she sees red

closed for renovation

2014-07-29T16:35:00.002+01:00

In April 2006, I started this funny blog as a way to write about the process of exhibiting and venting my strong opinions about other art exhibitions I was seeing in Sydney and beyond.

It has been an amazing experience over the last 8 years and I've made friends, influenced people, made enemies and lost myself in it.

Now it's time for she sees red to grow up a little, expand, move premises and kick arse.

I'm turning the lights off, closing the shutters, putting up some scaffolding and working some magic behind the shadecloth that has an artists' impression on it.

Next year, I'll have a new domain, a new look and new focus, with more guest posts, a new podcast i'm starting, regular writing again and a cooler focus. Still all on art, music, sound, politics and general cultural critique, but with more oomph.

And it's going to look amazing.

This baby will still stay here until then, so feel free to stick-beak through the archives, search, etc.

Here's a quick shortcut to the posts you all loved the most:

Review of Zadie Smith's Collection of Essays

Confiscated Childhood: Afro Supa Hero and Confiscated Cabinet and the Museum of Childhood

Pink Bits (NSFW): Exhibition Review of Erotic Art

Obligatory Chris Brown Post

Has Conceptual Art Gone Too Far

Leigh Bowery (you guys love him too!)

London Wednesdays

Secret societies: Public or Private

For those who have hung out on this blogspot site (Hi Mum!), thanks for coming.
I promise to leave a forwarding address.

I'll be guest writing about arts and culture in some other places, so keep an eye out and you can always catch me on twitter or sheseesred.com.

Until 2015, you've all been amazing!

her footnotes are perfect: a review of zadie smith's collection of essays. yes, 6 years after it was published.

2014-04-28T22:20:00.000+01:00

an introduction

Since taking a sabbatical from making visual work, I've been absorbed by the written word - writing more and reading like my mind is a black hole; sucking in book after book, no rest in between. Close one, open another.

I haven't read like that since I was a child; weekday afternoons in the library, reading everywhere: the toilet, the garden, the bedroom - always getting in trouble for sitting with a book instead of doing chores.

In this recent craze I read Zadie Smith's occasional essays: changing my mind. Or inhaled, rather.

I should have had an inkling that this book would be like a glorious cordless drill, boring into my life, given the way it came into it:

I read the first essay in its natural habitat - as the introduction to Their Eyes Were Watching God. It was the most intimate introduction I've ever read of a novel - like someone I was having a casual conversation with suddenly giving me a beautiful french kiss.*

I was struck.

I remembered relishing her exacting essays about art in the New Yorker - and, before I had even started the ZNH book itself, I was pining after a whole book more of Zadie Smith's essay.

The searching gods (ie: amazon) shone, there was such a book! Gasp!

Being the kind of girl I am, I tweeted about it:

dear twitter, it is my birthday tmrw. I would really like this collection of essays by zadie smith, please. best, http://t.co/yjkU54gh0e
— lauren brown (@sheseesred) February 7, 2014

A dear friend, one @purplesime responded thusly:

@sheseesred Done.
— purplesime (@purplesime) February 7, 2014

Arriving wrapped in gorgeous illustrated paper a few days' later, it sat in my bookshelf, waiting until The Right Time.

If you're thinking 'yeah, alright, enough about you more about the book', I'm sorry but it's not going to get all that much more objective.

My relationship to this book and to its writer has grown greater than mere critique, into some kind of literary love affair - less austen, more nabokov. It is a love affair somewhat reminiscent of the only time I have felt deep romantic love for another person (all the way from the part where my blonde and black hair meet, to the bottom of my size 37 feet.)

I have become so besotted by this book that, at one point in the middle of reading it, if I had passed her on the street, I might have had to hug a light pole in order to respect her personal space, rather than run up to hug her and not let go for a full minute.

A minute is a long time to hold onto a stranger in a fierce and loving embrace.

So that's how I feel about this book.

I would love to write a proper literary essay about it. But it's already 6 years old and all the best journalists and reviewing people in the world have written about it, so this will be for the latecomers and more along the lines of a long rambly blog post.

on y va.

PART I

so, it's about..

Broadly speaking, it's about culture.
But who wants to know about the broadly speaking. everything is, broadly speaking, about culture.

So, it's divided into four separate sections: seeing, being, feeling and remembering. Which set the architecture of the book into the human way of relating to things - especially to the kinds of things that a Zadie Smith-like human relates to. I'm sure it's not done by Zadie herself*, but it still seemed to exude her sense of a 'correct' way of these things and the best way to connect herself and the reader.

So this book of essays is also about Zadie Smith. More than just a reflection, it's like a relief mold - one gets to know her by the ways she speaks of others and who she speaks about.

Despite the humanities-like grouping or taxonomy of essay types, her real themes and methods jump and criss-cross all over the place, lovingly tangled like my headphones after a long day in my bag.
Actually, more like a rough-weave fabric. Or a drawing: the discreet and the continuous combined to create a texture. Themes about voice (including listening) - the author's and the readers': language, cultural history, literature.

And then in between those two layers, the essays were about those things we related to in that human way: books and their authors (in which she doesn't divorce the two - like I haven't here), film and its characters/actors, families and their characters/actors; and work.

her voice
A combination of authority and personality, she tells you something - facts, analysis, outlines - then reminds you that she's telling you these things; That she, Zadie Smith, has this understanding/experience/opinion and that you, dear reader, are part of the journey too.

Without being as obtuse as writing directly to the reader, she has a rhythm that says "stay there and listen this. Now, come and and watch it with me." Show and reveal. Authority and personality.

I don't know if, during her literature degree at Cambridge, she focused on comparitive literature, but this is the underlying form for much of her essays in this book. But rather than binary comparison, which helps no-one, she sets out with two distinct markers, but swims around them.

Even within the confines of a short essay, she is a novelist. and because of that, she makes occasional diversions, brings in extra characters or points that probably don't need to be there, but make the reading all that more gorgeous, because it is.

Endearing is a term that can be so patronising, so i'm loath to use it here, but there were some essays in which she did this, and what I felt was endearment. I felt like I was being reminded that this was a story too, not just instruction on valuable things to know.

PART II

speaking to me
The way i'm going to write about some of the specific essays is as though she wrote the book for me.

Yes, me. Personally.

Because that's how it felt. I don't know whether that's because this book attended to my particular language, or this time in my life right now, or if I would have always have felt this way, but I was consistently saying YASSSS!!! on the inside. Sometimes on the outside, usually between stations on the tube. It was slightly embarrassing.

With a serious, critical tone - and from what i gleaned from her essays themselves - this directness of a relationship with the reader is crucial to Smith's writing. It's what drives the way she writes. And possibly the authors she reads/falls in loves with/writes essays-like-these about, so it's not just me being self-absorbed. Not entirely.

ownership
I know there are some people there for whom the paper of the book is a sacred thing.
This next section may offend:

I write notes on my books, as i engage, or read sentences that hit me in the heart. I highlight, underline, ask myself and the author questions in the columns. But for the first time ever, reading this book, i have corrected an author! *gasp*

I never do that. It feels so presumptuous. I take the book as it comes and I fit myself to it for that time.

But i had such a personal connection with this book, such a way of relating, that when I read her gorgeous reflection on Katherine Hepburn and she used the word 'tomboy' to speak about Kate's childhood (one I also related to, by the way). I crossed it out and wrote 'girl'. To suit myself. Because I was so invested in this writing, in this book, in her stories, that I couldn't afford to feel the disappointment over a small thing like using language that perpetuates gendered stereotypes in girls. So I corrected it and kept reading.

Even as I write that, it seems really silly. But I also think it says something about the quality of Zadie Smith's work - that i feel so connected to it - that i have the audacity to correct her phrase. An arrogance I've never witnessed in myself with any other book. It sounds hideous, but it feels complimentary.

Less so, but along these lines, I mixed up the order in which I read.
Yup! Didn't read it from cover to cover. I cherrypicked this muhfucker.

I know, it's not particularly revolutionary - it's a collection of essays. But I am still a sucker for start-to-finish. I hate choose-your-own-adventure stories - I'm a compliant reader. But clearly, this one felt slotted into my own life enough for me to want the range of stories to be scattered around me like a shuffled deck of cards.

Perhaps i'm overstating it, but in the picking and choosing of reading the essays, according to what I felt, what I saw, how I was being - it felt like i was weaving those stories in with my life. Plaiting a little from hers, a bit from mine, left, right, under, over, until all the stories were finished and I popped my head up and out of the book and realised I was looking at it from the perspective of a Zadie Smith essay.

Not all books do that, you know. I have this romantic notion that they should. But they don't.

PART III

some specific bits that wove in
These are some of the particular parts of the book that needled into my consciousness. Not just about the what, but the how. And, again, they were areas that firmly tugged at the stitching between me as the reader and Smith as the author. They were particular times when she did that thing I mentioned earlier 'i'm writing about this in a particular way that you'll love and I know you'll love it too'.

seeing: at the multiplex, 2006. (aka comparitive literature for film)
Her short treatises on film are not initially set out as comparitive. but in this series of essays, they become comparitive through mere juxtaposition. and deliciously unlikely in their coupling: Shopgirl and Get Rich or Die Tryin'; Walk the Line and Grizzly Man; Brief Encounter and Proof.

Her language was refreshingly shorthand and removed - reminding us of the ways we approach films - interchanging characters and actors names with general descriptions - loose and personal.

seeing: katherine hepburn and greta garbo.

I held back reading this essay, because I've never understood the Garbo fascination and couldn't quite straighten myself up to a comparison between the two. I had to work up to it. Which is a shame because I love katharine hepburn, feel protective about her and was busting to read about her (altough a bit afraid of a garbo-loving view of her).

But the way Sadie wrote about Katharine was worth the wait. She highlighted all the aspects of Hepburn's character that highlighted exactly why I like her. And left out any of the ones I didn't.

Similarly, it was Hepburn's unquite real-life position in Hollywood to chip away at some of America's more banal and oppressive received ideas. Whenever Hollywoood thought it knew what a woman was, or what a black man was, or what an intellectual might be, or what 'sexiness' amounted to, Hepburn made a move to turn the common thinking on its head, offering always something irreducibly singular.

