tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39714745809730900362024-03-13T18:05:52.763+00:00nuits sans nuit et quelques jours sans jouragata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.comBlogger118125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-30302833269931971142014-04-19T13:47:00.000+01:002014-04-24T14:49:19.845+01:00Scene & Herd<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kxLa3abuhZY/U1JrQEORoJI/AAAAAAAABac/RSFkRsNu6JI/s1600/Polowanie+Olowska.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kxLa3abuhZY/U1JrQEORoJI/AAAAAAAABac/RSFkRsNu6JI/s1600/Polowanie+Olowska.jpg" height="400" width="292" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Righto, time to launch the promotional campaign for Poor But Sexy, now after the book hit the stores just over two weeks ago, as you have to do these days! The launch at Calvert 22 gallery took place on April 9th DREAMING THE LOST COLLECTIVE (here the link to the <a href="http://calvert22.org/events/dreaming-the-lost-collective-eastern-european-culture-past-present/">event </a>and some <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.685922798121214.1073741939.503124029734426&type=1">photos</a>), but there's several other events in the pipeline, conveniently each focusing on different aspects of the book, not to make people bored and to showcase all five short books compressed into one: one on current politics of the former East, one on pop culture generated out of the late cold war paranoia in late 70s/early 80s, then one on eastern European mysticism, then one on contemporary art meets Socialist Realism and finally, one on the different strategies of modernity and consumption in the Soviet Bloc and in the West.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZMNEB8E6XUE/U1JrhkF0D7I/AAAAAAAABak/DUjhwPX0XY4/s1600/stokrotki+spolem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZMNEB8E6XUE/U1JrhkF0D7I/AAAAAAAABak/DUjhwPX0XY4/s1600/stokrotki+spolem.jpg" height="309" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There has been and there are forthcoming articles in the press, linked to the book.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the Wire #362, there has been <a href="http://www.thewire.co.uk/archive/issues/362">my Epiphany</a>, in the prestigious series where authors are revealing music that influenced them somehow. I wrote on Franz Schubert and the influence of his song cycles such as Schone Mullerin on my later fixation with effeminate men in synthpop and Neue Deutsche Welle.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4FZga6XDv7o/U1JrqJtB_1I/AAAAAAAABas/gJc4e7jM3MM/s1600/my+the+wire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4FZga6XDv7o/U1JrqJtB_1I/AAAAAAAABas/gJc4e7jM3MM/s1600/my+the+wire.jpg" height="320" width="262" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At the Quietus, <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/14876-poor-but-sexy-agata-pyzik-extract-polish-80s-futurism">book excerpt</a> focusing o the popfuturism in Polish pop-culture - how we invented capitalism, that wasn't there (and how we predicted things to come). Two posts ago on this blog I made an <a href="http://nuitssansnuit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/polish-80s-pop-futurism-appendix-to.html">appendix</a> to this fragment.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Apart from that, I wrote recently for the Guardian about <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/21/ukraine-turmoil-womens-rights-europe-democracy">women's rights in Ukraine</a> and elsewhere in East Europe</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Icon monthly had me recently twice on the specificity of Soviet and Polish graphic design, <a href="http://www.grad-london.com/press/">on Soviet film posters in GRAD Russian Gallery</a>, London, and Henryk Tomaszewski's retrospective in Warsaw in the forthcoming, June issue.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WMO3VDMN0zY/U1JwcKp-qfI/AAAAAAAABbM/LvZuStdBZAg/s1600/2014-04-01-icon-magazine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WMO3VDMN0zY/U1JwcKp-qfI/AAAAAAAABbM/LvZuStdBZAg/s1600/2014-04-01-icon-magazine.jpg" height="400" width="301" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I'm also to have two pieces, on Vera Chytilova's Daisies and two para-long thingy for the Marguerite Duras Centenary in the forthcoming, #32 issue of <a href="http://fivedials.com/fivedials">Five Dials</a> magazine, edited by the one and only, wonderful writer Joanna Walsh. it will also include a great short story by Juliet Jacques. Stay tuned for this one!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-96j_W6uHEXM/U1JsBOuiGAI/AAAAAAAABa0/CGZ-4fyxGLc/s1600/restauracje+spolem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-96j_W6uHEXM/U1JsBOuiGAI/AAAAAAAABa0/CGZ-4fyxGLc/s1600/restauracje+spolem.jpg" height="320" width="319" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here are upcoming events:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">22.04 Cafe Oto, London: <a href="http://cafeoto.co.uk/poor-but-sexy-dancing-across-the-iron-curtain.shtm">Dancing across the Iron Curtain</a>, w/ Esther Leslie and Chris Bohn</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">2.05 <a href="http://www.kuadgallery.com/">KUAD Gallery</a>, Istanbul,Turkey - part of the Turkish-Polish Year, I'll be speaking at the opening of the exhibition of Polish art since the 90s, my abstract <a href="http://rupturesandconvergences.com/debate/">here</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">14.05 Manchester, UK, Atelier</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">16.05 London, <a href="http://emigratinglandscapes.org/events/16-may-2014-poor-but-sexy-meeting-with-agata-pyzik/">UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies</a> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Discussion around themes of <span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;">What’s the East and the West? How do we perceive the East and its transformations? What’s behind post-1989 developments?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;">4.06 Warsaw, Poland: <a href="http://artmuseum.pl/en">Museum of Modern Art</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;">21.06 Berlin, Germany: <a href="http://www.pro-qm.de/">Pro Qm Bookshop</a> (with guests)</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;">15.08 Wales, Green Man Festival, </span><a href="http://greenman.net/" style="letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;">greenman.net</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;"> </span><a href="http://www.greenman.net/artist/agata-pyzik-alex-niven" style="letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;">Q & A with Alex Niven</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;"> (</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;">of Folk Opposition and Definitelky Maybe book for 33 1/3 series fame)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;">Forthcoming in September: Pages of Hackney, London and Housmans Radical Booksellers, London.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;">Last but not least, very happy for this pretty uncanny celebrity appreciation, more of that please, some accolade from Martin Gore or David Bowie, for example?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6SZ8AqUxiPg/U1JyiW9EFEI/AAAAAAAABbY/_fBA3iEwG1A/s1600/102_6556.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6SZ8AqUxiPg/U1JyiW9EFEI/AAAAAAAABbY/_fBA3iEwG1A/s1600/102_6556.JPG" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;">that's all for now, folks!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #201213; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.15; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-W7iyU4rTMCY/U1JtO-OjwzI/AAAAAAAABbA/3KpNOwbJEZs/s1600/czech+xmas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-W7iyU4rTMCY/U1JtO-OjwzI/AAAAAAAABbA/3KpNOwbJEZs/s1600/czech+xmas.jpg" height="320" width="222" /></a></div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-2589781285447284052014-04-02T15:14:00.002+01:002014-04-18T14:34:20.427+01:00Neo-New Romantic heroes SUPER GIRL & ROMANTIC BOYS touring the UK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_abH-8_ScOA/UzwaDXYS2LI/AAAAAAAABY4/fq-4yMKF7wI/s1600/sgrb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_abH-8_ScOA/UzwaDXYS2LI/AAAAAAAABY4/fq-4yMKF7wI/s1600/sgrb.jpg" height="367" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Please, come to the concerts of one of my favorite Polish bands in the UK. here are the April dates:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>18.04 Brighton @ Cowley Club</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>19.04 Bristol @ Polish Club</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>20.04 Plymouth @ Tiki Bar</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>23.04 Edinburgh @ Banchee Labirynth</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>25.04 London @ T Chances</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/5vOKM01w2tc" width="420"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Polish neo punk-synth-goth (?) </span><a href="http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Girl_%26_Romantic_Boys" style="background-color: white; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">New Wave band Super Girl & Romantic Boys</a><span style="background-color: white;"> were pioneers of the </span>synth wave revival<span style="background-color: white;">. The band formed in 1998, never released their album and disbanded in 2006. Last year it was finally released by Antena Krzyku records.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0_YvpJvzzik" width="420"></iframe><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Listen to them on their <a href="https://myspace.com/supergirlromanticboys/music/songs">myspace</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wMx7sgCckns/UzwaldpYaeI/AAAAAAAABZA/Jdqr1IGaQac/s1600/sgrb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wMx7sgCckns/UzwaldpYaeI/AAAAAAAABZA/Jdqr1IGaQac/s1600/sgrb1.jpg" height="400" width="286" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I wrote on them last January in an <a href="http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/features/columns/eastern-haze/eastern-haze-january-2014/">Electronic Beats column</a>:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Super Girl & Romantic Boys can boldly claim to be the most unlucky Polish group of the last decade or more. Only last year did they finally release material which had been recording in late nineties/early 2000s, which had been shelved due to an unfair contract. They formed in 1998 after a few years of participating in various punks squats and groups around Poland. The leader and composer Kostek Usenko founded his first band, The Leszczers, at the age of eleven. Coming from an interesting three-quarters Russian background, but growing up in Poland, he always kept one leg in a different country, and is familiar with punk scenes of both Leningrad and Warsaw. Yet the music of SGRB, though showing the influences of <a data-tealium-rel="content" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Deutsche_Welle" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.05s ease-in-out; color: #e50285; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.05s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">Neue Deutsche Welle</a>, anglophone synthpop and cold wave, is definitely Polish in spirit. Their sound is chiefly inspired by the heroes of Polish eighties electronic music—Marek Bilinski, Romuald Lipko, or Andrzej Korzynski—recently popular due to <a data-tealium-rel="content" href="http://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.05s ease-in-out; color: #e50285; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.05s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">Finders Keepers</a> re-releases.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">While decidedly electronic in sound, their lyrics are less arch or obscure than the synthpop norm—usually a gritty, daily realism, more suitable for punk/post-punk bands like Magazine or even Prefab Sprout or the Smiths, full of stories about broken relationships or psychogeographic drifting through a misty, grey Warsaw. There’s also a good deal of social critique of the still-fresh-to-capitalism Polish society: aspirational middle classes wanting only new kitchen devices or the propagandistic manipulations of the Polish right wing authorities over historical events. While cold wave/synthpop bands are nearly universally a male affair, where female members could be counted on one hand, SGRB have a gender and emotional balance—vocalist Ewik has equally strong presence as Kostek."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">See you at the gigs!</span></div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-61488965892407961032014-04-01T15:24:00.000+01:002014-04-02T13:52:18.225+01:00Polish 80s pop-futurism - an appendix to the Quietus excerpt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_8sTiPLbF3I/UzrDUnVSh-I/AAAAAAAABXc/l6_I3hp7UcI/s1600/IZABELA+TROJANOWSKA+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_8sTiPLbF3I/UzrDUnVSh-I/AAAAAAAABXc/l6_I3hp7UcI/s1600/IZABELA+TROJANOWSKA+01.jpg" height="397" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
In addition to the excerpt published today <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/14876-poor-but-sexy-agata-pyzik-extract-polish-80s-futurism">at the eminent Quietus</a>, I thought it would be nice to publish some stuff that didn't fit to tQ's page and is fun to watch and vitally enriches the context written out in that fragment.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HfLR3fV-2Bg/UzwH8jBb4fI/AAAAAAAABYo/E-vV8acRzQM/s1600/urszula-0_83568403_big.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HfLR3fV-2Bg/UzwH8jBb4fI/AAAAAAAABYo/E-vV8acRzQM/s1600/urszula-0_83568403_big.jpg" height="400" width="367" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GdkJbTdW9Ko/UzrLSboxrII/AAAAAAAABYI/PO8xffNuux0/s1600/80s+fashion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GdkJbTdW9Ko/UzrLSboxrII/AAAAAAAABYI/PO8xffNuux0/s1600/80s+fashion.jpg" height="290" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
So here's more tracks from Kontrola W - industrial New Wave mavericks:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u8Yc0gDFsH4/UzrLw3hZNuI/AAAAAAAABYQ/T6sOv5jBcqQ/s1600/tumblr_megfupPpN21rmy2iio1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u8Yc0gDFsH4/UzrLw3hZNuI/AAAAAAAABYQ/T6sOv5jBcqQ/s1600/tumblr_megfupPpN21rmy2iio1_1280.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Radioactive<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/UxCaSLq3ayA" width="320"></iframe><br />
<br />
Dummies<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/AOcPeMIZqUc" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
The End<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/8db78DWbr9o" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
Stay in Motion<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/TVYAwYw-5Wg" width="320"></iframe><br />
<br />
Izabela T. - the queen<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mgNmlZN8m0Y/UzwHmz_negI/AAAAAAAABYg/58C2qalIPeg/s1600/5.17+In+Poland,+David+Bowie+was+a+woman.+Izabela+Trojanowska..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mgNmlZN8m0Y/UzwHmz_negI/AAAAAAAABYg/58C2qalIPeg/s1600/5.17+In+Poland,+David+Bowie+was+a+woman.+Izabela+Trojanowska..jpg" height="400" width="398" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Song of the Brick - mock-Socialist realism, after which Iza had trouble in the Party<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/gKhFs7e5KLI" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
pretending a Newton-sque businesswoman with nowhere to go to work, posing by the socialist skyscrapers<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/gxmdXoxP4f0" width="320"></iframe><br />
<br />
one of her memorable Opole song festival performances<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/gcsZgAElEg4" width="320"></iframe><br />
<br />
A curio - pre-80s, interwar cabaret style TV performance, pay attentio to the low cost but maximum effect foil decoration<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6Y8uh6R8qvU" width="320"></iframe><br />
<br />
electro pop extravaganza, I'm Your Sin<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="180" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ZpmrlAlQJRs" width="320"></iframe><br />
<br />
Urszula, who specialised in musing on outer (even if only mental) space and various kinds of surrealism, eg. that she's going crazy from a shopping frenzy...(in 80s? Poland no way!)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IcVC_pb7iyc/UzrG6JHY5dI/AAAAAAAABXo/oY0CYE2COoI/s1600/Urszula_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IcVC_pb7iyc/UzrG6JHY5dI/AAAAAAAABXo/oY0CYE2COoI/s1600/Urszula_2.jpg" height="400" width="270" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Seasonal Shopping Frenzy<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/KGJs4YmqjQY" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
Great Flight<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="180" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/sGN7ElVdBow" width="320"></iframe><br />
<br />
"Loose-blues, and holes in the sky"<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/jWARdlH56wQ" width="320"></iframe><br />
<br />
Raspberry King<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/kM3uPfwWmhY" width="320"></iframe><br />
<br />
Kora & Maanam - goth- New Romantics; first Polish band ever played on MTV<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mOmUOnDNFOA/UzrJApUAWvI/AAAAAAAABX0/te7AkuESnxM/s1600/5.18+Richard+Boulez+and+Kora,+1983,+photo+by+Tadeusz+Rolke.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mOmUOnDNFOA/UzrJApUAWvI/AAAAAAAABX0/te7AkuESnxM/s1600/5.18+Richard+Boulez+and+Kora,+1983,+photo+by+Tadeusz+Rolke.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a></div>
<br />
"It Gets Darker", directed by Zbigniew Rybczynski (Polish avant-garde filmmaker, laureate of an Oscar for animated film, Tango in 1980), teh first Polish song played on MTV.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_M350-1-I1M" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
Lipstick on the glass (!!)<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/EG7oojeA3PE" width="320"></iframe><br />
<br />
Lucciola<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/WyQdYVNuy_I" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
Kapitan Nemo - king of futuristic synthpop<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-teJohMMlqP8/UzrKjcXb2jI/AAAAAAAABYA/xIQaEHyftpU/s1600/KapitanNemo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-teJohMMlqP8/UzrKjcXb2jI/AAAAAAAABYA/xIQaEHyftpU/s1600/KapitanNemo.jpg" height="261" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Your Lorelei<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/g1lzCzKyn48" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
Electronic Civilisation<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="180" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1b9dwMd_WN8" width="320"></iframe>agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-37651360663324962362013-12-26T18:20:00.005+00:002013-12-27T11:01:31.942+00:00The present day flaneur<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1UQolfyxbOk" width="400"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-size: large;">[extended review of P. Keiller's The View from the Train, written originally for Blueprint magazine]</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">Despite
being the cradle of modernity, Britain never had much of an artistic
avant-garde, but its influence has had a slow-burning effect.
After reading the finally published collection of <a href="http://www.versobooks.com/authors/781-patrick-keiller">Patrick Keiller’s</a>
writing, </span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"><i><a href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/1504-the-view-from-the-train">ViewFrom the Train</a></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">,
we can see why it wasn't the world of traditionally understood art or
even the avant-garde, that today stands for the most peculiar legacy
of British modernism, but, perhaps, its peripheries. Situated
somewhere within popular cultures, pulp modernism and non-beaux arts
- in theory, philosophy, or scientific research. Somehow, we find
this strange intersection of art, architecture and research in the
exploratory “spatial” research done by one man in the ways of
filming, writing and reading, and focusing on the most mundane,
neglected elements of our landscape, perhaps precisely because of
that fact: docks, ports, wastelands, defunct industry, devastated
nature. Finally, the city. This is the core of Keiller's work.
Although the city was at the centre of fashionable archi-theories for
several decades, somehow nobody noticed how capital is changing the
space of our cities, with the chief example of London, the author’s
lifelong obsession.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en-US"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u2cixzoeDfQ/Urx5TWtKFTI/AAAAAAAABTk/eYKst-OMqnI/s1600/Nadja4_525.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="241" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u2cixzoeDfQ/Urx5TWtKFTI/AAAAAAAABTk/eYKst-OMqnI/s320/Nadja4_525.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-agYIP8Yag1Y/Urx5TgDfAcI/AAAAAAAABTo/DH3Y0p-TRKQ/s1600/Nadja_Marien_525.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="303" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-agYIP8Yag1Y/Urx5TgDfAcI/AAAAAAAABTo/DH3Y0p-TRKQ/s400/Nadja_Marien_525.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D84LiUhUnUg/Urx5TiEAq0I/AAAAAAAABTw/KCDladdfJJA/s1600/Nadja5_525.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D84LiUhUnUg/Urx5TiEAq0I/AAAAAAAABTw/KCDladdfJJA/s320/Nadja5_525.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span lang="en-US" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Always
pursuing his own individual path, Keiller, who used to be a
professional architect, has developed his own theory of space, which
owes more to his own interpretation of surrealism, the Situationists
and poets of early modernity, such as Poe, Rimbaud and Baudelaire,
than studying the classics of architectural theory. This beautifully
titled book puts together texts, which reveal the artistic
provenances behind the strikingly separate and unique Robinson
Trilogy. Keiller learned the ways of topographic exploration from the
‘heroes of modern life’ – Poe’s ‘man of the crowd', the
Baudelarian flaneur, the surrealist tourist, and the Situationist
drifter. Take a look at Breton's Nadja - it's a ready blueprint for the future Keiller's work, both in terms of the aesthetic sense of the 'uncanny', the mysterious, the unknown (see early Keiller's short films especially, where character's are often filled with unexplained anxiety) and a specific taste for the abandoned, desolate (like from a Giorgio de Chirico's painting), neglected cityscapes, or to the contrary - places so obvious, so everyday that nobody really <i>looks</i> at them anymore. Or the situationist city, 'psychogeography', which now seems to be so popular, of course - where the sense of random drift is there to reclaim the city, to take it over in a poetic just as much as in a political sense.Yet writing about it, Keiller retains his own voice, where Laurence Sterne meets Guy Debord, dreamy yet succinct, critical yet benign, poetic but politically astute.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V886Oakgr0w/Urx-AEb0U3I/AAAAAAAABUM/qWxrwO9n68g/s1600/breton-nadja-p59.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="243" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V886Oakgr0w/Urx-AEb0U3I/AAAAAAAABUM/qWxrwO9n68g/s320/breton-nadja-p59.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
First Keiller began his trips looking for buildings he couldn't build himself, but gradually turned to the space itself that he was
sinking in, not far from the Romantic notions of the “sublime”
and the “atmospheric”. As he writes here in ‘The Poetic
Experience of Townscape and Landscape’ (1982): “The present day
flaneur carries a camera and travels not so much on foot as in a car
or on a train.” A photograph becomes a degraded form of documenting
the changing world on one’s own, which cannot be, because of the
urban and social decline, experienced as it used to be, as a
community. Developing his interest in space, “I began to look at
places as potential photographs, or better still, film images, and
even the still photographs took on the character of a film still.”
From there begins a journey to the unobvious found in the most
everyday elements of the British or life in general - and this is
what the 30 years of texts collected here are about.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-33WOyExDiwU/Urx61fKa1WI/AAAAAAAABUA/f52kINvIbjI/s1600/situationist_city_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="292" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-33WOyExDiwU/Urx61fKa1WI/AAAAAAAABUA/f52kINvIbjI/s400/situationist_city_400.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AufGMIr-51E/Urx006FkpfI/AAAAAAAABTI/Hxb07-Knx4c/s1600/SAM_7591.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AufGMIr-51E/Urx006FkpfI/AAAAAAAABTI/Hxb07-Knx4c/s400/SAM_7591.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">They
were mostly written as a part of the research before, during or after
making a specific film. ‘London in the early 90s’ is of course a
meditation on London, which came from the working on the breakthrough
feature London (1994). London then, after over a decade of the Tory
rule, cuts to public spending and the stimulation of the financial
industries only, was in great social and spatial decline, with
dissolving old infrastructure - a depressing and unpleasant place to
live. We see it from the perspective of Robinson, this hapless
radical, who, in the face of the demise of socialist politics can
only act out his anger in a series of eccentricities, not in a
coherent political action, as a sign of this political despair. This,
resulting in the so-called “problem of London”, obsesses
Keiller’s rootless, melancholic character, being, as we discover,
the problem of a specifically British kind of capitalism, which
wasn’t a question of some economic inevitability, but the result of
conscious political decisions and ideology, which could have been
avoided. ‘Port Statistics’ was a part of the research
accompanying </span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"><i>Robinson
In Space</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">
(1997), documenting the observation of several working British ports
as places of the inward/outward movement of commodities and the
declining industry, contesting the view that industrial production
had disappeared from Britain. It was rather pushed outside of the
cities to the periphery (or offshored to China) and automated.
Similarly, ‘The Dilapidated Dwelling’ consists of notes to the
film of same title (2000) documenting the reasons for the general
decline of housing in the UK and the notion of time acting as
corrosion during the unfolding life of buildings.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en-US"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TR1q7OlDrCc/Urx1l4zVfzI/AAAAAAAABTQ/R5W1jqhJsqA/s1600/Southampton+Docks+crane+accident-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="253" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TR1q7OlDrCc/Urx1l4zVfzI/AAAAAAAABTQ/R5W1jqhJsqA/s400/Southampton+Docks+crane+accident-01.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">Knowledge
comes to Keiller mostly via a “sense of space”, grasped via the
instruments of photography and film. The space he writes about can be
grasped anywhere, at any moment – it’s the title’s “view from
the train”, a little, momentary glimpse of reality, of perception,
possibly a revelation, an epiphany. It’s also a borrowing from
Freud, who said the logic of the psychoanalytical confession is like
“describing to someone the changing views seen from the outside”,
a phantom train ride. And in the essay ‘Phantom Rides’, Keiller
helps us reimagine how people perceived early silent film as an
instrument of the spatial transformation of reality. Those films are
today a true “window” onto a lost space, which, according to
Henri Lebfebvre, was “shattered around 1910”. He could be quoting
Virginia Woolf, who claimed in 1924 that ‘on or about 1910 human
character changed’. She meant the age of speed: of radio, mass
media, cubism, modern music, Stravinsky’s </span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"><i>Rites
of Spring</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">,
but also the social change, great social unrest, socialist parties
rising across Europe. The old order was gone, and the films silently
reflected this.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en-US"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FrYUucLgxCI/Urx2JS58x6I/AAAAAAAABTY/ESnFh07tbyE/s1600/soton+docks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="215" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FrYUucLgxCI/Urx2JS58x6I/AAAAAAAABTY/ESnFh07tbyE/s400/soton+docks.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">In
this sense, the invention of film participated in and instigated this
change. That’s why this form remains still a perfect instrument of
documenting the “spatial research” Keiller talks about. The
spaces that attract his eye, often deliberately shown abandoned, open
infinite possibilities. They are “palimpsests” or carriers of new
urban myths, “which can be constructed as a narrative”, which is
a ready template for a film. It’s not, according to Keiller, what
the film says, that should be new, but the way it says what we
already know and refuse to think about. These essays show that the
author of London and Robinson In Space has cast his own key to
understand it.</span></div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-62557405803848872492013-11-27T19:12:00.002+00:002013-11-27T19:14:03.244+00:00The Book! The Book!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7sbYTNT_XNw/UpZCaOx8ixI/AAAAAAAABSY/ND5Inr_ExQw/s1600/jhp525813abf2df1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7sbYTNT_XNw/UpZCaOx8ixI/AAAAAAAABSY/ND5Inr_ExQw/s640/jhp525813abf2df1.jpg" width="414" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-895w8DTIp-4/UpZAgsgI0GI/AAAAAAAABSM/dEMu77C1oQw/s1600/jhp5294df89cb1e2-page-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="464" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-895w8DTIp-4/UpZAgsgI0GI/AAAAAAAABSM/dEMu77C1oQw/s640/jhp5294df89cb1e2-page-001.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It's nearly here - my book Poor But Sexy. Culture Clashes in Europe East and West is coming out o March 28th 2014 on Zero Books. I will be posting here all events related to this - as well as reviews, articles and other pieces of writing. Book will be probably available before that date on Amazon anyway.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>"24 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe is as divided as ever. The passengers of the low-budget airlines go east for stag parties, and they go west for work; but the east stays east, and west stays west. Caricatures abound - the Polish plumber in the tabloids, the New Cold War in the broadsheets and the endless search for 'the new Berlin' for hipsters.</b></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Sweeping across the breadth of the former Iron Curtain, Agata Pyzik charts the mutual misunderstandings between Western and eastern Europe, going beyond the familiar myths of plucky dissidents, the horrors of Stalinism and the 'success stories' of a neoliberal New Europe. Rather than a low-wage hinterland for the affluent west or a picturesque holiday destination, Pyzik finds a rich and unwritten counter-history.</b></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Poor but Sexy ranges from Warsaw to Luton, from Prague to East Berlin, from Ukraine to Romania, in search of the counter-currents and other traditions. Instead, Poor But Sexy peers into the secret histories of Eastern Europe (and its tortured relations with the 'west'). Eastern European migration, the post-punk Bowiephile obsession with the 'Eastern Bloc', Orientalism and 'self-colonisation', the emancipatory potentials of Socialist Realism, and the possibility of a non-western idea of modernity and futurism. Its subjects veer from Femen to Depeche Mode, from David Bowie to Nikita Khrushchev, from Socialist Realists to New Romantics.</b></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Refusing both a dewy-eyed Ostalgia for the 'good old days' and the equally desperate desire to become a 'normal part of Europe', <i>Poor But Sexy</i> reclaims the idea of an Other Europe."</b></span></div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #e2f6ff; line-height: 18px;">What’s a poor girl to do when worlds collide except listen to gloomy rock ’n’ roll bands and dance precariously along the fault-line of history where the Berlin Wall used to be? Born in Poland in the 1980s, Agata Pyzik is barely old enough to remember life under communism. Watching the waves of Ostalgie spreading across the former GDR and other ex-Warsaw Pakt states, she felt compelled to investigate the underlying causes of disenchantment among increasing numbers of Central Europeans hankering for the certainties guaranteed them under Soviet rule. If she began her mission with a sense of bemused contempt for dewy-eyed sentimentalism distorting people’s memory of what life was really like under communism, her investigations reveal a far more complex picture. Poor But Sexy is a fabulous freefall through 25 years of East-West exchanges predicated on the West’s arrogant assumption that at base everybody wants to buy in to their belief systems. Riding these East-West crosscurrents of desire, envy and wounded pride, she has found much to be proud of amid the ruins of communism, and in the process of looking back she has recovered some extraordinary punk, art, fashion and philosophical alternatives to the Western way ahead.</span><br style="background-color: #e2f6ff; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: #e2f6ff; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: #e2f6ff; line-height: 18px;">Chris Bohn aka Biba Kopf, editor of The Wire</span></span></div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-30790381921925544452013-11-18T16:10:00.000+00:002013-11-19T16:42:26.834+00:00Polish Avant-garde Seen From Many New Angles: Themersons<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Q4QwcOD3pmM/Uoo7Z-SyZMI/AAAAAAAABRg/JfI-vY1JsTQ/s1600/themersonowie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="286" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Q4QwcOD3pmM/Uoo7Z-SyZMI/AAAAAAAABRg/JfI-vY1JsTQ/s400/themersonowie.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">[guest post in Polish, about two Polish avant-garde artists Franciszka i Stefan Themerson, who spent half of their lives in London, where they founded Gabberbocchus Press, among other things; my essay from <a href="http://www.midrasz.pl/archiwum.php#">Midrasz 2/2013 </a>magazine]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><b>Themersonowie i
awangarda</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Muzeum Sztuki w
Łodzi<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Agata Pyzik<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Franciszka (1909-1988)
i Stefan (1910-88) Themerson należą do najchętniej dziś odkrywanych i
cytowanych polskich artystów awangardy. W czasach, kiedy sztuka stała się
jednym z najlepszych sposobów 'promocji', a rozmaite wystawy i towarzyszące im
wydarzenia stanowią o 'kreatywności', nie ma nic lepszego, niż nagle odkrycie,
ze mamy 'naszych' artystów, którzy mogą stanąć w jednym szeregu z awangardą
europejską. I my mamy swoich pionierów sztuki, a Themersonowie, z ich osobnością,
doświadczeniem emigracji i kontaktami ze światową awangardą, nie dają się nijak
sklasyfikować. Znani głównie dzięki swoim filmom, które mają woje miejsce wśród
najciekawszych dokonań tego rodzaju obok Fernanda Legera, Rene Claira, Luisa
Bunuela czy Hansa Richtera. Ekspozycja w Muzeum Sztuki w Lodzi, pierwszej i do dziś
jedynej instytucji sztuki nowoczesnej w Polsce, stara się prześledzić awangardowe
konteksty Themersonów i zestawić część ich wspólnego dzieła z dokonaniami artystów
światowych – biorących się z przyjaźni i wspólnych doświadczeń. Ruchami
awangardowymi najczęściej docenianymi w Polsce byli formiści, kubiści, Blok i
Praesens, grupa a.r. czy polscy konstruktywiści. Jednak po latach możemy
dostrzec, jak często były one mocno zainspirowane pionierskimi odkryciami
Konstruktywistów w Rosji, Bauhausu w Niemczech, surrealistów w Paryżu czy de
Stijl w Holandii. Natomiast Themersonowie wiele rzeczy zrobili jako pierwsi, i
to nie tylko w Polsce. Jako pierwsi zainteresowali się np. możliwościami filmu
artystycznego. Wydawali jedyne pismo w Polsce jemu poświęcone, <i>f. a.</i> pod redakcja Franciszki, którego wyszły
zaledwie trzy numery. Podobnie, jak produktywistów i Eisensteinowską szkołę
montażu w radzieckiej Rosji i Bertolta Brechta, interesowały ich możliwości
komunikacyjne i kreacyjne radia jako medium.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/f-NNnOPb8Wc" width="400"></iframe></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Wystawa koncentruje
się na ich dokonaniach filmowych, książkach wydanych po emigracji do Londynu
podczas wojny przez ich własną oficynę Gabberbocchus Press i eksperymentach
wizualno-leksykalnych dokonanych wspólnie. Themerson studiował fizykę i
architekturę w Warszawie, być może stąd zainteresowanie możliwościami filmu i
montażu. Jego dzieła, jak <i>Wykład
Profesora Mmaa</i>, <i>Kardynał PÖlÄtÜo</i>
czy <i>Euklides był osłem </i>stanowią
komentarz do współczesnych dyskusji filozoficznych, np. logiki i języka
ówczesnej szkoły Lwowsko-Warszawskiej. Franciszka była córką malarza Jakuba
Weinlesa, a jej matka Łucja z Kaufmanów była pianistką. Poznali się w
warszawskiej Akademii Sztuk Pięknych, gdzie studiowała malarstwo. Porównywalni
do Sophie i Hansa Arpów albo Stepanowej i Rodczenki, Themersonowie najczęściej
tworzyli podpisywali swoje dzieła wspólnie. Jednak dziś widać doskonale, że ich
zainteresowania i funkcje w rodzinnym tandemie były zupełnie różne.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Domeną Stefana był
język: poezja semantyczna, eksperymenty leksykalne, teoretyzowanie i filozofia.
