I’ve been doing boring music stuff the last few weeks but on the weekend I did make it to the concert of Cornelius Cardew’s late music at Conway Hall. This was the music he composed while an active member of the Progressive Cultural Alliance and the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). I was going to write a little something about the concert tonight so I looked up the RCPB(ML)’s website, which had a link to the flyer promoting the gig.
Instead of the flyer, I found this:
The front page article links through to a statement by Chris Coleman, the National Spokesperson of RCPB(ML). It contains such shameless statements as:
Comrade Kim Jong Il has led the Korean party and people in continuing to build the socialist society of their choice, in the most trying circumstances, and defending the sovereignty and independence of the DPRK, while ceaselessly striving for the peaceful reunification of the Korean people by their own efforts.
In my last Cardew article I linked to the party’s website with the phrase “wrongheaded political project”. As I feared, I was being too kind.
The statement is then followed by the official DPRK statement, reprinted in full without qualification or comment. It is accompanied by pictures which make it look like a copy of the Kim Jong-Il Looking At Things blog, without any sense of irony, humour or self-awareness. It is full of sentences such as “Kim Jong Il possessed of personality and qualifications as a great man on the highest and perfect level was an outstanding thinker and theoretician who led the revolution and construction along the path of steady victories with his profound ideologies and theories and remarkable leadership.”
It was this that reinforced the tragedy of Cardew’s life. Regardless of the qualities of his later music, he made himself into a humourless, clueless, brainless agitator utterly lacking in awareness of both the evil he promoted, and how transparently ridiculous his efforts appeared to the people he most wished to save.
Filler By Proxy LXXXI: Great Moments In Medical Research, or Life Imitates Derp
Sunday 23 October 2011
This was the front page of the paper last week.
Finally someone’s paying attention to this doctor’s advice.
Great Moments in Journalism: 7 August 2011
Sunday 7 August 2011
The Observer, 7 August 2011:
The Observer, 7 August 2011:
“Well thanks for wrecking my evening.” The modern art critic in crisis.
Wednesday 25 May 2011
This was almost going to be one of those “Great Moments In Art Criticism” posts.
“For me the Turner prize is a hit-and-miss affair – there are years when it actually seems important who wins and years when I honestly couldn’t care less. This year, I care because Mark Leckey is on the shortlist.”
– Jonathan Jones, “The Turner should go to Mark Leckey”, The Guardian, 13 May 2008.“Leckey won a Turner prize in 2008, which goes to show you should never take these awards too seriously.”
– Jonathan Jones, “Mark Leckey’s art creates noise without meaning”, The Guardian, 23 May 2011.
Jones’ latter review is so vituperously negative (he compares Leckey to Gordon Brown, which is just plain mean) that maybe, just maybe, he should have mentioned his dramatic change of heart. The comments section, usually a desultory place peopled with commentators who don’t seem particularly interested in art, has come alive. Comments both for and against, amongst the usual dross, make some fascinating points on the current state of art and art criticism.
Jones himself responds frequently, steadfastly refusing to admit he made a basic error in interpreting one of Leckey’s works and offering unintentionally hilarious ripostes such as “It was 2008! Why would I refer back to it?” and the Mugatu-like “I have put my views of art across in such contexts as a Turner Prize jury. Have you been a Turner judge? So where do you come off so high and mighty?” Eventually, Mark Leckey himself comments, along with other critics, all of whom predictably end up wallowing in self-pity. Why did all this anger and sorrow suddenly burst forth?
Stephen Potter famously observed that the role of the critic is to convey to the reader what a splendid person the critic is, and that “you must never praise or blame two weeks running.” In his initial praise of Leckey, Jones begins by announcing “I’m a natural fan. I can’t stand indifference.” – and so smartly allows himself intellectual room to praise or blame at will. Regardless of the quality of the art, the critic must alternate praise with blame; their career depends on it.
Car journalist Jack Baruth recently described at some length the necessity of what he calls “the wobble”. Praise every car and you appear a corporate shill; slam every car and you appear apathetic.
A successful automotive journalist doesn’t fall into either of the above traps. He wobbles. He creates what Jimmy Page called “light and shade” in the body of his written work…. Every autowriter with ambitions to be something more than a low-paid PR agent needs the wobble. Credibility, success, a fan base, a recognized name. The wobble giveth, and it taketh away.
The motoring writer’s dilemma is that for the past 20-odd years all cars have been, fundamentally, the same. The car-buying punter no longer has to choose between one model that has disc brakes and no heater, another with a heater and chronic rust problems, or a third with bucket seats and a tendency to flip over and kill you. Baruth’s article explains how a car journalist tries to find or make “the wobble”, and sometimes gets caught out.
