Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre and More

A the end of my post about my visit to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow this morning I teased you with a mention of an event I booked for this afternoon. That can now be revealed. I went to a performance at the Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre.

After that, I made some random visits to nearby sights. I chose them by using the attractions list feature of my walking tour app and sorting them by distance from where I was. Not exactly heavily researched, but it made for an enjoyable, particularly the theatre.

Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre

Let’s cut to the chase. The Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre is great fun. However, you may have to enjoy gadgets, serendipity, kinetic art, or, better still, serendipitous gadgets that are kinetic art to feel that way about the theatre. I qualify.

When I went into the Sharmanka Theatre, I was greeted by a man at the ticket desk. For this journal, I think it best that we refer to him as Robin because that’s what he said his name was and that’s what his name badge said.

Robin told me that I was the only person who had pre-bought a ticket for that performance. So, he said, unless there was a last-minute rush of people showing up to buy tickets onsite, I’d be the only one in the show. He asked me if that bothered me. I gleefully answered, no.

The Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre runs performances Wednesday through Sunday. On weekends they put on three shows a day. On weekdays it’s two, but I don’t know if they stick to that schedule throughout the year. The theatre has two different shows. On weekends, there are two performances of one and one performance of the other. On weekdays, one of each.

Today is Saturday, so there were three performances. I was at the first performance of the day. Robin told me that the subsequent two performances were quite full with pre-bought tickets and tomorrow it’s the opposite. The first show tomorrow is quite full and the remaining two are quite quiet. The point is, if you want to go, you should probably pre-buy your ticket online because you never know. But it might not be necessary.

I entered the Sharmanka theatre almost 15 minutes before the scheduled show time. Robin kept to the schedule in case any other customers showed up. They didn’t.

Because I was there early, I was allowed to wander around the theatre and snap some pictures. (Photography is allowed before and after the show, but not during the performance.)

Photographs—plural—in a theatre? How much can there be to photograph in a theatre? In this case, lots. Sharamanka is not the sort of theatre that comes to mind when you hear the word “theatre.” (Or “theater” if you’re American.)

Arrayed along three of its walls are a series of kinemats. (The ticket desk and some other back-of-house stuff occupy the fourth wall.) In the centre of the room are two back-to-back tableaus, each containing several more kinemats, with their fronts facing opposite walls.

At this point, I’d like to welcome back the more inquisitive of you who broke away to look up “kinemat” or its plural, “kinemats,” in the dictionary. You’ve no doubt returned thoroughly disappointed. You might have had better luck if you did a general web search rather than a dictionary search.

The term kinemat was coined by kinetic artist and mechanic Eduard Bersudsky, who created the kinemats in the Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre. I don’t think the term has been adopted by any dictionaries in common use.

Bersudsky was born in St. Petersburg, which was then Leningrad. When he grew to be an artist, he carved wooden figures before he went on to create kinemats—which are kinetic sculptures of a variety of forms and materials—as well. He later moved to Glasgow and continued his art there.

The kinemats in the Sharmanka theatre include some of his wood figures, but also gears, rods, blades, pedals, bells, fans and many found items that come together to form something recognizable, if only in the abstract.

Each of the kinemats has many independently moving parts.

The show started with Robin giving a brief introduction about the show’s flow. That was followed by a recorded introduction about the history of the Sharmanka Theatre and Bersudsky.

Then the real show begins. The first part of the show is viewed while standing. (I was offered, but refused, a portable folding stool. When you reach the state of decrepitude I’ve reached, compassionate people spontaneously make such offers to you sometimes.)

I moved to the kinemat in front of one of the walls that Robin said was the opening act. It then performed. I forget the specifics of the first one, but depending on the kinemat, limbs moved, pedals were pushed, wheels or gears spun, bells rang, or any of a host of other motions occurred.

At each of the kinemats, the motions didn’t all happen simultaneously. Everything is carefully choreographed to music.

Highlight lights pick up the elements in motion. The lights weren’t all of the same colour. And they often created high-definition shadows on the back wall.

When one kinemat completed its performance, I walked to the next and it put on its show. This continued for about half the kinemats in the Sharmanka Theatre. The show then finished at one of the two tableaus. There, I got to sit down to watch the rest of the show.

Each of the kinemats in the tableau took a turn at a solo performance similar to the standalone ones along the walls. For the grand finale, they are performed together.

I found the show exceptionally enjoyable. I involuntarily smiled broadly at several points. Anyone who knows me knows that if I involuntarily smile, that’s the equivalent of a several-thumbs-up rating.

I spoke to Robin after the show. He said that most of the kinemats that weren’t in the performance I saw, perform in the other show that Sharmanka Theatre puts on. But there are a couple that perform in both and one or two that don’t perform in either. The tableau that wasn’t used in the show I saw is used in the other show.

Robin also said they have some kinemats and tableaus of kinemats in storage and they change up the shows every once in a while.

There are also some of Bersudsky’s kinemats on display in other museums around the world. Robin said the largest single kinemat is a Millenium Clock that’s on display in the Scottish National Museum in Edinburgh. That kinemat puts on a brief show on the hour.