Stefana pasjonowała logika, język i rozważania nad prawdziwością. To
prawdopodobnie również on wprowadził eksperymenty z fotografią do ich twórczości.
Fotogram miał być czymś więcej niż tylko odzwierciedleniem rzeczywistości – miał
kreować tę rzeczywistość od nowa. Jak wielu innych awangardzistów, Stefan wierzył
w zaktywizowanie zmysłów jako klucz do nowej rzeczywistości; pobudzeni w niezwykły
sposób, zaczniemy widzieć ją dynamicznie, ujawnią się nam nowe znaczenia, poziomy,
kanały tej realności. Połączenie zmysłów, znane od romantyzmu i Baudelaire'a,
Themerson nazywał 'intelektualną orkiestracją elementów leksykalnych i
znaczenia semantycznego'. Najbliżej było mu do dadaistów, z ich pozornym
brakiem zaangażowania politycznego, regresem w bardziej 'prymitywne' formy,
kontestacją talentu i statusu artysty. Z surrealistami łączyła go wizyjność i oniryczność,
stąd traktat <i>O potrzebie tworzenia widzeń</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Franciszka, dobrowolnie
często wycofująca się za męża, jest dziś niedostatecznie doceniana. A to być
może jej twórczość jest z dwojga ciekawsza. Wystawa doskonale to wydobywa.
Ekspozycje dzieł obojga sąsiadują ze sobą i dopowiadają nawzajem. Teorie
Stefana odpowiadają poruszającym, dramatycznym płótnom Franciszki namalowanymi
w jej własnej poetyce bieli. Pozostająca pod wpływem abstrakcji figuratywnej,
obrazy Franciszki dzielą fascynację ekspresją dziecięca znana z płócien Jeana Dubuffeta,
Wolsa czy Paual Klee, jednak jej kolorystyka – ledwo zarysowane jakby dziecięca
ręką lub patykiem na piasku postaci i zwierzęta, ledwo wyłaniają się z białego
tła, żeby po chwili, widziane pod innym katem, ponownie zniknąć.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/49Vjr1waHM0" width="400"></iframe></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Wizyty w Paryżu w
1936 i ’37 roku, gdzie spotkami Moholy-Nagy’a i innych twórców filmow
awangardowych, które zachęciły ich do własnych eskperymentów. Podczas około
10-letniego pobytu w stolicy (1928-37) pierwsi dokonywali eksperymentów
dźwiękowych w filmach artystycznych, ich techniki filmu animowanego były
unikatowe. Filmy realizowali w domu, posługując się światłami i cieniami na
obiektach oraz urządzeniem pozwalającym fotografować klatka po klatce obiekty
umieszczone na przezroczystej kalce. Przy użyciu nowatorskich choć
nieskomplikowanych technik zrealizowali m.in. <i>Aptekę </i>(dzis dostępną dzięki rekonstrukcji artysty amerykańskiego
Bruce Chechewsky’ego), <i>Europę</i>
(zainspirowaną poematem Anatola Sterna, przedstawiającym katastroficzną wizję
Europy zmierzającej ku zagładzie)<i>,
Zwarcie</i>, <i>Przygodę człowieka
poczciwego</i> i <i>Drobiazg melodyjny</i>,
okrzyknięty pierwszym polskim wideoklipem, który służył jako reklama firmy
galanteryjnej na Nowym Świecie i był pokazywany w kinach przed filmami.</span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 9pt;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Muzykę do ich filmów
pisali m.in. Lutosławski i Stefan Kisielewski.</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Jednak to wojna i
jej trauma wyrasta w twórczości Franciszki jako sprawa bardzo istotna. Małżonkowie
opuścili Polskę w 1938 roku do Paryża, licząc, ze pozostaną tam na zawsze,
oddając się eksperymentom. Wojna pokrzyżowała te plany, w 1940 Stefan
ochotniczo wstepuje do Polskiego Pułku Piechoty, Franciszka pracuje dla Rządu
Polskiego na Wygnaniu jako kartografistka we Francji. Podczas gdy on tuła się
po obozach dla uchodźców we Francji, jej udaje się uciec do Londynu. Themerson
dołącza do niej dopiero po dwóch latach. Tam od razu włączają się w akcje wspomagające
Polakow w kraju. Powstaje „eksperymentalny film patriotyczny” <i>Calling Mr Smith</i>, zachęcający Brytyjczyków
do zainteresowania się dramatyczną sytuacją Polaków podczas okupacji
nazistowskiej. Wykorzystujący tradycyjne elementy awangardowe: kolaż, repetycje,
zbliżenia, jest zarazem filmem stricte propagandowym, z wykorzystaniem
sentymentalnej polskiej muzyki Chopina. Jednak zanim tak się stanie i
Franciszka jest sama w Londynie, tworzy cykle o bombardowaniach ludności
Londynu i Wielkiej Brytanii. Szkice przedstawiające ledwo rozpoznawalne postaci
w maskach gazowych, zniszczenia, wybuchy poruszają jej dziecinną, rozchybotaną
kreską. Także „białe malowidła” czy scenografia do szwedzkiej inscenizacji
Krola Ubu i Opery za Trzy Grosze poruszają zdeformowaniem, ciemnymi barwami.
Dzieciństwo ukazuje tutaj swoją ciemną stronę. Dramat dziejący się „W Polsce,
czyli nigdzie” w ujęciu Franciszki jest historią ludzkiego upodlenia,
skarykaturyzowania ludzkiej egzystencji, wyrastającym z doświadczenia traumy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1Mh30f1K9_s" width="400"></iframe></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">W Londynie po
wojnie postanawiają zostać na stałe i zakładają Gabberbocchusa, nazwa wzięta
oczywiście z wiersza Lewisa Carrolla, Jabberwocky. Stefan był teoretykiem ich
działalności i ze swoimi manifestami dyskutował z innymi awangardzistami,
zwłaszcza bliskimi im dadaistami, Raoulem Haussmannem i Kurtem Schwittersem, z
którym spotkali się w Londynie, kiedy zuryski dadaista został wypuszczony po 2
latach przebywania w obozie przejściowym dla Niemców. Wycieńczony obozem,
Schwitters żył tylko do 1948 roku, jednak zdążył w tym czasie rozwinąć nowe
techniki kolażu, które miały wpływ na Stefana. Stefan był znacznie bardziej pod
wpływem surrealizmu. Jego 'obiekty znalezione, rozsiane po całej wystawie, jak <i>Rękawiczka dziecięca połączona z imadłem</i>,
i rozmaite Przedmioty erotyczne są unikalne w polskiej sztuce.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Temu chyba należy
tez zawdzięczać erotyczno-surrealistyczne elementy w ich filmach. Na łódzkiej
wystawie znalazły się niemal wszystkie ich arcydzieła filmowe: <i>Oko i Ucho</i>, <i>Calling Mr Smith</i> i rekonstrukcje warszawskie. Zniszczeniu podczas
wojny uległy dwa wielkie arcydzieła polskiej sztuki: film <i>Europa</i> (1931-2) na podstawie poematu Anatola Sterna, który podziej wielokrotnie
stawał się kanwa działań artystycznych, by wspomnieć tylko film Akademii Ruchu
z początku lat 80. Po filmie Themersonów pozostały dziś tylko fotogramy, ale
nawet w tej formie zadziwiają podobieństwem do równoczesnych eksperymentów niemieckich
ekspresjonistów czy tzw. rosyjskich Ekscentryków w rodzaju duetu
Trauberg/Kozincew. Artyści ci widzieli współczesność jako dramatyczną i godną
zdramatyzowania zarazem. W zachowanej tylko w strzępach i fragmentach
fotograficznych <i>Europie</i> mamy do
czynienia z połączeniem obrazów chropawej powierzchni chleba, kobiecych nagich
bioder, gestów rak, żucia. Film składa
się z fotogramów, abstrakcyjnych elementów drukarskich i geometrycznych. Były
to celowo przedmioty odarte ze znaczenia, zderzone jakby przypadkowo, gdzie to
ideologia, nie znaczenie, stanowiło ich wspólną płaszczyznę. To była Europa
galopującego nazizmu, która je, rozmnaża się, a wkrótce zamienić się miała w
żywą amunicję. Za to <i>Żywot Człowieka
poczciwego</i> (1937) to artystyczne potraktowanie komedii slapstickowej –
podobnie, jak wielu innych awangardzistów, Themersonowie widzieli w komediach
Chaplina i Harolda Lloyda odpowiedź na wyzwania współczesnego świata i
technologii. Jak we <i>Współczesnych czasach</i>
Chaplina, Człowiek poczciwy stara się tylko wypełniać swoje codzienne zadania.
Jeśli jednego dnia postanawia chodzić tyłem, odwróceniu ulega cały świat, jego
bliźni nie pozostawią go w spokoju za to zaburzenie konformistycznego porządku.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Ich
filmowo-dzwiękowe kolaże, łączyły towarzyszące nowoczesności doświadczenie
nieciągłości, mediacji przez język i wynikającej zeń fragmentaryzacji świata
także z eksperymentami z poezją wizualną czy raczej, jak nazywał to Themerson,
semantyczną (gdzie słowa były zastępowane np. ich definicjami). Themerson
mówił, że dziś slogan może być poezją, a tzw. poezja niczym więcej, jak
propagandowym sloganem. Świadomość materialności języka i podporządkowania go
arbitralnym regułom zbliża ich do artystycznej międzynarodówki, Patafizyków (do
których St. T. należał) pod wodzą Raymonda Queneau, dadaistów (przyjaźń ze
Schwittersem) i surrealistów. Ich filmy były same z siebie 'kolażami': zrobione
ze ścinków, fotogramów, negatywów, abstrakcyjnie potraktowanych elementów
drukowanych, stosujące techniki zwielokrotnienia i efektu wyobcowania (od
radzieckiej szkoły formalistów, przez Szkłowskiego nazwanych '<i>ostranienie</i>', uniezwykleniem czy też Verfremdungeffekt
u Brechta). Owszem, fotogramy robił Man Ray, czescy surrealisci czy
Moholy-Nagy, jednak te Themersonów były niezwykle oryginalne.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">W Londynie
rozpoczęli działalność wydawniczą, która z czasem stała się najważniejsza.
Wydawali nie tylko poematy, opery i traktaty samego Stefana, które potem
Franciszka ilustrowała. Podczas gdy Themerson rozwijał swoje teorie poezji semantycznej,
zaczęli po raz pierwszy po angielsku publikować najważniejsze pozycje
awangardy, jak pierwsze angielskie tlumaczenie krola Ubu Jarry’ego (sic!).
Miały to być tzw. bestlookery, ksiązki o wyjątkowym wyglądzie. Opublikowali
m.in. pierwszy raz po angielsku Raymonda Queneau, Stevie Smith, Kurta
Schwittersa, Henri Chopina, Apollinaire'a, C.H. Sissona, James Laughlina,
Kennetha Tynana, Raoula Hausmanna. Prowadzili salon zwany Common Room,
stanowiacy miejsce regularnych spotkań pisarzy-eksperymentatorów. Themerson
nadal tworzył poematy i opery, np. libretto i muzykę do opery
semantycznej <i>Święty Franciszek wilk
z Gubbio albo kotlety świętego Franciszka</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Ważna była przyjaźń
się z malarzem żydowskim zamieszkałym w Londynie, Jankielem Adlerem, którego
tylko jeden obraz jest na wystawie. Adler był postacią fascynującą. Urodzony w
Tuszynie na przedmieściu Łodzi, był współzałożycielem łódzkiej żydowskiej
awangardy, grupy Jung Idysz. Już jako nastolatek mieszkał w Belgradzie i
Wuppertalu. od 1917 roku tworzył obrazy zainspirowane żydowskim folklorem i
epizodami z życia wschodnioeuropejskich Żydów, choć w awangardowej,
ekspresjonistycznej formie. Na początku lat 20-tych mieszkał w Berlinie, gdzie
był częścią grupy ekspresjonistów Die Aktion. W Dusseldorfie, gdzie uczył w
akademii sztuk pięknych, poznał Paula Klee, który wywarł na niego wpływ.
Sprzeciwiał się rządom faszystów, razem z innymi artystami lewicowymi w 1932
napisał manifest na rzecz komunizmu. Zaliczony przez nazistów do sztuki
zdegenerowanej, wyjechał do Paryża, gdzie zetknął się z surrealistami. W latach
30. wystawiał w Polsce w Instytucie Propagandy Sztuki w Warszawie i został
scenografem filmu jidysz Ał Chet. Podczas drugiej wojny walczył w uformowanej
we Francji Armii Polskiej. Zmarł w Wielkiej Brytanii, gdzie zawarł przyjaźń z
Themersonami. Stefan napisał o nim książkę <i>Jankel
Adler:</i> <i>An artist seen from many
possible angles</i>, w której wyjaśniał narodziny malarza surrealistycznego,
ale osobnego, wynikłe z pojedynczego epizodu w jego życiu w wieku 6-ciu lat,
kiedy doznał uczucia „pomieszania języków”. Stąd w jego malarstwie magiczna transformacja
przedmiotów w osoby, przygodność języka i malarstwo na pograniczu świadomości.
Ale to Franciszkę łączyła z Adlerem surrealistyczna dziecięca wyobraźnia,
instynkt gry i zabawy, podatność na surrealny humor. Podobnie było z Raymondem
Queneau, którego <i>Ćwiczenia stylistyczne</i>
wydali pierwsi po angielsku. Nastrój „poważnej zabawy”, pozornych zabaw, od
których zależeć może ludzkie życie, jest może wiodącym uczuciem na łódzkiej
wystawie. Pogłębia ono wciąż niedostateczną wiedzę o tej dwójce artystów,
wyjaśniając, skąd brały się obsesje jednych z najbardziej unikalnych artystów,
jakich kiedykolwiek mieliśmy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-7963061412923742692013-11-17T12:21:00.005+00:002013-11-17T18:37:59.702+00:00"It was not real love, it was only something physical ..."<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Rainer Werner Fassbinder is probably my favorite director, definitely my deep fascination for years, since I first saw his films and become an aware cinephile asa teenage girl. I never wrote about him in here, beside a small fragment on In the Year of 13 Moons in the post on Christiane F./David Bowie and he will feature a bit in my book. Recently I discovered the several films I still haven't seen from his corpus (44 films and several serials, mind) are actually available online. Here's 1972's <i>Jailbait</i> with a young, nymphettish Eva Mattes as an overdevelopped 14 year old who defies her petty bourgeois parents lifestyle and starts seeing a 19 year old unskilled worker. Then it involves illicit sex with minors, class war, death threats and a gun.</span><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/h98myGDu05U" width="400"></iframe><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There's a scene in this film in which such piece of dialogue really occurs - w<span style="line-height: 14px;">hen her parents find out that their daughter's hymen has been busted by a certain proletarian, they have this conversation:</span><span style="line-height: 14px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br style="line-height: 14px;" /><span style="line-height: 14px;">Mother: The Nazis had their faults.</span><br style="line-height: 14px;" /><br style="line-height: 14px;" /><span style="line-height: 14px;">Father: I would rather 100,000 Jews murdered than this happen to us!</span></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 14px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 14px;">He really knew what he was doing to his nation, the fucker.</span></span></div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-30303002732798349132013-11-14T17:23:00.000+00:002013-11-27T19:30:19.744+00:00Music of Full Communism? Early Musical Experiment in Soviet Union<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MhjWVGp88JU/UoUC7PcNFeI/AAAAAAAABQ8/EQCwyZjJy1Y/s1600/enthusiasm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MhjWVGp88JU/UoUC7PcNFeI/AAAAAAAABQ8/EQCwyZjJy1Y/s400/enthusiasm.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">[full text of an essay which appeared on <a href="http://calvertjournal.com/comment/show/1340/waves-of-the-future-russian-sound-art-pioneers">Calvert Journal</a>]</span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Around the same time that the Museum of Art in Lódz, Poland in 2012 and the <a href="http://calvert22.org/exhibitions/show/955/sounding-the-body-electric-experiments-in-art-and-music-in-eastern-europe-1">Calvert Gallery</a> in London now host <a href="http://msl.org.pl/en/wydarzenia/sounding/">Sounding the Body Electric</a>, an exhibition of Eastern European sound experiments between
the 50s and 80s, Andrey Smirnov, one of the most prominent researchers of the
early Soviet era music, has finally published his magnum opus, the long-awaited
<i>Sound in Z</i>, which will now be the
definitive book on the subject. One of the most surprising aspects of 50s and
60s sound art in the Soviet Bloc for the Western audience might be its
incredible scientific-cultural interdependency - its new inventions strictly
tied up in parallel with the newest scientific inventions of the era such as cybernetics,
a perfect combination of mathematics and electricity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Yet this art didn’t come to us from
nowhere. The relative relaxation in the mid-50s, after Stalin’s death and as a
compensation after uprisings both in Hungary and Poland, meant in many cases a
comeback to the buried and forgotten splendid inventiveness of the original
Soviet artists – who, together with the Bolshevik Revolution which they mostly
wholeheartedly supported, believed that now was the time humanity would undergo
a great transformation. Smirnov calls them ‘the Z Generation’. Why? Partly because
of the proliferation of the radio waves and electrical currents, which,
together with other technological phenomena, was feeding the imagination of
this era. Z signified the spark, the zigzag of the radio wave, lightning, electrical
spasms of energy. In a way, this embodied the bodiless, the ethereal, esoteric
energy, of something necessarily dematerialising in the act of dialectical
transformation; and last but not least, all those energies mounted to some
notion of cosmic energy. The intense development of scientific ideas among the
generation Z could be compared to the Renaissance, and not only because artists
were equally polymathic – also the more esoteric ideas resemble that period,
replacing often a divine immateriality with more technological precision.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9MldPIWuSfE/UoUGiVfpo3I/AAAAAAAABRI/zXVubt-owno/s1600/Lucie_Rosen_playing_theremin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="305" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9MldPIWuSfE/UoUGiVfpo3I/AAAAAAAABRI/zXVubt-owno/s400/Lucie_Rosen_playing_theremin.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Divided by one crucial event – the Second
World War - the inventors, scientists and artists creating under Bolshevik rule
had already been working on most of the inventions which the later generation
inherited, which in the later history of electronic music and cybernetic, kinetic
50s/60s art are not enough stressed or are even forgotten. And the comparison
of the development of sound art and sound science and electronic music in those
two eras is interesting, because it reveals a similar nature and similar
history common to both eruptions of originality: first the beautiful rise and
explosion, and then, politically motivated destruction. In the case of the
post-war era, that came with the Brezhnev era of stagnation, beginning in 1968
with the Soviet invasion of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Czechoslovakia</st1:country-region>,
and in March the same year, the anti-Semitic political crisis in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Poland</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dhJa5j07A98/UoUG4_p0l0I/AAAAAAAABRQ/zjH9S1op0LE/s1600/lenin_electrification.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dhJa5j07A98/UoUG4_p0l0I/AAAAAAAABRQ/zjH9S1op0LE/s400/lenin_electrification.jpg" width="288" /></a></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There was a similar “crushing” of the
artists, but they weren’t similar in their convictions. Andrey Smirnov shows a technically
detailed panorama of the flourishing of an art which could only have arisen in Soviet
conditions, although the author remains skeptical of whether the Soviet rule
was necessary. Yet Lenin’s passion for “electrification of the whole nation” as
a necessary element of communisation, inspired a new art which, according to
Commissar of Enlightenment Anatoly Lunacharsky, was to be from now on
experimental, to match the politics. This led to the spread of a conscious ‘Art
of the Future’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">While many of the post Thaw
experimental artists who enjoyed support by the state probably did so
pragmatically, so that they could continue or pursue their experiments, the
artists of revolutionary <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>
wanted their art to embody communism, an idea and ideal most of them strongly
believed in. They were strictly pioneers, creating meticulous instruments out
of now laughably primitive conditions, which also conveyed the rapid industrialisation
of the civil-war destroyed country. Associations like Proletkult promoted projects
such as “music of metal and machine tools”, which were to sledgehammer the
former world quite literally.</span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Kq_7w9RHvpQ" width="300"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">For instance, Smirnov describes how the <i>Symphony of Sirens</i> by Arseny Avraamov,
performed across the factories of Baku in 1922, was made with the sound of the following:
hydroplanes, machine guns, factory sirens, the foghorns of the entire Caspian
flotilla, the horns of steam locomotives and artillery fire, all denoted with
coloured flags and field phones by the conducting composer. The same Avraamov was
extremely enthusiastic at the presentation of the Theremin in 1927: “<b>The
prospects opened to music by Theremin’s invention are really boundless. His
‘Theremin’ is not a simple ‘new musical instrument’ as our musicritics [sic]
are thinking, no, it’s a solution to a huge social-scientific-art problem; it’s
the first big step into the future, into our future, it is a social revolution
in the art of making music, its revival.” </b>The “primitiveness” of <i>Symphony of</i> <i>Sirens</i> wasn’t a goal in itself, but a necessary means towards
something more sophisticated. The future belonged to the ‘Radio-Musical-Instruments’,
which could combine the overcoming of the traditional music with the ethereal sound
and technology and in this way, dreamt Avraamov, inventor of the new tonal
scales, it would reunite with the great alternative tonescale of music
traditions of the East. Another inventor, the scholar and acoustician <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_sound">EvgenySholpo</a>, wrote <i>The Enemy of Music, </i>a
story of a fictional polymath-musician who is expelled from the circles of
traditional musicians, so that he has to pursue his path of experiment alone.
The absolute star of <i>Sound in Z</i> is
Lev Termen aka Leon Theremin, author of the first electronic instrument in the
world, the famous Theremin (and uncountable others), based on the electronic
manipulation of air, who for his whole life had to balance his astonishing
musical science with political pressures that stretched as far as being forced
to help in espionage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/w5qf9O6c20o" width="300"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">While the narrative of electronic music
history often restricts itself to pointing to Schaeffer and Stockhausen as the
great protoplasts, they were different in their approach to sound. Stockhausen treated
sound matter in the end in an abstract way, as a thing detached from reality;
for the Soviet pioneers sound never really lost its representational element,
its connection to the social and material world. The later artists also had the
luck to have instruments such as tape machines ready at their disposal, unlike
our Russian heroes, who had to build their devices on their own, using what was
available. Dziga Vertov, for instance, had a lifelong obsession with the
special, rhythmic organization of sound. From his early experimental thoughts
as a student of music, he got interested in sound editing, and only via this he
came to film. His most startling work, <i>Enthusiasm
- Symphony of the Donbass</i>, is a quite terrifying apotheosis of labour, that
emphasized its toll and hardship, at the same time as it aggrandizes the
workers. Vertov spliced sounds of radio broadcasts, and industrial clanging on
his pioneering soundtrack, which is still striking in its monumentality.
