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03/07/08: Funny place for the Social

the-situation modern #2

duck-art : the-situation : arch635 SW4

17th July 2008
art/music/performance/social/life
7pm until 1am

attendees (alphabetical):

audio/performance-
Dodo
TonyThorpe
KARBORN
Kate Daisy Grant

text-
The London Lit Plus Festival featuring Social Disease presenting:
Heidi James
Matthew Coleman
Adelle Stripe
Lee Rourke

visual-
Dae Hun Kwon
KARBORN
Ken Rose
Myles Quin

Posted by Susan Tomaselli / Permanent link / Comments (0)

: Mr Ferocious

No One is Innocent, the exhibition of little seen Sid Vicious photographs showing at the Proud Gallery until August (and previously noted by 3:AM), is reviewed by Sue Steward:

This exhibition, documenting fragments from the life of Sid Vicious, has a special pull for me, as I used to work for the Sex Pistols. But this only makes its inconsistencies more frustrating. The title questions Sid’s innocence and resurrects issues around his death from heroin, aged 21, in 1979.

Several contemporary photographers, including Janette Beckman and Adrian Boot, saw innocence in his clear-skinned face, knock-kneed goofing and unconvincing snarls in early 1977 — but within a year, others reveal the effects of drugs and body-cutting.

Disappointingly, the show’s random chronology offers no sense of this tragedy unfolding, and the caption information is erratic. Previously unseen images by two American photographers share one caption each for all their images. Richard E Aaron’s final Sex Pistols tour shots (1978) include the iconic photograph of Sid’s “Gimme a fix” chest-carving and a tight-lipped Johnny Rotten on what is possibly the night he walked out on the band.

The Independent catch up with Eileen Polk, contributor to the exhibition and one of the last people to see Sid alive:

Eileen Polk was working as a photographer in New York at the time, and had become friends with many of the leading lights of the music scene. She knew Debbie Harry and Frank Zappa and had dated Dee Dee Ramone and the New York Dolls‘ Arthur “Killer” Kane. She took her camera with her wherever she went, and had gained the trust of those she photographed.

“You met people and then started photographing them rather than jumping straight in there like a paparazzo,” she recalls. “I wasn’t making much money out of it but I knew I was documenting something that wouldn’t be around for long. I knew that one day these pictures would be very important to people.”

Polk first met Nancy on the underground scene in New York in 1975. “She worked as a topless dancer and hung about with bands,” Polk remembers. “She was pretty honest about what she was doing. She was a groupie and had drugs to offer them. But it didn’t take long for her to wear out her welcome.”

The following year, Nancy went to London where she started her relationship with Sid and introduced him to heroin. When the Sex Pistols split, the pair relocated to New York and Polk was welcomed into the fold. She remembers Sid as “being weak when it came to drugs but fearless when it came to performing and being an icon. He wasn’t afraid to wear those clothes and stand up to those who criticised him. But he also had severe mood swings, even before Nancy died. He could be really funny, making obscene gestures and generally goofing off. The drugs probably induced some sort of depression, but I think he had problems even without that. Nancy definitely had some sort of mental illness and you’re attracted to people like you. Whatever Sid had, I wouldn’t want to give it a name.”

Also forming part of the exhibition are clips from Alan G Parker’s forthcoming film, Who Killed Nancy?

Sid Vicious: No One is Innocent, Proud Gallery, 4 June - 12 August 2008

Posted by Susan Tomaselli / Permanent link / Comments (0)

02/07/08: Scriptures from the future

Andrew Gallix wonders if composing Spam Lit is akin to “Cocteau’s Orpheus picking up cryptic poetic messages from the underworld on his car radio”:

In order to bypass increasingly efficient filters, spammers began embedding blocks of text - often pilfered from great literary works via Project Gutenberg - in their junk mail. Techniques like the Dissociated Press algorithm were employed to randomly generate new, essentially meaningless texts or text collages (“word salads”) so that each message would seem unique. Lee Ranaldo has compared the outcome to a “dictionary exploded”. Another early aficionado, Ben Myers, observed that “it was as if the text had somehow been remixed and shat out down the wires of modernity”. “Spam Lit”, as Jesse Glass dubbed it in 2002, uncannily mirrored bona fide literary experiments that were taking place simultaneously: Jeff Noon’s exploration - through textual sampling and remixing - of “metamorphiction” in Cobralingus; Jeff Harrison’s aleatoric poems based on Markov chains; or even Kenji Siratori’s baffling cyber-gibberish.

[..]

