28/10/06. White Cube Hoxton

Carroll Dunham - downstairs.

My thought was that it is rare to see a woman artist obsessed with penisis. (Or perhaps I'm out of touch).

I read the leaflets and it turns out She is a He. (Perhaps I am out of touch.)

Gabriel Orozco - upstairs

Strangely more of the same. Identical themes and images: Cowboy hats and graffiti penisis - but with the addition of arse holes. I think it fair to say with Gabriel it is about fuckin. With Carroll it is about being fucked. (I wrote that before I found out Carroll was a man.) Perhaps Gabriel will turn out to be a woman...

Achin Vanaik. George Monbiot. Radical Book Fair. Edinburgh. 14-Oct-2006

http://www.word-power.co.uk/book_fair

Achin Vanaik.
What a brain!
Approaches to the global warming crisis:
Market
Or
Technology
Or
Turn away from endless growth.

'To believe in endless growth either a fool or an economist.'
16% of world power is nuclear. NP is in decline in West. Growth areas for NP are non-West.
Decommission costs make NP uneconomic. NP always needs massive subsidy.
About 25 million people globally have suffered radiation effects. (Though it would be interesting to see the calculations behind this.)
In India nuclear weapons are supported by the scientists because they have made such a mess of the NP programme. (Costs, delays, poor safety record.)
Storage still not solved.
Good quality Uranium will run out in 60 yrs. Then have to use low grade ores. This mining pushes up overall Carbon use. (Carbon cost of digging the stuff out and transporting it.)
India is after high grade ores for NP. Can use indigenous poor grade ores for weapons.
Non Prolif Treaty - has contradiction built in - by helping with power, this gives the means to build weapons. So now US also worried about nuc energy. - Leading onto the current Iran issuea.
It is Israel that has always stopped a pact in mid East to be a nuclear weapons free zone.
N Korea is after normalisation to grow economy with Japan etc.
http://www.tni.org/fellows/vanaik.htm

Monbiot.
Due to coming water shortage the World with have a net food shortage.
Once we get to 2 degrees above pre-Industry then we hit positive feedback effects.
Plasma TV uses 5 times more energy than CRT.
Industry has re-graded fridges to hide the fact that they are not efficient. (It is not currently possible to buy the best grade fridges in the UK.)
A big issue is electricity transmission. (Which can be solved by going to DC apparently.)
The green-hyperconsumer. (Agas etc.)
California proposals to reduce by 80% by 2050 - will reduce down to current Europe!

History Boys. Bennet. Kings. Edinburgh. 21-Oct-2006

The fact that it won all those awards in the US shows they must have had a dearth of good plays that year. Of course to say it is a bit middlebrow and a bit populist (songs) and a bit snobbish doesn't mean that I am not jealous at how brilliantly the thing is put together and how funny it is. (Made even worse by the fact this is not his best work.) What I thought was good was that all the characters were real and both good and bad. Lots of greys, no black and whites.
Contrast the theatre version of Tutti Frutti where the transfer from TV had not worked. In History Boys they had film breaks during the scene changes. During this they showed the dolly bird secretary of the Headmaster. If she had actually appeared on stage it would have been too much of a distraction, sex currents would have been too strong and it would have broken the spell. But having her on film in a theatre (distanced) was just right. Skill.

Merchant of Venice. Lyceum. Edinburgh. 14-Oct-2006

To my shame this was is not a play I knew. The programme carried the predictable apologia from the local English Prof.
I am strongly opposed to censorship, and it is fine studying the text for scholarly purposes, but on grounds of good taste I don't see how the play can be shown as entertainment.

It is OK the prof arguing that WS is showing the attitudes of his time and that he makes Shylock a real man 'who can bleed'. Fact is, the end result of the play is the barbaric treatment of Shylock. This is not questioned by one character in the play. I am not criticising WS for this. But it is dated. (Like slavery and woman as chattel). If one thinks of the way this play must have been used over the years as a support for antisemitism and theft from the Jews (not to mention worse) then I think the relativist excuse that it 'has to be seen in context' loses its strength. It may be historically interesting but it is still distasteful. Pretending otherwise is bad faith.