Apparently, after seeing it, Charles Chaplin was to call it “the greatest
symphony I’ve ever heard”. Or maybe seen? The use of industrial noise in his <i>Modern Times</i> was probably inspired by Vertov.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/vUInm2dC6Ug" width="300"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">All this was in turn connected with a
wholly new science of the body and its movement. Inspired by the efficient
employment of a worker’s body in a factory, the idea of “biomechanics” was
established by the Central Institute of Labour (CIT) founded by the
experimental radical thinker Alexei Gastev, and haunted the minds of Soviet
intellectuals: with Gastev it resulted in a kind of labour psychology; it was
adapted for the stage by theatre reformer Vsevolod Meyerhold. From there, it
was close to the concept of the man-machine, androids, humanoids, robotics and
even today’s anti-humanism – yet it was understood not as a hatred of the
human, but rather of making the life supported by the machines and in symbiosis
with them more pleasant, more creative and easier than before; creating a New
Man, who could use technology to his advantage. Yet the ideas of mechanization,
electrification and efficiency for everybody came about at the same time as the
first conductorless symphony orchestra, PERSIMFANS (from <i>Pervyi Simfionicheskiy Ansamb bez Dirizhyora</i>), which represented
similar musical radicalism - not because of the quality of sounds (they toured
playing quite traditional music), but because the lack of a conductor actually embodied
the idea of communism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The richness of the book’s research is
impossible to convey in a review. A basic synthesiser, graphic sound such as
the so-called ‘variophone’, various kinds of proto recorders/players,
variations on the pianola, ways of splicing, cutting and sampling sounds, all
were invented or paved the way for then, in the 1920s or 1930s. Post war music
was also much more international in its opening up of communication and
collaboration between countries, even above the cold war divisions – suffice to
mention Warsaw Autumn or the Donaueschingen festival, or the proliferation of
radio studios, with Polish Radio Experimental Studio as especially key. Soviet
artists created in isolation and weren’t emulating anyone – with the possible
exception of a possible initial inspiration from the Italian futurists and
Luigi Russolo’s <i>Art of Noises</i>. The
really radical things at the time in the west were serialism, or the minimalism
of Erik Satie or Paul Hindemith, and were very different from what the Soviets
were doing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Sound technology after the war was more
advanced in its use of machines. Given the primitive conditions, the level of
invention in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>
came from the incredible enthusiasm people felt about the new reality, trying
to stretch technology to quite extreme levels, and it’s this that made eg.
Vertov’s creations so noisy, as he was basically trying to do something then impossible.
Stalinism gradually destroyed a lot of that, as the new leader wasn’t as
tolerant to the futurists as was Lenin, who was so interested in the electric
proprieties of the Theremin that he asked its creator to give him lessons. Some
creators were still trying to do radical things under Stalin, like Vertov’s <i>Three Songs of Lenin</i>, which put together
folksongs with more distorted radio signals and marches, still trying to retain
the initial clash. Yet it’s definitely a lot calmer, much less manic and brutal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/49DQ3aWaVbg" width="300"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">As Smirnov had full access to the
documents, we learn a lot about the sad endings of so many of the careers here:
if they weren’t recruited as spies, like Theremin, who became a lifelong
prisoner of the KGB, where he had to invent more and more sophisticated systems
of wiretapping for their use, then they died in the Gulag or after being
destroyed as artists, like Evgeny Sholpo, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variophone">inventor of variophone</a>, or were executed, like Gastev or Meyerhold.
Yet Smirnov goes as far as implying that the avant-garde Russian artists couldn’t
really have believed in the system, as they mostly came from anarchic
environments. Some of the avant-garde had been associated with anarchism
immediately after the revolution, but they wouldn’t have seen that as
anti-communist. There’s a certain anachronism in thinking that people from the
time should have been equipped with the later knowledge, that they “should have
known what would happen.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What linked artists in both eras was
wanting to make points with electronic sound using similar techniques: but in
very different circumstances, and with very different equipment. <i>Sound in Z</i> makes knowledge about this
hidden world of unimaginable inventiveness finally available, and also makes
the reader melancholic over how many of those geniuses had the misfortune of
trying their revolution in times that proved to be more than hostile. The world
wasn’t ready.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-73684868519529463822013-10-08T14:10:00.000+01:002013-10-08T19:13:30.825+01:00Expressway to reality principle: Inside the Barbie Dreamhouse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A3WWgTjpSfQ/UlP6059ZGiI/AAAAAAAABOQ/k6u3CYsVHXE/s1600/102_5114.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A3WWgTjpSfQ/UlP6059ZGiI/AAAAAAAABOQ/k6u3CYsVHXE/s640/102_5114.JPG" width="360" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">[director's cut of the review for <a href="http://iconeye.com/news/reviews-2013/review-barbie-s-dreamhouse">ICON</a> magazine]</span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">For the first time I heard about Berlin Barbie
DreamHouse, when the German branch of Femen activists and other feminist
organizations were protesting against its opening and accusing it of
sexist propaganda, and the Mattel company had it protected by the police.
Frankly, one wonders what’s the point? Is the world really in such a bad state
that the best way of entertaining girls is to put them through the possibly most reactionary experience of womanhood? And why in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Berlin</st1:state></st1:place>, a city afterall famous for its
leftist political activism. Yet, the queues I encountered proved otherwise and
a rise of tourism is also exactly what the city authorities are counting for.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E_f8d6zdgRw/UlQCQA153rI/AAAAAAAABPM/kJs1FQesYR4/s1600/102_5082.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E_f8d6zdgRw/UlQCQA153rI/AAAAAAAABPM/kJs1FQesYR4/s400/102_5082.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The first “man-sized” Barbie fun-house opened in <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place> confirms the design’s obsession with the
‘life-sized’ and the said ‘experience’. The idea, which partly originated from the
Cedric Price’s “fun palace” and Situationists, idea of ‘interactivity’ and
conceptual exhibitions in museums like Parisian Pompidou, posits <i>experience</i> always in the center of everything. And if we judged the
House only by that, it definitely makes you <i>experience</i>.
To an architecture connoisseur there’s a double pleasure/horror about it,
depending on the way you look at it. The inflatable pink tent stood just next
to Alexanderplatz, the flag GDR square, at the back of the new mall
Alexa, so far as many thought the ugliest building in the area. Now there’s
something to top this neoclassical kitsch.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n-GxAZ2Z8uI/UlQFWo3BIwI/AAAAAAAABQA/x781HIW7nbQ/s1600/102_5193.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n-GxAZ2Z8uI/UlQFWo3BIwI/AAAAAAAABQA/x781HIW7nbQ/s400/102_5193.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZcP05TpSC4s/UlQBrratbtI/AAAAAAAABPE/_nsixbWez90/s1600/102_5126.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZcP05TpSC4s/UlQBrratbtI/AAAAAAAABPE/_nsixbWez90/s400/102_5126.JPG" width="225" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">With DDR blocks looming behind, it, the tent looks
unbelievably tacky. Nobody will believe this is a castle, least of all the
children. As the toys become ‘real’, the first association is that of Lewis
Carroll’s <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Alice</st1:place></st1:city>
in Wonderland, with a gigantic shoe at the front turned into a fountain, around
which little girls run and cry.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AU_Ym2QvYtk/UlQCha2Wh8I/AAAAAAAABPU/UmAcMFCJgI8/s1600/102_5192.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AU_Ym2QvYtk/UlQCha2Wh8I/AAAAAAAABPU/UmAcMFCJgI8/s400/102_5192.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But they won’t ‘learn’ as <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Alice</st1:place></st1:city> did. The color pink, an object of much
mockery and attacks to stop making it the girl's colour, in BarbieHouse reaches
levels of saturation surpassing the effect LSD or any other psychedelics could
guarantee. A true pink-orgy. Which soon makes us nearly hallucinate, which
I guess is the desired effect. The idea seems to be to “help” the girls to act
out their fantasies, to which Barbie acts as an early catalyst. But
is it really acting out or rather harsh conditioning to their future lives? The
house is constructed as a magical sesame, a sequence of rooms unveiling little
girl’s apparent desires. But is it realising them?</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f132BXcpKSQ/UlQC3X3ReXI/AAAAAAAABPc/xYGRKSbQHMs/s1600/102_5165.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f132BXcpKSQ/UlQC3X3ReXI/AAAAAAAABPc/xYGRKSbQHMs/s400/102_5165.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">We start – of course – from the kitchen, but strangely the only thing you can make in this vast room is a
cake. A cake small, medium or of a size of a little car. Not much nourishment, this
is the “retro-feminism” kingdom, where cupcake is a king. The House is in constant whimsical indecision,
whether Barbie is a princess or maybe an ordinary woman, with all hes weaknesses.
A housewife, or a spaceship pilot? And tell me this isn’t ‘empowering’, huh? But
who can blame her? From the salon with, in order: a piano, a horse, a 10 sq.m.
bed, and a sofa, we gather she likes a bit of domesticity, and like all of us
all she ever thinks of is shoes and handbags. Like all of us she looses her
head during shopping (alleys of fake clothes, shoes and bags, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">imprinted on plastic,</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"> occupy several
corridors) and dressing in sexy lace underwear in boudoirs and beauty parlours.
Cosmetic fetishism is not even really the right word here. Finally, everything (as in
life) must end in (cardboard) </span><st1:city style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';" w:st="on">Paris</st1:city><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">, with girls
hanging on a poor man’s paper </span><st1:place style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';" w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Eiffel</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Tower</st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">. The construction
is so tacky that lifting our heads we can see the plastic walls aren’t even
touching the Styrofoam ceiling.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9lUWKIsUwsg/UlQDOg_kaKI/AAAAAAAABPk/gL7eyNDRPtE/s1600/102_5157.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9lUWKIsUwsg/UlQDOg_kaKI/AAAAAAAABPk/gL7eyNDRPtE/s400/102_5157.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Hang on, this is for girls? The crudeness with which
those adult desires are projected on girls is truly grim. As if seeing this
might be too adult entertainment, the creators added some obviously childish elements,
like slides, ponies or ballerinas. But it’s too late to be deceived. Soon girls
also learn the reality principle: jewellery is secured to the tables, clothes
are just the wall picture, dolls are behind the glass, the Barbie toilet
doesn’t work and the blond women sitting next to them waiting for manicure smiling
are dead. For an extra money, girls can do a catwalk or sing from playback on a
rockscene. Yet, in the middle of that there’s a gigantic diamond ring – because
all in all, Barbie is a traditionalist, she only wants to marry, and all those
shoes were only for flirt. What is also striking is how we’re always made ready to
buy: furniture is all made of arranged shelves, on which new and new versions
of stylish dolls are packed, which lead straight to the shop. In the end, this
is what Barbie House is, a man-size shop.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OZ0jN1Hu7eQ/UlQDj0Af66I/AAAAAAAABPs/eX6Mo37hMuI/s1600/102_5179.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OZ0jN1Hu7eQ/UlQDj0Af66I/AAAAAAAABPs/eX6Mo37hMuI/s400/102_5179.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">There’s nothing unnatural in transferring children’s
anxieties and desires onto a doll, a human-resembling object, only why it has
to be the one, which famously, if it was to become a real-size woman, it would die
instantly from suffocation, and her neck and waist would break? By all means,
if anyone could really live in the Barbie house, he’d instantly get a
depression and lose the will to live. The fascination with Barbie on the side of the
design world is then all the more objectionable. Why on the cover of the Architect's Journal issue on powerful women architects, they had to be symbolized by a Zaha-like
dressed Barbie? Just mocking the stereotype or a casual, if quite astounding sexism? From what I
know about life, if Zaha took after Barbie, British
architecture world would’ve lost even this sole argument counter its feminist
critics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OjWfOiRK2U0/UlQD99sDVeI/AAAAAAAABP0/zkH2k2lFYtk/s1600/barbie+aj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OjWfOiRK2U0/UlQD99sDVeI/AAAAAAAABP0/zkH2k2lFYtk/s400/barbie+aj.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-18384943495777851012013-10-08T13:52:00.003+01:002013-10-09T11:49:06.351+01:00Voice of the People - lyrics of Depeche, Human League, New Order, eurohouse & the Smiths and 80s/90s Eastern Europe<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9KkjLpHApNw/UlP9xFsLU6I/AAAAAAAABOk/B9ijrEnOwJE/s1600/DM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9KkjLpHApNw/UlP9xFsLU6I/AAAAAAAABOk/B9ijrEnOwJE/s400/DM.jpg" width="332" /></a></div>
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">[extended version on my entry in the 'Words' #352 issue of The Wire, <a href="http://thewire.co.uk/archive/issues/352">'Babble On!'</a> on the 'shitty lyrics']</span></i><br />
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></i>
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MzGnX-MbYE4" width="420"></iframe></span></i><br />
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></i>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">“People are people so why should it
be/you and I should get along so awfully</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">”<i>. </i>To this
day Depeche Mode fans are not exactly sure what Martin Gore meant by this lyric. But as with
many other Depeche songs, this terminally clumsy attempt at significance
wasn’t an obstacle to the contagious popularity of “People Are People”. It's a lot like life - that's their statement on Sado-masochist practices. In
Jeremy Deller’s documentary <i>The Posters
Came From the Walls</i>, on the phenomenon of the band's international fandom,
fans speak nostalgically of forming squads more solid than in the army. We hear
one Russian fan stating that “We’re Depechists the same way other people were
Communists, or Fascists!” That’s motivation.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W7vDRWBcDC8/UlP96IAdGPI/AAAAAAAABOs/NYtYhzeoSk0/s1600/dmreichstaga.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="254" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W7vDRWBcDC8/UlP96IAdGPI/AAAAAAAABOs/NYtYhzeoSk0/s320/dmreichstaga.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The power of Depeche Mode’s lyrics lay in a perfect
combination of vagueness and a resemblance to agitprop, ending up somewhere between
the political sloganeering of the falling Communist bloc and the promises of the Big Capital offered by the West. It was a formula that hordes of young people
from both sides of the Wall, raised among Cold War paranoia, understood almost
subliminally. O</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">ver this, they formed a perfect union, which remained
stronger than the politically induced unifications after the Wall has fallen. Depeche could appeal to both Soviet Bloc and America, because aesthetically and lyrically they consciously flirted with both sides of the Curtain: heavy industry, Red Army, red stars, looming nuclear catastrophy and Potemkineqsue battleships for one side and lust, orgies, stock market, Eastern Tigers, money, high contracts and cocaine binges for the other.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1t-gK-9EIq4" width="420"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/r_0sL_SQYvw" width="420"></iframe></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: left;">Usually heavy-handed, staggeringly literal, simplistic—even didactic, given how often the crime must immediately meet its punishment, the lyrics of Martin Gore always hit upon something, touch us somewhere, always move. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">However you look at the following lyric, it can’t possibly pass
as good: “</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">There's no turning back/The
turning point of a career/In Korea/Being insincere”</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> (from “Everything Counts”). A</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: left;">round Music for the Masses they achieved their trademark anthemic, grandiose style, perfected on songs like “Stripped” or “Never Let Me Down Again”, and then the tortured, synthetic, smoky blues of “Personal Jesus” and “I Feel You”. Enjoy The Silence is their manifesto, the famous lyrics are DM in a nutshell: “words are very unnecessary”, “feelings are intense, words are trivial.” They based the rest of their career solely on the intensification of this, while endlessly vaguely dwelling on the dialectics of sex, sin, atonement and the final release. That’s also the reason they’re a tough writerly topic—how long we can focus on the endless permutations of violence, sex and punishment? Writing on Depeche, one is challenged to participate in this collective emotion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zvQwWaybPaw/UlP8_CJjL4I/AAAAAAAABOg/a7PZHuMjdCY/s1600/me_and_my_leather.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zvQwWaybPaw/UlP8_CJjL4I/AAAAAAAABOg/a7PZHuMjdCY/s400/me_and_my_leather.jpg" width="306" /></span></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yet, in the strange and
fantastic world of pop music, words such as these can convey more than
avant-garde poets could dream of. <span lang="EN-US">We often say lyrics are crap not seeing the
special place they have in the history of the valuation of the spoken word.
That is, the p</span><span lang="EN-US">op lyric is a
perfect example of 20th century folk art. If after pop art, everything could be
important for 15 minutes, the pop lyric makes sense only during the provisional
three minutes of a single. The words hold meaning within the context of this
magical moment, and nowhere else. It’s a metaphorical space of transformation,
where temporary unions and associations can form. A pop utopia.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/BgMhMRC4Fr8" width="420"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Sometimes a lyric is saved by the personality and
charisma of the singer. Phil Oakey from The Human League achieved a new
benchmark of crap lyrics with his group’s first single, “Being Boiled”, the
only protest song in the world concerned with silkworms. Oakey not only
conflated Buddhism with Hinduism (in India, renowned for silk production), but
came up with the line “</span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Just because the kid's an
orphan<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">/<span style="background: white;">Is no excuse for thoughtless slaying”<span class="apple-converted-space">. </span></span></span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Yet
there is something moving about his delivery, the way he tries to keep his
shaky voice cold.</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> Oakey notoriously
overdid cold war topics, making them camp – “<i>Dehumanization/is such a big word/it’s been around since Richard the
Third” </i>(“Blind Youth”) or war, which becomes ludicrous in “The Lebanon”: “<i>And where there used to be some shops/is
where the snipers sometimes hide”</i>. Or the cheesy aside in “Love
Action”: <i>“This is Phil talking, I wanna tell you”.</i><span style="color: red;">
</span>The Post-punk era's combination of the amateurish and overambitious was much
reflected in League's lyrics - after all, written by an ex-hospital janitor and
sung with two high school girls. <i>Nothing
was too good for ordinary people</i>, to use the modernist maxim.<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/LhFRreMpCyA" width="300"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">“When
I was a very small boy/Very small boys talked to me”</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">, sings Bernard Sumner of New Order,
on 'True Faith', at his most honest. Yet it has strong competition in “</span><i><span lang="EN-US">One of
these days when you sit by yourself/you find that you can’t shag without
someone else”</span></i><span lang="EN-US">
(“Subculture”) or maybe “<i>I have always
thought about/staying in and going out/tonight I should’ve stayed at
home/playing with my pleasure zone” </i>(“The Perfect Kiss”). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Yet those mocking Bernard Sumner's efforts are
usually those claiming how great Ian Curtis' verses were in turn. Really? A
closer look at them will reveal, that Curtis’ premature, tragic death makes for at least half of
their appeal. Without that, aren’t they simply nihilistic musings of a naïve
boy who got very concerned after reading some history books?</span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span>Sumner’s lyrics were a perfect match with New Order’s
music: unreal, otherworldly, bathing in an endless Summer of Love. This land of
innocence and constant highs where even sorrow is sweet was a utopian
alternative to the reality of the 1980s. </span><span lang="EN-US">They're never really about anything, yet,
despite sounding as if they were made up on the spot, the lyrics often
unexpectedly hit at <i>something</i>. New Order had perfect simplicity, giving a <i>mot
juste</i> of modernity to pop, like Kraftwerk – yet, where lies the difference
with simple crap? New Order took their fans from trauma to euphoria, often drug
induced, like in <i>Touched by the Hand of God</i>, where the lyrical I, after
the crush of love is metaphysically resuscitated when touched by the title's
god's hand. Like with Depeche, the ordinariness and generalizations of Sumner’s
words were completed by their fans.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="169" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/fxodGkgnIa8" width="300"></iframe></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/kqq7E0Sd84k" width="300"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">This
euphoric trend continued after the break of 1989 and in the early 1990s in
dance music, through </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">House, especially
in Eurodance. Even d</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">egraded words, devoid of meaning, within music can suddenly start a new life. Let's take i</span><span lang="EN-US">nternational anthems, such as Coldcut's “People Hold On”, Rozalla's “Everybody's Free (To Feel Good)”, even
“Happy Nation” by Ace of Base – all called to unity, to get together and to brotherhood above all divisions. Sterling Void's “It's Alright” - later reworked as a smash hit by one of the most successful pop duo in history, Pet Shop Boys - might've been a
blueprint, in which the lyric tried to combine the concern with the world and
calling for a revolution, yet, for now, suspended for the sake of the happiness found within the dancing crowd, of the illusionary community of co-clubbers: </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3971474580973090036" name="line_8"></a><span lang="EN-US">P<i>eople under pressure on the brink of starvation<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3971474580973090036" name="line_9"></a>I hope it's gonna be alright<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3971474580973090036" name="line_10"></a>/(Alright,
alright, alright)/Cause the music plays forever </i>and so on.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9r0pISqCDRw" width="400"></iframe></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jYChsUJsO_8/UlP_xkLmNPI/AAAAAAAABO4/F6G07ZJIAyE/s1600/morrissey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jYChsUJsO_8/UlP_xkLmNPI/AAAAAAAABO4/F6G07ZJIAyE/s320/morrissey.jpg" width="238" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">A temporary collectivity can be founded over lyrics
even if those listening have little or no idea what is being sung. From my own
experience, with English as my second language, I regularly mistook words in
The Smiths’ songs, despite recognising Morrissey’s lyrical talents. Despite
getting Smiths lyrics wrong, they were meaningful to me. For some reason, when I misunderstood them, and it was happening more often than I'd wish, they usually ended
up being more pessimistic than they really were: in "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This
One Before", I thought that “lied” in “<i>who said I'd lied because I never, I never!</i>” was “liked you”, as if it was obvious that all
relationships must finish in rejection. Did it matter? Not much – what
unified the fans of The Smiths all over the world was a feeling – something
which seemed subjective, yet magically transsubstantiated into an
intersubjective sharing between fans. Morrissey's lyrics are often a
combination of the very intricate and obscure culture references and places in
Manchester with the general themes of love, loneliness and rejection and to
this second part they probably owe their mass appeal. The opposite was the case
with Depeche Mode – their appeal was based on the big themes put in simple words. As we
understood every second or fifth word, our version of the lyric was already pretty crappy, frankly, but I guess we still got the most important part.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9p__WmyAE3g" width="300"></iframe></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Sometimes pop music
surprises us with lyrics which despite their superficial crappiness are
sublime, or are sublime crap, like Manic Street Preachers. Written on any page,
including the copybook of a bored 6<sup>th</sup> form student, they are not passing the test of 'poetry' or tastefulness (if we were to be botehred by this anyway). MSP lyricist and ideologue, Richey Edwards, as if predicting his premature end, was
only interested in Big Ideas: the Holocaust, communism, mental diseases,
masochism, anorexia, life & death. Yet, who, in the ironic 90s was still
interested? Pulp may have sung that “irony is over”, yet it was far from it.
There was a guy who wanted to prove some stuff must be for real, even if that
meant leveling crap written by a 14 year old and Guy Debord to one and the same
level. As Adam Ant said,<i> 'ridicule is nothing to be scared of'</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="169" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/iU3S94lWx2s" width="300"></iframe></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-26543434342153391202013-08-20T10:53:00.002+01:002013-08-20T13:50:22.574+01:00Counter Homophobia in Russia - a Look into Soviet Past<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GOm9jeR2clc/UhM21k3WqII/AAAAAAAABN0/bDDAWMKGhdg/s1600/evgeny+fiks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GOm9jeR2clc/UhM21k3WqII/AAAAAAAABN0/bDDAWMKGhdg/s400/evgeny+fiks.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Evgeny Fiks, a photograph from the <i>Moscow</i> album</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;"><br /></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="line-height: 16.5pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;">[I published this article as <a href="http://calvertjournal.com/comment/show/1235/moscow-cruising-sites-fiks">"Cruising Past" </a>Photographer Evgenyi Fiks ressurects the Forgotten Gay History in Calvert Journal. Posting it here in slightly longer version for more political and other (like Fiks's other work) details, as the boycott of the Sochi Olympics spreads wide as a result of the horrific kidnapping and persecuting LGBT people in Russia today. What are the reasons of the recent progression of ever draconian laws from Putin? Why is he scapegoating gays? Is Russian society "inherently" necessarily homophobic? Or Maybe it wasn't always so? Also, this piece was published by New Statesman <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/08/putins-war-gays-desperate-search-scapegoats">today</a>]</span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;"><br /></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;">Homophobia was never in a “better” state in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region> than it is today. The
horrific murder of 23-year old Vladislav Tornovoy on 10<sup>th</sup> of May in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Volgograd</st1:place></st1:city> shook the
public, but not enough, it seems. He was raped with a bottle, castrated and
stoned. One of the murderers admitted the reason for the killing was the
“provocative” dress of the victim and his sexual orientation, which “hurts
patriotic feelings”. The official authorities had to admit it was a hate crime.
This way, after many years of abuse, Russian authorities had to admit there’s a
homophobia problem in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;"><br /></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;">At the same time, a solidarity demonstration planned for May 25<sup>th</sup>
was banned by the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">St Petersburg</st1:place></st1:city>
authorities. The protesters were still trying to carry out a “one person
protest”, which became famous during the winter 2011-2012 protests, after the
authorities banned several demonstrations –one person protesting doesn’t
require a permission. Still, the people who tried this were arrested one after
another. This didn’t happen to the counter demo, whose religious slogans
apparently didn’t offend anyone.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;">This is only one of many sad events in the story of homophobia in
post-Soviet <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
To this you may add the widespread laws “against propaganda of homosexuality”,
which started their life in <st1:city w:st="on">Novosibirsk</st1:city>, but
were most notorious in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Petersburg</st1:place></st1:city>,
where, among other things, there were attempts to ban Madonna from performing
on that basis. The law has just been passed and accepted in the Duma for the
whole <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
As one Russian MP said: “<st1:country-region w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region>
is not <st1:city w:st="on">Sodom</st1:city> and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Gomorrah</st1:city></st1:place>.”<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;">Yet <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>
wasn’t always a homophobic hell. The Bolsheviks legalized homosexuality soon
after seizing power in 1917, together with establishing equal rights for women.