Of course, for any of this car talk to be relevant to Jonathan Jones, modern British art would have to be somehow comparable to the car industry. The latter has large financial investments riding on the steady production of homogenised product, largely devoid of any extreme highs or lows of user experience, whereas…
Total Aversion: Brian Ferneyhough
Saturday 26 February 2011
This evening I’m off to see the BBC Symphony Orchestra play Brian Ferneyhough, including the first British performance of his large work Plötzlichkeit, as part of one the Barbican’s Total Immersion days. Unsurprisingly, the BBC has been cross-promoting it through one of their news and current affairs programmes.
What is a surprise, however, is that the time dedicated to interviewing Ferneyhough and discussing his music on the Today programme yesterday seemed to strongly suggest to listeners that this was a concert they should stay away from. The Rambler has an insightful analysis of what happened on the show (followed by a good debate in the comments).
In summary: Ferneyhough’s music is sinister, pointlessly difficult, causes stress and sounds a bit like farts…. this is not responsible arts journalism at any time of day. It’s deliberately and offensively misrepresentative. It doesn’t promote the music, it doesn’t increase understanding, it doesn’t even offer a moment for people to make up their own minds (three minutes of just the music would have at least done that). It simply builds walls, closes ears and reinforces prejudices.
It’s infuriating, but hardly surprising any more, that mainstream media is so hopelessly crap at arts reporting, even on Radio 4 and other outlets that present themselves as more intellectual. If they can’t frame the story as a controversy or scandal (whether it is or not), the journalists are at a loss as to whether they should approach their subject as a case for uncritical boosterism, adversarial inquisition, or quirky human interest. The last case always involves some degree of condescension, and Today’s treatment of Ferneyhough was no exception.
Why does arts reporting so often fall into this charade? The immediate impression is the same one given by politicians and certain business leaders, that they need to be seen as “one of the people,” and in doing so find themselves pandering to a lowest common denominator, becoming a patronising charicature of their supposed inferiors. On further thought, the position of a broadcaster like Radio 4 is closer to that of Hollywood film studio execs and millionaire movie stars, who regularly turn out “heartwarming” films about smalltown folks who come to the Big City to find success and fame, before learning the truth that the true happiness they seek can only be found back home living an ordinary life, free of glamour or wealth. You do not want this, they say. Do not pursue the dreams we have achieved. You’re better off the way you are now.
I doubt the people who make the Today programme live glamourous, millionaire lifestyles, or even that they like Ferneyhough; but I bet they go to the theatre, museums, concerts and art galleries. You won’t see news reports on whatever latest production of Swan Lake, Mozart recital or gallery opening might be. Instead, when the arts are reported at all, it’s a scandal or a freakshow. This is culture. You do not want this. Best to leave it alone.
Scrabble: Everything’s Officially Ruined Again.
Wednesday 7 April 2010
I wasn’t going to bother writing about the lame decision to change the rules of Scrabble to allow proper nouns. As half-arsed publicity stunts go, it’s only slightly more devestating than if the makers of Monopoly grandly announced they were rewriting their rules to allow players to quit when they get bored.
But now I’m thinking they’ve got a point. The makers of Scrabble have twigged that a fundamental aspect of the game has changed. This isn’t about giving Stoopid Kids These Days the edge – it won’t: you play Xzibit, I play Xerxes (and Xzibit).
The thing is that modern-day Scrabble is played by people who can access the OED on their smartphones, not to mention various online anagram tools. Letting in proper names brings back a lost fundamental of Scrabble: arguing. Arguing over who is or is not sufficiently famous to justify the latest mangling of “Brittany”. Convincing people there really is a Greek island called Aeaea. Debating which variant spellings of Mxyzptlk are canon. Like all authentic grassroots games, nothing is certain and it all ends in bickering, resentment and tears.
A Toast to Thomas Angove
Thursday 1 April 2010
I’m breaking my impromptu holiday from blogging to pass on the sad news that Thomas Angove, inventor of the wine cask, has died at the age of 92. Not since the inventor of booze itself has one man advanced the science of getting an entire nation so drunk, so quickly, at so little expense. A large part of the art world will be forever in his debt.
Three quotes from Harry Halbreich’s sleeve notes for the album Iannis Xenakis: Chamber Music 1955-1990:
Kottos for cello (1977)
Later, the music returns to extremely high registers, the toccata proceeds with double stops, but after a short recall of the opening sounds, the piece unexpectedly ends by dissolving into gossamer glissandi in the highest register.
Embellie for viola (1981)
And the work ends in the same manner, slipping away to the extreme high glissando harmonics on the edge of audibility.
