I went to this show expecting it not to be great,usually the shows here dont really do much to me  I think its the space itself.

But this show which was the first one i'd been to for ages restored mty belief in art had a really good time. Photos below and there are some over at LondonAlive as well.

Last Wednesday was Short Circuits night at the Common Room, upstairs at The Forum in Sheffield's Division Street. I walked in to the bar's cavernous interior, hunted around the pool tables and past the couples in their smart casual clothing, watching boxing on multiple flat screens, until I finally stumbled upon a more rag-tag bunch hidden away in a dark alcove, watching a series of short films made by local artists and film-makers.

There were around 20 pieces on show, ranging from around one minute to five minutes in length, with short breaks every few films during which music played along to live video mixing and we were treated to one or two performances. A highlight of the night was the live show by WebsterGotts - two near-naked men (Alexis Gotts and Scott Webster) dressed only in large cardboard y-fronts, a forest of fake pubes hanging underneath. They stood, impassive, smoking cigarettes and holding pints of beer while a brass band version of Bohemian Rhapsody played over the PA. When it reached its near-climactic "guitar solo" both men lifted their pints to their lips and tipped them back, glugging the lot over the length of the solo. Glasses down on the table, they returned to making only the most understated of movements, puffing on cigarettes and staring into space. As the last breaths of the song played out, the two took one final drag and exhaled over the last lingering note. The whole thing was inspired, and reminded me of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer at their surreal best.

Back to the films - here are some of my favourites:

• David Shrigley and Chris Sheperd's Who I Am What I Want, a disturbing and funny animation about a savage boy whose name is muck and who just is who he is; voiceover by the legendary Kevin Eldon.
• Aqua Gym by Simon Green, is a film of two synchronised swimmers but filmed from underwater, and often turned upside-down, so that it looked as though we were watching two women balancing upon water. The film began with a quote from Diane Arbus: "Nothing is the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before I recognise". Echoing the quote, the action in the film was simultaneously familiar and alien.
• Forget Me Not 3 by Trine Lise Nedreaas showed an old man eating a plateful of mini-frankfurters (around 30 of them) in a little over a minute. The expressions on his face, especially the pleasure on finishing his task, were beautiful to behold, as was the photographic style of this fixed-camera piece.
• All the time in the world? by Semiconductor combined sounds from the British Geological survey with cleverly animated photographs of the Northumbria landscape which made it seem as though the earth was breathing, pulsating, its heart beating with the passing of aeons.
• The Pitch by Mark Lewis was a pitch, spoken by the arist (I presume), proposing a film with no leading roles, where the stars are the extras. The film started out as a head shot, and panned out over the course of its four minutes. The speaker was standing in what seemed to be a busy station (Liverpool Street?) and all around him people bustled, their various activities both distracting from and adding to the significance of his speech.

Once the films were finished, Hotsnack set up and played a set of largely improvised music which regularly broke down (broke up?) into a repetitive troll-like marching rhythym. The band members stalked the stage in masks, hats and enormous beards, while snatches of film, orchestrated by Edwin Rostron, continued to play on the large projection screen behind them, making the performance as visually exciting as it was aurally. When they finished, the band packed up as the film continued, scenes from a variety of bizarre fetish movies which showed, among other things, scantily-clad women pouring baked beans over one another's feet and then licking them off.

Finally, I headed downstairs to The Forum in time for two songs by local band Monkey Swallows the Universe, and then trolled home myself. There is a full set of photos from this night here.

On 30th June I went to the third BLOCassembly (you can see my report and pictures from BLOCassembly two here) at BLOCspace, Sheffield. I arrived a bit late, and spent most of my time chatting once I was there, so I missed some of the work which this time was all film/video based arts. The first piece I caught was Homagery by Elizabeth Adams, a claymation featuring plastacine ducks, which was described in the programme as "small commentaries on art, art education and the importance of either, with slapstick overtones". It took a few scenes for me to catch on to the theme of the pieces, but after seeing ducks on couches, ducks picnicking on the lawn, duck ballerinas, ducks covered in blue paint writhing on canvases, ducks in formaldehyde, etc etc etc, I realised I was watching the history of art as re-enacted by small animated plastacine animals. Lots of fun.

Next up was Restricted View/1 by Susanne Palzer. Footage from a 70s American cop show, featuring an outrageously camp drag artist and some apparently closet homosexuality. There was something strangely familiar about the show, but the strange jump edits made me wonder what was missing and how the various parts linked together. It was only when I read the programme that I realised this was an episode of Starsky and Hutch with all appearances by Starsky and/or Hutch edited out. Made for an interesting study of what's left over once the main focus of attention has gone.

Outside in the courtyard, several TVs (and a Mini-DVD player, viewable through a telescope) played pieces on continual loop. I didn't get a proper look at any of these, something which could well be the fault of Drink by Sheena MacRae, another piece of re-appropriated American TV. This time the source material was the soap opera Dallas: an entire series-worth edited down to show just the scenes of characters drinking - seven minutes in total. Placing this right next to the bar was either a very bad or a very good move. I'm sure shots of JR repeatededly knocking back large whiskeys had some subliminal influence upon my habits that evening, and go some way towards explaining why my memories beyond this point are rather fuzzy.

As I stood outside, drinking, Linda Bevan performed her untitled piece, walking carefully back and forth around the courtyard, laying down pieces of paper (flyers for the event), walking over them, re-tracing her steps and collecting them up. In the programme she explained that "my art practice has included me using high heels, bubble wrap, cardboard boxes, and sheets of cardboard as important perpetual props to make my art. It is imperative to my practice that I don't allow a prop to remain a trace left over from an event, but come back and perform a task that allows me to activate it again". By this stage, I think I'd had too much Dallas to properly appreciate the significance of the ritual. Inside again Shaun Armstrong's film Things Are Queer was mainly a photographic animation, a series of still photographs strung together to make a jerky motion picture in a similar matter to Between You and Me by Patryk Rebisz. The effect was spoiled slightly by a "making of" documentary afterwards in which the artist explained, in uneccessary detail, how the effects in the film were achieved. Some things are best left unsaid.

As the evening wore on, and I grew more and more under the influence of Dallas, I saw less work and participated in more drunken chatting. Eventually the studio closed down for the night and we headed, en masse, to Dulo, where I sat beneath the angels in the beer garden and took photographs of any and every stranger passing my way.