The work of the New York-based Russian artist and photographer <a href="http://yevgeniyfiks.com/home.html">Evgeny Fiks</a> documents spaces
of social dissent and revolution. </span></strong><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">His inquiry into the soviet story of homosexuality in his latest series of photographs <a href="http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/catalog/browse/item/?pubID=196"><i>Moscow</i></a> is a part of the characteristic research of this self-proclaimed “post-Soviet artist”, highly identifying with the post-soviet condition, by which he understands a specific duty to react against the collective amnesia surrounding this period, focusing especially on the demise of the Left after the fall of communism, both in </span><st1:country-region style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';" w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"> and </span><st1:country-region style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';" w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;"><br /></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;">In here, he inspects spaces where homosexuals could express
their sexuality,claiming the public space back for those past histories in
order to reclaim homosexuality both from the horrific contemporary homophobia
and stigmatization of other kinds of sexuality, just as he distances himself
from Soviet, specifically Stalinist times. A</span></strong><strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;">t first sight,</span></strong><strong style="line-height: 16.5pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;"> titled just plainly <st1:city w:st="on"><i>Moscow, </i>it </st1:city>could be just an
ordinary photo album of the public places in the capital of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. We can
see parks, squares, boulevards, riverside embankments and public toilets. We
admire the splendid classicist architecture of the capital, its greenery, constructivist-classicist
constructions and the care of the Soviet authorities to make even the toilets,
like those on Nikitsky Gates, beautiful. What emanates from them is
peacefulness and silence. But of course, learning that each and one of the
locations of the photos were actually the areas of Soviet cruising instantly
changes the way we see them. What we may suddenly perceive in them is in the
eye of the viewer. Yes, there’s especially a lot of public toilets, and that
may make us also see the public facilities in a different way, as sites that
enable spontaneous relations between adults, which normally had to go on in
hiding, away from the public eye – but paradoxically, are only possible in
public. In addition to this, the author ordered the photos according to the
time when they were popular, from 1920s to 1980s, which means here we’re
looking at the complete history of Soviet cruising, at least in one capital
city. But what about the post-transitional years? This is exactly the question
Fiks makes us ask.</span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;"><i>Moscow</i> is a
specific “work of mourning”, where pleshkas – Russian name for spaces of
cruising become strange “lieux de memoire”, to use Pierre Nora’s idea, by which
he meant repositories of collective memory, which also were inspirational in
Holocaust studies to describe places of extermination. What’s also striking is that the places are
completely empty, abandoned, what increases the feeling of disappearance and
silencing of the victims. And those spaces were dear to many: they acquired an
inner slang, in which statues of Lenin and Marx, present in each Russian city,
were called affectionately “Auntie Lena” and “Director of Pleshka” both for its
familiarity and in an act of queering them. To use Situationist language, gay
men were <i>detourning</i> these areas and
symbols of revolution, showing there’s no real discrepancy between ideology and
what they’re doing.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;">The current spread of far right feelings in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region> cannot be overlooked as just
another effect of the years of communism, but rather the failed transition to
capitalism. If homosexuality was banned in Soviet Russia, its anti-communist
liberals would have a perfect argument – but it wasn’t. The Bolsheviks
legalized homosexuality, because according to the original idea of communism,
sexuality wasn’t there to be policed by the state. It was there to revolutionise
the citizen, with love understood as a public good. Homosexuality was banned
again in the mid-1930s under Stalin – a letter to whom is included in Fiks’
book, protesting the law, written by out homosexual and British communist Harry
Whyte. Yet unlike the restrictions Stalin placed on women’s rights, the ban was
not repealed under Khrushchev. Homosexuality wasn’t legalized again until 1993.
Though unlike Stalin’s laws, homosexuality is not being banned again, in
practice this puts it back in the ghetto, encouraging homophobia and hate
crime.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">There have been several artistic ways protests
so far against these limitations on personal freedoms. Pyotr Pavlensky, a 29-year
old performer and activist from <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Petersburg</st1:city></st1:place>,
did a public intervention under the Legislative Assembly, where he lay naked
literally folded in barbed wire, so that the policemen who tried to remove him,
couldn’t touch him, despite the wire hurting the artist with each move. Recently
the popular Russian magazine “Afisha” published an issue with the rainbow LGBT flag
on the cover and even for holding it during a demo somebody was arrested.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;">Homosexuality as a banned, shameful practice that goes on necessarily in
hiding has a long history. And in fact some commentators argue that the current
wars aren’t strictly between homosexuals and heterosexuals, but a </span></strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; padding: 0cm;">conflict
between two different versions of homosexuality – “Soviet” and “Western.” <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>
it’s very deeply attached to the Soviet practice on a huge scale in Gulags.
There, as the prisoners were on purpose deprived of possibility of expressing
their sexuality (men and women were imprisoned separately), the homosexual act
was associated with the criminal hierarchy and deeper humiliation of prisoners,
where for instance those who were “passive” in the act were considered the
lowest. This taboo attached to the homosexual identity prevents it from being
seen as something “natural” in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
Yet suggesting natural means Western would be in here inaccuracy, given <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region> de facto
is a part of the West for several hundreds of years.</span></strong></span><strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Yet, the persecution of gays must be a
serious PR blow to Russian liberals who’d like to see <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region> as a
potential market, free of the typical “eastern barbarism” our part of the world
is often still associated with. Yet the supposedly moralistic homophobia
somehow hypocritically leaves intact the enormous sex industry post Soviet
Europe has, only proving that this has nothing to do with morality, but only hate and prejudice. Soon this will bring even more horrible consequences
and spread even more violence – what really has to happen so that the law
makers loosened their bigotry? <span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">“Political
figures have provoked anti-gay sentiment by portraying the gay
community as a bunch of freaks,” one of the May 25 protesters have said.
“They are accomplices in the killing.”</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;">Putin’s anti-homosexual laws are aimed at bringing him back the crashing
popularity, damaged after the protests of the Winter 2011-12, when even his
followers are more prone to expect a clear, coherent politics from their president. Channeling homophobia is here only one,
albeit especially nasty way of getting back a now especially illusionary
“unity” in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia and divert teh attention from the real political turmoils in Russia today.</st1:place></st1:country-region></span></strong></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<strong><span lang="EN-US" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-weight: normal; padding: 0cm;"><br /></span></strong></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Fiks's work is also a subtle but potent protest. As someone who migrated quite soon after the
dissolution of <st1:country-region w:st="on">USSR</st1:country-region> (he left
for <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place>
in 1994), Fiks clearly saw how the reality which succeeded it was actually
worse. His artistic strategy is
to make “interventions in history”, treating it indeed in a dialectical way: not
as frozen and dead, but as a space of the present, lived experience. Especially
the latest activity: the idea for a competition for the <a href="http://coldwarvictorymonument.com/project/">Monument to Cold War Victory</a>
in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region></st1:place>
(sic!) challenges various thinking clichés of history. It’s exercise in
“political imagination” within the present, a protest against “the end of
history”. At once a reminder of the cold war obsession with monuments and an
attempt to stop the current obliteration of the recent history, as the
communist monuments are removed everywhere. As ironically as the idea may
sound, it’s true the Cold War’s legacy persists, whenever we like it or not,
but we are yet to find an appropriate aesthetical form for it. As in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><i>Moscow</i></st1:place></st1:city>,
this project starts from an ironic confirmation of a certain stereotype, in
this case certain political melancholia and nostalgia, to in the process change
it into a living scene of living history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-44177703894404133532013-07-04T12:26:00.003+01:002013-07-04T19:20:04.144+01:00Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957-1984<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4ViTygryIz4/UdVQTXfDtXI/AAAAAAAABM0/dJ1Fqfm9M0Q/s852/boguslaw+schaeffer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4ViTygryIz4/UdVQTXfDtXI/AAAAAAAABM0/dJ1Fqfm9M0Q/s400/boguslaw+schaeffer.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Bogusław Schaeffer, one of his "poliversional" music scores</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>On the occassion of the opening in London, a review of Sounding the Body Electric show (adapted from a text published in The Wire, August 2012), which first debuted in the <a href="http://msl.org.pl/en/wydarzenia/sounding/">Lodz, Poland's Museum of Art </a>in June-August 2012 and currently, though adapted for the new space, is available in <a href="http://calvert22.org/exhibitions/show/955/sounding-the-body-electric-experiments-in-art-and-music-in-eastern-europe-1">Calvert 22 gallery</a> in London, UK.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Ok6-g_mIstE" width="400"></iframe></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">a newsreel about the Polish Radio Experimental Studio</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There were many decisive dates
in the history of the Cold War, but little mattered so much as 1956. It meant very
different things in different countries: choice of Khrushev for the Communist
Party secretary in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USSR</st1:place></st1:country-region>
brought the alleged ‘thaw’ in the Bloc. For
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Poland</st1:country-region> workers’ protests
brought to power a relatively popular reformed Communist regime; but for <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Hungary</st1:country-region></st1:place>,
a revolution that was quickly and brutally suppressed. It meant relief on
the culture in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Poland</st1:country-region>, but in
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hungary</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
it lead to a revolution against the Soviet government, that, after brutal
suppression by Soviet tanks, brought more control, only less thinly veiled. For
everyone it meant changes, and nowhere it was welcomed more enthusiastically than
in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Poland</st1:country-region></st1:place>. Politburo wanted to "repair" the damages it has done, and did it via science, experiment and lifting of the previous censorship. Basically, it tried to help its damaged image with culture. It was supporting various cultural initiatives impossible before,
including promotion of abstract and experimental art, suddenly liberated of
accusations of formalism and opening to the Western influence.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In music life
the most important aspect was inauguration of the festival Warsaw Autumn, but
first of all, founding of Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES) in 1957, answering
the challenge of Schaeffer and Stockhausen with their respective studios for
music experiment, Studio d'Essai in Paris (pioneering in effecting the <i>musique concrete, </i>which term was coined by Schaeffer) and WDR Cologne. The chamber, lushly arranged and
superbly researched show Sounding <i>the
Body Electric 1956-1984</i>, is located in Lodz – Polish Manchester, in the Art
Museum co-founded by Constructivist pioneers Katarzyna Kobro and Wladyslaw Strzemiński. It was supervised by a renowned expert on Eastern European art <a href="http://www.artmargins.com/index.php/5-interviews/689-sounding-the-body-electric-a-conversation">David Crowley</a> and Daniel Muzyczuk, and sees PRES as a chance to put together and explore the most intriguing experiments in the
crossover between music and visual arts in the Bloc.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o2kpVfdEJ78/UdVQmUjBqmI/AAAAAAAABM8/5uLiv1z5MIU/s1600/PRES_male-fot.-Andrzej-Zborski1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="285" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o2kpVfdEJ78/UdVQmUjBqmI/AAAAAAAABM8/5uLiv1z5MIU/s400/PRES_male-fot.-Andrzej-Zborski1.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">The interior of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio; in the background visible the vertical panels by Oskar Hansen</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">It was an era of
developing cybernetic, electronic and information technologies. At the same
time, the question of how the Bloc was actually forward or competitive to the
West in terms of technology remains open. You could say that embracing
technology was one of the ways of compensating the promises unfulfilled by the
politics. On the other hand, artists could reconnect with traditions of
artistic modernism, the first avant-garde, buried by Stalinism: hence the
Neo-constructivism, comeback to the kinetic art, to light and sound
experiments, cybernetics, computing, exploring of the electro-acoustic
possibilities. The beautiful, moving, colorful, mechanized, industry-related
art, just like the avant-garde before, was to create a new aesthetic, and then, new social relations. What
is great is how the show, by meticulous choice of artworks and reconstructions allows us to experience, sometimes for the first time after 1989,
the originality of post-war Soviet art.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Showered by state money, the Studio
was designed by the most progressive artists of that era: architects,
directors, musicians, engineers. The room was “mechanised”, with vertical
panels, one side sound-absorbing, other sound-reflecting, painted in red and
yellow, that changed colours according to the type of activity. It was designed by an architect Oskar
Hansen, now considered a major influence of that era with his completely original idea of modernity, based on his concept of the Open
Form (drawing from architecture, but surpassing it in all sorts of directions, and encompassing the whole world of social relations). Similar experiments in constructivist approach presented conceptual artist <a href="http://www.mg-lj.si/node/259">Alex Mlynárčik</a>, with his collages of new Metropolis</span><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">or composer Dubravko Detoni, with conceptual, kinetic artist <a href="http://www.avantgarde-museum.com/en/museum/collection/4477-ALEKSANDAR-SRNEC/">Aleksander Srnec</a>, who together authored a 1972 <i>Proposal
for a <st1:placename w:st="on">Lenin</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Monument</st1:placetype></i>
in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Belgrade</st1:place></st1:city>, a
monumental, glimmering, sound-emitting diagonal, evoking Tatlin’s
Internationale monument in form and message. It’s an era of splendid collectives: Béla
Balázs Studio for experimental film in Budapest, VNIITE All-Union Scientific
Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics in Moscow or Prometheus Institute in
Kazan, founded by Bulat Galeyev, developing Lev Theremin’s inventions with synaestesiac
prophecies of Alexander Skriabin into electronic sound the name of the space
race success – all this financed by Moscow money!<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eP_8sRvERnE/UdVSIAMLAQI/AAAAAAAABNM/f6WMj6HD8TI/s852/sounding.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eP_8sRvERnE/UdVSIAMLAQI/AAAAAAAABNM/f6WMj6HD8TI/s400/sounding.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This is the era of
utopianism and burgeoning conceptualism. So Boguslaw Schaeffer draws graphic
scores to realise his idea of “Poliversional music” in <i>PR I VIII</i> series of potential “supra parameter” music, where all
the elements, pitch, duration were variable. Yes, John Cage’s (and
Fluxus/concrete poetry) influence on the whole generation of musicians (he
visited <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Warsaw</st1:place></st1:city>
in 1960s) is obvious, but Eastern artists looked everywhere: Mondrian and
Malevich, happening, performance, also feminism (sexually fuelled films of the phenomenal, feminist artist <a href="http://monoskop.org/Katalin_Ladik">Katalin Ladik</a>!).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/XgS4iXMGC20" width="400"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
This is, for comparison, some feature film she played in, as she appeared in many TV and else rpoductions - not entirely sure what's going on in this one, but it's definitely sexy!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ZBkqh7K7AE0" width="400"></iframe></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At the core were biomechanics and organicism, and a reflection over how a living body interacts with the environment. The Studio served
recording of film and TV music during the day, and the tape leftovers were used by
engineers, such as Boguslaw Mazurek or Eugeniusz Rudnik, who cut, pasted,
reversed and manipulated it, pioneering the aesthetics of trash and plounderphonics.
Musical and visual effects are stunning: published <a href="http://boltrecords.pl/en_br_es09.html">scores</a> – because only a published
score was considered music by the authorities - look like utopian architectural
sketches for a futurist city. Synesthesia inspired architectural hybrids, as
much as of new morphing interpretations of abstractionism.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/A88qOh5nuRU" width="400"></iframe></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/W3UwATThDe8" width="400"></iframe></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-deFV10d_lB4/UdVbf0u5FBI/AAAAAAAABNc/sSfYq1CGBoA/s960/krauze,+helm,+morel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-deFV10d_lB4/UdVbf0u5FBI/AAAAAAAABNc/sSfYq1CGBoA/s400/krauze,+helm,+morel.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="text-align: left;">Teresa Kelm, Zygmunt Krauze and Henryk Morel’s</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: left;"> </span><i style="text-align: left;">Spatial-Musical Composition</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The most stunning
reconstruction is that of Teresa Kelm, Zygmunt Krauze and Henryk Morel’s<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Spatial-Musical Composition</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">,
six acoustic booths emitting different sounds and shining different colours of
light – by walking, we shape the installation</span></span>.</span><span lang="EN-US"> <span style="background-color: white;">Those knowing the Polish film new wave, will
see how much Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk (or early Polański) emerge
straight from surrealism – the show opens with <i>The House</i> (1958) by those two, an oneiric animated film full of
visual and acoustic objets trouves, generated by Wlodzimierz Kotoński. This
elegant avant-gardism followed by years of flourishing experiment is closed
unexpectedly, in less than a decade, when 1968 brings anti-Semitic crisis in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Poland</st1:country-region> and the Prague Spring in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Czechoslovakia</st1:country-region></st1:place>. Szablocs Esztényi
and Krzysztof Wodiczko’s<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Bare Transmitters</span></i><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;"> from
1969 with performers playing various, also forbidden stations is no longer
a Cageian “chance” operation – rather a grim scene of oppression, a power-play, work of hope
lost in art as the liberatory power.</span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-52574761203534441982013-05-28T14:54:00.001+01:002013-06-02T20:51:13.684+01:00Three times food: Czech surrealism in cinema<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y88Wm6palLc/UaS1bF_bqpI/AAAAAAAABME/vYreqP8lPiQ/s1600/KillingtheDevil2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y88Wm6palLc/UaS1bF_bqpI/AAAAAAAABME/vYreqP8lPiQ/s400/KillingtheDevil2.jpg" width="277" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Fetishization/obsession with food is one of the leitmotifs of the Czech New Wave kind of surrealism. It has definitely a lot to do with the legacy of Czech surrealism, which had some of the most interesting art and artists in that spirit. Food gains new meaning within socialist economy and culture: it's precious, you're not supposed to waste it or play with it. Waste is a crime against the working people and ultimately against the state. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yet there's also no excuse for wasting food within capitalism, at least according to the early, protestant ethics, which can be also traced paradoxically in American Pop Art, with its gigantisation of food, a specific "food porn", where within the mass market, consumerist capitalism becomes monstrous and breeds all sorts of pathological relationships we have with it - especially women, whose activities have been endlessly associated with preparing/making/eating it. Maybe in this, in denying the food the usual meaning it has (including sacredness!) there lies a power to subvert both systems, or any system? The anarchic food waste and obsessing about it finds also amazing effects in Czech feminist art. In communism, famous for food shortages, gathering food was often extremely difficult, and it was also on women, where lay the responsibility for keeping the family alive. In capitalism, we have no shortage of food anxiety and insecurity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3JDd6cOuss0/UaS2mFfkUZI/AAAAAAAABMU/T7crnB7i65s/s1600/daisies-smashing-dinner.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3JDd6cOuss0/UaS2mFfkUZI/AAAAAAAABMU/T7crnB7i65s/s400/daisies-smashing-dinner.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Resulting from the physical, oral, "wet" contact with food is its sexualisation, pornography of food, where both the sex and the neurotic activity of capital are present. Food as fetish, and woman as an object to consume, an 'edible woman' is a renowned motif in feminist art, including the difficult relationship between food and woman's body. Which, according to the punishing, coercive beauty ideals, simply can't have a proper relation with the food, she can never do right.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This and many other uses is at play with the outstanding "food art" or food anarchism we encounter in Czech experimental cinema.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I will highlight only a very few here. In Jan Svankmajer food becomes basically "existential" and stands for the general hopelessness of human existence; the hopeless mundanity, the routine and repeatability of everyday activities, such as eating three meals a day; which is deeply felt also in the 'Meat love', a motif of which he repeats in his late film Lunacy, or The Loonies, which was partly inspired by Marquis de Sade, a huge influence present also, in a sardonic way, in his Conspirers of Ecstasy. The world in Svankmajer is always impossibly twisted and distorted to the degree we merely recognise any familiar elements, stripped down to the libidinal rudiments of id, all consuming, violents and unpredictable:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9nUkQheb9n8" width="400"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HXWZ_K4ahMo" width="400"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vXDwjUsOwno" width="400"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sfUFxu9_IKw" width="400"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Quite different is food for Vera Chytilova. Daisies features a lot in my future book, Poor but Sexy, so here only briefly: Daisies is and isn't about working/not working, laziness and boredom; it also hints at the all encompassing futility of existence, but with much stronger feminist and anarchic/(anti?) socialist accents. It questions what the citizens do and not do under socialism, it also questions the seeming liberalisation in Czechoslovakia and possibilities for womens' lib. It's a praise of laziness and boredom as reclaiming of time from under the political regime, and at the same time it questions this as means of feminist or any other liberation. And it's dedicated to those, "who cried over the potato salad". Women laughing, women eating, women destroying:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/laUAFDE9Tzg" width="400"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OspCW4BlC5Q" width="400"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The two Marias do a lot of feminist transgression: they not only waste food, burn meat etc, they also cut their dresses, ‘deconstruct’ them, the necessities for women’s fashion. They walk on food, crush it with their high heels (an analogue scene is repeated by Ulrike Ottinger in her <i>Portrait of a Drunkard</i>, with the character walking on broken glass). They want desperately to break free, but it’s
always illusionary what they do, it lasts two seconds and then the jouissance
goes away, much like under capitalism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After the disaster they promise to themselves: “We will be hard working and everything
will be clean, and then we’ll be happy”.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5bzj5C1OhCE/UaS2y5r0VJI/AAAAAAAABMc/2czSvJqN9ss/s1600/daisies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5bzj5C1OhCE/UaS2y5r0VJI/AAAAAAAABMc/2czSvJqN9ss/s400/daisies.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The screenplay for Daisies was developed together with Pavel Juracek and Ester Krumbachova, two amazing artists in their own right. Especially Krumbachova, a strikingly original costume designer, writer and director, interests us here, as a somehow tragic, unfulfilled figure, who made several astonishing films with Chytilova, like Fruits of Paradise, and co-wrote The Party And The Guests by Jan Nemec, Karek Kachyna's The Ear and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders by Jaromir Jires, but then, as a self-relying director didnt have similar success. Watching her only film, Murder of Mister Devil (1970) we already see, what in Daisies belongs to Chytilova, and what to Krumbachova and that only by working together these women could bring the best in their art.</span><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/v_TLV7macUo" width="400"></iframe><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In <i>Murder</i>, which I only watched in Czech, the visual means overshadow the actual content. We see a perfect bourgeois woman in a perfect flat preparing a real feast for her rather unimpressive functionary partner/husband. The feast is completely unproportionate to the small scale of the evening, yet the dishes just keep coming and coming, more and more breath-taking, and the whole film reminds me rather of Marco Ferreri's <i>La Grande Bouffe</i> or any transgressive anti-capitalist 70s fantasy. Yet given the title, and the superb poster, in which the screaming man is to be drowned and eaten in a ice-cream sundae by a smiling Medusa-woman (by </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22.5px;">Eva Galová-Vodrázková</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22.5px;">, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">in the best traditions of Czech and Polish school of poster, with excessive irony and surreal/dada spirit, from where Linder Sterling must've learned some of her technique too), it was a strongly feminist statement playing with anti-feminist semtiments, of a woman who's using her only 'weapons' - food, as a way to make everything in the world implode.</span></div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-24343400130249873162013-05-24T17:37:00.001+01:002013-05-26T14:12:40.174+01:00Going on the Wild Side - Jean Rollin<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oaIruOayaz8/UZ-Ww-v6f4I/AAAAAAAABL0/lBJDl4KvV-0/s1600/requiem_for_vampire_poster_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oaIruOayaz8/UZ-Ww-v6f4I/AAAAAAAABL0/lBJDl4KvV-0/s400/requiem_for_vampire_poster_01.jpg" width="285" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">(on thye basis of a review for The Wire, April 2012)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="FR"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Various Artists<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The B-music
of Jean Rollin<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Finders
Keepers CD LP<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Philippe
D'Aram<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Facination<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Finders
Keepers CD LP<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Pierre Raph<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Requiem for
a Vampire<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Finders
Keepers CD LP<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The 1970s
were a splendid era for a certain kind of auteur cinema, not exactly in the patchy
category of art house, though definitely being an art of some sort: the exploitation
movie. From that the gerat moments of giallo, art horror and thriller emerged. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Rollin">Jean Rollin</a>, author of an absolute
cult <a href="http://wrongsideoftheart.com/tag/jean-rollin/">artsy soft porn horrors</a> mostly featuring beautiful female vampires and a
lot of unashamedly bright red blood, just as much as feminine breasts and kinky
gothic S&M outfits, was one of the titans of that genre. Similarly to Dario
Argento (and <i>gialli</i> as such), Walerian Borowczyk or even John Carpenter, Rollin fearlessly realized
his own private vision of the sublime, which in his case meant some tremendous
rewriting of the vampire’s classic metaphysical/physical drama, caught between life
and death. Also, all those directors had a taste for some best music of that era,
now being rediscovered: prog rock or heavy synths aren’t anymore a sign of
cheese, but rather a full-on gripping aesthetics. And however ridiculous the
plot/plotlessness was in Rollin’s films, the clothes, the colors, finally, the
music, were always stupendous and unforgettable. Let’s take Pierre Raph’s <i>Requiem for a Vampire</i>, one of three just
re-released by always treasure-seeking Finder Keepers’ Andy Votel, for the
first time in full. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gbsm1SDidiQ/UZ-WGQL6kEI/AAAAAAAABLk/m9diikSv8-8/s1600/shiver_of_vampires_poster_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gbsm1SDidiQ/UZ-WGQL6kEI/AAAAAAAABLk/m9diikSv8-8/s400/shiver_of_vampires_poster_01.jpg" width="263" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Like
Argento, who had the best curious musicians of his era by his side and was even a part of the band Goblin which provided the trademark synthetic terror to his films, Rollin had great musicians of his era by his side. he knew
everybody in the Parisian underground and took prog bands like Acanthus, otherwise hidden in complete mystery (they provided the soundtrack to <i>Le Frisson de Vampires</i> and feature
heavily on the compilatory <i>B-Music</i>)
or musician Raph, who replaced them on <i>Requiem</i>.
If Antonioni knew their music, he would never have taken Pink Floyd to his <i>Zabriskie Point</i>. The ease of Raph’s improvisations
combined with the flamboyant panache, ease and sexiness of the proggy, airy
sounds, have something sincere and straight-forward about them. Audibly influenced
by Neu!, they also are in the same veneer as Ennio Morricone’s giallo and spaghetti western soundtrack classics. Similarly on Fascination, Philippe D’Aram’s daring
synth choral masterpiece of a soundtrack, </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">as synths became so popular as a
horror movie music. Accompanied with droning guitars yield a spectacular, wide and dreamy
sound, provocatively interluded with sounds of menace and bloody dialogues from
the film, expressing usually final dread or going over to the wild side, which sums
up the drama of a newly-bitten vampire.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eosLlBfLqv0/UZ-WWjWV0wI/AAAAAAAABLs/f3CO9RMbuJU/s1600/9786__x400_demoniacs_poster_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eosLlBfLqv0/UZ-WWjWV0wI/AAAAAAAABLs/f3CO9RMbuJU/s400/9786__x400_demoniacs_poster_01.jpg" width="302" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Music from both soundtracks </span><span lang="EN-US">and a few more Rollin films</span><span lang="EN-US"> is collected on the compilation<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US"><i>The B-Music Of Jean Rollin</i></span><span lang="EN-US">. The sadomasochistic horror, the toll of passion
beyond comprehension, the consummate fear and sexual liberation and the final inevitable pitiful death – all is expressed in special effects and synths, that may be typical or generic for the era, but refreshing today.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US">B-Music</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US">proves that Rollin’s films had some of the finest free
rock of the 1970s. It’s not about conscious kitsch, but a grainy, blood and
flesh beauty, with meaty riffs, dreaminess and sexual mystique – a letter from
a lost era that eclipses any notion of irony.</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-85068617399182914512013-05-17T13:16:00.000+01:002013-05-17T19:19:47.529+01:00Telly as a prefiguration of death: on Susan Hiller<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QmigY72ReXA/UZYY8N6L3BI/AAAAAAAABK0/26aYcj7Bah0/s1600/SHiller_02_21-02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QmigY72ReXA/UZYY8N6L3BI/AAAAAAAABK0/26aYcj7Bah0/s400/SHiller_02_21-02.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Susan
Hiller<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Channels</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.mattsgallery.org/artists/hiller/exhibition-4.php">Matt’s Gallery, London</a><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">(on the basis of a review written for The Wire)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Apparently
all of us project sometimes our own death, and the best art often makes us
realise its inevitability as well as grasping its meaning, and maybe more
importantly, the meaning of what precedes it. Contemporary culture is yet playing
perfectly on something that Guy Debord in <i>Society of the Spectacle </i>described as
Sex/Death conundrum: that is, what happens when capitalist visuality involving
a multiplication of spectacular effects, at the same time serves our morbid
exposure. Contemporary culture is morbid, surrounds us with macabre images of
death everywhere, yet the last thing it does is prepare us for dying as such,
suffocating in a cult of fitness and youth. The impressive new work of <a href="http://www.susanhiller.org/">Susan Hiller</a>, occupying a good part of the gallery room, is precisely addressing this
paradox. Hiller is an increasingly canonised contemporary artist, with the recent <a href="http://www.artforum.com/inprint/issue=201105&id=28071">retrospective</a> in <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/susan-hiller">Tate Britain</a> as only one of major events. <i>Channels</i> are a much more chamber event, which in turn makes one focus on one work only. Her works often require (and make at the same time possible) a total immersion within the mulitisensory experience. It's no different this time.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Basing Channels on numerous accounts of so called near-death experiences, she
constructs a wall-sculpture of TV sets, blinking to us in uncoordinated series
of colours, static and transmission signals, interrupted by the voice
recordings sharing the clinical death experiences, their timbre indicated by
the pulsating green line, like on a heart rate monitor. To increase the feeling
of chaos the voices recorded are in different languages (apart from English, I
detected Spanish, French and Chinese), augmenting the blurriness of the
undelivered message, until we feel like we want to fall asleep, much like at an
airport, surrounded by communiques in unknown languages.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F5XJBVxquZ4/UZYZVmXVXqI/AAAAAAAABK8/nIpmSKEBZhE/s1600/susan-hiller-witness+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F5XJBVxquZ4/UZYZVmXVXqI/AAAAAAAABK8/nIpmSKEBZhE/s400/susan-hiller-witness+(1).jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Susan Hiller, Witness, 2000</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Screens do
evoke better than anything our subconscious, or better yet - for the post-war
man, they simply create it. Staring into the screens all day, maybe this is
what we also see when closing our eyes, when dreaming, maybe also when dying
(today computers or iPads would be more apt than TVs, perhaps). But it’s this
seemingly old fashioned medium that in its function is the closest to hypnosis.
