It’s a load of fuss, all this transporting of the Olympic flame. Surely someone in China must have a box of matches. I mean, they invented fireworks. Perhaps they only have those glowing taper things now.
For a serious look at how and why, have a look at the BBC news site.
For someone who rarely visits the cinema, I am madly interested in movies and movie news. Instead of going to the cinema, I buy DVDs which I never get a chance to watch… although actually I do copy them onto the Archos and watch them on the Camberley Express into London.
I quite liked the recent ‘Hulk’ movie directed by Ang Lee and starring Eric Bana - some of it was a bit slow-going but there’s a glorious segment about two-thirds of the way through where the US armed forces chase the big green fella across the desert, and fun ensues as he throws tanks and helicopters around.
An even newer Hulk adaptation starring Edward Norton is one the cinematic highlights I probably won’t get to see this year, along with ‘Iron Man’, ‘The Dark Knight’ (the latest Batman flick) and ‘Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Zimmer Frame’. Nevertheless, I was excited (possibly the wrong word… interested, maybe) to see the news of the Hulk trailer on Comingsoon.Net. So I clicked on the link and made ready with the headphones… but in the embedded movie player I saw the message pictured here.
I can understand being asked to leave a room while someone explains US encryption export policy to some US citizens (yes, it did happen), but this is a bit stupid. What’s the point? Spoilsports.
Call me an unromantic old cynic, but isn’t St Valentine’s Day just another occasion promoted by greetings card companies and florists to swell their own coffers? Isn’t it strange that the price of roses suddenly peaks on February 14th?
Okay, I bought the wife a card and a very nice tasteful gift. But while I was in the card shop looking through the selection of over-priced printed cardboard I noticed cards that sons could send to their mums and cards from the family’s dog. Wikipedia describes St Valentine’s Day as “the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other”. So, sending THAT sort of greetings card to your mother, I believe that’s known as Oedipus Syndrome. And receiving one from the dog, quite frankly, that’s just not right.
Mother’s Day is less than a month away (florists, rub your greedy hands with glee). Then Easter… I don’t think we’ve ever been in the habit of sending Easter cards, but greetings card companies would like us to remind our friends of Christ’s resurrection with the words “Happy Easter”. Was it a happy time for Jesus? I don’t think so. Then Father’s Day. If they’re looking to plug a gap in the calendar where people are inconsiderate enough only to celebrate birthdays, I’m sure you’ll find “Happy Summer Solstice” cards in your local shop. And then perhaps “send your friend a piece of printed cardboard” day.
Please remember to recycle, because we’re running out of rainforest.
So, here we are, the first post of 2008. After a strenuous first day back at work I arrived home to find two letters for me. Not unusual, I get post but usually it’s either a) bills or b) junk mail. Sometimes birthday cards, but typically only in January.
Since we moved in October 2006 we certainly get less casual delivered-on-foot junk mail. Where we used to live there was a high concentration of houses meaning that all manner of junk mail-delivery offenders could offload a huge volume of their wares in a short time… and hence we used to get a lot, sometimes up to ten pizza delivery leaflets a week. The day when I opened the door, screwed up a leaflet from an estate agent and threw it back at his head now seems distant.
The road we now live in is a bit of a hike for on-foot junk mail-delivery, nowhere near as many houses and wouldn’t be attempted after dark (not because of me jumping out of a bush at them - although that’s a thought - it’s just a very dark road). Hence we rarely get any leaflets through the door, which I count as a huge bonus. However…
The amount of junk mail delivered in addressed envelopes seems to be on the increase. Now, what are we constantly warned against (apart from eating too much saturated fat, binge drinking and driving while shaving or eating a bowl of cereal)? Answer: identity fraud. Who warns us against identity fraud? Answer: financial institutions, banks and credit card providers. Who sends the most junk mail which carries the risk of exposing our name and address details to potential fraudsters? Answer: financial institutions, banks and credit card providers.
Here’s my tip… when you receive junk mail from anyone and it includes a reply-paid envelope, send it back to them. It costs them money to process your incoming envelope. You can send their crap back to them and include a note saying “take me off your mailing list” or just send them back something else you don’t want. After all, they sent you some rubbish, so just return the favour.
