On this 5th anniversary of 9/11, the question often heard is: "If Al Gore had been elected, would it have happened?" Having read and viewed many thoughtful commentaries on the incident and its motivations, aftermath and implications, it’s apparent that there are two implacably opposed schools of thought.
The first group advocates that these and other Al Qaeda-inspired attacks on Western interests, both before (USS Cole in Yemen, East African embassies etc) and since (Bali, Madrid, London) are a response to decades of unjust US Middle East policy – specifically its military support for Israel, its cosiness with the regime in Saudi Arabia, and of course the more recent debacle that is Iraq. This is repeatedly stated in Al Qaeda broadcasts and suicide bomber videos, and is self-evident to most commentators, including many senior conservative ex-US Administration figures such as Richard Clarke. Our own very sensible head of the AFP, Mick Keelty, voiced the bleeding obvious some years ago, but was quickly silenced by his political masters.
The second group takes the view that the attacks are because of “what we are, not what we’ve done”. This includes John Howard, the Bush Administration and (with rapidly diminishing conviction) the British Government. The fact that New Zealand, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and most other ‘Western’ countries have not been targeted by Al Qaeda, is dismissed by this group as yet another ‘inconvenient truth’. They argue that these countries are inevitably next in line – because of their civil freedoms, and their religious traditions. However five years of repetition of this mantra has not convinced the fearful population of the USA, and certainly not Australians. Ask anyone.
I think it's quite probable that if Al Gore had been inaugurated as the rightfully elected President in 2000, and the USA had not lurched so dramatically and suddenly towards the fundamentalist, NeoCon-dominated right, the attacks of 9/11 would not have happened, but of course "they did, Blanche, they did".
But consider the possibility, and the world we might now be living in. I don’t argue there would be no problems. There had been a previous attempt to blow up the WTC, and attacks on US interests (USS Cole etc) during the Clinton years. Post Soviet-occupied Afghanistan under a Pakistan-sponsored Taliban was a dangerous result of Western indifference. Then, as now, there were longstanding resentments of US policy in the Middle East – mainly focussed on perceived double standards regarding Israel/Palestine, but also historically in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia, linked to a widespread perception that US policy was motivated primarily by access to oil. Saudi Arabia has always been the real geopolitical prize in Al Qaeda’s assault on the US and its allies. For the US, apart from oil security, it represents an important client state and military base in the region. For devout Muslims, the presence of US troops and air bases in the Holy Land of the Prophet is a greater affront to Islam than even the recent invasion of Iraq. Before and since the Iraq invasion, several Al Qaeda attacks on Western enclaves in Saudi Arabia itself reinforce this view.
Despite these historical factors, American Middle East policy was improving under both the Bush Snr and Clinton Administrations, moving towards negotiated multilateral solutions, underpinned by political realism and an understanding of the underlying causes of discontent in the region. In 2000, an apparently viable peace process seemed to be taking hold in Palestine, the Intifada had died down, Israel had good and realistic leadership, dialogues had been opened up with Iran and Syria, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein was kept carefully in check, subject to UN weapons inspections and balanced by powerful neighbours.
There is every reason to believe that the highly intelligent Al Gore, advised by some of the best minds in the US, would have built on this legacy, understanding that America’s long-term interests in the region are best served by building consensus, trust and economic opportunity. There was the potential for events to develop very differently, and to usher in a new era of peace and stability in the Middle East. Even without 9/11 the military removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan may still have been ultimately required, but I have no no doubt that Gore would have ensured this happened under the multilateral auspices of the UN or even NATO (like the successful Kosovo campaign).
Into this delicate realpolitik stepped Bush, the most incompetent and ill-educated president in US history, the NeoCon warriors Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle et al, and the bizarre Condoleeza Rice, with her now discredited vision of a ‘Pax Americana’ – i.e. exporting democracy by force. Only poor old Colin Powell stood for reason and commonsense, and had the experience to back it up. Commentators at the time noted an immediate and extreme lurch to the right in American foreign policy (despite a non-existent mandate) – first felt in a sudden chill in relations with China, North Korea, Iran and Syria, but the mutterings about invading Iraq and finishing off what George Bush Snr had left unfinished, were already being heard well before 9/11. This from those who had helped create the monster under Ronald Reagan.
The result? The worst terrorist attack in history and the resulting ‘War on Terror’ – a misnomer if ever there was one. Terrorism is a method, a mindset – you cannot wage a war on it, or not an effective military one. The only way to combat terrorism is to address the motivations driving it, but that would mean acknowledging that it has causes beyond the “who we are, not what we’ve done” mantra. It would mean acknowledging the herd of elephants in the room.
And what has this ‘War on Terror’ delivered in five tears? Hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, unimaginable suffering and displacement, a civil war in Iraq, the resurgence of a fundamentalist Iran, the creation of a rallying point for millions of new jihadists, home grown suicide bombers in western cities, thousands of US soldiers returning in body bags, and Australians a target of terror for the first time in our history. To say nothing of the erosion of the civil liberties for which this so-called war is being fought.
You have to ask yourself whether this is playing out exactly as Osama bin Laden foresaw.
Maybe it’s no too late to elect Al Gore in 2008?
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Sydney:Voices from the Zone. Eora at SLNSW. London: Damien Hirst and Francis Bacon at Gagosian
Sydney:Biennale of Sydney 2006 – Zones of Contact
“I hear humanity amiss in a sad plethora of print” – Lawrence Ferlinghetti, c1965
The long-awaited, Charles Merewether-curated 15th Sydney Biennale has finally kicked off, with credit due to all concerned. Le Flaneur has seen about half of it so far, and there’s too much, too new, for a detailed critique, even if I wanted to provide one, which I don’t. - there will be megabytes of words written by others in the coming weeks.
Le Flaneur’s overwhelming impression, to paraphrase Ferlinghetti, is “I hear humanity amiss in a sad plethora of video art and installations about dislocation, dystrophy and despair”.
Of course, there are some extraordinary standouts – the above is more a comment on Biennale-land, internationally, and I suppose I should be at the symposiums discussing the topic, instead of blogging about it, but … somehow the high seriousness of it all becomes relentless and headachy. Loose Projects (above Mori in Day Street), opened on Thursday with a group show called Cones of Zontact – I have to confess to not having made it there yet, but I’m sure it will be interesting, as will safARI, a loose collection of ARIs currently operating as a sort of fringe event.
Back to the main event though, which is pretty fringey and edgy in its own right, being overwhelmingly made up of artists from the Second and Third Worlds, with a major component from the Middle East and West Asia – not often seen here.
The standout, on scale alone, is obviously the majestic Anthony Gormley installation of 150,000 fired clay figures at Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay (above). Adding a powerful dimension of meaning is the frieze (around the other half of the top floor) of close-ups of hundreds of faces – the Chinese villagers who made the figures with Gormley – with next to each face a photo of a figurine made by that person – all in black and white. I spent a long time looking at these mainly thoughtful, serious and beautifully photographed faces, many of them children, and went away profoundly moved by the whole thing.
Other standouts so far:
• Meschac Ghaba’s (Benin) giant kids’ game Le Maison (MCA)
• Brett Graham and Rachael Rakema’s (NZ) beautiful ceiling installation UFOB (MCA)
• Tawatchai Puntusawasdi’s (Thailand) slate ‘drawing’ series Dwelling (MCA)
• Milenko Pravacki’s (Yugloslava>Singapore) huge mixed media paintings (MCA)
• Navjot Altaf’s (India) video/DVD installation with floor mirrors Lacuna in Testimony #1 (MCA)
• Mamma Anderson’s (USA) beautiful and mysterious paintings (AGNSW)
• John Reynolds’ (NZ) installation in the reception area at AGNSW
• Alfredo Juan Aquilizan & Maria Isabel Guadinez- Aquilizan’s (Phillipines) poignant installation of piles of migrant workers meagre belongings In Transit (Ivan Dougherty Gallery)
This last piece has strong superficial similarities with Claire Healey and Sean Cordeiro’s work, showing at GBK Danks Street, but in my view has a ‘ritualised’ power that is lacking in the slightly-too-clever work of Healey and Cordeiro. Perhaps because I felt the genuine poignancy of these poor collections of things that one wouldn’t want – actual people’s things, used and even cherished, neatly arranged in pristine cubes, in a pristine ‘white cube’ – orderly, quiet, sanctified as art… as ironic as it gets.
Finally, what to say about the Biennale Artists’ party at Pier 2/3? For and event where invites were supposedly like hen’s teeth, every art student and ligger in Sydney (including Le Flaneur) seemed to be there – to the event’s advantage – scarved and starved, devouring the tottering boards of thin-crust pizza and freshly carved slabs of ham like there was no (meal) tomorrow. Le Flaneur thought the setting, with Adrian Paci’s giant chandelier as a spectacular centrepiece, and the sight and sound of thousands of panting young artists high on art and the pospect of hot sex, was how Sydney should be every week. The only gripe heard was the fact that there was a paying bar, and prices were far from art-student budgets, with bottled beer and nasty wine at $7.
More Biennale, and especially the fringe, next week.