And this way, like a patient etherized upon a table, despite the moving aspects
of the stories told: concerning car crashes, suicidal attempts, cardiac attacks
and other such stories, what we grasp from the installation is the overwhelming,
calming noise of the machines. White noise fills the gaps between the otherworldly
stories, pulsating, even scary. And despite the beauty of the blinking screens,
forming a splendid De Stijl-esque pattern, it makes us close our eyes. Because it
seems the real piece can be seen only after shutting your eyes and just
listening to it, even asleep.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/50919727?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&autoplay=1" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">This way, Hiller gets to the core of the experience
of her characters, not because but in spite of them. Deceitfully designed in a
manner instantly recognizable for any 20<sup>th</sup> century art history
aficionado, in the style of the “new media” movement of which Hiller, born in <st1:metricconverter productid="1940 in" w:st="on">1940 in</st1:metricconverter> New York, was a
part, it almost nostalgically recalls the works of Fluxus, Woody and Steina
Vasulka, Nam June Paik or Yoko Ono. Yet if their art served partly as a
critique of the media manipulation and use of information, Hiller </span><span style="background-color: white;">uses it in a much more intuitive way, as she demonstrated </span>in her <i>Dream Mapping</i>, the light visual
installation <i>Belzhazzar’s Feast</i>, to
name only a few and in her lifelong interest in Freud.</span> <span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Commonality of watching TV can serve as some sort of prefiguration of death even; another thing that we definitely have in common. It is not like this work doesn’t have it’s limitations: we're still obviously not even close to feeling what it is like to be nearly dead and the multi-language audio resembles too much a special breed of twee "globalist" artworks telling us "how we are different and yet the same". We aren't and whereas I agree that life is a chaos, it's maybe a different kind of chaos, than can be viewed on telly. Still, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Channels</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> remains a bold work, a modern, Ballardian urban lullaby.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H2LvGejN31c/UZYerB_QxQI/AAAAAAAABLM/84m9R4IXN48/s1600/susan_hiller_Psi_girls_intro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H2LvGejN31c/UZYerB_QxQI/AAAAAAAABLM/84m9R4IXN48/s400/susan_hiller_Psi_girls_intro.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span></div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-51278740818824642262013-05-03T15:44:00.001+01:002013-05-06T21:09:04.714+01:00Leaving the logic of a victim - on Femen<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i17FifGCifM/UYPMO2ggAFI/AAAAAAAABKM/sURqKdqwzW0/s1600/femen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i17FifGCifM/UYPMO2ggAFI/AAAAAAAABKM/sURqKdqwzW0/s400/femen.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the latest issue of the EuroStar lovely little unpretentious magazine, also charmingly titled: "Metropolitan", which I had the guilty pleasure to read during my recent London-Paris-London venture, <a href="http://www.ink-live.com/emagazines/eurostar-metropolitan/1357/may-2013/">the cover story and the major "article"</a> concerns FEMEN - the lately media-ubiquitous Ukrainian collective, who are now also taking over France. As I recently <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/voices/2013/04/white-doesnt-always-mean-privilege-femens-ukrainian-context">written an article</a> about them for the New Statesman in response to their critics (which unexpectedly got either a positive response or the firm silence from basically all women and feminists I know, which I still strruggle to interpret adequately), I feel growingly ambivalent both about the subject of my article (also discussed in my book) and their actions, and especially the coverage they get all over the place.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
The Metropolitain magazine coverage is expectedly stupid, at some point making also the comparisons to the Mai 68-ers (what? when? how?) as if: the former protest and the latter protested; we're in France; look, there's a connection!; nevermind this: I was also struck by how the movement, whose defence I strongly sustain, especially a la Francais, again, offers a limited version of feminism, where showing yer tits is just a bit punky, sexy activity, in the article at least, speaking mostly through privileged, well off women (asistant director, "singer and journalist"), "whip-smart, funny and in no obvious need of rescuing". You can see, what is happening, if you transfer your message from an impoverished, postcommunist Ukraine to affluent France.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Also, not a single mention in this article about any debacle with Islam or Arab world, they're also incapable to make any critique or awareness of the media: "Our body is our message that's why we write our slogans on our bodies. You just can't help seeing it!". "the aim is to be rockstars of sorts, to generate the image of <i>an ideal </i>woman, so that when a 14yo opens up a magazine, she wants to be a warrior woman, like the Femen, rather than a passive thing who only wants to seduce the guy." Because "an ideal" woman is of course the thin gazelle with nice boobs. We get it. So far, so good. (Btw, I'm also thin, FYI, and so what). In the contex of French libertinism though, they say "It's still a big deal here. because we're not using our boobs in the right context, to sell something. Using your naked body to support a cause and demand freedom as a woman is unbearable to some people. It makes them really angry, the proof being that they hit us, send us death threats, insult us every day on Facebook. Woman's body (...) is still extremely taboo."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Yes, the negative male response, including (funnily, in Poland too) also the emergence of pathetic male groups "fighting the women's supremacy", in France Hommen and Masculinistes, Masculinum in Poland, who steal the collectives tactics, ensures me Femen are necessary. This leaves no doubt that we should protect Femen, but at the same time, we should demand from them and criticise them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Wgj66ED5W4o/UYP1aNZdGcI/AAAAAAAABKc/8N2eFofDG4Q/s1600/femen-waloon.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="280" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Wgj66ED5W4o/UYP1aNZdGcI/AAAAAAAABKc/8N2eFofDG4Q/s320/femen-waloon.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Recent FEMEN protest in Wallonie, belgium, against the homophobic archbishop Leonard. Another photo, send to me by Alex Harrowell, contained the guy in grey suit "dancing" like a peasant from the famous Breughel painting. Alas, it wasnt reproducible. See comment box to this post.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
<br />Here is the addition that should be read together with my <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/voices/2013/04/white-doesnt-always-mean-privilege-femens-ukrainian-context">New Statesman</a> article, which came to my mind recently:</span><br />
<div style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 5px;">
</div>
<div style="border: 0px; line-height: 22.65625px; margin-bottom: 0.8em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Yet, another level of FEMEN is its undecision, whether they want to be a political or only cultural movement. Are FEMEN the movement, which is going to realise the dreams of a leftist movement for the former East, and also, acting beyond the nation borders? Or is is only a political parody of EuroTrash (erstwhile trashy erotic British TV programme), <i>pour epater le bourgeois</i>, a caricatural liberalised moral police?</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; line-height: 22.65625px; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
The problem is that within patriarchy, this is the only thing they can count for: to fight via controversy. Politically it remains unfocused, and sometimes, despite showing ytehg elftist approach, they incline towards teh right: apart from the "topless Jihad" scandal, they also got into racist action against Turkish footbal fans, carried out together with the ultra right in Lviv.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
I was told later that I may have suggested in the article that the Femen's racism and the intersectional feminists unawareness of Femen's context are in certain balance. Of course not: and I'm not excusing Femen. I was basically saying: think twice before you criticise/mock/reject a movement consisting of women. Also, FEMEN aren't restricted to women's right fight, the also fight homophobia and for LGBT people's rights.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; line-height: 22.65625px; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Still, they manage to activate women all over the world, they hit onto something. Since they have such power, they need to recognise themselves politically and identify which side they're on.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 22px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 5px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 22px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 5px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The only thing that keeps bothering me is whether, by undressing, femen really regains the power over their bodies, escape commodifocation or to the contrary, submits it to the authorities, who are arresting them and abusing them?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Several things would support this thesis: for one, the success of their actions would be null precisely without the abuse they get. Imagine that an action by Femen went unnoticed or wasn't aggressively treated. That the police or security wouldn't violently take them away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Without the resistance, Femen would loose their point of existence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Yet, as we know, this is impossible: those policing the public space within the patriarchy will be eternally brutally removing any unruly women's behaviour from there. As long as this order will exist, Femen's actions will be making-visible the activity of patriarchy within the society.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
It is a perfromative difference: are Femen merely embodying the poor, "disciplined", opressed, coerced bodies within the patriarchy or is their goal just simply too shallow, not politicised enough, not thought through-enough, that they merely still depend on the opressor?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
I do not expect Femen to be some kind of Foucaldian-Butlerian intellectualised combo, with philosophical, esthetical performances - that'd be much worse than what they ever do. The thing is they may still empowerise those, who beat them and hate them.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Femen's actions should be less like a "sacrifice", less about exposure to danger and more about political goals. And we know how the logic of the victim ends (so excessively used by the right wing politics actually).</span><br />
<div style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 5px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Femen, the way it now goes, remains powerless and it can thematize this powerlessness forever, until they will feel a need to change their logic of failure into political success, ie, instead of willing to be caught and punished they will want to win. Can this be said of most of the leftist politics, not only in the Eastern Europe, today?</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 5px;">
<br /></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-58246537748012057282013-04-09T13:47:00.003+01:002013-04-17T10:36:16.824+01:00Orgreave and Other Battles - interview with Jeremy Deller<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6j_30MWYfYM/UWQXA06FC8I/AAAAAAAABJo/CtWgI2EzskU/s1600/Artist-Jeremy-Deller-007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6j_30MWYfYM/UWQXA06FC8I/AAAAAAAABJo/CtWgI2EzskU/s400/Artist-Jeremy-Deller-007.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">[this is an interview I did with artist <a href="http://www.jeremydeller.org/">Jeremy Deller </a>in July 2010, still fresh to the Islands, for my planned book with interviews with British thinkers, philosophers, artists, activists about the meaning and possibility of a revolution today. amongst other interviewed are: Mark Fisher, David Crowley, Owen Hatherley, Dominic Fox, Jon Wozencroft, Isaac Julien, Ulrike Ottinger, John Roberts, Douglas Crimp, to name a few.</span></b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Still unfinished, there may be a new spur to finally do it. The yesterday's event of Margaret Thatcher's death gave me the impulse to publish this interview on the blog. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-death-orgreave-coal-miners">Miner's strike and Orgreave</a> remain a wound on the UK's working class. So often it occurred to me that many who were interested in Jeremy's work (crowned last year with a big retrospective in Hayward Gallery, Joy in People), may not necessarily share his politics or politics of the miners.</span></b><br />
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></b>
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Mind you, this was made just after the Tories have been elected, and doesn't contain any of the atrocities of the last 3 years, only their predictions.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Let it prompt my work on this book (when I finish the previosu one). Hopefully, we'll see it published this or next year. If you like it, please share it and cheer me on to finish the book).</span></b><br />
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UUM2OnaEExA/UWQYHJc_pjI/AAAAAAAABJ0/pMpPQwre7aY/s1600/Deller_Orgreave_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UUM2OnaEExA/UWQYHJc_pjI/AAAAAAAABJ0/pMpPQwre7aY/s400/Deller_Orgreave_1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">ORGREAVE
AND OTHER BATTLES<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">INTERVIEW
WITH JEREMY DELLER<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">25/07/10<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">with thanks to Owen Hatherley, who helped with transcription</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">AGATA
PYZIK: I wrote to you for the first time when there was still a Labour
government four or five months ago, and I thought that would be a good start.
My partner lives here, and I've been visiting for seven months...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">JEREMY
DELLER: So you know a bit about the politics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yes,
or everything I can. People are terrified, and it's funny, though it sounds
like a simplification, but your best known work, on the <a href="http://www.jeremydeller.org/orgreave/orgreave_menu.htm">Battle of Orgreave</a>,
considered the disaster of the previous Tory government, and we're having another
one, in fairly different circumstances not only politically but as far as the
development of capitalism goes, but I thought – there will be some kind
of...the amounts of cuts that are going to be introduced...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">...are
going to be bad. But I think everyone knows it's going to be bad. Because
earlier nobody knew what was coming. All the arts organisations should be
worried, everyone should be worried – there'll be cuts from 25-40%, more or
less. So we'll see. But they seem to be enjoying it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Who
seems to be enjoying it?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The
government. So it could lead to a social breakdown, some sort of breakdown of
our social fabric, of society. There could be more riots, a repeat of 1981.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Do
you think a kind of historical repetition is possible?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yeah, I
think it always is. It's really about human behaviour rather than history. So I
think it's...we'll see. If they do what they say they're going to do and things
happen, then there could be a lot of trouble ahead. A lot, I imagine. Though
they don't seem to be worried about this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">So I
started with the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Battle</st1:place></st1:city>
of Orgreave, which is nine years old now -<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yes,
2001.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Which
has become some kind of...one of the favoured examples in terms of
participatory art, for instance in Clare Bishop's text in Artforum a couple of
years ago, where she wrote about you, Artur Zmijewski and a few others, as a
kind of 'delegation', delegating other people to make your work or to interact,
which then becomes your work. On the other hand, re-enactment is fairly present
in domains that have nothing to do with art. We have a lot of historical
re-enactments in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Poland</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
especially under the right-wing government. This year we had the re-enactment
of a 600 year old battle with the Germans, and the <st1:city w:st="on">Warsaw</st1:city>
Uprising is one of the favourite themes – battles in the streets of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Warsaw</st1:place></st1:city> that get
re-enacted. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The
Jewish uprising?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">No,
the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Warsaw</st1:city></st1:place>
uprising of 1944.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">That's
interesting, I didn't know about that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">So
Artur Zmijewski, who is frequently juxtaposed with you and others working in
this area has been shooting this cycle called 'Democracies' for the last two
years. You're familiar with it?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Mmm. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">...which
is filming direct participation in 'democracy'.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It
sounds really good. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I
could send it to you. It's his testing the very basic possibility of participating
in democracy.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">But it's
documentation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Documentation
plus editing of some kind. But I'm mentioning it in the context of the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Battle</st1:place></st1:city> of Orgreave, which
is something completely different, though you have real people, real policemen
and real miners, as well as people who specialise in re-enactments. So my
question is – what is the strategy behind it, given that the poignancy of the
Miners' Strike has been a trauma ever since, something that people put almost
on the same level as the Second World War, a myth of the working class – what
was the strategy behind staging it like this?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Why did
I do it, you mean? I did it because I remember seeing it on TV when I was a
child, or a young man, a teenager, so I wanted to do it as an investigation.
Also there's a sense of absurdity to it, and ridiculousness, and a humour which
doesn't get picked up on much. To re-stage a riot - it's almost impossible, by
definition. And too use the re-enactment societies, who are huge in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, where
it's not really a nationalistic thing, because they re-enact battles from all
over the world, but also ones where the British lost, often. So it's...I don't
see it as too nationalistic, but I wanted to engage those people on something,
and work with them on a political re-enactment. A political battle, not
something that happened a hundred or more years ago, but something very very
recent, or too recent to re-enact. Too soon for them. For them it was very
unusual to do this. So there was a number of reasons to do this, really.
Personal, and then about history, British history, because re-enactors look at
history in a very specific way. I wanted them to look at British history in a
different way, in a rough way. In a way they don't really understand, maybe, in
the sense that they don't see the Miners' Strike as a war, as a Civil War. I
was presenting it as a form of warfare. So they had to think of it as part of a
war. And also, they were meeting people who had been part of the strike, which
you can't do with any other war, really, apart maybe from the Second World War,
because they're all dead. So they've got to meet and mingle with veterans of a
war, of a campaign. I was interested in that. You can see that in the film –
they mix or don't mix, or maybe they get a little bit scared. Mainly it was
about investigating a moment of history, on a grand scale. Investigating it
physically rather than with a text, or film. Rather than just looking at an
archive, actually doing it as a reconstruction as a form of investigation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">So it
was an attempt to raise or create a <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/deller-the-battle-of-orgreave-archive-an-injury-to-one-is-an-injury-to-all-t12185">political consciousness </a>in people living in
2001?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yeah,
although people who live there don't need to re-live it. It was really for
other people, because they know about it already, they live with it. It was for
the actors really, and then the general public.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">What
about the miners who participate? Whenever there are anniversaries of <st1:place w:st="on">Auschwitz</st1:place>, the survivors sometimes wear again the
stripes. There's this very interesting aspect of trauma or reversing the
trauma...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">...but
also of pride, a sense of pride, for the miners, and if you're an <st1:place w:st="on">Auschwitz</st1:place> survivor there's a shame in that you survived,
or a shame or whatever. For the miners...yes, they didn't really wear old
clothes, they just wore their normal clothes. Everyone does, really. We didn't
go for re-enactment in those terms, but we did try and make it a piece of
performance art, like a massive performance art piece. But going back to your
question. Yes, the miners are always brought up, and as the years go on, it's
looked at differently. The anniversary was more sympathetic to them. Initially,
there were no anniversaries until 2004, so we did it in 2001, and before that
there hadn't been anniversaries, or any interest in it, because it was too
difficult to talk about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">What
was the impact on the participants? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Some had
a really good time, some were upset by it – the miners, I'm talking about. It
was a range, a variety, but what I think they enjoyed most was meeting all
their friends, everyone came back together – about 200 guys came back together,
and they could talk, they could socialise, which was really important.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">What
about the potential that...this is in a way the sense of re-enactment, but
since it was staged, it raised again those emotions, but it couldn't have a
political impact in a way.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">No.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">So
there is a certain futility to it.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yeah, of
course, and an absurdity to it as well. The absurdity of remaking a riot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">But
what was the miners' reaction, weren't they disappointed?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">No, they
understood it. They weren't expecting a new revolution because of a
re-enactment, they weren't expecting the world to change because they were
doing that. They're realistic people. If anything, it was the re-enactors who
were expecting something to happen during the re-enactment, who thought it would
start a massive real riot and then a battle and then a revolution or something.
So the miners were just totally pragmatic about it. They weren't expecting
public policy to change or the mines to re-open at the end of it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The
boundary, if there is any, between art or what have you arises – did you
experience criticism on that level, that this thing promises much more than
it's able to give?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">No, or
if it did I didn't hear it. No. I wasn't setting out to change the world. It
wasn't promising anything, there was no promise. It was an artwork.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">You
use the word 'performance', and obviously there's discussions about what
performance is, whether it can be reproduced. For you what's the essence of
performance as such?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">That's a
big question. In that piece in particular? It's a public event, people acting
out roles, or former roles. It's rehearsed, it has a script – and it has an
audience, and that's what a performance is really, because a film hasn't got an
audience. There is no audience when it's being made. So the role of the
audience is important. But I'm improvising really. To be honest - I don't
really think about these things. I don't think very much about my work, and I
try not to, and let other people do it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">But
on the other hand something like this re-enactment is a very consciously
political work.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Of
course it is. It's very pointed. But what I'm saying is that doesn't mean I
think about it too much in retrospect, or even at the time – I have an idea,
and think let's do this idea. I don't think of the theory, or dissect it too
much, because if you dissect ideas you end up thinking 'that's a terrible
idea'. This won't work, that won't work. So I try not to. But it was a
consciously political work, and made at a time in which the art world was not
particularly interested in politics, where the mainstream artworld was more
interested in hanging out than making political artworks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">When
for the first time did you think you wanted to make art that engaged other
people, not just the artworld?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I think
that in terms of making art that works with people, which is I think what you
mean,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yes,
working with people, that is collaborating, that is delegation...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">1996.
Because I did a project with a brass band. It happened in 1997, but it began in
'96. I realised I enjoyed doing it and that I didn't have to make objects
anymore, but I could just work with people. I wouldn't have to make an object,
but it was a thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I'm
thinking about social sculpture, and Beuys...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yes, but
I wasn't thinking about that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Whenever
we do something that engages people it engages communities, and this is
something that your work is about.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It can
be, yeah. The brass bands are people who make music within communities, so
there is that. But I do lots of other things as well, because if that's all you
did then you become a certain kind of artist, especially in Britain, where
everyone has to work with communities, you are asked 'can you work with these
kinds of people', these people of this area...so with the Olympics there's all
this art made about the people who live in the area, all of that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">In
the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Lea</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Valley</st1:placetype></st1:place>. So is that what you're doing
now?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Of
course not – I just want to do my own thing. I don't want to be asked and
dropped into a town or a school and think 'these are the people I have to make
art with'. I'm not interested in that. So no.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">How
did you get interested in fandom communities? For instance with the <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Manic Street</st1:address></st1:street>
Preachers? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Well, I
liked them, I wasn't a 'fan' in those terms. I liked Depeche. You probably like
them, being Polish!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Well
yes...I can't remember whether you included Polish fandom.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">No,
sadly. If we made the film again we'd make it about the Eastern Bloc, really. <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Rather
than the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region></st1:place>
and the world. There's a really interesting US-Russia connection with the band,
they were big in both countries during the Cold War.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I
must get back to fandom communities, because they're transcending communities.
Brass bands are a group of people who all live in the same town, Manics fans
are living in the different cities of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Great Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. But I would prefer
to discuss that project now, 'The Uses of Literacy'.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">That was
the same year as the brass band performance, that happened within four days of
the brass band performance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I
just happen to live with an ex-massive fan, so I know...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Do you
have the book?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">No...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's
really nice, you should give it to the person you live with. It's cheap! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I
probably will. Well, two things. It's funny for me, because it shaped him in
those seminal years...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">15,
16...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yeah,
maybe even younger. This plus the Folk Archives.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yes,
because they're the same thing, they're both forms of contemporary folk art.
Well not this, but what we did with the exhibition, and folk art was about
traditional and contemporary folk art, because folk art in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region></st1:place> hasn't been looked at in a
good way, as being stupid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">There
is this distinction, that Hanns Eisler made between folk art and mass art. This
is mass art, but folk art is in a way nostalgic, yearning for the past, but
this is not. Depeche Mode called one of their albums Music for the Masses.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yes, but
I think the fan response is a kind of folk art. This is mass art, it's
mass-produced culture; but when someone produces something about the band, that's
makes a drawing, this is folk culture. That's what I believe. Because folk art
isn't about yearning for the past. It can be, it can be about ancient ritual
and tradition, but then so many things aren't. And who's to say that those
drawings of pop stars aren't yearning for something? They're also about the past
or about nostalgia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I'm
not saying that nostalgia's bad.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">That's
why we make folk art, and why we make folk art contemporary as well.
Contemporary folk art which isn't about the past, but which is modern.
Traditionally folk art has often been very political, about the moment – about
the strike, about the event that happened, the riot, or whatever. So we
included a lot of material like that, trade union banners and so on. So I don't
agree with that definition. But then I agree mass culture is not folk art,
obviously.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">But
forget about the definition – I thought that was brilliant, that you gathered
all this work. A friend of mine said once that the writings on the walls of
loos...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I did a
book on that once. A book of poetry from toilet walls, in 1994. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">If we
take this definition of art as something that is made of...that is modern and
fresh, to be honest, something disinterested, made out of free will, this
modernist idea – so this is it, art created by fans, and poetry on the loo...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yes,
it's equivalent. And also it's not...you don't see it very much on the whole.
Maybe now with the internet you can see it more, but mostly it was invisible.
So I wanted to make the invisible visible, really. Art made by fans – you don't
get to see that. Unless you get sent it, if you're a member of the band – but
otherwise it's private. I wanted to make it public.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">How
did you start to gather this?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It was
pre-internet, so I gave out pieces of paper to fans, at a queue for a concert,
in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>. And
I put an ad out in Melody Maker, or NME, I can't remember, and then people sent
me things. It's very simple. We kept in touch, and I did this show, and now
it's owned by the Arts Council. It gets shown round the world or whatever or in
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region></st1:place>,
and it's part of a national collection, which I'm really happy about. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">So
did it come from the idea that pop music is the modern form of folk art.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Popular
art. I like music, and I enjoy seeing people's devotion to bands. I enjoy that.
So it seemed natural. I was interested in the band, and the band's fanbase. It
was only meant to be an exhibition for one day, but it worked as an exhibition,
so it was repeated – it had its own history after that, which is great. After
that I did a few more things about the band. It was very enjoyable doing the
exhibition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The
band had a very exceptional appeal, because it wasn't really about the music
itself, it was about Richey Edwards.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Those
lyrics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The
lyrics, and slogans.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">This is
the best example, this album is the best example. What's the quotation there?
They always had loads of quotations, from history....and on the singles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">There's
now a novel about Richey Edwards, Richard by Ben Myers.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Fiction?
Is it any good?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's
a first-person narrative by a former music journalist. I was wondering what
appealed to you in Richey Edwards' work, because now it seems obvious...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's not
obvious when you're 13. Obviously he wasn't 13. But it's very appealing to
young people at a certain age. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I
must say that I find it strangely appealing, this in-your-face attitude, and
the tragedy behind it...his going to the end in certain things. I'm asking you
– why this following, why this band?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Because
it was unique. It was at a time in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region> when most bands wanted to
be as stupid as possible, as dumb as possible. And they were they exact opposite.
About every generation, every decade, there's a band who is intelligent, clever
and witty and so on. There wasn't another one. It was the Smiths in the '80s
and in the '90s it was this band. In the '70s I don't know. A band which is
going against what is popular. Which is what they always did, they were very
good at that, especially with this album.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">At
the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">peak</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Britpop</st1:placename></st1:place>, with the rise of New Labour.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's
such a downer of an album. 'What is this album?'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's
monstrous.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It is,
something really unpleasant about it. So I was very happy to do this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">So
who was the typical fan?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's
quite easy to guess. Not surprisingly, it was a sixteen year old girl who lived
in the countryside or at least not in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>,
and who didn't have many friends. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It
appealed to...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The
classic pop fan, who was very intelligent, and read a lot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Who
was working class?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Not
necessarily – but definitely not wealthy. It was exactly as I expected, which
is a community in itself. But now with the internet it's much easier to really
feel part of something. Before it was fanzines, letters, maybe phone calls, but
now of course it's something else. So maybe it's about something that has
disappeared. Maybe this fan world has disappeared because of the internet or
changed into online rather than at home in the bedroom making stuff. I'm not
sure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">On
the other hand you could still make a film like Posters came from the Walls.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Have you
seen it? You're not allowed to see it. The lead singer doesn't like it, and
we're never allowed to show it again – even though it was made by Mute. Mute
paid for it in its entirety. It's owned by Mute records. It can never be shown
because the lead signer has a problem with it – though I suspect it's his wife,
who is this crazy woman. He's a bit crazy too. But it'll end up on the
internet, so people will see it. At the moment it's on show in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region>, and it's been shown in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Basically
we're showing it until they come down on us and tell us not to show it. Because
it's stupid not to show it, it's crazy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">What
you were able to still depict is a strong community, persisting for years.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">In the
Depeche film? Yeah, and that was especially in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. I thought that was the most
amazing story. Making the film was fun, and I'm very happy with it. We had to
cut a lot out, but we kept the best stories. But that's like fan adulation to
an extreme degree, like no-one has really had since the Beatles. In <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, the way
they talk about the band.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">What
was the appeal of the band, why do you think they had this emancipatory effect
in the Eastern Bloc?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's to
do with timing, how they looked, about the music, about how it looked, how it
sounded, about how it's easy to reproduce, you can make copies and copies of
that music and because it's very clean it can be copied very easily, so it's
also for technical reasons...they looked really butch but kind of gay...they
had everything you wanted really. The songs were really short and easy to
understand – it was kind of perfect. And they were making their best records at
that time, when it was disappearing, when all that change was happening, they
were making their best songs. Even though they weren't really aware of it. They
don't really know why they're so popular there, they have no idea. They don't
really think about it because it doesn't really matter, it's just great to be
popular. But it was really something that was adopted. They were adopted by the
Eastern Bloc, the people there. And it's very modern sounding as well. It's not
decadent rock music, it's a new kind of music.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Maybe
it was embodying their idea of liberation at that present moment.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Exactly,
those kind of tortured lyrics. It's not dissimilar to the Manics really. It
works well with young people, they identify with the lyrics, the content, and
the sound had all these minor keys.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">What
was interesting for you, the transcending again or the sense of community or
the lyrical sense? I remember this tremendous guy, the homeless guy from <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city> featured at the
very end. Someone told me there's more homeless people in <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>
than in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Moscow</st1:city></st1:place>.
