| Contents
Editorial
All Messed Up
William Clark
Not so groovey
William Clark
Playing with Fire
Marshall Anderson
Comic and Zine Reviews
Mark Pawson
Who's Afraid of
Film & Video in Scotland
Ann Vance
supplement
Socially Engaged Practice Forum
Dialogical Aesthetics:A Critical
Framework for Littoral Art
Grant Kester
Living in the Margin
David Appleman
Somebody's Falling
Jeremy Akerman
Tales of the Great
Unwashed
Ian Brotherhood
Signs of the Times
Robin Ramsay
Something for Nothing?
Brighid Lowe
_____________________________________
Don't care in
the community
A metaphor: At a ceremony concocted
by the Scottish Media Group (a local monopoly) and a Swiss Bank, Scotland's
first "politician of the year" was announced together with further endless
awards for all the new politicians. The same day a conference was held
by a new organisation set up in March, the Scottish Civic Forum "in the
wake of it being awarded £300,000 by the Scottish Executive." The
Forum will "encourage participation in the work of the Scottish Executive."
Its funding has been secured for three years. Its convener (a known hustler)
said "this is a step forward for making a difference to Scottish Government."
Although they do not know what they will do they've got the money to do
it. Organisations which question the Scottish Executive--and indeed their
relationship with Swiss banks and the media--receive no awards.
State support, in its broadest sense,
continues to be systematically politically allocated. This is disguised
in political language which mimicks that of self-empowerment groups. The
emphasis on individual 'self-help' puts the accent on the guilt of individual
failure and serves to relinquish the State of any culpability. As one of
our writers notes: mental handicap is now termed " learning disabilities",
largely because of the expediency of care in the community. Within bureaucratic
culture the shutters come down on any reality --any potential heresay--which
deviates from the culture imposed from above.
Public sector funding is administered
by people who have conditioned themselves to think that culture is a game:
they watch themselves lose their soul as petty bureaucrats obstruct and
fabricate conditions. In the arts inventing priorities has become inventing
basic exclusions. This year's qualifications are next year's disqualifications.
There is no leadership from these organisations, there is no direction.
Tough on Art -- Tough on the Causes
of Art
The political fixation with the
designated look, or designed reception of policy is discredited. The UK
government is set to sustain its concern with 'correctional facilities'
through its various obliging 'arms length' arts bureaucracies. Here this
self-help goes as far as doing-in what actually exists on the ground and
replacing it with a speculative clientele bidding. The effect on artists
and their practices as directed through the mechanisms of the public funding
system, and more importantly the communities and groups that are set to
be targeted, has become an attack on freedom of expression. There are too
many voices around and some of them are saying the wrong things for those
who seek to imprison the mind.
The zombification will come in handy.
We are being prepared--well bound and gagged--for the type of art which will
inhabit the galleries of the future. Most big cities are having their big
art spaces done up with Lottery money and if they are compliant enough...
as one reader writes:
"The Dome should be seen a forebear
of what we have to look forward to: nothing less than the monumental re-embodiment
of the State, a theme park to Civic pomposity. It is time for artists,
individually and through their organisations to get together and attack
the cowardice of the Arts Councils. Or you can apply for some money. That's
really what they are trying to make people think, that there is no sense
that you can influence policy, simply subserviently trail their money."
The government have their attempts
to control culture: their efforts are pathetic and deplorable. The meaning
of life is not contained within a government edict or a grant. Why should
we tolerate facile categorical imperatives imposed on freedom of expression,
they are humiliating and degrading--the end product of years of materialistic
priorities with entirely predictable inhuman outcomes. You can get a glimpse
of another time (before all those years of wallowing in the mire of sheer
ideological manipulation of the arts) by looking at what Roy Jenkins wrote
in the early '60s:
"First there is the need for the
State to do less to restrict personal freedom. Secondly there is the need
for the State to do more to encourage the arts, to create towns which are
worth living in, and to preserve a countryside which is worth looking at.
Thirdly there is the need independently of the State to create a climate
of opinion which is favourable to gaiety, tolerance, and beauty, and unfavourable
to puritanical restriction, to petty-minded disapproval, to hypocrisy and
to a dreary, ugly pattern of life. A determined drive in these three directions
would do as much to promote human happiness than all the 'political' legislation
which any government is likely to introduce... In the long run these things
will be more important than even the most perfect of economic policies."
The Labour Case (London, Penguin 1959)
Written some forty years ago (expressing
basic liberal attitudes) this stands as an indictment on the present state
of affairs. What progress has been made when people had greater freedom
in the past? The Welfare State was set up when Britain was at its poorest,
and owed millions, after a war which almost destroyed the country. What
existed then was the political will. Today affluence is everywhere yet
we are told we have less money. The result of all this is a worse quality
of life; the demise of the public sphere altogether. Politics becomes deals
done in a back room.
It is one thing to blame the ongoing
crimes of bureaucracy on one or two stupid individuals who make up the
rules as they go along; it is another to go along with it.
That which is termed responsible:
official 'Culture', and exposure to it has been routinely represented as
having a positive, corrective influence. Unfortunately today there is still
scant questioning, let alone discussion, of what and who compete to constitute
'acceptable' culture, and what exactly are its ideological values.
There is going to be a history of
this period and someone is going to write it. Who writes history has always
been the privilege of the victor but there can never be only one voice.
For if there is only one voice what need have we of truth.
An example of how the arts are
covered in Scotland
Pathetic non-stories, inflammatory
gibberish and a lascivious pouring over of weird fantasies are the hall-mark
of most tabloid press attempts to cover the arts.
The Scottish Media Group decided
in its Glasgow Evening Times to allege on its front cover that Lynn Ramsay's
film Ratcatcher was an "under-age sex movie". Ratcatcher (a work drawing
on many Scottish, UK and European film traditions) opened the Edinburgh
Film Festival. Instead of offering appreciation and encouragement to view
the work Scottish Media Group contrived a mindlessly salacious headline
implicating Lord Provost (Scotland's equivalent of a Mayor), Pat Lally,
his image appears on a TV set in the film.
Thus the headline "Pat in under
age sex movie" was part of an "exclusive" story dubiously written by Andy
Dougan. Above the headline is a picture of a "Bonnie Babies" winner and
below it is an advert for the "Ultimate Kids Play Area". News vendors were
giving away a free bar of chocolate with the paper. Underneath the story
on page four is one headlined "Boy's club sex fiend drops appeal". It is
a fairly standard example of how sick and pathetic coverage of the arts
has been in Scotland for as long as anyone can remember. It is also an
example of the Scottish Media Group's cultivation of an obsession with
child pornography.
The sub headings within the story
are "Lally's movie shocker" and "indecent". The story was a bizarre contrivance
made up to coincide with the film's premiere which opened the Edinburgh
Film Festival a few days later. It is hard to imagine why Dougan provides
such statements as: "The most explicit is one in which she frolics in a
bath with a 12-year old ..." One paragraph (in bold italics) is little
more than a parade of words such as full-frontal, young girl, topless.
The only point of the article apart from Dougan's own distorted self-indulgence
is to try to create/ test the waters for some kind of 'public outcry'.
There is a spurious quote from a
spokesman (sic) for the British Board of Film Classification who says:
"We cannot comment on a film before we have seen it. But we would always
look very closely at any film which involves children in such scenes."
[emphasis added] You can almost picture Dougan thinking "that'll do."
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All Messed Up
William Clark
All Dressed Up (the Sixties and
the Counterculture)
Jonathon Green
ISBN 0 - 7126-6523 - 4, £12.50
(Paperback 482 pages)
Well he says it himself even in the
introduction:
"...the Sixties have joined those
other recent decades over which the survivors, decades past their prime,
are scrapping like mangy mongrels, each determining to impose their own,
sometimes self-serving vision upon history."
And, to echo the unoriginality by
quoting Ecclesiasties, he even provides a quick review:
"Whatever the phenomenon known as
the Sixties may have been, and however much that era would turn out to
change the world in general and Britain in particular, there was, as ever,
not that much new under the sun."
This particular mangy mongrel, Jonathon
Green's knowledge of "the 60s counter-culture" was mostly Oxford University,
then a very brief time with the British version of Rolling Stone magazine
in the 70s, (bankrolled by Mick Jagger and based in the luxurious setting
of Hanover Square). When all that collapsed a few friends moved down to
Portobello Road and started the whole process of making an underground
magazine/smoking dope all over again. Then the magazine produced there
collapsed, because the people behind it got more into making money out
of listings magazines. Green actually stopped someone beating up Richard
Branson and made minor contributions to Oz and International Times (IT)
as they went into decline. He is thought of as representing the less political,
more hedonistic end of hippydom.1 This does
not excuse his sarcastic dismissals of those who did actually try in their
daily lives to counter what they took to be repressive aspects of mainstream
culture.
When suggesting some antecedents
of "the sixties," he demonstrates his class bias:
"For the Teds, less cerebral than
those who followed them, it was a gut reaction to the denial of free choice.
Unimpressed by education, unlikely to transcend the low-grade jobs for
which they were destined, they sought release in the exploitation of their
leisure time."
He also believes the Teds "expanded
into the metropolis and thence to the provinces...they were, ultimately,
too prole, too mindlessly violent...inarticulate, lashing out at whatever
they saw."
So the book is a familiar collection
of snippets from other books including his previous one, Days in the Life
(Voices from the English Underground). Why it bothered with the "English
Underground" when so many seminal figures (Alexander Trocchi, William Burroughs,
Allen Ginsberg, Tom McGrath and so forth) were not English, one can attribute
to the usual reasons.
Ideas are not limited by geographic
space, but this book would be properly subtitled--the tiny bits of London
counter culture. It is also difficult to say what exactly this adds to
Green's previous book which featured a list of quotes from various middle-class
chums, or indeed what it adds to the bibliography he cites at the end.
Mr Green is also--according to the first page in this book--"England's leading
lexicographer of slang". My opinion is he hasn't got a Scooby. 2
Most people would be better writers
if they were aware of their own bias. Should the 1968 'Night of the Barricades',
with 9 million on strike and most factories occupied have been given as
much attention as the invention of the trouser suit? Its all very well
for Green to say this is a personal account but does that mean bias and
distortions are allowed to come to the fore, is that objective history?
Are not huge gaps in his knowledge revealed?
There are very phoney comparisons
between the 'Angry Brigade' and the IRA:
"...and while the IRA campaigns
that would soon be getting under way in the wake of the renewed 'Troubles'
would be far more spectacular, this outbreak of what looked like a low
intensity urban guerrilla war was disturbing enough."
I don't really understand that,
but he immediately derides the Angry Brigade by saying they had a "Just
William" level of melodrama. There is just no comparison between the two.
The IRA are a highly disciplined and organised army which has held off
the worst the UK armed forces and intelligence agencies has flung at them.
To this day nobody seems to know who the Angry Brigade were or what they
were up to.
There are also problems of reversal
of perspective. During the 'Angry Brigade trial' we are told that the Evening
Standard stated:
"The guerrillas are violent activists
of a revolution comprising, workers, students, trade unionists, homosexuals,
unemployed and women striving for liberation. They are all angry...Whenever
you see a demonstration, whenever you see a queue for strike pay, every
public library with a good stock of socialist literature...anywhere would
be a good place to look. In short there are no telling where they are."
The Angry Brigade should have been
using that as a press release--its better than anything they ever wrote.
Green himself wanted to break into Fleet Street, but couldn't get in, whereas
many of his friends now work in the upper echelons churning out much the
same shite the papers will forever print.3
Many of the later passages (very
little more than a re-hash of previously published writing) run out of
steam or have no focus. Passages on King Mob show him--the greatest lexicographer
in England--with no notion of where the name comes from (the mobile party);
others with no notion of the nature and history of Nihilism, which is simply
used as a pejorative term (he went to Oxford but he hasn't even read The
Devils).
It is difficult not to see King
Mob's exploits as outdone by contemporary comedy:
..."A waterfall in the picturesque
lake district was to be dynamited and the slogan 'Peace in Vietnam' sprayed
on the rubble; Wordsworth's house, a shrine for literary tourists, was
to be blown up; in this case the caption would read 'Coleridge lives..."
And now for something completely
different.
He States on page 286 that after
the police framed the Angry Brigade (AB):
"Within a very few years the police
would be steam-rollering through the trials of a variety of alleged IRA
bombers, using very similar tactics."