Not only did she remind me about the parts of myself that need/needed to connect to Katharine (headstrong, determined, feminist, struggling with being understood, etc) through the choices of the way she wrote about Katherine, but in doing so Zadie showed me a bit about what she liked/needed from Katharine too. And because they were the same, she placed herself firmly in my camp, as the kind of person that values those things too. Or perhaps I did the placing, but still.

reading: nabokov and barthes
Here's another one I put off for a while, but that got to me in the end. I do love roland barthes (I think I'm the only one who actually digs his Fashion System book), but in a book of essays, I was scared of reading about him. Especially being compared to Nabokov. I didn't know that much about nabokov, but have mixed feelings about Lolita and I was imagining the worst.

But this book, unsurprisingly, was a perfect pair to another of her essays about the craft of writing (see below), in that it quickly pulled apart and organised into a loose pile the relationship between the author and the reader.

Artists quite often use barthes and his writing about this to speak of the relationship between artist and viewer, so I thought I had an understanding of his perspectives. But having read it again with the position of the actual 'author' (ie: writer) in mind, I feel like they're very, very different kinds of relationships and it does a disservice to both to use them in the way it has been. Or at least the way that some of the artists i know have used it.

As she mentions in it, zadie smith is influenced by both schools of thought, but probably more likely from a position of Nabokov. That is: in which the author is 'in control' of the story and her position is to grab the reader by the hand and lead her through the story, dragging her along behind her in a way like an overworked parent in a shopping mall.
This method doesn't really leave much room for Barthes' mentality of this relationship (and perhaps 'purpose' of authorship) in which both partners create the story - it is a the moment of the author's giving and the readers' receiving: the 'birth of the reader as the death of the author' idea.

Every writer needs to keep the faith with Nabokov and every reader with Barthes. For how can you write, believe in Barthes? Still, I'm glad I'm not the reader I was in college any more, and I'll tell you tell you why: it made me feel lonely.

Although this essay is at the beginning of the novel, and does, in a way, underlay her relationship with us as readers, I'm rather glad that I particularly left it until the end. Until after I had enjoyed her amusing stories, been taking on the journey, analysed myself and her as the writer through her personal history and through her lecture on the craft of writing. Because, in this way, it was like adding a glaze over the top of the experience - filled in some of the gaps and elevated it. Rather than it dictating from the beginning how I should read the essays. In the mode of nabakov and barthes, it was using the nabokov method of laying out and establishing the way, in a barthes-like way. Meta.

being: trip to libya
This essay is in the section on Being that cuts to the heart of language and expererience. It is balanced between a lecture on writing and a lecture on language. In that sense it feels a little like being jettisoned - suddenly being flung out of the written word into LIFE.

However, I read this essay after the movie reviews and on the back of three family-related essays in a row, including her astute wit on comedy. Instead it was a welcome travel outside London, a welcome hit to the system and with a view of NGO culture in West Africa that I hadn't quite read before.

Oxfam had sponsored zadie's trip to monrovia and the outlying areas and it was originally published in the Observer - a Sunday publication with a focus on more indepth investigations on life, rather than news.

Unlike most of her other essays, Zadie herself is quite a bit removed from this one. She presents the situation from her position, and acknowledges her light-skinned, western perspective, but that's where the Zadie-ness of the trip finishes as she takes a break from herself as novelist and goes on a trip as journalist. I got the sense that she conserved a deeper and more intense experienced for herself, giving us a unique, but well-behaved account, leaving the guts of the trip in the sun to dry and become something else, not an article.

being: that crafty feeling
As I mentioned earlier, I skipped over this essay - reading the joyful and culturally-focused ones. I must admit that the title killed me a bit. Crafty? Feeling? And the first subtitle 'macro planners and micro managers'… blah.

But I got there in the end, and oh I fell in love. I think it was the second last essay I read - before the mammoth one about David Foster Wallace.

It was this essay that prompted me to consider planning more time in my day to write. And to perhaps consider writing something more seriously.

It is clearly for creative writing students - a frank and personal description about her craft of writing that is engaging, warm and generous. Self-deprecating and perhaps elevated by a little more confidence in the way in which she constructs a novel - is is an excellent 'example' of the theory (between Barthes/Nabokov) that she writes about earlier. It is also an extension of the personal, that we already read in previous essays.

Unlike her novels, which she says are invariably third-person, past-tense, this lecture, becoming essay, becoming book of essays is very much first-person, present-tense by a person who is used to leading a group along from the past to the present.

It is an inspiring essay about the normality of writing that isn't dripping with privilege or patronising - like those of martin amis or the other douche who was whinging about the demise of publishing recently. It is forthright, inclusive and self-actualised.

the footnote in her overview of david foster wallace.

I'm leaving this bit as a section of its own, because it literally made me squeal with excitement when i was reading it (see below).

Her essay on DFW deconstructs him as one of the most vital authors in English in contemporary times, and it's clearly borne of love and affinity and value. She speaks about his work and then, mid-essay, she speaks about his death. A suicide that happened in the middle of her writing about the work.

Anyway, as she's deconstructing his method and in the process, framing his genius for those of us who have never quite got it, she is also being methodical in the vein of DFW. she breaks his purpose down into two sections, investigating the first and presenting her case to me, the reader.

It's not an easy case for me to read and as she begins to follow this further, I find myself asking - but what about the second point. And then literally the next sentence is footnoted. With a note to the impatient ones, just like me. Not a reference for her information, but a note. Just like the ones i've included in this post. Where she speaks directly and perfectly to me and we have a brief moment - reader and author - and I trust her, implicitly, on this journey she's taking me. And so I learn.

footnotes
As you can telll, I am a sucker for footnotes, afterthoughts, parentheses, appendices. probably because even the clearest storytelling needs context, underwriting and by-the-way.

Plus, my best writing has always been essays and academic investigations into blah, blah, blah, so i have a soft spot for them. Perhaps blogging has an element of that writing too, so it feels super personal. Either way, I love a good footnote. And her footnotes are perfect*.

I don't think I've ever written about footnotes with such praise. Apart from Ginsberg's infamous footnote to Howl, they're not that well-discussed as 'literature'. Well, not in my world. But I feel like Zadie Smith's footnotes should be. Because they're exactly how they should be: a mixture between reference: background information, fact, context, literary references; and direct addresses to the reader. she bring the reader right into the story. into her world as a writer. you become co-conspirators in this story (see above).*

As well as inspiration for this overly long and sycophantic blog about the book, I am inspired to pick up my footnote game. That, and investigate other authors who have a good use of footnotes.

in closing
The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the person who gave them. I have no real literary wasta to cast, but I have become quasi-evangelical about this book. I keep imploring people to read it.

I don't have nearly the same talent for piquing people's interest in a writer as she does, which is a shame, because I feel like essay books get left behind in an author's oevre until far too late. And it would be a great shame if our perception of Zadie Smith was missing the ones that you get from reading her special but Occasional Essays.

UPDATE: I don't feel quite so much like a dork for reviewing (so sentimentally) something that was released in 2008, after seeing bim adewumni's rad pieces on 90s teen flicks. yes!

UPDATE 2: i've decided to find out more about the footnote in fiction, and have already found a couple of interesting posts about such thing. on fiction and miskatonic.

*apologies for the over-familiarity - but it just felt like that.
*actually, what the hell would i know.
*and what i would easily call my biography of zadie smith. (er, lauren, wake up - Ed)
*which highlights her application of the relationship between author and reader, again.

Humiliation in small, tiny increments.

2014-04-20T12:55:00.000+01:00

Caveat: It shits me when men get kudos for writing about the same thing (in this case rape culture) women have been doing for years, yet it gets spat back in their faces.

See these (not-so-recent) articles about rape culture and the myths behind it (monster and otherwise) that are by women. One Mohadessa Najumi, Two Laurie Penny (in 2012!), Three Clementine Ford, Four Chimene Suleyman, Five Steenfox, Six Everyday Sexism.

Now that you've done that.

Read these two articles: One Musa Okwonga, Two Tom Meagher

Last week, Tom Meagher wrote about rape culture and the 'ordinary' rapist. Today, Musa Okwonga has written an even better article on it, in light of the ha-ha-funny-hip-rapist confessions of a rich street-art hipster DC.

The articles are not easy to read. But they're good.

When I was reading Musa's article, two things he alluded to jumped out at me. I want to extend them a little here:

Where rape culture hangs out.
Both these articles reminded me (and should remind you) that rape culture hang out where ordinary culture hangs out.

It's something that women have been saying for ages, but perhaps now that men are starting to see that there's an assumption of 'it's not men like me' - it will make sense.

The kind of mentality that Musa highlights - the silent or awkward compliance, partly what sociologists call the Spiral of Silence, and the kind of 'norm' of it all - it hangs out in the media.

On TV, radio, films, books, magazines, music, blog posts, facebook and twitter.

It's the same kind of thinking, writing, imagery (that's what culture is), that says 'tits on page 3 = ok', using women's body's to sell shit = ok. using an app to tell you when in the movie to put your arm around a girl = funny, getting drunk at the weekend and pushing that little harder for the girl to fuck you = maate, posting pics of girl's bits on your twitter page because pussy = fine, fuck your masseuse because she got your hard, even when she didn't want it and because it's for tv = ha!, damn, fucked a woman and bashed her head in because i was horny = oops, rapist/paedophile but he makes art = ok*.

There is a reason why women have problems with page 3, FHM, lads' mags and vice. And all the ways that excuse the kind of behaviour that David Choe boasted about. Because they are stewing pots for the kind of boys will be boys, women-as-mine culture that stews this kind of mentality.

And that kind of mentality is the one that prompts men to rape women.

It's not just those mags, but the frustration is that it's that they are considered norm. Just media. Just part-of-the-wide-range-of-available-things-to-read-and-that-your-choice-is-your-choice. Fuck you and your choice.

And before you all roll your eyes at the kind of ban-everything suggestion that you've already assumed, it brings me to my second point:

You might need to give some things up.
You can't say 'I don't want women to be raped but i still them to be at my disposal.' Or 'I don't want my daughter to be raped, but I still want Terry Richardson to be photographing bitches for Vice'.
It's the slow wearing down of women's esteem and place in the world. The slow ramping up of the 'i'm a man, so i get to..'