Sydney: State Library of NSWEora: Mapping Aboriginal Sydney
Left: Nouvelle - Hollande. 'Gnoung-a- gnoung-a, mour-re-mour-ga' (dit Collins.) by Barthelemy Roger (1767-1841) after Nicolas-Martin Petit (1777-1804), Engraving, from 'Voyage de découvertes aux terres Australes' by François Péron, 1811.
Launched on the same night as the Biennale, with a VERY different crowd, is this beautifully curated (by Ace Bourke and Keith Vincent Smith) and designed historical survey of documents, maps and images recording the early interaction between the Sydney basin’s original Eeora clans, and the colonists.
There is virtually no ‘documentation’ from the Eora side, so the show is very largely dependent on colonial documents, and the thankfully enlightened attitudes of a series of colonial governors – Phillip, King, Bourke et al, and the fact that they thought it worthwhile to make a visual and verbal record of the culture of the Eora. And there are of course some very vivid and well-known Eora figures – Bennelong, Bunjery and their families, whose ‘assimilation’ (or not) is an integral part of the story.
I agree with Marie Bashir, who opened the exhibition – every Australian child and adult should try to see the show, which is on for several months, and perhaps come away knowing a few Eora words.
London: Damien Hirst and Francis Bacon at Gagosian Gallery
Opens June 20 2006
Left: © Damien Hirst 'A Thousand Years' (installation view), 1990
Steel, glass, flies, maggots, MDF, insect-o-cutor, cow's head, sugar, water
84 x 168 x 84 inches (213 x 427 x 213 cm)
Courtesy the artist and White Cube, London
It hasn’t escaped LF's notice that these two – one living, one dead, both equally famous – are opening at Gagosian’s London gallery at the same time, on June 20. I also read today that Damien Hirst is now Britain’s richest artist, with a worth of $100 million or more.
Gigabytes have been written about Hirst, much of it hostile, and his firmly ironic post-modern grasp of the zeitgeist (like Jeff Koons’) probably does annoy a lot of people, but there is no denying that he is one of the most profound artists working today – the natural successor to Joseph Beuys dare I suggest? Featured in the London show will be the seminal 1990 vitrine One Thousand Years, you know the one – decaying cows head, insects, insect-o-cutor. Like Beuys, Hirst brings “the powers that exist in the word” (Beuys) into the gallery and the museum without walls, in a horrific and disturbing meditation on mortality, life-cycles, time, and the organic nature of the living world. This work was apparently seen and admired by Francis Bacon in his final days, and Hirst also acknowledges his debt to Bacon, with his own Triptychs (to complement Bacon’s), including a new work The Tranquility of Solitude (For George Dyer. Sounds like a must-see, or at least a ‘must talk-about’ for the chattering classes.
A tout a l’heure.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Brown and Green at Grantpirrie, Destiny Deacon at RosOxley, Souliere at G&A, Capricornia at Belvoir
Sydney
Lyndell Brown and Charles Green, GrantPirrie
Confidently riding the ‘new realism’ (my sloppy term) surge in painting so prevalent among younger Australian artists are this somewhat older duo (PhDs and academics both), who make large detailed and closely-worked oil paintings which are not quite trompe-l’oeil enough to categorise as hyper-realism, but are skillful enough to render apparently collaged elements in paint. Such commentary on different types of picture-space, common to so much of this ‘genre’, are not in themselves revelatory – some would say just another manifestation of the eternal preoccupation with ‘questioning the act of painting”. However the subject matter, among it a whole series of small canvasses depicting different views of Robert Smithson’s seminal earthwork ‘Spiral Jetty’, an elderly Aboriginal woman holding a white baby, and other repreated motifs of no doubt personal significance, burrow down to new layers of possible meaning in a way which I think transcends and extends the ‘plasticity’ of the medium. Though stylistically and conceptually somewhat different, the work evokes for me Tasmanian James Morrison’s remarkable and obsessively painted friezes which seem to narrate both personal and cosmic stories in minituarised ‘history’ or ‘narrative’ paintings that one could well imagine blown up to giant murals, Diego Rivera style.
Rolande Souliere: G&A Studios
G&A is arelatively new ARI, and generally interesting, usually mounting either group or 2-3-person shows across their two large rooms. I was quite taken with Rolande Souliere’s confident intsllations, particularly Materality#2, conisiting of a series of large wall-mounted cylindrical shapes or vessels, with knitted wool insides and and exquisite layering of bird feathers (different kinds on each vessel) on the outside. It didn’t feel necessary to know what they mean – they have an obsessively crafted, ‘ritualised’ quality that had me going back to gaze at them again before leaving. Watch out for Souliere at an ‘emergent’ show at a public gallery soon.
Hany Armonius: Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
I’m a fan of Armonius’ ironic and often hilarious pieces, but this show of 3 or 4 small installations/tableaus/machines feels perfunctory and all wrong in the space. Installations need to have a transformative presence that exceed the mere space they occupy, and though the discared sheets of paper from one of the works appear to do this, it is all quite visually dead somehow, and fails to ignite or charge the space with any added resonance or poetics. The same works would be very different no doubt in their own lit and more isolated context. Plonking them all in a white cube, sculpture-style, may be the ironic intention, but the show doesn’t transcend the sum of its (amusing) parts.
Destiny Deacon: Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
Destiny rides again, with a new show of recent photomedia works titled Totemistical – large prints blown up from snapshots and/or polaroids, defiantly low-resolution and fuzzy, depicting a series of bizarre miniature tableaus often involving dolls, children’s toys, kitsch souvenirs and household items. These are delightfully colourful, even lurid, as if the saturation knob has been turned right up, and feature the usual deadpan and ironic titles, Continuing her ‘documentary’ strand (with Virginia Fraser), featuring the dressing-ups and antics to camera of young Indigenous children within her large extended family, is the short DVD Shark Dreams which, knowing the children a little over the years, I found fascinating.
Capricornia: Belvoir Street Theatre
To Belvoir on Cleveland (the soul-less Seymour Centre) for Louis Nowra’s Capricornia, adapted 2 decades ago from the famous Xavier Herbert novel of class, race and tragedy in a semi mythical top-end town of Port Zodiac (Darwin). Though long, Wesley Enoch’s simple staging keeps the narrative moving along at a good pace, and good acting, particularly from Luke Carroll as the the main protagonist (the mixed-race Norman Shillingworth) carries it the rest of the way home. Ursula Yovich as the feisty mission-girl ‘Tokkie’ is also a stand-out. There aren’t too many plays where Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky rubs shoulders with a traditional Indigenous language, and I liked the non-didactic way in which numerous themes very relevant to Australia now are woven together in a piece of good storytelling.
Lyndell Brown and Charles Green, GrantPirrie
Confidently riding the ‘new realism’ (my sloppy term) surge in painting so prevalent among younger Australian artists are this somewhat older duo (PhDs and academics both), who make large detailed and closely-worked oil paintings which are not quite trompe-l’oeil enough to categorise as hyper-realism, but are skillful enough to render apparently collaged elements in paint. Such commentary on different types of picture-space, common to so much of this ‘genre’, are not in themselves revelatory – some would say just another manifestation of the eternal preoccupation with ‘questioning the act of painting”. However the subject matter, among it a whole series of small canvasses depicting different views of Robert Smithson’s seminal earthwork ‘Spiral Jetty’, an elderly Aboriginal woman holding a white baby, and other repreated motifs of no doubt personal significance, burrow down to new layers of possible meaning in a way which I think transcends and extends the ‘plasticity’ of the medium. Though stylistically and conceptually somewhat different, the work evokes for me Tasmanian James Morrison’s remarkable and obsessively painted friezes which seem to narrate both personal and cosmic stories in minituarised ‘history’ or ‘narrative’ paintings that one could well imagine blown up to giant murals, Diego Rivera style.
Rolande Souliere: G&A Studios
G&A is arelatively new ARI, and generally interesting, usually mounting either group or 2-3-person shows across their two large rooms. I was quite taken with Rolande Souliere’s confident intsllations, particularly Materality#2, conisiting of a series of large wall-mounted cylindrical shapes or vessels, with knitted wool insides and and exquisite layering of bird feathers (different kinds on each vessel) on the outside. It didn’t feel necessary to know what they mean – they have an obsessively crafted, ‘ritualised’ quality that had me going back to gaze at them again before leaving. Watch out for Souliere at an ‘emergent’ show at a public gallery soon.
Hany Armonius: Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
I’m a fan of Armonius’ ironic and often hilarious pieces, but this show of 3 or 4 small installations/tableaus/machines feels perfunctory and all wrong in the space. Installations need to have a transformative presence that exceed the mere space they occupy, and though the discared sheets of paper from one of the works appear to do this, it is all quite visually dead somehow, and fails to ignite or charge the space with any added resonance or poetics. The same works would be very different no doubt in their own lit and more isolated context. Plonking them all in a white cube, sculpture-style, may be the ironic intention, but the show doesn’t transcend the sum of its (amusing) parts.
Destiny Deacon: Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
Destiny rides again, with a new show of recent photomedia works titled Totemistical – large prints blown up from snapshots and/or polaroids, defiantly low-resolution and fuzzy, depicting a series of bizarre miniature tableaus often involving dolls, children’s toys, kitsch souvenirs and household items. These are delightfully colourful, even lurid, as if the saturation knob has been turned right up, and feature the usual deadpan and ironic titles, Continuing her ‘documentary’ strand (with Virginia Fraser), featuring the dressing-ups and antics to camera of young Indigenous children within her large extended family, is the short DVD Shark Dreams which, knowing the children a little over the years, I found fascinating.
