Momo brings Unsee The Future to the stage

Timo Peach delivers the keynote at Bournemouth Writing Festival 2023 with a unique one-man show, Sunday April 23 19:00.

 

To celebrate Earth Day this year, the bloke from Momo:tempo is creating a special stage experience to reimagine the global challenges we face: UTF! The planet is f***ed. So what: Unreality and creative response.

Invited by festival founders Dominc Wong and Ildiko SpinFisher to bring something very Momo to the Palace Court Theatre to close the weekend, Mr Peach says he felt prompted to… go for it.

“Dominic picked out a Testimo blog post of mine,” he says, “with a cheeky title, but an interesting way into my general thesis of the moment. And he seemed almost keen on a lively, formatted show.”

This gave the music artist and climate communicator a chance to try out a format he’s been wanting to develop from his other presenting projects – a talk that feels just like his playful research cast, Unsee The Future.

“I’ve wanted to do this with music shows,” explains Timo, “but this just happens to be dialed over to the more editorial end of my storytelling. It will help me translate the production approach into appearances with the band.”

“Oh, and the cheeky title stuck” he adds.

 

“Together, we’ve grown used to seeing the future only one way – as an inevitable dystopia.”

 

“The show with four stars in the title” looks at Timo’s central idea about tackling the climate crisis and everything it connects to – art. Its primal place in human survival and how starkly missing it seems from planetary strategic thinking.

And he’s written a handbook on how to use “art thinking” to change the futures we imagine for ourselves.

UTF! How to think like an artist and change the world will explore nine practices of artists to help you “reimagine the story you think you are in” – and first edition copies will be available over the weekend at the Bournemouth Writing Festival book shop.

“Hopefully,” qualifies Timo.

“It’s my first book, written in my special little 2202 creative season this time last year, and so trying out a little on-demand self publishing is part of this season’s challenge, as I prepare to kind of come out with this first show.”

There may also be something else special at the end of the performance.

“I have been preparing a preview of the creative project that started it all for me, The Shape of Things To Hum – but I will keep you posted on that” he says.

The planet is f***ed. So what? Unreality and creative response.

Sunday April 23 2023, 19:00 at the Palace Court Theatre, Hinton Road. Bournemouth – tickets available on the festival site >

Timo joins TEDx Cowes 2022

Oceans apart, the bloke from Momo joins speakers from across the world virtually convening on the Isle of Wight to share his perspective on how the oceans can connect us to creativity – and to facing crisis.

 

The platform for good ideas worth sharing may be globally well established, but the Covid pandemic encouraged TED to try some new formats for its well-understood independently organised shows. And so founder of TEDx Cowes, Leonardo Zangrando decided in the event’s second year to put his speakers where his mouth is – keeping them right where they were, around the world.

“We believe we can avoid the environmental cost of 50 to 100 people travelling to the event, while retaining the same positive impact by sharing actions worth taking to hundreds of thousands people” he says.

It is a move of solidarity with the oceans, which ties all of this year’s talks together.

And Mr Peach was delighted to be asked to join the virtual roster.

 

 

Momo is, of course, based around the bay in Bournemouth – but he has a sense of connection to Cowes.

“I have a big soft spot for the town and its incredibly rich maritime life” he says. “I’ve put in with crews a few times, joining dear mates there for rum and Isle of Wight Blue countless other times and I find the West Cowes promenade a place I could sit and watch a whole world of sea-going human life all day. I also increasingly feel an interest and energy in South Central as a region and the island is quietly emerging to me as a fascinating potential futures test bed.”

So it felt to him like a lovely fit to be asked by Leonardo to join this year’s line-up connected so the Solent.

The theme for the 2022 event is “One and the same” – which is really an invitation to use the human sense of connection with the oceans as a way to rediscover our connection with all nature.

“In my talk, I share a core personal perspective on this” says Timo. “I suggest something that I believe is a vital and mostly missing part of our response to global crises that connect us to nature – and I also ask up front just who we want to emulate as archetypes to inspire our often helpless-feeling place in the middle of it all.”

“I will miss a live stage” he adds. “I AM planning a Tropey-Rangey one-take walk and talk version of this for my own channels too – but Leonardo felt strongly about honouring our connection to nature by not burning lots of carbon to bring us all physically to the island this year. So I share my thoughts from the Momo studio, mere pottering distance from my daily view of the Isle of Wight where I live on the coast in Bournemouth.”
 

DRAWING THE TREASURE MAPS:
Art’s vital place in facing crisis and change.

 

Find out more about all the speakers at this year’s TEDx Cowes at: tedxcowes.com >

The Monochronium Prophecy

 

Celebrating ten years of creative partnership with the artist Hazel Evans, Momo and she announce a special release – a reinterpretation of her original album exploring an epic and intimate black & white storyscape.

