Notes from the (London) Underground

At rush hour, the London transport system is a beast; a pulsating mass of divorced limbs, trashy paperbacks, rotten armpits and faceless faces. An apathetic, endless automaton drip-fed bigotry and buggered nationalistically by the in-house Evening sub-Standard. HORROrR!

Sheep, by lucas.mccomb @ flickr

Georg Grosz - Republic automatons, 1920

Jake and Dinos Chapman, Zygotic acceleration, Biogenetic de-sublimated libidinal model, 1995

It needs SAVING from itself!!!.

But where does the problem lie??!? In its inefficiency?, rooted in the Thatcherite privatisation of industry which separated out all the contracts for its maintenance, thus confusing and effectively disabling the possibility of ever again being able to use the tube line you need of a weekend.

Boris Johnson, Conservative mayor of London, might have an answer. “I… have some Trotskyite ambition to take back… the private sector” he kind of said in a recent interview.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23801847-we-deserve-better-than-this-tube-lines-farce.do

“You would have thought we had learned our lesson by now…

…It is as though the city was in the grip of a bunch of rogue builders who have been given a vast fee to spend three months doing up the bathroom. For a whole month your family has been prevented from using the bath at critical times of the day, even though it sounds as if not much work is actually being done on the bath. And at the end of the month you not only find you are now being banned from the shower and the sink — before the bath is remotely ready — but that you will have to pay for the cost of the delay.

But it gets worse. How would you feel if the various senior plumbers were not being paid the normal rate for your bathoom? They were being “seconded” in exchange for “secondment fees” that were double the normal rate…

…It is time to bring an end to this demented system.

Quite right BoJo. Let’s reassess this mess.

Do we sate the beast’s relentless appetite for gourmands of contemporaneity; the epitomy of 21^st century aspirational waste, or do we lash the foul creature for its insolence?

Do we treat it mean, or do we keen it sweenos?

The OverHound between Richmond and Stratford has had its coat washed.  

Formerly known to me as the CrossFAIL, OR the chokeamotive – I suffered the ignominy of entering the beast at Dalston regularly for a short time a while back to my immense displeasure – this particular dragon’s den has recently been given a face lift and sustainability. Now the CommuterBeast might enter the sleek, spacious and inviting womb below, reminiscent of the French underground trains which – revolutionarily – actually allow, nay prioritise room for commuters. CraZZIYy!!

The British Rail Class 378

But a few Christmases back, 2007, a few rogue elements had other ideas than the gentrification of these ogres’ layers. Rather, a few aficionados of urban tastes spent their holy break decimating/decorating the walls with jAUNnnty urban décor, akin to the ‘Street Art” of the New York Subway, whilst one rogue adventurer road the beast’s spine at Angel in a scene reminiscent of when Perseus slew Cetus!!!?!

Mile End, by Alvin Ross Carpio @ flickr

Angel, by Alvin Ross Carpio @ flickr

New York

New York

A more disturbing prescient of the answer to the question WHAT NEXT?, however, has been appearing throughout London with alarming regularity of late. The beast falling apart at its seams!!

Kings Cross

Kings Cross

Marble Arch, by markhillary @ flickr

by mallingering @ flickr

Will the monster fall out of itself, like the spilt guts of a fished fish, or is this tear in the fabric of the panoptical beast just a shedding of skin/asexual reproduction. Is it fishin’ or fission?

Has the fiend seen what is happening through his countless eyes – computer enhanced black boxes of its fabled final days – or will a tabloid hack expose the beast’s cheated expenses? WHO KNOWS?!

Some say it is preparing for the hallow’d Olympiad, the feast of all feasts, when tourists will pack into eastbound cattle wagons heading for the day of reckoning!

But remember BoJo’s harsh warning…

Trotyskities ARM yourselves!!!

The brave soldier of Angel will be avenged!

We will take back the tube for when we want to go to Hampstead Heath at the weekend.

We will walk or cycle to work if we have to, to remove ourselves from the slithergadee’s grasp, or at least we will if we’re not in a hurry, or it’s a bit wet outside.

Are you prepared!

This fella is!!!

Henry's Day Out

Aliens

In another triumphant effort from the Prince Charles Cinema, I was recently afforded the opportunity to see Aliens on the big screen. 

