I apologise wholeheartedly for my absence - despite numerous wifi hotspots and the safe haven of the Fresh Air Center (thanks Tck Tck Tck!) I had a rather unfortunate mishap with my beautiful macbook yesterday which involved it being soaked in water. Not due to police misbehaviour, I might add, more my own stupidity in jumping up and down through the carnival crowd of the Global Day of Action Demo.
No doubt, news of 900 arrests have been thoroughly reported within the British media. What perhaps has not been reported is the hundred thousand strong crowd who marched on the Bella Center where the conference is happening in a peaceful carnival with one message - to end climate chaos and seek a fair, ambitious and binding deal as a result of the conference. We were part of a spectacular international crowd who, despite the hundreds of languages spoken, all had the same message, and it was truly exciting to be part of such a significant movement. Various charities provided floats with soundsystems which rolled through the broad Danish streets pumping out Bob Marley and the Who. Actionaid and the Danish Communist Party provided the best tunes in my opinion!
Our mission was to reach the Bella Center for a candlelit vigil, but unfortunately the 8km walk was rather a slow burn and we did not make it in time. When we did finally make it there, we found French anarchists insisting that we return to save our comrades trapped on the bridge and facing police brutality. I personally did not witness any direct violent action, but from what I can gather, a small group of aggressive individuals hurled rocks at the police whilst wearing masks (an illegal act during protests in Denmark) and it kicked off. There are always certain groups who attend such events to exercise their civil liberties and seek violence. However, my belief is that the majority of the 900 arrested will have been swept up with the chaos of the action. I know at least two friends who were held for 9 hours outside in the below freezing temperatures without food, or water, and were forced to kneel on the ground.
Kettling was widely used, as were holding cages (which can be seen here) and police brutality has been widely reported within the community of activists. Naomi Klein wrote well on the mismanagement of the Global Day of Action in today's Guardian. It is a relief to see now that we have returned that some facets of the media have been fairly representing the activists. There has been a rather glaring disparity between the numbers provided by the Danish police and the organisers of the Day of Action; the former suggesting 30,000 whilst the latter suggested 100,000. Having spent the weekend before at the Wave in London (which had 50,000 attendees), I would say that Saturday in Copenhagen saw numbers closer to Tck Tck Tck's estimation.
It has been a surreal few days. I have spent more time in transit than actually in Copenhagen, and the NGO that I attended with as an activist have proven themselves to be frustratingly disorganised and very poorly managed. I believe that had I atended the COP-15 as an independent activist, I could have gleaned a more holistic overview of the conference as a whole, and been able to report more widely on the week's events. As it stands, the clout of the NGO got me through many doors, but the poor scheduling allowed no time for exploration, and this is where my frustration lies. I seriously hope that there will be some impressive eleventh hour negotiations and that Gordon Brown does push for the reduction of 30% on 1990 CO2 levels by 2020. As many of the placards read, there is no planet B, and it is imperative that an ambitious, safe and binding is reached.
Sunday 13 December 2009
Wednesday 2 December 2009
Review - Lutyens and Rubinstein Bookshop
So Borders is no more and no one in the book world seems to know whether to cheer or cry over it. There are two distinct schools of thought: 1) Borders was crap 2) Borders was crap but at least it was an actual, physical bookshop and it was only stocking what we bought anyway.There appear to be three culprits 1) Amazon 2) Celebrity biographies (Jordan is an entire subsection to herself within this category of blame) 3)us.
As Franklin Roosevelt said, ‘in a democracy, we get the government we deserve’. We all buy our own books, and we buy shit. So we’re sold shit. Come to think of it, our government’s pretty rubbish too. Oh, and we’re destroying our own planet.
Now, to counter this, along comes Lutyens and Rubinstein. An independent bookshop! Hurrah! If it won’t reverse climate change it must at least mean that actually what we’re doing is sticking it to the man and experiencing a resurgence in independent shops for independent people. Except for the fact that independent bookstores which have been around for generations in Charing Cross are closing down around us, driven out by ever-increasing rental prices.
None of this is to knock Lutyens and Rubinstein – it’s quite a nice bookshop. It’s got a great name for a bookshop – if one you want to be careful to practice before announcing to anyone that you want to impress that you’re going there. It’s very Notting Hill (it’s even been featured in Vogue: http://www.vogue.co.uk/blogs/the-vogue-blog/articles/091026-lutyens-and-rubinstein-book-shop.aspx)– if it’s sticking it to the man it’s doing so with a delicately gloved finger. Pretty, exclusive cards sit alongside pretty, exclusive perfumes, and behind them there’s some pretty, less exclusive books.
