Brian on Art

Regular readers will know of my fondness for Brian Micklethwait’s blog and his narrative, no nonsense style of writing.

Today, Brian gave us a collage of Anthony Gormley’s exhibit(s?) in London during the summer of 2007. But it wasn’t the pictures that piqued my interest so much as Brian’s commentary:

For some damn fool artistic type reason that need not concern us unless we want it to, Gormley called these Men “Event Horizon”.  (Artists who make nice things but talk bollocks about them are a characteristic type of our time, I think.  I don’t blame them.  If they didn’t talk bollocks they’d never get their careers cranked up.  Anyway, it makes a change from a generation ago, when the things they made were almost entirely bollocks also.) The Gormley Men are all based on Gormley himself.

Critic Howard Halle (see here) out-Gormleyed Gormley by saying this:

“Using distance and attendant shifts of scale within the very fabric of the city, [Event Horizon] creates a metaphor for urban life and all the contradictory associations – alienation, ambition, anonymity, fame – it entails.”

Whatever.  In other words, you see in these metal Men whatever you want to see, much as you see whatever you want to see when confronting actual men.

I can’t agree with Brian that what artists produce these days is any better than what artists produced a generation ago. Lest we forget that during this year’s (at least partially) publicly-funded “Infecting The City” arts “festival” in Cape Town:

City “treasures”, including King Edward’s statue on the Grand Parade, were covered in clingwrap and trees on the station forecourt were draped in toilet paper.

Which, to me, almost entirely indicates that things in the art world really haven’t moved on at all in the last 30 years.

Other places…

I’ve been here and there around the internet this last few days, so I thought I’d share what I’d found with you, hunter-gatherer style.

Firstly – one of my favourite bloggers. Yes, it’s Brian Micklethwait and his ongoing battle with technology – or just recording devices in this case:

Maybe I can get Cobden Centre supremo Andy Duncan to tell me how to use my recording gadgets without getting totally confused.  At present the only one I am any good at using is the hateful Sony confusaphone, hateful because it obliges you to go half way around the techno-world turning Sony files into a human (.mp3) files.  I bought another machine which doesn’t have this problem, but it has another problem.  It’s totally effing incomprehensible.

My new Sony Confusaphone (also known as the glorious new Xperia X10i) is also mentally taxing, but in a good way. Android certainly seems like a lot of fun, although I haven’t found much hugely useful to do with it yet.

Then onto Gina Loubser’s opinion on the whole @pigspotter issue which has divided a little tiny piece of South Africa not really down the middle. I’m with Gina on this one – namely that his tweeting the location of roadblocks and mobile speed traps is just wrong.

He may be a hero in the minds of many and he may have thousands of people following him, but he is still a prime example of someone acting on impulse in a public forum without any concept of the consequences of his actions on his own life and the lives of others.

It’s interesting to note that internet polls have come down firmly (like 90:10 firmly) on the side of @pigspotter.
I don’t understand why he warrants this sort of near fanatical support. Is it something to do with getting one over on authority? Does this make people feel good?
Cliff gives his reasons for his actions thus:

to stop corrupt police soliciting bribes from citizens, and victimising the public.

Yes, there are some corrupt cops in Jo’burg and that’s not good, but how does Cliff’s real-time revalations of their whereabouts assist to weed them out? Am I missing something here?

It’s bizarre and rather unpleasant watching as the brainwashed masses instantly and mindlessly lay into anyone who voices a dissenting opinion to the majority.
The thoroughly repulsive Clive Simpkins is one of the masses.
After I replied to a comment he left on Gina’s post, he refused to discuss the matter further:

Dear 6000, if you don’t have the cahunas to put your name to what you write, you’re classed as an Internet troll. I don’t waste time on them.

This while he is wasting his time on supporting a bloke who is called… er… “@pigspotter”.

There is a school of thought that says that Clive was just caught out by actually being asked to explain his actions and couldn’t, but it’s obviously far more likely that I am “an Internet troll” than that he is a hypocritical tosser.

Over to my mate Albert:

Great spirits have always faced violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Right. Thanks for that.

Finally, something a bit lighter. I think, anyway. Peace Island.
We’ve all heard of Robben Island and Dassen Island and Seal Island and Marion Island and Easter Island and the Galapagos Islands and the Falkland Islands.

But Peace Island? Paarden?

Well, this is apparently Cape Town’s answer to the Palm and World Artificial islands built in Dubai.
Yes, really.