This was the first 18 film I ever saw, at just nine of ten years of age. I still distinctly remember watching it with my brother and two friends on New Years Eve. It scared the bejeezus out of me, but also thrilled my innocent mind. Turns out it still has all the power it did then, as my girlfriend’s fingers found out to their cost when they got somewhat crushed in the scene where Ripley and Newt are trapped in a room with two Facehuggers. 

 

What interested me most about this revisiting of an old friend of a movie, however, was not so much to do with the incredible 80s dialogue which I have always loved, 

nor was it the incredible vision of HR Giger which created the blueprint for this, the most evil and awful of film monsters, 

 

Rather, it was to the film’s presentations of maternity that I found myself really drawn, and with which I’m going to feebly and ironically grapple, even against all my better judgement. 

 

In Laura Mulvey’s famous 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, she waffles on about the inherently voyeuristic and scopophilic (pleasure as looking at another person as an erotic object) act of watching movies, positing the females’ To-Be-Looked-At-Ness (TBLATN) above and beyond her purpose in the film: the bearer of meaning, not the maker of meaning as she puts it . The essay has been immensely influential and continues to shape feminist critiques of cinema, but has nothing really to do with my point… apart from this. 

She says in her conclusion that: “the structure of looking in narrative fiction film contains a contradiction in its own premises: the female image as a castration threat constantly endangers the unity of the diegesis and bursts through the world of illusion as an intrusive, static, one-dimensional fetish.” 

Rather, in Aliens, the diegesis is broken by the profusion of aliens, and the fact that it is science fiction, and the real and present danger is quite the opposite of castration, as the disconcertingly vaginal protrusion that is one’s belly button promises to have an angry snapping little fella bursting through it: an intrusive, yes, but neither static nor dimensional little fetish if you want to call it that. 

Red Dwarf's Polymorph

What’s more, the female’s TBLAN (to-be-looked-at-ness) is ruined, here, by a Jewish/latina butch commando with a gun fetish of her own, a permed, androgynous and, in my girlfriend’s words, saggy-breasted hero, and the queen alien herself, in all her beauty. 

As such, my interest lies in the fact that the film’s main and final face off is between these two un-feminised, un-“womanly”, un-“beautiful” “women”, neither simply maternal nor clumsily feminine. Their primary battle is based on fighting for, and protecting their young even if it means ripping the face off another girl. The ultimate bitch fight.

What might otherwise be a fight between good and evil, then, becomes rather a fight for the protection of their (surrogate) offspring, and the righteousness of Ripley’s protection becomes somehow less right, even if the nasty little xenomorphs do have acid for blood and prey on humans to further their species. 

And where these main female parts portray strong and scary anti-stereotypes, the males are simple henchmen – both human and alien – stupid, if occasionally funny, and pretty much killed off in order of their crapness. Even Bill Paxton’s excellent turn as Private Hudson is intended as light relief amongst the central and importantly maternal conflict. Weaver’s spirited portrayal of a woman is both strong and weak, both brave and fearful, both maternal and fraternal, and of course displaying all the inevitable shades of grey therein. 

*** 

The queen alien also reminded me of Louise Bourgeois’ sculpture Maman, of which she has created multiple versions in the last 15 years or so. 

Louise Bourgeous, Maman 1999

Bourgeois has also spoken of the similarity between her mother and the spider. Both were weavers (not Sigourney Weaver’s though), and both are protective and helpful (in that the spider kills mosquitoes). Indeed, the carnivorous diet of the spider is not only protectionist, but also provides food for her spawn. Similarly, the Alien’s cocooning of humans to lay eggs in their mouths which will hatch more Aliens through the host’s stomach is simply a method of procreation. Their evilness comes in their other-ness, and, again, the fact that they have acid for blood and are ugly mother-s. 

The maternal elements in Bourgeois’ works are, I think, enhanced alongside the presentations of maternity in Aliens discussed above, and vice-versa for the art-historically-inclined doubter who refuses to believe in the excellence of Aliens. 

Where maternal doesn’t stand for simply womanly, or nurturing, or feminine, or ladylike, it might come to mean an overcoming of “lack”, and a very simple appreciation of the other.   

Louise Bourgeois, Spider, 1997

Martin Creed is a Dick

Today, in the Guardian, Martin Creed answered the question What’s the worst thing anyone ever said about you thus:

“When I was nominated for the Turner, a lot of people talked about my work in terms of the emperor’s new clothes. I could see their point: my piece was just an empty room. But it was also a room where the lights were going on and off, like a mini theatrical production. No one would say that the lighting in a theatre was an emperor’s new clothes situation, would they?”