Capricornia: Belvoir Street Theatre
To Belvoir on Cleveland (the soul-less Seymour Centre) for Louis Nowra’s Capricornia, adapted 2 decades ago from the famous Xavier Herbert novel of class, race and tragedy in a semi mythical top-end town of Port Zodiac (Darwin). Though long, Wesley Enoch’s simple staging keeps the narrative moving along at a good pace, and good acting, particularly from Luke Carroll as the the main protagonist (the mixed-race Norman Shillingworth) carries it the rest of the way home. Ursula Yovich as the feisty mission-girl ‘Tokkie’ is also a stand-out. There aren’t too many plays where Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky rubs shoulders with a traditional Indigenous language, and I liked the non-didactic way in which numerous themes very relevant to Australia now are woven together in a piece of good storytelling.
Melbourne: Clinton Nain 'a e i o u', Lorraine Conelly-Northey at the NGV
Melbourne:
Clinton Nain: Nellie Castan Gallery
Contemporary Commonwealth, LandMarks: NGV Australia, Federation Square
I saw the almost completed work in Clinton Nain’s studio a few weeks ago for his just-opened show 'a e i o u' at Nellie Castan Gallery, and was once again blown away by the way this artitst’s work continues to evolve. I think this will be seen as his most powerful and resolved show to date, but it is very much a progression from the multiple themes and metaphorical use of materials for which he is well known. The recurrent use of words in his work moves centre stage as he comments on the 'tyranny of English’ (my expression), as colonial langauge, and also as an arbitrary sign system, mindset and coloniser of thought processes. Nain's linguistic references are compemented by his own recurrent language of personal symbols - the cross, the 'mission' dress, the target, the winding road – and metaphorically through his chosen materials – such as bleach, bitumen and PVA “house paint” in Aussie 'heritage colours’. This is an important exhibition. For a full and excellent review by Robert Nelson go to The Age : http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-reviews/clinton-nain-a-e-i-o-u/2006/05/31/1148956385544.html
Nain has a large bitumen on canvas work titled Erub has a bitumen road now in LandMarks, an Indigenous show on a theme of (obviously) relatonship to the land. The show is curated by Judith Ryan, and well worth seeing, but could be much better – both hung and conceived. The relatively few contemporary ‘urban’ works (for instance Julie Gough’s amusing Indigenous heads as soaps-on-ropes) seem somehow ‘tacked on’ to the show, and not very convincingly. Standout for me was a vitrine of tiny woven baskets in many different materials by Lorraine Conelly-Northey, who also has a large, whole-room installation upstairs at Contemporary Commonwealth which is a must-see if you are in Melbourne, with a huge and cutting-edge screen-based component at ACMI next door. Conelly-Northey exhibits a fascination with transformation of materials and meaning, and while her work is coming from an Indigenous tradition, it would not be out of place in Catalan Spain, that land of blood and rusted, twisted iron. Beautiful stuff. Both shows at NGV are on for just a few more weeks (June 25).
Clinton Nain: Nellie Castan Gallery
Contemporary Commonwealth, LandMarks: NGV Australia, Federation Square
I saw the almost completed work in Clinton Nain’s studio a few weeks ago for his just-opened show 'a e i o u' at Nellie Castan Gallery, and was once again blown away by the way this artitst’s work continues to evolve. I think this will be seen as his most powerful and resolved show to date, but it is very much a progression from the multiple themes and metaphorical use of materials for which he is well known. The recurrent use of words in his work moves centre stage as he comments on the 'tyranny of English’ (my expression), as colonial langauge, and also as an arbitrary sign system, mindset and coloniser of thought processes. Nain's linguistic references are compemented by his own recurrent language of personal symbols - the cross, the 'mission' dress, the target, the winding road – and metaphorically through his chosen materials – such as bleach, bitumen and PVA “house paint” in Aussie 'heritage colours’. This is an important exhibition. For a full and excellent review by Robert Nelson go to The Age : http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-reviews/clinton-nain-a-e-i-o-u/2006/05/31/1148956385544.html
Nain has a large bitumen on canvas work titled Erub has a bitumen road now in LandMarks, an Indigenous show on a theme of (obviously) relatonship to the land. The show is curated by Judith Ryan, and well worth seeing, but could be much better – both hung and conceived. The relatively few contemporary ‘urban’ works (for instance Julie Gough’s amusing Indigenous heads as soaps-on-ropes) seem somehow ‘tacked on’ to the show, and not very convincingly. Standout for me was a vitrine of tiny woven baskets in many different materials by Lorraine Conelly-Northey, who also has a large, whole-room installation upstairs at Contemporary Commonwealth which is a must-see if you are in Melbourne, with a huge and cutting-edge screen-based component at ACMI next door. Conelly-Northey exhibits a fascination with transformation of materials and meaning, and while her work is coming from an Indigenous tradition, it would not be out of place in Catalan Spain, that land of blood and rusted, twisted iron. Beautiful stuff. Both shows at NGV are on for just a few more weeks (June 25).
Sunday, April 30, 2006
The History Boys on Broadway, Sherman at Twenty, Tsotsi on film
Welcome back dear readers (all nine of you), from the Easter Break. Hope it was refreshing.
After its critically-acclaimed but low-key run at The Sydney theatre, the NT's (National Theatre, London) production of Alan Bennett's deliciously wordy play, The History Boys, opened at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York last week, to lavish praise from the serious critics. John Lahr in the New Yorker starts his review by quoting from the play:
"“How do I define history?” asks one of the grammar-school highfliers cramming for the Oxbridge exams, "It's just one fucking thing after another."
This is as good way as any to evoke the whiplash humour and biting ironies of a play that is two and half hours long, but never for an instant lets you feel bored. As in Sydney, this is the original, brilliant London cast and Richard Griffiths excels. All the schoolboys are excellent, with standouts being Jamie Parker (Scripps), Samuel Barnett (Posner) and Dominic Cooper as the much admired class spunk, Dakin. The design and stagecraft is the best, simplest and most theatrically inventive I have seen for many a year. Five big ones - see it if you can.
At the movies, the best thing I've seen lately is the South African feature Tsotsi, which is on worldwide arthouse release, having taken the Best Foreign Picture Oscar, to the obvious astonishment (at the ceremony) of its director, Gavin Hood. Even though the premise (bad boy steals car with baby on board and discovers his humanity) is not that original, there is something uncompromisingly honest and believable about the world evoked in this film, which raises this simple redemption story above mere sentimentality, although there is plenty of sentiment, to paraphrase Somerset-Maugham. The movie does not try to be 'International', and most of the dialogue is in 'Sowetospeak' (my term because I can't remember what it's called), an amalgam of Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa, English, Afrikaans and several other languages. The cast are 'unglamorous' in every way. It is this truthfulness to its own vernacular which perversely gives the film its universality. South African film comes of age.
To Sherman Galleries last week for the launch of their impressive book TWENTY, celebrating 20 years in the game. Interesting to see the usual power crowd of black (or tweed)-clad movers and shakers supplanted for the night by black (or denim)-clad artists and their artwives, arthusbands, parents and children - something of a family affair. Gene Sherman gave an enthusiastic and endearingly gauche speech, and Charles Merewether gave a robust and rather rigorous one. Everyone admired the Hari Ho photographs (of each other) on the walls with suitably ironic commentary, and a good time was had by all. The book is excellent, and will be seen as an important milestone in the internationalisation of the Sydney commercial gallery scene. It sets a new, high benchmark for gallery publishing and shows all the evidence of having been properly resourced - a very classy piece of print indeed. Can it be long before we see something along the same lines from Roslyn Oxley? Only better, of course.
A tout a l'heure.
After its critically-acclaimed but low-key run at The Sydney theatre, the NT's (National Theatre, London) production of Alan Bennett's deliciously wordy play, The History Boys, opened at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York last week, to lavish praise from the serious critics. John Lahr in the New Yorker starts his review by quoting from the play:
"“How do I define history?” asks one of the grammar-school highfliers cramming for the Oxbridge exams, "It's just one fucking thing after another."
This is as good way as any to evoke the whiplash humour and biting ironies of a play that is two and half hours long, but never for an instant lets you feel bored. As in Sydney, this is the original, brilliant London cast and Richard Griffiths excels. All the schoolboys are excellent, with standouts being Jamie Parker (Scripps), Samuel Barnett (Posner) and Dominic Cooper as the much admired class spunk, Dakin. The design and stagecraft is the best, simplest and most theatrically inventive I have seen for many a year. Five big ones - see it if you can.
At the movies, the best thing I've seen lately is the South African feature Tsotsi, which is on worldwide arthouse release, having taken the Best Foreign Picture Oscar, to the obvious astonishment (at the ceremony) of its director, Gavin Hood. Even though the premise (bad boy steals car with baby on board and discovers his humanity) is not that original, there is something uncompromisingly honest and believable about the world evoked in this film, which raises this simple redemption story above mere sentimentality, although there is plenty of sentiment, to paraphrase Somerset-Maugham. The movie does not try to be 'International', and most of the dialogue is in 'Sowetospeak' (my term because I can't remember what it's called), an amalgam of Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa, English, Afrikaans and several other languages. The cast are 'unglamorous' in every way. It is this truthfulness to its own vernacular which perversely gives the film its universality. South African film comes of age.