I live in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Greenwich</st1:place></st1:city>
and I hardly see them. You made him visible, in a way.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">There
will be more homeless people now, because of this government. Without a doubt,
that's one thing I can guarantee, more people will become homeless. When he was
homeless, ten years ago or so it was a very serious problem – there was like a
city of homeless people in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>,
at the underpass where the iMax cinema is now, there was hundreds of people
living, like a shanty town. It was called <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Cardboard</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">City</st1:placetype></st1:place>.
Hundreds of people lived there, it was like something out of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sao Paulo</st1:place></st1:city>, and that was the result of ten
years of those policies in the '80s. It's got better since, it's not as bad as
it was, but it'll get worse now. They were moved to hostels, they were given
more help, and also it disspiated, because that site was closed, they dispersed
around <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>.
But socially things got better in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, so they were helped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I'll
come back to the quotation of Richard Hoggart's <i>The Uses of Literacy</i>,
because there's this chapter on how popular culture and popular music are
fooling the working class, 'sex in shiny packets'. He's very critical of it.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">He was
very anti-pop music. He took it too seriously, he was worried in a serious way
about popular music, he didn't understand what it was really, because he was
too old – he was pre-rock and roll. But the Manics were always interested in <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region> and its effect on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, but
they were a popular music band who transcended that. This is why I used the
term The Uses of Literacy. But also it's an interesting phrase, an interesting
four words – because they used literacy, they used books, they <i>used</i> it,
they used the act of being literate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The
very name of their band, and calling themselves Ministers of Propaganda...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">They were
playing a lot, they were playing with their image. It was a game, in a good
way. They were very clever, though some of them more clever than others. They
understood it, they understood the game, and what they were trying to do. But
Richard Hoggart was just terrified by what he saw. He was right in some ways,
in other ways he was not right, I think. But that he looked at things closely
and took it seriously was very unusual in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region> at the time. So that's why
I used the title for my book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Probably
it was unavoidable in the development of the system, what we could see is the
levelling, and now the widening the gaps between rich and poor in liberal
societies. But you mention the game, and I wanted to ask about that in relation
to the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Battle</st1:place></st1:city>
of Orgreave. What is the game for you?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's
definitely a sense of play. It was a political statement, but it wasn't out to
change the world. That's where activism differs from art. Activists actually
want to change something very directly and very specifically, while artists
don't really want to do that, or be so clear in their intentions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">And
you insist that you are an artist.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Absolutely.
If I was an activist and I did that piece at the end of that piece I'd like the
mines to re-open, or everyone to get a job or something. Then there's an
endpoint, an aim. But with that piece of work there wasn't an aim. So I'm not
an activist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">To
put it very bluntly, how do you see your role, making these very politically
loaded and informed works of art? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Should I
have a role? I'm just an artist, I like making things, and seeing what I can
get away with. I'm just seeing how far I can go with things, and that's how it
is. I don't have any aims, I don't have a list of things I want to do. That's
why I'm not an activist. They use art forms maybe, but not as an endpoint, as a
beginning. So they'll do performances as a way of trying to change things, and
that's what I'm not. I'm not interested in that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's
something that's always raised...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">A lot of
activists have art backgrounds, I imagine – they went to college and learned
about performance art maybe, and they use those forms for political ends, in
terms of issues or policies or whatever. But I'm not in that camp, no pun
intended. I'm interested in it, but I don't want to be part of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">What
is this film you're working on at the moment?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">There's
two, they're both biopics. They're both about elderly men who have had
interesting lives. One is about a 70 year old man, he's a wrestler, he's from <st1:country-region w:st="on">Wales</st1:country-region>, very close to where the Manics are from,
and he was a coal miner, and left the mine, and went to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> to
become a wrestler. He still wrestles, but it's really about his life, how he
managed to leave industry and become part of the entertainment business. Then
another one is about a British artist who's 83 and lives in the countryside,
and still makes art, and it's about his life. His name's Bruce Lacey. He's
semi-known, but he does incredible things. The other one, which is relevant to
you, is the car from <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>,
which went round the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>, that's
coming to the <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region>, and is now
owned by the <st1:placename w:st="on">Imperial</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">War</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Museum</st1:placetype>
in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>.
It'll be on display in September. It'll be part of their collection, on display
in <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> and <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Manchester</st1:place></st1:city>. It's relevant for your questions
about art and activism and stuff. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's
funny that you mention the Imperial War Museum, which is a very interesting
institution, based in a former mental institution, as there you also have
re-enactments, of being in a bunker, or being bombed or something like that –
museums that provide this 'war experience' – it seems relevant to the Battle of
Orgreave. Calling it a battle.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">That's a
provocation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">As a
kind of reference to the Middle Ages, even.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It was
known afterwards as 'the battle', it was very quickly known as a battle.
Because of the nature of it and the scale of it, with thousands and thousands
of people – and also how it looked, it looked like a medieval battle, with
police horses and the scale of it. And also its importance. It became one of
the most important events in the strike, because the police very publicly won a
battle. And they on the propaganda war as well, about the battle. So it was a
battle. I did a book about the Battle of Orgreave, called The English Civil
War, again as a provocation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">How
did you talk to all these kinds of people, did you have to convince them?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">No, I
think most people understood it very quickly. Re-enactors had to be convinced.
I think, maybe. The miners didn't – they understood it, on the whole. On the
whole they were very excited about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It
re-enacted a seminal moment of their life. Did they have a sense of failure
about it?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Well
they're glad it's remembered. And also that through history the opinions on the
miners have changed, because it's a much more sympathetic view. Through history
you can see what was going on much more clearly, the results and consequences.
So they were happy for the attention, and for the opportunity to tell the story
in their own terms, and that was important. You've seen the film?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yes,
it was part of an exhibition at CCA in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Warsaw</st1:place></st1:city>.
I was interested by the form in which you have parts of the battle and then
single people commenting on it. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">We tried
to interview different people, like a policeman, an organiser, a woman, that's
important, some of the miners. We wanted to have a narrative structure to the
film. And also those people who don't usually get interviewed about their time
in the strike. Normal people, really – it wasn't the politicians, but the
footsoldiers, really. Which was interesting, because they were all very
compelling, they way they spoke. It was really good to do that. We did it after
the performance, we spent a day with each person. We were really happy with
those interviews. In the book there's interviews on a CD.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Do
you know Artur Zmijewski's work?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">A little.
I've not seen it, but a friend's worked with him on a project. I really like
the sound of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">He's
getting into controversial things like the Holocaust, for which he's frequently
accused of exploitation. Were you ever?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Of
course. As soon as you're working with people that's what you're accused of, as
if they're not intelligent enough to understand what's happening. Even with the
Folk Archive, when we put on a big nice exhibition with a book, we were told we
were exploiting them. It's just the most stupid thing to say. A lot of people
really hated that exhibition, really hated it. Art critics hated the fact they
had to review it. They wrote 'I didn't want to review this show, but I had to',
which is funny, but it really shows the kind of attitude to folk art in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, it's
very class-based. That was interesting to see. They couldn't bear to see it,
some of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">They
didn't like it because of class?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">No, they
didn't think it was art, they thought it was terrible. And it was exploitative.
What they were voicing was their own fears, because they didn't have the
capacity to review what we'd presented them with, they didn't know how to
understand it as art. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The
Depeche Mode film is a classic form of documentary...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">You
don't have to be an artist to make a film like that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Why
is that appealing for you?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I like
documentaries. I like them, I like making them, I like watching them, I like
making my own. With the Depeche film, more than anything I love films about
music and musicians, so I wanted to make a film in that tradition, about a
band. It was very exciting. I like the process of making films, seeing what
happens. I'm doing a variety of things really, there's no way I'd want to limit
myself to doing one thing, I never have. I'm curating as well, I'm curating a
show in the next year, doing more films, maybe another performance piece. I'm
lucky really, because of winning the Turner Prize not a lot of artists can do
what I do in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
so I'm in a very good position. I'm always being asked to do things so it's
good not to do one thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The
things you've been creating to date are very unusual, in that they're works not
made by artists, so is this going to be in this vein?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It's
actually a version of an exhibition I did in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Paris</st1:place></st1:city> at the Palais de Tokyo, about British
music, and British identity through music. It's music-based, but it'll have art
in it and music. It's not clear at the moment. It's about how our identity has
been shaped through industry and music. It's not clear as you can tell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Music
as industry?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The
industrial revolution and its relationship to British rock music.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Probably
what happened a hundred years in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Manchester</st1:place></st1:city>
was probably the biggest revolution since the Palaeolithic or something. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Yes – <st1:city w:st="on">Manchester</st1:city>, <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Birmingham</st1:place></st1:city>
– all these big musical towns had an industrial base.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I'm
going to <st1:place w:st="on">Sheffield</st1:place> later today.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Well
that's a very important one, for electronic music.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">I'm
fascinated by this, that the most exciting music from the late '70s was made by
working class people in industrial towns.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Well
that's what my exhibition is about, <st1:city w:st="on">Manchester</st1:city>, <st1:city w:st="on">Birmingham</st1:city>, Sheffield, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Newcastle</st1:city></st1:place>. Centres of heavy industry and
their relationship with what became the music industry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Now
we have this austerity nostalgia, a sort of cover for the austerity policy of
the government, 'Keep Calm and Carry On' and so on, which unconsciously tried
to use the war policy.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Those
posters when they came out were massively unsuccessful, because they were seen
as massively patronising to the general public. Now they're taken as ironic,
and they're everywhere, aren't they. People felt patronised by the English
ruling classes – you are fantastic and you are the British public, keep going.
Really crude propaganda. Now it's seen as very nice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Can
people see the very cynical politics behind it?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Well
some can, though some voted for it. People must understand what's happening,
they'd be crazy not to. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">If it
was possible for an artist to influence how people vote, would you like it?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">No.
That's for activists, I'm not interested in that. It's nice not to be told.
That's the problem with activism, it's very preachy, it's very 'you are wrong,
I am right, and I have a moral high ground and you do not'. It often doesn't
see the complexity of situations. Some people in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> think the invasion was a
fantastic thing. You could tell some people that and they wouldn't believe it.
But for a lot of other people it was the worst thing that ever happened to
them, so I'm much more interested in complexity rather than having all the
answers. That's what politicians do, they say they can solve all the problems,
and they're usually wrong. Usually it's better to see things in a more
complicated way. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Trevi, somewhere on Holloway Road</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-20322200625863463902013-03-21T15:20:00.000+00:002013-03-21T21:59:42.239+00:00Spiritual poverty of modern machine <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fSGMCHnxUjw" width="400"></iframe><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Timothy D. Taylor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising Music and the
Conquest of Culture<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">University</span></st1:placetype><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Chicago</st1:placename></span></st1:place><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> Press 345 Hbk<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It is easy to think niche, experimental music can escape commodification. More often than not,
this is an illusion, but it would be equally gratuitous to say all the music is merely a commodity within the late capitalism, or at least it isn’t always in the same
way. In his book Timothy Taylor deals with the sounds that throughout the
existence of the consumerist society (that is at least since the 1920s in America) accompanied
and helped to sell things. He provides a not only extremely well researched,
but also fundamentally leftist interpretation, an analysis from the
perspective, but not on the account, of the admen and companies and their
strategies, which in order to start selling, had to construct the audience </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">to sell their products to. From the concept of the
“masses” in the 1920 to the discovery of youth as a market to the new petit
bourgeois, for whom “everything concerned with the art of living, in
particular, domestic life and consumption” becomes a matter of special concern,
we see the construction of society via an analysis of a single subgenre – here,
the ad jingle.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/k10r0yfndCE" width="400"></iframe></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Of course, such criticisms are old and their most
famous exponent was Adorno, now frequently misunderstood as a one-dimensional mere critic of consumptionism. Adorno, who saw the rise of nazism and fascism, during his American years was rather concerned with the cynisism accompanying the regression process, regression of our perception of art and of the world instigated by the standardisation of the mass media. Radio and then TV simplified the way the world can be grasped and helped commodifying the consumer's consciousness. His analysis was supported by his longstanding research as a part of Princeton radio project and the Hacker Foundation he lead in 1952-53.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mLRhsxJ8_GE" width="400"></iframe></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Not subscribing to any of the symplifying binarisms (mass culture as 'good' or a necessarily evil thing) Taylor did a meticulous research going through enormous archive of the initial development of the ad business. We’re not going to discover suddenly that in fact jingles were very
sophisticated things, but we’ll see, how the development of the radio and, at
the same time, performing and composing of music, which was broadcasted, has lead the Don Draper’s forbears to get the idea how music can 'animate' and make the product more
desirable. </span>With commercial use of music, the question of taste wont stop
haunting us. Here, Bourdieu’s theory of taste’s relation to social class and the cultural capital comes
to the rescue, enriched with gender and ethnicity brought to the agenda. What may be
crucial is how this music specifically designed to sell, that is of the possibly 'lowest' sort, also in terms of "primitiveness" of the composition, is a necessary backdrop, more even – must shape the
conditions in which any non-commercial, niche or artistic music is made and how
it is impossible to think, within consumerist capitalism, that one can escape the influence by these modes of production, broadcasting, popularization and the necessity to sell. <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Taylor</st1:place></st1:city>
shows the origin of this world in motion, as it’s constituted: from the
supposedly “absolute” conditions, he shows our society as built by this
“shlock”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It’s a Foucaldian, as well as traditional historical approach, in this sense, that <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Taylor</st1:place></st1:city>, while remaining very close to his subject and writing a microhistory, contributes to the macro image. He analyses very practical aspects: the wages of the musicians, the evolution of the copyrights (initially no one paid anyone for playing his music on the radio and one musician could easily ‘steal’ from another) and contracts. One of the things that is debunked is the myth of the laissez-faire and competition of early capitalist stage – power-consolidating corporate ambitions of “destroying all the competition” were present in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place> already between the wars.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HUcjJ-yChjg" width="400"></iframe></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In order to appeal, product had to become “emotional”,
first regardless of class, and then doing this quite despicable thing, creating
consumerist groups. </span>Early admen were all disciples of Ayn Rand and we get to read the crippled poetry of the self-proclaimed Fountainheads. A 1930s one could write that “modern commercial
designs will offset in some measure the ugliness and spiritual poverty of much
of this modern machine environment” and instead, will bring beauty ‘in our
visual world, in our landscapes, architecture and tools and furniture with which
we perform the operation of living.” There's a startling resemblance here to certain
avantgarde manifestoes, as the avant-garde artists obviously were fascinated by the modern way of life, the machine age, speed, technology and the everyday. Especially some of the early commercials can be little masterpieces of a short film and animation, influenced by directly or even made by the avant-garde artists. Many included first class composers, like Raymond Scott, artists like Man Ray or filmmakers like Len Lye (although UK or Europe and eg. the achievements of GPO film unit unfortunately cannot be our concern here).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/aIuFc0ghQWo" width="400"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="263" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/k0UOdGUk1xk" width="350"></iframe></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It shows, how the original admen probably really thought they are making things better and creating some sort of a new art. Hence the descriptions "art director" and many other, art-related. But exactly by comparing the art with those, who are approprating its ideas, you see, how their 'art' was something different, so often about 'concealing' rather than 'revealing', what mostly good art does. In the 20th century capitalism, at leats since Warhol, art and business has became one. There was something larger than life, pioneer, 'American dream'-like about the beginnings of the ad industry, even if that lead to quite despicable things. This brings us to what the future, ie the present, will be
like: how the notion of “art” will start to support the appetites of the brand
new social class of “conscious consumers”.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uyCl3BdlICY" width="400"></iframe></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Their “art”, as we see it more clearly now, was rather
the opposite: it was to cover the ugliness of the real ad intentions
(annihilating the real reasons for the crises of capitalism and social
conditions) with another illusion: that of beautiful, unproblematic life. Role
of a commercial jingle was then similar to the neon light at the Broadway, to
dazzle, to give shivers. But alas, their 'art', however they wanted to see it, remained 'primitive', it had contributed a lot to a regression of listening in the adornian sense.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">That's why <i>Mad Men's </i>Don Draper, who's an idealist, can both think that he's making people believe in nonsense and believe that there's something sublime to his work, that really makes things and the world better. He wants to believe in the dream. You can see, how the development of this business could ever only happen in America, with their chaotic religion of vaguely understood Freedom, the power of the Dream (even if at the cost of killing and enslaving millions of people) and identyfying all those values with capitalism. Capitalism carries a utopian, magical aspect and that's why there's actually no contradiction. Radio, cinema and the silver screen started as dream-factories to, with the time, show their much darker side.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/irJxbxL7Z7A" width="400"></iframe></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">With time, as the initial bling wore off, and there
was a discovery or rather “invention” of youth, apart from the new market,
criticism of the new media arose. Yet the fights of counterculture, necessarily
combined with their fights for the political issues, made the commercial
appeal problematic. Unlike Don Draper, who is puzzled by the counterculture, yet desires its
freedoms, corporations also didn’t understand, but counted for the eternal
residuum of conservatism and backwardness of their clients, prophets of the
middlebrow. They weren’t wrong, and the operation of “appropriation of the cool”
into the middle of the road started. The baby boomers made the Yuppies, taught
to spent their lives at nothing else but cultivating their individuality. They're best portrayed by Patrick Bateman of <i>American
Psycho</i>, who kills to the accompaniment of the jingle of the favorite talk
show, muzak dripping from the walls of the office interiors or Huey & The News. “Hating the commercials” was </span>a sign of cultivation among the aspirational classes, and it
marked the corporations’ biggest triumph, as the <i>quality</i> was the last thing they had to be concerned about at this point. Business has become a sort of religion anyway – definitely in <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>, only to bring the well known film of the 70s, <i>The Network</i>, to mind, where it is shown, how quite
“cosmic” ambitions the corporations had become, like some inverted <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USSR</st1:place></st1:country-region>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Today, as the music industry sees itself in a great
crisis, as we live in a dystopia from WS Burroughs, the love of the middlebrow
has never been better. Ad pervades the industry more than ever, so that it’s
often impossible to distinguish one from another. </span>It is so morbidly smooth that even the surgery from a sober Marxist like
Taylor, pointing out also how the notion of “work” itself evaporates in this
process, still can’t kill the parasite. Advertising, which helped to create the
current concept of creativity, was also the pioneer of the new “cognitive
capitalism”. The catchy jingle may have been the virus that first and best
helped it to spread around capitalism’s sick body. In this, commercial music may be one of the best
way to show contradictions of contemporary capitalism as such.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Agata Pyzik</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-18959427172139630982013-02-27T01:36:00.003+00:002016-02-17T14:51:53.543+00:00Mauer Dreamstory, Pt.2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JjnRVMigPFM/USzgsISkIfI/AAAAAAAABEg/zWEMOGdXSAo/s1600/Zulawski+Retrospective.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JjnRVMigPFM/USzgsISkIfI/AAAAAAAABEg/zWEMOGdXSAo/s400/Zulawski+Retrospective.jpg" width="258" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">(X-posted from <a href="http://facesonposters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/mauer-dreamstory-pt2.html">Faces on posters</a>)</span></b><br />
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></b>
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">(from the work in progress "Poor But Sexy", see Pt.1 <a href="http://facesonposters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/drang-nach-ost.html">Drang nach Osten</a>)</span></b><br />
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></b>
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">“I didnt want that
to happen, but it did”</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">‘A woman who fucks
an octopus’ – that was the way Andrzej Żuławski pitched his 1980 film
<i>Possession</i> to the producer, fresh after the success of his French film <i>L'important c’est d’aimer</i>, about a fallen actress, played by a sad-eyed Romy Schneider, who is made to act in pornographic movies, surrounded by
other failed artists, including an unusually melancholic, tender performance from
Klaus Kinski. He was also right after the fiasco of his three hour long monumental metaphysical SF <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Silver_Globe_(film)">On a Silver Globe</a> (1978)</i>, an adaptation of a fin de siecle futurological novel of his great uncle, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_%C5%BBu%C5%82awski">Jerzy Żuławski</a>, pulled before completion by the hostile communist authorities and shelved until 1987, when only Zulawski had a chance to "finish" the film. Around that time, he was abandoned by his wife Malgorzata Braunek, actress in his <i>Third part of the night </i>and <i>The Devil</i>, due to his famously domineering and possessive personality as a partner and a director. Left in shock and depression, he started plotting a mysogynist fairy tale about a monster....<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The sleep of reason produces demons, and one of them materialised, when Anna, living in West Berlin with her functionary nice husband and child in a neat, 3 storeys blocks estate, realised she despised her husband. She confesses that to him. The rest is what happens after that confession.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Y5gHa4323nw" width="400"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><i>Possession </i>was
made in the golden era of the genre of exploitation, and it must be due to the
communal genius that things conceived as forgettable shlock to this day shine
with a magnificent mixture of the visceral and the metaphysical, with
cinematography, colours, costumes and set design taken from a masterpiece.
Argento and the lesser <i>gialli </i>creators,
Jean Rollin with his erotic horror, the expansion of intellectual SF, started and inspired by Tarkovsky, all paved the way for <i>Possession</i>, a still unrivalled
study of a marital break-up, thrown in the middle of political turmoil in
divided cold war Berlin. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">Still, Possession had a special “career” in the UK, if by career we understand horrible reception, extremely negative reviews and eventually putting it to the ‘video nasties’ list of banned films. “Film nobody likes”, it was deemed too arty for the flea pits and too trashy for the art house*.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cI4q9aXZWPo/US1dCMwidmI/AAAAAAAABGg/tsMD0tbWUDk/s1600/Possession_1981_6+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cI4q9aXZWPo/US1dCMwidmI/AAAAAAAABGg/tsMD0tbWUDk/s400/Possession_1981_6+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YYsY4gsqs6A/US1hcK_dOvI/AAAAAAAABIM/IRnFgQwB21s/s1600/cap065.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YYsY4gsqs6A/US1hcK_dOvI/AAAAAAAABIM/IRnFgQwB21s/s400/cap065.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Today perhaps we
can’t imagine what it was like to live in a city surrounded by barbed wire and
under a constant look of armed guards. When we first see Anna, played by a disturbingly
pale, un-Holy Mary-like Isabelle Adjani and Mark (Sam
Neill), we instantly see something is terribly wrong: their windows are under
constant scrutiny, and surrounded by wire – the symbol of political oppression
just as of the marital prison, of conventional life.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nb8mNh8GCwE/USzhSvJGHtI/AAAAAAAABEo/RaxQIdToz-g/s1600/possession7-e1323116334500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nb8mNh8GCwE/USzhSvJGHtI/AAAAAAAABEo/RaxQIdToz-g/s400/possession7-e1323116334500.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Mark’s job is not
what it seems – he has completed a secret government mission, which he wants
nothing to do with anymore. Meeting with mysterious grey-suited men, it’s clear
he's involved in high rank espionage. Anna can’t explain what is driving her
towards the mysterious lover. She wears her deep blue, up-to-neck gown of a 19<sup>th</sup>
century governess, which walks her through all kinds of atrocities as if
untouched, as if it’s a secret armor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jkIvgUzpV3U" width="400"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The Berlin U-bahn
is a character in its own right, scene of her neurotic commutes to the fatal
flat on another end of Kreuzberg, again, by the wall, with screaming dramatic
graffiti: FREIE WEST and MAUER MUST GO (despite location in the east, it was
still included in the West), and in its underpasses is the most terrifying
scene of her possession, where she issues green-yellow gunk among terminal gargles. In all this there's a place for comic relief: the whole
character of lusty Margie, played by one of iconic RW Fassbinder’s actresses Margrit
Carstensen and her comical enormous leg in plaster, just as her failed courtship
of Mark; in one of Zulawski's turns of surreal genius, when a stupor-ridden Adjani is on the tube, she's
robbed of a bunch of bananas by a homeless man, who takes one and gently puts
the rest back to her bag. Luxury goods were an issue in the East, mind you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6E7ETtVZvj8/USziyouGYsI/AAAAAAAABE4/9olp8kkPO2k/s1600/possession2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="253" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6E7ETtVZvj8/USziyouGYsI/AAAAAAAABE4/9olp8kkPO2k/s400/possession2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The demon can be
many things: her anxieties, her neuroses that took the shape of an
evil monster. The monster can be also simply a misogynistic punishment for the
unfaithful Zulawski’s wife. A chronically decaying demon, built out of corpses,
can be also a sum of the traumas his generation had to go through. It is common
to say of JG Ballard that everything he ever written, wore the shadow of the scenes
he saw in a concentration camp in war-ridden <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Shanghai</st1:place></st1:city>. Similarly, it is generally believed of Roman
Polanski, that all his films, revolving around pain, trauma, sickly sexuality
and claustrophobia, reveal the daily atrocities he saw as a child in the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cracow</st1:place></st1:city>’s ghetto. There’s
no doubt Zulawski also went through a traumatic childhood experience, motifs of which he obsessively came back to throughout all his career: war, isolation, madness realising in taboo eroticism, violence, evisceration, Polish <i>romanticisme fou</i> and our tragic history. Born in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lviv">Lvov</a>, Ukraine (then Poland)</st1:place></st1:city> in 1940, he barely
survived the war, once nearly hit by a bomb, witnessing the destruction of the city and his family at a
very early age. In <i>Possession</i> we observe a growing hostility of the spouses, a decay of the family, of the city, and of the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ed-VEVpccsI/USzrdD6Lp7I/AAAAAAAABFs/144hVCWDD5I/s1600/tumblr_loz58lIuKZ1qavk2zo1_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ed-VEVpccsI/USzrdD6Lp7I/AAAAAAAABFs/144hVCWDD5I/s400/tumblr_loz58lIuKZ1qavk2zo1_500.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Most of Zulawski’s
and some Polanski’s films, like Repulsion, Cul de Sac, Locataire (The Tenant),
all associate eroticism with perversion and anomaly, and fetishism, in a
genuinely surrealist way. Sex is creepy, sex involves an exchange of ugly
secretions, preceding of our inevitable decay; in fact, sex is a delight in
revulsion, in turning to rot, to a corpse, an acceptance not only of dying, but
also of dying disgustingly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uTeyF76bPoE/US1eH8Xk1jI/AAAAAAAABGs/EuCGj01dk4E/s1600/possession-scream.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uTeyF76bPoE/US1eH8Xk1jI/AAAAAAAABGs/EuCGj01dk4E/s400/possession-scream.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Also, due to the
amusing, pretty-ugly soundtrack of Andrzej Korzynski </span>(rereleased recently, what's characteristic, by <a href="http://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/discog_fkr062.html">English afficionados</a> from Finders Keepers)<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">, the tale gains the feel
of deceit and malice and of a childish game at once: music is here at the same
time parodic and deadly serious. K</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">orzynski had a longstanding relation to two Polish directors: the great Andrzej Wajda and to Zulawski, which can be compared to the greatest director-composer couples in cinema: Leone-Morricone, Argento-Goblin/Morricone, Fellini and </span><st1:place style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" w:st="on">Rota**</st1:place><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> In <i>Third Part of the Night</i> it was more art and free rock and prog - a bricoleur, it's clear he was taking from wherever he could. </span>Some of his musique concrete experiments may owe a lot to the seminal activity of the pioneering <a href="http://nuitssansnuit.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/polish-radio-experimental-studio.html">Polish Radio Experimental Studio</a> (featured a lot before on my blog), and Wlodzimierz Kotoński. In Possession, he takes
those typically romantic styles, like tango or waltz, and turns them upside down;
similarly, he takes a children’s ditty motif, played on a broken harpsichord,
and twists it with sardonic, scary undertones, like a parody of a cheap <st1:place w:st="on">Hollywood</st1:place> film noir. Every romantic illusion, fantasy of a
nice, unproblematic life, must in the end collapse and rear its disgusting head to us. The
motifs come back on a loop, signifying the hopeless routine, in which the life
of Mark and Anna has hung, and how terrible the way out of it must be.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-w_as6vq9HQ" width="400"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="Default">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Anna’s ‘nymphomania’ can be also explained by her lack of orgasm. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The whole film revolves around
her lack of pleasure, or in general, woman's incapability to get an orgasm from
the men that surround her. her craving for the beast is a typical freudian case of women's narcissism grew out of imprisonment and solitude (much like the aristocrat in Borowczyk's Beast, who also craved a monster as a source of unbelievable ecstasy). 'Almost' we hear from Anna each time she has sex
with her husband, with a tragic facial expression, typically, almost feeling
sorry for him, not for herself. Woman blames herself for the lack of
orgasm, never her lover. Neill is in his role often disarmingly, charmingly naive: he's chasing his wife, this woman, whom he doesn't understand a bit, always several steps behind her, disoriented. I'm sure this way Zulawski wanted to suggest who is in fact the vulnerable sex, cheated by the deceitful womanhood. As a proof of that, we have also Anna's double, their son's teacher, like in many other films (Third part of the night), replacing the (dead) Anna, who's less demanding in bed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Default">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H6Wxx8rqn4E/USzhV-Av8vI/AAAAAAAABEw/ktEw3GbM6EM/s1600/possession+bed.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H6Wxx8rqn4E/USzhV-Av8vI/AAAAAAAABEw/ktEw3GbM6EM/s400/possession+bed.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="Default">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Anna is
disintegrating, gradually possessed by demons: with her body
becoming like a lifeless marionette, sleepwalking through the besieged city, with uncontrollable self-harm, shaken by one shock after another, obsessed with bodily
mutilation (never before has an electric knife and kitchen automat meant so much in
the marital drama). She’s breeding her monster on her neurosis, guilt and
repulsion (like Catherine Deneuve keeping a dead rabbit in the fridge in
Polanski's eponymous film). </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">I always actually thought monster is primarily an idea, Anna's punishment, her thoughts that turn into flesh.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">A fallen from grace housewife and mother, living on
sex like a vampire lives on blood, driven to madness by the increasingly mad
Berlin, </span>Anna falls out of her previous gender roles, <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">challenges all the cliches of a woman of her class or position and mocks this spectacle.</span> The only healthy products
she keeps in her fridge now are the macabre heads and body-parts of her victims.