This and its extrapolation in the
text is weak writing. If he had read (and not just cited) Tony Bunyan's
"The History and Practice of the Political Police in Britain" he would
know that the Special Branch were originally named the Special Irish Branch.
Trials of Irish political dissent have a long history. The state's perversion
of the course of justice (where and when it was bothered with) with the
fabrication of evidence in political trials did not stem from the 70s,
but can be seen as a direct result of the creation of the Special Branch
(the clampdown on Liberalism and the dawning of the secret state at the
turn of the century). The Special Political Branch was the other name they
tried. 4
"This is not a political trial"
said the Judge in the AB trial and Green thinks he was fair. He could fucking
well afford to be. At the end (250,000 words) of his summing up of the
imaginary conspiracy he directed the jury:
"As long as you know what the agreement
is, then you are a conspirator. You needn't necessarily know your fellow
conspirators, nor need you be always active in the conspiracy. All you
need to know is the agreement. It can be effected by a wink or a nod without
a word being exchanged. It need have no particular time limit, no particular
form, no boundaries."
One can imagine some stoned freak
in the public gallery suddenly leaping up and shouting: "Yeah man--the dude
in the wig's right on--I wanna be a part of that shit--lets do it!" And the
judge's words could by extension be imagined to refer to implementation
of the class system, the old boy network; and they are a great interpretation
of the mood (what it was to be part of) of the counter-culture. But Green
doesn't pick up on any of this--guess why?
He has obviously put a lot of work
into it--but there are just so many annoyances that its strength as a resource
and reminder--in these days when people are falling over themselves to utterly
comply with the dictates of the status quo--of 'utopian thought' is overshadowed.
So many figures such as Arnold Wesker were (and probably still are) derided
for what was utter common sense:
"Centre 42 will be a cultural hub
which, by its approach and work, will destroy the mystique and snobbery
associated with the arts. A place where artists are in control of their
own means of expression and their own channels of distribution; where the
highest standards of professional work will be maintained in an atmosphere
of informality; where the artist is brought into closer contact with his
audience enabling the public to see that artistic activity is a natural
part of their daily lives."
When was the last time you heard
someone talking about de-mystifying the arts in a meaningful way? Due to
reluctance and conservatism on the part of the art elite the project--which
centred on the Roundhouse--did not fully come to fruition... how different
things were in the 60s.
The place was used by IT for an
"All-Night Rave Pop Op Costume Masque Drag Ball Et Al", ten bob on the
door. As with many figures he mentions (coupled here with no analysis of
the event's significance or spontaneity), Green indulges in comments which
are poorly disguised jealousy. Jim Haynes, the organiser of the event is
"some escapee from a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland vehicle", a put down which
steps on the heart of the counter-culture.
His knowledge of art is thin, a
weak point. The Young Contemporaries show of 1961 included such figures
as R.B. Kitaj, Peter Phillips, Patrick Caulfield, Derek Boshier, David
Hockney and Allen Jones. Green in an allusion to how reactionary the response
to new work was cites one critic: "John Russell writing in 1969, who described
Pop art as 'classless commando...directed against the Establishment in
general and the art-Establishment in particular...'" There is no source
mentioned. This is a confused passage. Is Russell writing on the 61 exhibition,
Pop art?
It is important to understand the
hostility that progressive ideas will always receive from the poverty stricken
imagination. These days we have whole bureaucracies devoted to perverting
freedom of expression. If a press release arrived which said that the Arts
Council of England were starting a committee of Pharisees and Sadducees
would anyone notice anything?
With his account of Michael Abdul
Malik (p.298)--who is now considered a disreputable conman5--he
hides his personal involvement and transfers gullibility elsewhere to aid
a process of demonisation:
"The underground press, in particular,
was swamped with pro-Michael pieces. Friends offered a lengthy interview...with
nary a doubting syllable."
No mention anywhere in this book
that he was one of two or three guys working on Friends. This is just very
poor history. A bit dodgy, Johnboy. A big deal is made out of this contact
and promotion of Malik--who is presented here as the first dishonest man
he had ever met.
Now that Malik has been extremely
dead for about 25 years he feels safe to go on at length about how 'liberals'
(i.e. not him) were taken in by the big bogeyman Malik. Putting Colin McInnes
to the fore he scores some points from a distance of 30 years or more.
The passage on Malik gets progressively worse:
"Malik was a creature of the media".
If Green was on Friends when they
did the story then he was probably at the front of the queue boasting about
his paper getting in on it first, until it all turned sour:
"Like every hustler he was an actor,
relying heavily on the credulity of his audience..."
That kind of stuff cuts both ways.
For Green ripping off Notting Hill dope dealers and frightening hippies
who do underground mags are Malik's big crime--he casually mentions he was
hung for murder in Trinidad. Which makes him--to Green's likening--just yet
another lower class demon like those nasty Teddy Boys.
Friends office was on Portobello
Road. At the time Green lived with Rosie Boycott (who later started Spare
Rib and now edits one of the papers frequently cited here as an example
of atrocious journalism) and he subsidised his income producing pornography6.
One would have thought that porn would have been a bigger part of the book,
since it was a big part of the counter culture (then it wasn't, then it
was again in the mid 80s), there is not much left of Oz if you take away
the bare bums. And Green would have as much inside knowledge of it that
he has with the Underground Press.
Notes
1. I draw my remarks on him from
"Underground (The London Alternative Press 1966 - 74), Nigel Fountain,
Comedia, 1988".
2. How one would achieve the status
of "leading lexicographer" (note not even living lexicographer) beats me.
Did they all battle it out in a mud wrestling ring and he knocked out Ambrose
Bierce in a close-run final? The dictionary mind-set--encapsulation and
elocution--in that language is an expression of consciousness--and certainly
when written by one person, propel their makers towards a political orthodoxy,
with its disguised proscriptions and prohibitions. Green has compiled some
five dictionaries, one seems to be a dictionary of 'jargon', another is
a 'Dictionary of Dictionary makers. I suppose it passes the time.
3. He is quoted in Fountain's book
as saying: "my CV--had I had one--would have been completely meaningless
...as far as Fleet Street was concerned I'd never done anything. I was
writing 20,000 words a week for Friends and it was great and it ruined
me for ever, because it ruined me for editing." [emphasis in the original].
4. There is no mention of Time Out's
relation to the Agitprop Collective and the whole area of investigative
journalism which stems from the period. In both the USA and the UK, towards
the end of the '60s and into the early '70s as the counter culture lost
its earlier 'coherence', there was a noticeable move towards underground
newspapers concerning themselves with the issues of particular communities,
both geographically and interest wise. This had happened before, but with
the increased fragmentation of the counter culture, local concerns took
on a new importance. This can be seen more clearly with the rise of community
presses, as collectives formed throughout the UK. Community presses engaged
and mobilised around issues that affected their immediate community, within
a broader web of national and opposition media. Beyond London numerous
magazines/papers came into existence: such as Mole Express, Rap, Grass
Eye, the Liverpool Free Press, the Manchester Free Press, Grapevine, Mother
Grumble, Inside Out, the Aberdeen Free Press and the Brighton Voice. Even
my old home town of Easterhouse had 'The Voice'.
5. Many activists supported Malik
when he went on trial. This is not in Green's book but Darcus Howe stated
in Race Today that Malik "was denounced by the revolutionary movement in
Trinidad. He was lined up with government ministers and he was doing land
deals with them." "Two old members" of It published a souvenir programme
for his hanging.
6. Fountain page 191; "It left Green,
and others, in the curious situation of having to hustle for money from
skin mags. while his one-time partner Rosie Boycott worked for feminism
and Spare Rib, Green hit the typewriter, anonymously, for its diametric
opposite." I don't believe pornography is necessarily the opposite of feminism,
but the situation does resemble BBC 2's recent 'Hippies' programme.
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_____________________________________
Not so groovey,
Bob
William Clark
Groovey Bob (The Life and Times
of Robert Fraser)
Harriet Vyner
Faber & Faber, ISBN 0571196276
(317 pages, £20 hardback)
There is no explanation of who the
people who contribute to this book are--the majority of whom are not that
well known, this is a festschrift, a tribute by pals for other pals.
Robert Fraser was the son of a slightly
loopy banker. He failed at Eton and was thus sent into the King's African
Rifles (a soul destroying combination). He got into the art world by spending
his early days in the US where he visited the Betty Parsons gallery and
took a few notes. The sybaritic pleasures, were all the more tasty for
him when spending other people's money. As he grew sick of NY's early 60s
bondage bars, the idea came to him to start a new gallery in London and
punt fairly established US artists in the UK. A lot of the west coast and
east crowd hadn't then exhibited in Europe.
His father (a Christian Scientist)
offered uselessly lenient advice--and was talked into parting with the cash
for the gallery (an early white cube designed by Cedric Price--who said
he was the ideal client). He did seem to pay the money in those days, a
habit he would grow out of over the years as one turns the pages.
Enjoyment or interest in reading
this book is reliant upon the reader making their own amusement--at the
expense of the parade of various old hippies--but it has none of the art
of epistolary novels like Smollet's Humprey Clinker, although it does have
some connection to Stoker's Dracula. Early indications paint a cute picture
of him as a cross between the Fast Show's Swiss Tony and Rolley Birkin
QC. Later ones are not so funny as he descended into forms of abject depravity,
which would disgust and anger most people: including nights out with Gilbert
and George preying on young boys--or 'chicken' as they liked to call them.
The problem with unleashing a parade
of old roués regaling us with tales of their sad exploits and pathetic
existence--the cast of this book does lean towards Norma Desmond's old card
pals, and I know this is the London art world in all its glory--is that
as we are ultimately invited to smell waft after waft of their own emissions--they
all end up talking about themselves:
"Dave Medalla: there was a Picasso
exhibition at the Tate. I'd been acting pretty funny and got thoroughly
drunk, drinking all this red wine and sherry--I was so young! My uncle,
the ambassador, had taken me along to this big benefit supper. They wanted
to invoke Spain with flamenco dancers, so I jumped on the table and had
done an odd version of Flamenco. Robert had really loved it! he and Sir
Roland Penrose and his wife, the photographer Lee Miller. So I was just
zonked out of my head, that's all I remember."
That one gets worse--it's all just
such blundering bathos:
"Anita Pallenberg:...Whether the
drugs has anything to do with it I don't know".
"Jim Dine: I thought his views of
art were great, although I was never very clear what they were."
The period is thought of as one
of a lowering of class values--and Fraser is presented as an example of
this. The liberation was exclusive--reinforcing aristocratic values albeit
those of the Hell fire club.1
When Fraser's gallery closed down
as he awaited trial, a group of his artists got together in support to
stage an exhibition; and to bitch about not being paid. This is Richard
Hamilton (one fairly sensible voice throughout) talking to the Press (at
one point I thought it was on the invite):
"We are not going to have any kind
of statement sympathising with his habits. A number of artists have suffered
materially at his hands over the last year or so. Some of the exhibitors
have sworn never to show in the place again..."
Fraser influenced the cover of Sgt.
Pepper and Peter Blake's contributions tend towards telling us he is still
pissed off about not getting paid royalties which he was stupid enough
not to bother to negotiate properly at the time. Also it still rankles
him that it came out looking like a collage rather than a photograph of
a full size set. More than thirty years later he's still counting up imaginary
sums of money in his head like some Beckett character.
The author Harriet Vyner had a tenuous
alchohol relationship with Fraser and makes the pretty hopeless admission
that:
"He didn't reminisce at all or talk
in depth about anything, but when I was with him there was an atmosphere
of glamour."
Right. And that through the haze
of booze has qualified her to lash this together.
The book has very little to offer
on Fraser and the 'Railing Stains' (as he no doubt referred to them) arrest
and subsequent trial2, it repeats chunks of
previous books, such as that of the Stone's em ...Substance Technician,
Spanish Tony. This is Keith Richard's memory of events:
"When you're on an acid you take
things in a different way...There's a great thundering at the door and
we're all relaxing in front of a big raring fire. George Harrison had just
only left. I think they were waiting for him to leave. It was some tip-off
from a chauffeur, a newspaper, shabby stuff.
Knock at the door. And we looked
through the window. There's all these little people, wearing the same clothes!
We took it with a sense of bemusement: 'Oh, do come in.' Then they read
the warrant. 'Yes, that's fine, OK, please do look around.'"
