Dani Admiss
Come Together
A Plea For Tenderness, curated by David Raymond Conroy
Sally-Ginger Brockbank, Hal Hartley, Andy Holden, Sean Landers, Paul Lewis, Lee Lozano, Jonathan Richman, Jiri Skala, Carey Young
I hold a genuine appreciation for a will to counteraction, to show the world up as being not what it really is. Moreover, it is a difficult task to unravel this process of negation, revealing the equilibrium that it operates in at the same time displaying the residues of its actions to reach this pure undoing. A Plea For Tenderness is and consists of, a collection of such attempts. The exhibition posits two assumptions: irony and sincerity and all that lies in between. Writing in the press release artist and curator, David Raymond Conroy, opens with the lines ‘I want to make a show that tries to illuminate the space that exists between sincerity and irony, or between apparent honesty and the techniques used to convey or convince people about the truth of what they are being told.’
Handled with the utmost care and precision there are no real objects in this show. Instead there are subjects, whose performances manifest in a cacophony of self-evident, self-constructed and self-obsessed melodrama of identities. Each is caught, one after the other, in an existentialist crisis between two opposing factions and in one all-consuming snare. We are asked to question, the legitimacy of the roles these actors are playing and the meaning behind the uncertainty of not only theirs, but everyone else’s will to believe.
The sound of a gallant Sean Landers dominates the upstairs space with his composition, The man within, 1991. Landers’ words of incitement, amplified by the rousing melodies of an American anthem are part of a larger economy of deafening self-promotion. The work is split between, his frenetic enthusiasm, which borders on a type of personality disorder and a self-aware description of the preposterousness of his interior self, depicted in the works title. A little more nuanced is the ease with which the work sits within the conduits of a proclaimed American identity and which ultimately reveal a type of uneasiness at the core of the work.
In contrast, at the other end of the gallery sits Carey Young’s video, I am a Revolutionary, 2001. Made a decade later, her unnerving nature circumscribes her demeanour and overrules her attempts to embody this polysemy. Dressed in a conformist black business suit and set in the empty room of an office-block Young is struggling, despite the presence of a coach, to get through her lines. The backdrop of transparent glass looks out onto other offices and magnifies the potency of Young’s work, which lies not in the inherent irony, or futility of the actual turn of phrase that she is repeating, but rather that it is difficult to make any concrete judgement on which of the many contexts the phrase exactly operates on. Both Landers and Young’s works sit metres away from one another, but paradigms apart in terms of a conduct of a system of self-belief. It is these two utterly different spaces that each piece occupies to make relative commentary on the same thing, which makes language and more precisely an articulation of language so much about a sense of freedom that course through most of the works in the exhibition.
A strength to A Plea For Tenderness is that it finds fruition in languages inability to precisely locate and sustain a place for meaning. An example of this is in the relationship between the works of Lee Lozano and Laurie Parsons. Both pieces are painstakingly understated, in fact Laurie Parsons ‘lack of work’ is only represented in the exhibition through her absence, reflected by a gap in the list of works between exhibits no.2 and 4 and is one of a few subtle acts of trickery that run throughout the show. Lee Lozano’s General Strike Piece, 1969, is displayed as an incongruous couple of paragraphs on a page of A4. The text outlines Lozano’s plans on how she intended to withdraw from the art world and this distance is exasperated by a series of further removals; her words are reproduced from a book made of a magazine in which they were originally published. This seemingly submissive style of representation requires a sense of dedicated curiosity to uncover not an act of disappearance as one may think, but rather a downward spiral of consistent questioning. It motions to a pre-occupational hazard particular to artists and their ego’s - how to present themselves to the world? Rather than a heavy-handed attempt to uncover the artist’s identity, Conroy chooses to represent them with an apparent ‘tenderness’ reflecting their wish to anonymity. This rhetoric of disappearance echoes 70’s conceptualism and one cannot help but think that the level of detail of this homage is a deliberate attempt to question the premeditation associated with any humble gesture made by artists the world over.