It’s a story of a woman who stops controlling herself: stops controlling her
libido (then of course she must fail as a mother), stops controlling her mind
(madness ensues), then stops controlling her body – and then her fluids start
to flow freely regardless of decorum: a dress is torn, a woman fucks an
octopus, a woman expels vomit, yellow prenatal waters and finally the foetus,
shaken, in a shocking scene, through all her orifices.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0eK4NqMztuA/US1g8LTOydI/AAAAAAAABH8/8h-tsJz9SDQ/s1600/possession-meat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0eK4NqMztuA/US1g8LTOydI/AAAAAAAABH8/8h-tsJz9SDQ/s400/possession-meat.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_NbcFvNZvY8/US1e6pbH0zI/AAAAAAAABG4/JYR4ZU74DCI/s1600/Possession+(1981)+4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_NbcFvNZvY8/US1e6pbH0zI/AAAAAAAABG4/JYR4ZU74DCI/s400/Possession+(1981)+4.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="Default">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">And then there’s the characteristic
claustrophobia of all the interiors, as if the closeness of the eastern border
and the restriction by the wall, especially felt in Kreuzberg district, caused
a specific Island Fever mentality (Insellkoller). Polanski’s Locataire
(together with <i>Last Tango in Paris</i> and <i>Possession </i><span style="text-align: justify;">forming a great film trilogy</span> about the madness induced by the claustrophobic bourgeois tenements), tells a
story of a man growingly assuming the identity of the previous female tenant, who
killed herself (it’s also starring Adjani against her emploi as an
unattractive, bespectacled woman who grows friendly with Polanski’s character).
Similarly, Anna’s monster belongs to the insalubrious, skanky place of their
love, feeding on the negative aura surrounding the place, just like on the blood
and the headless bodies she brings him. </span><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Zulawski had a proper budget behind him, so it</span> is funny and telling, that the beast was made by the special FX specialist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Rambaldi">Carlo Rambaldi</a>, known mostly for his outstanding work for Ridley Scott's Alien (a</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">s well as Argento's Profondo Rosso; </span><span style="text-align: justify;">then he went on to model the little body of E.T., amazingly) and it would be tempting to compare Alien and Possession's main females and in many other ways.</span><br />
<br />
The glass-blue eyes of Isabelle Adjani
seem to tell the truth beyond recognition, beyond understanding…She knows that
the only way through the cold war of <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>
and of her own marriage is to live it, become like them: crazy.</div>
<div class="Default">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Llv49XNiTGg/US1fD6pYllI/AAAAAAAABHA/ou3Oox6tq8U/s1600/possession.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Llv49XNiTGg/US1fD6pYllI/AAAAAAAABHA/ou3Oox6tq8U/s400/possession.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="Default">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="Default">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">All this to the accompaniment of the melody
of sardonic music box, deriding the characters. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">The queasy, sickly and morbid ditty, it owes a lot to Polish Jazz and Komeda’s
deliberately frantic note and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">soundtracks to
Lenica and Borowczyk’s animated films, House or Labyrinth, or Polanski’s Cul de
Sac with its fucked up organ melody in a false key, </span>just as the cheap soundtrack to horror movies.<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">. </span>They all belong to something that could be called a Polish surrealist tradition, similar to the experimental Czech cinema. <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">But it's synth drivennes is another issue entirely, taking from the italo disco</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";"> frenzy of the era, Giorgio Moroder's Munich Machine.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TC5YIfmjEd8/US1gxVs49MI/AAAAAAAABHM/E-OMR8ONAzs/s1600/possession-beast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TC5YIfmjEd8/US1gxVs49MI/AAAAAAAABHM/E-OMR8ONAzs/s400/possession-beast.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The genius of
Possession is that it's at least three films at once. On the surface it is a
horror movie, if slightly metaphysical, a giallo with images terrifying beyond
comprehension, with a monster, cannibalism, blood, forbidden sexuality, macabre
murders, corpses etc. On another level it is a marital break-up drama, much in
the style of many Bergmans, like <i>Scenes from a Marriage</i> or <i>From the Life of Marionettes</i>,
with spouses self-harming, humiliating, and tearing each other apart. But that still
wouldn’t explain why they act the way they act, at least if we won’t accept the
rule of exploitation: there's no rules, and a plot of no plot. Here, a plot
there definitely is, and it develops with the inevitability of Greek tragedy.
Because another level of this drama is a political movie, set in the key city
of international secret services and a scene of ideological war. Anna and Mark
may live the relatively privileged life of expats, in their nice low rise
modernist flat, but are still subject to increasing alienation and isolation, harrassed
by men of mystery in ridiculous pink socks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Eybgr4Q2bGc/US1hFJyF3MI/AAAAAAAABIE/Ng9lHIIlJz0/s1600/adjani.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Eybgr4Q2bGc/US1hFJyF3MI/AAAAAAAABIE/Ng9lHIIlJz0/s320/adjani.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Trouble with
sexuality pervades the whole film – woman's sexuality, the murder of a
homosexual couple, Anna's previous lover ridiculed as an amateur of tantric sex
and martial arts, and all this finalizing in a third world war-verging plot. Early 80s were the era of a 'second cold war' entering a new
phase, a nuclear crisis which could lead to 3<sup>rd</sup> WW, which is </span>implied by the final carnage between the secret services and the aftermath. Extremely theatrical, like a lot of the rest of the film, it's very
much in the 'postmodern' style of the French Neobaroque. To me, Possession is one
of the most prophetic movies for the 1980s, predicting the Polish Martial Law
of the 1981 and the great depression that followed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Zulawski's genius was to
see the personal drama as political, and the visceral and the sexual as coming
from the social and political oppression. Incredibly stylish, haunted with
beauty and austerity, it's a world torn between Marx and Coca-cola (with Anna
in one scene smashing the portraits of the classics of Marxism) and Zulawski is
not necessarily a Marxist. The choices of many in that generation, and later -
which they made as soon as capitalism entered <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Poland</st1:place></st1:country-region> - wore serious traces of
reacting over a trauma. Still, Zulawski remains a Romantic: revealing that love
is the darkness, against the common, desexualized, sanitized convictions within
capitalism.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">* and ** - observations I owe to one of Zulawski's greatest experts, Daniel Bird.</span></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-84287309078465315132013-02-21T16:34:00.001+00:002013-02-21T19:25:32.183+00:00Not For Human Consumption<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wWtfO2MJ4I8/USZMCmy9g3I/AAAAAAAABAo/EBXc-C5XIaw/s1600/MilkyWay.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wWtfO2MJ4I8/USZMCmy9g3I/AAAAAAAABAo/EBXc-C5XIaw/s400/MilkyWay.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">[a longer version of a review published in the #348 2013 issue of the Wire)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://nfhc.crisap.org/">Notfor Human Consumption</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Online
exhibition<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">CRISAP,
ie Creative Research Into Sound Art Practice is a new platform for developing
of contemporary critical art and thinking around sound, focusing on developing
new ways of engaging with the environment, creating new software and organizing
seminars and symposiums, mingling artists and scholars, with the flagship
projects such as HerNoise, problematising women’s participation in the sonic
and public sphere. The newest way of engaging with the public is the idea of
publishing? installing? - a whole exhibition online. We can say many websites,
serving as databases, with all kinds of links, mp3, podcasts, are already in a way were
creating the experience of entering an "exhibition", conceived as a little
world in itself. But Not for Human Consumption, six<a href="http://www.crisap.org/index.php?id=30">th online show</a> by CRISAP is consciously using the format, liquidating this way
any other institutional threshold shying the potential audience away, and taking from our everyday experience of online wandering as a ready blueprint of how the
future exhibition should work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">And
isn’t it a realisation of the avant-garde ideas of overcoming the “space” as a
finite concept anyway? Ten or so sound artists and researchers took the task of coming up with a sonic phenomena, tests, by-products and compositions, that
didn’t previously exist in the world, challenging the primate of human consciousness in the phenomenal world.
Text and mp3 files, distributed randomly on the page like a discontinued milky way,
unveil the sounds, sometimes barely audible or unaudible, but possibly audible to the
non-humans; sounds of things that do not exist yet or are yet to come. We are, for
instance, listening to the listening brain, or the termites activity under
earth (</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">R. W. Mankin & J. Benshemesh’s </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">project using geophone), or acoustic vibration
tester from NASA, or modern trains DD IRM, helioseismology, solar oscillations,
voice-bots, choreography for computers etc. Its sounds that can be only
listened to on our behalf by the machines. Of course, in this sense, as such a
post-human and even speculative music, it is very much an illustration of the
contemporary theories of posthumanity, expanding of our ontological world,
like Michel Serres' concept of quasi-objects or Bruno Latour’s theory of non-human actors and the so called Speculative Realism, developing mostly online. <o:p></o:p></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">One
project by Steven Hammer, is even called Towards an Object Oriented Sonic
Phenomenology, and what it does is an extremely sophisticated system of
listening to objects’ vibrations near a highway.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
brave new world of new sonic objects is still only looming, it seems: the
intellectual just as the practical part of such project seem not have matured
enough to already speak of a revolution. The non-anthropocentric theory can
have of course very interesting ethical consequences, of which we have to still think about</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">as explored by SF or recently, by the dystopias of Michel Houellebecq</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">. What I’ve found
nevertheless appealing, were the charm of certain projects: even computers have
a right to choreography, and the voice-bots getting excited and reverberating to each other is a dream of every bored commuter on the tube, though again, I think these are
concepts straight from the SF books, confirming our imagination of the future largely comes from the 30 and more years old SF visions, where there's dreaming of
music created by the cosmic vibrations or the inner life of the machines. Still,
CRISAP goes against this tedious argument, that we stopped projecting the
future. It's speculative music, music of things to come, even if in practice it can come across as a not tremendously appealing "noise". In a way, it is also the final consequences of
conceptualism, with internet as a “site specific” place, place that can be one day of a historical value.</span></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-22907880891883373142013-02-19T12:55:00.000+00:002013-02-22T11:24:29.347+00:00Physical sensations<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jHAbc_K2VuQ/USdSzyIfhaI/AAAAAAAABCo/6LSQ2ZZw7sM/s1600/fuse_barn..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jHAbc_K2VuQ/USdSzyIfhaI/AAAAAAAABCo/6LSQ2ZZw7sM/s400/fuse_barn..jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uvOQw01__Xo/USNzx_7DLjI/AAAAAAAAA_g/2FLcuf98kfI/s1600/fuse_1lg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uvOQw01__Xo/USNzx_7DLjI/AAAAAAAAA_g/2FLcuf98kfI/s320/fuse_1lg.jpg" width="226" /></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;">[a review of <a href="http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/design/all/06768/facts.fuse_120.htm">FUSE 1-20</a>, a retrospective of the cult typography magazine, based on a commission for Blueprint 12/2012]</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;">From today’s perspective,
the 1990s seem increasingly like a somewhat lost, under-considered era. We have
replayed the raucous/bombastic 80s aesthetic in all possible ways, but the 90s holds
a strange in-between legacy. Technologies, political systems, styles from a
fascinating decade stand still partially explored, with its hopes in technology
and a strong futurist streak, now largely obsolete. FUSE magazine, whose lavish
anthology has been republished by Taschen, was the brainchild of two
designers-cum-theorists: Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft and looks today like
a dispatch from this blurred, and misunderstood transitional time. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;">Why transitional? The
nineties saw a moment of great technological change: launching off the back of fax,
where paper, print and immediacy were suddenly one, and more obviously, the personal
computer, which became increasingly ubiquitous. Together with this emerged
graphic design software, meaning the laborious techniques of designing,
especially typography, suddenly became easy and within a reach of a click. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PwKQmsFQW-g/USZN4NokJMI/AAAAAAAABAw/Dan3gH5ttM4/s1600/fuse_neville_brody_05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PwKQmsFQW-g/USZN4NokJMI/AAAAAAAABAw/Dan3gH5ttM4/s400/fuse_neville_brody_05.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ak3-3pX33RE/USN0cStsvLI/AAAAAAAAA_o/2lsukhVe7Ow/s1600/the-face-designed-by-neville-brody-resized.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #444444;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ak3-3pX33RE/USN0cStsvLI/AAAAAAAAA_o/2lsukhVe7Ow/s400/the-face-designed-by-neville-brody-resized.jpg" width="291" /></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Brody, as the 2012's V&A exhibition
on "Postmodernism" proved, is one of the contemporary classics of design and
typography, someone who combined punk’s radicalism, early avant-garde’s rigour and
glamour of 80s fashion. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Both Wozencroft and Brody
came from the sophisticated circles of high art and music, both involved in
building the visual language of post-punk and new pop. Brody designed covers
for </span><st1:place style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';" w:st="on">Sheffield</st1:place><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">’s industrial gods Cabaret
Voltaire, Depeche Mode and of The FACE – the “style magazine” and the era's true bible, which helped to define its erratic, eclectic, whimsical esthetic. Channelling something of
the unpolished, radical, buzzingly creative energy of punk was key to
providing an intellectual and visual extension of those aesthetic movements.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;">That also meant the pair
had higher demands of graphic art, which at this point was swiftly being
co-opted as the purview of advertising agencies and marketable products.
Already in the 1980s the tandem issued a manifesto called “Death of
Typography”, worried by the sudden eruption of easy corporate design. FUSE was
established in 1991 and continued until the 2000s; designed to create a
multinational workshop of the new possibilities of technology in typography as
art, as intellectual provocation, as a catalyst. A look at Brody’s covers, with
their blurry, fizzy metallic layers of dimmed greys, oranges and anthracites
brings to mind the visceral futurism of David Cronenberg just as much as Sonic
Youth’s album covers. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-83M_DF5DeeY/USN0owr2XXI/AAAAAAAAA_w/ARlJDeG8WDE/s1600/Kraftwerk1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #444444;"></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i3VKkrICeso/USdTKb3R_2I/AAAAAAAABCw/TC9E8q3aDzI/s1600/fuse_mogadishu..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i3VKkrICeso/USdTKb3R_2I/AAAAAAAABCw/TC9E8q3aDzI/s400/fuse_mogadishu..jpg" width="266" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eiX-CsI_6hk/USZSuVhLTWI/AAAAAAAABBk/VUORk15RtW0/s1600/brody12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eiX-CsI_6hk/USZSuVhLTWI/AAAAAAAABBk/VUORk15RtW0/s400/brody12.jpg" width="283" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V7pTTU7c-hw/USdUfG2GAbI/AAAAAAAABDE/9Abr53ziYgQ/s1600/saville.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="143" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V7pTTU7c-hw/USdUfG2GAbI/AAAAAAAABDE/9Abr53ziYgQ/s320/saville.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">That was the time of floppy discs and MS DOS ecstasy, now wholly nostalgic accessories, but FUSE was trying to combine radical futurism and possibilities with a sense of bodily fragility of material. FUSE issues typically arrived in a taped cardboard box, including floppy discs, CD-roms, posters, cut-outs and bitingly intelligent Wozencroft manifestos, with topics varying from religion, (dis)information, exuberance, cybernetics and the virtual. The spirit of JG Ballard was always present, providing the more pessimistic undertones of Wozencroft’s visions (“Abuse is part of the process!”). As a result of the new more versatile software and treating design as one creative whole, typography and design were finally one and the same and a host of graphic luminaries including Peter Saville, Malcolm Garrett (of the Buzzcocks’ album covers fame), Pierre di Sciullo, Paul Elliman John Critchley and Blueprint regular Erik Spiekermann were commissioned to respond to FUSE’s ideas. Their influence shaped the title in a truly curatorial sense, as we’d say today, just like in the conceptual magazines of the Fluxus era, like Fluxus Yearbook or </span><st1:city style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><i>Aspen</i></st1:place></st1:city><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">, which had contributions in conceptual, sculptural or other experimental formats.</span><span style="color: #444444;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ownw2-x6gbk/USZbtzjGXaI/AAAAAAAABB0/dS4eyeX5LuQ/s1600/brody10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ownw2-x6gbk/USZbtzjGXaI/AAAAAAAABB0/dS4eyeX5LuQ/s400/brody10.jpg" width="283" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NqR_BE_0ykc/USZS1fpqolI/AAAAAAAABBs/qvMGsdRJLjQ/s1600/nevillebrody1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NqR_BE_0ykc/USZS1fpqolI/AAAAAAAABBs/qvMGsdRJLjQ/s400/nevillebrody1.jpg" width="316" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SF1jW_MY8zM/USN08gH7nkI/AAAAAAAAA_4/uNVD2RX2Z5w/s1600/fuse_neville_brody_05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #444444;"></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">The result, with typographic
gems such as the Stealth font face by Malcolm Garrett or Chocolate Runes by Gerard
Unger, is astonishing, an inspirational remembrance of the possibilities and
ambition graphic design could have. Taschen’s retrospective is trying to repeat
the format of cardboard box, but instead of a floppy disc you get a graphic
card with free access to the last two, digitalized issues and fonts. We seem
much more minimalist and boring now, aren’t we? Compressing everything in a
chip we eliminated the first excitement of new inventions. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Wozencroft is now more
dedicated to his ‘audiovisual’ label <a href="http://www.touchmusic.org.uk/">TOUCH.</a> (again, physical sensations!), but
his darkly humorous manifestos are something we now truly miss.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BQyvPmpnSdk/USdTc6vabbI/AAAAAAAABC4/hxlZMm9nXJ4/s1600/fuse_5spread..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BQyvPmpnSdk/USdTc6vabbI/AAAAAAAABC4/hxlZMm9nXJ4/s400/fuse_5spread..jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-83023401732139600352013-02-12T13:30:00.002+00:002013-02-14T13:34:51.028+00:00Strange Silence of Liberal Poland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nvfiTLSQFWs/URpF6fCvMJI/AAAAAAAAA-w/G4hl3_wojnw/s1600/occupiedeurope+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nvfiTLSQFWs/URpF6fCvMJI/AAAAAAAAA-w/G4hl3_wojnw/s400/occupiedeurope+(1).jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Occupy Movement European solidarity map</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">[full version of the Guardian CiF piece published on </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/poland-leftwing-voices-silenced">October 24th 2012</a><span style="background-color: white;">]</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">After 1989 <st1:place w:st="on">Eastern
Europe</st1:place> was supposed to join the club of so-called ‘normal
countries’. From now on, we were told, there will be free speech, a free press
and free debate, all prevented during the years of communist oppression. But in
practice, this free liberal debate has become a strange unison. Whenever
someone in post-communist countries wanted to criticize the style of capitalist
transformation, their voice was either ridiculed, or cut out, or rather, made inaudible.
We were all now to become middle class, found our own little enterprises,
consume and shut up. Anyone today trying to discuss any solutions to the current
crisis other than accepting austerity measures is dismissed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So when <i>Przekroj</i> (“Slant”), a prominent Polish news weekly, after undergoing
several typically 90s and 2000s chaotic political shifts and even more erratic makeovers, going from one owner to another, was all of a
sudden given over to a left-oriented editorial board last winter, there was
suddenly a strange breeze of fresh air blown into a public debate. In Poland, a debate usually, like in most post-communist countries, divided evenly between neoliberalists and nationalists. Yet, after several
months, with the circulation shrunk by roughly 50% (later it was revealed it was 25% only), the editors were sacked, and
within a fortnight replaced with well-known specialists in entertainment and
lifestyle press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The leftist <i>Przekroj</i> was trying to initiate a debate about capitalism and its crisis in a
country that didn’t dare to use a class language supposedly discredited by its
use in the previous system. It interviewed trade unionists and spoke about
strikes and opposition against austerity in a committed way.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">They <span style="background: white;">interviewed critics of <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region>, wrote on the
“rebel cities” of David Harvey, the Occupy movement, Indignados, or last year’s
riots in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place>
– and took them seriously, unlike most of the liberal media, including <i>Gazeta Wyborcza,</i> founded by the previous
oppositionists, who after ’89 did their best to dismiss welfare state or fight
for workers’ rights.</span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="background: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="background: white;">Wait a minute, you might ask, wasn’t it a union,
Solidarity, who were the architects of the great freedom of ’89? What happened
to them? You’d be surprised: when recently the union, or rather what’s left of
it, protested the raising of pension threshold by Donald Tusk’s neoliberal
government from 65 to 67 years, their previous leader Lech Walesa said in an
interview that in the PM’s place he’d have sent truncheons to these ungrateful
spongers. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">Such robust protests were legitimate if directed against a dictatorship, he said, but couldn't be tolerated in a modern democracy. "</span><span style="background-color: white;">Tusk works behind the desk, what does he know about being old and
having have to work in the coal mine?” – one of the protesters was quoted, but
not in liberal outlets, busy condemning them for greediness, but on a blog run
by an English leftist in </span><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Warsaw</st1:city></st1:place><span style="background-color: white;">.
Class is on the agenda, but the media refuses to talk about it.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">This protest, as well as recent
strikes of nurses, was a rarity, because in the whole ex-bloc the culture of
protest died off with communism. It’s sufficient enough to look at the map
depicting the Indignados & Occupy solidarity marches on October 15 2001,
which was <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/sep/17/occupy-map-of-the-world">nearly empty east of the Iron Curtain,</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Occupy_movement_protest_locations">with tiny, 100-200</a> people-strong groups in <st1:city w:st="on">Warsaw</st1:city>, <st1:city w:st="on">Bucharest</st1:city> or <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Prague</st1:city></st1:place>. There was a better turnout in Slovenia or Croatia, but this they owe to a much better-remembered tradition of Titoism and the left was always stronger in there. Yet Eastern Europe
– the Balkans and <st1:place w:st="on">Baltic states</st1:place> especially –
has been hit very hard by the crisis. <st1:country-region w:st="on">Latvia</st1:country-region>
has experienced economic collapse on the scale of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Greece</st1:place></st1:country-region>. But there is no <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Latvian Syntagma Square</st1:address></st1:street>
or a party like SYRIZA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Poland</st1:country-region></st1:place> there’re two kinds of protests
– the old generation of Solidarity, or the post-89 youngsters, protesting
against internet censorship ACTA, can gather thousands. Yet the only reason the
jobless or insecure young took to the streets was the fear of free culture
being taken from them. This in a situation where the state thinks only of liberalising
employment legislation, tax-cuts and privatisation. Leszek Balcerowicz, who
introduced shock therapy at the beginning of the 90s, talks today of “swollen
public sector”, while his old comrades Sachs and Stiglitz say they were wrong.
Nobody in Poland is exposing the ATOS company, who will soon be taking care of “benefit
reform” in Eastern countries, but the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place> knows their results very well.
