film. Document a conscious attempt to engage unflinchingly with the travesties of the modern world. The screenings and the workshops are forensic in their interrogation of how to confront the refugee crisis, the unfettered ravage of global capitalism and the ever more global fight for gender equality. If you want to get serious, political and download some data that may help you change the world, then Document is on 19-22 October.