Okay readers, it’s time to get high-brow and discuss modern art. And not for the first time on dadams.co.uk… oh no, we’ve explored this subject before, and I’ve dug into the archives and resurrected postings one and two for your delectation.
What makes me come back to modern art for the third time in the illustrious history of dadams.co.uk is the 2007 Turner Prize, which is described as “a contemporary art award that always provokes debate and is widely recognised as one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe”.
“…provokes debate” - yep, I’d say so. It also leaves most of us scratching our heads and wondering if some sort of abstract parallel universe has temporarily collided with our own. Or is it just that there’s a bunch of jumped-up media types trying to pretend they’re better than us by getting us to believe that there’s some hidden value that they can see but we can’t, presumably because we’re just not clever or artistic enough?
Example: Mark Wallinger has been nominated, and one of his pieces is an ‘installation’ which comprises of numerous protest posters and placards. According to the judges his work “evokes a heightened sense of reality that communicates an unpalatable political truth”. Eh? I noticed that the people present at the poll tax riots some years ago didn’t get nominated for their signs, but in Wallinger’s favour he has never (to my knowledge) burnt cars, lobbed petrol bombs at the police or thrown a dustbin through the window of McDonalds. Although if he did, the results would be pieces of art.
But now let’s have a look at another piece by Wallinger which really allows us to have a good scoff at the world of modern art’s expense. Entitled ‘Sleeper’, it’s a video filmed over ten nights in a Berlin art gallery. Interesting? Maybe. The main subject was Wallinger dressed in a bear suit. That’s art, is it? Dressing up as Bungle from Rainbow. Genius. No doubt it evokes a heightened sense of ursine loneliness suffered by a tortured soul on a nocturnal quest for honey, or perhaps his friend Geoffrey. I once went to a fancy dress party in a similar costume (although it had a space for my real face) - does that make me an artist? All I can really tell you is that it seemed like a good costume until I had to visit the boy’s room.
It’s simple… if you want to see real art created by someone with a real talent, take a look at Julian Beever’s pavement art. Meanwhile if you fancy your chance at the Turner Prize, acquire a bucket of vomit, dangle it from a wire coat hanger, and get yourself down to the Tate. They’ll lap it up (but only if you went to art school and regularly have Damien Hirst round for dinner).
Update: given the past history of cleaners throwing away ‘works of arts’ the BBC News web site have rather amusingly interviewed Vera Montgomery, a cleaner at the Tate Liverpool. “What about the bear?” she says, “please explain it to me”. Yeah, and me please. She goes on to say “to me it’s just a guy dressed up in a bear outfit, walking round an empty vacant building”. This rather accurate description (and I’m not being sarcastic Vera) is followed up by “am I being ignorant or what?”. Ignorant Vera…? No, just honest. The short video end with her asking the BBC’s David Sillito “what does it represent?” - Sillito responds with another question, which would seem to imply that he doesn’t have a clue either, but unlike Vera isn’t prepared to admit it.
In another video Sillito asks Vera for her opinion of ‘Untitled Threshold Sculpture’ by Nathan Coley. Let’s be clear about what this is… it’s a piece of wood laid on the floor. Vera is not impressed and thinks it’s a health and safety hazard.
According to Coley, this is part of exploring physical and psychological boundaries, and marks his temporary ownership of part of the gallery. According to me, you can pop down to B&Q or Homebase, make a purchase and ‘hey presto’ you’re a modern artist. But beware, Vera has got you sussed and won’t be impressed.
Make sure you come back in a year’s time, when we’ll be discussing some very clever arty person who will be displaying a bottle they’ve either p*ssed or farted in, while several art critics marvel at their genius.
It was nearly three years ago that I commented on the pretentiousness of modern art (see here) and now it is time to do it again. And for a second time, the world of art has been exposed by a humble, hard-working, honest member of the Tate Britain’s cleaning staff. Three years ago, a cleaner threw away a pile of rubbish because he mistook it for a, errr, pile of rubbish. But of course the pile of rubbish was actually constructed by Damien Hirst, and was therefore of great artistic value, illustrating the chaotic world of a genius’ studio. Yeah, right - pass me that shovel, there’s some bull-shit that needs shifting. I took a quick look in our kitchen bin tonight, and came to the conclusion that it illustrated the slightly chaotic world of a suburban family that receives too much junk mail and has a daughter who’s a bit too fond of frankfurters and spaghetti hoops.
