Outro // “Another Year Passes: Seven things that we liked in 2013”
“But we never see things
changing/ We only see them ending…” (Ani DiFranco)
2013 was for many a bad
year. But for others it was a good year. For others it was an equal measure.
The fact remains that we wish all of those people a Happy New Year! The above
quote may seem extremely untraditional, but it really isn’t. Life can never be
perfect – and every ending is merely a new door opening into change for the
better.
It was a mixed year for
sure in all areas of life but if we always look on the dark side (As we did to
varying degrees in December’s Dark Season sub theme of features) we’ll get
nothing but darkness. Positivity is always the better side of the coin to fall
on and that’s just what we’ll do here! Here we go with seven things that we liked
in 2013…
#1: Music. Music was
everywhere in 2013 – with essential releases from artists coming all year
round. We enjoyed music from David Bowie, Novella, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,
Death Grips, Prince and much more besides. For our picks of the year check out
the #essential2013 features for more (but not all) of what we enjoyed…
#2: Art. We’ve been
inspired by many artists this year – dead and alive. Salvador Dali helped us
with coffee. Giger helped us out with dark eroticism. Frank Kozik inspired us
with his smoking’ Labbits. Jonathan Barnbrook made us reconsider simplicity in
design with his iconic cover art for Bowie’s The Next Day. And, of course, our
friend Love ArtUK inspired us with his exhibition in February and the
collaborative work that followed on some of #srcz’s other projects.
3: Coffee. With our second
Coffee Culture season we explored (over various forms of the devils beverage) its
connection to art, creativity and life and it went down very well indeed.
(Double meaning very intentional!) You could say that we had the best time with
coffee ever…
4. Cassettes. We had
Record Store Day and then we had Cassette Store Day. Some of our picks of the
year were released exclusively (in the physical format, at least) on cassette
and we rediscovered our love for them as a result.
#5. Collaboration. Our
events arm took a few more steps out of the darkness with some low key but
excellent event collaborations in the second half of the year. This resulted in
collaboration – a very potent thing indeed! It also greatly enriched our
content both in front of and behind the scenes of #srcz. But most of all, our
(ongoing) partnership with Liverpool’s excellent Threshold Festival was as
enjoyable as ever. We look forward to more multi-arts adventures in 2014 for
the festival very much!
#6.Television. We’re pretty
sure you’ll agree when we say that we were spoiled by a lot of good television this
year. You can check our picks of the year in our #essential2013 series but our favourite
shows were on throughout the year including Borgen’s final season, the 50th
anniversary run of Doctor Who, some excellent documentaries on the (we think)
under appreciated BBC4 and probably a lot more besides depending on your
television package. We even headed down to the excellent Nordicana in London to
see a celebration of Nordic Noir drama’s such as Borgen, Arne Dahl, The Bridge
and more – joining a packed audience for Borgen star Sidse Babett Knudsen’s
illuminating Q and A session. Fun?! We’ll see you next year!
7. People. At the heart of
all of the above is the essential ingredient of people. To all the people we
met, worked with, hated, loved, embraced and encountered – may 2014 be as good
as 2013!
See you in 2014!
From all at #srcz!