When you buy those things. Pay money for them. Give men like this money, you are literally buying into those ideals.

It is compliance.

Guys, change means you might have to not-have some things. You might have to feel 'hard done by' for a while. You might not get to have all your toys. You might have to sulk for a while, because actually, you quite liked the occasional joke or ad at the expense of women. You didn't see the harm in it. Hey, i've got mothers, sisters, wives, female friends too. Perhaps it made you feel like part of the human race.

And this is why rape culture perpetuates. Because men confuse the right to this kind of culture with the freedom of speech: it's humiliation in small, tiny increments.

word of the day: scripturient

2014-04-07T22:17:00.003+01:00

yes. currently at level 10.

thanks sam 'sanga' nelson!

a half thought about art and praise

2014-04-01T21:50:00.002+01:00

on the weekend, i had an occasion to do a live drawing. as part of a thing i'm about to embark on. it doesn't matter what, really, but it involves drawing. live. listening. and people seeing it evolve. it's used as a tool for recording, really.

during the course of the afternoon, there were a range of reactions to the artwork being produced. and to us as artists working on it. apart from the initially patronising 'are you art students?', it was primarily praise.

'oh, it's amazing!', 'it's so beautiful', 'oh, i could never do that, it's so great!' - pointedly. i could hear the extra effort made to voice the praise. just in case.

most of it was genuine - i really believe that people got a lot of enjoyment from seeing the colours and the artwork as a whole, but the sheer amount of it and the sameness of its tone and timbre made me feel quite uncomfortable.

it was as if the only way to express value about art is through praise. endorsement. along the lines of 'exposure'. that if people 'like' it, it's good.

despite its first appearance, this is not a humblebrag, or some kind of dysfunction desire for hatred. it's an acknowledgment that art is rarely seen as a tool. even when it is being explicitly used as one - as illustration. there was no similar praise for the facilitators of the afternoon, or the chairs/tables one was sat around. there was no fauning (really, some people were fauning over us) over the emcee, or the event organisers.

yet all were equal to the task of conveying what had been happening during the day. to the various ways of discussion and knowledge and understanding.

again, in this reaction to art is its undoing, i think. where the link between art's value is its enjoyment, and that its means of exchange is an expression of it. rather than something else which makes it worthy or valuable, something outside taste, or awe.

perhaps i just need to go to bed and stop thinking about it.

i always cry when i hear a poem read. (1)

2014-03-27T22:48:00.000+00:00

Damilola Odelola, 2014

as some of you will remember, I made some work with boni caincross over the last few years, which focus on voice and the spoken word.

since being in london, i have delved into the amazing spoken word/performance poetry scene here - managing to see a stack of really amazing poets that i now stalk online/call friends.

speaking of which, last night, kareem parkins-brown (no obvious relation) invited me to the showcase for this year's barbican young poets programme.

it was phenomenal.

25 poets, all under 25, all crazy skillful and electric.

i'm not versed in writing about poetry (geddit?!) - yeah, that's why - Ed. so i'm not going to do the night justice at all, because i can't write about each and every poet, nor even describe the night very well.

but i will say that it got me. i clicked and cried a lot.

i'd never seen group poetry before and some of them were phenomenal. one in particular - speaking about families and homes and using the form of the group to highlight the range of disparity in a family as in the group itself. holy shit, astounding.

some individual stand-outs included emily harrison, who spoke of falling in love with strangers in t-cut; shonshana anderson's cool american delivery that reminded me of a young patti smith mixed with a young lily tomlin; greer dewdney and her work meant to be - a cutting work a social situation, using a form invented by one of the other poets ankita saxena; kareem (yeah, so what if i'm biased - he was amazing and had people standing up for him! deservedly so) with his work about his mother and the way he described her sighs and posture of sadness; antosh wojcik with his well-crafted gonzo/surrealism and cameron brady-turner's living along: an experiment, a crushing story of OCD that had us all gasping on a bus.

(cue envelope opening)
and dami odelola, who had the line of the night in her work and the stuff that comes before a fall. seriously, all the ladies in the house were clicking and showing appreciation like mad, and probably a stack of men too. i can't quite remember because i was hit.

it was a line that hasn't left me. i couldn't really hear the three poets after that line, because my mind had hit a glitch and was just skipping back and forth over that line.

aside from the lyricism itself, it was a line that struck me squre. and i knew from then on, for the first time in my life, that being used by men was not my fault. but it wasn't entirely theirs either - i was a solution to a gnawing hurt.

it still makes me cry.

and i'm sorry you all couldn't hear that line. because although i've posted the image of it up there, taken from the bodacious anthology that they produced, it's not the same. it's not even close to sitting in a room, hearing the energy, the timbre, rhythm; seeing the gestures and the fire inside, and being in a group of people for whom 16 words hit them behind their eyes at the same time.

Martin Creed: Pointing

2014-03-11T21:54:00.002+00:00

A few weeks' ago, my regular art date, sitdowncomedian, and I went to the Martin Creed show at the Hayward gallery. We were both struggling a little, heavy hearts for different reasons, but found it the perfect antidote.

It was the first time I've seen the breadth and the depth of Martin Creed's practice*.

Until this point, it's only ever been catalogues, a few displays in group exhibitions/biennales/etc and a ramshackle live performance at Goldsmiths.

I think the man is pretty great, I just didn't realise how much until this show.

The thing about this show is that you just have to see it. You don't even need to know anything more about it than that.

Which renders this post a little superfluous, really. However, i will do my best to write something about it, but still, just save up your £11and see the show.

Succinctly, it's a show about ascendence (and descendence).
In as many ways you can possibly think of.

The curators at the hayward have done a shit-hot job of taking you on a journey along that simple-but-profound-idea and it's immensely satisfying.

It is the busiet show i've seen in a while, because of the frenetic and prolific nature of his work.
Yet because of the size and the purity of it, it's not cluttered or overstated. Which feels an odd thing to say about a show that repeatedly speaks about the same thing over and over and over again.
But because he comes at it from a variety of facets, it's clear and pure and crystalline in form.

A diamond says the same thing about carbon over and over again and is brilliant and dazzling, without being bloated or overstated.

This show is like that.

Yes, I know, I just compared Martin Creed's show to a diamond.
Perhaps I am guilty of overstating.

Anyway, without giving too much of the show away, you can look forward to highs and lows, ups and downs in a gorgeous cascade of variety, including:

Colour spectrums (ascending light/colour)

Musical scales (ascending and descending) on the piano - played by the security staff
Towers of boxes (ascending space)

Towers of other objects (ascending form and line)

Phallic cacti getting bigger/smaller (natural order)

Cocks doing the same

A newly erected wall (it's all about getting it up)

Even the ramp was blocked off (for clear reasons to do with safety) and you had to climb up and down those stairs.

Up and down, up and down, again and again and again.

It sounds like a Doctor Seuss book in visual form.
Perhaps it's exactly like that - filled with direct poetry, profound ideas and joy joy joy for the hell of it.

A couple of nice and fitting diversions from the theme include the massive swinging MOTHERS sign. It didn't wow me that much the second time around, but it is a crowd-pleaser.

The funny film of a dog and a couple of people tracking back and forth across the screen. It could be arbitrary, but it seemed to be triggered by people crossing the space, which I liked.

And a cool trick with a car doing something similar;

The wall of tape - which was sort of like a colour spectrum, but more linear. And ridiculous. And reminded me of friends who have tape obsessions (Hi Julia, Phiroze and Gemma!);

Nipples and arseholes/ nautical installations and objects, which were lovely (although not quite as lovely as Sue Webster and Tim Noble's similar things);

The balloon room. Although I was in no state to really plunge into that fit of joy on that day, by all accounts it was pretty exciting, if not a bit claustrophobic (like the Gormley White Light room);

And, the great wall of broccoli prints, which lead me to fantasising about being Martin Creed's Broccoli Assistant:

"oh, nice to meet you, what do you do"

"I work for Martin Creed, I'm his Broccoli Assistant"

with the business card:

Lauren Brown
Broccoli Assistant
Martin Creed Studios
London, UK

See? the exhibition takes you to some absurd places, without being obtusely, or disrespectfully ironic (everyone knows how much I fucking hate irony as the core of an artwork). And because it is so generous, it also leaves plenty of room to dislike works without feeling left out or hating the whole show.

Like all good art shows should.

If you want to round out the well-rounded experience at the Hayward, pop across the way and head into the Royal Festival Hall, to the Singing Lift. It features his ascending/descending sound work, which overlooks a different perspectve of the balloon room.

In fact, this added exterior perspective of the show was great and not something I had seen in many shows at the Hayward. It was a reflection of an exhibition which concerned itself with entirety.

From the outside 'car park', you could see the image of the dogs on the side of the opposite building, and from the section with the wall, you looked towards the towers of The Shed and the Tate Modern - similar to structures seen instide. (I did have a little wish that the tower of the Tate Modern had been painted in a colour spectrum by him, so it would tie all in nicely across that southern bank.)

Anyway, you should go and see the show. I'm going back for seconds soon.

*I always call him by his full name Martin Creed. Just Creed or just Martin seems weird to me.

image: pinched from the martin creed site itself.

work and experience, part 2: school work experience

2014-02-19T22:34:00.004+00:00

I was recently looking for work, and I obviously had to reflect on the experiences I bring to prospective workplaces. It was an opportunity to look back at the history of my relationship with work.

Unsurprisingly, I also had to avoid considering internship positions, which is a bit of a shame, because there are a stack of things I'd love to try out, if i had the chance (read: money).

Especially because I feel like I wasted my chances with that whole idea of gaining 'work experience' - especially when I was in school.

I have never had enough money to take a gap year, or even to do internships - I've always had to wrangle my money - so the school-based scheme was really my only chance at connecting my skills with all the possibilities of earning.

I don't know what it's like here in the UK (or anywhere else in the road), but in Melbourne, we get two weeks - one each year at 15 and 16 - to spend in a workplace relevant to our careers.