There are one or two passages which
are mildly related to the times, mildly informative if you flick around
and compare things. Malcolm McLaren after noting that it was Fraser who
encouraged the V&A to collect Punk memorabilia talks of the 80s:
"High culture was about to become
low culture. I think by the eighties it was ...if it wasn't a product that
was useful, it wasn't worth being on the block. That was the Thatcherite
philosophy or, in fact dare I say it, a fucking mandate. Suddenly art schools
were being closed down, suddenly you couldn't get grants to go to art schools.
You know, what's the point of studying art if you can't use it to get a
job? I could see that was having an effect. Bob was part of an old era
that was not wanted on location any more."
This comes a page after testimony
by the man running the system who obviously is no judge of character, old
mendacity himself:
"Lord Palumbo: I trusted him because
he was my friend, always someone I could talk to, to define/refine my own
tastes. He was wonderful from that point of view. He was ideal. If you
think of gallery owners of today, good though some of them are, none of
them have his taste, his eye, his instinct and ability to spot a trend
or a talent ten to fifteen years in advance of its time."
The UK didn't produce a really good
writer on, and who was part, of the counter-culture of the 60s (if it exists
I'd like to read it). Not someone who truly remained an outlaw. Some who
should reflect on the past are reluctant to be seen 're-living the past'
as if that was a sufficient definition of history.
Notes
1. Apologies to The Club, which
never really called itself the Hell-Fire Club. Its founder, Sir Francis
Dashwood termed it 'The Knights of St. Francis of Wycombe', or 'The Monks
of Medmenham', but seems to have attracted the 'Hell-Fire' label through
the organisation's reputation, echoing that of earlier groups. They were
a small group of selected members: Dashwood--a Member of Parliament being
the leader. Other members included Lord Sandwich (who at one point commanded
the Royal Navy), the politician John Wilkes, William Hogarth and poets
Charles Churchill, Paul Whitehead and Robert Lloyd. Benjamin Franklin doesn't
seem to have been at the core of any 'Hell-Fire' activities, despite the
more spurious books written about the Club. The current Sir Francis quotes
John Wilkes describing the group:
"A set of worthy, jolly fellows,
happy disciples of Venus and Bacchus, got occasionally together to celebrate
woman in wine and to give more zest to the festive meeting, they plucked
every luxurious idea from the ancients and enriched their own modern pleasures
with the tradition of classic luxury".
The Hell-Fire Club's Sir Francis
was also founder of the Dilettanti Society.
I draw these remarks mostly from
the wonderful Irish electronic magazine Blather devoted to the spirit of
Flann O'Brien.
2. Although some points (such as
the presence of all the Beatles) are disputed, there is an interesting
account of the punitive use of drug busts against the 'rock elite' and
the general development of drugs policy, in Steve Abrams "Hashish Fudge,
The Times Advertisement and the Wooten Report" (7 April 1993) which is
available on the net:
"The News of the World replied
to the article in the People by accusing the Rolling Stones of abusing
drugs. (February 3rd) The same night Mick Jagger appeared with Hogg on
the Eamon Andrews talk show. Jagger told Hogg that he too had been to university,
and seemed to get the better of him. Then, I thought, he got above himself
and announced, impulsively, that he would sue the News of the World for
libel. The newspaper panicked and went to the Scotland Yard Drug Squad.
The head of the Drug Squad, Chief Inspector Lynch later told me that he
refused to act. He said that he was not expected to stamp out cannabis,
but to keep its use under control. If he arrested Mick Jagger every lad
in the country would want to try some pot. He was, after all, head of the
drug squad, not head of the Lynch mob.
As is well known, the News of
the World had more success with the local police in West Wittering, where
Keith Richards lived. In the subsequent trial, Jagger's counsel, Michael
Havers (later Lord Havers, also Mrs. Thatcher's attorney general in the
"Spycatcher" case) alleged that the newspaper used an agent provocateur.
The arrests were made on February 12th, but the story did not break until
the 19th. Only the Telegraph named those arrested, Keith Richards, charged
with the absolute offence of permitting premises to be used for smoking
cannabis, and Mick Jagger, charged with possession of amphetamine. George
Harrison has said that the Beatles were at the party that was raided, but
the police waited until they left.
Perhaps the beginning of the
entire sequence of events was the arrest on cannabis charges on December
30th 1966 of... John Hopkins (Hoppy), a member of the editorial board of
the underground newspaper "International Times". The "underground" was
a literary and artistic avant garde with a large contingent from Oxford
and Cambridge. Hoppy, for example, was trained as a physicist at Cambridge.
The underground had found an enemy in Lord Goodman, Chairman of the Arts
Council, who went over the head of the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, and
appealed directly to the Director of Public Prosecutions to mount a police
raid on the Indica bookshop where International Times was edited. Goodman
had an animus against (Barry) Miles, co-proprietor of the bookshop with
Peter Asher, and also a member of the Editorial Board of IT. In December
1966 Eric White nominated Miles to serve on the Arts Council Literary Advisory
Panel. Goodman had been infuriated when his appointment was announced to
the press on January 30th, and had him thrown off."
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Playing with Fire
Marshall Anderson
Fire is a potent force. If we are
to believe in genetic memory then fire transports us back to our prehistoric
origin: to feel our primeval hairs stiffen as we are caught off balance
between primitivism and contemporary science and technology. For the artist,
fire is an element that can be immediately evocative and provocative. Its
magic lies in the alchemic fusion between destruction and creation. To
watch the unleashed force of destruction at work is thrilling. It is easy
to understand, therefore, why Stirling Council's Department of Leisure
and Cultural Services, when charged with the task of providing an appropriate
millennial spectacular, opted conveniently for fire to entertain and thrill
its citizens.
The Stirling Observer's : 'Blaze
Of Glory For Millennium' (9/6/99) was the first public announcement of
the Council's intentions that a 60 foot sculpture of Scottish hero Robert
The Bruce would be set ablaze at Stirling Castle as part of a £1.2m
programme of events. The idea had been commissioned from Regular Music,
project manager for Stirling Council's millennium events. Writer Fiona
Wilson explained that the origins of such hero worship-cum-sacrifice stem
from a Spanish tradition of fire festivals. Barry Wright, Regular Music's
impresario, said he hoped the idea would capture the imagination of the
people of Stirling. The Council's Chief Executive, Keith Yates, said the
festival is part of a two year programme aimed at involving everyone in
the marking of a new millennium. Most significantly, he hopes the event
will attract 20,000 visitors to Stirling and generate £2m.
Fire festivals are likely as old
as our upright passage on the Earth and the true origins of many fire customs
are long-since obscured. Such customs are believed to have their beginnings
in heathen times when our ancestors worshipped Bael, the Sun-god and Ashtoreth
(Astarte, Queen of heaven) with certain mystic observances chiefly connected
with fire. In Druidic times, there were four great fire festivals: May
day or Beltane deriving from Bel-tein: Bel in Gaelic signifying sun and
tein, fire; Midsummer's eve; Hallowe'en, 1st of November when all fires
were extinguished apart from those of the Druids, "from whose altars only
the holy fire must be purchased by the householders for a certain price":
and Yule. As soon as administrative hierarchies, whether Druid or town
councils, come onto the scene some sort of financial implication is brought
into play.1
But folklore and customs belong
to the people who have developed them across the centuries. They are kept
alive through practice and commitment. Many of these were founded on basic
superstitions and beliefs that, with the rise of scientific knowledge,
have become out-moded. Who today would pass their children and cattle through
flames to protect them from disease, and who would kindle great bonfires
near to cornfields to secure a blessing on their crops?
Although many such practices have
died out some Scottish communities have kept their fire festivals blazing
and appear not to have relied upon town councils and bureaucracies in order
to do so. The potency of local customs is all the more intense when these
observances are perpetuated by people-power and not imposed by a higher
authority.
A rerun of the Fiona Wilson (11/6/99
Stirling Observer County Issue) piece printed a photograph of the two artists
commissioned to design a sculpture of Robert The Bruce for incineration.
Whatever the citizens of Stirling might have imagined a sculpture fit for
burning might actually look like they were probably surprised to discover
that the maquette for such a 60 ft structure was nothing more than a scale
model of the heroic bronze statue by Pilkington Jackson, which stands proud
on the site of The Battle of Bannockburn. The sculptors, Andrew Scott and
Alison Bell, were possibly breaking copyright laws by so-doing.
Another Observer piece by Fiona
Wilson (16/6/99 Town Issue) told us that there was, "concern amongst residents
who don't agree with the idea of setting a hero on fire." Surprisingly,
the first letters of disapproval did not appear within the Observer's pages,
but in the the (Glasgow) Herald. It may well be the case that if the Observer
is over-critical of Council policy it might lose the privilege of first
option on press releases. The first published letter--demonstrating that
The Herald might have an easier relationship with Stirling Council--came
from Ian Scott, Director of The Saltire Society, who was not only writing
on the behalf of incensed Society members but also personally: "At a time
when we have recovered a measure of control over our own affairs we should
be honouring those like the Bruce who helped create and sustain our identity
as a nation throughout our long history rather than allowing an ignorant
'mob' in Stirling to shame the rest of the country." Scott's prime objection
was a cultural one he told me, not a debate about modern art. There was,
he felt, a debate as to how The Burning should be handled. There is a fine
line, he explained, as to whether a drawing or illuminated image or outline
image created by fireworks might be more acceptable than a well-known embodiment
of a much-loved hero.
The next letter to appear in The
Herald of June 18th was from Alexander Stoddart of Paisley who is an established
Scottish sculptor. His statue of David Hulme was unveiled on Edinburgh's
Royal Mile earlier this year. Entitled, 'Revolting fiesta in Stirling',
Stoddart's letter was a passionate and angry response that might have been
improved by the writer taking more time to consider his argument and moderate
his use of emotive language. For the better informed dilettantes and observers
of the Scottish sculpture scene it is common knowledge that Stoddart had
proposed a large scale sculpture for Stirling Castle esplanade which was
vetoed by The Council in 1997. His letter could easily be interpreted as
coming from someone with an axe to grind. However, it did close by stating
a valid point: "the Bruce statue is more than a logo, or a sodding 'icon',
or any fun thing at all, and is rather a cherished component in a War Memorial,
placed on or near some blood-soaked ground."
The Battle of Bannockburn memorial
stands on a raised area hemmed in on three sides by urban development.
It was the threat of this encroaching housing that compelled a national
committee led by the 10th Earl of Elgin and Kincardineshire, head of the
Bruce family, to raise funds to purchase the 58 acre site in 1930. Arriving
by car one is met by a hideous 1967 visitor centre with 1980s additions
housing a shop of 'tasteful' souvenirs, the Bannockburn Cafe, and an interpretative
display. One then walks a short distance up to the site itself. This is
marked by a mish-mash of ill-placed shapes. The largest of these, a rotunda
approximately 35m in diameter, is composed of a continuous wooden beam
raised about 10 ft off the ground on steel pillars. Two sections of this
circle contain curved walls of ugly, uncompromising concrete blocks cemented
to a height of 8 ft. This 1962 rotunda encloses a flag pole (erected in
1870) flying The Saltire, and a dour-looking stone monument erected by
public subscription and inaugurated by the Merchant Guild of Stirling in
1957. Dwarfed by this arena and standing some 100 meters away is Pilkington
Jackson's larger than life-size bronze of The Bruce on horseback. The statue
is set valiantly high on a 12 ft plinth of granite blocks and stands about
25 ft in height. The whole being unveiled by the Queen on 24/6/64, the
650th anniversary of the battle.
A far more valid, and sustainable,
investment of £1.2m would have been a millennium project to redesign
the site of the Battle of Bannockburn retaining as its centre-piece Pilkington
Jackson's empowering, iconoclastic Bruce. What the sculptor would have
thought about his work being copied in wood at two times original scale
only to be set alight is anyone's guess--he died in 1973.
Andrew Scott of Scott Associates,
a business partnership of six sculptors based in Glasgow's Maryhill, defended
himself against Stoddart's accusations of dishonour and treachery through
The Herald's Letters Page. As protest gathered the Stirling Observer's
editorial made no comment. The front page of 23/6/99 did notice that: 'Outcry
grows over burning of King Bob'. Inside 'Feat of Flames' by Fiona Wilson
stated that the indifferent organisers are backing Bruce's burning. Stirling
Council's leader, Corrie McChord, acknowledged that the project would be
controversial but, "urged people not to be shy." In a display of mock heroics
he declared: "We are entering a new millennium. We have chosen this powerful
figure from our past to lead us into the future. Let's celebrate confidently."