If it was purposely distasteful (like The Jew of Malta) I would be more included to defend it.

Calum Innes Fruitmarket. 07/10/06

Fabulous names: Dioxazine Violet
I preferred the plain black and white dribble paitings to the coloured ones.
Shellac on linen. It is actually the aged linen that has done most of the work. I suppose it will change more given long enough.

The ones on the top floor were the most striking for me. The Famous Identified Forms should be trite dribbles but are somehow much more: organic shapes, plants, space ships, people, light in the dark, stains, age, decay.
I thought standout was Untitled 2002. The markings really draw you in: moonscape, mountains, people, soot, desert or just marks. Why don't I dismiss these pieces as simply random marks? Why is he picked up and exhibited in prestiguous spaces as opposed to other abstract painters?
Interestingly, Formed Painting 2 is very colourful and simply looks like a textile design .

http://fruitmarket.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=82

Outside the Ron Mueck exhibition. 07/10/06

For the last day of the extended run they are keeping the exhibition open until midnight. The queue to get in at about 4pm ran outside the Scottish Academy and along Princes Street.

My highlights: Spooning Couple. Because they are smaller than scale but appear so real it maked you feel like God looking down on the poor humans.
The baby of course - a monster, but you feel parental. And the frightned giant who should be intimidating but you feel sorry for him. Human weakness on a monolothic scale.

There's talk of Scotland buying the small figure in the boat. I hope so. It felt to me like an updated sort of faery story.

http://www.nationalgalleries.org/mueck/highlights.html

4. Director Ilya Khrjanovksy.

4
http://www.rusfilm.pitt.edu/2005/pn/4.htm

One of the best film openings ever? Then, the whole meeting of the 3 characters and the barman in the early hours. A combination of Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter. (And they said it couldn't be done!)
From here on in there is not ever the slightest pretence of pulling the different themes together - or even making sense of some of the strands. Does it matter? Not a bit.
It's the village of women that gets to me. Some of them remind me of my Granny. (Though she was more or less teetotal. This lot are on on vodka from breakfast to supper. ) The disturbing thing is that it all feels sooo authentic. (There are rumours of whole villages drunk outside the cities but is place is so extreme in their whole economy.) And it doesn't feel like fantasy. The lone man is so pathetic - trying to pursuade parents at the railway station if he can borrow their child with his bag-full of small coins as his hire-price.
Can't wait for 5.

Albert Watson Edinburgh City Art Gallery 30/09/06

Some of the photos (eg Orkney Standing Stones work just cos their bloody big.
The car photos are fantastic - big 50s American cars in peopleless settings. One in a car park is more the film 'crash' than 'crash'. Another has raindrops on the glass. Outside a Motel. You know it dominates some human story. There is a photo of a dashboard that tells you more about humans & the smell of the world than all the fashion plates opposite.
Celebs: Dull. Except for the cut ups of Jack Nicholson & Michael Jackson. Jack N always seems to get photographers rapping. The Michael Jackson is brilliant at giving a sense of his movement. Of course the photo is better than anything I've seen Michael Jackson produce himself. Fearsome back view of Mike Tyson.
Breaunna in the LA Hilton. The Catwoman is fantastic - comics for boys. The superhero vs her scared vulnerable expression.
A mock Christ Trilogy thing I though lazy & confused.
The showstoppers were the American landscapes. Great Motels. Pathetic/ phallic like sex sometimes. But the missing people hint at all sorts of lives.
I loved the roadsign for God. And the stunning sunset, improved by the Resort road adverts stretching into the distance.
And electric pylons like ship masts. Just for a second - at the top of the picture - the desert is like a ship.
A lot of the fashion ones are just sub-surreal cheap contrasts.

Monkeys with Mask is just a joy.
As is Dirt Road. Brings you back to the world with your eyes open.