Sally-Ginger Brockbank’s creative prose is also subject to subtle placement, found under a desk lamp in the darkened space downstairs her photocopied essay performs, ontologically, a ritual of simultaneous commonality and singularisation of self-recognition. This stream of consciousness touches on the conflicting interior landscape of a flickering, reciprocal showing and telling of one’s identity and draws equally on a sense of alignment as it does expose itself as part of a Western process of ‘othering’. In this way Brockbank can be seen to be speaking of a type of détournement about the regard of authenticity and opens up Conroy’s curatorial intentions - illustrating that perhaps, in this show, he has found a balance, locating a common sense of self through others work and typifying this as a form of universal pursuit.
In a further manifestation of the textual nature of A Plea for Tenderness other linguistic couplings are at play, counterbalanced by the presence of something that punctuates, or puts into question this cyclical unity. For instance, US identities surface repeatedly seen in the works of Hartley, or Holden, who use the heightened language of Hollywood cinema to reinforce a type of earnest and heartfelt vigour. Holden’s manifesto, MI!MS, 2012, calls for ‘Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity’. Typically understood as originating from certain aesthetic, political, historical and namely European traditions Holden has taken the format of a manifesto and embellished it with a highly stylized cinematic language that today has come to be associated with an act of deception. This is one of the many deeds of seduction Conroy has placed throughout as a cultural marker of sorts. What works particularly well in the exhibition is the ‘othering’ of space, illustrated by the works of Jonathan Richman and Jiri Skala. Richman, because although he is added to the list of works on the press release his music is not actually in the show, just interviews of him talking about his work – the part where his songs play have been cut. Skala, because Foreign Bodies, 2011, is the only video to gesticulate to the relationship between irony and sincerity ‘outside’ of a paradigm of self-reflection. Instead it references an actual geographical location, Brno in the Czech Republic, rather than purely an identity associated with a certain territory.
If you are aware of the work of David Raymond Conroy it is hard not to see his-self inscribed in A Plea for Tenderness. In this manner the exhibition is not just an extension of his work, but is the work itself, as it is part of a trajectory that further compounds a problem between perception and experience. Once a meaningful message has been spoken, acted, written, or performed all that we are left with is what people are trying to say about the relics left behind from a particular social consciousness. This line of thought compliments the feeling of nostalgia exuded by the exhibition, everything in the gallery space feels like it comes from yesterday, but not quite from a time that has fully past. This can be seen everywhere; in Hal Hartley’s nubile 90’s American protagonists, in Andy Holden’s manifesto, in the MTV-esque footage of Jonathan Richman, in the emblematic American harmonies of Landers sound piece, or in the thrice reproduced words of Lee Lozano’s will to dematerialize.
Maybe this question is just a bypass to a more deeply rooted enquiry that defines Conroy’s practice - that each work, which he has quite beautifully selected as being irreducible into the many other things that we are surrounded by, for the reason that they are (un)knowingly sincere about being ironic. This is part of a wider story about the infinitely complex interplay of gestures that are all part of a setting that tell us how the world works. What this sense of allegiance implies is that albeit, we may be lost in hermeneutics, but we are not alone in this. Then again, walking out of the exhibition, once the music has ebbed away and the film credits have ended I am back in the wider world and can’t shake the feeling that much of the shows success was because of my readiness to be part of the story.