McChord carried on in a more defensive tone. "The cost is certainly not
the £50,000 suggested in the press."
Andrew Scott informed me that his
cost to make the replica Bruce was £45,000 and that once fabrication
costs, labour, engineers' fees etc. had been subtracted the company would
be left with a 'tiny' profit. He implied that the project was being undertaken
for the fun of it and that his company had more important projects on its
books. On the subject of copyright he believed it was The Council's responsibility
to check the legal position as regards copying Jackson's work. In the Observer
of 23/6/99 he said, "It will be created with respect to honour the life
of Bruce and will be true to the original monument. It is a wonderful opportunity
for Scottish art to be showcased and to see Stirling join the ranks of
European cities like Barcelona and Paris famed for their bold public art
projects and celebratory events." A few lines further on Barry Wright was
exercising hyperbole: "The model that artists Andy Scott and Alison Bell
have created is breathtaking. What a tribute to Bruce, to the designer
of the original monument and to Stirling--home of Scottish kings." Maybe
some of Scotland's kings would have liked the symbolism, as for the citizens
of Stirling, they were venting their ire. In the same issue the letters
page was blazing.
A week later a letter from Bob McCutcheon,
historian, archivist and antiquarian book dealer, appeared condemning The
Council's "crass stupidity and total lack of sensitivity towards the history
of the area." "Scots do not burn effigies of their heroes" declared McCutcheon.
Had the Council taken pains to research the tradition of fire festivals
and burnings in Scotland they might have reached the same conclusion. The
Council's chief spokesmen during the debacle were very keen to point out
that they were emulating a Spanish tradition in Valencia where local heroes
are torched as part of Las Fallas. This popular fire festival had been
visited in March of the year by Barry Wright in the company of Alison Bell
of Scott Associates. Obviously they were over-awed by the spectacle that
they witnessed for, without cultural considerations, they automatically
presumed that it would transport to Stirling. What they failed to recognise
was Las Fallas had evolved as a folk art custom under particular cultural
circumstances that could not be transported with the same meaning--especially
to Scotland. It is a sad reflection that they did not think to develop
strands within Scotland's fire-rich tradition. Had they done so they might
have come up with a less offensive and more culturally acceptable concept.
Under the banner, 'Big Man, Big
Sword, Big Fun', Stirling Council had popularised history to mark the 700th
anniversary of Wallace's defeat of the English army at Stirling Bridge.
Evidently the millennial event was an excuse to similarly celebrate The
Bruce. The Council's distinctive trivialisation of history and heroes attracted
few supporters on this occasion. One letter only from an anonymous "working
artist" thought that the project was "wonderful".
By Wednesday July 7th Stirling Council
and Regular Music were looking desperately for friendly support. The Observer's
front page announced, "Bruce Backlash Forces Council To Rethink Fire Stunt".
An ally of Regular Music in the form of Chris Kane, DJ with Central FM,
who writes a weekly music review column in the Observer, cantered lamely
to the rescue. His attempt to place the Burning of Bruce in an historical
context was shallow and feeble: "Robert The Bruce disliked the government
of the day and decided to remove them. He was successful and today is our
most popular hero." Kane poses the question--were Guy Fawkes and Bruce all
that different? His final flurry is a pathetic attempt at patriotic spin,
"Bruce set the nation on fire 700 years ago. He lit a burning desire within
us to be free of oppression and that fire may have smouldered over the
years, but its never gone out. By setting fire to his image we are acknowledging
that the fire Bruce started has now done its job. Symbolically the fire
is healing the wounds of the last millennium and lighting the way forward
to the future." No one rallied to his cause, not even his teenage readership.
Next to attempt to turn the tide
of public disapproval by placing a letter in the Observer was Councillor
John Hendry, Deputy Leader of Stirling Council. He commenced thus, "When
the council agreed to proceed with a spectacular millennium celebration
centred on ancient Celtic traditions of fire festivals, we knew it would
provoke debate and discussion, but we were confident that Stirling was
mature enough to cope with it." He was surprised that "no-one has come
up with an alternative celebration." However, The Council's authoritarian
role as purveyor and designer of culture via an extravagant spectacle was
a clear, "we know best" message. Their arrogance being a declaration that
no one could, or was more equipped, to do it better. Hendry said: "Officers
have worked hard to provide the people of Stirling with the opportunity
to celebrate the millennium in spectacular style... The £100,000
Community Chest is already opening up to provide local organisations with
help to plan their own festivities." In a cack-handed way the Council was
trying to lavish money on the community and provide a service, but surely
the history of celebration is a complex intertwining of spontaneity and
custom brought about by community action and not through the agency of
some bureaucracy.
Above Hendry's somewhat superior
letter appeared the first 'Editorial Opinion' on the subject by Colin Leslie,
Chief Sub-Editor, who adopted a similar tone: "Let sensible alternatives
now come forward from the public of the town, so that Stirling's millennium
party can give Scots something to be proud of--not ashamed of." The pages
of The Observer then went quiet in anticipation.
Monday 26th July: a critical day
for the Council who had obviously rallied and put a plan of action into
effect. That day a "planned" article by The (Glasgow) Herald's Arts Editor,
Keith Bruce, appeared adopting a matter-of-fact approach. He did little
more than asked of him and we must conclude that his heart wasn't really
into the scam that had been arranged at a more senior level within The
Herald and Stirling Council hierarchies. Bruce had been given 'access'
to key players so one can assume that what he reported was not word-of-mouth
rumour. There are "Other figures under consideration as the potential local
hero", he informed us. These being, "the legendary Wolf on the Craig, currently
used as a marketing symbol by the MacRobert Arts Centre at Stirling University,
and contemporary figures such as footballer Billy Bremner, rugby's Kenny
Logan, and actor Robbie Coltraine and actress Diana Rigg, who both live
locally." That same evening The Council held a 'private' meeting at their
headquarters which, in conjunction with Keith Bruce's limp article and
a 'briefed' interview by STV with Council Chief Executive Keith Yates afterwards,
was designed to turn the tide of public opinion. The next day "Coltraine
saves Robert the Bruce from fire" appeared in The Herald. It had been penned
by a local freelance who door-stepped the 'private' meeting on the behalf
of Central Scotland News Agency. It concluded, "A Stirling University spokesman
said [Diana] Rigg was filming in England." He added: "It must be April
1st again."
Wednesday 28th July: The Observer
declared, "No U-Turn On Burning Bruce". Journalist Clare Grant tells us,
"Stirling Council are sticking to their guns". The indefatigable Keith
Yates once again came to the fore, "We had people from the BBC up on Friday
to discuss what we were doing here and they were delighted about it." Yates
then went on to "refute" the story that the Bruce could be replaced with
Diana Rigg, Kenny Logan etc. forgetting that he initiated the story in
his interviews with Keith Bruce and STV.
Bob McCutcheon, also in attendance
at the meeting was quoted, "Those who objected were more or less told that
they were being parochially minded." The Council were now playing that
tired old joker, the parochial card, setting themselves up as worldly sophisticates.
Parochialism is all too often interpreted as being narrow-minded, whereas
a more accurate meaning might be, defence of the parish. The Observer's
editor, Alan Rennie issued a timely warning, "I would advise the council
voluntarily to abandon their plan ...If they don't, public opinion will
stop this proposal in its tracks."
The Observer held a telephone poll
on Wednesday August 4th and a week later published the result: 32 were
in favour of Burning Bruce, 1076 were against. The parishioners had defended
well.
Monday 9th August: the heavy artillery
arrives. The Saltire Society organises a 'public protest meeting' in Stirling's
Golden Lion Hotel to discuss the Council's decision to burn a wooden statue
of King Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland from 1306 to 1329. Our Scottish
hero could never be described as a paragon of virtue for on the 10th of
February 1306 he arranged a meeting with John 'The Red' Comyn, his only
rival to the throne, in Greyfriars' Church in Dumfries and, in circumstances
which have never been fully explained, murdered him in front of the altar.
Bruce's allegiance to Edward I likely cost William Wallace his life and
his own self-arranged coronation at Scone further divided Scotland making
it all the more vulnerable. The strong mix of hatred and love that The
Bruce invoked in Scots demonstrably contributed to his hero status. It
was this that the Saltire Society met together to protect. Although absent
Scotland's historical novelist, Nigel Tranter, sent a message: greatly
deploring the proposal. His sentiments were echoed by Dr Fiona Watson of
Stirling University and Professor Geoffrey Barrow who addressed the assembly
saying, "the burning of an effigy was meant to dishonour the name and reputation
of the person involved."
Forces were now gathering on all
fronts to discuss The Burning. Stirling Council held another 'private'
meeting on Wednesday 11th August. This time sculptor, Andrew Scott was
invited to assist Barry Wright in his presentation of the project and to
explain the full extent of the entertainments package. According to Scott
there was a very positive agreement to the overall event but a very negative
disapproval of burning The Bruce. Every one of the thirty community council
representatives present was against the action. Bob McCutcheon told me
that a petition raised at the close of The Saltire Society meeting was
signed by 100 people within 2 days at his bookshop alone and if the Council
had not backed off they would have received 75,000 emails in protest from
all over the world.
Friday 13th August: The Stirling
Observer, banner headline, "WE'VE WON".
The Battle of The Burning had been
a resounding victory for the democratic process or people power. Stirling
Council had been backed into a corner but Andrew Scott told me that no
formal contract to build a 60 ft copy of Pilkington Jackson's statue of
The Bruce had ever been confirmed.
Wednesday 25th August: Stirling
Observer, "Bruce Still Invited To Millennium Party!" Although it will definitely
not be burnt, the Council, in a comic display of mock heroics, decide to
go ahead with the construction anyway so that it can, "go on display at
the Stirling Castle esplanade where it will be illuminated and seen for
miles around." Astonishingly, Councillor John Hendry tells us that the
wooden Bruce "could be a prototype for a permanent statue after the millennium
celebrations."
Before the end of September Scott
Associates had been officially appointed by Stirling Council to produce
a large fire spectacular. The honour of replacing The Bruce was to go to
The Wolf on The Craig, an afore mentioned heraldic device. Local legend
has it, "One night, long ago, when Viking raiders were sneaking up on Stirling
they disturbed a wolf. The wolf howled, awoke the sleeping townspeople
and saved Stirling from attack." Now in a defiant and resolute display
of pyromania Stirling Council would thank that legendary guardian by burning
it.
Notes
1. Old Scottish Customs by E. J.
Guthrie, published in 1885. A Miss Gordon Cumming is quoted.
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Comic and Zine
reviews
Mark Pawson
First up in this issue's selection
of reading material you definitely won't find in the local W H Smiths is
Crap Hound--a picture book for discussion and activity, 92 pages
crammed-full of clip-art culled from innumerable sources and several decades
worth of graphic imagery. Crap Hound #6's themes are the inevitable--death,
the inescapable--Telephones, and the indispensable--scissors. For each theme
there's pages of painstakingly arranged image tableaux, not an inch of
valuable space has been wasted or left empty--look closer and you'll realise
that it's all assembled manually with scissors and glue --not a scanner
or Mac in sight, no wonder it took two years for this issue to see the
light of day. Crap Hound is the equivalent of a Dover pictorial Sourcebook
for the post-slacker zine-producing generation. Seeing Crap Hound for the
first time is a visual onslaught, I can imagine being totally overwhelmed
by it and being deterred from ever picking up scissors and a glue stick
again. Crap Hound is the image bankers' image bank, all your image requirements
are in here, leaving us to play spot-the-source. I'd advise buying three
copies, one to cut up and use, one to file away intact and another to lend
to friends which you'll never see again.
Book Happy and Comic Book
Heaven both take forgotten and neglected books of yester year for their
subject matter, they have lots of fun rescuing and rehabilitating old books
that most people would be happy to forget ever existed.
If you like the idea of discovering
cheap secondhand books, but are put off by dusty bookshops with strange
odours and equally strange proprietors, then help is at hand. Book Happy
is the latest publication from Donna 'Kooks' Kossy, your guide to the world
of incredibly strange books and loopy literature --none of which is ever
likely to appear in 'collectors price guides'. In Book Happy #4 Donna owns
up to her internet book auction addiction, she's reached the stage of checking
several times a day to see if she's still in the bidding, 'Epidemic of
Bad Drug Books' looks at the genre of 1950's and 1960's drugs education/exploitation
titles, there's a great article about Theodore L Shaw's thirty year war
against Art Critics, during which he published eight books with titles
such as 'Precious Rubbish' and 'That Obnoxious Fraud: The Art Critic'.