Well, no Martin, they wouldn’t. Because that is an entire theatrical production, not just a light going on and off.

Justification of a work in terms of its two, singular merits, neither of which offer anything of value, interest, poignancy or even humour, does not an art work make.

Since attending Creed’s show at the Hauser and Wirth Coppermill, an incredible venue which has not been used since, where I was treated to a 30 foot high video of anal sex, a pianist playing the keys left to right and back again one at a time, and nothing else which sticks in the mind, my certainty about the pointlessness of this man’s endeavours has been resolute.

This is neither the emperor’s new clothes nor the emperor’s rubbish, for both might have historical and/or comical value if nothing else. Creed’s work is the worst kind of work. Meaningless.

Unfinished or just incomplete

I keep coming back to Alberto Giacometti. Since first falling for his work at the Sainsburys’ Centre for Visual Arts’ exhibition Giacometti in Postwar Paris of 2002 whilst my brother was studying at the University of East Anglia, I have found his work constantly intriguing, beautiful and somehow inexplicable. 

I have spent the last eight years responding to and furthering those initial jolts of excitement, first in my art A level where I poorly attempted to pin down something of his painterly style in my own work, and then throughout my university career in a number of essays. Most recently, a wonderful retrospective of his studio work at the Pompidou inspired an essay exploring the sense of incomprehension and uncertainty which permeates his oeuvre, as well as his quest for answers. 

As a result, I have come to see all of his works as works-in-progress; somehow incomplete. 

Alberto Giacometti, Still Life with Apple 1937

From his conversations with David Sylvester most notably, one gets the feeling that seeing his work in this way gives us the best chance of fully appreciating the effort put into them, as well as the exasperation he constantly felt trying – and failing in his eyes – to achieve what might be called his vision.

That is, Giacometti spent such a large proportion of his life painting and sculpting a few select people in his life, most notably his brother, for the very reason that he was constantly dissatisfied with the results.

Alberto Giacometti, Seated Man, 1949, Tate

Alberto Giacometti, Diego, 1950

Alberto Giacometti, Diego, 1953

It comes as – not a surprise, but an anomaly, then, that one of his works sold recently at auction for £65 million, making it the most expensive artwork sold at auction. Much as I love his work, I’ve always found part of my admiration based in the crudity and the tangibility of his work’s creation. I find his work almost uniquely UNprofessional amongst his contemporaries, and my knowledge of his struggles feels different from the romantic notion of the artistic struggles which lead to GREAT works. Rather, his works somehow feel to me like failures: perfect exemplars of the moment of creation, not the finished products which become somehow valuable.

The work in question, Walking Man I, or L’homme qui marche I, is a splendid, globular thing. It is ugly, all vulgar finger marks and uncertain impressions. The results, to my mind, are alarmingly fragile both materially and emotionally, and such a large value somehow further destabilises the figure’s gait. Vertigo insues.

Such a utopian approach to the work, however, fruitlessly attempts to ignore the market’s ever-presence in the art game. One website, artfacts.net, even enables the reader to look at artists ranked in worth according to their auction value. It would appear, as I’ve long suspected, that Giacometti truly is one of the greats. I am heartbroken to have this confirmed monetarily.

The current exhibition at Camden Arts Centre of Eva Hesse’s studioworks appears to presents us with the other side of the coin. The exhibition presents us with a series of test pieces intended only as working models, not intended for public consumption; smaller and, amazingly, more incomplete looking than even her best known works. The exhibition is presented academically, curated by the art historian Briony Fer, and might be understood as a meditation on the artistic thought process. It certainly isn’t an exhibition which brings about questions of market value, and the works sit questioningly alongside each other, small clusters of latex and plastic offering no answers.

Eva Hesse, no title

Eva Hesse, no title

Moreover, these unfinished studioworks encounter and celebrate what my partner showed me (and the world via Amelia’s magazine, http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/art/eva-hesse-studiowork-camden-arts-centre/2010/02/15/) to be the importantly intrepid nature of her work. Here, materials are enjoyed in their essence. Giacometti’s frustration is replaced by Hesse’s playfulness. The artists’ personalities are, apparently, there to be found. Their imperfections appear to resonate in three dimensions.