Fashion: There's a boot on a cooker & its supposed to be surreal (?)

Also upstairs. The Ichthys font by Colin Reid. Unlike all the other media, Glass must have reached it's peak in history in the modern age.

Mapplethorpe Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art/ Philip Townsend 21/08/06

Mapplethorpe:
What a parade of flatulent egos!
The only human characteristic on show is vanity.
How embarrasing to be one of the subjects...
The photo notes had lots of talk about composition - but surely the easiest part of photography. Especially in a studio!

Philip Townsend:
Compare and contrast the Philip Townsend exhibition round the corner.
Fun, joyful, sexy - and shows why these people were cool.

(To be fair, there was an interesting point in the Mapplethorpe about why the series on women seemed less offensively vain. Answers on a postcard please. Then again, why should I be fair?)

Dada's Boys. Fruitmarket Gallery 18/06/06

V dull except for the more recent stuff.
Sarah Lucas value for money of course. (The photo of Sarah Lucas with a skull really looks like Barrie Humphries.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Lucas

Matthew Barney is out on his own, but I didn't spend too much time there as I have seen his stuff. (I don't know if it is just me but I would prefer one artist as a time rather than these group exhibitions.) http://unit.bjork.com/specials/dr9/


I liked Keith Farquhar who was new to me. The rules of attraction. About courting / sex. It is an installation of pretty mirrors with Calvin Kelin y-fronts and huge glasses of mock white wine. I always think galleries are sexy places anyway. And this put an exhibition party into a different league. It was like a giant game (of 'get laid'). Funny. Is that all there is to the attraction business?

Edinburgh. Lecture on Titan: Huygens Probe. Winter 2005.

Prof John Zarnecki
Notes:
17 yrs designing & building probe.
ESA /Bae 25% of Hubble
Then Giotto to Haley's Comet
Titan round Saturn.
1.5 billion Klicks
Only satelite with substantial atmosphere (mass 10x earth )
Surface pressure 1.5 x earth
Temperature -180C
Mostly water ice. Cover in ice.
All for 3 mins of data. Actually got 72mins.
Liquid methane rain. (Violently)
Grav. 0.15 of earth.
Cost of project to UK population = £1.50 each over 15yrs

Sarah Angliss. Sonic Cabaret. Winter 2005.

Hoover the talking seal
Nokia the starling
I remember she showed file of a machine that was an articulated robot arm with two mikes that followed sound. V spooky how it follwoed people around as if alive. At night, they found it curled up on itself - so that it could listen to its own engine.
Used to have organs specially to accompany birds.
Bulfinch Seronet (starved bulfinch so it thought it was winter)
Vocoder uses voice to control the sound the machine makes (into synth).
Sample voice. Faurier transfer.
Audacity free software
Untold secret of modern popsingers is the Entares autotune.
(Robbie Williams was asked about it and he likened it to a spell checker.)
(However dispute if some could not manage at all with the voice correction.)
Puredata & Processing Free software
Brighton Festival show
Proximity Effect with mikes = crooners.
Mains hum = 50 hert & Barry White
Below 20h we don't hear it.
The Godstop. Organ pipe below hearing.
Tried them at concerts.
Before electronic used candles to detect Infrasound. (Ghost story connection.)
The lecture included a sample godstop pipe. You didn't feel anything until you touched it, but then it was definately creepy.
http://www.spacedog.biz/biography.htm

December Sky in Edinburgh. 2005

Notes:
Dec - darkest month. 14 hrs dark
Civil nautical and astronomical twilight
sunspots -> aurora borealis. Can ruin electronics on satelites. Last Thurs broad band in the sky from E to W. How can you tell not a lit up cloud? Stars shine as bright.

Mars. Viking 1977.
4 missions currently. Japan one damaged from solar flare. (Nazomi)
Mars Express. Beagle 2. Lands Xmas day. US Rover probes. Mars is red because rusty.

Venus. Visible in twilight. Bright because of reflective clouds. Very Prominent next Spring.