In 'Book Hell --where bad books go when they die' Dan Kelly tells how he
staked out and tracked down a cache of serial killer and true crime books.
There's plenty more on self-published autobiographies and the worst science
fiction novel ever written. Get Book Happy--where enjoying cheap books doesn't
mean getting the latest bestseller for 50% off at the local supermarket.
Comic Book Heaven celebrates
the world of weird and absurd comics from the '50s/ '60s. A fanzine that
revels in the sheer ridiculousness of these empty-headed entertainments!
This issue has Advice for Girls, some spurious Helpful Hints Ripped From
the Pages of Actual Romance Comics of the Fifties, a hilarious section
of plot summaries from some of the most bonkers comic book stories ever!
Facts about Commies is a collection of words of cold-war wisdom from fightin'
men in the comics.
The three page list of comics with
the word 'Death' in the title is wonderful found poetry, and deserves to
be heard recited --
Death Relay
Death Rides High!
Death rides the 5:15
Death Rides the Guided Missile
Death rides the Iron Horse!
Death Rides the Rails
Death Rides the Stagecoach!
Death Rides the Storm!
Death ridge!
Death Rises Out of the Sea!
After two magazines devoted to old
books what next? How about two comic books about Art Students...
Art School Superstars by
Grennan & Sperandio and Meet the Art Students by Les Coleman
are both collections of art student portraits, they approach similar subject
matter from different continents and vastly different perspectives.
Grennan & Sperandio interviewed
students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and then selected
sound bites to represent them and accompany their portraits. The 28 privileged
SFMA students are happy and proud to tell us what they like and how long
they have been at the school, they're all-positive all the time. Grennan
& Sperandio's full page portraits of photogenic students, in flat bright
colours adorned with speech bubbles look like a collaboration between oral
historian Studs Terkel and Andy Warhol's portrait screenprints.
Les Coleman's caricature observations
are based on his 20 years lecturing experience in art colleges around the
UK. Drawn on endless train journeys to and from Newcastle and printed in
graphite grey on newsprint, they are partly intended as a critique of the
educational establishments funding cuts, his class of forty-eight are each
represented with a portrait, quote and title that gently mocks and sums
them up. Immediately recognisable characters include: 'inner conviction',
'traditional values', 'the new philistinism' and 'art rage'. Compared with
the Americans, British art students are mostly ambivalent, most of the
time. With his wobbly lines courtesy of British Rail rather then Grennan
& Sperandio's smooth-rough line style achieved via custom computer
software programme, Coleman's student portraits say much more in less space,
than Grennan & Sperandio's, and as inert and lacking motivation as
they are I somehow have more time for the hapless British Students than
the over-confident Americans, one of whom gladly admits "I'm studying Art
because I didn't do well in Physics".
Born out of Manhattan's lower east
side residents struggle for affordable housing and the right to exist free
from police and state oppression World War 3 Illustrated's commitment
and political agenda remains just as sharp and focussed as ever after a
decade of publishing. Issue #27's theme is Land and Liberty, with comic
strips and illustrated stories about Shell Oil in Nigeria, M11 Road Protests
in East London, the historical struggle over who controls the land in Mexico,
Reclaim the Streets New York style and the fight to keep a lower east side
neighbourhood community centre. Whilst the strongest work in WW3I will
always be the stark agitational graphics of founders Seth Tobocman and
Peter Kuper --equally suitable for a spraypainted wall or the printed page,
the editorial board put their beliefs into practice by setting up workshops
and playing an active part in community education programmes, thus nurturing
new artists and writers and providing a forum for them to see their work
in print.
Mentioned briefly last time, and
on comic shop shelves now is the reissued EC comic 'people searching
for peace of mind through Psychoanalysis', truly one of the
unlikeliest comics ever published. Each issue has three, long, inaction-packed
on the couch strips. Speech balloons take up so much of the frame that
the patients seem obliged to lie down on the psychiatrists couch at bottom
of the picture. Each session opens with 'The Psychiatrist', an archetypal
pipe-smoking authority figure whose name we never learn, opening the case
notes for a monthly session with one of his patients. How many therapy
sessions does it take? As many as the subject's problems take before they
are resolved when 'The Psychiatrist' pronounces "We've gone as far as we
can! You know the cure of your problem! You know the facts about yourself!
Do you think you can go ahead now without my help!" and then proceeds off
to write 'therapy completed' on the case notes and thus closes the file.
Psychoanalysis doesn't go so far as to have a big red star on the cover
saying "All-Freudian" but it may as well have done.
Robot Publishing Co put out a series
of two-dollar minicomics which they call 'lunchtime stories'. I've seen
two so far, The Envelope Licker and Binibus Barnabus--they're
both printed in stylish midnight blue, with oh-so-strokeable matt-laminated
covers.
The Envelope Licker by Ante
Vukojevich is a meandering tale of a family equally blessed and cursed
with talented tongues. After a wild youth the youngest settles down and
makes his fortune as a champion envelope licker, buys the company, then
looses it due to modern envelope-sealing technology, then he starts a new
life and finds love with a stamp-collector who works at the post office.
In Binibus Barnabus by Robert Goodin, we meet Binibus Barnabus an everyday
stevedore whose life revolves around working at the dock, the baseball
game, and dreams of a brand new cadillac. One day at work he sees a "mer-mare"
in the docks, falls in love and jumps into the water after her: turned
into a merman when they kiss, we leave them happily swimming off to a new
life together, far away from the docks of New York.
There's probably more 'lunchtime
stories' out by now, if they are as enjoyable as these two they're well
worth looking out for.
Beer Frame--the Journal of Inconspicuous
Comsumption, a consumer products review magazine that asks 'What the
heck is this? rather than just 'Which?' Raising product reviewing to an
artform, Paul Lukas searches for the most unlikely and superfluous products
he can find on supermarket shelves. In Beer Frame #9 we get a round up
of products with suggestive names: Mr Long Candy Bars, Cock Soup and Meat
Sticks --they're all real, with photos to prove it, this could easily turn
into a long-running feature. We also learn more than anyone really needs
to know about pizza box lid supports --those little white plastic three-legged
things that look like dollshouse coffee tables. Beer Frame celebrates their
status as functional yet innocuous items that we rarely pay attention to,
and warns they could disappear forever if pizza companies upgrade their
cardboard boxes. There's also a look at advertising characters who take
their responsibilities to the extreme, they don't just want to publicise
their products, they want to be eaten themselves! --think of the old Birds
Eye Country Club adverts with skinny peas and wrinkly runner beans being
turned away at the gates as buffed beans parade around inside.
(Reviewer's declaration of interest:
a Heinz Meat-Free Ravioli label which I sent to Beer Frame is mentioned
on page 9)
Very little is known about Mexican
Masked Wrestlers outside their homeland, From Parts Unknown, the
mexi-mask-pop-culture magazine! is a great way to find out more. The tag-team
of masked editors have plenty of fun putting their magazine together. From
Parts Unknown #5 has articles and interviews with Blue Demon, Zebra Kid
and Super Astro, there's a mexican tour diary, behind the scenes report
with the men who make the masks, japanese masked wrestlers, a comic art
gallery with some esteemed contributors and there's plenty on silver-masked
El Santo the most famous lucha libre star of all, veteran of innumerable
Z-grade films and his own series of photonovellas. From Parts Unknown keeps
the photonovella tradition alive and up to date with their Stacked Grapplers
supplement.
Contact Details
Comic Book Heaven #1
36 pgs $1.95
SLG Publishing
http://members.aol.com/scottjava
Crap Hound #6
A4 92pgs $6+p/p
PO Box 40373, Portland )OR 97240-0373
USA
available in UK
from disinfotainment
Book Happy #4
A4 36pgs £3.00
Donna Kossy, PO Box 86663, Portland
OR 97286 USA
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/bookhell
KOOKS WEBSITE?
http://www.teleport.com/~dkossy/
giftshop.html
available in UK
from disinfotainment
From Parts Unknown #5 A4 £2.95
PO Box 54-1133, Waltham, MA 02454-1133
USA
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/
frompartsunknown
available in UK
from disinfotainment
Beer Frame #9
A5 48 pgs £1.95
160 St john's Place Brooklyn NY
11217 USA
http://www.core77.com/
http://inconspicuous/index.html
available in UK
from disinfotainment
Psychoanalysis #3
$2.50
gemstone PO Box 469 West plains,
MO 65775-0469 USA
http://www.gemstonepub.com
Meet the Art Students
£4.95
Arc Publications, Nanholme Mill,
Shaw Wood Road, Todmorden, Lancs, OL14 6DA
Art School Superstars
A4 28pgs No Price Given
Fantagraphics Books 7563 Lake City
NE Seattle WA 98115 USA
Lunchtime Stories
$2.00
Robot Publishing Co, 542 s.los robles,
pasadena, CA 91101
http://www.robotpub.com
World War 3 Illustrated #27
68 pgs $3.50
PO Box 20777, Thompkins Sq Sta,
NY NY 10009 USA
available in UK from AK distribution
POBox 12766, Edinburgh EH8 9YE http://www.akuk.com
and Tower Records
disinfotainment
PO Box 664 London E3 4QR http://www.mpawson.demon.co.uk
back
to top
_____________________________________
Who's Afraid of Film & Video
in Scotland?
The Exhibition of Single-screen
Film & Video:
Cafe Flicker, Museum Magogo,
Canadian Fall
Ann Vance
I would like to discuss a few recent
events involving the exhibition of single-screen film and video which have
sharply brought into focus for me, somewhat ironically, the lack of an
existing infrastructure for the presentation and dissemination of such
work in Scotland. The following introduction gives a concise outline of
circumstances that have contributed to the current drought of regular screenings.
It frames an urgent context for the appreciation of work and efforts that
do still prevail in spite of a funding climate characterised by erratic
and contradictory decision-making. I should say that my thoughts and feelings
expressed here, though subjective, are informed by my experience as an
artist/ producer of experimental film and video and as a voluntary co-ordinator
and curator for New Visions Film and Video Festival since 1993.
Scotland has never experienced a
continuing and stable level of commitment from arts funders in the film/
video sector, unlike our neighbours south who can boast a number of organisations
and agencies embedded and fully established in a wider cultural nexus.
Many temporary and longer term projects
and events have been initiated in Scotland and have actively and successfully
promoted film and video by Scottish-based and international artists over
the past ten to fifteen years. New Visions based in Glasgow, and Fringe
Film & Video Festival (FFVF) in Edinburgh, were two key organisations
with similar aims and objectives but differing histories and life spans.
Each undertook the organisation of international festivals of experimental
film and video art, the bulk of which comprised single-screen programmes
alongside installation and related events.
FFVF did this on an annual basis
and New Visions biennially as well as providing a series of regular screenings
and events. Each established a reputation on the circuit of international
festivals as well as a platform in Scotland for the support and promotion
of home-grown talent. I should say that my focus on these two organisations,
not intentionally at the expense of mentioning other projects and ventures,
serves the purpose of this introduction.
Speaking for New Visions, public
funding was never secure and less money was awarded for each subsequent
festival until our final festival in 1996 when we received nothing from
the Scottish Arts Council (SAC). The decision then from SAC was that Scotland's
two festivals of film and video were two too many, and a preference was
expressed for a single organisation with the insistence that FFVF and New
Visions go into talks about merging. In spite of our desire to continue
working seperately, this option was not made available to us and consequently
SAC and The Scottish Film Council (SFC, now Scottish Screen) ploughed £9,000
into two consultancies, the result of which were the reports produced in
August '97: 'The Strategic Development of Creative Video, Film & New
Media', undertaken by Positive Solutions, a private firm based in Liverpool;
and 'Equipment Technology Resource for Scotland', undertaken by Clive Gillman
and Eddie Berg of FACT.1 This consultancy
process was overseen by representatives from SAC, Scottish Screen, FFVF
and New Visions and managed by Paula Larkin of New Visions.
The report furnished by Positive
Solutions was built on the efforts of many, not least those artists, organisers
and educators who gave up time and energy, voluntarily, to contribute.
It took, as a springboard, the models of practice developed over the years
by both organisations and put forward a number of possible options for
the development of a single new organisation. These reports have since
been shelved, the funders under no obligation to act upon any of the key
recommendations. However, in true hypocritical fashion, they are able to
quote the reports and indeed SAC have done so, in my own experience, as
proof of their commitment to the issues they raise.