To Sherman Galleries last week for the launch of their impressive book TWENTY, celebrating 20 years in the game. Interesting to see the usual power crowd of black (or tweed)-clad movers and shakers supplanted for the night by black (or denim)-clad artists and their artwives, arthusbands, parents and children - something of a family affair. Gene Sherman gave an enthusiastic and endearingly gauche speech, and Charles Merewether gave a robust and rather rigorous one. Everyone admired the Hari Ho photographs (of each other) on the walls with suitably ironic commentary, and a good time was had by all. The book is excellent, and will be seen as an important milestone in the internationalisation of the Sydney commercial gallery scene. It sets a new, high benchmark for gallery publishing and shows all the evidence of having been properly resourced - a very classy piece of print indeed. Can it be long before we see something along the same lines from Roslyn Oxley? Only better, of course.
A tout a l'heure.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Faulty Memories, the Price of Freedom, V for Vendetta
A busy week past, but not (for me) a particularly arty one. Most notable has been the media spectacle of our Foreign Minister (Alexander Downer) and Prime Minister (John Howard) appearing before the 'Oil for Food' enquiry into kickbacks of nearly $300 million paid by AWB (Australian Wheat Board) to Saddam Hussein's regime, prior to the invasion.
This has been so exhaustively written about that I hesitate to add to the verbiage. Suffice to say that even the most ardent supporters of our current leaders are disbelieving and somewhat ashamed at the mass breakout of amnesia surrounding this disgraceful matter. I am looking forward to reading the spin that right-of-centre columnists such a Gerard Henderson will put on events next week, but it's interesting that even 'New Right' commentators such as Michael Duffy are starting to (albeit rather gently) question the integrity of the Government, see On with the show for the artful dodgers (SMH 14/4/06).
There is perhaps the first whiff of an important change in the political air, worth noting. Could we even be witnessing the moment when the worm turns? The 'Kids Overboard' affair, Tampa, phantom Iraqi WMDs... in all these familiar cases Ministers and the PM claimed not to have been properly informed by their underlings, and got away with it. They may have been somewhat diminished in the eyes of the Australian people, but election results consistently demonstrated that if people thought they were being lied to, they didn't really care, or that good economic management and low mortgage rates were more important. Or perhaps the 'War on terror' has meant that standards of accountability and probity need not be so exacting? We have reached a point I believe, long passed in the UK and the USA, where the Australian populace in general, in so far as it cares at all, now believes that it is routinely lied to. The Aussie way is to shrug and say "Well, they're pollies, what do you expect?"
In response, I quote Wendell Phillips:
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." (1852)
Benjamin Franklin:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (1759)
And best of all, James Madison (4th President of the United States): "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." (1788)
Which leads nicely to the newly released movie V for Vendetta. OK, so its a 'Hollywood' movie based on a graphic novel, with some major script flaws, but remarkably timely for all that. Without going into full detail about the Britain it depicts, set in the near future, the important factor is that does not imagine an Orwellian world where people know they are oppressed (yet), but rather one not unlike the present, where the abdication of freedoms is still actively in progress. In this world a combination of nationalist infotainment (think of Bill O'Reilly on US Fox News and it's not so far fetched) and constant, media-manipulated fear of 'terrorists', disease outbreaks, 'degenerates' and so on, keeps the population willingly in thrall to a 'Big Brother' type Chancellor, played with suitable menace by John Hurt. While people in pubs and at home around the TV set mutter "Rubbish... fuckin' liar", they are sufficiently cowed by fear not to do anything. NOT fear of the Government security apparatus per se, but of the bogies that government and a compliant media constantly conjure up. Sound familiar? Of course, all this changes when a character called 'V' (Hugo Weaving), wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, arrives on the scene. All the performances are excellent, and Natalie Portman is, as always, mesmerising. Three and a half stars.
Still on movies, I watched on DVD the underrated A Home At The End Of The World based on Michael Cunningham's book, which I've never read, but may do after seeing this film. Believable performances from Colin Farrell, Dallas Roberts, Sissy Spacek and Robin Wright Penn - it slipped below my radar on release, and I don't recall anyone commenting on it. Given that the film deals with a complex ménage-a-trois between a gay man, a bisexual man, a heterosexual woman and 'their' child, and throw in a dope-smoking mother and HIV, I found myself wondering what all the fuss over Brokeback Mountain was about. This isn't quite as epic or as well directed, but Colin Farrell is as much a straight leading man as 'Heath'n Jake', and the story presents what is in many ways a more contentious issue in a non-judgmental way - whether two men, a woman and a child can be a family. Four stars from me. Margaret?
This has been so exhaustively written about that I hesitate to add to the verbiage. Suffice to say that even the most ardent supporters of our current leaders are disbelieving and somewhat ashamed at the mass breakout of amnesia surrounding this disgraceful matter. I am looking forward to reading the spin that right-of-centre columnists such a Gerard Henderson will put on events next week, but it's interesting that even 'New Right' commentators such as Michael Duffy are starting to (albeit rather gently) question the integrity of the Government, see On with the show for the artful dodgers (SMH 14/4/06).
There is perhaps the first whiff of an important change in the political air, worth noting. Could we even be witnessing the moment when the worm turns? The 'Kids Overboard' affair, Tampa, phantom Iraqi WMDs... in all these familiar cases Ministers and the PM claimed not to have been properly informed by their underlings, and got away with it. They may have been somewhat diminished in the eyes of the Australian people, but election results consistently demonstrated that if people thought they were being lied to, they didn't really care, or that good economic management and low mortgage rates were more important. Or perhaps the 'War on terror' has meant that standards of accountability and probity need not be so exacting? We have reached a point I believe, long passed in the UK and the USA, where the Australian populace in general, in so far as it cares at all, now believes that it is routinely lied to. The Aussie way is to shrug and say "Well, they're pollies, what do you expect?"
In response, I quote Wendell Phillips:
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." (1852)
Benjamin Franklin:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (1759)
And best of all, James Madison (4th President of the United States): "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." (1788)
Which leads nicely to the newly released movie V for Vendetta. OK, so its a 'Hollywood' movie based on a graphic novel, with some major script flaws, but remarkably timely for all that. Without going into full detail about the Britain it depicts, set in the near future, the important factor is that does not imagine an Orwellian world where people know they are oppressed (yet), but rather one not unlike the present, where the abdication of freedoms is still actively in progress. In this world a combination of nationalist infotainment (think of Bill O'Reilly on US Fox News and it's not so far fetched) and constant, media-manipulated fear of 'terrorists', disease outbreaks, 'degenerates' and so on, keeps the population willingly in thrall to a 'Big Brother' type Chancellor, played with suitable menace by John Hurt. While people in pubs and at home around the TV set mutter "Rubbish... fuckin' liar", they are sufficiently cowed by fear not to do anything. NOT fear of the Government security apparatus per se, but of the bogies that government and a compliant media constantly conjure up. Sound familiar? Of course, all this changes when a character called 'V' (Hugo Weaving), wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, arrives on the scene. All the performances are excellent, and Natalie Portman is, as always, mesmerising. Three and a half stars.
Still on movies, I watched on DVD the underrated A Home At The End Of The World based on Michael Cunningham's book, which I've never read, but may do after seeing this film. Believable performances from Colin Farrell, Dallas Roberts, Sissy Spacek and Robin Wright Penn - it slipped below my radar on release, and I don't recall anyone commenting on it. Given that the film deals with a complex ménage-a-trois between a gay man, a bisexual man, a heterosexual woman and 'their' child, and throw in a dope-smoking mother and HIV, I found myself wondering what all the fuss over Brokeback Mountain was about. This isn't quite as epic or as well directed, but Colin Farrell is as much a straight leading man as 'Heath'n Jake', and the story presents what is in many ways a more contentious issue in a non-judgmental way - whether two men, a woman and a child can be a family. Four stars from me. Margaret?
Sunday, April 09, 2006
British Alchemy, New Design at Object, Norrie at Mori, Judy Watson at GrantPirrie, Musee du Quai Branly
Tuesday 4 saw the opening of Great Brits - The New Alchemists at the UTS Gallery, another exhibition showcasing emerging British talent, curated by London's Design Museum with Paul Smith, originally hosted by "Sir Paul" at the Milan Salone Internazionale del Mobile last year, with much fanfare, and now being toured by the British Council. According to the press release the six designers "share a passion for experimentation with new materials and manufacturing technologies and for exploring the transformative - or alchemical - possibilities of design. Great Brits explores the development of a raw, surreal design aesthetic that transforms base objects or materials and commonplace typologies in unexpected ways." The standout work in a somewhat underwhelming show are Julia Lohmann's "dismembered cow carcass lounges" (my description), and Mathias Megyeri's amusing security railings. One influential Australian design thinker has commented (anonymously alas) that this is "product design trying to be gallery art and succeeding in being a self-indulgent wank". I don't entirely agree, however if one views product design as a discipline aimed at industrial production, then the one-off experimental nature if some of this work could be a problem.