Still Remains: A classic that survives reinvention
In January 2005 Gene Kelly appeared on our television screens with a reinterpretation of his original classic Singing in the Rain. He walked along the same street holding the same umbrella and possessed the same asphyxiating smile. He had the same build, wore the same clothes and appeared, for a brief couple of seconds, to adopt the same swagger, the same gait, the same steps. The song then slides effortlessly into a remix and the original dance is replaced with an updated version; a reflection of the times we found ourselves in then. The commercial was devised by the advertising firm DDB for Volkswagen’s (VW) new Golf GTI and followed the brief: a classic that survives reinvention[1]. DDB had the set and costume arduously reconstructed along with a meticulously choreographed performance, a conscious development of every gesture Kelly had originally made. Whilst the illusionary dancer David Elsewhere, recently made infamous by a viral video demonstrating his extraordinary body-popping skills[2], carefully and in a controlled way brought to life the phrase ‘a classic that survives reinvention.’ As the advert comes to a close, Elsewhere addresses the Golf, tipping his hat towards the car in a mutual recognition of exchange. Both survived the reinvention of time.
The advert has played on my mind recently. It is not my aim in this text to describe the public reaction to the commercial, nor is it to cite it within an expanded field of anthropology, technological shifts, or even digital culture. Instead, I am concerned with its refusal to be incorporated into a broader cultural synecdoche, as part of a larger act of assimilation into the past. Because it won’t easily embed itself into this mélange of mediated artifacts, because I am unable to fully grasp its repercussions, rather than it’s intentions, is precisely why I do not want to decode it in this way.
As an alternative, let us look to Foucault’s essay on the Diego Velazquez painting ‘Las Meninas[3].’ Foucault’s essay was deemed radical not through it’s decoding of sociological, or ideological systems, but as a carefully constructed analysis of representation as a system of power. In the words of Craig Owens, Foucault is ‘interested less in what works of art say, and more in what they do[4]’. It is a performative reading, which shies away from interpreting works of art, as ‘if to interpret them is to assign them a meaning.[5]’ In this, now perhaps traditional approach, I want to talk not about what that advert says, or does, but what has ‘been done’ to Gene Kelly’s Singing in the Rain. As what has been done to it may offer a potential insight into why I find the re-using of historical material both alluring and troubling against a backdrop of shifting boundaries in our approach to the historical.
So, what has been done to Gene Kelly’s Singing in the Rain? It has been replicated so that in many ways it is entirely faithful to the original, but Kelly and his signature dance moves, have been hollowed out and replaced with a newer model, David Elsewhere. Inside of Kelly a process of re-inscription has taken place - he has been re-written. As viewers, we are presented with a replica of the context, whilst the content has changed, ultimately altering its form.
This is similar to a manufactured product, such as the Golf GTI, which is constantly being revised, honed, or worked on, most likely inspired by an earlier edition, a different model, or another car. The process is constantly being subject to a series of revisions, framed by the considerations of usability, safety requirements, efficiency of performance etc, but the car, in some way, still remains. The advert exemplifies this thinking, we still recognise Kelly even though his demeanour and gestures are different and it illustrates this by association, despite the many reincarnations of the car the idea of it still persists. Beyond mass manufacture and reproducibility the Golf GTI actively displays an ethnographic present; a perception of time, described by Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, as condensing past, present and future into a continuous present.
‘Whatever is presumed important about the past is assumed to be making itself felt here and now.[6]’
What has been done to Gene Kelly then, can be more widely associated with how we come to narrate history today. In The Shape of Time, (1962) George Kubler describes certain objects in time as being able to be defined by terms of sequences, rather than as series’, or other chronological models. He goes onto ask, ‘where are the boundaries of a formal sequence? Because history is unfinished business, the boundaries of its divisions continually move, and will continue to move for as long as men make history.[7]’ As Kubler points out, viewing time in terms of sequences - an ordering of certain elements without summation, is subject to the continual development of history. History is forever unfinished precisely because it is a social process.
How can things survive time then? What is the meaning of their survival? What still remains?
Looking at it from a another vantage point it is just as relevant today to ask how do we structure a discourse around historical thinking? Speaking in ‘The State of Design History,’ (1989) Clive Dilnot attempts to chart the topography of Design’s past. At the time of writing Dilnot was still grappling with the legacy of modernism in design and increasingly aware that we can be defined as a ‘designed society’. In relation to how to position design history within this, as something that straddles the realms of both the social and the professional, he questions what should the debates of this discourse involve?