This latest example of a cleaner not realising the artistic merit of a piece concerned a bag full of scrap paper and cardboard which formed part of an exhibit by 78 year-old German artist Gustav Metzger. The exhibit, said to demonstrate the “finite existence” of art, also included a large piece of nylon burnt by acid… so of course I’ve been cursing myself for not finding the time to get along to the Tate Britain to have a look at that. The see-through polythene bag, which was sitting on the floor beside the rest of the “installation” was picked up by the cleaner and thrown out. Well, I said it last time, some people have the gift of seeing things for what they really are. That comment doesn’t apply the curators of the Tate Britain and Tate Modern - as far as they’re concerned, if you can sniff up a load of phlegm and cough it out on a dinner plate, you can create art (the other analogy I considered, but decided against using, was far cruder).
As if to prove that we live in a world gone mad, the Tate Britain has offered compensation to Metzger. The artist, who was dismayed at the destruction of his work, had to create another bag of rubbish to replace the lost piece and make his work complete again. We really do live in different worlds. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and work on an “installation” - I have an old rag in the garage that I used to rub furniture wax onto a pine shelf. I thought that if I draped it over an old piece of skirting board and balanced that on top of a half-empty tin of Dulux Soft Linen paint, I could sell it to the Tate Britain as a work depicting the fact that I hoard too much crap in my garage.
I can’t remember how we got onto the subject, but the wife informed me that some art award had been given to an exhibit that consisted of two flashing lights in an empty room. A quick search of the BBC news web site revealed that this was (nearly) true… an exhibit consisting of two flashing lights in an empty room had been short-listed for the Turner Prize. And this merely confirms what I’ve always believed… modern art is not, in most cases, artistic - merely rubbish admired and promoted by pretentious twats.
If you need any further proof of this, there was another recent article on the BBC news site that made me cheer for the average man-in-the-street. A cleaner at the Tate Modern got into a bit of hot water because he cleared away a pile of rubbish. Isn’t that his job? Well, normally… except this pile of rubbish had been placed there by modern artist Damien Hirst - and it therefore qualified as an art exhibit. In the process the cleaner, who is probably paid less than your average art critic by several orders of magnitude, showed an enormous measure of savvy and taste - he saw the exhibit for what it really was… a big pile of crap.
Let’s face it, if I nailed six corn beef tins and a dead squirrel to a piece of chipboard, the jumped-up curators of the Tate Modern wouldn’t be falling over themselves to hang it on the wall. If Damien Hirst nailed six corn beef tins and a dead squirrel to a piece of chipboard, they’d be choosing a spot for it while writing out a big lottery-funded cheque. But I guess it serves me right for not having the foresight to stick a dead sheep in a tank of preserving fluid when I had the chance to.
An addition… the following text is taken from the Tate Britain’s web site and explains the flashing lights. Before you read this, remember that this is just basically lights going on and then going off… rather like when you go into the bathroom and use the light switch and then use it again when you come out:
“For the Turner Prize exhibition, Creed has decided to show Work # 227: The lights going on and off. Nothing is added to the space and nothing is taken away, but at intervals of five seconds the gallery is filled with light and then subsequently thrown into darkness. Realising the premise set out in Work # 232, Creed celebrates the mechanics of the everyday, and in manipulating the gallery’s existing light fittings he creates a new and unexpected effect. In the context of Tate Britain, an institution displaying a huge variety of objects, this work challenges the traditional methods of museum display and thus the encounter one would normally expect to have in a gallery. Disrupting the norm, allowing and then denying the lights their function, Creed plays with the viewer’s sense of space and time. Our negotiation of the gallery is impeded, yet we become more aware of our own visual sensitivity, the actuality of the space and our own actions within it. We are invited to re-evaluate our relationship to our immediate surroundings, to look again and to question what we are presented with. Responding to the actual condition in which he has been asked to exhibit, Creed exposes rules, conventions and opportunities that are usually overlooked, and in so doing implicates and empowers the viewer.”
Perhaps I’m a bit of a pleb, but isn’t that just a load of complete b*llocks? I’d re-evaluate my relationship to my immediate surroundings by asking for a refund.
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