Thursday, June 22, 2006
Black Eye
I am currently recovering from a violent assault and robbery. I was mugged by 2 boys who took phone and they wanted to steal my back-pack. A struggle ensued but they soon realised I wasn’t going to let go of my back-pack, no matter how many times they stamped on my head.
The Police found a young man matching the description myself and witnesses gave of the more violent of the 2 boys. I have given statements to the police but will have to wait and see if they can pin it on him. The took my DNA which they are going to try and match to his trainers.
I had to be treated for head injuries, I ache a lot and don’t look too pretty, but I am going to be Ok. However I am even more behind with work than I was before, for which I apologise.
The Police found a young man matching the description myself and witnesses gave of the more violent of the 2 boys. I have given statements to the police but will have to wait and see if they can pin it on him. The took my DNA which they are going to try and match to his trainers.
I had to be treated for head injuries, I ache a lot and don’t look too pretty, but I am going to be Ok. However I am even more behind with work than I was before, for which I apologise.
Whitstable Beinnale
These notes should have been pasted up a few days ago, but due to an unpleasant incident last week my schedule is somewhat behind.
Here some notes I made during my stay in Whitstable for the Biennale. It was great fun and I got to camp by the beach for a week and worked with artist Gary Stevens. Also got to hang out in pubs with a few of my heroes.
Gary was working with a group of students including myself on a performance called ‘Thought Bubble’. During the rehearsals for the performance we were improvising various everyday activities and we found some cleaning equipment in a cupboard that we thought might make useful props. Gary said this was a good idea but insisted that the women did not do the hovering because this might make the performance look like a statement on gender and he didn’t want this. On the way to the chip shop at lunchtime I tried to quiz him on his attitudes. I wanted to know how he avoided association with body politics which had become such an issue for myself. Pheobe, who also part of our performance group and was on the way to the chip shop concurred, saying that when she had done her own performances she had been accused of being a feminist when it was not her intention. Gary replied that he tended to work in mixed groups to avoided any specific body type coming to the fore.
Even when Gary performs on his own he is very sensitive of these things, as I said earlier it is very hard to describe his performances and this also means it is very hard to find specific statements in his work. During my our rehearsals Gary directed things so a performance happened but no real focus on any moment or individual could be found within it and therefore no firm conclusion could be drawn. There were no grand statements, things just going on.
I learnt a lot from Gary in how he creates his performances by evolving structures in which improvisations can take place using what is available to him.
The theme of the Biennale was Art and Comedy and I got a chance to a symposium on Art and Comedy. It was a strange affair, which highlighted the fact that theorising about comedy is not actually very funny. You can either not think too much about it, or think too much about things and not be very funny. Gary Stevens made a good point that art audiences think too much about things and don’t know how to take a joke. The reverse is also true, that comedy audiences only want to be entertained and don’t think too much about anything else.
The first speaker at the symposium was a stand-up comedian named Adam Bloom who was very funny even though it was clear he didn’t know what he was supposed to talking about. He said that “The object of stand-up comedy is to make an audience laugh”. Perhaps this is were art maybe has something to offer because though it can make people laugh, it doesn’t have to do just that, it can do many other things too.
Half way through the lecture Bob & Roberta Smith asked Adam Bloom if he had a mental health problems. The artist with the ginger beard elaborated on this and explained that most great comedians had suffered manic depression, such as Spike Milligan, Tony Hancock, Peter Cook and many others. Adam Bloom replied that he didn’t really have mental health problem and neither did many of he comedian friend, expect one who was in rehab for some drink problems.
At the end of the Art and Comedy Symposium Bob & Roberta Smith took everyone down to the harbour to float concrete boats on the sea. However the joke went terribly wrong because the tide was out and there was no sea, just some mud which nobody really had suitable footwear to wade through.
While I was in Whitstable also I ran into the poet John Hegley in a pub and I had a conversation with him about how great artists, musicians and poets die young. He was not comfortable with this idea because he was getting on a bit now and wasn’t dead which suggested he wasn’t held in such high regard where as I was only 26 and still had a chance of being great. I realised I was also not too keen on the idea of being dead soon. Am planning to do a show with John Hegley at the Poetry Café in July which is quite an exciting honour.
Here some notes I made during my stay in Whitstable for the Biennale. It was great fun and I got to camp by the beach for a week and worked with artist Gary Stevens. Also got to hang out in pubs with a few of my heroes.
Gary was working with a group of students including myself on a performance called ‘Thought Bubble’. During the rehearsals for the performance we were improvising various everyday activities and we found some cleaning equipment in a cupboard that we thought might make useful props. Gary said this was a good idea but insisted that the women did not do the hovering because this might make the performance look like a statement on gender and he didn’t want this. On the way to the chip shop at lunchtime I tried to quiz him on his attitudes. I wanted to know how he avoided association with body politics which had become such an issue for myself. Pheobe, who also part of our performance group and was on the way to the chip shop concurred, saying that when she had done her own performances she had been accused of being a feminist when it was not her intention. Gary replied that he tended to work in mixed groups to avoided any specific body type coming to the fore.