“Context depends on definition, which in turn depends on context. The process is circular: The way one segment of the problem is defined determines the answer for the other.[8]”
Dilnot is highlighting, by questioning the use of terms, the location of meaning; which requires the combination of context and definition for it to be translated and reinserted back within a discourse, such as history. If we view the revised version of Singing in the Rain through these positions, we start to see why breaking this cycle between definition and context is unsettling. I am not interpreting the remixed Gene Kelly to find his ‘place’ within history, but instead looking at what has been done to Kelly as an example of how we use the historical to define a location of meaning through representing the past. In a similar way to Foucault’s demonstration that representation is not neutral I am keen to expose history as using methodological instruments to forge a system of representation.
The advert is telling us that the Golf is ‘a classic that survives reinvention’, but what does this also say about how we use historical thinking today? With the above three sources in mind we can see that certain artifacts of history remain because of our active, present understanding and this understanding is forever shifting. The VW advert cites a present dance star, David Elsewhere, inside an icon of the past, Gene Kelly. This illustrates a certain type of active social process, which plays with the current systems of historical representation.
To clarify this point, let us think about how we record the immediate past today, by way of aggregated feeds, newsreels and mediated video updates. These do not present us with the meaning of the event, in fact quite the opposite, providing us purely with a commentary of what happened, over and over and over[9]. When we actually see the event in real time, does this not open up the notion of a closed historical event as having a beginning, middle and an end? VW, rather than re-playing Singing in the Rain, re-designs it. Stitching together elements to create a sequence, which represent an artifact that is implicitly involved in providing a continuous contextual present. As Kubler eloquently writes,
“The Shapes of time are the prey we want to capture. The time of history is too coarse and brief to be an evenly granular duration such as the physicists suppose for natural time; it is more like a sea occupied by innumerable forms of a finite number of types. A net of another is required, different from any now in use.[10]’
This poses a question about what happens to the past, when Kelly’s dance becomes part of the present? By inserting Elsewhere inside of Kelly, not in purely spectral terms, but rather through the activity of embodiment, Elsewhere has literally been inscribed within Kelly, altering the way that we interpret Kelly’s surface. In this way the advert shows both that the ‘idea’ of certain elements continue over time, but also that the past, through our eyes, can be seen as always already having the present inscribed within it also.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKtqNQJuDuw, (2005)
[2] David Elsewhere at Kollaboration, (2001) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAyTK6jF5o8
[3] Michel Foucault, ‘Las Meninas’ in The order of things, (1966)
[4] Craig Owens, ‘Representation, Appropriation and Power’ in Beyond Recognition, (1992)
[5] ibid
[6] Mary Douglas & Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods – Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (1979) p.23’
[7] George Kubler, The Shape of Time, (1962) p.35
[8] Clive Dilnot, ‘The State of Design History’ in Design Discourses, (1984) p.215
[9] Hayden White, ‘The Modernist Event’ in The Persistence of History edited by Vivian Sobchack (1996) pp. 17-38
[10] George Kubler, The Shape of Time, (1962) p.32
Karsten Bott, One of Each, 1993 part of the exhibition "Deep Storage" which showed some of the contents of Andy Warhol's time capsules.
The design museum’s recent event ‘Collecting and Collectors of Contemporary Design’ was the 6th conference to be organised by Professor Catherine McDermott and Design Museum Head Curator Donna Loveday. Part of a wider effort to discuss and debate issues relating to curating contemporary design.
The Design Museum Director, Deyan Sudjic, was the first keynote of the day. Sudjic chose to focus on the impulsive act of collecting and the legacy of connoisseurship through key collectors such as Jean Paul Getty and Andy Warhol. Although his opening invoked a sense of the historical and timeless qualities associated with collecting, the remainder of the morning provided an insight into the contemporary realities, as part of a larger design economy.