None of this surprises me, government
bodies govern and are themselves governed by their own constrictive discourses.
Arts Officers with changing agendas come and go and often fail to respond
to or nourish the forms of cultural challenge already in existence. Recognising
and acknowledging this makes for contestation. Neither am I surprised,
only disheartened and embarrassed, at the show of blatant self-interest
and divisiveness put on by a few individuals, who seem to be busy building
empires and carving out careers for themselves without acknowledgement
or respect for other people's efforts.
Within this scenario, the climate
has not been exactly ripe for the exhibition of challenging film and video
work. In spite of this however, new work can be viewed, though not always
in a concentrated form --events/ exhibitions occur in isolation as one-off
projects, poorly funded or not at all, often with film and video appearing
as an adjunctive element or token inclusion.
Three recent artist-initiative presentations
of film and video in Glasgow demonstrate different levels of interest and
commitment to this field of practice.
Cafe Flicker has been running since
around 1993 and has survived for that time without public funding. Its
long life-span is no doubt linked to this fact. The un-funded organisation
ethic was not a driving force unlike other groups springing up around the
same time e.g., Exploding Cinema in London. Flicker (as it was then known)
aimed to serve the community of makers in and around Glasgow by providing
an informal platform for the screening and importantly the discussion of
film and video work. Some events were pre-programmed but on the whole makers
turned up on the night with work in tow. All organising was and still is
done on a voluntary basis using ready resources of host venues (presently,
Glasgow Film & Video Workshop plays host with fully equipped screening
facilities). Flicker has evolved over the years with the efforts and vision
of numerous people including Shazz Kerr, Martha McCulloch, Paul Cameron,
Jim Rusk and presently Russell Henderson, Iain Piercey, John Fairbairn,
Abigail Hopkins and I - igo Garrido.
These days I - igo Garrido
takes a firm stance against funding, rejecting the restrictions and demands
it brings to bare on the creative freedom of an organisation. Although
Cafe Flicker has changed much since its seminal years, for him, its defining
qualities are its freshness, openness and most urgently its "low profile".2
Unlike other high profile organisations who find themselves inventing their
public and manufacturing evidence to justify public funding, Cafe Flicker
has no interest in serving any remit other than the provision of support
for the makers who pass through its doors.
Its atmosphere has swung from the
awkward formalities of the first screenings with few hesitant attendees
to the more convivial social night, replete with simulated cafe interior
and lots of audience interaction. It now sits comfortably between the two
extremes and is not as daunting for first time screeners tentative about
being grilled in public.
The standard of work varies constantly
and the range of styles and genres is limitless: Experimental film (which
means different things to different people), drama and documentary (in
all its mutant forms), comic, travelogue, home movies, found footage, video
art all from first time makers, seasoned enthusiasts, hobbyists and those
who call themselves artists and almost all produced on low or no budgets.
That said, the most recent screenings
I've attended have been dominated by the short, straight drama. The proliferation
of this genre is a reflection of Scottish Screen's overwrought focus on
The Industry as the mecca for new talent. The emphasis is firmly on entertainment
value; the formulaic mimicry of conventional cinema being embraced at the
expense of seeking out new, challenging forms of creativity expressed in
a more experimental, innovative approach to film and video production.
It is to Cafe Flicker's credit that
all works are screened on a first come, first served basis, irrespective
of style, genre, politics, and that criticism is constructive and genuinely
helpful. An ongoing database of every work exhibited dating back to 1995
is a valuable resource open to anyone researching this area. All visitors
passing through Glasgow on the first Wednesday of every month are always
welcome --bring your own bottle.3
Museum Magogo was a recent exhibition
of both pre-selected and open-entry work housed at the Glasgow Project
Room. Curated, or rather fashioned, by artists John Beagles and Graham
Ramsay, it showcased two hundred artworks, among them a cluster of works
on video. The Project Room is an open-submission, artist-run exhibition
space, self-sustained through a studio complex and premised on the basis
that it is somewhere for artists to try things out.
Museum Magogo saw the overall space,
not excessive in itself, divided by slim partition walls into smaller territories,
each area parodying an aspect of museological and curatorial drill --the
Sculpture Garden replete with grocers turf, the Lidl wing (the cheap-and-cheerful
rebuttal to the Tate's Sainsbury's wing), and, amongst others, the cuby
hole that was the Video Lounge.
Here, videotapes were shelved with
an accompanying list of titles and artists (running times and production
dates were not listed but could be found on some individual tapes) and
could be selected at random and viewed on the borrowed domestic monitor
and video set-up.
While excess rather than ease was
the order of the day, for me, this form of monitor presentation is not
always suitable. Here the artists' work suffered to some degree in comparison
with the other instantly viewable exhibits --the wanton cacophony of wall
embellishment in truth looking more spacious and deliberated. Spectatorship
and reception are, in these circumstances, entirely dependent on the effort
made by the viewer and although it doesn't take much to stick a cassette
in a player, in my experience few people bother to do so.
Overall, there has been a massive
upsurge in the use of video as an art medium over the past five years.
The proliferation in the use of loops and the projected image, with its
attendant seductive and monolithic qualities have allowed video easy entry
into the gallery site, a relatively clean, quick and easy space filler.
And the reverse of this being, since the gallery now accepts video in ways
it seldom did before, there is now more typecast production. Video, in
all its varied forms, has not been fully embraced by the gallery, and film
exhibition is virtually non-existent. Single screen work, i.e. that which
requires to be viewed from beginning to end, irrespective of style, genre,
format or running time seems to suffer most in this environment.
While some of the works in Museum
Magogo sat comfortably with the single screen label, notably Alan Currell's
dryly comic 'Lying About Myself in Order To Appear More Interesting', and
Tim Cullen's animation pieces which both suited this particular presentation
method, others did not fair so well. Cath Whippey's eccentric ten-second
animated loop 'Bear Tries on His New Bear Outfit', and 'Blue Moon Over
Alabama' by Geeta Griffith were two most obvious candidates. The 'Be Er
Monsta' compilation of '96 put together by Glasgow-based artists for pub
screenings is a record of activity at that time and it would have been
valuable to see it again as a one-off, sit-down screening in the environment
it was intended for. Chris Helson's 'Chat Show', a documentation of Orchardton
Television's live broadcast at the '98 Orchardton Arts Festival included
some quirky features and topical discussion but, at two hours in length,
proved impossible to view in the discomfort of the Museum Magogo set-up.
While Smith and Stewart's '97 piece 'Dual', a characteristically tense
play of performed action, and Wendy House's oddly anxious 'Untitled' were
compelling enough in entirety, I found myself losing patience and tiring
with the obvious lack of cohesion of works.
I am not advocating a strict approach
to the construction of "sense" as is witnessed in the curatorial obsession
with theme. Accounting for the curators' intentions, as I understand it,
the video works were treated no differently from the other exhibits --pre-selected
or gleaned from open-submission with an express aim of parodying the strictures
of the art institution, while perhaps at the same time bringing to the
fore a near-neurotic obsession of artists to exhibit at any opportunity,
regardless of circumstance. For me, though, this edge was lost in the Video
Booth, where the unnecessary effort required to view the works was questionably
as much a result of a real lack of available resources within the artistic
community as any intended irony.
The presentation of film and video
in or outwith the gallery must always be an issue and concern for those
choosing to exhibit such work, whether they be artists, curators, gallery
managers or attendants. In the case of Museum magogo, the small amount
of project funding they did acquire did not cover equipment hire and as
such cannot be ignored as a factor that impacted on the choice of presentation
--wishfuly slack or not. In fairness the resulting set-up, I'm sure, was
also partly due to the non-existent support network which the commissioned
reports, referred to above, identify as a prerequisite for the establishment
of an effective infrastructure for film and video exhibition in Scotland.
Choice and preferred options of
exhibition are all too often compromised, however there can be no excuse
for well funded galleries and organisations not addressing these consequential
issues.
Canadian Fall was a programme of
recent single-screen film/ video work from across Canada shown in a number
of Scottish venues in November and December. The project and tour was co-ordinated
by Paula Larkin of New Visions and the programme curated by video artist
Holger Mohaupt after a visit to Canada. In his words it is "an insight
into the anthropology of video creation in Canada."
It is the second leg of a loose
exchange initiated by Canadian video artist Nikki Forrest who, on a trip
to Scotland, compiled a selection of Scottish work, Video d'Ecosse, for
exhibition at the Articule Gallery, Montreal in 1998.
The curatorial slant in both programmes
reflects the notion of the chance meeting, the experience of being out
of sync in a foreign land, searching for signs of familiarity and shared
perceptions.
Scottish cultural links with Canada
stretch far historically, specifically the link with Quebec, where many
of the artists in this programme are based, in our common experience as
countries within nations and the struggles for independence.
This current exchange between artists
and enthusiasts looks set to continue with further projects and contact.
This is not purely by chance but is rather motivated by genuine interest
and the energies of individuals in both countries as opposed to the vagaries
of institutions with short-term agendas.
This energy was much in evidence
at the launch of Canadian Fall at Glasgow Film & Video Workshop. Nikki
Forrest and Nelson Henricks, accompanied by Cindra McDowell4
showed a selection of video work and gave a slide presentation and talk
on the Montreal scene, the flurry of artists' initiatives, galleries, video
workshops and distributors. Canada has a very rich history of independent
film and video activity stretching back to the introduction of video technology
in the seventies, with a solid infra-structure of organisations supported
by government money.
"If such an underpopulated country
produces an overabundance of video work, it is because a government obsessed
with communications technology chooses to sustain it, via arm's length
funding."5
The issues pertaining to Scotland's
lack of that infrastructure are perhaps woven not only with the short-sightedness
of government-backed funders, but also, from a wider cultural perspective,
with our geographical position in relation to the United Kingdom as a whole
and the Westminster government. Now that we have a devolved parliament,
the rhetoric of Members of the Scottish Parliament abounds with optimism
and promise of cultural/political transformation. This rhetoric raises
serious questions concerning the concoction of a new, national identity.
Inane definitions of Scottishness, which we have long suffered, prevail
alongside prescriptive definitions of The Modern Scot. Coloured with a
new corporate cosmopolitanism, these discourses are extolled with the risk,
or even the aim, of smothering the indigenous voices of marginalised and
alienated communities, who also contribute to the landscape of Modern Scotland.
The struggle to retain some sense
of self tied to personal/ political histories un-limited by suspect nationalisms,
emerges recurrently in Canadian Fall. The thirteen works "tackle the question
of marginal identities from a position of instability"6,
that is with a tolerance and bias in favour of flexibility and nuance.
As a whole, the programme is a finely
balanced mix of styles and approaches and gives a good overview of production
methods characteristic to artists' film/video--a key requirement which benefits
audiences new to such work. This balance allows each work the space to
speak its own language and although the theme of identity is clearly a
concern, it is gradually emergent as opposed to definitive, as is the case
in many themed programmes.
Canadian Fall opened with Nikki
Forrest's Shift, a poetic expression of loss where perceptions of time
and place impress upon memory and the autobiographical to shift and de-stabilise
any sense of a unified self. Stravaig-Errance, also by Nikki Forrest, journies
through landscape and the city seeking this sense of self or a consciousness
of self and finds only, that with movement and passing time, the notion
of absence inscribes itself throughout. The treatment of time as an intrinsic
element of the video medium characterises both works by Nelson Henricks,
Window and Time Passes. Through a sensual manipulation of imagery, time
is condensed and moments of detail expanded as the artist creates impressions,
as opposed to clear-cut representations, of his personal interior and exterior
space.
Though many of these works tell
stories of some sort, different approaches to narrative and the diaristic
form are evident in Ghislain Gagnon's Le Mouroir, Rhonda Buckley's Matter
Over Mind and Joan And Stephen by Monique Moumblow. Le Mouroir, which received
its world premiere in this programme, is a tragi-comic tale of a gay couple
who get stuck in a heat wave while working as cooks for a tree planting
camp in northern Canada. It has a beautifully dark, filmic quality which
contrasts nicely with the previous work Operetta by Laurel Woodcock, a
more conceptual video piece showing a close-up of a fly struggling to the
sounds of a crashing HAL from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Matter
Over Mind, Rhonda Buckley uses her own body to explore notions of seduction
and the representation of femininity as stereotype and Monique Moumblow
constructs for herself a fantasy involving a lover who lives inside her
video camera.
