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brasenosearts · 6 years

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The alchemical power of college-sponsored wine: Arts Week 2017, half-remembered.

Arts Week came upon us in the third week of Trinity 2017, glittering and glistening through our college colours of black and gold to reveal itself through this year’s theme of Alchemy.

Whilst maybe a little loosely connected in places (is pole dancing alchemical? It’s certainly a form of magic to watch students stiff from the library attempt to haul their limbs into something resembling elegance) the general theme of transformation and states of change was an apt one for a year that could be described as nothing short of tumultuous.

It was also perhaps fitting seeing as Arts Week this year fell the day after the biennial Brasenose Ball, and thus required a great deal of shape shifting from sleepy attendees to muster the arm strength to put together a new stage in the remnants of the Ball’s ruins.

Fittingly, Monday started with a very gentle bang as Tian, a third year artist, ran a workshop on the art of Qigong (literally: "Life Energy Cultivation") - a remarkably well attended workshop given that most attendees had had a grand total of 5 hours sleep all weekend in the aftermath of the Ball. Morning workshops continued all week - from life drawing to bark horn crash courses to gold leafing and even the appearance of a VIP guest.

Life drawing took place on Tuesday morning, with a twist. The twist in this case came in the form of the long muscular bodies of the models - and their many thousand legs. The chance to draw millipedes and snakes (real snakes, not the kind that always steal your milk and never wait for you in the Hall queue) drew a crowd keen to get up close. Masterpieces were made, with biologists turning out in droves to correctly identify the muscular sections and also correct my erroneous assumption that millipedes have a thousand legs.

I had tricked scientists into drawing, and thus alchemy was underway.

Wednesday morning heralded the arrival of the mysterious “Celtic Chris” as he descended upon us with multiple horns and flutes in tow, carved by his own hands and foraged from woodland. Nobody knew quite what to expect from the ‘bark horns’ he promised: horns that barked? Horns from sheep? Celtic Chris played some lovely melodies on a carved instrument that raised hopes for everyone’s own creative endeavours.

Unfortunately it so happened that this instrument was not a bark horn, nor even close to it in output.

As it turned out, the process involved a great deal of scraping and twisting of sticks, with the end result being strangely, if not intentionally, reminiscent of a dog barking. Or at least that’s how it sounded when played by me. These howls rang out across the quad for the afternoon, goading those who had sworn to be distracted by neither art nor sunshine out of their study lairs - then forcing them back in when it appeared that people would not cease in attempting to achieve the elusive singular note that the horn could allegedly produce.

One such horn, rumoured to be Sam Quinn’s, was left overnight and discovered to much delight the next morning at the gold leafing workshop. It reemerged far shinier and possibly less usable, alongside a variety of glimmering items such as lighters, water bottles, glasses and even a laptop. The theme of “Alchemy” that the week loosely abided to was truly in action, as objects went from practical to gold but glued shut; a small price to pay for glamour.

Friday’s morning workshop brought with it more star power than those shiny leaves and the celebrity draw of Celtic Chris combined: the author of Maisy Mouse, Lucy Cousins. Everyone learnt how to recreate the iconic character and how you might draw subfusc on cartoon animals with no arms. The final product was a painting as wide as Lecture Room XI. Whilst it currently lies dormant in the JCR, there have been rumours of getting Joe Organ to incorporate it into Open Days to show just how talented Brasenose students can be when armed with only a kids paintbrush, a mild hangover and a determination to remember what colours go into a cartoon peacock’s tail.

In the afternoons, events ranged from a capella (so much a capella) to plays and pole dancing, with great excitement arriving midweek with the appearance of a BBC One camera crew in college. The news started to spread in both whispers and college-wide emails, prompting the appearance of the entire development office in Deer Quad to watch Brasenose’s own Daniele and Hiba do some beautifully spontaneous leaps from the chapel stairs for the sixth time that morning.

After a tense start involving a well timed exchange of boxes containing furry spiders to those with film equipment occurring on Old Parlour staircase (see “Life” Drawing, above), the Alternotives took to the stage.