Even when Gary performs on his own he is very sensitive of these things, as I said earlier it is very hard to describe his performances and this also means it is very hard to find specific statements in his work. During my our rehearsals Gary directed things so a performance happened but no real focus on any moment or individual could be found within it and therefore no firm conclusion could be drawn. There were no grand statements, things just going on.
I learnt a lot from Gary in how he creates his performances by evolving structures in which improvisations can take place using what is available to him.
The theme of the Biennale was Art and Comedy and I got a chance to a symposium on Art and Comedy. It was a strange affair, which highlighted the fact that theorising about comedy is not actually very funny. You can either not think too much about it, or think too much about things and not be very funny. Gary Stevens made a good point that art audiences think too much about things and don’t know how to take a joke. The reverse is also true, that comedy audiences only want to be entertained and don’t think too much about anything else.
The first speaker at the symposium was a stand-up comedian named Adam Bloom who was very funny even though it was clear he didn’t know what he was supposed to talking about. He said that “The object of stand-up comedy is to make an audience laugh”. Perhaps this is were art maybe has something to offer because though it can make people laugh, it doesn’t have to do just that, it can do many other things too.
Half way through the lecture Bob & Roberta Smith asked Adam Bloom if he had a mental health problems. The artist with the ginger beard elaborated on this and explained that most great comedians had suffered manic depression, such as Spike Milligan, Tony Hancock, Peter Cook and many others. Adam Bloom replied that he didn’t really have mental health problem and neither did many of he comedian friend, expect one who was in rehab for some drink problems.
At the end of the Art and Comedy Symposium Bob & Roberta Smith took everyone down to the harbour to float concrete boats on the sea. However the joke went terribly wrong because the tide was out and there was no sea, just some mud which nobody really had suitable footwear to wade through.
While I was in Whitstable also I ran into the poet John Hegley in a pub and I had a conversation with him about how great artists, musicians and poets die young. He was not comfortable with this idea because he was getting on a bit now and wasn’t dead which suggested he wasn’t held in such high regard where as I was only 26 and still had a chance of being great. I realised I was also not too keen on the idea of being dead soon. Am planning to do a show with John Hegley at the Poetry Café in July which is quite an exciting honour.
Monday, June 12, 2006
We’re fuckin’ with yer Power-Knowledge
The OUTCIDER ART symposium was in interesting experience. My brother Theo had prepared a short presentation about Foucault’s ideas of radical politics and how they could be applied to art making. I don’t really have time to fully explain the concept here which involved the realisation that we are controlled by knowledge because we understand everything by referring to knowledge, but if I get some time I will transcribe some extracts or make some audio samples for the website. The lecture was mostly attended by Goldsmiths Fine art post graduates, however Theo the lecturer was still an undergraduate. This caused a mix of responses, those who found it funny and those who were not amused. We had been hoping that the whole thing would be light weight knock about with a few stupid songs. Goldsmith’s Fine Art department has a reputation for super criticality and Theo was quickly faltered by a series of difficult questions which he had trouble answering because he had not really done as much reading and the discussion soon turned into a more uncomfortably conventional debate on art philosophy. However the songs seemed to go down well despite the fact we never got around to rehearsing them and Sam Curtis rounded the event off with a game he had devised about Foucault’s love spud.
One of the theories Theo presented was that once the people are prepared to die then a government can not threaten people with death and no longer has any power. Theo applied this Theory to art and suggested that though the art institution can readily threaten artists with death, it can threaten to say that their artwork is not good enough; therefore Theo proposed that the institution would have no control over an artist if they were prepared to make crap work (I was held up as the main example for the justification of failure). This seems like a suitable justification for the performative failure of the event… however this theory of failure was also picked to pieces by the audience.
It was a nice little escapade into improvised performance and failure and we learned a lesson or two even if it wasn’t the one Theo was teaching.
Watch the video :
Just got back from Whitstable Biennale where I was working with a group of artist under the direction of Gary Stevens. Tired and sun burnt, but we all had a great time and I will type up my notes from the event over the next few days.
One of the theories Theo presented was that once the people are prepared to die then a government can not threaten people with death and no longer has any power. Theo applied this Theory to art and suggested that though the art institution can readily threaten artists with death, it can threaten to say that their artwork is not good enough; therefore Theo proposed that the institution would have no control over an artist if they were prepared to make crap work (I was held up as the main example for the justification of failure). This seems like a suitable justification for the performative failure of the event… however this theory of failure was also picked to pieces by the audience.
It was a nice little escapade into improvised performance and failure and we learned a lesson or two even if it wasn’t the one Theo was teaching.
Watch the video :
Just got back from Whitstable Biennale where I was working with a group of artist under the direction of Gary Stevens. Tired and sun burnt, but we all had a great time and I will type up my notes from the event over the next few days.