Looking, as voyeur, and being looked
at form the basis of Paula Levine's three-minute Mirror Mirror. A male
figure, posing with naked torso is caught in slow motion returning our
expectant gaze as if to challenge our preconceptions. Steve Reinke's Excuse
of The Real, exposes, with sinister effect, the voyeuristic detachment
often deployed by the documentary film maker. A male voice speaking in
the first person is layered over repeat-cut home movie footage. He tells
of his interest in making a documentary about Aids and how this would involve
taking a "close personal look at a guy dying", concluding that his film
would not be complete without his death.
Yudi Sewraj's Rut lightens the tone
with its more humourous approach to the question of identity. We see a
man in a bear suit, entering a room and shaving his fur belly. Overlayed
text tells how he sees himself as a bear but how everyone else sees him
as a man in a bear suit! Finally Cathy Sisler's powerful Stagger Stories
is a personal account of her past alcohol and drug addiction and how she
came to surrender her fantasy that "deviance is necessarily an effective
form of resistance". We see her moving through busy city streets, staggering,
almost a danse macabre, as she asserts her right to difference, to be an
"alcoholic", to be "inconsistent", to be a "lesbian".
Canadian Fall7
will hopefully create a demand for more single-screen, experimental film/
video throughout Scotland. Paula Larkin, who also initiated the tour, sees
it as a "prime opportunity to create links with new audiences who, whether
familiar or not with these methods of practice, are sophisticated enough
in their tastes to develop interest in such work and recognise its intrinsic
value."
This article is a record of my experience
and interest at this point in time. It is, more importantly, a record and
assertion of the energies and unpaid efforts of many involved in short-term
projects whose histories end up lost and distorted or viewed in isolation,
in deference to a writing of history and culture that fails to take account
of the complexities and facts that comprise their making.
Notes
1. Both documents are available
from SAC.
2. I - igo Garrido--In the sense
that Cafe Flicker is not duty-bound by funders to market itself.
3. Cafe Flicker @ GFVW, 3rd Floor,
34 Albion Street, Glasgow G1, 7pm.
Works over 10 min. in length must
be pre-booked. Flicker database available for researchers. Call I - igo
0141 552 9936.
4. Cindra McDowell & Nelson
Henricks were also exhibiting at the Gallery of Modern Art as part of the
Glasgay festival alongside Steve Reinke and Tine Keane.
5. Nelson Henricks, Canadian Fall
brochure.
6. ibid.
7. For information and tour dates
contact 0141-5720958 or 0141-4243369
back
to top
_____________________________________
Dialogical Aesthetics:
A Critical Framework For Littoral
Art
Grant Kester
Introduction:
Socially Engaged Practice
Forum
There is pressure through the
public funding system for the arts in the UK to create at least the allusion
of engaging a broader demographic of the population. The reasoning for
this is explained away as public funding shifts to an indirect yet local
and media promoted form of taxation through the Lottery, so Government
wishes to see--as much for its own PR as continuing Lottery sales--a publicly
visible correlation between where the income is generated and on what it
is being spent--'good causes'. This can be seen to be having not dissimilar
conservative repercussions on what receives public funding as happened
with the National Endowment for the Arts in the U.S.
One outcome has been the supporting
of art that adheres to promoting and cultivating 'Social Inclusion'. This
has placed the emphasis on artistic engagement as educational, or pedagogic,
in a way that attests to inclusion within society as an integrated whole.
At least superficially, this is espousing a shift in the terms of engagement
between artists and what were traditionally regarded as audiences, to a
more therapeutic or correctional interaction with an underscored group
of people.
However, expectations and shifts
in artistic practice are not a 'given' with legislative changes to government
funding priorities, but performative. If a shift is to occur at the point
of social engagement then it does not 'happen' coercively or in isolation
but as a direct effect of an informed choice shift in formations of artistic
practice in partnership with the people with which they work.
Within socially engaged approaches
to arts practices there are widely differing dispositions, from what can
be seen to be broadly in line with the Government's agenda--uni-directional
activity of cultivating what are effectively better 'citizens'/ consumers
where 'collaboration' is largely symbolic--to attempts at anaquality of
engagement, where art is seen as "a medium for discussion with social reality",
as artist Jay Koh puts it.
One description of the latter
has been 'Littoral' practice. "Littoral--adj. of or on the shore. --n. a
region lying along the shore." From its description it can be taken to
express a point of complimentary meeting, an inbetween space.
The UK Government's take and
emphasis on 'self-help' programmes has generated much scepticism with regard
to socially engaged art practices. While there may have been many managerial
conferences, effectively bolstering the position the Government is adopting,
there has been little to no indepth and critical discussion.
One conference that was established
to address issues of socially engaged practice was Critical Sites: Issues
in Critical Art Practice and Pedagogy held in the Institute of Art, Design
and Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, September '98, organised by
Critical Access and Littoral in Ireland. At the conference Grant Kester,
assistant professor of contemporary art history and theory at Arizona State
University, delivered a paper: Socially Engaged Practice--Dialogical Aesthetics:
A Critical Framework For Littoral Art.
To raise and debate some of the
related issues Variant is hosting an on-line forum on Socially Engaged
Practice, commencing with the launch of this issue. Given his commitment
and work done to date in these areas, to initiate this dialogue we asked
Grant Kester to re-present his paper from the conference.
The Socially Engaged Art Practice
on-line forum--held in collaboration with the Environmental Art Department
of Glasgow School of Art--is at:
http//:sepf.listbot.com/
This includes an archive of all
messages, available to all list members, you can subscribe (at no cost)
to the list also from the above site.
Grant Kester's paper Socially
Engaged Practice--Dialogical Aesthetics: A Critical Framework For Littoral
Art is also available as a downloadable PDF file at the Variant site:
www.variant.org.uk/
If you do not have access to
e-mail but wish to respond to Grant Kester's paper, or any issues related
to socially engaged practice, please post them to:
Variant, 1a Shamrock Street,
Glasgow, G4 9JZ
The resulting exchanges will
be subsequently documented at the Variant site and are intended to appear
as a dedicated supplement within the ensuing issue, Variant #10 (Spring/Summer
2000).
Dialogical Aesthetics: A Critical
Framework For Littoral Art
Grant Kester
I. Defining Littoral Art
In this paper I'm going to outline
a framework for the critical analysis of "Littoral" or engaged art practices.
I start with two related caveats. First, my analysis is based primarily
on work that I am familiar with in the US and the UK. Thus, it is very
much a selective framework. And second, even within this geographically
limited context it is focused on a single aspect of these works which I
feel is of particular importance. Given the time and space limitations
there will be a number of complex questions which I will be unable to elaborate
sufficiently and others which I will be forced to bypass altogether. I
begin with the assumption that Littoral projects make very different demands
on the practitioner than do typical gallery or museum-based art works and
that they challenge on many levels the normative assumptions of conventional
art works. By the same token I would contend that Littoralist art requires
the development of a new critical framework and a new aesthetic paradigm.
There are aspects of Littoralist practice that simply can't be grasped
as relevant (or in some cases identified at all) by conventional art critical
methodologies.
Mainstream art criticism is organized
around two key elements. First, it is primarily concerned with the formal
appearance of physical objects, which are understood to possess an immanent
meaning. These meanings are then actualized as the object comes into contact
with a viewer. The object here remains the primary carrier of aesthetic
significance, whether in terms of a formal analysis or in terms of a speculative
phenomenology that attempts to re-construct a postulated viewer's interactions
with it. Second, the judgments produced through the critic's interaction
with the physical object are authorized by the writer's individual, pleasure-based
response. In The Scandal of Pleasure the American critic Wendy Steiner
argues that the primary organizing principle of criticism should be "subjective
preference" or what she terms the "I like" response.1
When contemporary critics confront
Littoral projects they often lack the analytic tools necessary to understand
the work on its own terms and instead simply project onto it a formal,
pleasure-based methodology that is entirely inappropriate.2
The results are not surprising: Littoral works are criticized for being
"unaesthetic" or are attacked for needlessly suppressing "visual gratification".
Because the critic is unable to gain any sensory stimulation or fails to
find the material in the work personally engaging it is dismissed as "failed"
art. This was the reaction of a number of U.S. critics to the most recent
Dokumenta exhibition. Ken Johnson of Art in America coined the term "post-retinal"
to describe much of the work in the show.3
Although Johnson intended this term as a mild pejorative, I feel it is
quite useful in capturing the ways in which many Littoral projects challenge
the tendency of contemporary visual art to function primarily on the level
of sensation. The reliance of contemporary criticism on the writer's personal
response also has the effect of treating subjectivity as an unquestioned,
a priori principle, rather than recognizing the extent to which the critic's
"personal" taste is structured by forms of identification and power based
on class, race, gender and sexuality. I would argue that the critic has
a responsibility to interrogate their own individuality; to ask how their
identity functions in relationship to other subjects and other social formations.
1. The Problem of Definition
and Indeterminance
The concept of a Littoral criticism
is important because it forces upon us the question of what Littoral "art"
might be, which in turn requires that we differentiate Littoral art from
other kinds of art (or other forms of cultural politics or activism for
that matter). I know that for myself most of these differences have remained
relatively intuitive or unconscious. The act of criticism requires that
we make these intuitive judgments more concrete and subject them to some
conceptual elaboration. The positive dimension of this activity is that
it can deepen our understanding of what makes Littoralist art effective.
The negative dimension is that it can lead to a hardening of categorical
definitions and distinctions. This brings us to a central question. There
is a long tradition of defining modernist art through its difference from
dominant cultural forms. Thus, Clive Bell and Roger Fry defined avant-garde
painting (and in particular, Postimpressionism) through its active suppression
of representation, which they associated with the populist realism of Victorian
genre painting; Greenberg, of course, contrasted authentic art with vulgar
"kitsch". In the 1970s critic Michael Fried differentiated the truly avant-garde
art of Anthony Caro and Frank Stella from the inauthentic "Literalist"
art of Donald Judd or Robert Smithson, based on its resistance to "theater".
That is, Caro's work was judged to be superior because it refused to incorporate
formal cues that would acknowledge the presence of a viewer.
This resistance to fixity can be
traced to the function of the aesthetic in early modern philosophy as a
force that is intended to absorb antagonisms created elsewhere in society.
Typically, as in the writings of Schiller, the aesthetic is conceived of
as therapeutic; its job is to ameliorate the fragmenting effects of a market-driven
society. This compensatory function needs to be understood within the context
of liberalism. The aesthetic provides us with a unique power to comprehend
and represent the totality of forces operating within society, and to envision
more progressive or humane alternatives, but this epistemological insight
is always joined with the requirement that the artist must never attempt
to realize these alternatives through direct action. The "poet", according
to Schiller, possesses a sovereign right only in the limitless domain of
the imagination. In a parallel manner, for Hegel, in The Philosophy of
Right, the "aesthetic state" can comprehend the deleterious social effects
of private property but it is prevented from intervening in the ostensibly
"natural" operations of the market. The resulting social tensions (poverty,
a growing gap between rich and poor, environmental destruction) will be
relieved, rather, by the expansion of the market and by the colonization
of what he terms "backwards" lands. These as yet unclaimed colonies are
defined, like the aesthetic imagination itself, as potentially boundless
and conceptually indeterminate. For Kant the destructive impact of social
stratification will be healed by the unfettered circulation of commerce
and knowledge (or "books and money"), leading to the gradual diffusion
of a spirit of harmonious Enlightenment. The aesthetic can thus be understood
as one of several related mechanisms that were developed within liberalism
to simultaneously regulate the threat posed by systematic forms of critique
and to compensate for the dysfunctional effects of the emergent capitalist
system. It must remain highly elastic and un-regulated, precisely because
it is being called upon to absorb a potentially infinite range of divisive
social effects.
Under the influence of late nineteenth-century
critics such as Robert Vischer and Heinrich Wölfflin, this principle
of indeterminateness was transferred from a general condition of aesthetic
knowledge to a trait primarily associated with the experience of artworks.
Specifically, the capacity of the modernist work to continually complicate
or modify its own formal condition became an expression of its refusal
of determinant boundaries. Critics like Bell, Fry, and Greenberg then endowed
this idea of formal innovation with the specific motivation that modernist
art must constantly transform itself to avoid co-optation by popular culture.
This principle of indeterminateness remains with us today in the concept
of the art work that refuses the economic exchange of the market or that
resists translation into other forms of discourse or meaning (Adorno) or,
for that matter, in the belief that art schools should be experimental
and open-ended institutions.
