Review: One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This

“This May [2007], we’re marking NYC’s creative history by installing plaques at 33 sites that inspired us over the past three decades” …

New York is a truly electric city. There’s a real feeling of flux in every neighborhood, excitement along every neon vista and surprise in the most unlikely places. It lights up at night, freezes in the winter, sweats underground and buzzes in the summer. It’s a city you love; visiting it countless times – the peaks and gullies, side streets and diners – through pop culture and art, high and low.

And this is now – in the decade of globalization, mass communication and over-consumption. Thanks to harsh mayoral ’street clearances’, New York is cleaner than ever, it’s property market booming thanks to the commercial midas touch of gentrification and it’s art market ripe and fit to burst. – so different to thirty, twenty, even ten years ago! How are we to get into this writhing mass, reaching ever higher, further, faster? How are we to get a sense of a moment in this flux, to hear the thoughts of its inhabitants, to reassess and review? Who better to turn to than the artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians – woven into the fabric of the city, yet producing work to speak across time, signposts towards a better understanding of these experiences …

Artists grapple intimately with the heart of the zeitgeist, yet at the same time are required to exist on the periphery. This is a near impossible demand, hard to reconcile in any environment, and especially so in New York – a behemoth of a city; disjointed, fidgeting, fighting, chattering and howling day and night, for it never sleeps. A collective of artists that have worked in New York over the last thirty years is Creative Time. They’ve produced a series of entries explaining their struggles to read and relate their experiences throughout their history in the city, accessible day and night via a cell phone at a number of locations across the city.

It’s a wonderful idea; a guide to an incarnation of New York that no longer exists. The ghosts of passionate pasts, living in neighborhoods a world away then from those we know today (when the MeatPacking District was simply the meatpacking district), revealing memories lost in empty spaces; boarded up, painted over, raised or re-used. Harnessing the technologies which simultaneously separate and bridge the gap between people in contemporary society, Creative Time intend to create a sense of place within these barren spaces through the tradition of storytelling and the relatable intimacy of the human voice.

The recorded entries catalogue a vast variety of sites and the events hosted within them, through the words of the artists and reactionaries who produced or experienced them directly at the time. Many facets of the city experience are covered, and some do justice to their subject. In one instance Anne Pasternak effectively demonstrates the use of discussing art in its absence by asking listeners to close their eyes and concentrate on the sounds of footsteps around them when describing the once ‘vegas-esque carpet’ lining Grand Central’s ticket hall. In doing so the listener is able to recreate something of the wonder of experiencing the (absent) art work. In another, John Waters walks us through a 70s sex club, recounting his experiences, as well as describing the social state of the surrounding neighborhood. The accuracy of these descriptions are assured by the presence of Waters (whose controversial filmmaking always manages to steer well clear of the mainstream); if he says the neighborhood was dangerous it was most definitely best avoided (especially as he’s recently been quoted as saying that, ‘alas’ (!), New York no longer has any dangerous parts of town).

Unfortunately, the overall experience of listening to the entries is a mixed one. The scripts deal with periods of upheaval, passion and strife in the city’s history. Evocative descriptions are given of the minutiae of atmospheric conditions created by an installation, and an artist effectively recreates the experience of looking at a building through his eyes. However, what should set an audio guide apart from a simple written description on a wall is often lacking – from the ’self-help’ soundtrack intro to the uncharismatic, monotony of the principle narrator and the poor editing of phrases. The narrator speaks of ‘crisis, culture and heat’ but you’d never know it from his inflection, and DJ Spooky talks of the crowd ‘moving in the rhythm of the movement’, though this is far from mirrored in his delivery. The project is unbalanced; some of the artists’ views would clearly be better aired by more engaging speakers and often the script writers should have exchanged their microphones for voice actors. New York is a myth for many, yet it suits this myth. Talk of the city is best presented in a manner akin to the introductions to the impassioned works of Spike Lee, one of the principle proponents of the New York myth – a local addressing us with the charisma of the vernacular. Creative Time get close with the Waters sound-bites, but often fall short of the mark.

Ultimately, the idea behind the project is so good that it gains more favor than is warranted by its patchy execution.