Following on from this and in an endeavor of cartography as much as history, DeTnk co-founder Rabih Hage and Jeremy Morrison, former London Head of Design at Sotheby’s, set out to demystify the design market. Loosely figured within the question 'what drives the market?' Hage drew from the DeTnk. Market Report, 2011, in an attempt to decipher the rise in design purchasing. Best described as ‘a holistic analysis of the emerging collectible design market’ the report consists of data collected since 2005 and Hage used it to support his prediction of the end of fraudulent limited editions, in favour of commissioned objects. Feeding into the traditional notion of value, as being original and rarified, Hage highlighted production numbers as consciously driving the value of goods, a key theme of the day. In addition, Morrison reminded the audience of how young the design market actually is detailing the unpredictable nature of highs and lows in auction houses over the last 50 years. Acknowledging the difficulty to know what and when something will sell Morrison explained memorable sales at contemporary design auctions, such as Tom Dixon's S-Chair for Capellini, (1990), which was sat in Dixon's studio for years before he had it re-upholstered after his child's rabbit ate the original cover.
The afternoon session concentrated on design objects and their cultural value, assigned through exchange and distribution. Tony Brooke, founder of SPIN, was the only designer to speak that day and this was reflected in his anecdotal presentation, which confessed his obsession for collecting. Brooke brought attention to the fact that like design itself, collecting is an exploration and expression of ones relationship to the world. As we had seen earlier on in the day much of design purchasing is driven by exploiting strategies, hidden under the anonymous face of the market. Pazit Offner-Dines, an Israeli marketing and consultant researcher, was the final keynote and she revealed some of the characteristics behind this ambiguity. Examining the status of the design object in relation to market value, she used correspondence archives from the V&A to chart the buying and selling of key design objects such as 'Cinderella' table, by Jeroen Verhoeven, (2005-6) and a set of drawers entitled ‘You Can't Lay Down Your Memories’, by Tejo Remy of Droog (1991). Highlighting value as being configured through a complex cultural process of trade.
Overall the event presented a timely relationship between collection and consumption. A relationship defined by its circulation, manipulated by production and constructed by capital value. It is interesting to note that the majority of keynotes analysed archives, in one way or another, to make this point. Indeed as Sudjic had initially pointed out, there is a heritage involved in the act of collecting. Using data produced from these transactions speakers such as Hage, Brooke and Offner-Dines demonstrated the importance of comprehending the actualities that are played out in these systems. I couldn’t help but think it was a perfect environment not to just present this reality, but to question it as the only way forward as well?
As if to make this point, the discussions at the end of the day acknowledged the museums responsibility as part of a larger pursuit towards a collective knowledge of design in the world. This was posed in contrast to the economical purchasing power, which markets are built on. What struck me about the days events is that 40 years after the first contemporary design auction at Sotheby’s in 1969 design is more, not less subject to being understood in relation to two powerful houses; the museum and the auction house/the trade fair. How we construct value within these two spaces becomes increasingly mired by the dominance of the marketplace and although the notion of value was at the crux of all the presentations on the day, as a term it was never actually defined. Maybe the conference would have been better served if it had been the question raised from the very beginning?
And you'll see why 1984, won't seem like 1984
Apple Macintosh commercial 1984
“If the possible has become impossible I must allow myself to believe that the impossible must become possible.” Shelly Silver quoting Goethe on her blog
‘Creativity can solve anything, anything’[1]. These are the closing words, which ring out in Art & Copy (2009), a documentary on the last fifty years of American advertising. This sentence could easily be dismissed as a maniacal statement emptied out of all meaning. Something that we have come to expect from an industry built on the complex and unregulated production of selling our image and understanding of desire back to ourselves. In fact and as I hope to point out, it actually holds a potentially implosive position for those who work in the creative industries.