It's interesting to compare Great Brits - The New Alchemists with Object Gallery's rather more sedate annual New Design 2006 show. According to the press release: "This popular exhibition introduces the most outstanding design graduates in the country, working across product design, textiles, fashion, ceramics, glass and furniture." All the work shown is excellent as you'd expect, but in comparison to the messy, noisy, experimental Brits, it seems timid, well-mannered, a little conservative. A subjective opinion of course, and not a crticisism of the quality of the work. Standout for me is Janice Vitkovsky's (ANU) award-winning cast glass piece Moment when the darkness, 2006. Also well worth a look is Poetica in the Project Space upstairs.
Wednesday 5, to Mori Gallery for Susan Norrie's haunting new 'Work in progress 2005/6'. This silent, black and white film, projected really huge on one wall of the main space, begins with an image of a nuclear explosion, and progresses to an almost elegiac meditation in and around the Aboriginal tent Embassy in Canberra. A restless, roaming camera pans and glides, revealing flapping canvas, drifting smoke, distant figures, the stark white architecture of the old parliament buildings. The artist's statement talks of the concept of a "Black Mist", which are the words apparently used by Aborgines to describe the fallout from the British nuclear tests at Maralinga in the 50s and 60s. Norrie's work stands out from so much humdrum screen-based work, although I find it hard to articulate just what is so special about it. For me her pieces have the quality of almost dream-like 'nocturnes', saturated with sadness and melancholy, a kind of grieving for the human condition.
Thursday 6 to GrantPirrie for the new Judy Watson show - impressive works, though rather decorative for my austere taste in painting. However Judy Watson's curved, etched zinc wall at the Melbourne Museum is my absolute number 1 favourite piece of environmental art in Australia, and she is one of the 8 Indigenous artists whose work will be incorporated into the fabric of the 'Rue de l'Université building', one of the four buldings that make up the of the soon-to-be opened Musée du Quai Branly (MQB) in Paris, designed by Jean Nouvel. The other artists are Gulumbu Yunupingu, John Mawurndjul, Paddy Bedford, Lena Nyadbi, Ningura Napurrula, Tommy Watson and the late Michael Riley.
More on MQB soon.
It's interesting to compare Great Brits - The New Alchemists with Object Gallery's rather more sedate annual New Design 2006 show. According to the press release: "This popular exhibition introduces the most outstanding design graduates in the country, working across product design, textiles, fashion, ceramics, glass and furniture." All the work shown is excellent as you'd expect, but in comparison to the messy, noisy, experimental Brits, it seems timid, well-mannered, a little conservative. A subjective opinion of course, and not a crticisism of the quality of the work. Standout for me is Janice Vitkovsky's (ANU) award-winning cast glass piece Moment when the darkness, 2006. Also well worth a look is Poetica in the Project Space upstairs.
Wednesday 5, to Mori Gallery for Susan Norrie's haunting new 'Work in progress 2005/6'. This silent, black and white film, projected really huge on one wall of the main space, begins with an image of a nuclear explosion, and progresses to an almost elegiac meditation in and around the Aboriginal tent Embassy in Canberra. A restless, roaming camera pans and glides, revealing flapping canvas, drifting smoke, distant figures, the stark white architecture of the old parliament buildings. The artist's statement talks of the concept of a "Black Mist", which are the words apparently used by Aborgines to describe the fallout from the British nuclear tests at Maralinga in the 50s and 60s. Norrie's work stands out from so much humdrum screen-based work, although I find it hard to articulate just what is so special about it. For me her pieces have the quality of almost dream-like 'nocturnes', saturated with sadness and melancholy, a kind of grieving for the human condition.
Thursday 6 to GrantPirrie for the new Judy Watson show - impressive works, though rather decorative for my austere taste in painting. However Judy Watson's curved, etched zinc wall at the Melbourne Museum is my absolute number 1 favourite piece of environmental art in Australia, and she is one of the 8 Indigenous artists whose work will be incorporated into the fabric of the 'Rue de l'Université building', one of the four buldings that make up the of the soon-to-be opened Musée du Quai Branly (MQB) in Paris, designed by Jean Nouvel. The other artists are Gulumbu Yunupingu, John Mawurndjul, Paddy Bedford, Lena Nyadbi, Ningura Napurrula, Tommy Watson and the late Michael Riley.
More on MQB soon.
Iraq Update: 'Blood for Oil'
My eagle-eyed brother has drawn my attention to an excellent article in The London Review of Books: 'Blood for Oil?' in response to the post Condoleeza Rice's Pax Americana of March 18, 2006 (see archive).
The Blood for Oil? article, by a group of writers and activists collectively called Retort, considers whether oil was the reason for the invasion of Iraq. Their conclusion, that oil is only a minor factor, is similar to my own thesis, but much better argued. It's long, but is a veritable history lesson in US and Western policy in the Middle East since the 1920s, and a devastating look at the labyrinthine US oil/military/industrial/ construction/banking/ political complex. Here's a sampler question to whet your appetite (courtesy of LRB and the authors, see below):
"The first Gulf War had been a struggle over oil supplies. Saddam was furious that Kuwait and UAE, under US pressure, were producing over quota to keep prices low. His obvious oil-profits motive elicited widespread condemnation in the Arab world and provided a broad multilateral basis for the American military response. What was on offer to the industry in 2003, on the other hand, was unilateral adventurism in the face of a global Muslim insurgency, and the prospect of enraging the most numerous generation of young Arabs and Muslims in history. It risked over 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply, the entire Gulf strategy, the wider set of US interests in the region, the radical destabilisation of the entire Muslim world, the active promotion of the jihadi struggle, and blowback of a wholly unpredictable and uncontainable sort. Why do it?"©
For answers see the full article on the LRB website at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n08/reto01_.html
© The London review of Books and Retort, a ‘gathering of antagonists to capital and empire’, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. This essay was written by Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts. Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, which deals with many aspects of post-September 11 global politics, is due from Verso this summer.
The Blood for Oil? article, by a group of writers and activists collectively called Retort, considers whether oil was the reason for the invasion of Iraq. Their conclusion, that oil is only a minor factor, is similar to my own thesis, but much better argued. It's long, but is a veritable history lesson in US and Western policy in the Middle East since the 1920s, and a devastating look at the labyrinthine US oil/military/industrial/ construction/banking/ political complex. Here's a sampler question to whet your appetite (courtesy of LRB and the authors, see below):
"The first Gulf War had been a struggle over oil supplies. Saddam was furious that Kuwait and UAE, under US pressure, were producing over quota to keep prices low. His obvious oil-profits motive elicited widespread condemnation in the Arab world and provided a broad multilateral basis for the American military response. What was on offer to the industry in 2003, on the other hand, was unilateral adventurism in the face of a global Muslim insurgency, and the prospect of enraging the most numerous generation of young Arabs and Muslims in history. It risked over 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply, the entire Gulf strategy, the wider set of US interests in the region, the radical destabilisation of the entire Muslim world, the active promotion of the jihadi struggle, and blowback of a wholly unpredictable and uncontainable sort. Why do it?"©
For answers see the full article on the LRB website at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n08/reto01_.html
© The London review of Books and Retort, a ‘gathering of antagonists to capital and empire’, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. This essay was written by Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts. Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, which deals with many aspects of post-September 11 global politics, is due from Verso this summer.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Colour Power and Power Games in Wollongong
To the Wollongong City Gallery (WCG) this Saturday past to see the NGV touring exhibition Colour Power, Aboriginal art post 1984, curated by Judith Ryan. The WCG selection appears to be a drastically cut-down version of the original NGV show (judging by the NGV website - the catalogue was unavailable). The survey show looks at the impact of synthetic colour (acrylics) on Aboriginal art, covering most regions, the premise is a good and interesting one, and the work is well hung in a single room with mezzanine balcony - by far the best room in a somewhat dispiriting gallery.
Certainly the gallery Director, Peter O'Neill, made it a dispiriting occasion. I was a guest of an advisor to the AGNSW Aboriginal Collection Benefactors Group - a distinguished and fairly knowledgeable assembly of 15 or so people who had traveled down from Sydney to view the show and hear a talk by the Director on WCG's own Indigenous collection. Possibly because Herr Direktor was forgoing Saturday with his family, perhaps because he thought the visitation from Sydney needed a lesson in arrogance, or maybe because he simply dislikes people not from Wollongong - from the moment of greeting he had "... resentment tucked into his waistband like a 38", to borrow a phrase from Tom Wolfe.
In short order he favoured us with his distaste for Art Express (the HSC student show), Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, the "oddly named NGV" and its inability to supply a catalogue for his show, the fact that he was "neither an expert, nor a scholar, nor a curator", and his view that the fortunate citizens of Wollongong had an immeasurably better cultural life than those in Sydney, having his gallery of course, and their "own newspaper", an apparent reference to that beacon of enlightenment, The Illawarra Mercury.
It would have been quite funny, if it hadn't been delivered with scarcely-veiled animosity towards his guests. Having raised everyone's hackles, he then abdicated from talking about the exhibition, saying "perhaps some of you would like to talk about it".
"It's going to be a delightful day", I thought to myself.
In fact it did get better - marginally. As the afternoon wore on and the prospect of escape neared, he seemed to be making an effort to be pleasant, with mixed results. His slide show was of interest, and though the locally collected work was pretty ordinary, he spoke well about it. The visit ended with a trip to the storeroom to look at the permanent Indigenous collection usurped from the walls by the much-resented Art Express. Except that he didn't really get anything out, except a fake Clifford Possum, despite being asked about the Rover Thomas in the collection. I was glad to escape.