My two weeks

At 15, I was studying Italian, German and Japanese. My mother (and probably my school) suggested that, with those language skills, perhaps I should be an interpreter or translator.

If i could advise my former self, I would suggest other things. However, time has passed.

So I spent a week in June at an interpreter's office, which turned me off the idea forever. The staff were all bored, spoke turkish to each other - a language I couldn't understand - and no-one really guided me through the process. I read a book for most of the week. Perfect experience.

I remember being really disappointed after that experience at the the interpreter's office;
I was completely lost as to how to use the obvious skills I had with languages and no-one in my family, (or seemingly in school), had any kind of understanding as to how to apply them either. I was also at an age where I was having a lot of difficulty expressing how I was feeling. So couldn't really talk about it with anyone.

So I did the best thing I knew how to do: scrapped it and changed tack. I picked up science, headed towards something that I knew I could 'use' and that has some prestige to it.
Except i'm not a scientist and I knew it.
But i didn't talk to anyone about that disappointment or lack of direction.
Not really. So i hid those skills (including my A+ skills at English) and wobbled off into the world alone.

At 16, I was working for a crook in a fucked up situation. I was getting paid and I was on a path of self-destruction. I manipulated the week so that I did 'work experience' with him and spent half the week with my boyfriend.

So those two weeks were my 'introduction to the workforce'.

I don't regret too much about the past, but in the middle of job-hunting and reconsiderations about the nature of my 'work' those lost chances are a tiny sore spot.

Lessons learned

So when David McQueen recently asked his twitter's suggestions for young students about work experience, I remembered that I had a lot of them.

So, here they are:

1. Do as much work experience as you can. We only had to do one week each. At one firm each week. We got paid $5 per day (which was more I'd ever earned before), but it's not really that much of a tester - considering how different high school or even university is from working life.

I would have spent time in a fashion house, at a funeral home, in a school, at a newspaper's office, in a factory, working for a builder or an architect, - in all kinds of places.
Give yourself some real room for real discovery and experience.

And write about it. Or blog. Tweet. Make videos, or songs or whatever it is that you do to express the deeper parts of yourself. Do that whilst you're on that journey. It will help in years to come to look back at that raw reflection and see some truth in it.

2. Play to your strengths. Go to places not so obviously connected to what you 'want' to do, but that use your skills.

Because it's much easier to love what you do when you do it well, rather than just doing what you love. don't worry about getting it straight away - the happy accidents or the conscious changes we make as adults are invaluable. But it would be nice if you can get a bit of a head start.

3. Think laterally. Search websites for those skills from #2. And then some based on your school reports - even the bad ones will highlight the areas you are skilled at. Even if you're a pain-in-the-arse-class clown, you still hold the skills of holding people's attention, managing a room full of people, being vulnerable, witty and manipulative - skills that are great for management, public speaking, loads of areas of showbiz, teaching, etc.

4. Actually speak with someone about it before and after. Really - do your best to get some support for it. It will stand you in good stead for speaking with recruiters, careers coaches, counsellors and other people there to help and support your growth.

Our careers counsellor at school was ~~a little bit~~ useless, so I got away with how shit it all was and deserved the lost chance.

But, if you can grasp the great opportunity you have, bookend it with a few different people. Especially with someone who challenges you on your shit. It should be your Mum. or your Dad. But it's also just as likely to be your older brother, or aunty, uncle, favourite teacher.

Try to properly analyse it. Don't just fill in the form (any kid can do that, jeez) - but speak to them. Tell them your expectations, hopes and fears about the job/role/experience beforehand. And then again afterwards.

And use that to create a bit of a plan of attack for the next time you do it. Because you'll do it again.

5. Be strategic. Have a plan of attack. Really think through what you're looking to understand about a workplace. Use the chats from #3.

It's not always easy or appropriate to ask questions, so be as observant as you can about things like time, goals, visions, accomplishments and relationships:

How do people organise their time? How do they treat each other? What are the ways in which they celebrate success? How do they speak about expectations.

6. Don't do the work experience where you already work. Even if my 'job' wasn't shady-as-fuck, I would suggest this. You already know how that job works. For all the reasons above - this is a chance to really research and uncover the good, teh bad and the ugly about a role.

It's better than speed dating, even.

why are black boys' ears not the same?

2014-02-17T22:26:00.000+00:00

Last Saturday, two things happened on the same day that prompted me to write (again) about the intersection of listening and race, and sound in public.

Firstly, the Florida jury judging the murder case against Michael Dunn were unable to decide that he was guilty against jordan davis.

They were unable to believe, without reasonable doubt, that a middle-aged white man armed with a gun did not commit murder by shooting an unarmed teenager because he felt his life threatened by the boy's loud music and defensive manner.

Jordan Davis' death is, among other things, linked to listening in public to loud music. Black music. Music that black boys listen to in cars. Loudly.

In terms of sound in public space, this is a case which sets dangerous precedent. In terms of my interest in the rise of headphones and the changing ways we listen in contemporary times, it's full of important things: It connects to the rights of the listener, who has privilege over those rights and even the racial difference between the ways of listening.

In this case, the ears of the white man are privileged over the black boys'.

Michael Dunn's ears were offended in public. So his life was threatened in public.

His defensive actions were found, in the public realm of the law, to be justified.

The ears of Jordan Davis were ignored in public. So his life was ignored in public.
His death was found, in the public realm of the law, to be justified.

For obvious reasons this bothers me greatly.

It is racism, white privilege in the eyes of the law and the ears of the listener.
It pushes the relationship to sound into the area of law.

It is also an example of something that i'm coming to see as the dangers, the real consequences of the racial differences between listening. ie: the fact that white people don't listen*. or actually, the way in which white people colonise listening (connected to the way in which white people colonise everything else.**)

This realisation was driven home that same day at the Pharaohe Monch gig.

I'm a hip hop fan. I've made artwork about hip-hop and I have to acknowledge the privilege and problematic aspects that puts me in. So I am not above my own criticism at all - I am part of this colonial white listening crew too.

And back to the hip-hop gig:

The main support band were four white dudes wearing masks, with great beats (a great producer/DJ) and the same old boring shouty rhymes over the top.

At first they seemed OK - like i said - killer soulful beats, and full of energy and crowd-pumping. But after the first 2 songs, once I realised that all the songs essentially sounded the same, I was bored, started to see a bit of a pattern, and applied it.

These four white boys took the parts of hip hop culture that they learned/borrowed/shared with their black brothers and sisters, mashed with it, applied their 'i have something to say and people need to hear it' agenda that is (we have to admit) part of the typical white-with-a-mic pattern.

They took the form of rapping/preaching over bass-heavy, soul-heavy music, without an experience of these things, or an understanding of the more subtle aspects to hip-hop.

These guys, all four, wrote a verse, all sung four choruses together, found some phat beats and sticky taped them together - interwoven with occasional 'when i say X, you say Y: X, Y, X, Y' blah blah, and a bit of a stand against the legalisation of marijuana (because you know, white kids are crowding the UK prison system on pot charges.) just shouted at us.

Seriously, the whole set sounded exactly the same. It was cut and paste.

There was no real connection between their lyrics and the music. Just an approximation to rhythm, but no actual marriage, no understanding. No years-of-it aspect that is present in so much other music.

It was like these four white guys have never really listened to music, hip hop, or even to the soul music they were riffing on.
Or preachers. Or performance poets. Or maybe even people in general. Not with their hearts. Or souls.
It has never truly kept them alive.

Perhaps, as white folk, the desire to manipulate and use the material is too strong.

And the privilege is to high - like we've never really had to hold onto music, because we know that at least the jury will believe us, we'll eventually get work we qualified for, the bank will probably loan us the money eventually or we can always 'go home'.

Because the difference between their set and the Pharoahe Monch set was huge. Monche and DJ had an actual connection with the music being played, with each other, with the audience.

He has a deep connection with listening. An identification with the sounds of music, of people, of rhythm and therefore and understanding and connection.

Of course Pharoahe Monch is a high-grade professional. He's crafted and worked hard. He has been doing this a long time. But his whole community have been doing this a long time. The four boys are still just along for the ride.

it is the difference and the privilege of taking up sound space in this kind of gig, which particularly sparked the link to the jordan case. The link between the rights of the listener and the rights of the body are linked through music and a reminder that listening is a political act.

postscript: i was also a bit sad to realise that nobody did a shout out to jordan davis that night. nobody acknowledged the public death of a young black man in the hip-hop community and that rap, hip-hop and black music is still a site of much contest that we must all be alert to.

*which may or may not be the title of a much longer essay/book/PhD, etc.

**I would like to spend more time unpacking this case, in relation to listening as an act. It won't be in this post, but it may end up in a more academic-style of essay.

*** btw, angela corey, you have a lot to answer for at the moment.

a new/old/young sizwe banzi

2014-02-12T23:56:00.001+00:00

It was my birthday on Saturday, so I took myself to the theatre because I love going to the theatre on my own. It was a last-minute decision after a difficult day, so I was very grateful that, when I rushed in, (late, puffed) and only had enough for a £10 ticket, the Young Vic staff were able to accommodate me. They also forgave me calling the play Banzi Sizwe is Dead. Typical wadjela.

As I was waiting for my late-comers' entrance time, I had a quick run-down: a bit of the section I'd missed - a monologue from Styles about his time at the Ford factory, but nothing I couldn't catch up on.

And, it was explained to me, the crowd and entrances were segregated. I wasn't shocked. Perhaps I already knew from something I'd heard about last year's season. Perhaps it just made sense, being that the play was portraying South African Apartheid.

The play

Sizwe Bansi is Dead was written by South Africans Athol Furgard, Winston Ntshona and John Kani, deep into Apartheid/National Party in the 1970s. First premiering in 1972, Cape Town, its first season in London (1974) won accolades and connected English audiences to the nature of apartheid (and its UK complicity - noting the presence of Barclays in the South African City skyline at Styles' studio). It has since been performed here in 1977, 2007, 2013 and now 2014.

The official blurb:

It’s 1972 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and Sizwe Banzi’s passbook gives him just three days to find work. No work and he’ll be deported. That was four days ago.

So when Sizwe stumbles across a dead body with a passbook, he asks himself – does his identity card really define who he is? Could he give up his family and his name in order to survive?