Whilst the eventual screen time of Old Library and Deer Quad was limited due to them only lasting one episode on Pitch Battle, the memory of John Bowers (QC) sat cross legged at the front of the marquee, entranced by a capella, will remain in our hearts forever.

Not to be overshadowed by the glitz and glamour of a BBC camera, we also had noted Oxford groups the Gargoyles and The Oxford Belles - whilst it seems like every group seems to claim the role as Oxford’s original all-singing, some-dancing troupe, the Belles at least had star power in the way of internet reach, with noted fan Ashton Kutcher sadly declining to turn up on the day despite his Facebook post-based enthusiasm. We’ve all been there, Ashton.

We also had not one but two plays running this year: one imagining the late and great William Shakespeare in the context of fresher’s week as a mechanical engineering student disillusioned with both flirting and the sciences, and a dynamic rehearsed reading of Pygmalion.

Dynamic in that it was meant to be a traditional reading that somehow wandered off the rails and all the way up the staircase 10 at one point.

Both were enthusiastically received by large crowds composed of friends and family members and even some paying guests, and feedback on both was great, with one very anonymous audience member remarking that Cal Demby-Harris pulled off the red officer’s jacket better than anyone else in college. He is, thus far, the only person in college to have worn this garment.

On Friday afternoon, following the debut of Pygmalion on the quad, Medieval Kitchen was transformed with poles and hoops for what was technically our most popular event of the week - according to Facebook’s algorithms. “Pole Dancing Workshop” reached 45k people on Facebook, something Brasenose Arts would love to claim as representative of the average enthusiasm for the week but unfortunately should probably note down as due to an irresistibly amusing combination of Oxford’s hallowed halls and the Wikihow-esque illustration on the cover photo, amplified by the Facebook reach of our treasured Stanford exchange students and their friends in Palo Alto.

As it happens, a solid 20 or so people attended each session, and it was a sight to behold to see students hanging from the beams of MK (or rather, suspended close to - I can confidently assure you that no actual climbing of the architecture occurred in case you are reading this, Matt Hill Domestic Bursar).

Following the excitement of our viral success story on Friday afternoon was the Arts Week Formal, an event eerily free of senior staff, which meant that the gavel ended up in my not entirely capable hands.

Whilst I can’t vouch for much of what I said, it has been reported that I gave a speech - all I can recall is that the food was wonderful and I was probably a rather soppy and exhausted shell of a human by this point. I can also recall that the Northern Soul night that followed the dinner was a roaring success. Playing off of Brasenose’s fondness for ceilidhs, and retaining the joy and mandated dancing of a ceilidh but with a name one can spell without googling, the night involved much moving of tables and some unexpected cameos from a porter or two. Again, Matt Hill, if you see any photos where we appear to be standing on tables, it is merely an illusion and we are in fact levitating from the sheer fun of it all.

Saturday morning was naturally a quieter affair, with the final performance of ‘Willy Shakes’ taking centre stage both on the quad and in the timetable. In the afternoon came a panel on Inequality in Film, boasting speakers from the BFI, Girls in Film and Another Gaze Journal as well as Jendella, an independent filmmaker and photographer.

Following the panel, after deliberation between Brasenose’s thriving and warring FilmSocs, came an open air screening of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. The air was warm with the promise of the great summer heatwave yet to come, and the fairy lights we had swiped from the wreckage of the ball and haphazardly strung across the marquee’s frameworks glimmered in reflection with the candles of the film. 3DIMAX eat your heart out.

The next morning the early summer sun rose on the same marquee, only slightly dampened by overnight showers that cleared to a blazing brightness by the time the annual celebration of Jazz on The Quad dawned. Our Music Rep and Organ Scholar, the multitalented Sarah Hughes, had managed to gather us together an impromptu band from her bursting contacts list. As they played, strawberries and (maybe a little too much) Pimms were handed round liberally, leaving everyone in a fruit flavoured midday daze to round off the week.

The fact that we had well and truly trampled the quad to pieces and broken several pieces of expensive IT equipment is merely a blip among these heady memories, and one I feel no fear in admitting here, as I know a certain IT rep never reads my notices to the end, regardless of content. Sweet, guiltless bliss.

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