A lot could be said about how the filmmakers have chosen to promote advertising as a business in Art & Copy. Notably how the film exposes the industry as a pioneer of disconcerting social norms at the same time it repudiates certain ethics and moralities. Any negative side to advertising is seamlessly debunked by experts, whose only judgment criteria seems to be one that states a truly great advert can never be bad – on any level. One could ask, who even remembers No Logo nowadays anyway, right?[2] (Insert said preferred level of irony here please).
That aside Art & Copy is a fascinating, well-edited and gripping watch. I knew it would be and as such I was consciously prepared to rationalise this highly stylised endorsement frame-by-frame. How could any documentary on advertising, not be one big advert? It is pointed out in the film that everything is in some way an advert and for documentary to be thought of in this way and with all the cynical connotations we associate with advertising, I was ready to break down some of those layers.
The film was delivered by a handful of passionate and powerful moguls whose sheer exuberance and compelling anecdotes on seminal adverts kept the pace and depth ‘just right’. Did I mention they were compelling stories? Such as the Nike slogan ‘Just Do It’, which was inspired by and originates, in part, from a quote taken from a man on death row before his execution. Think. Just think of the enormous repercussions of this statement. One of the most well recognised global mantras of the 20th century, indicative of the ‘me’ generation, which literally instructs at the same time it permits the universal-individual to self-empowerment and emancipation from the grind of daily life was derived from a person, who is now dead executed by the state for a crime. Complex, yes, difficult, definitely.
“All we were doing was reflecting peoples lives and doing it in a way that touched that audience.”
For me, it is important here to use the powers of critical writing to its fullest advantage and acknowledge the dominant hierarchies inherent in any system of communication. Even when they are anecdotal and personal musings, which I value in writing very much and interestingly an approach used by advertising to persuade on mass. Namely that not only have the very few dominated the position of authority of speech for the many. Not only do advertising companies have untapped power allowing them to shift a person’s perception of themselves and the world around them, even in the face of ‘regulating bodies’. But also and very importantly that there is still on some level, to some people and at some times a ‘real’ need to address who gets to say what and where they have authority to take this information from.
I repeat: Who gets to say what and where they have authority to take this information from.
Let me explain. The documentary was structured so that there was a loose chronology of the ‘history-of-advertising’. Beginning with nostalgic representations of the first advertising power houses and moving into the present day, where not much has changed; 4 companies control 80% of the advertising on US screens[1]. Throughout this are, as I have mentioned above, deeply compelling individuals, bursting at the seams with joie de vivre, telling equally compelling insights into ‘life-changing’ adverts. Each of these ‘characters’ were exquisitely painted as mavericks and visionaries with a disregard for the normal ways of doing things – every little move they made was magic.
Interspersed between both of these narrative schemas however, is the story of advertising as cited within different spaces of production. Early on in the film we see Chad Tieman, a ‘rotator’, who in his words ‘rotates [advertising] copy around the city’[2]. We see the public billboard spaces across different parts of the city, we see the scale of these spaces and we see the daily operations that take place to make an advert become apparent to its audience. In short Art & Copy makes public where desire, which has been registered and regulated, is promoted.
A little later on in the film we see a shift from the advertising canvases in the cityscape to the seemingly discreet repetitive markers in the shape of satellite dishes that litter our horizon. As well as the ‘private’ space where satellites are launched into orbit[3]. Exposing the spaces in which the advertising message crosses over from a place of consumption to a space of production. The fact that these places range from visible to inaccessible spaces, signals the indivisible and invisible messages of power and desire embedded within this very, same landscape.
Lastly, these spaces dematerialise completely and the film addresses some of the exuberance that it has been mood boarding. The film has told us that everything can be perceived to be an advert. It has told us that we all love to hear stories – we, must we not forget, are built to tell stories, as cognition is an exercise in narration. Now the spaces of production become blurred between the places of sentiment and liberation. There are explicit references to the personification of brands likened to interesting people you and I would like to get to know. Much like the true origins of the Nike advert, we are being shown that the new spaces of production now reside within our imagination. Cleverly revealing to the audience the code of belief that the medium is the message and that the message equals power, but also the message as power.