Naked inquisition

My 3yr old nephew jumped on me this morning, and after rolling around on me for a short while, asked; ‘What do you look like naked?’. Well. I told him when he was older I’d take him to the National Gallery and find him an accurate representation.

Hot air. And then some.

The mundane and mediocre chainstore-riddled landscape of London’s suburbs cracked asunder before my eyes today and brought a smile to my face. I’m always hungry for sights and sensations that change my perception of my environment.
I followed a (real, live) camel from Richmond carpark to the green, and as I crossed the bridge on the way home, a steam engine passed underneath.

Now, the steam engine is one of my favorite things in the world, but only when in motion – static they’re as interesting to me as parked cars. I’ve only witnessed them twice, both in Richmond station. Though ‘witness’ doesn’t adequately sum up the experience. These raucous machines are angry behemouths; monsters from another age – when the first one charged, enraged, along the platform it scared the shit out of everyone (what else has the power to do that these days, aside from suspect parcels?). It came from nowhere, howling like a banshee and filling the station (which is no mean feat, as it’s open air) with steam and fumes. The second time, today, its cry shook the bridge and its fumes filled my lungs. I was reminded of something I’d once read by the founder of Honda – as a boy he’d run out onto the tarmac of the road to smell the petrol, freshly-bled from the sports car blazing away into the distance – he likened it to ‘perfume’. There’s something genuinely primal about being in the presence of such a fossil-fuelled force, unlike anything electricity can muster short of lightening – a storm on tracks, if you will. Immediately I felt two things acutely – the reason children in old news-reels and movies always run alongside them, cheering, and the burning in Turner’s lungs as he painted his masterpiece, Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway:

In other news; I’ve been hiding away recently, writing 10,000 words of museum and cultural site recommendations for a travel website that in four days time is to become a direct competitor. D’oh. I’ve also been staying in to save money, as I’m thinking of leaving my job soon, which I’m relaxed about – but I just realised that if I go, a couple of folks in Thailand may have to go too – and that I’m not so happy about.

Booooo – That is how the French treat their women.

Weird day.

After escaping the cross-atlantic clutches of my new boss (who manages to motivate me to the same extent lions motivated Christians in ancient Rome), I fled to a discussion at Tate Modern. “The changing face of art and audience”. Hold on to your seats, folks. Unfortunately, as these things often do, it spiralled into mild navel-gazing over issues too far-reaching for a panel of 5 with 90mins, however it was interesting (and depressing, in a way) to see just how naieve some people are in British creative organisations, about the importance of online metrics and recordable usage statistics, etc., and to find out only about 2 in every 100 Brits watch Cultural TV programmes. And they’re mostly over 55. I guess that makes me the odd one out.

Now, half an hour along the Jubilee line from Tate Modern on a Thursday night gets you to The Luminaire, which won the NME’s ‘best UK live venue’ at about 10pm. It’s a great, intimate space (with SUPERB flyers – see below); very similar to King Tuts Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow (nominated also), but with more of a 50s lounge vibe. It’s noticably clean, and the stage features a domed ceiling and disco ball directly above the band – a nice touch, as the reflected globules of light fall across the audience and not the band but behind it. I’d not been before, yet I could tell I was going to like the place when before I’d even stepped foot in it I spied a sly thigh and kneehigh sock through the tiny window behind the ticket clerk. It belonged to one of a pair of willowy, raven-haired mods by the name of The Tall Poppies, and pleasently tall they were. And harmonious. Later a French duo appeared – the guy a spitting image of Caligari’s Cesare – the girl managing to take being French, long brown hair, a lowcut dress and base guitar and …. (incomprehensibly) not come out being anything like the sex bomb that this equation warranted. Though she did shake her legs adorably whilst playing. They were called “John & Jehn”, and as my buddy pointed out, one could well imagine them repeating those names to each other whilst locked in a really creepy kind of coitus after the show. Any doubt as to their place of birth was quashed by Jehn’s refusal to do an encore because, well, she just didn’t feel like it

I spent the train ride home overhearing the sound of a recorded video on a passenger’s phone, of her friend trying to feed her baby ice cream.

Weird night.

Winslet’s lips and Schrader’s tips.

Photograph by James White, Esquire magazine.

“Every successful artwork is a fluke. It’s very hard to predict or plan. There is an element of mystery to creation, and you have to respect the mystery.”