Tetras for string quartet (1983)
The eighth section, a metrically complex tutti, leads to the ninth, which serves as a coda and which, after a display of strength in tremolos, dies away in a surprising manner with pianissimo glissandi.
Filler By Proxy LXVIII: The Stockhausen Football League
Sunday 24 May 2009
It’s the last day of the English football season, so The Guardian is giving minute-by-minute updates on its website, tracking the fates of teams facing relegation. Naturally, reporter Scott Murray is decribing the action through an extended conceit of likening the tail-end of the Premiership season to the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen (with some John Cage coming in for stoppage time), right down to the concluding section of his epic opera cycle Licht: “Sunday Farewell”.
A Lesson in the Bleeding Obvious
Sunday 8 March 2009
Don’t take your severely hungover girlfriend to an early afternoon concert of percussion music by Iannis Xenakis.
World Class Anxiety Redux
Tuesday 6 January 2009
It’s not normal for a nation’s press to care about a cricket series on the other side of the world that doesn’t involve said nation. Unless I checked the fine print in the sports sections of the papers, the British media would offer me no clue as to the Australian test team’s performance – which is perfectly natural. However, in the past few weeks the BBC’s sports reports have become increasingly concerned with the current series of Australia versus South Africa. British newspaper columnists are quietly excited at the prospect of Australia losing the third test and no longer being the number one cricketing nation in the world.
The fact that the England team are ranked at number five and had no part to play in their former colony’s potential downfall is irrelevant: just the fact that someone has beaten them is a source of vicarious satisfaction. It’s like the instinctive barracking by a neutral country for whoever is playing against the USA at the Olympics, writ large.
(Crossposted at Sarsaparilla.)
The Most Useful Piece of Advice You’ll Get All Year
Monday 8 December 2008
Got a tune stuck in your head and you just have to get rid of it? The Girl From Ipanema. It wipes the music part of your brain and then fades away. Works every time.
I recommend track 21 on that linked page.
(Crossposted at Sarsaparilla.)
One Short Black
Tuesday 29 July 2008
Like many people, I didn’t know whether to feel sorrow or amusement when Starbucks came to Australia 5 or 6 years ago and opened a store in Lygon Street, of all places. Every afternoon I would stroll down the pavement past the bustling tables outside all the cafés, and then pass through the dead, sucking void where Starbucks had set up shop.
It seemed like it never had more than three punters in it: a middle-aged American couple, and a Japanese tourist wearing hip-hop gear. Was I deluding myself into thinking that the international chain of overpriced crap coffee was doomed to failure in Melbourne? Was I overestimating the ability to resist the millions of dollars’ worth of pressure the corporation could use to grind down the competition and the public, year after year?
Starbucks will close 70% of its Australian stores and slash more than half of its workforce…Across the country, the company’s 84 cafes closed yesterday at 2pm…. Although the list of the stores to be closed has not been released, it is believed the controversial Starbucks shop in Lygon Street, Carlton, is among them….Starbucks president Howard Schultz ruled out closing other stores internationally and cited “challenges unique to the Australian market”. Retail analyst Barry Urquhart said Starbucks failed in Australia in part “because they didn’t understand and respect the unique and differing characteristics of the Australian coffee consumer”.
Frontier: Coburg
Saturday 19 July 2008
A few years ago, my girlfriend went to her first medical checkup in London and found herself explaining to the British-born doctor that Australian houses have bedrooms, thus correcting her assumption that verandahs were primarily designed for sleeping. When the only news story from Australia that has impinged upon British consciousness this year is the one about the bloke with the seatbelt on his slab, it can be hard explaining to Brits that Australia is a modern, largely urbanised society, with a complex and sophisticated culture.
Then you come back to Melbourne for a visit, sit out on the verandah of your friend’s house in leafy Coburg, and flip through the Personal Services classifieds at the back of the local paper.
“Yee-haw! There’s a passel o’ fine fillies up from South Yarra ways on that thar stagecoach, pardner!”
“Shucks, Jed, I ain’t seen me a gin-u-wine South Yarra lady up the Sydney Road in a month o’ Sundays!”
“Shucks, Jed, I ain’t seen me a gin-u-wine South Yarra lady up the Sydney Road in a month o’ Sundays!”
And then there’s this inspired promotional campaign that’s guaranteed to drum up trade. It’s enough to make any bargain-hunting man grab his hod and head out west. Also note the somewhat excessive zeal and efficiency that Amy brings to her job.
(Crossposted at Sarsaparilla.)
Hopelessly Devoted to Who?