In my remarks here I am, thus, working
somewhat against the grain of a long tradition that says we must not attempt
to limit or define art's potential meaning. In fact, I would argue that
one of the strengths of Littoral practice lies in its capacity to transgress
existing categories of knowledge. At the same time I want to stress the
importance of understanding indeterminateness in specific social and historical
contexts. Clearly we aren't talking about a generalized refusal of all
ontological boundaries. The question is, how has indeterminacy functioned
strategically over time? I would contend that, within the modernist tradition,
it has been constructed through a dialogue that oscillates between the
form of the work of art and its communicative function. And it is in this
question of discursivity that I will locate the basis for my definition
of Littoral art. It is necessary to consider the Littoralist work as a
process as well as a physical product, and specifically as a process rooted
in a discursively-mediated encounter in which the subject positions of
artist and viewer or artist and subject are openly thematized and can potentially
be challenged and transformed. I am particularly interested in a discursive
aesthetic based on the possibility of a dialogical relationship that breaks
down the conventional distinction between artist, art work and audience--a
relationship that allows the viewer to "speak back" to the artist in certain
ways, and in which this reply becomes in effect a part of the "work" itself.
2. Modern and Postmodern Anti-Discursivity
This approach is significant, I
think, because it stands in opposition to a long tradition of anti-discursivity
in modern art that associates communicability or discourse with fixity--the
generalized belief that art must define itself as different from other
forms of culture (popular culture, kitsch, Fried's theater) precisely by
being difficult to understand, shocking or disruptive (except now, contra
Schiller's return to "wholeness", a Lyotard-ian "ontological dislocation"
becomes the therapeutic antidote to a centered Cartesian subjectivity).
I would contend that the anti-discursive tendency in modern art hypostatizes
discourse and communication as inherently oppressive. It can't conceive
of a discursive form that is not contaminated by the problematic model
of "communication" embodied in advertising and mass-media.4
Notably, this attitude runs across
the historical and theoretical divide of modernism and postmodernism. Thus
Lyotard writes with real disdain of art which is based on the assumption
that the public "will recognize. . . will understand, what is signified."5
And both Greenberg and Lyotard postulate avant-garde art practice as the
antidote to kitsch. If kitsch traffics in reductive or simple concepts
and sensations then avant-garde art will be difficult and complex; if kitsch's
preferred mode is a viewer-friendly "realism" then avant-garde art will
be abstract, "opaque" and "unpresentable". In each case the anti-discursive
orientation of the avant-garde artwork, its inscrutability and resistance
to interpretation, is juxtaposed to a cultural form that is perceived as
easy or facile (advertising, kitsch, "theatrical" art, etc.). The condition
of this degraded cultural form is then seen as entirely exhausting the
possibilities of a populist art, thus forcing the artist to withdraw completely
from the field of discursive engagement.
What I am calling an "anti-discursive"
tradition in the modern avant-garde is defined by two seemingly opposed
moments. The first, which I have described elsewhere as an "orthopedic"
aesthetic, seeks to aggressively transform the viewer's consciousness (implicitly
defined as flawed or dulled) through an overwhelming encounter with the
work of art.6 This perspective is more accurately
thought of as counter-discursive in that it argues that the work of art
has the ability to operate on the viewer through a unique, non-discursive,
somatic power. Examples would include the "alienation" effect of the 1930's
Russian and German avant-garde and Walter Benjamin's concept of a "shock"
of critical awareness produced through the "dialectical" juxtaposition
of images. Although ambivalently positioned relative to discursive forms
of knowledge, these approaches provide an important framework for thinking
through a communicative aesthetic model. The positive recognition that
everyday language is always/ already ideologically prepared to interrupt
the formation of a critical consciousness, is combined with what I view
as a negative dimension: the positioning of the viewer as a passive subject
whose epistemological orientation to the world will be adjusted by the
work of art. The extent to which the commitment to shock (what we might
call the "naughty artist" paradigm) remains an almost unconscious reflex
can be seen in the recent controversy over the English art students who
claimed to use a grant to vacation at Costa del Sol while actually staying
in Leeds. Like some kind of dated Baudrillardian scenario the various characters
(the outraged press, the spluttering conservatives, and the clever art
students) played their roles almost as though they were working from a
script, and in a way they were.
The second view contends that the
artist, and the work of art, must remain entirely unconcerned with the
viewer. This is the basis of Michael Fried's distinction between authentic
and "theatrical" art. Fried insists that the artwork is under no obligation
whatsoever to acknowledge the viewer's presence--that is, to anticipate
or play off of the viewer's physical response, movement, or expectations
relative to a given piece.7 In its extreme
state this can take the form of the position that art is not a mode of
communication at all. In a classic expression of this view, we find the
painter Barnett Newman projecting an anti-discursive tendency into the
very mists of time: "Man's first expression, like his first dream," Newman
writes in 1947, "was an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry rather
than a demand for communication. . . an address to the unknowable."8
(Or to an ideal but currently unrealizable Sensus Communis.)
3. Modern Aesthetics and the
Problem of Universality
Greenberg's citation of Kant in
his "Modernist Painting" essay is widely taken as proof of the neo-Kantian
lineage of formalist art criticism. I would argue that we can draw very
different lessons about the meaning of art from early modern aesthetics.
The concept of the aesthetic that emerged in the work of philosophers such
as Kant, Schiller, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson was centered on the relationship
between the individual (defined by sense-based or somatic knowledge) and
the social. This relationship was constructed through concepts such as
"taste" (which marks the fortuitous harmony between the autonomous individual
and a more objective standard of judgment). This work was only nominally
concerned with the form of the art object per se. A primary term of reference
was the concept of a sensus communis or Gemeinsinn, a common sense or knowledge
that marked a horizon of shared communicability. This opens out into a
whole area of debate in contemporary theory between Habermas, Foucault
and Lyotard, among others. Lyotard goes so far as to link the concept of
discourse and communicability in art with what he ominously terms a "call
to order" and the cultures of fascism and Stalinism. Habermas' claim that
art might expand from "questions of taste" to the exploration of "living
historical situations" is linked for Lyotard with a naive, nostalgic and
politically reactionary yearning after "unity" and the misguided attempt
to reconcile art and society into a mythic "organic whole".
Of course Lyotard's fears of a universalizing
discourse are well-founded. One does not have to look very far in the current
cultural landscape to find concrete examples, such as recent attacks on
the teaching of Spanish in California public schools (Proposition 227)
under the guise of a resurgent one-language Americanism that attempts to
define American identity through the negation of the complex cultures that
actually constitute that country today. Clearly, any model of discourse
or cultural identity that is founded on the violent suppression of difference
is oppressive. At the same time the vehemently anti-discursive tradition
within the modernist avant-garde has led to another kind of negation--an
indifference and in some cases an outright contempt towards the viewer.
"The artist," as sculptor David Smith insisted in 1952, "deserves to be
belligerent to the majority".9 I would argue,
however, that we don't have to choose between fascism and withdrawal into
a mute, monadic isolation. Littoralist art is concerned precisely with
exploring and negotiating the complexities of discursive inter-relationships,
with trying to create a discourse which minimizes negation.
4. Implications for the Analysis
of Art
I now want to outline three related
components of a discursive or dialogical art practice.
1. Interdisciplinarity
First, Littoral art is interdisciplinary.
It operates "between" discourses (art and activism, for example) and between
institutions (the gallery and the community center or the housing block).
This is opposed to traditional art that operates within both the discursive
presuppositions and the institutional sites of the "art world" and art
audiences and that is, moreover, often even further defined by its identification
with a specific art medium. Ian Hunter of Projects Environment uses the
term "interface" practices which I understand in two ways--first, the interface
between practitioners and other individuals or groups and second, the interface
that is created in Littoral works across disciplinary routines or bodies
of knowledge. (This relates to the argument that the formation of disciplinary
knowledge is both an empowering and a limiting activity, and that breakthroughs
occur in the disciplinary interstices, while consolidation occurs within
the disciplines themselves.)
Along with this interdisciplinarity
comes the need to learn as much as possible about the ways in which meaning
is produced in and through these other contexts. This interdisciplinarity,
the ability to draw on analytic resources from other areas such as critical
theory, social history or environmental science, and the ability to work
through alternative institutional sites, allows Littoral art to develop
a systematic critique that can be actualized through specific political
or social struggles. The Littoral artist, by "interfacing" with existing
sites of political and cultural resistance can challenge the disabling
political quietism of liberal aesthetics.
2. Multiple registers of meaning
vs. formal immanence
In Littoral art the "meaning" of
a given work is not centered in the physical locus of the object, or in
the imaginative capacity of the single viewer. Rather, it is dispersed
through multiple registers. These include a spatial-temporal register,
in which the work "means" differently in different locations and times,
as opposed to the immanence that is characteristic of modernist formalism.
The work also produces multiple levels of information at a given time and
space as it interacts with a myriad of other discursive systems (existing
belief systems, ideologies, the psychological make up of particular viewers
or participants, etc.). There is thus no single "work" to be judged in
a Littoralist criticism. This is what differentiates Littoral criticism
from conventional art criticism. The "work" is constituted as an ensemble
of effects and forces, which operate in numerous registers of signification
and discursive interaction.
3. Dialogical indeterminance vs.
formal indeterminance
The recognition that Littoral works
operate on multiple levels of meaning doesn't imply that meaning is entirely
indeterminate, however. It can be clearly analyzed at specific points,
and this capacity to ascertain meaning effects among particular viewers
or co-participants is an important part of the process of dialogical "feedback"
(e.g., Stephen Willats projects with housing estate residents). At the
same time, this doesn't make the work entirely fixed. Rather, the principle
of indeterminance that is registered in conventional art through formal
innovation is expressed in Littoral art through the open-ended process
of dialogical engagement, which produces new and unanticipated forms of
collaborative knowledge. I'm not saying that Littoral art works can't be
formally innovative, but that they don't depend on the principle of immanent
formal differentiation as the primary engine for their development.
II. Current Political and Cultural
Context
In the second half of this talk I
want to use the concept of a dialogical aesthetic to outline some specific
conditions for the analysis and criticism of Littoral art. As I've argued,
one of the defining characteristics of Littoral art is its capacity for
interaction with other areas of social practice. The "interface" includes
more than just the "conversation" that takes place between practitioners
and their co-participants. It also encompasses the broader discursive context
within which a given Littoral project operates--for example, relevant public
policies and debates, corporate ideologies, images and narratives promulgated
by the mass media and numerous other sites which structure the political
and cultural meaning that a specific work is capable of producing, and
which are susceptible to being transformed by the work in turn. Two related
tendencies in contemporary cultural politics are particularly salient.
The first is the growing privatization of social life, linked with a corollary
embrace of the individual as the primary locus of political and cultural
authority. The second is the resistance to both theoretical and systematic
forms of analysis. These tendencies, although differentially articulated,
operate across a broad spectrum of cultural and political positions.
1. Individualism/ Privatization
In the U.S. we are witnessing the
widespread privatization of those domains of social life which were based
on the ideals (if not always the reality) of a shared commitment to a general
public good and a willingness to sacrifice some portion of one's self-interest
for the benefit of others. What might be termed the re-segregation of American
life is occurring at numerous points: public education is being replaced
by a system of selective "voucher" schools which often violate the separation
of church and state; fortified "gated communities" are proliferating among
the wealthy as a way to simultaneously express class privilege (and paranoia)
and to opt out of shared municipal services;10
with declining state and federal moneys "public" universities are becoming
research fiefdoms for major corporations; under the Republican congress
industry lobbyists are being invited to re-draft federal regulatory legislation
intended to protect the public from their own companies; and forms of collectively-financed
health care and social services are under attack by proposals to restrict
benefits to those least likely to need them.
Everywhere we see a retreat into
privatized enclaves along with a refusal to acknowledge the relationship
between economic privilege and consumption patterns here and lack of resources
and opportunity elsewhere. The withdrawal from a public commitment to these
programs is justified by the claim that they are inherently flawed. But
rather than recognizing the problems experienced by, for example, urban
high schools, as a result of an interconnected set of social and economic
forces (declining tax bases due to white flight, lack of job opportunities
as a result of a deliberate program of industrial disinvestment leading
to the proliferation of a drug-based economy, etc.) their problems are
attributed entirely to the failure of the poor as individuals; their lack
of moral fiber and personal initiative. The implication is clear: the only
effective public policies are those that function to transform the (failed)
individual; to provide them with a work ethic and a capacity for self-sacrifice.
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