Where: Espace du Lac Bordeaux
Hours: Saturday – 11am until midnight ; Sunday 11am until 7pm
Price: €8 per day
Prizes:

• 2 CORT custom guitars
• 2 x weekend pass for Hellfest 2010
• 2 x weenend pass for Show Bike 2010
• Special Offers on price reductions

There will be animations of tattoo’s and body piercing with special prizes to win. Grab a bite at one of the food and drink outlets proivided or stick around to rock out with one of the bands that will be playing (plus a laser show, wow!)

www.conventiontattoobordeaux.com

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The VCUB (V3) service was unveiled in February this year and provides the residence of Bordeaux a simple and effective way to get around town. There are 1545 bicycles and 139 stations throughout the city and surrounding areas.

The way it works is that you pick up a bike at the station of your choice and return it to which ever station is the closest to you. Each station is equipped with a information terminal (English available), where you enter in a code given to you when you register and pay for the bike. Not every terminal has credit card capabilities, so you’ll need to find one that does before you register your details.

You register your account by using your credit car, the network takes a deposit of €200 straight up which is charged if the bike is stolen or lost. Then your credit card is debited a €2 per hour until you return the bike to a station (first 30mins are free).

The service is a great way to get around town on short journeys and sure beats the peak hour on the trams.

www.vcub.fr

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The place was developed in the 10th Century where it was bordered with the Palace de l’Ombrière which was the residence of the dukes of Guyenne. The palace, which was also at the time the Parliament of Bordeaux, was demolished in the 19th century after being destroyed by several fires.

Today, after the redevelopment of the quarter, the place has been converted into being pedestrian friendly bordered by benches and trees. A nice change from the over crowded car park that once filled the centre of the area.

The facelift has also brought new life to the local businesses, allowing them to set up shop directly onto the place itself… offering a great atmosphere for grabbing a bite, knocking back a beer or just enjoying the view.

Where: Tram Stop ‘Place du Palais’ Tram Line A

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From the 1st June until the 30th September 2010, you will have the chance to satisfy your thirst for performing arts.Discover a wide variety of theatre, street art, classical, jazz and world music. Along with visual arts, photography, cinema, literature and some of the most beautiful and captivating places in the South West of France.

The rich and original programming in 2009 saw approximately 600 spectacles throughtout more than 200 communes in Gironde.

Les Scènes d’été facts:

• A total budget of 6 million
• More than 360,000 spectators
• 4 months of entertainment without interruption
• 200 partners (common, communities, tourist offices)
• 73 associated operators

There is so much going on over the summer it’s not funny… the best way to keep a finger on the pulse would be to sign up to their newsletter.

To kick off the festival this Friday 28th May there is a free concert at the stade de Captieux (75km from Bordeaux). Anne Etchegoyen, Debout sur le Zinc et Sans Additif will be ensuring the festivities get off to a bang!

When: 1st June until 30th September 2010
Where: Gironde
Cost: Some events are free, others are not. Click here for program.

www.sndt.gironde.fr

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The Bordeaux Fete le vin takes place over 4 days in June and runs in alterance with the Fete du fleuve (river). The festival has been in exsistance since 1998 and is the perfect day out for lovers of wine, food and culture.

The event accomodated nearly 300,000 visitors last year that came from all over France and Europe.

Thanks to a Tasting Pass, visitors will be able to discover a diverse range of wines from Bordeaux and the Aquitaine region. There will be 57 appellations of Bordeaux and 23 appellations of Aquitaine on offer to discover. Also, there are plenty of possibilies to taste the regional culinary specialities.

Tasting Pass sell between €15 (1 person) & €20 (shared between 2 people) includes:

• 12 tasting vouchers
• a glass and glass holder
• several privilege tickets

The Vineyard pass is also on offer and there will be several excursions every day on various themes during the Festival.

The Vineyard pass sell between 50 and 90€ includes:

• air conditioned coach transport
• English-speaking tour guide
• a visit to three different wine estates or heritage sites, with wine tasting
• Lunch

There will be concerts, street performances and fireworks over the 4 days and is one of the largest events on the Bordelaise’s calendar.

When: 24-27 June, 2010
Where: Place des Quinconces & Quays
Cost: Free to look or €15 tasting pass

www.bordeaux-fete-le-vin.com

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But what about where to go for a wee dram of whisky?

Look no further than the whisky and wine specialists at ‘Cave Art et Vins’ located in the heart of Bordeaux at Place du Palais (at the the foot of the majestic Port de Cailhau).

http://www.art-et-vins.com/

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Painting, drawing, sculpture, video, installation and performance are all media used by this American artist since the late 1970s, helping him to put across an encyclopaedic and hectic vision. Jim Shaw is an atypical figure in California’s art circles, sharing with Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley the same desire to produce a visual body of work aimed at exploring the dark side of an American society that is conformist and standardized. Jim Shaw draws his inspiration from a vernacular culture on this side of the pigeonholes established by art history: pictures by amateur artists unearthed in bric-à-brac stores, popular cult objects, comics, rock music, B movies, etc.