“The bad thing about being a writer is that you don’t have a job, and the good thing is that you’re never unemployed because you are always speculating. From the time you read the newspaper in the morning to the time you dream at night, it’s all some sort of creative speculation.”

“I don’t care much for the idea of relaxing. I read a lot. I don’t consider that relaxation, I consider that invigoration.”

What a wonderful, wonderful idea these urbancurators had.

Unfortunately, sometimes, I do.

Supposedly, Jackson Pollock once threw a book on Picasso across the kitchen, exclaiming; “Did he miss nothing!?”

Pollock basically started off by painting Picasso-esque figures and then worked over them, obscuring them with more and more lines. One reason I believe Duchamp to be a much more ‘important’ artist than Picasso. Duchamp declared everyday objects he put in a gallery to be works of art simply because he was an artist. I don’t care how many lines you have, there’s no covering up that! Ever since someone asked the Average Joe to see more than a single message in an image there’s been conceptual art, however not until Duchamp was conceptualism presented and indeed handed to the general public. Warhol told us we’d be famous; Duchamp made each and every one of us artists.

However, in transfering the role of the artist to the viewer, he also signalled conceptualism’s instant demise in the great canon of Art, no?

Chip upper lip, old boy.

I’ve been seeing London through foriegn spectacles these past few weeks and I’m all the better for it. Playing tourguide to Yanks and Aussies. I’m warming to it; cheese and wine in cellars, playing cards with Satan in Lynchian Wapping (before he tried to make out with me), drinking in an oppulent backstage boudoir, flicking through porn over coffee, reading some of Beckham’s early handwritten correspondance (“I just got my first wage packet. I got £120 …”), drinking in Britain’s tiniest snug bar, seeing horror at the theatre, fairies under London Bridge, eating Okonomi, fish curry, jam rolly polly & custard, venison pie, Welsh cakes, yuzu chocolate truffles and blowing over £100 across Turnmills and the Ministry of Sound (though upon exiting at 5.30am I won the MOS entrance fee back on a scratchcard).

I also bumped into someone in the National Portrait Gallery who I’d met at The Met in NY back in November ‘05 (art geeks tend to travel in small, albeit international, circles). Leading from our brief conversation I was inspired to get back into practical fine art and also dip into ‘art business’. So I’ll be looking into part time courses … and what to do/where to live in 2006! Oh, and I might get round to finding out where in the world half of my genes come from.

“I love the sea, and I love England as long as you can see the edge of it”. AA Gill (author, ‘This Angry Isle’).

And his words on what Churchill referred to as ‘old friends’ – the only food stuffs exempt from WWII rationing: “Fish and chips is … generally better remembered than eaten. It’s a totem of Englishness, a thing that is more than mere dinner and rather less than actual food. … Fish and chips is a silent meal. You shouldn’t talk and eat. It is a race against falling temperature. You need to be perfectly concentrated, constantly blowing and sucking, wolfing with bared teeth and flared nostrils”.

Whilst on a trashy British food note, I found this in a free mag in a bar in Paris (selling wonderful glasses of house red for just £1.20!), extholing the marvels of the English fry-up or, Brunch A L’Anglaise; “Enfin une idee originale pour bruncher a PAris! Sur de grandes tables facon cantine, vivez une experience culinaire rare: beans, jacket potatoes, sausages et bacon, assortis de scrambled eggs, scones, blueberries et delicieuses doucers a l’anglaise, vous reprendrez bien une tasse de the?” If you couldn’t translate that, the accompanying image was pretty self explanatory:

They weren’t kidding when they said ‘une experience culinaire rare’.

Something a little more confusing, is just what goes on at this little bar in the backwater town of Commercy in central France. Sexy drink party and an avalanche of T-shirts? Sounds like heaven. Checkout the flyer:

I also managed to catch the ‘Velasquez’/'Tim Gardner’ shows at the NG, the ‘Photographic Portrait Prize’ at the NPG, the ‘Fischli & Weiss’/'David Smith’ shows at TM and ‘Bound For Glory’ at The Photographers’ Gallery.

TV on the Radio.