The gallery building is, I gather, an old council headquarters, so has some natural disadvantages as an art gallery, but it feels threadbare, dusty, neglected, gloomy... dispiriting, as I said at the outset. There is a marvelous terrace on the top level, where there could be a great café and bookshop for instance. Perhaps the place is short of funds or, more likely in my view, its Director lost interest long ago, and is serving out his time until retirement. That's what it feels like, and if so, the citizens of Wollongong are being ill-served and deserve better, just as they no doubt deserve a better newspaper.
Pip-pip.
Certainly the gallery Director, Peter O'Neill, made it a dispiriting occasion. I was a guest of an advisor to the AGNSW Aboriginal Collection Benefactors Group - a distinguished and fairly knowledgeable assembly of 15 or so people who had traveled down from Sydney to view the show and hear a talk by the Director on WCG's own Indigenous collection. Possibly because Herr Direktor was forgoing Saturday with his family, perhaps because he thought the visitation from Sydney needed a lesson in arrogance, or maybe because he simply dislikes people not from Wollongong - from the moment of greeting he had "... resentment tucked into his waistband like a 38", to borrow a phrase from Tom Wolfe.
In short order he favoured us with his distaste for Art Express (the HSC student show), Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, the "oddly named NGV" and its inability to supply a catalogue for his show, the fact that he was "neither an expert, nor a scholar, nor a curator", and his view that the fortunate citizens of Wollongong had an immeasurably better cultural life than those in Sydney, having his gallery of course, and their "own newspaper", an apparent reference to that beacon of enlightenment, The Illawarra Mercury.
It would have been quite funny, if it hadn't been delivered with scarcely-veiled animosity towards his guests. Having raised everyone's hackles, he then abdicated from talking about the exhibition, saying "perhaps some of you would like to talk about it".
"It's going to be a delightful day", I thought to myself.
In fact it did get better - marginally. As the afternoon wore on and the prospect of escape neared, he seemed to be making an effort to be pleasant, with mixed results. His slide show was of interest, and though the locally collected work was pretty ordinary, he spoke well about it. The visit ended with a trip to the storeroom to look at the permanent Indigenous collection usurped from the walls by the much-resented Art Express. Except that he didn't really get anything out, except a fake Clifford Possum, despite being asked about the Rover Thomas in the collection. I was glad to escape.
The gallery building is, I gather, an old council headquarters, so has some natural disadvantages as an art gallery, but it feels threadbare, dusty, neglected, gloomy... dispiriting, as I said at the outset. There is a marvelous terrace on the top level, where there could be a great café and bookshop for instance. Perhaps the place is short of funds or, more likely in my view, its Director lost interest long ago, and is serving out his time until retirement. That's what it feels like, and if so, the citizens of Wollongong are being ill-served and deserve better, just as they no doubt deserve a better newspaper.
Pip-pip.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Who the hell is Richard Diebenkorn?
Was.
Maybe the greatest American painter of the 20th century.
Oh all right, him and Mark Rothko.
Pollock? Basquiat? Hopper? O'Keefe? Rauschenburg? OK, OK, OK!
The point is, his is not a name that many people are familiar with. He died in 1993 in Berkeley, Caltifornia.
I saw a retrospective of his work once, at the Whitechapel in London, must have been... maybe 1980, thirteen or so years before he died, and the memory of that show has never quite left me. The catalogue of the major 1998 (posthumous) retropective at the Whitney (NY) remains the most looked-at book in my library. And when I have lost the heart to paint, of haven't painted for awhile, I look at it, and invariably I want to paint again.
I've been thinking about him again lately, indeed earlier today on a trip south along the coast to Wollongong, seeing the angular new housing developments, I thought particulary of his semi-abstact 'cityscapes' (more 'suburb-scapes') from the early 60s – the period between the 50s 'organic' abstracts and the 70-80s 'Ocean Park' abstractions.
Anyway, came across this last weekend, quoted in John Elderfield's essay 'Leaving Ocean Park' in the Whitney cataloque, with the permission of Phyllis Diebenkorn, and I repeat it here courtesy of those individuals:
Richard Diebenkorn: Notes to myself on beginning a painting:
1. Attempt what is not certain, certainty may of may not come later. It may be then a valuable delusion.
2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued – except as stimulus for further moves.
3. DO search. But in order to find other that what is searched for.
4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
5. Don’t discover a subject – of any kind.
6. Somehow don’t be bored – but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.
7. Mistakes can’t be erased but they move you from your present position.
8. Keep thinking about Polyanna.
9. Tolerate chaos.
10. Be careful only in a perverse way.
I think these rules are extraordinary, and although he wrote them about the scary adventure that is painting, I imagine they would have a resonance with most visual artists, writers, composers, choreogoraphers, and even philosophers.
Thanks Bob, your thoughts live on, and your painting still inspires.
Maybe the greatest American painter of the 20th century.
Oh all right, him and Mark Rothko.
Pollock? Basquiat? Hopper? O'Keefe? Rauschenburg? OK, OK, OK!
The point is, his is not a name that many people are familiar with. He died in 1993 in Berkeley, Caltifornia.
I saw a retrospective of his work once, at the Whitechapel in London, must have been... maybe 1980, thirteen or so years before he died, and the memory of that show has never quite left me. The catalogue of the major 1998 (posthumous) retropective at the Whitney (NY) remains the most looked-at book in my library. And when I have lost the heart to paint, of haven't painted for awhile, I look at it, and invariably I want to paint again.
I've been thinking about him again lately, indeed earlier today on a trip south along the coast to Wollongong, seeing the angular new housing developments, I thought particulary of his semi-abstact 'cityscapes' (more 'suburb-scapes') from the early 60s – the period between the 50s 'organic' abstracts and the 70-80s 'Ocean Park' abstractions.
Anyway, came across this last weekend, quoted in John Elderfield's essay 'Leaving Ocean Park' in the Whitney cataloque, with the permission of Phyllis Diebenkorn, and I repeat it here courtesy of those individuals:
Richard Diebenkorn: Notes to myself on beginning a painting:
1. Attempt what is not certain, certainty may of may not come later. It may be then a valuable delusion.
2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued – except as stimulus for further moves.
3. DO search. But in order to find other that what is searched for.
4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
5. Don’t discover a subject – of any kind.
6. Somehow don’t be bored – but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.
7. Mistakes can’t be erased but they move you from your present position.
8. Keep thinking about Polyanna.
9. Tolerate chaos.
10. Be careful only in a perverse way.
I think these rules are extraordinary, and although he wrote them about the scary adventure that is painting, I imagine they would have a resonance with most visual artists, writers, composers, choreogoraphers, and even philosophers.
Thanks Bob, your thoughts live on, and your painting still inspires.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Portrait fever, Contemporary Commonwealth, Pro Hart RIP, Tony Blair...
A busy week in Sydney's art world, with many openings, and the annual Archibald prize (portait painting, from life, AU$35K) going to a surprise winner, Marcus Wills, for his painting 'The Paul Juraszek monolith' (after Marcus Gheeraerts). The Archibald Prize is now in its 85th year and excites more interest from the general public than any other event in the Australan art calendar, with its own 'Salon de Refusées' at the S.H.Ervin (National Trust) Gallery, and even a satirical spin-off, 'The Bald Archies'. It was won last year by John Olsen. My own favourite was Ben Quilty's diptych of fellow-painter Adam Cullen. Quilty also has a solo show on, see below.
Finalists for two other important prizes, The Wynne Prize (landscape) and The Sulman Prize (genre painting), are always exhibited simultaneously, and I had entries in each of these, but alas did not make the cut (or even the Salon de refusées). That puts me in my place.
Although there are some that like to sneer at The Archibald, and it is definitely a bit of a circus, I can't think of anything comparable in any other country, and I think it is an indicator that Australians at large do actually have an interest in art - the crowds certainly flock to the exhibition, which tours the country after its Sydney season, and everyone seems to have an opinion. This doesn't quite equate with the Daily Mail or The Sun's jeering about the Turner Prize (UK) - it's something uniquely Australian. There is a strong affection here for the figure of 'the larrikin artist', or even 'the eccentric caroonist' (eg Michael Leunig) and there could be no better illustration of this than Pro Hart, 'artist of the people', who died today, and will be given a state funeral in Broken Hill, even though his work is deemed a bit too kitsch for The National Gallery. Importantly he's not, or wasn't, a realist - and his popularity interests me far more than his work. In my opinion the whole Mambo tradition owes the old fella more than a passing nod. Anyway, RIP Pro.