 

 

It’s been one of most productive and significant artistic friendships for Mr Peach’s work, but he finds it hard to believe a decade has already gone since he first worked with Hazel Evans.

“She approached me after her first exhibition of The Monochronium, just wanting a spot of her poetry recording,” says Timo. “So, smash-cut to six week’s later and the most bonkers brilliant concept album existed.”

Adventures Into The Monochronium was timed to coincide with Hazel’s second exhibition at Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre For The Arts, in May 2012, as it’s first visual artist in residence. A collabration between her and a number of artists, including Momo:tempo, the expo explored a monochrome world with many hints and impressions of narrative, reflected especially in the recordings she and Timo wrote together for visitors’ ears.

“We neither of us expected it to grow such legs so quickly,” he says, “but it was infectious – the work coming out of us, and the flow of collaborating on it. Something about it struck up a really fun artistic friendship – and we went on to explore lots of other work together.
 
 

The face of the future.

 
Not least of that work was Hazel putting her face and voice to Behave New World and, in turn, the first series of Unsee The Future, all flowing from Momo’s exploration of science fiction and the way it’s shaped the future. This culminated in the pocket epic testbed musical show Five Songs To Help Us Unsee The Future, with filmmaker Andy Robinson, in which Hazel took on the part of The Muse, joining Timo’s Ghost of Future Shock in guiding an audience around  stories of scifi and a different vision of tomorrow.

But alongside other works with Hazel, including projects with her then theatre group Valise Noire Storytelling Theatre, the pair returned to The Monochronium many times during the following decade, in live iterations of parts of the story and even developing a shooting script from Hazel’s first draft of the novelisation.

“It’s such a rich and inspiring story,” Timo explains. “In the times Hazel’s stayed with the lovely first lady of Momo and I to work on things, the details emerging from her writing have captivated us. And I think it shows in the work. It’s been wonderful to be part of. I wish I could tell you more about what happens in the narrative!”

Most recently, Hazel joined Timo on the last episode of his first interview series for Unsee The Future: The Hopeychattybits. “Meeting artists, solarpunks and changemakers reimagining the stories we think we’re in”, episode ten turned into a bit of a celebration of Hazel’s work and the pair’s artistic friendship, as well as an exploration of the inner landscapes of storytelling that might have much to say in times of crisis and fear.

“We went back to Lighthouse to film a special, thanks to Elspeth McBain, the centre’s director, and to Michael Hancock joining us to record a wonderful chat,” Mr Peach says. “And as ever, we had rather too much fun.”
 
 

Time for the prophecy.

 
But in getting together again for the first time since before the pandemic, Hazel and Momo felt there might be something to say with a celebratory re-release of the original LP.

“It’s a waypoint, ten years,” says Timo. “It feels like a midpoint moment in time – a chance to acknowledge the past and celebrate that work, but also to look forward to the implications of it yet to come.”

As such, the pair wanted to let the work speak to this collective moment in time especially, and so a re-ordering of the original pieces inspired Hazel to write some new meditations to carefully replace four of the original pieces – Prophecy Tales that imply something of the purpose and experience of The Monochronium for Hazel as an artist.

“It was tough to remove The Art Of Waiting, The Wardrobe Post Office, One Momo In Time and Transcribbling The Ages,” Momo says with sadface, “but they still exist in the canon of The Monochronium and will feature in new incarnations of any theatrical realisations of this story. They are parts of the tale. But this flow is saying something in particular, and it is beautiful as Hazel has gently re-imagined it.”

“I felt like I was almost being ministered to as Hazel added some vocals to things in the sessions” he says thoughtfully. “This is a wonderful celebration of musical artistic work I’ve always been super proud of. It’s worth 40minute and 40seconds of everyone’s time in good headphones.”

You can find The Monochronium Prophecy exclusively at Hazel Evans’ Bandcamp pages >

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Momo launches “22022022” creative season.

Save the date, February 22nd. The new single from Momo:tempo is released, promoting a new series of creative interviews and accompanying book series – all to help anyone “think like an artist and change the world” in an era of crisis.

 


 
How Big is the audacious big beat new tune from Bournemouth music artist and social impact storyteller, Timo Peach – but it’s no coincidence that the B-side to this new release is a new mix of the signature tune to his idosyncratic research cast. For, after 31 foundational episodes of Unsee The Future, exploring “how to encourage the more hopeful human tomorrow” the single is a flag for its new spin-off interview series: UTF: The Hopeychattybits.