“Ill never forget the first time I first walked in and showed the President [Regan] the ‘Morning In America’ spots he teared up and said I wish I was that good.” Ed Rollins, Art & Copy (2009) 01:04:53
I don’t think it is particularly revolutionary to think that advertising designs our imagination, desire is built on creating narrative landscapes for fantasies to reside within. However, what I think is important is where these two ideas meet in the film – the idea that the message is synonymous with control and that creativity can solve anything.
I was watching QI the other night[6], which featured the Japanese robot asimo. Asimo was brought on stage to perform a few crowd-pleasing tricks and for the panel and audience to be awestruck at the new marvels of technology (a fairly Victorian notion in itself). The robot ran. Steven Fry emphatically tried to show that this is an unparalleled level of sophistication and advancement in technology. All I could think about was I had seen it all before and done much better in AI, or Tron, Bladerunner. I have watched cyborgs and robots perform the most mind-boggling tricks and not only defy, but destroy nature on every single possible level that the human mind can imagine and fit into 180 minutes of digital film (within budget). I had to watch the episode again to really let the ramifications of this act sink in. Because if I didn't make myself really think about it, it didn't really matter to me which one was real. I was more impressed by the films and that is where the meaningful encounter resided, for me.
This marked a shift. Things do not amaze in the same way. Perception, experienced through narration and subsequently integrated through mediation into our understanding of the world, is the actual unparalleled advancement. It not only collapses our sense of space and time it redefines who we are as people, precisely through the cyclical nature of representation, which reconfigures how we perceive ourselves. Who controls the message then, which we either choose, or not choose to believe, literally alters the perception of ourselves and our world. And it is becoming pointless to make distinctions between what is real or not. Just what matters most to each of us.
To come back to Art & Copy then and acknowledge that the film showed us that it is not the power of the message, but the message as power and that message has the ability to redefine our very notions of reality and all that is bound within that. Creating and solving everything and anything in all the levels, which our existence operates on is a very profound state of affairs. The position of the storyteller then can redefine us planting, through a process of inception, the desire to want certain things, see no difference between other things and make everything around us into a sensually animated advert. We can be turned onto everything, no matter how immaterial, and for this to be framed within an industry that does not separate between desire and capital means that creativity does solve anything, because it has the power to create anything and has been permitted to tell any story it wants from anything it pleases.
When I had drank all the whisky in my glass...
...and all that was left was the transparent layers of glass against residue against melted ice, I thought... why aren't I asking what makes a difference, rather than what is real?
'The Dangling Conversation'
The heat has been saturating. It’s October and I have moved through the streets of London similar to that of a levitating banshee. Each particle of air quivering, shimmering almost to lift me off my feet and transport me to where I never thought I needed to go. It has felt like I have been cushioned, cuddled, enveloped by the warmth and all in all has given me a feeling akin to a red bull without the crappy after taste. Red Bull gives you wings, indeed!
To accompany this atmospheric tremolo is the beginning of the autumnal season. Bright hues of berries squish onto the pavements, golden leaves dazzle and the sun setting a little earlier each day have typified the last fortnight. Today I found myself staring down at the floor at a cluster of empty horse chestnut shells. Laying on the ground like empty bullet cases I almost felt their inertia pull me down further into the moment when they collided with the ground and split open into the universe. Outstanding, it is almost like time-travel, don’t you think?
The soft jazzy notes of Gabriel Yard’s song ‘Betty y Zorg’ fill my room as I write. It is all about timing - reaching out and crossing over.