Also at AGNSW is a major blockbuster called 'Self-Portait', and at the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) a whole lot more portraiture, including BritBrat-ess Sam(antha?) Taylor-Wood's series of crying celebrities. I don't think they will stand the test of time, but there's no denying she understands the artistic zeitgeist, the cult of celebrity etc. Masquerade - Representation and the self in contempoarary art, is a rather better show - an eclectic international review investigating aspects of self-portaiture across a wide range of cultures, again featuring Ms Taylor Wood (weak), along with good stuff from the late Martin Kippenberger, the late Claude Cahun (France), the very much alive Samuel Fosso (Cameroon/Central African Republic), Cindy Sherman, Shigeyuki Kihara and many others. Well worth a look. Included are Australian Mike Parr's deadpan photographs of jackets We are all monochrome now seen at Sherman Galleries a couple of years ago. And still at the MCA and still on a self-portaiture theme, downstairs is a killer Mike Parr solo show VOLTE FACE - prints and Pre-Prints 1970-2005. Parr's obsession with himself results in an astonishing body of work, mainly intaglio, all on a huge scale. He is one of the best printmakers in the world in my opinion.
On the Sydney commercial circuit, more huge drawings and prints by Mike Parr at Sherman Galleries, and a seductive new show by Pat Brassington at Stills. Stunning big oils of utes (Australian for pickups/trucks/vans) by Ben Quilty at GrantPirrie. And a lovely, evocative name for the show - "Ache".
In Melbourne the Commonwealth Games, which ended with a suitable bang on Sunday night, has no doubt eclipsed everything else, but there is what looks like an excellent coincident show 'Contemporary Commonwealth' at the NGV Australia (National Gallery of Victoria at Fed Square), featuring 22 artists from diverse counries, as well as an indigenous show 'Landmarks', which I believe features the inimitable contemporay Melbourne artist Clinton Nain, among many others. Willam Kentridge's homage to George Meliès is at the NGV International (St Kilda Road). The Pissarro blockbuster, ex AGNSW, is also at the NGV International - not to be missed if impressionism is your thing. never mind impressionism - he was simpley a great painter, with some of his early, pre-impressionist works being among my favourites.
I can't refer to the Commonwealth Games without noting the presence here of Tony Blair - the first British PM ever to address a joint sitting (or any sitting?) of the Australian Parliament, would you believe? No longer 'Bambi'-like, he seems to have acquired gravitas, and has been at pains to praise John Howard (steadfast ally etc) and defend the invasion of Iraq. None of this is surprising really, but there is a weirdness to it - the two men (Howard and Blair) are supposedly from opposite ends of the political specrtrum, but it's Labour Leader Kim Beazley, Blair's old mate from Oxford, that is suddenly on the 'other' side, pushing for withdrawal of Australian troops.
Next visit is the Chinese Premier, to do a deal to buy Australian uranium. Watch this space.
Finalists for two other important prizes, The Wynne Prize (landscape) and The Sulman Prize (genre painting), are always exhibited simultaneously, and I had entries in each of these, but alas did not make the cut (or even the Salon de refusées). That puts me in my place.
Although there are some that like to sneer at The Archibald, and it is definitely a bit of a circus, I can't think of anything comparable in any other country, and I think it is an indicator that Australians at large do actually have an interest in art - the crowds certainly flock to the exhibition, which tours the country after its Sydney season, and everyone seems to have an opinion. This doesn't quite equate with the Daily Mail or The Sun's jeering about the Turner Prize (UK) - it's something uniquely Australian. There is a strong affection here for the figure of 'the larrikin artist', or even 'the eccentric caroonist' (eg Michael Leunig) and there could be no better illustration of this than Pro Hart, 'artist of the people', who died today, and will be given a state funeral in Broken Hill, even though his work is deemed a bit too kitsch for The National Gallery. Importantly he's not, or wasn't, a realist - and his popularity interests me far more than his work. In my opinion the whole Mambo tradition owes the old fella more than a passing nod. Anyway, RIP Pro.
Also at AGNSW is a major blockbuster called 'Self-Portait', and at the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) a whole lot more portraiture, including BritBrat-ess Sam(antha?) Taylor-Wood's series of crying celebrities. I don't think they will stand the test of time, but there's no denying she understands the artistic zeitgeist, the cult of celebrity etc. Masquerade - Representation and the self in contempoarary art, is a rather better show - an eclectic international review investigating aspects of self-portaiture across a wide range of cultures, again featuring Ms Taylor Wood (weak), along with good stuff from the late Martin Kippenberger, the late Claude Cahun (France), the very much alive Samuel Fosso (Cameroon/Central African Republic), Cindy Sherman, Shigeyuki Kihara and many others. Well worth a look. Included are Australian Mike Parr's deadpan photographs of jackets We are all monochrome now seen at Sherman Galleries a couple of years ago. And still at the MCA and still on a self-portaiture theme, downstairs is a killer Mike Parr solo show VOLTE FACE - prints and Pre-Prints 1970-2005. Parr's obsession with himself results in an astonishing body of work, mainly intaglio, all on a huge scale. He is one of the best printmakers in the world in my opinion.
On the Sydney commercial circuit, more huge drawings and prints by Mike Parr at Sherman Galleries, and a seductive new show by Pat Brassington at Stills. Stunning big oils of utes (Australian for pickups/trucks/vans) by Ben Quilty at GrantPirrie. And a lovely, evocative name for the show - "Ache".
In Melbourne the Commonwealth Games, which ended with a suitable bang on Sunday night, has no doubt eclipsed everything else, but there is what looks like an excellent coincident show 'Contemporary Commonwealth' at the NGV Australia (National Gallery of Victoria at Fed Square), featuring 22 artists from diverse counries, as well as an indigenous show 'Landmarks', which I believe features the inimitable contemporay Melbourne artist Clinton Nain, among many others. Willam Kentridge's homage to George Meliès is at the NGV International (St Kilda Road). The Pissarro blockbuster, ex AGNSW, is also at the NGV International - not to be missed if impressionism is your thing. never mind impressionism - he was simpley a great painter, with some of his early, pre-impressionist works being among my favourites.
I can't refer to the Commonwealth Games without noting the presence here of Tony Blair - the first British PM ever to address a joint sitting (or any sitting?) of the Australian Parliament, would you believe? No longer 'Bambi'-like, he seems to have acquired gravitas, and has been at pains to praise John Howard (steadfast ally etc) and defend the invasion of Iraq. None of this is surprising really, but there is a weirdness to it - the two men (Howard and Blair) are supposedly from opposite ends of the political specrtrum, but it's Labour Leader Kim Beazley, Blair's old mate from Oxford, that is suddenly on the 'other' side, pushing for withdrawal of Australian troops.
Next visit is the Chinese Premier, to do a deal to buy Australian uranium. Watch this space.
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Condoleeza Rice's Pax Americana
'Condi' is in town, Sydney Australia that is, meeting with her Australian counterparts and with the 'outspoken' Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso.
Polls indicate that she enjoys an approval rating of 52 percent in the USA, compared with George W Bush's 33 percent (and falling). And the macabre jokes about Condi versus Hillary in 2008 are starting to look increasingly like reality.
"There is one, and only one, figure in America who can stop Hillary Rodham Clinton," writes Dick Morris, the former political adviser to Bill Clinton, in his book Condi vs Hillary. "If there is a Hillary, there must be a Condi. One will spawn the other."
I've often wondered what makes this rather scary woman tick, and how someone so obviously intelligent could be party to the Middle East policies of GW Bush - policies that I am convinced will be seen in retropect as the biggest collective strategic blunder in the history of the USA, Vietnam included. It may well be that Bush is not nearly so dumb as he appears. Perhaps the silly walk, the stilted diction, the mispronunciations, the malapropisms and so forth are a strategy to endear himself to the people, to appear unpatrician, a regular dude - unlike the "almost French" John Kerry for instance. But he comes over as stoopid, the fall-guy for comedians around the world. Rice, by contrast, is plainly very bright, has studied history and politics at doctoral level, and has been known to draw parallels between the Roman Empire's 'Pax Romana' and America's stated policy of exporting Western-style democracy to the rest of the world.
Taking this desire at face value for a moment, putting aside the cynical vew that it's all to do with oil and that vile dictatorships are tolerated where oil and other strategic advanteges exist for the USA, you'd still have to seriously question the judgement behind the invasion of Iraq.
Or maybe not. Whether USA Middle East policy is ultimately seen as mistaken all depends on what the game plan is. There are some, including Southeast Asian leaders, that do not regard the Vietnam debacle as ultimately a failure, despite the effective military defeat of the USA.
I have always been convinced that the 'overt' plan for Iraq - the phantom WMDs, removing a vile dictator (so recently a valued ally), the establishment of a democracy, has always been a front for the real game plan - establishing a permanent force of 350,000 or so American soldiers at the heart of the Middle East, between the Sunni 'West' - The Arabs (and the 60-odd year old settlement that is modern Israel) and the Shiite 'East' - the non-Arab Iran, the old Persian Empire.
The reasons for this? The stakes that have plainly factored in an 'acceptable' American death toll of perhaps a thousand soldiers a year for the foreseeable future? I recenty saw the excellent 'Syriana', and the Matt Damon character, in answer to just such a question by a young Emir-in-waiting, says something like "Isn't it obvious? It's RUNNING OUT! THE OIL! THEY THINK IT'S RUNNING OUT!".
So far so obvious. But oil cannot be the whole answer. USA policy is surely concerned with far more than just Iraq's oil reserves. Saudi Arabia has to be an imporatant part of any Middle Eastern geopolitical equation. The House of Saud is one of America's staunchest allies in the region, and I believe that everyone knows it is only a matter of time before that regime colapses, an outcome to which Osama Bin Laden has dedicated himself. The American troops there are, I suspect, being quietly withdrawn.
