The month of Vivisector-related blogging approaches, and the Patrick White Readers’ Group has worked out a plan on how to read and/or write about Patrick White’s evidently-neglected novel. That is, provided you have managed to get hold of a copy.
Previously: I don’t read Patrick White. Not as a rule, anyway.
Filed under: Writing by Ben.H
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Au Tombeau de William McGonagall
Sunday 20 August 2006
Beautiful city of Edinburgh!
Where the tourist can drown his sorrow
By viewing your monuments and statues fine
During the lovely summer-time.
I’m sure it will his spirits cheer
As Sir Walter Scott’s monument he draws near,
That stands in East Princes Street
Amongst flowery gardens, fine and neat.
And Edinburgh castle is magnificent to be seen
With its beautiful walks and trees so green,
Which seems like a fairy dell;
And near by its rocky basement is St. Margaret’s well,
Where the tourist can drink at when he feels dry,
And view the castle from beneath so very high,
Which seems almost towering to the sky.
* * *
Beautiful city of Edinburgh! the truth to express,
Your beauties are matchless I must confess,
And which no one dare gainsay,
But that you are the grandest city in Scotland at the present day!
– Wm. McGonagall, “Edinburgh”, Poetic Gems (London: Duckworth, 1970), p.84.
Filed under: Travel, Writing by Ben.H
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Ah fooked dis place afore yew!
Wednesday 16 August 2006
There’s something in the air around my neighbourhood: if it’s not the grand guignol of the bird-on-bird violence on one side of the bunker, it’s the dodgy pub on the other side. This is the place where there was a shooting last month, and no sooner have the police incident signs come down than the locals are punching on out front again.
Judging from the overheard quote above, it seemed to be some sort of turf battle over who’s the dodgiest cunt on the block.
Filed under: London by Ben.H
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That’s probably a “yes” to the former, then.
Wednesday 16 August 2006
Me, 25 May, looking around the Pompidou:
That Donald Judd stack is really biffed about: did someone drop it, or did the Pomp get it cheap off the back of a truck?
The world-renowned Pompidou Center of Paris, which set out in March to celebrate the work of Los Angeles artists, has accidentally destroyed two of their works — which fell from museum walls. A third piece was slightly damaged.
Yes, it turns out the Centre has form in trashing art works loaned to it.
“It’s no secret in the museum business that handling can be very sketchy at Pompidou,” said John Walsh, director emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
(Links found via Modern Art Notes.)
I saw the LA show: like everything else at the Pompidou, they stuffed so much into this one exhibition there was no way you could take in everything in a single visit, even if you stayed all day. There were about twenty videos or films, some an hour long, in addition to a couple of hundred static works. Perhaps they were planning for attrition.
After a year in Europe it was great to see a substantial body of art from a place that was new, modern, urbanised (or suburbanised), and spacious (yeah, like Australia). One of the side effects of moving to the UK from Australia is that it has made me want to live in the USA. Even though I can’t drive.
Filed under: Art by Ben.H
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In other words, Crowded House.
Tuesday 15 August 2006
Really, really regrettable comparison used in the publicity for an upcoming gig at The Spitz (scroll down to 1 September):
The enigmatic Westcountry acoustic duo Show of Hands are formidable operators in the roots arena. Voted “Best Live Act” in the 2004 BBC Radio Folk Awards, they’ve been likened to U2, “Crowded House without the drums” and…
Filed under: Music by Ben.H
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Grand disillusion: it’s taken me this long to finish posting about the Berlin Biennial
Tuesday 15 August 2006
Sometimes you wonder why you bother. As an artist, as a curator, as a gallery-goer. An interview with the curators of the fourth Berlin Biennal reveals a quiet desperation as they discuss the scratching around they’ve done in a hunt for some means to break their lassitude. Contemporary art novices will wonder why they don’t talk about art; old hands won’t even bother clicking the link.
For their professed perversity, the curators’ attempt to shake things up doesn’t amount to more than pissing into an ocean of ennui. The only thing that got me truly puzzled at the Biennial was the inclusion of 30-year old art by Bruce Connor and Christopher Knowles, and even this looked like a curatorial gesture of defeat. No-one here, on either side of the Talent Moat, was operating outside of their comfort zones.
The biggest part of the exhibition was held in the old Jewish Girls’ School in the former Soviet sector: it was the first time the building had been open in over ten years. Really, everyone should know by now that attempting to put art in derelict buildings is a mug’s game. The art is left to compete with the building, and almost always loses. Correction: always loses.
At any rate, we were left free to roam the four floors of charming dilapidation only occasionally obstructed by artwork, once we had successfully passed through the security check and metal detector at the entrance. My German isn’t good enough to say whether they were searching us for bombs or for spraypaint. “Do not photograph,” admonished the sign tacked to the door, “this is not an art exhibit.” As we had guessed because, like the crumbling walls, it was more interesting than the art inside.