Saturn v bright at moment all night. Cassini probe to Titan to land Heugans. No one knows surface.

Jupiter early morning. '94 comet hit.

Meteorides. Mid 13/14 Dec will get 1 meteor a minute. From Gemini. Saturn close to it.
Fireball meteors can create moving shadows.
Comet Enki close at moment. SW. By Aquila.
Int Space Station 3 minutes to cross. Bright as Mars. By Mars. By square of Pegasus.
Dec 2. US launch secret satellites. 3 together.
Cappela almost overhead.
Gemini is above Orion.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence 05/11/05

Directed by Mamoru Oshii.
Like many films the winner for me was the opening sequence. I this case the construction/ growth of a female android. (Vaguely Hans Belmer but beautiful/ sacred.) The plot turned out be a load of balderdash about souls but you can't have everything.

SuperComputer Lecture. 2005

Weather readings taken every 6 hrs over a 12km grid which is 70 levels high
= 2*10 to 15 calcs.
Would take 3 months on PC.
So process in parallel.
Climate modeling much larger 100km. Usually over 100yrs.

Physics /Chem model individual particles.
Eg 10 billion particles! .5 million light yr grid.
Wires in chips down to 5 atoms wide.

Edinburgh. Summer 2005.Theodore Zeldin.

Theodore Zeldin.
I was impressed at the time. Things from my memory:
2 people cause change. Provides real equality.
Fear is biggest block to progress.
Muses. The Muse.
Trying to set up an MA over everything rather than specialising.
Flaw of English is they think everyone will be rational.
Rights should be based on needs. Not wants.

But as time has gone by and I looked at An Intimate History of Humanity I'm not sure if he isn't full of hot air.

Royal Academy. Summer 2005.

The beauty of a magnet falling down a copper tube.

Royal Colledge of Surgeons. Edinburgh. 06/10/05

Prof Arnold Moran lecturing on the voice. (He is a surgeon on the larynx etc.)
Notes:
Used Colin Watson software for analysis.
Birds have 2 voiceboxes! - one per lung.
300 songs for Nightingale.
Lyrinx is primarily to protect the lungs. Epiglotis Stops food falling down lungs.
Human mouth is small (no smell vs snouts) so can be controlled.
100s muscles used for speech - all controlled by brain.
So Drunk impacts muscle actions.
When chords touch you get sound.
200 cycles per sec - female
100 cycles per sec - male
Length impacts pitch.
Clicks of vibrations makes continuous sound.
Main definer of sound is muscle weight. Heavy = low.
Russian & Slavic genetic feature = a fluid in larynx so heavier. Females get this in west with age. (not men.)
Church split male/female for choires.
Boy trebles. Castration so less muscles but stronger than women. Bigger lung volume. Women don't have same power in lower register.
97 percent of music records have voice.
Some people hard to hear.
Some have' laser' voice due to harmonics.
Due to projection. 3KHz is easier to hear. Top end of piano. Some people
Pavaroti top C is 0.5 A soprano is 1. But the harmonics make them audible.
Sound wave has sharp dips cos larynx closes rapidly cos chords are held closer via training.
Harmonics sound louder. (Using cave of mouth. Each person does it differently!
Energy of non singer is wasted on lower KHz.
Passagio = moving point from one register to the other.
Opera singers get fat because lonely. Can't stop or drink cos damages voice.
Pop - mike allows voice chance to relax. Best are Ella & Frank. Could have been Opera singers.
Current fashion is voice is just another instrument.
Musicals audition for next while performing current.
Belting (Ethel Merman) = safe.
Twanging (Dolly Parton) (Les Mis)
Crooning
Falsetto (of pop) v high & unnatural.
Muscle injuries.
Nerves.
Real lesions.
Lump on chord - cist or nodule if diagnosed wrong will scar chord.
Voice messages turned to accent for region.
100 muscles in vocal - only n muscles used at one time.
Classical singers develop regular swopping = vibrato.
So classical singers can't do Cole Porter. (Vibrato spoils it.)