Typically and misleadingly, Furgard is often touted as *the* writer of the play, however Ntshona and Kani are deeply entrenched in its dialogue - they played Styles and Bansi (Banzi) in the 1972/74 and 2007 seasons, and their names appearing as cameos in the play. Ntshona is the name of a friend of Buntu and (presumably) the "answering to 'John!'" as a subordinate term was not just about the de-nomination of Afrikans/Bantus, but also a reference to Kani. (Who also played Happy Bapetsi's 'Dubious Daddy' in the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series. Geez, Lauren, what's with that reference? - Ed. )

Background info

Port Elizabeth, the setting for the play, is a White Area on the Eastern Cape outside the sanctioned African Reserve Areas of the Ciskei/Transkei. Highly regulated. And not to be confused with even-more regulated Port St. Johns.

Africans/Bantus require a permit to be in an area outside of their 'Homeland', or another Bantu designated work area, requiring the kind of visa the Home Office dreams about.

I have a little bit more of an knowledge of Townships, Homelands and the business of the book* thanks to some reading I had done last year¹, which including the restrictions for working in towns like Port Elizabeth and the legalities of why he would HAVE to go back to King William's Town.

Of course, I have zero understanding of the system portrayed in the play, but I got a little closer with this play.

The Court Theatre study guide to the play is also an interesting accompanyment.

1. Bantustans - The Fragmentation of South Africa was a disturbing but enlightening publication from 1964 by Christopher R Hill and the Institute for Race Relations, London. I learned a lot about the specific policy of apartheid and the gross financial and econonomic destruction that was behind the ideology, sold as 'solutions' every couple of years.

This production

Sibusiso Mamba, who plays Sizwe Banzi/Robert Zwelinzima is actually adorable. He brings to the role a solid combination of solemn, awkward and honest - pathos. And this is crucial to playing a man struggling with being turned into someone he isn't: not just his name, but someone who is twisted into dishonesty and manipulation - to fit within the white supremacist system of Apartheid - in order to continue to be something he used to be.

Although I have one disappointment. There is a section in the second half of play - the crux of the work - at the point in which Sizwe Bansi becomes Dead. It is where the desperation of being cut into a corner, dehumanised and bureaucratised has built to a point of such frustration, that he is willing to go to any lengths to prove that he is actually who he believes himself to be: a man.

The dialogue is full of tension.

And, unfortunately, in the performance I saw, it lacked the conviction of that situation.

There is like a very good reason for this (see the next section), probably nothing to do with Sibusiso's acting, but it was still a little disappointing.

Tonderai Munyevu - who I had seen recently in Zhe at the Soho Theatre - is fantastic. He's such a bright light on the stage and brings that cheeky Southern African (specifically Zimbabwean) humour whilst balancing the gravitas of oppression under white supremacy and poverty. I could be making this up, but I felt like he is more Styles than Buntu - more "dapper, alert, thriving', than 'strong, compassionate, willing' but that's just me projecting it onto him.

The Styles section of the play was exactly what I needed on my birthday: Lots of laughter, lots of humanity, lots of cheerfulness in the face of adversity, and lots of determination.

He also happened to remind me of an ex-boyfriend (also Zimbabwean, also more Styles than Buntu), so sometimes during the performance I may have been smiling when it was slightly inappropriate to be doing so. I hope it wasn't deemed as disrespectful.

Speaking of disrespectful..

The blankes/whites

Throughout the last 30 minutes of the performance, every 10 minutes or so four white, drunk, fairly-young members of the audience tramped and sloshed their way across the bench seats and out the door. Stumbling, making noise, disregarding the action on the stage and being arses. One woman falling up the stairs and clearly unable to manage anything quieter than a stage whisper when talking to the ushers.

When the first two left, I was confused. I thought the preview I was in must have been a rehearsal. And that they were crew making changes. Then when the next person left I realised that they were just being rude. And by the time the last woman left - making the most noise, I was ropable.

Of course, the disturbance was not just that of individuals or the performance itself.

But it highlighted the disregard us blankes still have for Africans and Black British people and stories. It reminded us that, despite being at a great performance of contemporary theatre, in one of the most diverse cities in the world, racism still exists.

Overtly. Subtly. Structurally.

Truly, Madly, Deeply.

Theatre-goers aren't some special breed, inocculated against ignorance and bad behaviour. And, in true privileged style, most of us theatre-going white folk like to think we are separate from it, so we also didn't like it when they showed us up. Me included.

And this is problematic, but it was somewhat satisfying to spy one of the girls in the foyer and express my displeasure. Not in an English, passive agressive way, but it in an overt way. As overt as her racist behaviour was. Although I didn't use the word 'racist' - because I'm still slow. I was also slightly relieved and pleased to hear others telling her and her friends off, expressing their dissatisfaction. It felt like maybe a step towards a desire for whiteness to not include such disgustingness. Clearly I'm still in denial.

Set for racism

The white supremacy that the characters in the play are railing against is continued in the structure of the performing of the play itself. Possibly intentionally, although given the behaviour of my four ignorant friends, here, I would suggest that it's destructive, rather than enlightening.

The fact that Furgard is still touted as THE writer of the play (especially in London), rather than as one of three equal contributors is a reflection of the way in which whites are still privileged over Africans. And that's not in South Africa, kids.

In fact, the 2013 season of Sizwe Banzi and The Island was often touted in the London press - Time Out, The Guardian, as an Athol Furgard season. Not a Furgard, Kani and Ntshona season. All three writers wrote both these books, by the way. Need I remind you that it would have been the lived experience of Ntshona and Kani that enabled Furgard to even speak of many of these actions.

And of course, with this production, teh segregation is the action of white supremacy. It may not be the intention, but the thing about racism is that it's not about intention. It's about action or effect.

Back to our drunk mzungus, did it charge the conditions for racist behaviour? White supremacy as a system, causes racism. If the crowd has been mixed, or our differences not highlighted or enacted in such a way - if the system was not replicated, would these people have still done this?

Probably - because they were disrespectful, drunk and consequently self-absorbed and ignorant (the breeding ground of acting out internalised racism) but I'm asking the question anyway.

Because I think it's quite important for me to remember - especially as an intelligent, politically and racially-aware white woman - that oppression and racism (see also patriarchy/misogyny, ablism, hetero/cis-normative/homophobia) it is not about individuals and their own actions. It's the awareness that we are a group of people who contribute and that there are systems (designed) that create and perpetuate these destructive actions and beliefs.

It reminded me that it's only the privileged who get to really fuck around with paying homage to oppressive systems in art or theatre or design. It's only really those who have no clue who can cherry pick symbolism, 'reincarnate' or try to bring it to life - because we can all go home, tralalala and write a blog post about it instead of committing suicide or stealing a dead man's passport to stay alive.

image: promo shot pinched from the Young Vic website.

work and experience, part 1

2014-01-27T22:12:00.000+00:00

Currently all roads are leading to ideas about work. probably because i'm spending all my days looking for it.

As a treat, I started writing a post about all the interconnecting ideas I was having about work and earning and experience. Then it became a bit of a thesis. So, in the interest of public safety, I've broken it into a few separate posts about work and mothering, earning, work experience and about the concept of 'hard work'.

Work and mothering

Until the point I left it on a bus, I was reading Lynne Segal's first book 'is the future female?' and within it, revisiting the journey of feminist ideas about work:
- mothering-as-work,
- sexual harrassment at work,
- the disproportionate amount of women in the areas of work that are unstable and underpaid
(especially women of colour)
- and the focus of parity in the workplace
(which i have decided needs to be reworded as parity in the workforce - a difference i'll cover).

That book was published 30 years ago and it reminded me that even though many things have improved for women (especially white western women like me) - there are some more women in better jobs, we are more present in parliament and policy-making, in higher management and still rattling at the parity cage. However, many things are still unenequal, oppressive and unjust for so many.

One of the ongoing areas of change and challenge is the link between women's role as mothers, as primary child-raisers and the unpaid, unacknowledged and assumptions about that role - a role that cuts across all the sections of women's experience.

Not to mention the public's expectations of certain mothers (like I mentioned here), it is still largely assumed women will be the primary care-givers, rather than it being a considered choice between the two people responsible for raising children.

Many of my friends and family are having children at the moment and I only know one couple for whom the man is the conscious primary care giver. And another couple for whom it has turned out that way, but wasn't necessarily discussed in those terms. Those woman have gone back to work or to running their businesses, but are still expected to keep the foot on the gas. None of the male partners have been given parental leave longer than the first three weeks of intense newborn time - some haven't even thought about it, others have, but structurally it's like… what?

I overheard a conversation on the tube the other day that highlighted how we still have a long way to go about the relationship between work and child raising and expectations of who does that. There were three (white) lawyers - two men and a women. Both the men have young children and they 'do their best' to get up, get to work early, so they can leave at 5pm and be home in time to spend an hour with their children before they go to bed, another couple of hours with their partner before starting all over again.

The sound of melancholy and sense of 'stuckness' in those stories was awful. We're continuing to go with the idea that a man being entitled to just an hour a day in the rearing of new people as enough - it's just not right. How can the men be OK with that too? Part of it is because the rest of their good lives are enabled by this imbalance and that 'good life' is based on the old role of 'provider', etc.

I am not a mother. Or even a potential one. So I have a slightly biased and theoretical view about this issue, but it did remind me that it's still something that is very much a problem. We are still raising people to have particular gender skews towards who needs to be raising those people.

And it means that women's 'choices' about mothering - using their skills to raise children, etc, are still in response to expectation. This is not to judge the role of women in mothering. It's just to point out that having a choice about it adds value and agency to it (something i'll cover more in the next post)

As an aside, in looking for that image above, here's what came up. not even stock photography is helping us here:

Interestingly, in looking for work at the moment, I have had my first interaction with this assumption about women's roles with my own parental status.

There are probably loads of other reasons why I'm not being interviewed, but in some situations, I have became aware that, due to my particular age and gender - that winning combination - it puts me into 'mother' or 'potential mother' range and can influence decisions about hiring. Especially in relation to my perceived commitment to a role vs my other perceived 'priorities', not to mention an expectation about working with youth.

