Saturday 26 November 2016
Four decades ago toujours la même histoire, again....., my brown ink of the period, oh Maoist me.
You know the thing, unpacking my library etc, so having moved to London N4 (we quit E1 because of how hip grew into hipster, we were always the first, never the second, one syllable too many with no poetic value at all) I found these documents that are self explanatory and very interesting for long term studies of art education. Below is a list of attendees, Andrew Brighton's statement and mine, I will put the others up to. I put his and mine up as we always enjoyed, in the rather Lacanian sense, disagreement, before J Rancière made it respectable, dunque, three pages as good jpegs:
BTW Hoggart really came out as an elitist and authoritarian know all facing the younger audience, a kind of Mr Bounderby of theoretical knowledge. Had a nice fight with him, but I recall that before that Stuart Hall dismantled him on a radio programme - inspiration, in disagreement!
BTW Hoggart really came out as an elitist and authoritarian know all facing the younger audience, a kind of Mr Bounderby of theoretical knowledge. Had a nice fight with him, but I recall that before that Stuart Hall dismantled him on a radio programme - inspiration, in disagreement!
Tuesday 28 June 2016
EU EU EU EU and the Land of the Pharaohs, let's be the crocodiles?????????????
Do you recall that marvellous shot at the end of Land of the Pharaohs (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046949/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_ps) when the villain looks down from the wall from which he is to plunge into the crocodile pit and sees them there with open, welcoming jaws - and then, as he plunges, we see him fall from the viewpoint of the crocodiles themselves - but never the impact?
Is that not the position in which we now find ourselves vis à vis the EU?
What would Jack Hawkins do and whatever was it that Joan Collins did? Will there ever be another episode? At the moment of writing the whole thing is turning into a crossover between a screw-ball comedy with Cameron as a goofy and unintentionally clumsy Jerry Lewis, and a rather coarse and vulgar tragedy of the kind that only Goves, Johnsons and Farages could produce. The number of vile politicians on both sides is utterly astonishing, with the hideous CD right of Schauble or Merkel looking like the moderates that they are not - as we know over the decades, but saw nakedly in their handling of Greece; the grimly neoliberal Juncker with his mafioso style denials of his running his country as a tax haven having anything to do with heading up the EU, actually demanding that the UK exit today and so act in conflict with the Lisbon treaty and UK Parliamentary procedure; and the skunk-like putridity of Le Pen and Farage coming head on with the pro-EU but hardly less fascist Eastern European leaders. Is there anyone to admire? Schulz, who tried to block the EU from one of its honourable moves in labelling West Bank products and who apologised to Netanyahu for even suggesting that israel might deprive the Palestinians of water? Pity the poor crocodiles, if this lot were to fall from the wall even their cast-iron digestive tracts would be sorely challenged.
The weird outcome of the stupidly anti-democratic and manipulative UK referendum is that disagreement, or mésentente, now rules; the staging of the sensible is reworked in an uncannily new décor and we have a chance to look long and hard at our own delusions and illusions. The racist or xenophobic insult to our new populations stands out clearly as a symptom to be accounted for - while on the one hand understanding that the much vaunted freedom of movement is not much more than Norman Tebbit's one time 'get on your bike' for the poor and, on the other hand, a privilege of the Eurogranted academics and art world tourists of whom I am still a hanger-on. We need to see this, and to look at the delusions as at the wounds, without shame and without lamentation as a state of things in which we might or might not find some kind of effective thinking ... I read three things today that beautifully support this reading, Chantal Mouffe, Etienne Balibar and Stathis Koevelakis
https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/250616/chantal-mouffe-le-brexit-peut-constituer-un-choc-salutaire
http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/06/27/le-brexit-cet-anti-grexit_1462429
https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/250616/stathis-kouvelakis-l-ue-n-est-pas-reformable
Is that not the position in which we now find ourselves vis à vis the EU?
What would Jack Hawkins do and whatever was it that Joan Collins did? Will there ever be another episode? At the moment of writing the whole thing is turning into a crossover between a screw-ball comedy with Cameron as a goofy and unintentionally clumsy Jerry Lewis, and a rather coarse and vulgar tragedy of the kind that only Goves, Johnsons and Farages could produce. The number of vile politicians on both sides is utterly astonishing, with the hideous CD right of Schauble or Merkel looking like the moderates that they are not - as we know over the decades, but saw nakedly in their handling of Greece; the grimly neoliberal Juncker with his mafioso style denials of his running his country as a tax haven having anything to do with heading up the EU, actually demanding that the UK exit today and so act in conflict with the Lisbon treaty and UK Parliamentary procedure; and the skunk-like putridity of Le Pen and Farage coming head on with the pro-EU but hardly less fascist Eastern European leaders. Is there anyone to admire? Schulz, who tried to block the EU from one of its honourable moves in labelling West Bank products and who apologised to Netanyahu for even suggesting that israel might deprive the Palestinians of water? Pity the poor crocodiles, if this lot were to fall from the wall even their cast-iron digestive tracts would be sorely challenged.
The weird outcome of the stupidly anti-democratic and manipulative UK referendum is that disagreement, or mésentente, now rules; the staging of the sensible is reworked in an uncannily new décor and we have a chance to look long and hard at our own delusions and illusions. The racist or xenophobic insult to our new populations stands out clearly as a symptom to be accounted for - while on the one hand understanding that the much vaunted freedom of movement is not much more than Norman Tebbit's one time 'get on your bike' for the poor and, on the other hand, a privilege of the Eurogranted academics and art world tourists of whom I am still a hanger-on. We need to see this, and to look at the delusions as at the wounds, without shame and without lamentation as a state of things in which we might or might not find some kind of effective thinking ... I read three things today that beautifully support this reading, Chantal Mouffe, Etienne Balibar and Stathis Koevelakis
https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/250616/chantal-mouffe-le-brexit-peut-constituer-un-choc-salutaire
http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/06/27/le-brexit-cet-anti-grexit_1462429
https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/250616/stathis-kouvelakis-l-ue-n-est-pas-reformable
Never written... The Catamites of Cork Street
All of this was still in black and white and reality had yet to be coloured by digital numbers, like a cheap oil painting .. Oddly many of these stores were not far from municipal, private or public Turkish baths, The Savoy in Jermyn Street or Porchester hall up Queensway, or strangely near to famous cottages (Piccadilly Circus station). So there was a gayish novel to be written, even before Hollinghurst had published his glorious Swimming Pool Library (yes, yes, the cheap smell of rented speedos!).
My novel, as a Proust reader and a gallery rat was to be entitled:
Du côté de chez Swann and Edgar,
and the first chapter was to have been
'The Catamites of Cork Street'.
here is a picture I drew a couple of years ago, on my tablet, for a conference where we were asked to bring a bit of porn, I think. It is a memory of a graffito seen on the wall of the Gents at the corner of Carnaby Street, just behind Liberty. It made me laugh so hard I peed on my jeans. Heigh ho, 1968 was such fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
Thursday 26 May 2016
theory and theorists - one learns these matters from images or artists in the first place...
recently i stopped someone kindly introducing me as 'a theorist' and asked the person not to use the word of me. Here is why and what I believe, oh yes I do, I do believe it, deeply, wildly, madly....
A theorist is
to theory
what
a beautician
is
to
Wednesday 2 March 2016
Sad News via Anthony Reynolds
Every moment teaching with Jon was memorable, nothing was dull, nor wasted, nothing was other than care-lessly complex, fear-lessly adventurous, wonderfully open and sometimes wildly funny.
Thursday 18 February 2016
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