Ingelby Gallery. Edinburgh. Garry Fabian Miller. 24/09/05

Garry Fabian Miller.
Red Light.
The images on the url don't give a good impression. They were absolutely beautiful. Here the medium is the message. The fact that they are, in effect, natural phenomenon gave then extra depth. God must see like this.

http://www.inglebygallery.com/artistsDetail.php?id=20

Edinburgh University. Carlos Fuentes. 08/06/05

How small minded the British mainstream scene is.
CF's thesis was that the novel is all about deceit, invention and the confusion between reality and fantasy. And that is why it is inherently subversive.
It was really peculiar having a glass of wine afterwards in the same room as CF. He is just not the sort of person you expect to meet.

Modern Art Gallery 27/06/05

Francis Bacon. Can't remember the event. After Martin Hammer's lecture it was stiking how much Three Figures at the base of a crucifiction is just like an earlier Sutherland.

Saatchi Gallery. London. June 2005.

When still housed in the old GLC building. (Before they Saatchi and the landlords fell out.)
I got it. Who wouldn't want to do this? Basically, just go round all the art college shows and just buy the best ones.
This is the sort of thing The Prince of Wales used to do in. (Though it is hard to imagine any of the current crop doing anything as useful.)

Light Perpetual 1 - Conrad Shawcross
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/conrad_shawcross.htm
What I remember was it's noise. And it was rather frightening as if you could get caught up in it. And the shadows cast were like things in a horror-dream. It also seemed so effective for something so apparently (it was probabaly a horror-dream to make) simple.

Naomi V Jelish by Jamie Shovlin (basically a student purchase)
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/jamie_shovlin.htm
I confess I didn't find it moving but I loved the concept of the project.

Richard Wilson - 20:50 (oil room)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/history/wilsonr.htm
What the blurb doesn't explain is the effect from the relfections of the surrounding room - doors etc. AND the SMELL.

Brood - Kate MccGwire (wishbones) (student)
http://www.axisweb.org/grCVFU.aspx?SELECTIONID=15357
Don't know how long this site will last. WHY ISN'T IT ON THE SAATCHI SITE?
Made from 20000 chicken wishbones. Can you beat that? Good luck?! (For the chickens.) A beautific delicate slaughterhouse.

Vermin Death Star - David Falconer (rats)
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/gallery/image/0,8543,-11104640115,00.html
The memory of this still gives me the shivers. (And why is that fun?)
100s of freeze-dried rats used to make the metal castings for the sculpture. Was it really cast-metal? Even the process of making it makes your stomach turn. Or? Maybe there are whole reserves of frozen rats out there? What a great name for an sf book. Or pulp film. Can't stand to look at it but it is certainly art.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/

Ketelbey 08/08/05

One of those pieces of music that everyone (in the UK of a certain age) has heard but does not know the name of.

Albert W Ketèlbey (1875-1959) was an English composer whose early music won the praise of Elgar and gained first place over Holst. From ages 16 to 20, he was a church organist as well as a piano soloist. After 1912, Ketèlbey became a music editor for Chappell and music director of the Columbia Gramophone Co. This piece was the first of many short tone poems with exotic titles (In a Persian Market, In the Mystic Land of Egypt, In a Chinese Temple Garden) that he composed with elaborate orchestrations over the next 15 years. His positions helped to get these atmospheric pieces published and recorded. Theatre organists such as Reginald Foort, Reginald Dixon, and Quentin Maclean have performed and recorded them.