“Regular listeners to Unsee will have heard bits of Timey Blimey a lot,” says Timo of the show’s theme, “but up until now they’ll have only heard my voice on the episodes – the Hopeychattybits is about to change this.”

Being Momo, the new music release is not just releasing new music.

“Meeting artists, solarpunks and changemakers”, the new podcast is an interview series designed to show how some creatives are already “challenging the stories we think we’re in”. A theme so central to Momo’s work, it’s the title of the first book from his findings – which he is also sharing an essay chapter of each week to his mailing list, starting on the 22nd.

 

SAVE THE UTF LIVE LINK >

 

A guidebook to redrawing the future.

 
UTF: How to think like an artist and change the world is “the non-art student’s guide to what the hell art is for in an era of crisis” and explores nine practices of art that can help ordinary readers see the world around them differently. An idea vital to times that seem locked on a course to planetary destruction, thinks Timo.

“The book is a kind of codification of what researching Unsee‘s core episodes showed me – that art is what we most need, in a sense, to the change the world. Because it’s how humans change the way we see the world, including potentially the cultures that lead us down this catastrophic path” he says.

Like co-hosting The Global Goals Music Roadshow with AY Young – which is also returning next week, to EarthX TV – writing the book is as much about connecting people to other creatives, makers and ideas as anything he is making.

“It can also act as a kind of handbook to the work of some remarkable people, trying to re-imagine the future from the boring dystopias we are constantly told are inevitable. People I am lining up to talk to from the world of solarpunk and futurism in the first new UTF podcast series. I can’t wait to share their stories.”


 

Music to shake out the stories we think we’re in.

 
It all reflects the idea of finding courage to look forward with vision, in an era of crisis that a globalised 21st century society seems to have lost the capacity to do in the everyday, as Timo explored in his Christmas live talk: Is Generation X about to discover what its name stands for? And all of this stemmed from an original project that was itself, art.

The lead single, How Big, is taken from the long-in-development The Shape of Things To Hum and, like every piece on the LP that started Momo’s exploration of the future, explores a theme of science fiction – in this case, “the galactic megalomaniac”. It’s video reflects a certain power-crazed madness, but looks more like global figures closer to home than Ming The Merciless.

“I was planning to release it during Davos week,” smirks Timo, “which tells you something. But Davos was postponed until the summer. Which is disappointing for hoping to get this projected on a blimp over the Swiss alps.”

“Scifi has been teaching us the future for generations,” he adds, “but our generation is due to find the courage to write whole new stories of us. Futures we actually want to live in. This will take the courage of artists to bring alive, but solarpunk is the genre to manage this.”

 

How Big is out February 22nd 2022 on all digital platforms and Momo:tempo’s Bandcamp >

Unsee The Future: The Hopeychattybits EP01 debuts live the same day on Momo’s YouTube channel and later on your favourite podcast app.

UTF: How to think like an artist and change the world begins weekly from the same day for subscribers to the Momo:memos >

Momo announces a brand new single How Big with a special end of year live talk

A belter of a new tune announces a timeline to the very-long-awaited-indeed new LP from Timo Peach – but does so with an online event to perhaps help some of us Unsee The Future, as 2021 draws to a close.

 

It may have been years since the first tune to be announced from the forthcoming Momo:tempo album The Shape Of Things To Hum, but for the bloke from Momo himself a lot has happened since Behave New World was released. Like reshaping his whole view of the human tomorrow because of this very work –  but now he’s back, with a new single from the epic project. And he’s launching it like a social impact storyeller, with a live stream story.

 

 

In 2020, Momo was selected to support TEDx Southampton as a speaker but, postponed as the event was until this year for pandemic reasons, he was unable to share his talk this autumn – and so is sharing it with everyone now, as part of the launch of the new piece of music.

 

Thursday December 16 2021 LIVE
Is Generation X about to discover
what its name stands for?

A live talk from Unsee The Future‘s Timo Peach
previewing the brand new single from Momo:tempo

 

 

“I’ve been sitting on the talk for more than a year,” says Mr Peach, “but I’ve been sitting on this tune for at least three, and it’s burning a hole in my portfolio! It’s a freaking great tune I want to share now, to signal a music new year for Momo.”

The livestream will also announce some of Momo’s plans for 2022 after a busy autumn researching different events, including the much talked about COP26.

“Artists were very under-represented,” Timo says, “and the music industry in general seemed oddly absent. But talking with Fay from Music Declares Emergency, who appeared on a forthcoming episode of The Global Goals Music Roadshow with us, it is clear lots is happening in musical communites about our social and environmental crises, and how to respond creatively. And I just want to share some work into this story at this point.”

 

Catch up on the livestream right here >