That had never occurred to me before.

That's how much privilege I have. I've just hit my first thought of real discrimation towards work - something that is outside of my control and an assumption made without even meeting me.

Naturally, it's an opportunity for me to clarify these things in my applications but damn I've never had to include my youthful appearance, attitude and empty uterus in a cover letter before.

90 in 90 days

2014-01-09T17:55:00.000+00:00

Instead of running a marathon, giving up smoking, or losing a stone, I'm beginning the new year with another 90 drawings in 90 days stint.

Primarily because, as uncool as it is for commercial value, drawing connects me.

It forces me to pay attention to the world AS IT REALLY IS, I have to observe, be present, consider myself in it and it also gives a sense of accomplishment when you've done one. Even if it's left undone.

I embarked on a stint in 2012 and completed 30 drawings, including a series that helped me deal with the stress of an HIV scare and moving to the UK. i still quite like some of these drawings.

A few weeks' ago, I discovered one I did of the V&A Museum when I first arrived in London in 2012 (above), and thought 'Hey, it's not so bad'. That feeling's quite a nice gift to give yourself.

Having decided to let go of all assumptions and misconceptions about myself and art, the desire to write and draw have bubbled up to the surface like basic needs from yesteryear. I guess they are my core methods for processing information.

Despite my raunchy love affair with web things, I still have to work out the difficult and complex things - like feelings, perception and deep longing - with a pen and paper.

So i'm going to do one of these sessions again. 90 drawings in 90 days. This time the focus will be largely drawing from life - because of the required attention, it's a bit meditative. And I can explore how sound and writing comes into that practice.

Back to basics, kids.

hannah arendt (the movie)

2014-01-07T13:15:00.005+00:00

Last week, as I was revisiting* the discussion between Melissa Harris-Perry and bell hooks at the New School, I remembered my academic crush on The New School as a school in which a lot of my favourite thinkers, writers and artists have taught/teach and whose research I admire (a bit like my London LSE fantasy).

Which, in turn, reminded me about the Hannah Arendt film released here last year, directed by Margarethe von Trotta, and centred around her time at the New School.

Now, I think Hannah Arendt is amazing.
Her books The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition are crucial, her take on Rosa Luxembourg is heartwarming and my copy of The Portable Hannah Arendt is tattered with love and much use. The reports she made about the extraordinary trials in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann were so sensational and provoked vital critical thinking about genocide, sovereignty, international law and crimes against humanity.

She has problematic views too. Her take on the Little Rock Nine and desegregation of education the US is one I categorically reject, and her complicity in the occupation of Palestine through her work with Youth Aliya disturbs me.

Yet her complexity and her writing (as a whole) is a formidable influence on my work, thinking and inevitably on the work of people I admire, too.

So it was with a bit of trepidation that I approached the film.

Much in the same way films about Frida Kahlo, Sylvia Plath and Truman Capote have been unsatisfying**, I didn't want to witness a degrading, thin or limiting rendition of someone who is complex, who I admire and who I think the world needs to pay attention to.

There is always the threat that, in attempting to funnel their life down into a story of 100 minutes within the genre of contemporary filmmaking , it will reduce them to an afterthought and undermine the work they've done, as opposed to laude and celebrate their place in the world. Especially as the history of mainstream cinema banks on that kind of entertaining reduction and revisionism: palatable, easily distributable and marketable.

Sadly, i think that's what has happened to the character of Hannah Arendt in this film.

Given that Arendt is a writer and theortician, i imagine not easy to depict this kind of life in film.

So the obvious way through is to focus on the fracas that she caused with her New Yorker report from 1961 Eichmann in Jersualem (still available on the New Yorker website!). So the film centred around her trip to Israel for the trials, her discussions about the trials and theories of evil, justice and humanity, the writing of those articles and the aftermath of the publishing.

It was the beginning of discussion about the role of law, who gets to punish, about the role of media/journalism in such a massive undertaking.

And given that, really, i think the title should have been Hannah Arendt: A Reporter At Large or The Eichmann trials, or something along those lines - something that was in line with the story and trajectory of the film.

By its broad title, it suggests a story about her entirety, or the whole of her career at least.

The film focused a little on her relationships with students, her work with Karl Jaspers and Youth Aliya and other writers/acedemics at the time, but it primarily focused on her relationship with her bloody husband!
Just like every other biopic about women in the arts and letters.

Frida was about Diego, Sylvia was about Ted and Hannah was about Heinrich and/or Martin. In fact, the only recent film I have seen about an influencial woman that wasn't about her husband, was The Iron Lady about Margaret Thatcher. Which was about her debilitating illness instead. Not to degrade that, mind, but for god's sake can we have a film about the breadth of an intelligent woman's life!

Yet with those criticisms out of the way, I was still chuffed to see a political theorist in film, a female academic on film: her strong and opinionate character, the smoking (lordy - she didn't stop!), her friendship with author Mary McCarthy and a bit of her connection with Martin Heidegger. To see on-screen discussion of the theories of Heidegger and the difficulty in divorcing his excellent theory work from his decision to stay in the nazi party - that was welcome. And perpetuated in similar grey areas about Arendt (although not necessarily teased out).

And, as I mentioned, I appreciated seeing the New School as a kind of character, too - the subplot of their flip-flopping sycophancy and rejection of their controversial 'prized lecturer'. Reminiscent of the character of Harvard University in The Social Network, the university and its influence on those who influence is an interesting side-note.

I am not sure how good a film this is if you didn't know who Hannah Arendt is. This is a shame, because film is oftentimes an opportunity to also educate or intrigue people who may be otherwise none-the-wiser.
But if you do know about Arendt and her work, it is still worthwhile seeing for a kind of curiosity, fondness or revisiting her written work. And perhaps for generating resolve towards better scriptwriting about intelligent women of influence.

*when i say revisiting, i mean clapping my hands gleefully and yahooing around the house like a madwoman.

** geez - why are all these films just their names? how about 'zapatista in surrealism' or 'in the blue hours' or 'the love of in cold blood'. OK, iIm terrible with titles, but c'mon - single word names?

confiscated childhood: afro supa hero and confiscated cabinet at the museum of childhood

2013-12-27T00:49:00.000+00:00

It's not far from where I live, but I had never been to the V&A's Museum of Childhood before now. Crazy, huh.

Anyway, last week I finally went to check out two shows I'd heard mentioned: Afro Supa Hero and Confiscated Cabinet

If I'm honest, the building itself shocked me a bit. And reminded me of a starker version of the Pitt Rivers Museum (which is a weird museum - another story). It was all open and noisy. I don't know why, but I was expecting more of a library, journey-type museum, rather than an (admittedly, gorgeous) open hall and with massive ceilings and balconies around the outside.

I was also hungry at the time, so some of these opinions may be slightly skewed.

Wow, I've digressed already.

Afro Supa Hero - Jon Daniels

I loved the underlying idea behind Afro Supa Hero. I loved seeing the comics from the 1960s onwards - I wished I could have read some of them there. I'm not even into comics that much, but there were some seemingly great action stories and ace history-based ones I wanted to peer into (especially the one about Harriet Tubman).

But the historical journey of Afro action figures and heroes was the really interesting bit. It was a relief to see a shift from their names being 'Black XYZ' to just XYZ. That's polite of everyone.

Some of the renditions of famous black characters into toys was embarrassing - you could compare the printed image on the box to the way they'd been rendered in 3D and you could tell sometimes it was just like - "eh, we'll just make White Lady Action Figure into darker skin and it'll be fine!" Cringe.

I learned that Jean-Michel Basqiat and Lee 'Scratch' Perry have action figures!! Which is pretty rad, although i never really played with dolls (cough) and ona selfish level, I was a bit bummed that Frozone from the Incredibles wasn't in there. But maybe he's missing for a reason. Like licensing blah blah.
(Or maybe Jon Daniels doesn't like Frozone?)

At the end of the historical/collectible action figures was Jon Daniels' own super hero design.
And it was fly - matching mega afros, the earrings matching the goatie? red, yellow, green and black colours of africa? Loved it.

There were mock-ups and lego versions, although I really want to see them in production. Surely Momiji dolls need a new range. I would have bought some Afro Super Hero dolls, for sure.

Well, I say that, but I couldn't afford to buy one of the cute mugs on sale, so who am I kidding ( I would like to think that the money went to Daniels himself and not back into the V&A merch pot)

But what Daniels' show highlighted, of course, was the limitations of scope in action figures and super heroes and how that perpetuates the limitation of scope of human beings. Especially human beings of colour, starting from the beginning. In childhood.

Super important issue to tackle.

And, here's where I add to the problem: I wanted to draw even more out of that show.

I wanted to extend it into a whole show about race and childhood and toys.
Like, looking at the Mamie Clark research from the 1960s on the colour dolls and how she changed the way race and childhood imagery was understood; it has had an influence in psychology, cultural studies, art and image-making and of course education.

And i could totally imagine a wider scope that takes those ideas, includes the excellent ones from Daniels' work and extends even further - including makie dolls, brats, barbie, home-made toys/dolls from non-western cultures, etc.

And I wanted to see more, not because I'm culturally greedy (although there is that), but because the influence toys/dolls have on us as adults is pretty massive. With them we learn to play, to associate, development of identity, understandings about our body and the abstraction of the internal experience to a external object in identification, and boil down our expansive selves into these very particular objects.

It would become a museum show about the history of where limitation starts. The history of where adults decide how small a box they can squeeze future adults into, in order to get the best possible outcome for current adults.

Wouldn't THAT be a cool show to see?

OK, I'm being a bit ascerbic, but I do think that, given the influence from childhood into adulthood of dolls when it comes to race and culture, it's a massive topic that deserves even more attention.

And speaking of home-made toys/dolls,

Confiscation Cabinets - Guy Tarrant

These cabinets of confiscation were fascinating: A collection of toys/weapons/objects that have been confiscated from school children over the last 30 years.

hand-written notes, those paper-based things girls play with, knifes, flame throwers, stones, playing cards, chewing gum, etc.

It was organised according to 'age' and 'gender'. Two cabinets each for girls, two for boys. Two for lower grades and two for higher grades.