So your plane crashes on a beautiful island. Strange things start happening. There’s a hot chick. And a polar bear. You walk through the jungle and find a clearing. There’re mud huts, and a cheap bar in the far right hand corner. And more polar bears, standing round in a circle. In the middle of the circle a guy stands up. He’s in a zombie-like trance, eyes rolled back into his head. Pure, brilliant white eyes. A scratching electronic beat starts up. The polar bears nod their heads in time to the beat. There’s a guy facing away from the polar bears, bass over his shoulder, fingers on dials. The beat morphs into a metalic hum. Another guy with an enormous beard and afro that balloons his head to about five times its normal size steps up to a mike and deeply muses; “All your dreams are oooover now”. The zombie jumps up and down erratically, arms flicking like a broken perpetual motion machine. Fingers pointing. “All your dreams are oooover now”. Your conscious awareness kicks in, and you’re in a crowd in ULU, dancing like you didn’t know it. Which you didn’t. In fact, you don’t know what’s going on. Three minutes ago ‘TV on the Radio’ followed their Celebration support (who I want to play at my wedding) on stage and announced that in 5 minutes madness would ensue. Seems it kicked in early. I’m not sure how long the gig lasted, or what anyone else in that room was doing, but I was hypnotised. If you’ve heard their albums, you haven’t heard TVOTR. They’re recordings. Live these guys are the closest thing you can get to jazz, with a (sometimes) conventional band setup and, well, no jazz. Sometime during the set the band doubled in size, EVERYONE drummed, the drummer took up guitar, the singer a megaphone and two mics, the dude with the afro spoke of black magic and the guitarist beat-boxed through their love song. They played all the tracks I’d hoped they would. The singer sung like Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin and Johnny Rotten. He whistled and hollared and shouted and screamed and whispered and breathed. Half the crowd had bought tickets after reading the religiously reverential revues in TimeOut. They seemed to regret paying a babysitter for the night. They weren’t dancing. Fuck ‘em. I had a blast.

I have a favorite place in London now. Brompton Cemetary. I spent ages in there the day I went to a museums trade show in Earl’s Court. If you use Google earth, you can download the placemarker here. In nice weather the birds are singing, the squirrels are up to all sorts of mischief, and some of the gravestone carving is quite superb. I got a great idea for a business card from one of them. Walking through there reminds me of massive ruins like Pompeii. And there’s not a soul (hehe) to be seen. Which is rather rare in London.

Caught ‘Americans in Paris’ at the National (stunning furniture … and cigarettes). Also on the agenda after work was the ‘Cybersonica’ show at The Vinyl Factory. A show of crazy sound producing machines by M.A students. Drawing on a screen using the pitch and tone in your voice, a motion-activated device that taps the walls of the stairwell as you walk down it, a machine that altered Van Halen’s ‘Jump’ or Beethoven’s 9th in line with the scanned, torn edges of your show ticket, headphones that pickup the electrostatic waves given off by office tube lights – one of the best – affords you the ability to physically experience an otherwise invisible force that surrounds you everyday. “Shadow Monsters” made sounds that related to the movement of the shadow puppets you made with your hands, and added spikes, teeth, hair and dendrils to your appendages in real time. Other stuff that I find it hard to describe if I have a pad and paper infront of me, let alone in words. But all very cool. Today’s the last day of the show. Not a bad week.

Monkey, monkey, standing there – in your purple underwear.