According to Robin, Bersudsky is still alive, but he’s now 85 and fully retired. So he won’t be building any more kinemats. Pity.

George Square

After leaving the Sharmanka Theatre, I walked over to George Square. It’s Glasgow’s main public square in the central part of the city.

I passed it on my first day of this visit to Glasgow because it’s kitty-corner to the main train station that serves intercity routes. I arrived at that station when I came in from Inverness and I had to walk beside it when I went to my hotel. However, I didn’t know what it was at the time.

George Square has some small patches of grass, a large concrete area, lots of statues, and some benches at its centre.

When I was there, a small protest was going on. Its attendees didn’t come close to filling even one-quarter of the not-overly-large square. As best I could tell from the flags, banners, and the one speech I heard a portion of, it was a protest both for the independence of Scotland and pro-Palestine.

When I arrived, the person addressing the crowd used a professional loudspeaker system as he tied the two themes together in his oration. He shouted vociferously about how if Scotland were independent, it wouldn’t have to accept Britain’s warmonger policies against the Palestinians. Yeah, whatever. I’m just trying to enjoy Glasgow as a tourist.

And shouting? Hey, pal. You’ve got a microphone. The speakers amplify your voice quite well. You don’t have to shout.

When he finished, a less shouty speaker came on, but I didn’t stick around to hear what she had to say.

Argyll Arcade

The Argyll Arcade is a single-level shopping arcade. (Although, it looked like there are offices on the second level. I’m not sure.) It’s L-shaped and has an A-frame glass roof. It’s very quaint.

It’s not where poor people or even lower-middle-income people shop. Except for a café in the arcade and a cellphone store at one end, the entire arcade is filled with jewellers. A few of them sell only fancy watches. Some sell only other types of jewelry. And some sell both.

I window-shopped at some of the watch stores purely out of curiosity, not intending to buy anything. And I didn’t.

The cheapest watches I saw were a couple for a little under £300. They were difficult to spot because they were on a shelf so low that they were almost on the floor. The most expensive watch I spied cost £33,100. For £33,100, I want a watch that does my laundry, cooks my meals, chauffeurs me around, and sings lullabies to me while I’m trying to go to sleep. I don’t think that watch did those chores. You probably need to spend £50,000 to get that from a watch.

Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA)

I next moved on to Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, also known as GoMA.

It’s a small gallery with just, if I remember correctly, four small exhibit spaces. The collection was pretty much what you’d expect from a gallery of modern art. There were some abstract pieces—both paintings and three-dimensional art—along with some that were recognizable as objects and scenes, even if they weren’t classical interpretations of them.

In front of the gallery, there’s a statue of Wellington on horseback. If you read my post from this morning about Kelvingrove, you might recall that when I saw it five years ago the statue of Lord Kelvin in Kelvingrove Park was wearing an orange traffic cone dunce cap, but it wasn’t there today. Sometime in the past five years, Wellington became the dunce. He was wearing the traffic cone today.

In the interest of advancing art appreciation among the web-surfing public, I provide below my analysis and interpretation of some of the art pieces I saw at GoMA.

David Croft-Smith

Polarization, 1972

PVA on canvas.

Polarization is brilliant. Its dots exploding away from the centre despite, with just a couple of exceptions, being of only slightly gradually varying hues is a perfect representation of today’s polarization of society, to sometimes catastrophic effects.

Either that or they’re stars in a stylized galaxy illustrating the chaos of the universe.

Or it could be random dots. I’m not sure.

Henry Kondracki

Old Man, 1991

Oil on canvas

Henry Kodranki is or was a prescient genius. How did he know back in 1991 that there would be an old man, me, viewing his painting today? Clearly, he intended to present the viewer, me, in an artistic mirror on life.

True, I wear contacts, not glasses. And I rarely wear hats. And when I do, they’re never that style. And my nose is not quite that big. You can’t expect him to prophesize all of that perfectly. But he captured my curmudgeonly grimace perfectly. Obviously, he knew I’d be there to view it.

Brilliant.

Artist Collective led by MandyMcIntosh

Fegs Urny Mugs, 2018

This collection of decorated mugs mounted artistically on an amorphous white blob of some sort speaks of humanity’s need for and quest for caffeine in this blob of a society we live in; ever in search of our next dose. Or maybe that’s just me.

By extension, it expresses the hopelessness of all addictions that rely on mugs to sate the addicts’ dependencies. I’m not sure what other addictions that might be but there are probably some.

Unknown Artist

Untitled Work

This might be the most powerful, insightful, and valuable piece in the whole gallery. Untitled and unassuming, this collection of folding stools and fire extinguishers speaks volumes without explicitly saying a word.

The folding stools remind us of human frailty and, if we live long enough, our inevitable decline into a decrepitude that will force us to rely on such devices as our legs no longer bear our weight through the challenges our world might place on us, such as spending a long time in a gallery.

And the fire extinguishers force us to come to grips with the dangers, such as fires, that threaten our very existence daily.

Either that or they are simply utilitarian folding stools and fire extinguishers that weren’t intended to be part of an art exhibit at all. Who knows?