That sorting in itself intrigued me.
Yes, there are obvious links between boys and girls of similar ages. But i think it also would be interesting to make the cabinets sortable in different ways.
Like, actual age - see what all 9-year olds hide.
Or chronology - all the things confiscated in 1991, or 2007.
Maybe even by kind of school - what do grammar school kids bring and what do comprehensive kids bring?

But, back to the display at hand, it was enlightening for me, as a woman (who was previously a girl at a catholic primary and single-sex private highschool) to see what was gendered.
So it wasn't just in my school, but girls really do use words as weapons. And vanity is a weakness (one conditioned, I argue). So much make up, cruel notes and there was a chewing gum/hair attack sample in there that was simultaneously gross and a reminder of the nature of our attack/defence tactics: long-lasting and shame-based.

Boys? Garden-variety violence. I knew it, but the image of some of the sticks and metal rods brought to highschools still made me go a little weak at the knees. How the hell you're supposed to cultivate nuanced social interaction when that's a threat, I have no idea. And the fact that men grow up to be sensitive at all? Bravo. Hats off to the sensitive ones!

A History of Childhood

I do wish shows like both of these could be seen and talked about more. Especially because, given that we all have childhoods and those become our adulthoods and the society at large, it's amazing that more people aren't fascinated with the history of the small but constant ways in which we really belittle ourselves as humans.

I know, clear reminders of painful history and the failings of the human condition is not traditionally a thing that we enjoy pondering over on a wet sunday (except if you're in a cinema), but I think I would like them to be.

Perhaps if we could see these childhoods in museums, in an abstract way, and how they project forward, we might be better able to make decisions about our own adulthoods, or any childhoods we may be in the business of influencing right now.

Deets:
Afro Super Hero
14 September 2013 - 9 February 2014

Confiscation Cabinets
9 November 2013 - 1 June 2014

At V&A Museum of Childhood
Cambridge Heath Rd, London E29PA

images pinched from the V&A Museum of Childhood site.

intermission

2013-12-13T14:01:00.001+00:00

beyonce released another killer album today.

having danced around my living room to grown woman the other night, i know that it is going to be amazing.

between her and kanye at the moment, my world is sparkling with creative and pop-cultural dynamite. fireworks.*

but don't worry, this isn't one of a thousand reviews about it and her amazingess.

it's about the fact that i haven't listened to the album yet because it's too inspiring.

yes, that sounds ridiculous.

especially because i am a fan, i am totally gassed that she's released something, the film clips are all going to be killer and i'm loving seeing my twitter timeline light up with excitement.

but right now, i don't want to be 'inspired', because that energy needs to be poured into something, a channel, a path, a way forward, and i don't have a clear one of those right now.

and if you take energy and have no-where to put it, you end with catharsis and impotence.

none of which are helpful to me right now.

not to mention a waste of a shit-hot beyonce album.

because right now, i'm in an intermission.

i'm between drinks. in a holding pattern. treading water. purgatory.

although none of those idioms really describe where i'm at in my life.

i've put art down. for a while.

i'm not convinced that it's able to do what i want it to do in the world at the moment. i'm not able to overcome the glaring conflicts in the sector, or the same-old-same-old concerns and the same old tired ~~men~~ people doing the same old thing.

i'm bored of the complacency and unimpressed with the little energy there is.

i'm also not convinced of my place in art. of my ability to execute my ideas and passions and decisions into the world in a satisfactory way.

don't just do it for the sake of it

one of my good qualities is that i have determination and perseverance. i keep going, cutting through all the muck. just keep doing it.

but if i'm not convinced by the work, or the project, or the idea - its relevance, i can't get behind it.

i would rather preserve my energy and focus on something that resonates.

because when it is hard work, if you don't believe in it, NOTHING will get you through that hard work. and any energy from inspiration will be wasted.

it probably means i'm not going to be successful. because all those inspirational sayings talk about just keeping on keeping on. seemingly regardless of if the idea is terrible, or you're hurting people, hurting yourself or just wasting your time.

before spiritual enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. after spiritual enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

the nice thing about putting art on the shelf for a bit is that it allows me to do other stuff. to write. to pick up dancing. to watch film and theatre and to read the amazing articles i have access to in this day and age.

and to find ways to help other people doing things that have nothing to do with art or my own arts practice. i can just help see some stuff through. get things done.

i can be useful, without it having to reflect my own sense of identity in that usefulness.

beyonce reminds me that i have a stack of energy and things to say to the world. she reminds me that, when you're on a roll, go with it and work hard, believe in yourself and open up to the world. that being alive and fierce and loud and present is necessary. i'm looking forward to doing that in the near future. and in the mean time, i'm totally happy to be her stage manager.

*and don't worry if you hate it all, you don't have to convince me why, you can keep that opinion to yourself for a while.

image pinched from here:

http://es.tendencias.yahoo.com/blogs/pintalabios-y-chupetes/beyonce-levanta-ira-padres-super-bowl-144109219.html

what men really really want

2013-12-11T15:01:00.001+00:00

xav is an artist in london, who i first met when i was chained up in a box as part of my performance space residency.

he's made this artwork/video response to the question he posed on you tube: what do you want from girls?

i could find it depressing, or aggravating. but i'm don't.
i'm sad. i know that's not how all young guys think. and the system has fucked those dudes up.

i'm also kind of relieved, because it's not just me that is seeing this trend happening up close and personal.

but it gives clarity to actively supporting young women getting educated.

if guys (like that) start finding it harder to get with an uneducated, poor, low-self-esteem, don't-talk-back, girl-as-pet and see that their cum is drying up? they'll adapt.

team kanye. team crazy.

2013-12-09T16:57:00.001+00:00

this is an unhinged post about kanye west.

i am going to go full-wacko about how fucking amazing he is. i am going to speak in a paranoid way about how everyone loves richard branson, warren buffet, karl lagerfeld, crazy old eccentric businessmen, designers, heads of corporations and creative industries, actors and writers off their leash. unless, you know, they black. then, you gotta be all well-spoken and well coiffured and well-behaved, he's gotta get in line, dammit.

according to you guys, he cannnot be running his mouth, talking about how you're the next big thing, or better than the last big thing. he cannot be making wild statements about how amazing he is, or how excited things could be for him and how many risks he's prepared to take for his brand, because it's not allowed.

i'm going to talk in delusional ways about the 'rebellious' label of creatives and marketing people, who find his ego too intense, but happily love jeff koons, damien hirst, ernest hemmingway, don draper, eric from true blood - a stack of other OTT creative madness types. and how it's perfectly acceptable to dumb that shit down.

well, not on my ~~block~~ blog.

here are my opinions. ones that are especially unpopular with my white friends.
it doesn't matter if you agree or not. i'm just leaving this here.

i think kanye IS the fucking greatest.

i think he's a genius. yes, on the level with albert einstein and steve jobs.

he is out there and making things, pushing art and what's possible with creativity, extending people's expectations of music, production, love, film what 'hiphop' artist or 'black' artist is supposed to be doing. he's just continuing to extend himself and go further, longer, harder than he has before. he's michael jordan with a fucking mouth and a grill.

i think he was totally justified at MTV music awards.

yes, i know, he was rude to taylor swift. whatever.

tell me something: how many flash mobs of that film clip have been done for t-mobile?

how many times do you hear You Belong To Me (a track i had to look up to see what it was actually called) in the club and every woman in it knows all the routines.

how many pop references are there to that film clip? saturday night live pisstakes of the routine?

beyonce.

beyonce made the GREATEST VIDEO OF ALL TIME and kanye interrupted a young woman's speech (a young woman who now has the sympathy from all her white empathy types who've had their feelings hurt) to draw attention to the big fucking elephant in the room, the emperor with no clothes: the fact that a young white girl who made a pretty lame-arse video won a major industry award over a strong black woman whose video went bananas the second it was released.

y'all take a business risk like that some time and still produce work. stand in the face of that white backlash* and survive without having to puff yourself up sometimes. that is balls.

i think he is on a level with nelson mandela

(yes, that post is a hoax, but i'm going to defend it anyway because you all thought it was real for a reason and so i'm going to address those reasons)

as writer, poet and pundit musa okwonga has pointed out, mandela was not the smiling grandpa that we all know and love. he was a determined, focused man who believed in his principles. he was willing to kill for freedom. he exposed the systematic oppression of people's daily lives and found ways to systematically undo it by undermining the current power systems.

just because he chose to not go crazy and kill his oppressors, prison guards, assasinate the entire national party and move on with more important things, like getting universal sufferage in south africa, doesn't mean he's just about forgiving people who fuck you over.

yes, the value that nelson mandela brought to millions of africans is more directly connected to political freedom than kanye west.

but kanye is no less concerned with the creative and cultural emancipation of millions of people around the world. yes, he is also largely interested in his own creative emancipation too. but he is part of the people he wants to give the right to just make whatver the fuck they want. to be the heads of design organisations. to kick arse without having to do 'R&B' or a nice little diddy about a good guy.
no, it doesn't look like altruism, but nelson mandela fought for armed struggle, was prepared to kill and trained in the army to get where he got too.

and you think kanye doesn't forgive arsehole white folk every day of his life? he still releases music and talks to the white press doesn't he? the fact that he spoke to jimmy kimmel again instead of sending a molotov through his window.

i consider kim kardashian to be the shrewdest business woman on the face of the earth right now and actually i'm glad they're married.

ok, so i really didn't understand their attraction at first. especially because, well, amber rose is fucking hot. but now i get it.

kim has a great body. and she knows that the reality of patriarchal, media-run world we live in, that is some serious capital. she has used that. she has made a business decision to use her image, her body, her iconography to play to the masses who drink it up. she sold it and everyone bought it.

if it didn't work, and that wasn't the case, she wouldn't be loaded. and featured in every fucking magazine. that woman has CONTROL over shit.

it's not my basket, really. but it's a choice she made. she is not a victim to men and their gaze, women and our insecurity. she's playing it and that, in the business world, is ACUMEN. not immorality or sluttishness. yes, i would like her to not be feeding the patriarchal bullshit, but she isn't the only woman on the planet and patriarchy is bigger than her.