That’ll be LOMO-love, under a tree. It’s a tough love. I got showered with seeds on my lunch break.
I was going up the stairs at Leicester Sqr, behind a binman and his see-through bin bag had three, count ‘em, three spring rolls in it. Got me thinking. How many uneaten, giant spring rolls do you think are lying around on the London Underground at any one time? I reckon a lot.
I’ve been watching a lot of downloaded TV these past few weeks; LOST, Twin Peaks, Peep Show and Family Guy. Dark. Waiting on Green Wing and The Cremaster Cycle. And spying the producer-bashing out-takes to Bourdain’s new show No Reservations here. The new Chilis album is cool. Got a post-sold-out ticket to TV On The Radio on Monday and one to the DJ Spooky live-soundtracked abstract docu-flaneury “Berlin” at Tate Modern next week. Complete with beanbags.
Caught the Mary Cassatt prints show at the National Gallery. Like looking at a Matisse and seeing History change on the canvas as your eye travels from left to right and top to bottom; these bits of paper show someone trying to adapt an immediate and alien (Eastern) use of line, perspective and composition. The themes and materials are her norm, yet cut with single black, free-flowing lines; intersecting – yet not seperating – the flatterned patterns on the the walls and upholstery. Close-by is The Photographer’s Gallery, with a charming and heart-felt Asako Narahashi show. This is right up my alley. An ‘everyfamily’. Snapshots of bins, eyelashes, candles, toddlers on window sills, sandals, dying relatives, dead birds, birdsongs. A universal snapshot diary. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in Japan, yet Asako showed me that really, it’s no different to living right here, now.
Been hanging out with my lil’ 2yr-old nephew. He calls me “Uncle Ick” (after my sis – I’m ‘Ick’ for Ickle brother) and throws the horns at cameras (photo to come shortly). My little rock ‘n’ roll nephew. He shouts “Up, UP!” when he hears my name back home in Toronto (I lift him up higher than anyone else, evidently) and he shouts with glee when he sees the Dim Sum arrive. We’re bringing him up well.
I’m now the proud owner of a marshmallow gun, and halfway through The Pickwick Papers.
I’m not sure I can condense what’s been happening at work into a blog entry, but times are busy, exciting, interesting and scary. Lots of potential. I might have to talk my way into keeping my job. I think I’ve got it covered. I’ve got lots of good ideas.

“Why don’t they kiss? How come they have to run around the tree?” Anthony Bourdain on Bollywood.

Benches are for public use. Please keep off the carpet.

I shot these pidgeons outside Kensington Palace.
Have you heard? I’m managing a gallery listings website. It just went Beta too early, and I now spend most of my working life troubleshooting it (testing a program is sometimes refered to as ‘killing’ it, this was more like poking roadkill with a stick). I went to a birthday party as a school boy – muddy knees, grass stains ‘n’ all – last weekend, and cuaght up on culture this weekend. Saturday was hardcore highbrow – the Dan Flavin retrospective followed by the heavyweight Albers/Moholy-Nagy and the Kippenberger (that raised a smile). The Albers show was great for demosntrating how the Bauhaus/Constructivist vocabulary, undiluted, still sells records even today (Franz Ferdinand anyone?). For geeks like me Alber’s hand drawn universal typefaces are a must, as is his ‘Light Prop for an Electric Stage’ working alongside the film he made of it – an abstract light painting that constantly evolves. Its a shame the Flavin show’s finished now, as it would be great for folks to walk to the Hayward having just seen Alber’s ‘Homage to a Square’ series: an engaging lesson in perception. Afterwards braised eel and crispy pork at my favorite dirt cheap chinese kept me engaged long enough to keep me from bashing the halfwit next to me with my teapot.
I got a hot tip off that there was a Kinsey show in town so I raced to Shoreditch today to stomach the local urbanites and and their fare at the market, polish off a lovely (though undersized) sausage and mash at the imaginatively titled S+M Cafe, before being, well, disappointed, really, by the ‘Enviromethodology’ show at the old Truman Brewery. It may have been because two fucking middle aged media-whores bought the piece I was eyeing up AS I GOT MY CARD OUT OF MY WALLET. Or because he could have given so-god-damn-much-more. This is not a lot to ask from a guy who has been writing on walls and spraying massive, multi-coloured murals around L.A., SF et al for decades – and what is there to show that he was in London? A scribble on a “All of the artwork is for sale” card. The corner of the space was nicely dealt with – a pile of street detritus piled up against a 5x lifesize figure holding a sign, but the rest of the space felt more like a postcard rack in a gallery shop. Like, “This is Kinsey – look what he can be! Now kindly buy a postcard”. I perked up when it occured to me that he may have drilled the 10ft diameter holes in the ceiling but alas, no. Moving backwards by a couple of decades was not what I was expecting from the man who had the forsight to, possibly most effectively, bring a street-sensibility to the corporate marketing machine with Blk/Mrkt. I’d push the boat out and say if it wasn’t for Kinsey, Amnesty International wouldn’t be stenciling the Czech Republic as we speak (their new ‘Child Soldier Awareness’ campaign).
[http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=19#video] The future of graffiti?
My friends in New York – Come on guys, this is happening in Williamsburg! Down the road from Galapagos? Send me a photo, please!