Actually, the perfume is pretty cool – designed by a former cabbie – I imagine working in a small, enclosed space instilled his passion for pleasant-smelling people. The concept behind the scents is brilliant – based essentially on intelligent nostalgia, one of his scents, ‘In The Library’, is based upon the scent of his favourite book, another is meant to invoke a seaside holiday – which it does – although I wasn’t sure I wanted to go round smelling like the seaside. It’s nice at the seaside, but a bit fishy for everyday. I wanted to like ‘In The Library’ best, but ended up getting the delicious ‘Gypsy Caravan Tea’, which smells like a romanticised gypsy caravan – Patchouli, leather-bound books and a hint of wood smoke. It was expensive – as I said, very Notting Hill.
The book choice was nice. That was all, though, nice. There were lots of classic novels, some poetry, and some general interest, slightly off-the-beaten-track in a Christmas present sort of way ones. Very conservative selection. Very Notting Hill. Obviously, still better than Borders. Beautifully decorated and a nice atmosphere – tea and coffee served downstairs at a trendy and not very comfortable looking table – but doing the best they could with a very small space. The assistant was lovely and pretty, much like the products she was selling. She told the man who bought his books in front of me that the book he was buying was her favourite. I wondered if that was true. It was Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair so I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
In a nutshell, it’s great to see an independent bookstore flourishing. They’d had a run on a fantastic sounding book called Women Who Read Are Dangerous after a complimentary review of their shop in The Guardian. (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/29/borders-bookshops-independent-lutyens-rubinstein )Mind you, after the man had bought their only copy of The End of the Affair, I suppose there’d been a run on that too. Their extras – particularly the perfume, are a great touch, and whilst it would have been nice to see some books which weren’t ‘safe’ sellers and really out of the ordinary, a solid client base should allow them to experiment a bit more. I bought a couple of books that I hadn’t heard of before on the grounds they looked interesting – which is what being in a bookshop is all about. If only I hadn’t gone home and ordered Women Who Read Are Dangerous off Amazon afterwards.
Go to http://www.lutyensrubinstein.co.uk/ for more details.
Last Chance to See - Omer Fast's Nostalgia at the South London Gallery
Hooray! More video art for me to warble about.
Omer Fast's most famous work is CNN Concatenated (2002) for which he won the Bucksbawm award from New York's Whitney Museum. In CNN Concatenated, half of which you can see below (or above, stupid formatting...) Fast edited together shots of CNN newscasters to create a new scary-as-hell text. The film works like a heavily disjointed video essay. The seamless narratives of the groomed and impassive newscasters become distorted, and the distortions bring to light probing questions about the way in which we consume stories and newscasts. Ugh, every time I watch it it makes me start to feel a bit sick....
Nostalgia is a new three part video installation from Fast. It's showing at the South London Gallery until the end of the week, it won't make you feel sick (but it might make you cry) and if you read this before it's over then I would sincerely urge you to go!
The piece is installed in three adjoining rooms, each leading into the next. In the first room a single monitor shows a man demonstrating how to make an animal trap from bits of wood. Despite having both spoken instructions, and a visual demonstration, I still couldn't quite get my head around how this worked. Wouldn't it just fall over? how could you guarantee the animal would head towards this particular circle of ground? Why not just go to the shops? etc. etc. The voiceover described how the narrator (obviously better at woodwork - or hungrier- than I am) learned to make these traps from his father, who had briefly returned from fighting in an unnamed civil war. This bit was all very well, but a bit boring. What was cool though was the way the video looped, so you couldn't distinguish the beginning or the end. Just one long, looping instruction manual, until you decided to walk away.
In the second room was a piece being shown on two screens. A man whom I assumed to be narrator of the first film was interviewed by Omer Fast. The interviewer and the interviewee are shown on different screens, and occasionally whilst one person is speaking the other screen is blanked out. The interviewee, who is from Nigeria, comes across a lot better than Fast does, who seems a bit cocky and bossy. The interviewee is really cute and engaging, and super eager to be in Fast's film. The fact that he was once a child solder, forced to fight in a war that he didn't even understnd, doesn't seem to have got him down. Fast, on the other hand, is pretty morose.
I wasn't sure if the interview was scripted or not (the fact that the SLG newspaper contains a transcript of this section suggests that it is). Either way it's a wonderfully revealing piece of footage. In particular I enjoyed Fast's evident exasperation towards his subject. What's really clever is they way in which the dynamic that we see in the interview makes us reconsider the way in which we read the first film. Like in CNN... Fast makes us catch ourselves right in the middle of the act of consuming: just as we're swallowing the bait we catch sight of the metal hook buried within...
The final section of the piece is also the longest. Projected onto a cinema-size screen, the film depicts a dystopian alternate reality. Again, the pheasant trap recurs, but this time it's not described by an African asylum seeker but by a British man escaping from a war torn England. This bit isn't funny, and it looks a lot like a tv drama, possible starring people off the Bill. Having just seen the previous two films gives a wierd sort of 3D effect to the experience of watching the last one. It seems to be more true, by dint of having been more obviously fictionalised. Anway, in keeping with the majority of reviews on Cut out and Keep: I ended up in tears.