No wonder, then, that Spam Lit should have inspired the only new literary genre of the early 21st century (if we exclude crimping). The earliest examples of spoetry on record date back to 1999. A pioneering annual competition was even established by Satire Wire the following year. By 2003, when the BBC picked up on the phenomenon, it was already quite clear that writers were approaching spoetry in very different ways - an observation confirmed by Morton Hurley’s Anthology of Spam Poetry (2007). Some, like Kristin Thomas only used the subject lines of spam messages; others were content to cut, paste and add their names à la Duchamp. Myers, who has just published a collection entitled Spam (Email Inspired Poetry) believes, for his part, that the secret lies in the editing: “A spam poet is as much an editor as a bard“. Sonic Youth co-founder Lee Ranaldo, who has also just released an anthology (Hello From the American Desert), uses spam emails as a source of inspiration for his own work rather than as a raw material. Mark Amerika, meanwhile, describes the composition of his 29 Inches as a “spam collage” and a “narrative remix”.

Although published last year, Amerika’s work was written in 2004, which also happens to be the year when Myers and Ranaldo penned their first spoems. None of them were aware that others were doing similar things at the same time. There must have been something in the air. If my inbox is anything to go by, however, Spam Lit is now on the wane, so the time may have come to assess the merits of spoetry, its literary by-product. Beyond the genre’s obvious affinities with automatic writing, cut-ups, constrained writing (of the Oulipian variety) and found poetry, is it any cop?

(Somewhat) Related: How is the Internet Changing Literary Style?, the transcript of a n + 1 debate

Posted by Susan Tomaselli / Permanent link / Comments (0)

: L’art contemporain de Georges Perec

The Literary Saloon bring a George Perec-related exhibition to our attention, reviewed in Paris Art:

Le titre de l’exposition, [’Regarde de tous tes yeux, regarde’] qui sonne comme une formidable invitation à intensifier le regard, reprend l’exergue que Georges Perec a choisie pour La Vie mode d’emploi [Life, A User’s Manual]. Car c’est à partir de l’œuvre entier de Georges Perec que sont examinées quelques unes des grandes convergences esthétiques entre l’art et la littérature à l’époque moderne et surtout contemporaine.

[..]

Confronté dans sa vie à une perte incommensurable défiant toute expression, Georges Perec a construit une très sophistiquée machine littéraire sur un principe de subjectivité inexpressive. L’inexpressivité n’étant pas une abolition de la subjectivité, mais l’une de ses versions littéraires et artistiques — version plate et superficielle, sans profondeur apparente, distanciée.

Faute de pouvoir exprimer un trop grand inexprimable, de l’inscrire dans l’évidence lexicale et narrative des textes, Perec l’encode dans les structures syntaxiques de sa machine littéraire — ses programmes, ses contraintes, ses «cahiers des charges», ses combinatoires, ses enregistrements, ses inventaires, etc.
Ce faisant, son œuvre rentre dans ce secteur de l’art contemporain où la traditionnelle profondeur a fait place à des formes de platitude et de superficialité; où les affects des auteurs et des artistes s’effacent devant les machines picturales, littéraires ou figuratives; où la photographie est tour à tour paradigme et matériau.

Dans cet art a-subjectif comme dans la littérature inexpressivement subjective de Perec, les œuvres ne s’épuisent pas dans leur visibilité ou leur lisibilité, parce qu’elles résident dans la plate profondeur de leurs processus artistiques et littéraires de production. C’est dans cet infra-mince que Perec a contribué, avec d’autres, à se faire rencontrer la littérature et l’art contemporain.

Further: Perec’s ‘Thoughts on the Art and Technique of Crossing Words’ [The Believer 2006] / ‘Oulipo Ends Where the Work Begins’

Posted by Susan Tomaselli / Permanent link / Comments (0)

It’s taken 40 years and but it seems the writing world is finally realising what it lost when the brandy and the bailiffs sent Julian Maclaren-Ross to an early grave. Thanks mainly to the sterling efforts of Paul Willetts and Virginia Ironside, the writer is undergoing a rehabilitation with a new collection of his letters following in the wake of his collected memoirs, short stories and the biography Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia.

“Look I’m in a mess. Can’t pay the bill, danger of being kicked out, clothes etc seized… Can you lend me 15. If you can, will save life. Will repay without fail from BBC cheque. More money in by then….Hope you liked my review of you in TLS. Got book specially…No more now: pen running out.”

Picture courtesy of www.julianmaclaren-ross.co.uk.

Posted by darrananderson / Permanent link / Comments (0)

: Liminal London:

“Uxbridge has cornered the market in liminal architecture.”

Literary London’s 7th annual conference will be hosted by the Department of English, School of Arts, Brunel University, London, at the Uxbridge Campus, 2nd – 4th July 2008.

Confirmed speakers include Iain Sinclair, Matthew De Abaitua, Toby Litt, Matt Thorne, Prof Kristin Bluemel, Prof Chris Jenks & Prof Alan Robinson.