Of course, society’s wider interest in such documentary evidence is obvious if one looks at the rampant consumption of literary archives by the University of Austin’s Harry Ransom Centre, or the continued high prices paid at auction for single letters. Moreover, Heat magazine et al’s predisposition towards the unmasking of naked biography at the expense of the individual puts pecuniary value ahead of human value. Was it ever thus. Suddenly, it would appear that the more naked an artist’s ego appears, the more valuable might their work/the magazine demonstrating their EPIC FAIL become???

An unfinished work becomes a best seller, see Princess Diana, John Lennon and, inevitably, Alexander McQueen.

Consumption, then, lies at the heart of all this. In our need to acquire and to own, we become anthropologists of contemporaneity. We buy tomorrow’s relics from CD shops, online auction sites and, yes, galleries. We amass THINGS because we are told to continually, and where we can’t afford the finished article there is a print, a copy, a studiowork, or a postcard to plug the gap. I should know, my postcard collection is huge!

Reflections on (lost) innocence: Miroslaw Balka @ Modern Art Oxford

Disorientated, a nostalgia-inducing sensory whirlpool collides with the onset of a sort of cattle-shed claustrophobia. 

The effects of the first video work in Modern Art Oxford’s new Miroslaw Balka show, Carroussel, come on like one’s too-young first-go on the Waltzers, with all the accompanying tears and fear. The work encircles you, spinning chaotically: a barren, luckless landscape thrown across all four-walls of the gallery space with none of the dizzying merriment of youthful exuberance. None of the ethereal joy of spinning in meadows remains when the terra firma is stripped of its humanity. 

Indeed the title of this work’s relation to the piece induced in me thoughts of both the uncomfortably teenage atmosphere of fairgrounds – all lost innocence, cigarette smoke, stolen change and brazen neons – and the mechanisation of the meat industry, its seedy slaughter(ware)house underbelly seen one 100 revolving meat hooks at a time. 

 

 

Miroslaw Balka, Carroussel

The disturbance of one’s comfort zone is Balka’s raison d’être, and his reasons for so doing have been written about at length. Suffice it to say that my ability to even begin talking about these works in relation to Polish and Jewish history c. 1945 would be a calamity. You are better off reading the MOA press release as a starting point, and take your interest from there. (http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/Press/112). My intention here is to talk of a more general point about the way these works play with our senses, and my personal reaction to the works. 

Miroslaw Balka, Flagellare A, B, C

 

Be it in the violent outbursts heard below us in the work Flagellare A, B, C, where three floor mounted screens appear to look up at us, draw us down, and then join our downward gaze down at itself concurrently, or in the large quivering video entitled Bambi, where a number of deer enter into a snowy, industrial landscape and look up and around, at us occasionally, we constantly feel like witness. There is nothing voyeuristic in our presence, but our experience of these works is infused with discomfort, a sense that we are privy to something unexplained, or denying explanation. Even resisting explanation. 

Miroslaw Balka, Bambi

Similarly, the monumental video work Pond appears still, a lacklustre depiction of an icy pond surrounded by trees. Yet the stillness is by no means calm. There is an uneasiness about it, reminiscent to me of the Tom Waits song What’s He Building in There? from the superb Mule Variations album. Something is being depicted and we don’t know what. There is something we’re not being told. Why? 

Miroslaw Balka, Pond

The exhibition’s title, Topography, presents another set of questions. Imponderables. Are such uncertain and seemingly incomplete depictions of landscape and place analogous with the exactitudes of topography? If not, what is Balka getting at? Can mapping such inexactitudes provide us with something more worthwhile than their scientifically robust counterpart? Are we to “map” these works in the sense that they need a thoroughgoing analysis to seek out what’s been missed? Is there something which needs to be found. 

In the week that Kings College London decided to axe the country’s last remaining chair of Palaeography – the study of ancient manuscripts – it would seem that the unknowns provide as much larger scope for understanding ourselves and society than knowledge as it exists today manages to. The continuing quest for answers and, importantly, the absolute necessity to explore new terrain rears it head only when our current set of answers seem wholly insubstantial. 

The world we once knew was graspable. Now, I can’t fathom how children begin to reconcile the size of the world available to them with the size of their back yard. In this exhibition, I found my own childhood experiences cast against a world of doubt and a fear of what lies beyond. These works seem to understand and approach incommensurability. As such, they become part and parcel of knowledge, one that moves forwards and backwards, with both hindsight and hope.