It is a shame that <st1:country-region w:st="on">Poland</st1:country-region>,
so far masking the crisis’ toll through mass emigration, EU subsidies and
manufacturing goods for <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
doesn’t want to debate capitalism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But now, Przekroj’s solution to the
jobs crisis is “it’s everywhere, it’s enough to jump on a bike”, similarly to much British coverage, and amongst articles
about luxurious living and design toasters. Needless to say, after the announcement of the
editorial change, the internet was full of pleased liberals, finally having a chance to express their Schadenfreude. If this is how
current events are talked about, when the crisis really hits home, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Poland</st1:country-region></st1:place> will be taken unawares.</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-90128563054644237712013-01-23T21:46:00.001+00:002013-05-04T13:16:49.045+01:00Drang nach Osten<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">(from a work in progress <i>Poor but Sexy</i>)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">(x-posted from </span><a href="http://facesonposters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/drang-nach-ost.html"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Faces on Posters</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">)</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-awLuU2gpjEg/UQBaDp_xOZI/AAAAAAAAA8Q/aBPq5boFIWY/s1600/bowie+heroes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-awLuU2gpjEg/UQBaDp_xOZI/AAAAAAAAA8Q/aBPq5boFIWY/s320/bowie+heroes.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The 1970s was the era of defeat. As the 60s were extremely intense in terms of political and social change, from the early 70s the flux went steady. David Bowie, who debuted in late 60s, when he invented Ziggy Stardust in 1972, marked this change: no more real heroes, from now on, it was most desirable to be fabricated. What is genuine, authentic, is boring. The only hero that really matters is pure artifice, cut out from the comic books, movies and dressed in everything that’s glamorous. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Bowie</st1:city></st1:place> more than anyone contributed to the cherishing of artifice in pop music, realizing the idea of a “hero for a day”, only following the course mass culture was taking since decades.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B3GvxO1hkko/UQBc7d3JG1I/AAAAAAAAA9Q/tP0a4RjkyvI/s1600/bowie_moscow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B3GvxO1hkko/UQBc7d3JG1I/AAAAAAAAA9Q/tP0a4RjkyvI/s320/bowie_moscow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Was he conscious of that? Some of his lyrics of the era mark the mourning of the depoliticisation of his generation: in the lyrics to the song <i>Star</i>, he mentions “Bevan (who) tried to change the nation”, and posing himself as someone who “could make a transformation as a rock & roll star”. Facing the growing nihilism of his generation, he still believes that as an artifice star, he can carry on their political task.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><i>All the young dudes</i>, a song he wrote for Mott the Hoople in ’72, reeks of youth's disappointment and disillusionment, forming a kind of “solidarity of the losers” anthem. <st1:city w:st="on">Bowie</st1:city>, always too erratic to make any firm political commitment, was rather in love with various dubious figures, “cracked actors”, (the inspiration for Ziggy was a forgotten singer who believed to be a combination of god and an alien), dodgy occultists like Aleister <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Crowley</st1:place></st1:city> and fascist dictators. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">He was driven to German culture, especially Weimar period, expressionism, Neue Sachlichkeit, theatre, everything Brecht. Yet his image of contemporary </span><st1:place style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';" w:st="on">Berlin</st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"> must’ve been seriously twisted, if he thought he could find a shelter with another drug addict, Iggy Pop, in a place that had already become one of the most narcotics-degenerate places on earth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Tgcc5V9Hu3g" width="400"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">One of the reasons the punk generation reads dystopias like A Clockwork Orange as if they were their lives, and looks longingly towards the communist East in their aesthetics, is their depoliticisation. The generation of their grandparents was the one who survived the war, believed in socialism, was changing the world, joined political parties. Earlier, to piss off your parents, you’d join a communist party. By the 70s, those</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> who wanted to change the world, were discredited and all that had left was the aesthetics. A generation-two before, people believed in the modernist idea of living: built estates for dense living, in which neighbours were to meet in the center and socialise. 1960s and 70s marked also the crisis and decline of the nuclear family. In the regress towards the private life and individualism, with growing number of divorces, this generation was paying for the necessary experiment of their parents by not having anything in return for what they'd given up. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Counter culture as a resource/channel of political culture also began to decline. What has left were the drugs. Berlin since the 70s started having an enormous population of drug addicts.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Na3Sef4GjEY" width="400"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">If you look at any footage of <st1:place w:st="on">West Berlin</st1:place> in 70s, you see a murky, sinister city, whose punctum, trauma, is the Wall. People gravitate around it. Living next to a prison, even if theoretically you’e not the prisoner, you can develop symptoms of suffocation. Seeing people regularly being killed over an illegal crossing of the Wall, not being able to walk through your city, imagining what there can be on the other side. RW Fassbinder felt shame for the post-war <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">West Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region>, for the way the West stuck their mouth with consumptionism and told to shut up. In <i>In a Year of 13 Moons</i>, he punishes the viewer with a 15 minute sequence of rhythmical murdering and quartering of animals in the carnage, senseless death that is then wiped out and put into neat plastic bags as meat. Half of his films are acerbic commentary on the situation of the left, where they start to look more like funeral elegies. Fassbinder was friends with Holger Meins, who was a cinematography student, when he joined the RAF. He died in prison after a hunger strike. In May 1976 Ulrike Meinhof commits suicide or is killed, followed by Ensslin and Baader, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">after months of being hounded by the press, dragging on like a soap opera, with Meinhof's personal life put out as the cannon fodder.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-t3U80Uyg2Ts/UQBYdRcZ_bI/AAAAAAAAA8A/WuR1Y6bW1Ro/s1600/christiane-f-1-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-t3U80Uyg2Ts/UQBYdRcZ_bI/AAAAAAAAA8A/WuR1Y6bW1Ro/s400/christiane-f-1-1.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">When Christiane F and her boyfriend Detlef have awkward, clumsy teenage first sex it’s on a poor lair of bloodied, dirty sheets cobbled together in their drug den. Poor kids, they and their teen friends have their regular injections & bad trips, they hunger, shake, come, ejaculate and overdose under one and the same photograph of Ulrike Meinhof torn out of a newspaper.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UURViKurM9w/UQBVpBcY2PI/AAAAAAAAA7A/4fOD7IertIc/s1600/ulrike.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UURViKurM9w/UQBVpBcY2PI/AAAAAAAAA7A/4fOD7IertIc/s320/ulrike.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The 70s was an era of the abandoned children, with no more support in institutions. <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_F._%E2%80%93_We_Children_from_Bahnhof_Zoo">Christiane F. </a>- Wir sind Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo</i> (this sentence has the same structure as the "Wir Sind Helden") - the 1980 film, starts from a murky shot of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropiusstadt">Gropiusstadt</a>, the estate on the outskirts of West Berlin where Christiane lives in a small flat with her mother. This most infamous block estate in Berlin, by then decaying of social and material neglect, was plagued by crime and violence, which brings more and more argument to the new class of politicians declaring the ideas of modernism ”bankrupted”. The infamous estate Pruitt-Igoe was taken down in the mid-70s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hqsTJZHtHcI/UQBXEr7DCLI/AAAAAAAAA7Q/3Gf4tcssJdI/s1600/gropiusstadt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hqsTJZHtHcI/UQBXEr7DCLI/AAAAAAAAA7Q/3Gf4tcssJdI/s320/gropiusstadt.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Groupuisstadt <i>is</i> scary, but wasn’t meant to be. Walter Gropius designed it as a quite modest density estate. Later, with the migration from the East rising, it was rebuilt several times to cram the new population in growingly lesser quality flats. Christiane hates Gropiusstadt, where she lives with her single, always-at-work mother, who is always absent, unless she is fucking her dodgy boyfriend. The only company and community she finds is in the night clubs and friends, who are all into drugs. She goes to the Sound, the famous disco club, labelled as "the most modern discotheque in Europe". She </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">starts lightly, takes speed and coke, but the whole thing is about “H”. H is her obsession, a gate to different reality, where she can communicate with her idol, Bowie. Seeing her friends all drowning in H, she thinks this transgression is the only way to belong to their community.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qMTV3Kymd_U/UQBYO1pHMOI/AAAAAAAAA70/VgX41Mdh7PY/s1600/christiane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qMTV3Kymd_U/UQBYO1pHMOI/AAAAAAAAA70/VgX41Mdh7PY/s320/christiane.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Bowie, then a Thin White Duke, had cocaine as his toxin of choice, a typical drug of someone who insists they have the full “control” over the habit. The first half of the film is basically a <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bowie</st1:place></st1:city> fan story. Christiane has all his records (which she, when the first part ends, symbolically sells to have money for drugs). <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bowie</st1:place></st1:city> is the god for her postpolitical generation, who recreates politics as spectacle. In the film, he’s present everywhere, as music or endlessly repeated image: his music oozes out in clubs, at the Zoo station, where the young addicts gather their alternative home; they hear him, when they forget themselves in the drug haze. He looks at Christiane and others from posters, like a Big Brother, from the LP covers, in their dreams; his concert, central to the film, is an EVENT she waits for. It is her most intimate company, it accompanies the kids, when they prostitute themselves and when they inject the drug and go on a trip, he <i>IS </i>that trip and that drug and that malaise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><b>Oh, we can beat them, forever and ever</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">In “Heroes”, <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bowie</st1:place></st1:city> puts a final declaration: there’s no more heroes, long live the heroes! Yet, his character, the new, bodiless, endlessly androgynous, sexless fugure, has still some miasmas </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">of political nostalgia</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">, he’s yearning: "I can remember standing by the wall/ and the guns shot above our heads/ and we kissed, as though nothing could fall/ and the shame, was on the other side.” They don’t understand this Drang nach Osten and yet they are haunted - why else would they stick to the Zoo, the filthiest, most hideous, most brutalized station in the city? Next to it: the bling of Ku’damm, along which they walk searching for drugs and are taken by clients. Just like characters in Fassbinder’s </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">The Merchant of Four Seasons</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">, they look at the shop window displays as at the promise of a life they will never have.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zGEov-4LyEc" width="400"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Five hours way from that city was another one which was also levelled to the ground, but by Germans. 'Warszawa', <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bowie</st1:place></st1:city>’s most sinister and mysterious track, appears in the film in the most grim moments, when they first take heroin. It was also full of young, emaciated people. Perhaps the boredom the Polish youth felt at the time was the result of that isolation. <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Warsaw</st1:place></st1:city> didn’t have the wall, but the lives of its people gravitated no less around what happened with this piece of concrete. In 1981, the year <i>Christiane F</i> is screened, it was invaded by its own tanks. <st1:city w:st="on">Bowie</st1:city> was a tourist, who left <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Warsaw</st1:place></st1:city> a postcard, and then left. They couldn’t, continuing to felt trapped with their lives. For young people of the declining late 70s, Bowie - an endlessly enigmatic hero for one day, less real than celluloid, replaces their politicians, parents, institutions, their god. But how to stake your whole existence on something that does not exist?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/L_xlClDFui8" width="400"></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">[Film o pankach (Film on punks) dir. Mariusz Trelinski, a portrait of PL punk scene, 1983]</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--cxavkBk1BY/UQBX18D4tiI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/mWv2e9nCTNY/s1600/pijaczka5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--cxavkBk1BY/UQBX18D4tiI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/mWv2e9nCTNY/s400/pijaczka5.jpg" width="287" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Also the Drinker from Ulrike Ottinger’s <i>Bildnis Nach Trinkerin,</i> shot at the same time in 1979, sees the splendidly dressed Tabea Blumenschein, Ottinger’s lover and muse, as a beautiful mysterious millionaire, landing at Tegel airport, who chooses <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Berlin</st1:place></st1:state> as the scene of her destruction, with alcohol as the drug. She's wearing always splendid clothes, inspired by early Dior or Balenciaga, with the rule: dress well to you dying. To make it funnier, Ottinger accompanied her with a choir of three women, dressed in identical uniforms: Social Question, Accurate Statistics and Common sense, who comment and cheer her.</span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"> She drinks in the bars until she’s unconscious, meeting various weirdos, crossdressers, punks and transes on her way. Her only friend is a homeless woman. She goes around degenerate Berlin, which is full of trash, which, together with homeless Lutze, they gather in a supermarket trolley (Ottinger was friends with Wolf Vostell, artist of destruction, who appears briefly in the film). She picks a random from the bar and takes him on a night </span><st1:state style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';" w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Berlin</st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">derive </i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">without end. She does a lot of pointless things: one sees her balancing on a tightrope in a ridiculous ballerina dress, against the towers of Gropiusstadt, after she joins a circus troupe, a regular Ottingeresque bunch of weirdos, of society's marginals, who take a dim view of her circus art. After several attempts, when she manages to degrade herself completely, she goes to the Zoo station, as if looking for a way out. Yet, she’s is overrun by the careful, punctual German middle classes, hurrying to work. The film's alternative title is </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Ticket of No Return</i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">.</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-irWs8kitYUs/UQEH3NNMKDI/AAAAAAAAA-A/TQhPt9dumlk/s1600/pijaczka2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-irWs8kitYUs/UQEH3NNMKDI/AAAAAAAAA-A/TQhPt9dumlk/s320/pijaczka2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-P3RjpVLiVko/UQBX9nCoN7I/AAAAAAAAA7k/WgNC1NnuctM/s1600/pijaczka3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="261" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-P3RjpVLiVko/UQBX9nCoN7I/AAAAAAAAA7k/WgNC1NnuctM/s400/pijaczka3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><i>Christiane F.</i> is a weird kind of a zombie movie, with the action taking place only at night. When for the first time we see Christiane going to a night club, it resembles hell. Gradually, all characters, as the habit develops, more and more start looking like ghosts, or rather zombies. Edel is too literal, when he throws Christiane to a projection of The <i>Night of the Living Dead</i>, we can soon see that from their disintegrating faces, changing expression only on the sight or possibility of getting the drug. In the last part of the trilogy, Day of the Dead, sicentists discover the zombies have no stomachs, they can;t digest, so their necessity to eat humans is pure physical compulsion, just like in a sexual passion and, needless to say, like in a drug addiction. They don't need drugs to survive, but to destroy. Everything becomes clear during the ravishing sequence of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bowie</st1:place></st1:city> concert. If they’re zombies, <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bowie</st1:place></st1:city> is their master ghoul, a zombie-king. As Christiane looks her all-prepared, artificial idol in the face, then at his absolute artistic heyday, we start to believe he’s not only the sun they need to exist; he's a vampire living on their flesh. In a horrific vision he, or rather his persona, becomes identical with the drug, the reason for the decline. What follows is the naked horror of addiction: the physical and mental degradation and prostituting of the 14-year old kids, while their bodies waste away. Larry Clark’s ’94 <i>Kids </i>can be a version of this, post-AIDS.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6e5fi6Xgxe8/UQBYIiUPCcI/AAAAAAAAA7s/OQATS6etdxU/s1600/christiane-f-main-image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6e5fi6Xgxe8/UQBYIiUPCcI/AAAAAAAAA7s/OQATS6etdxU/s320/christiane-f-main-image.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Berlin</span></st1:place></st1:state><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> is there a hard edged, harsh city with no mercy, ruthless, easily claiming lives, a formerly ascendant city of modernity, where their dreams have died. We are in the realm of “joy division”: their passionless sex, their un-joy, resignation, their absolute nihilism. Punk was dead. The western <st1:state w:st="on">Berlin</st1:state> was full of pale, lifeless, sleepwalking young people (Hitler called <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region> once in a “nation of sleepwalkers”). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_F.">Christiane F.</a> (Felscherinow) was offered a career to “tell us your story”, she recorded hours of material, that then become the bestseller biography, and then the film. I read it at 13, and despite the grimness, the filth and horror of the addiction, for weeks I lived only on dreams of putting myself into the frame of the story, see the Ku’damm, see David Bowie, see the Zoo. On my first trip there, in 2000, the Warsaw-Berlin Express landed me at the Zoo, but there was nothing left anymore. The story leaves us with the track of corpses under the wall, with the sinister towers looming everywhere.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">(work-in-progress from the forthcoming <i>Poor but Sexy</i>)</span></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-79479711019434685202013-01-22T14:21:00.001+00:002013-02-05T14:42:34.050+00:00A Thousand and One Look at Yugoslavian Architecture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MjqXWKAyfMQ/UP6bwg7istI/AAAAAAAAA5M/uaz-80DCkkY/s1600/spomenik.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MjqXWKAyfMQ/UP6bwg7istI/AAAAAAAAA5M/uaz-80DCkkY/s400/spomenik.jpg" width="267" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">[first published, in a different version, in ICON #114]</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Modernism In-Between</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Maroje Mrduljas, Vladimir Kulić</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">protographs by <a href="http://www.wolfgangthaler.at/projekte/yuarch/yuarch.html">Wolfgang Thaler</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Why we’re looking at
Yugoslavian modernism now? Because the ideological war on interpreting the
socialist legacy has taken a new phase; capitalist crisis brings socialist
solutions back on the agenda as in most ex-communist countries discussing the
past in a positive way was a taboo. At the same time, we had a triumph of
postmodern vagueness in writing history, seeing traditional analysis as
“monolithic”, which preferred to focus on random elements of defunct ideologies
and philosophy of “memory”. This means we lost a wider image and that is why
coffetable books with melancholic landscapes of deserted lands of communist
utopia are now practically only books available on the subject. It’s not difficult to see how
this approach limits our understanding of history in the current moment. People
in the ex-Yugoslavia, like historians Maroje Mrduljas and Vladmir Kulic, who
were involved in important research think tank <a href="http://www.unfinishedmodernisations.net/">Unfinished Modernisations</a>,
refuse to participate in a boring ideological war and with <i>Modernism In-Between</i>, provide a necessary compendium of socialist
era architecture for the English speakers, in the times, where the Soviet or Yugo-modernism is suffering the label of <a href="http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/doomed-ex-communist-building-takes-lives">"toxic"</a>, deadly, bad for you - just in time to demolish it and build there museums of modern art, no doubt to a "Bilbao effect"</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-l_LjRrgGqwY/UP6f36A257I/AAAAAAAAA6E/6mCN5Fft46U/s1600/visoko.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-l_LjRrgGqwY/UP6f36A257I/AAAAAAAAA6E/6mCN5Fft46U/s400/visoko.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">I am not arguing for preservation of the ruins, but first we should know what caused them to become ruins. What we should try is to look at the buildings without the ignorant hatred of the past, but with an understanding of history. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">This isn’t a classic
picture book, although it contains many photos by Wolfgang Thaler. But unlike
the usual, the pictures do not base only on the extraordinariness of some of the best
examples of fantastical from today’s point of view social housing projects on
colossal scale. It does the justice to the architecture in all its variety,
which even if some of it is crumbling, most is in good shape, and definitely of
much better quality and architecturally superior to the post-transitional
speculative housing, that emerged without much regulation. Neither pretentious
nor just purely documentary, the photographs make us appreciate the variety of housing
schemes and spectacular rebuilds, like Novi Zagreb, Novi Beograd or the new </span><st1:city style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';" w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Skopje</st1:place></st1:city><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">, built after the
earthquake in 1963 by international team of architects, rather than picturesque
stadiums, conference centers or operas.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Which doesn’t mean, that the Poljud
stadium in </span><st1:city style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';" w:st="on">Split</st1:city><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">, Opera in </span><st1:place style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';" w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Skopje</st1:city></st1:place><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"> or churches, like Serefudin White
Mosque in Visoko, shouldn’t be admired as stupendous examples of innovative
architecture. Skopje’s case is discussed in the book </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">in detail </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">as one of those
strange Cold War events, where the war between the blocks was suspended, as at
the same time an international agreement in limiting the ban on nuclear weapons
was signed. Yes, a</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">different historical scenario to the one we know now was possible. The world could’ve looked
differently.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">There's also ideology, mostly expresed in the now-exploited <a href="http://www.manifestajournal.org/issues/regret-and-other-back-pages/yugoslavian-partisan-memorials-between-memorial-genre#">monuments</a> - <a href="http://fzz.cc/issue02PART.html">spomeniks</a>. But </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Modernism </i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">in general
rejects any black-white simplifications, which means we have to get deeper into
the context. There’s a shocking amount of text for a picture book, in which
architecture is not simply seen as a result of socio-political and cultural
tensions, but, in this case, as an attempt at a paradoxical independence of its authors and an intervention in social reality.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lpURfo2Mias/UP6flbDn_NI/AAAAAAAAA58/Tgr7d5WcoJE/s1600/skopje+opera.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lpURfo2Mias/UP6flbDn_NI/AAAAAAAAA58/Tgr7d5WcoJE/s400/skopje+opera.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">The title’s “in-between”
refers to the built environment in all its six republics (Serbia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia,
Macedonia, Montenegro, with Kosovo and Vojvodina having unofficial status) on
many levels: we’re here between cultures, between various socialisms, between
economical inequalities of the north-east and south-west, also, having have to
deal with nationalisms, that were emerging again and again, and, on the top of that,
strange positions between two cold war camps. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">If Yugo-sotsmodernism was “in
between”, that meant it was attempting a kind of architectural universalism, to
make “universalism one’s own”. It was against nationalistic fetishizations of
style, instead investing in self-managed socialism, brotherhood, independent
foreign policies. They were trying to follow demographical patterns, in a rapid
urbanization assuming sometimes traumatic effects on often rural population, but
still, from the contemporary view of housing shortages, it becomes relativised.
Yes, the initiative to house everybody was a whole with the political program,
but it really tried to improve level of life for everybody.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I3ndjdaw71c/UP6gApwuw6I/AAAAAAAAA6M/yvH89uyujcw/s1600/Hauptpost_skopje.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I3ndjdaw71c/UP6gApwuw6I/AAAAAAAAA6M/yvH89uyujcw/s400/Hauptpost_skopje.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Yet, authors seem
disintrerested in further discreditation of the idea of socialism, at the same
time not succumbing to the Yugonostalgia. Mostly completely unsentimental about
the shortcomings of the system: it didn’t realise its promises, it didn’t built
enough, appreciate certain aspects of this inbetweenness, like trying to
surpass the ethnic disruptions within the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Yugoslavia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, which resulted in such
tragic way at the end of it. at the very least, the book allows us to see <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Yugoslavia</st1:place></st1:country-region> not
as a defunct land of memory, but as a once living organism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971474580973090036.post-44740955769619883132013-01-15T13:44:00.004+00:002013-01-17T11:10:30.663+00:00The past and the present of Polish music avant-garde: two cases<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5AhvXFUQ8cc/UPVZL_I7S9I/AAAAAAAAA4U/Sg7ZEH3G3x4/s1600/Krzysztof-Penderecki-and-Eugeniusz-Rudnik-in-PRES-fot-Andrzej-Zborski.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="330" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5AhvXFUQ8cc/UPVZL_I7S9I/AAAAAAAAA4U/Sg7ZEH3G3x4/s400/Krzysztof-Penderecki-and-Eugeniusz-Rudnik-in-PRES-fot-Andrzej-Zborski.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Krzysztof Penderecki and Eugeniusz Rudnik in Polish Radio Experimental Studio, late 50s/early 60s.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">[both, in different versions, apeared in The Wire last year]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Krzysztof
Penderecki<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Awangarda<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">CD<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Utrenja<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">CD<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Polskie
Nagrania 2011<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Krzysztof
Penderecki’s story is well known: a bold avant-garde composer in the 1950s/60s,
one of the major forerunners of Polish School of Composition and champions of
the newly emerging, strictly Polish version of atonality called sonorism, of
which he was a precursor, suddenly, in the early 1970s, he gradually drops its principles and
starts composing mainly grandiose symphonic music in the Romantic style of late
19<sup>th</sup> century. He gave a famous statement, that “it’s not him, who
betrayed the avant-garde, but the avant-garde, who betrayed the music”. It’s
not the only case of an avant-gardist rejecting the experiment for the sake of classicism,
but it is his early stuff, that remains the most famous and which made him
successful in the West. Pieces compiled on <i>Awangarda
</i>CD, composed between 1958 and 1964, were all unanimously appreciated and
prized on international festivals, like Donaueschingen, exactly at the same time, when Poland was opening to the western world after years of Stalinism. <i>Strophes</i> for soprano, recitation and 10 instruments or <i>Psalms of David</i> for mixed choir, strings
and percussion were prized in the post-Thaw Poland, <i>8:27</i> from 1961, called this way as a homage to John Cage and later
renamed as <i>Threnody for the Victims of
Hiroshima</i>, has become an all-time soundtrack classic, from Kubrick’s
seminal use in <i>Shining</i>, <i>Children of
Men</i> and <i>Inland Empire</i> and <i>Polymorphia</i>
was used in <i>The Exorcist</i>, all becoming by accident somewhat universal sonic
embodiment of radical evil. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Despite being so well known, pieces collected here still give thrills,
especially paired with less known <i>Fluorescences</i>,
where apart from symphonic orchestra, Penderecki introduces sound smade by pieces of sheet
metal, electric bell, saw, typing machine and an alarm siren. The aleatoric
method of composition (a non-determined score, which gave the musicians space
for improvisation) made them very difficult to perform in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Poland</st1:place></st1:country-region>, mutinying
the players. Andrzej Markowski, who’s directing both on all the <i>Awangarda</i> pieces and the <i>Utrenja </i>(Morning Prayer), had a chief
role in making many avant-garde pieces to be played at all. <i>Utrenja</i> (1970-1) is one
of the most striking, uncompromising pieces of liturgic modern music, where the
chthonic, non-western wailings (phenomenal voices of National Philharmonics
soloists and choir) of Old-Church orthodoxy music is paired with the ruthlessly
modern, fragmented, queasy, even ailing modern idiom, in a way that would satisfy the very Theodor Adorno. It can rival with Ligeti or
Gubaidulina as a mastrepiece of religious music and convert anybody, if only for an hour; a timeless piece of music.
Given its success, especially in the foreign audiences, the later denial by the
composer of all this part of his work, must've been purely ideological. Perhaps the reason was easy: it wasn't the
indie film fans, who were filling the concert halls, though with Penderecki's recent collaboration with Jonny Greenwood and a sudden comeback to his early work, this is certainly a subject to change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xZ25OYqgPRI/UPVZchpdCcI/AAAAAAAAA4c/7wZE3l6gftA/s1600/pres2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xZ25OYqgPRI/UPVZchpdCcI/AAAAAAAAA4c/7wZE3l6gftA/s400/pres2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">PRES today</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">DJ Lenar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Re:PRES<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Bolt CD<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<a href="http://boltrecords.pl/audio/br_es05_15.mp3">listen</a>! <a href="http://boltrecords.pl/audio/br_es05_12.mp3">listen</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The title of yet another album from the revered series resurrecting Polish Radio Experimental Studio, Re: PRES, couldn’t be better put: here, the contemporary Polish minimal techno producer, improviser and musician, DJ Lenar is trying to at the same time “repeat”, but also reinvent, a very mysterious and fascinating part of the PRES archive: the hundreds of one if its flagship composer’s, Eugeniusz Rudnik’s so called “one-minutes”, vast collection of sonic miniatures, usually exactly no longer than the said one minute.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">The genius of it is that it is and it isn’t an “archival” production – because the collection of Rudnik’s pieces was so huge, the Bolt producers thought the best way of presenting them to the listener won’t be an arbitrary “curating” of some samples of it, but to give them to a musician, who would rather creatively replay them and try to use Rudnik’s method of making music. And those methods varied from a momentary distraction using the cast offs that left after other sessions, to the improvisations and planned compositions, but all must've been brief.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">This makes Lenar's 17 tracks, lasting from 30 seconds to 3,5 minutes, a contemporary rendition of the Studio methods, but with no trace of the hommage. We are rather to imagine Lenar simply trying out various moods, while playing, what is meaningful, on what used to be only the aides of music-making: amplifiers, gramophone, samplers, loopstation. Sometimes they are remixes, but more often variations over a piece. What is the most gripping in this beautiful series is how the genuine idiom of Polish electroacustic music: characteristic crookedness, crunkiness with a shine of madness and surrealism, clashes with the typical contemporary language of alt-electronica, filtered through glitches and loops.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">It is hard sometimes to say though, what sounds newer and what belongs to Lenar, and what to Rudnik – it is clear though this music couldn’t be played in the 1960s. The original purpose of miniatures was for thetre and you can try to imagine pictures accompanying the microstructures od Lenar - filled with romantic prettiness, yet haunted. <span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;">This meeting with the past has a slightly sickly, melancholic, tuberculosis charm of old laces - like meeting a beautiful girl from a past era, of whom we know she’s dead, afterall.</span> It is a romantic Polish soul, in search for an absolute sound, bathing in slices of sounds from many different times.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">the album is a part of an excellent series, including recent <a href="http://boltrecords.pl/br_es06.html">Assemblage</a> by Boguslaw Schaeffer and wonderfully artsy <a href="http://boltrecords.pl/br_es04.html">Knittel/Sikora/Michniewski</a>. Also, remember I wrote about this <a href="http://nuitssansnuit.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/polish-radio-experimental-studio.html">before</a>, <a href="http://nuitssansnuit.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/an-anthology-on-experiment-in-eastern.html">and a</a> <a href="http://www.eksperyment-manual.pl/index.php?/publikacja/">book</a> I contributed to.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br /></div>
agata pyzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16906387663496840966noreply@blogger.com0