The developers envision and economically and ecologically sustainable development in which upscale housing, trade and tourism opportunities fund and enable low cost housing and contribute to the developmental objectives of the South African Government.

How?
Well, “for every 1,000m² plot sold at R10 million, R1 million will go towards social housing”.
With the initial 25% of the land being sold for R2 billion, that would mean 40,000 units at R50,000 each. With an average of 5 people per unit, that’s housing for 200,000 people.
“The Government would decide where to built the houses.”
As long as it’s not on your island, presumably.

Apparently, the project would require 165 million m³ of sand and 4.2 million tonnes of rock. To put that in perspective – my kids’ sandpit is nowhere near that big and has no rocks in it at all.

Is it for real? I don’t know.
Will it ever take off? I don’t know.

But if it really is a pie-in-the-sky late April fool, someone has gone to a lot of work to put it together, albeit that the spelling and website are a little shabby.

No names though, so Clive probably wouldn’t give it the time of day.

UPDATE: Incoming!

That creepy bald dude is using his superior “communication skills” to trash talk you on his stream. Please tell him it’s spelt CAJONES.

Gasp – so he is!

This would be HUGELY amusing if I was indeed furious or if vasectomy involved anything to do with the testes, which it doesn’t (that would be a orchiectomy). So it’s actually not that amusing.

Oh – and the spelling thing is addressed here:

For some people, apparently, a Hawaiian word for “priest” has ended up as an English euphemism for “testicles”.

Not great use of language from Mr Communication. Yet another reason not to hire him.

Take it everywhere

The sage Brian Micklethwait tells us:

I try always to take my camera with me whenever I go out, because I never know what interesting thing I will encounter, and because I have a superstitious fear that on the one day when I don’t take my camera with me when I go out, that will be the day when an Airbus A380 flies over the middle of London, much too low, with one of its engines on fire, just when I have a perfect view of it.

And once again, he’s right. I take mine everywhere (except bed – Mrs 6000 won’t allow it in case I accidentally slip my zoom lens out while she’s asleep) for exactly that reason.
Well, ok, not exactly that reason. Not having my camera immediately to hand when an Airbus A380 flies over the middle of London, much too low, with one of its engines on fire won’t do me much good because – despite what I tell my wife – my telephoto isn’t actually that long.

So far, my constant companion hasn’t yielded anything hugely unusual, but you’ll be amongst the first to know when it does.

Brian’s Alicante Flight Pee Hell

Up early because of the little humans that reside with us – and today celebrating the sixth anniversary of my arrival in South Africa – I find myself catching up on reading other people’s blogs while the boy watches Handy Manny.

Brian Micklethwait.com – which has been a little quiet of late – returns with a couple of posts about Brian’s recent trip to Spain; and the description of his journey had me in stitches. 

At Stansted, knowing that fluids on planes are restricted, I consume a bottle of fruit juice (more like industrial waste from an artificial sugar factory really) and my tin of Tesco Red Bull Clone.  But since I am only just on time, I neglect having a piss.  On the plane, I desperately need a piss, what with the perpetual jogging that planes, I suddenly realise, subject you to.  They aren’t a bit like trains.  But, being an old git and what with all the jogging, I am, although bursting, unable actually to burst in the horrid little Ryanairplane toilet, despite literally crying and yelling with the frustration of it all.  Something to do with the same muscles that keep you standing also stopping you from pissing.  Defeated and humiliated, I return to my seat and continue bursting until we arrive at Alicante nearly two hours later, and am finally able to burst on the solid ground of Spain in a proper toilet with vertical walls, that stays still.

I’m reproducing part of it here because I think it’s one of those posts that will be taken down and gone forever when it’s actually re-read by the author. All bloggers will recognise the “Oh my Deity! Did I really write that?” moment. We’ve all been there and done that.

Equally, I think we can all agree that there are few worse feelings than not being about to pee when you need to. My story involves a night drinking in London, an underground rush to the bus back to Oxford – omitting any toilet stops because there’s one on the Oxford Tube coach – a last minute dash from Victoria Station to the bus stop, leaping on as the doors close and bus sets off and only then discovering that the on-board toilet is out of order.
At 1am, 1½ bladder-damagingly bumpy hours up the M40 later, the dry-stone wall at AC Nielsen at Thornhill Park and Ride was no longer dry. It was a urination event so lengthy, so wonderful and so memorable that the feelings of relief are still palpable today.

I hope you’re reading this now.
As soon as I get chance to review it, I’ll probably delete it.