I loved the way that the new fictionalised narrative weaved in the tropes and ideas of the previous two films. Narrative gets a pretty rough time in cultural theory at the moment, but by combining fiction, interview and reconstruction, Fast managed to get the best of all possible worlds. Whilst as a whole the three-part piece interrogates the ethics of narrative, showing the sutures and ruptures from which even the most 'true' story is built, the same time on an individual level the final piece packs a powerful emotional punch. Ouch.
The show is wonderfully curated as well. I loved the darkness of the rooms and the interconnecting corridors. It felt like the placing of the films in three separate rooms had been designed to give us physical sense of the mental journey. Brilliantly, the only way out of the exhibition was to go back through the works to the first film at the entrance, emphasising the cyclical nature of the whole project.
If you live in London and can skip your Thursday or Friday off work then it's well worth heading to SLG for a look at an artist whose going to be big news in 2010. If not, keep your eyes peeled for future shows. I predict he'll be popping up all over the UK next year. If you get a chance to see his work, grab it. And bring the tissues. And a sick bag.
Omer Fast's most famous work is CNN Concatenated (2002) for which he won the Bucksbawm award from New York's Whitney Museum. In CNN Concatenated, half of which you can see below (or above, stupid formatting...) Fast edited together shots of CNN newscasters to create a new scary-as-hell text. The film works like a heavily disjointed video essay. The seamless narratives of the groomed and impassive newscasters become distorted, and the distortions bring to light probing questions about the way in which we consume stories and newscasts. Ugh, every time I watch it it makes me start to feel a bit sick....
Nostalgia is a new three part video installation from Fast. It's showing at the South London Gallery until the end of the week, it won't make you feel sick (but it might make you cry) and if you read this before it's over then I would sincerely urge you to go!
The piece is installed in three adjoining rooms, each leading into the next. In the first room a single monitor shows a man demonstrating how to make an animal trap from bits of wood. Despite having both spoken instructions, and a visual demonstration, I still couldn't quite get my head around how this worked. Wouldn't it just fall over? how could you guarantee the animal would head towards this particular circle of ground? Why not just go to the shops? etc. etc. The voiceover described how the narrator (obviously better at woodwork - or hungrier- than I am) learned to make these traps from his father, who had briefly returned from fighting in an unnamed civil war. This bit was all very well, but a bit boring. What was cool though was the way the video looped, so you couldn't distinguish the beginning or the end. Just one long, looping instruction manual, until you decided to walk away.
In the second room was a piece being shown on two screens. A man whom I assumed to be narrator of the first film was interviewed by Omer Fast. The interviewer and the interviewee are shown on different screens, and occasionally whilst one person is speaking the other screen is blanked out. The interviewee, who is from Nigeria, comes across a lot better than Fast does, who seems a bit cocky and bossy. The interviewee is really cute and engaging, and super eager to be in Fast's film. The fact that he was once a child solder, forced to fight in a war that he didn't even understnd, doesn't seem to have got him down. Fast, on the other hand, is pretty morose.
I wasn't sure if the interview was scripted or not (the fact that the SLG newspaper contains a transcript of this section suggests that it is). Either way it's a wonderfully revealing piece of footage. In particular I enjoyed Fast's evident exasperation towards his subject. What's really clever is they way in which the dynamic that we see in the interview makes us reconsider the way in which we read the first film. Like in CNN... Fast makes us catch ourselves right in the middle of the act of consuming: just as we're swallowing the bait we catch sight of the metal hook buried within...
The final section of the piece is also the longest. Projected onto a cinema-size screen, the film depicts a dystopian alternate reality. Again, the pheasant trap recurs, but this time it's not described by an African asylum seeker but by a British man escaping from a war torn England. This bit isn't funny, and it looks a lot like a tv drama, possible starring people off the Bill. Having just seen the previous two films gives a wierd sort of 3D effect to the experience of watching the last one. It seems to be more true, by dint of having been more obviously fictionalised. Anway, in keeping with the majority of reviews on Cut out and Keep: I ended up in tears.
I loved the way that the new fictionalised narrative weaved in the tropes and ideas of the previous two films. Narrative gets a pretty rough time in cultural theory at the moment, but by combining fiction, interview and reconstruction, Fast managed to get the best of all possible worlds. Whilst as a whole the three-part piece interrogates the ethics of narrative, showing the sutures and ruptures from which even the most 'true' story is built, the same time on an individual level the final piece packs a powerful emotional punch. Ouch.
The show is wonderfully curated as well. I loved the darkness of the rooms and the interconnecting corridors. It felt like the placing of the films in three separate rooms had been designed to give us physical sense of the mental journey. Brilliantly, the only way out of the exhibition was to go back through the works to the first film at the entrance, emphasising the cyclical nature of the whole project.
If you live in London and can skip your Thursday or Friday off work then it's well worth heading to SLG for a look at an artist whose going to be big news in 2010. If not, keep your eyes peeled for future shows. I predict he'll be popping up all over the UK next year. If you get a chance to see his work, grab it. And bring the tissues. And a sick bag.
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