And then there is Iran - a non Arab country also with significant reserves of oil, but more alarmingly perhaps for the USA, the apparent means to build nuclear weapons, combined with a wish to export its religious revolution. Apart from the protection of Israel and other USA client states in the region, is this what the large standing US force in Iraq is really about? Are we seeing the same inexorable move towards war with Iran as we saw with Iraq in 2003, Are Tehran's WMDs also phantoms?
And where, in all this, is Condi's 'Pax Americana'?
Paul McGeogh, writing for Australia's Fairfax Press last week, quoted former US and UN envoy Peter Galbraith lamenting what he describes as a little noticed consequence of America's failure in Iraq: "We invaded Iraq to protect ourselves against nonexistent WMDs and to promote democracy. Democracy in Iraq brought to power Iran's allies, who are in a position to ignite an uprising against American troops that would make the current problems with the Sunni insurgency seem insignificant."
McGeogh goes on to quote an unnamed Jordanian source: "Iran has wanted to control the Sunni Arabs for 1000 years and they are doing it now. Ayatollah Khomeini tried - and failed - to export his revolution for 15 years, but Bush has done it for him in just two years", and adds 'The US did Tehran a giant favour by invading Iraq, because Saddam Hussein was the Sunni bulwark against Iranian Shiite ambition. Now, in his absence, Iran is winning a place in Sunni hearts and minds across the region by assuming the fallen dictator's manipulative interest in the Palestinian cause. Given the bungled US effort in Iraq, neighbouring countries are wary and weary of speculation that Washington might attempt military intervention - if only by bombing from beyond Iran's borders - in its efforts to thwart Tehran's well-developed nuclear ambitions.'
McGeogh then quotes democracy analysts Marina Ottaway and Thomas Carothers writing in Foreign Policy late last year: "Promoting democracy throughout the Middle East will require doing away with the fantasies of a sudden US-led transformation of the region and taking seriously the challenge of building credibility with Arab societies. Moreover, if the US is to play a constructive supporting role, it must seriously revise its cosy relations with autocratic regimes and show a sustained ability to apply nuanced diplomatic pressure with well-crafted and wellfunded assistance."
I wonder if Condoleeza Rice is listening. The future of our planet may depend on it.
Polls indicate that she enjoys an approval rating of 52 percent in the USA, compared with George W Bush's 33 percent (and falling). And the macabre jokes about Condi versus Hillary in 2008 are starting to look increasingly like reality.
"There is one, and only one, figure in America who can stop Hillary Rodham Clinton," writes Dick Morris, the former political adviser to Bill Clinton, in his book Condi vs Hillary. "If there is a Hillary, there must be a Condi. One will spawn the other."
I've often wondered what makes this rather scary woman tick, and how someone so obviously intelligent could be party to the Middle East policies of GW Bush - policies that I am convinced will be seen in retropect as the biggest collective strategic blunder in the history of the USA, Vietnam included. It may well be that Bush is not nearly so dumb as he appears. Perhaps the silly walk, the stilted diction, the mispronunciations, the malapropisms and so forth are a strategy to endear himself to the people, to appear unpatrician, a regular dude - unlike the "almost French" John Kerry for instance. But he comes over as stoopid, the fall-guy for comedians around the world. Rice, by contrast, is plainly very bright, has studied history and politics at doctoral level, and has been known to draw parallels between the Roman Empire's 'Pax Romana' and America's stated policy of exporting Western-style democracy to the rest of the world.
Taking this desire at face value for a moment, putting aside the cynical vew that it's all to do with oil and that vile dictatorships are tolerated where oil and other strategic advanteges exist for the USA, you'd still have to seriously question the judgement behind the invasion of Iraq.
Or maybe not. Whether USA Middle East policy is ultimately seen as mistaken all depends on what the game plan is. There are some, including Southeast Asian leaders, that do not regard the Vietnam debacle as ultimately a failure, despite the effective military defeat of the USA.
I have always been convinced that the 'overt' plan for Iraq - the phantom WMDs, removing a vile dictator (so recently a valued ally), the establishment of a democracy, has always been a front for the real game plan - establishing a permanent force of 350,000 or so American soldiers at the heart of the Middle East, between the Sunni 'West' - The Arabs (and the 60-odd year old settlement that is modern Israel) and the Shiite 'East' - the non-Arab Iran, the old Persian Empire.
The reasons for this? The stakes that have plainly factored in an 'acceptable' American death toll of perhaps a thousand soldiers a year for the foreseeable future? I recenty saw the excellent 'Syriana', and the Matt Damon character, in answer to just such a question by a young Emir-in-waiting, says something like "Isn't it obvious? It's RUNNING OUT! THE OIL! THEY THINK IT'S RUNNING OUT!".
So far so obvious. But oil cannot be the whole answer. USA policy is surely concerned with far more than just Iraq's oil reserves. Saudi Arabia has to be an imporatant part of any Middle Eastern geopolitical equation. The House of Saud is one of America's staunchest allies in the region, and I believe that everyone knows it is only a matter of time before that regime colapses, an outcome to which Osama Bin Laden has dedicated himself. The American troops there are, I suspect, being quietly withdrawn.
And then there is Iran - a non Arab country also with significant reserves of oil, but more alarmingly perhaps for the USA, the apparent means to build nuclear weapons, combined with a wish to export its religious revolution. Apart from the protection of Israel and other USA client states in the region, is this what the large standing US force in Iraq is really about? Are we seeing the same inexorable move towards war with Iran as we saw with Iraq in 2003, Are Tehran's WMDs also phantoms?
And where, in all this, is Condi's 'Pax Americana'?
Paul McGeogh, writing for Australia's Fairfax Press last week, quoted former US and UN envoy Peter Galbraith lamenting what he describes as a little noticed consequence of America's failure in Iraq: "We invaded Iraq to protect ourselves against nonexistent WMDs and to promote democracy. Democracy in Iraq brought to power Iran's allies, who are in a position to ignite an uprising against American troops that would make the current problems with the Sunni insurgency seem insignificant."
McGeogh goes on to quote an unnamed Jordanian source: "Iran has wanted to control the Sunni Arabs for 1000 years and they are doing it now. Ayatollah Khomeini tried - and failed - to export his revolution for 15 years, but Bush has done it for him in just two years", and adds 'The US did Tehran a giant favour by invading Iraq, because Saddam Hussein was the Sunni bulwark against Iranian Shiite ambition. Now, in his absence, Iran is winning a place in Sunni hearts and minds across the region by assuming the fallen dictator's manipulative interest in the Palestinian cause. Given the bungled US effort in Iraq, neighbouring countries are wary and weary of speculation that Washington might attempt military intervention - if only by bombing from beyond Iran's borders - in its efforts to thwart Tehran's well-developed nuclear ambitions.'
McGeogh then quotes democracy analysts Marina Ottaway and Thomas Carothers writing in Foreign Policy late last year: "Promoting democracy throughout the Middle East will require doing away with the fantasies of a sudden US-led transformation of the region and taking seriously the challenge of building credibility with Arab societies. Moreover, if the US is to play a constructive supporting role, it must seriously revise its cosy relations with autocratic regimes and show a sustained ability to apply nuanced diplomatic pressure with well-crafted and wellfunded assistance."
I wonder if Condoleeza Rice is listening. The future of our planet may depend on it.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Bundeena Blog Debut Posting
I read yesterday that a new blog is added to cyberspace every second. That's a lot of information.
In addition I had an induction session at the library at COFA (University of New South Wales College of Fine Arts), where I am studying for Master of Fine Arts, and glimpsed the thousands, or perhaps millions of specialist databases and repositories of knowledge that are out there. And thought that there really is far too much informatrion coming at us - an unthinkable, unimaginable torrent (of junk for the most part). And here am I, adding to it with these banal thoughts!
But yesterday I also located a rare out of print book - Jack Burhnam's seminal seventies collection of essays 'Great Western Salt Works', lurking on a shelf on the main campus, and ordered it. And numerous times lately I've used Google's astonishing Book Search tool. For the first time in human history it seems, all the information in the world is there, accessible at the touch of a button.
So, the challenge becomes not finding it, but keeping it at bay, or perhaps filtering it so that only the information we want to reach us, does reach us. And yet allowing for the random, the chaotic, the unexpected link, the metaphorical 'shout in the street'.
Watch this space.
In addition I had an induction session at the library at COFA (University of New South Wales College of Fine Arts), where I am studying for Master of Fine Arts, and glimpsed the thousands, or perhaps millions of specialist databases and repositories of knowledge that are out there. And thought that there really is far too much informatrion coming at us - an unthinkable, unimaginable torrent (of junk for the most part). And here am I, adding to it with these banal thoughts!
But yesterday I also located a rare out of print book - Jack Burhnam's seminal seventies collection of essays 'Great Western Salt Works', lurking on a shelf on the main campus, and ordered it. And numerous times lately I've used Google's astonishing Book Search tool. For the first time in human history it seems, all the information in the world is there, accessible at the touch of a button.
So, the challenge becomes not finding it, but keeping it at bay, or perhaps filtering it so that only the information we want to reach us, does reach us. And yet allowing for the random, the chaotic, the unexpected link, the metaphorical 'shout in the street'.
Watch this space.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
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