Wednesday 2 July 2008
I was emailed by a friend who received an invite to my exhibition (now closed, so no plug) in Melbourne, and noticed that the two letters UK appeared in brackets after my name. “Good to see the cultural cringe is alive and well in the local scene,” he said. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to convince several people that it wasn’t my idea to bill me as an Overseas Artist. When asked why they’ve listed me as British, I have a guess and say it’s something to do with claiming travel expenses.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been identified as non-Australian. Last year I played a gig in Brisbane which billed me as a New Zealander, owing to my having flown in via Auckland; but that was an honest mistake, whereas the British tag was, to my surprise when I recalled it, true.
Even though I have now lived in London for three years, and even have dual citizenship, there’s nothing about me that feels particularly British; yet it appears that my Australian identity is slowly and steadily slipping away, in ways I cannot control. Does extensive time out of the country inevitably extinguish my Australianness?
Earlier this year The Onion’s A.V. Club posted the latest in a semi-regular series, “The scandal of Olivia Newton-John: 12 surprisingly controversial Wikipedia pages“, chronicling the most protracted and furious arguments on Wikipedia’s Talk pages over the past few months. Fierce debates raged over such controversial subjects as Speedy Gonzales, Rotary International, the capitalisation of the name k.d. lang, and the nationality of Olivia Newton-John:
Yes, we know she was born in England, but moved to Australia at age 5, and left again at age 17. But such details don’t settle the linguistic and existential question of her essential nationality. Nv8200p “think[s] there is no doubt that Newton-John identifies with Australia,” but the ensuing complicated discussion covers dual citizenship, British birth certificates, whether Mel Gibson counts as Australian, and ultimately whether Australians have an inferiority complex. “English-born, Australian-raised” is the phrase that currently describes Newton-John in the first paragraph of her entry, but the issue may not be settled…
A quick straw poll among friends in Melbourne got a unanimous result: Hell yeah, she’s Australian. The English themselves most likely remember her, if at all, as American or Australian more than British – despite her sterling work for the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest. At the time of writing, her Wikipedia article describes her as an “English-born, Australian pop singer”, but of course this may change.
ONJ’s Wikipedia Talk page gives a fascinating, if not illuminating, account of the debating process that went into authoring her entry, including a section titled “Gay Icon Project” and the winning reprimand of “The E! TV special on Newton John isn’t the best source for wikipedia [sic].” Probably the most trenchant observation is this comment:
She’s still technically a British person. Australia is as guilty sometimes as some other countries in looking pass[sic] the home-born and reared people in preference of a claiming tightly[sic] to famous people such as Newton-John as the representer of Australia. I’d probably decide to only pledge my undying allegiance to the country that worships me as their symbol too.
Compare Our Libby to that other accidental icon of cheesy Seventies pop culture, the Bee Gees. Singing artistes with a similar, intercontinental upbringing, they are claimed by the British and the Australians with equal possessiveness – even though they are technically Manx. Their more contested national allegiance – in the real world, if not so much on Wikipedia – is doubtless due to their continued eminence in both countries.
Incidentally, the main debate on the Bee Gees Wikipedia Talk page concerns whether their formative years in Brisbane were spent in Redcliffe or the now-vanished Cribb Island. This sticking point seems to be more hotly contested than any of the larger claims for rival nations.
Perhaps it has been the fate of all world-famous Australians to have their nationalities confused, simply by the act of entering the wider world to be famous in. Percy Grainger was born in Melbourne, established his career in England, became an American to avoid the Great War, found his greatest fame in the USA, built his museum in Melbourne, and was buried in Adelaide beside his mother, to whom he dedicated a large memorial statue (with a rather fulsome poem on a plaque beneath) which dwarfs his own, modest grave. Depending on which country you are in, Grainger is either Australian, American, or English – the last in particular, given his identification with Anglo-Saxon, if not Aryan, culture.
There are also rare instances of celebrities who have falsely claimed Australian identities. For many years there were Tasmanians who swore they had personally known Merle Oberon as a girl growing up in St Helens, unaware that her biography was faked to disguise her mixed-race origins in Bombay. Far more common are the lazy inclusiveness granted by Australians to particularly successful New Zealanders, and the affectionate, unofficial status afforded to the likes of Our Tom and Our Fred. Such status, however, can be revoked at any time.
So, what does history have to teach me? Is my case yet another example of cultural cringe? Perhaps, having left Australia’s shores, I have been disowned, fobbed off to another unwitting country, at least until I become famous enough to be reclaimed. Or perhaps during my time abroad I have changed at an imperceptible rate until I am no longer recognisable to my fellow countrymen. Worse still is the fate of those who fall between two shores, the mercenary netherworld of the professional expatriate.
(Crossposted at Sarsaparilla.)
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