For the most part the art was trying to look Serious, i.e. grim and grotty in an effort to look more in tune with the darker aspects of life; the artists trying to pretend they weren’t quite so pleased with themselves, like the pious po-face of a libidinous preacher fronting up to Sunday service. Stockhausen spending a week barefoot in a rented log cabin in the mountains, divining the rhythm of the universe before he has to drive his Mercedes back to Kürten for a lecture. The grant recipient seeking inspiration by ramping up some empathy for the Turkish guest worker who comes into their flat each Tuesday.
Some of the art was just plain derivative (a room full of earth? in 2006?). People were making jokes about the dodgy lighting in a corridor being a Martin Creed work, until they found a title card showing that it was, in fact, a Martin Creed work. Then they made jokes about the Martin Creed work.
For all the standard curator-guff about inclusivity, the one piece that stood out and wasn’t thirty years old was Jeremy Deller’s film Theme for the 4th Berlin Biennial, shown in the old stables behind the former postal sorting centre: an old Klezmer group playing in someone’s flat, presumably the home of one of the band members. The tune they play is their own anthem to Auguststraße and the Biennial exhibitions that run its length. If only the rest of the show was as lively, well-crafted and generous as the theme tune performed in its honour. If only the other turgid, heavy-handed works in the show spoke as eloquently to the matters of history, society, and culture they loudly pretended to wrestle to the ground.
Curators need their fun, too: the room containing Christopher Knowles’ sheets of obsessively typed paper were hung in an old science room with a tattered poster of Einstein pasted on the wall.
Previously: Looking at looking at art.
Filed under: Art by Ben.H
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Ravens 2 – Pigeons 0
Monday 14 August 2006
Once you’ve got a taste for it, you just can’t stop at one. Not what I want to see outside my window first thing in the morning. Maybe I should hang out a bird feeder.
Filed under: The Bunker by Ben.H
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Great moments in poetry: Charles Olson writes to his would-be publisher to discuss the typesetting of proofs for his Maximus IV, V, VI, 1968
Thursday 10 August 2006
Where in hell did anyone get the idea these lines are not as written… Oh Jesus! where again does such ideas – in the face of a incredibly careful mss – go fucking haywire??… Here again SHRINK LEADING!!!! oh God it’s too much!… Note: whoever directed the Printer to set this this way shld lose his fucking head.
Filed under: Writing by Ben.H
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Questi Cazzi Di Piccioni
Monday 7 August 2006
The roof space of the scuzzy block of flats across from where I live is infested with pigeons. Two ravens have just moseyed on into the hole the pigeons use to get into the roof.
Do ravens eat pigeons?
- Yes they do! (ding!)
- No they don’t! (bzzt!)
I’m hoping for the affirmative, particularly since that pigeon in Venice shat on me.
Note: The above was written a month or so ago but never posted, until now: The Squid Files has witnessed the same event today, with horrifying consequences. (Warning: lo-res but grody image that may offend some viewers, if they’re pigeons.)
Filed under: The Bunker by Ben.H
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I Want To Believe
Monday 7 August 2006
Meddlesome anorak that I am, I just looked back in on the Wikipedia entry for Jeremy Bentham to see how my little edit was going. It’s been re-edited, already. According to whoever violated my impeccable scholarship, the notorious Auto-Icon really, truly, ruly is wheeled in to Council meetings. Not being a member of the College, I’ll have to take their word for it.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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Well! That wasn’t supposed to happen.
Sunday 6 August 2006
I come back from a small holiday away only to find that my last three posts, including the one which explained I would be offline for a week or so, didn’t get posted. Oh, and July went missing for a bit there, too.
I think it’s all working OK now, although it looks a bit pointless. Normal business resumes tomorrow.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Postcard from Venice
Friday 28 July 2006
I came here in my young youth
and lay there under the crocodile
By the column, looking East on the Friday,
And I said: Tomorrow I will lie on the South side
And the day after, south west.
– Ezra Pound, Canto XXVI.
Filed under: Travel by Ben.H
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It’s been another slow month
Thursday 27 July 2006
And it’s about to get slower. I’m on holiday all next week. Don’t worry, I know you’ll cope somehow.
I was going to suggest some highlights from the past month but (a) there aren’t any, really, and (b) the July archive is mangled right now. I didn’t even get around to posting the write-up of the Berlin Biennial. Ah well.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Unfortunately, when they arrived at the other end they discovered the movie was also showing there. (Bada-bing!)
Thursday 27 July 2006
Eurostar said the partnership with the movie – whose cast included French actress Audrey Tatou – helped generate “strong interest in overseas markets”, with travel agents reporting increased sales on the London-Paris route.
Filed under: Film by Ben.H
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Just what the world needs
Tuesday 25 July 2006
I have finally made my first edit to a Wikipedia article. Of course, it concerns you know who…