I always felt inadequate in Spanish lessons at school. The teacher, Mrs. Day, a slight woman besides from her protruding lower belly wore high-waisted skirts that accentuated her senescent curve. She’d pair this with a cream blouse and spectacles, which hung on a metallic beaded chain around her neck. She was fond of me and I appreciated her warmth, although she was particularly Victorian and prickly to the other kids. To be fair I needed all the help I could get, I wasn’t exactly liked by child, or adult alike at that point in my life.
In our school we had to line up outside each classroom before a lesson. This was probably issued in a vein attempt to exercise the mantra of discipline at all times. It rang through that institution like an unwelcome foghorn and to which I had an exacting deafness. There was one day in particular when we all came bustling in after standing outside in the strikingly beautiful sunshine for what felt like an eternity. The room was hot and uncomfortable, so much so that the school desks just didn’t appear large enough for our awkward and clumsy young-adult frames. Mrs. Day tried to calm the class down with her frighteningly high-pitched voice letting Spanish tumble out of her mouth until she tipped over into the territory of frustration and instructed us to just bloody well shut the hell up, or else.
“Who is the most important person in your life?”
The class fell into a murmur. Who is the most important person in your life? Someone piped up and said their parents, another chose to sit on one-side of the picket fence and say their ‘mom’. I think another said their sibling, or twin, or some other rubbish. Coming from a single-parent-only-child lucky dip the family combo thing didn’t sit well with me and I was uncharacteristically quiet. Usually the smart aleck with all the wrong answers Mrs. Day cast her eye over me. “Well, none of you are right, again, who is the most important person in your life, and this time ladies in espanol por favor!”
Apparently the correct answer was yourself, is yourself, sorry. A pretty large metaphysical question for a Tuesday morning I would argue, but her point had something to do with the subject pronouns of Spanish. Well didn’t that just get my imaginative juices secreting. Subjectivity and the way it flows in and out of other people has always interested me.
I spent a good chunk of my day yesterday in either sickeningly bright-white or blacked-out rooms full of art. There was a great show by David Panos and Katja Kirschner entitled ‘Living Truthfully under Imaginary Circumstances’ at Hollybush Gardens. A girl and a guy sit opposite to each other – the sexual tension is immense. Fuck, I want her hair. I love the way it sweeps across her forehead and is pulled back by a bobby pin. Fuck, I love her teeth too. Maybe, just maybe I could get my teeth pulled into that shape. She looks like a more interesting Kirsten Dunst. You know how Dunst’s teeth are flat and straight except for her two canines that sit angled against the rest. It says: I’m perfect and misshapen, all at once.
The actors are using a technique devised by Sansford Meisner, which in its approach apparently uncovers “the ‘true’ nature of human behaviour.” Fuck, maybe she knows she looks like Kirsten Dunst. If so, does she model her look around her - just to accentuate it for her burgeoning acting career you know. They are picking up on each other’s facial expressions and repeating it back to one another.
“You are smiling”
“I am smiling”
“You are smiling”
“I am smiling”
You get my drift, right? So, anyways the two actors are doing this and they end up in the realm of “you like me” “I like you” “You wanna fuck me” “I wanna fuck you”. Not exactly this, but in so many words. And I think did you guys get instructed to stray into this territory of foreplay, or is this the true nature of human behaviour coming through? Bloody brilliant. I thought about it all the way home, how much am I trying to hide my human behaviour, or not, in every encounter I have with another human being? Does the simple, but relentless act of repetition allow for a shift in the cosmos of reality and open up a whole world where we, the viewer, read between the lines that little more clearly.
I decided I am going to repeat things back to people when I am next confronted with a mis-subjective social situation.
“You are fucking making this shit up, right?”
“I am fucking making this shit up, right?”
“It’s all in my head?”
“It’s all in your head”
“It’s all in my head”
“It’s all in your head?”
“It’s all in my head!”
“It’s all in your head!”
"Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
Your'e a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives."
Simon & Garfunkel The Dangling Conversation
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