: The Funnies

PW interview Simone Lia: “Tom [Gauld]’s dream was to have a publishing collective with lots of artists, but in the end it was us two working together. We really encouraged each other and worked long hours to make our first comic, First. I remember coming in on the weekends and those poor old printers in the computer room took a pounding when we came in. We used letterpress to make the cover of First. We wanted to make a comic that was a beautiful object to hold in your hand, like an artist’s book.” + And Lia talks to Dark Horse, the US publishers of Fluffy [reviewed here by 3:AM]: “I like a lot of comic artists but the main inspiration must be Charles Schulz. I love the human warmth in his characters and the humor and depth of the strips. I’d like for my drawings to have that kind of warmth. Woodstock is my favorite character because he is so tiny and sweet.” + NY Mag profile Dash Shaw: Shaw’s design of his three main characters reflects the vast differences among them. It’s not that they don’t look like members of the same family; they don’t even look as though they’re characters in the same graphic novel. Oft-frustrated and childlike Dennis is a cartoon—“Homer Simpson with hair,” Shaw says. Realistically drawn Claire wears long gloves, a nod to her habit of keeping emotions and loved ones at arm’s length. Peter feels hopelessly left out—“My whole family looks at me like I’m a big, dumb frog,” he tells his girlfriend—and fittingly, Shaw draws Peter with the head of a frog for the entire book, except for a single panel that’s surprising and touching when it arrives. “I like characters that look very different,” Shaw says. “Matt Groening said you should be able to recognize each of your characters in profile.” + Gabe Soria provides the Booknotes to Life Sucks + The music of Scott Pilgrim: Nearly every page of O’Malley’s books is loaded with some sort of a musical reference. Some are obvious — Stephen Stills is the name of a principal character — and some are more for the in crowd, such as a magazine headline that’s ripped direct from a lyric from power-pop band the New Pornographers. [via Largehearted Boy] + Comics Reporter talk to What It Is author Lynda Barry [above image]: ”The only thing about it is you have to be willing to accept the story that comes, sad or funny, soothing or upsetting. That’s the one law I have to follow when I work. I do think it means I have no ability to assess the quality of the work or what it means to others, except when that state of mind won’t come. Because sometimes it won’t come at all. And there have been times that it has happened for months at a time and I’ve been convinced I’ll have to give up the strip. It comes back. Then it leaves again. And I think this is the way of things in the image world. Flannery O’Connor said that it was as crazy to think your faith will always be with you as it is to think your loss of faith will always be with you.” + Alison Bechdel’s reading habits [via Maud Newton] + Jeffrey Brown talks to IVY about the Holy Consumption show on in Paris ’til the end of July: The books I’d say are comics, the drawings are drawings…I don’t really worry about what they’re going to be labeled as, I’ll leave that for other people to decide. As an artist I just want to make the work and leave the categorizing to someone else…I’d say I’m a cartoonist, and also an artist, in the same way that a painter or a sculptor is an artist.” [via Journalista] + Dash Shaw, Jason Lutes & Guy Delisle in the CS Monitor [via LHB] + Irish Comics Wiki [via Bugpowder]

Posted by Susan Tomaselli / Permanent link / Comments (0)

30/06/08: Tonite Let’s All Make Love in Leytonstone

Continuing Leytonstone’s apparent emergence as literary locale, Ambit (”the magazine that thinks it’s a book”) will be hosting a night of music and readings at the Heathcote Arms on July 10, from 8pm (entry £3). Music from Uncle Rabbit and John Ellis (The Vibrators, Stranglers), with readings hosted as ever by Martin Bax.

Other events of note in the series include an evening devoted to Sonic Youth favourite and late local luminary Cornelius Cardew at O’Neills on Leytonstone High Road (featuring Eddie Prévost no less) on July 7 (also from 8pm, £3) and former Headcoatee Holly Golightly (pictured) at the Sheepwalk (also on the High Road) on July 9 (from 8.30pm, free).

Posted by Andrew Stevens / Permanent link / Comments (0)

29/06/08: “I can’t destroy you today lads. I’m on very serious business.”

Congratulations to the mighty Shane Meadows, whose latest film Somers Town has won the Michael Powell Award for “Best British Feature Film” at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
Singling the work out for the £20,000 award, the jury celebrated the film “as the freshest, most imaginative, maverick work.”

Posted by darrananderson / Permanent link / Comments (0)

: Stuck in Leytonstone

Fresh from petitioning the PM not to renew Nicholas Serota’s employment contract when it comes up for renewal, Charles Thomson of the Stuckists is appearing in my local tomorrow night:

Waltham Forest Arts Club present
Why the Stuckists are asking Gordon Brown to sack the boss of the Tate
A talk by Stuckist co-founder, Charles Thomson

Sheepwalk pub (upstairs room)
692 High Road, Leytonstone, London E11 3AA
Admission free
7.45 pm Mon 30 June 2008

Tube: Leytonstone (Central line)
Directions: take the left ramp out of the station, keep to the left around kiosk, then ahead go up Church Lane, turn left into the High Road for about 200 yards. Sheepwalk is opposite Barclays bank.
The talk marks the start of the first Leytonstone Arts Trail.

Posted by Andrew Stevens / Permanent link / Comments (0)