After putting together a collection of more than 400 canvases by ‘visionary’ Sunday painters (Thrift Store Paintings), and after drawing his dreams (Dreams) for more than ten years, since 2002 the artist has been involved with a project to do with inventing a religion which recycles the country’s ground-breaking myths and various crypto-sectarian American beliefs (Oism).

For his exhibition in Bordeaux, the artist is showing his latest output, consisting of some fifteen monumental pictures accompanied by sculptures in the museum’s nave. In outmoded cityscapes from old theatre sets, the forms painted by the artist seem to float, apparition-like. Inspired by William Burroughs’s cut-up technique, Shaw here offers a vision of schizoid America, somewhere between dream and nightmare. As an accumulation of moments of a personal history and bits and pieces of a collective cultural history, the heterogeneity of the illustrative sources is both surprising and intriguing: episodes from the artist’s life, iconic symbols of American culture, references from modern art history, biblical imagery, Hollywood imagery, political and media personalities, depictions of consumerism, visions of 9/11.

To this is added their equally as disparate stylistic treatment, mixing different visual languages: modernist abstraction, cinematic hyperrealism, western imagery, and advertisements from the 1950s, along with a diagrammatic treatment of the comic strip and Hollywood movies. Distortion, fragmentation and multiplication all bolster the impression of deliquescence, and the sensation of a world that doesn’t make sense.

For several years now, fascinated as he is by millenarian movements preaching the end of the world, the artist has been collecting objects making use of apocalyptic iconography. This collection is on view for the first time in the CAPC exhibition.

This is specific to the core aspect of the “Left Behind” series : as Jim Shaw said, it is about “the death of the labor movement due to Reaganism and globalization and their displacement by duped born again Christians, as well as the burial of the New Deal era small town capitalism, replaced by the casino capitalism of the 00s.”

When: Until the 19th September, 2010
Where: CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain, 7 Rue Ferrère, 33000 Bordeaux
Cost: €5.00

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The official inguaration of Le Rocher de Palmer will take place on the 24th of September, followed by a string of impressive musical events.

For a full listing of up coming concerts throughout October until Decemeber, have a look at their program details.

To read more about the back ground of Le Rocher de Palmer, have a gander at one of my previous posts.

Le Rocher de Palmer, Park Palmer, Cenon, France, 33100

Tram: TRAM LINE A (direction Floirac Dravemont) – Tram stop Buttinière or Palmer

http://lerocherdepalmer.fr/

www.myspace.com/lerocherdepalmer

www.twitter.com/lerocherdepalmer

Facebook Page

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The Cow Parade is an international public art exhibition that has been featured in major world cities over the past twelve years.

Since the 1st of April, the cows in resin of « Bordeaux & Cow 2010 » had entered their workshop in order to be customised by selected artists and prepared for the private inauguration at the Bordeaux City Hall on the 3rd of June. They have been bighting up the streets, squares and parks of the city ever since and will remain there until the 14th of September.

At the end of the public exhibition, the painted cows will be put up for auction and 50% of the total will be donated to charity.

The concept of a ‘Cow Parade’, was born in Zurich and has had a significant impact on tourism. The parade has attracted more and more visitors, up to today roughly 100 million people have admired more than 5,000 cows from the different parades.

Designers, painters and photographers were jumping at the chance to express their art and decorate the cows keeping the in theme to represent the diversity and riches of Aquitaine.

You better get a MOO’ve on, before these cows are put out to pasture… (I know, but it had to be said!)

When: Until the 14th September, 2010
Where: Bordeaux Centre and around
Cost: Free!

http://www.bordeauxandcow.com/

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Invited to assemble the production in Boston by the well renowned American Repertory Theatre, French Director Arthur Nauzyciel, transposes the action in the era of 1960’s Americana. The scene is set with the backdrop of the Kennedy administration, the emergence of Pop Art and the birth of the Television generation. Accompanied by a jazz trio, the fifteen actors play with the strength and elegance of the language and revive the power of the Shakespearian verb. Arthur Nauzyciel observes the U.S.A to expose the illusions that arouse the drama that unfolds.

This will be the second French tour of the production and you have the possibility of catching the performance over three nights at the Théâtre national de Bordeaux en Aquitaine. The performance is in English with French subtitles.

Running time: 3h30 with intermission

When: 30 / 31 March – 01 April, 2011
Where: TnBA – Salle Antoine Vitez (Grande salle), 22 quai Sainte Croix, 33800 Bordeaux
Cost: €5 – €25

Purchase Tickets

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