Huntarian Glasgow. 23/05/05

A selection from the University collection.
What great stuff!
Things I remember are the Chardin paintings.
Konstanze Mozart painted by her brother (not WAM)
Paintings by Beatrix Whistler. (The wife. She should get more attention.)
A portrait of Anne of Austria. Wife of Phillip II spain. 1570-71.

http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/index.html

Fruitmarket. 21/05/05

An Aside. Selected by Tacita Dean
Kurt Schwitters painted stones. 1945-7
Roni Horn Brink of Infinity. 1995. Sea breaking over rocks. Photo or painting? HAUNTING.
Rodney Graham. 2003 Rheinmetat. I thought this was a STANDOUT. A film of snow falling on a vintage German typwriter. Black v white. Metal vs snowflake. Cold and cold. Nature vs machine. Monumental vs transient. I hate the British obession with WW2, but it did also seem to be about ingenuity and brilliance and the perversion of.
Othar Baumgarten Mosquitos. Which was a bunch of bread rolls with feathers. 1969. A joke's as good as a rest.
Joseph Beuys goden coloured portrait bust bronze of a girl 1947. Surprisingly naturalistic and skilful. A type of artifice he decided to move awat from.
Yvan Salomone. Watercolours of Waste-scapes. The sort of mournful industrial landscapes I always enjoy.
http://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/archive-AA.html

V&A 30/04/05

The modern glass exhibits are breathtaking. eg Jaroslava Brychtova. Blue green sea glass.

Usher Hall. Edinburgh. 19/04/05

Organ Wedding MusicJohn Kitchen & Alexandra Stevenson.
Not as enjoyable as the previous recital I had seen because we didn't have the real organ anorachs (= life enhancing enthusiasts) that we had last time. For an ognoramus like me though it was an education to hear some of the range of Wedding Music.

Simon Patterson. High Noon. Fruitmarket. 16/03/05

The Great Bear is deservedly famous. Not bowled over by General Assembly or Ur. But Escape Routine was highly entertaining. Shows what good you can do when you push a pun far enough. (Air stewards and stewardess explain escape routines of chains and ropes.) Gets in bondage, absurdity, comedy, surealism and escapology all in one go.








http://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/Archive%20Simon%20Patterson.html

Paris Musée d'Orsay 19/02/05

Jean Delville 'L'Ecole de Platon' (School of Plato) - talk about kinky!

Ellen Gallagher Fruitmarket 02/01/05

The stuff I thought most powerful were the coloured and generally messed about film sequences. One was a jazzed up version of a 50s horror film that was really twisted into other directions.

Nathan Coley 'The lamp-of-sacrifice' 22/01/05

'The lamp-of-sacrifice'
Carboard modles of all the 286 places of worship in Edinburgh.
3 months to make with assistant Tony Nolan. Lyndsay Mann took the photos of the churches they usedf to make the models from. Very strong smell of cardboard & maybe glue. The exhibition fills a huge fills room. Apparently it has been purchased for Scotland. I have to admit my thought was where will they keep it?

Ghazi Hussein 30/01/05

Shore Poets. Edinburgh
Ghazi Hussein - Palestinian poet in arabic. English read by Tessa Ramsford.
Suspicious as I am of anything from the acedemico/Arts Council insititutions I thought this poetry was a jolt of energy.
Middle Eastern tropes. Rhythm, pattern, passion. Something to say.

http://www.scottisharts.org.uk/1/artsinscotland/artsandcommunities/diversity/features/archive/profileghazihussein.aspx

National Gallery. 01/05/05

My usual first port of call. Botticelli's Venus and Mars. (She is always so sad to have made him weak.)
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.nationalgallery.co.uk/shop/productimages/040306.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.nationalgallery.co.uk/shop/product_display.asp%3FSiteLanguage%3DENG%26ProductID%3D040306&h=170&w=190&sz=8&hl=en&sig2=PJah0UYqzll5lN-vpzvy9g&start=1&tbnid=4pbxlV5zAalP2M:&tbnh=92&tbnw=103&ei=6eYfRbOJKLDIJPD93LUM&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2Bsite:www.nationalgallery.co.uk%2Bbotticelli%2Bmars%2Band%2Bvenus%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D

This time I was struck by the colours on Virgin with Iris. School of Durer. The Orange dress with the Scarlet Cloak.(Can't seem to get any images from the web.)