and, as he mentioned in that zane lowe interview (where i wanted to throttle zane lowe), she has money and power. of her own.
she doesn't need it from a man. she doesn't need it from her man.
she doesn't need to control him, or manipulate him.
and he is so secure in his power that he isn't threatened by it. not one bit! how many men do you know who are not threatened by a woman who doesn't need him. especially given the kind of bullshit comments her accounts gets every day. and her image is all over the place.
how many in the forbes top 100 you think can handle that? how about rockstars like mick jagger, rod stewart, powerful men like charles saatchi, anyone?

and all the pisstaking of bound 2? you are showing us up, white-people, as petty insecure types who need 'satire' as a means to expunge our own lack of understanding and reluctance to not be at the forefront of dictating what's 'good, cool, interesting, or desirable'.
it was laid out for us to fawn over.

it doesn't matter that he made a shit album.

anyone who remembers when 808 came out, you'll remember that everyone was OVER the auto-tune. t-pain killed it for everyone, kanye included. no-one was into it. late registration had been a HIT. it bombed.

but even if it was the worst album - he fucking came back with my beautiful dark twisted fantasy. one of the best albums of the last 5 years. seriously. he failed. and came back with a vengeance. he missed a drop shot and came back with a slam dunk over the musical equivalent of le bron james. in other instances - perhaps the socially acceptable forums for black champions like boxing or basketball, he would be a CHAMPION. even if he spent the whole time running his mouth.

it's easy to call someone crazy or an ego-maniac.

that's like calling a woman ugly or fat.

it's the go-to for keeping someone down at a level that you have some control over, where you feel like you're part of the game.

but what if he's not?

why do you/we need him to be crazy so badly?

how does it serve you/us/humankind, for him to be 'humble?'. because steve jobs was humble?

and it's not easy to call out the awful people who truly have a bad effect on others' lives, so sometimes we find people called scapegoats.

does kanye oppress people?

does he use people without power as a stepping stone for his own?

does he steal ideas?

rape/kill/decimate people or their land/livelihood? write it into law?

is he in a position of trust which he has abused just because he can?

what if the only reason you cannot stand kanye and his ranting and raving - his crazy - is because he's a rich powerful black man with lots of money and who doesn't need you and who sometimes calls it like it is?

a few years ago, i made a small shrine. well, the drawing of a shrine because i was still a nomad. but it was a shrine to the people - the artists who i think are great - who have perserverence and dedication and are a little bit mad, but make the world a better place by challenging us.
patti smith, kanye west and louise bourgeois are on that shrine.
this post is a little candle in front of that shrine.

listen, kanye is not perfect. his free use of homophobic language makes me ill and the painting of 'bitches' in the way that he does is not cool.

but based on the vitriol that i have seen coming from friends and colleagues lately - reposting fake interviews and fake videos of him kicking this shit out of papparazzi, slating his recent videos and posting every kind of pisstake possible, posting such angry 'crazy, overblown motherfucker' type shit about the 'crazy' on the BBC interview, the opinionated tweets of 'oh puhlease' from his last tour and reposting of the jimmy kimmel 'satire'?

guys, you're champing at easy bits and circling in lynchmob territory.

and if you think i'm crazy after this, fine.
i'm really ok with it. i'm happy to live in a bubble with kanye west being the greatest thing in the world and you worshipping the ground of the pope, or anthony robbins or nikki sixx or even steve jobs. same as it ever was.

*this is my favourite backlash from the huffington post: "The last thing I would want to happen to my daughter is some crazy, drunk, black guy in a leather shirt to come up and cut her off at an awards ceremony" << really? i could think of a lot worse fucking things to happen to her, sir.

Hard out Here: Sarah Lucas and Kehinde Wiley

2013-12-06T16:04:00.000+00:00

Chicken knickers instead of Baggy Pussy.

This was originally a post about Lily Allen's Hard Out Here. But, well, who needs yet another mouthy white woman's opinion on the subject, really.*

So i'm going to do what i do better - write about art.

Specifically about two recent exhibitions speak with a little more nuance about some of the issues that Ms Allen was trying to portray in that racist piece of shit video. Oops? did i really say that.

Anyway, back to it: Sarah Lucas and Kehinde Wiley.

Sarah Lucas at the Whitechapel.

…and it's all about bitches. the images and the violence, the tawdriness of the same-ol-same-ol images of women's bodies, men's bodies - the same blah blah bullshit we're all just a little bit sick of seeing. well, maybe you're not sick of seeing. But I am. Friends of mine are. In fact, my first visit to the show was with a friend who is battling depression because of the hatred she has about her body because it doesn't 'fit' with what 'should'.

Anyway, it's there in the gallery. Just there. In all kinds of detail. with varying levels of humour, finesse, mess and message.

And it's refreshingly unsimplifed. it's all over the place.
It is probably comparitively 'sanitised' for the viewing public, but even with that in mind, it's not a perpetuation of the 'good girl' imagery. But neither is it so erratic that there isn't plenty of room to read some her messages about images of women. About the control of our own image. And who has it.

OK i have to say it. I think this image (i pinched) says some of what ms allen WAS trying to get at, with a whole lot finer detail. It is hard being that bitch.

And, having said that, Sarah Lucas is a white, middle class woman who presents a fairly singular image of woman. But for that, it's relentless. And it's consistent. She portrays the violence of gender symbolism, makes fun of the entendre - the guardsman of language - and rides it like she's going to come any second. She is unabashed.

The variety of materials is also refreshing: she's got sculptures, readymades, drawings, wallpapers, prints, mechanical wanking cocks (a material type all of its own), photography and text. And on that front, it's not singular.

It was a relief to see the savageness of her responding to the same old sexist bullshit about the female form.

Personally (currently up to my back teeth with it all), it is an exhibition which says 'it's ok honey, i feel the same way). But she's far more humourous about it. Me? i'm back on some adolescent angst, writing about it in my ~~blog~~ diary.

The work bursts its flow through the whole show, too. There's not enough space to spread out, and because of that, make plans to see the show twice.

I don't think the antidote is to give more space. I think the slightly-claustrophobic feeling of the show perfectly demonstrates a) the intensity of being an artist: you have a thousand things on the go at the one time and there's no space from it. You can't walk back from your life. b) same thing about being a woman. Your imagery and the intensity is relentless, there isn't a break from it. You don't get to take a 10minute breather, walk back and see how it feels to not have all of the 'requirements' and 'opinions' and 'representation' in your face. So why should you in an art gallery?

Kehinde Wiley at Stephen Friedman Gallery

The first time i saw Kehinde Wiley's work was in his Black Light book at the deutsche guggenheim in berlin. (note the caption: i still REALLY want this book.) it was €20 or something stupid cheap and i still couldn't afford it. and couldn't justify buying books when i could barely afford to eat. anyway, i'm a fan.

The show at Stephen Friedman gallery last month was his work from Jamaica. Floral, Patterned and Beautiful, Part of his ongoing series from around the world - especially places that have significance for (young male) figures unseen in the former colonies: Israel, Africa, Brazil.

This is one of my favourite: all pattern everything.

I love the OTT of it all. Yes, posed staring out in a fairly straight-up pose, but bursting with life and colour and yowsers!

Unlike previous works of his and other shows I'd heard about/seen, this show included the ladies. In fact, the gallery at #11 was all Ladies. Three large works of larger-than-life ladies, showing off their thang. I don't remember ever seeing a woman portrayed by Wiley like that - notoriously focused on the young men until now.

And, despite the regal/papal titles sometimes given to these women - or the grand floral treatment, the underlying message that comes with these paintings is that 'this is not their life'. These women are street. they are not 'portrait sitters', like the subjects Wiley refers to in his video

They are the 'bitches' in allen's song. The ones who she will never be and has never been. These are the women for who it is fuckin' hard. Oops - i went there again.

Again, the images are seriously beautiful. And they had me, as a 30-something educated white woman staring at the ornate, decorated images of young black men. hmm

This was the difficult part about the show for me, and the subject of a long chat with the gallery staff. (which i'm very glad that they were willing to have the discussion. they didn't, to their credit, ignore the obvious racial and ethical place of art/paintings/objects/viewers in what they're selling, and hide behind the 'it's just paintins, miss'.)

So, this age-old dynamic. me: western, privileged white appreciator of young, gorgeous black specimen. Not that's how I personally believed I was viewing these images, and these people, but I cannot ignore the echoes and the dynamic that had been set up. Into which i had walked and cannot avoid because of the fact that I am most of those things. Depressing.

The gorgeous patterns, the refreshingly different images of men and women surrounded by colours and framing reserved for the white elite - they're amazing and I love them. but if *I* take one home and stick it on my wall, am I not the same as the old anthopological doyenne with her specimens of 'the noble savage?'.

Argh! the mobius strip questioning of 'for whom is this art made?' 'who has the power?' drove me a bit bonkers. But in a way that I value: Is kehinde selling out young black street stylers, his own peeps, for the fodder of white folks, again. Or is he taking back that role of representing the young black gorgeous man into the hands of young black gorgeous man and the privilege white folks just get to watch, whilst they get to be immortalised. Or something of both. Or neither.

I left the show with all those complex feelings of wanting to take a shower, to dance in joy, to sleep with the next gorgeous man i saw, all desire and need to turn off all the images in my day to ignore how annoyingly complex and shit human power and relationships are.

Instead I wrote about it in my ~~blog~~ diary.

*here are a few excellent responses to that video:

- Deanna Rodger, poet wrote and performed a piece about it:
http://bit.ly/19CG9s5
- Chimene Suleyman, also a poet wrote an excellent essay:
http://www.poejazzi.com/fighting-against-the-fetishisation-of-women-doesnt-work-if-you-fetishise-women/http://www.poejazzi.com/fighting-against-the-fetishisation-of-women-doesnt-work-if-you-fetishise-women/
- MIA/۩ReverseColonialist۩ (@AnonFrantzfanon) and her tweet timeline from around this time https://twitter.com/AnonFrantzfanon/statuses/400411048643399680
- Bridget Minamore made an excellent storify of women on twitter: https://storify.com/bridgetminamore/lily-allen-and-satire

image credits:
Sarah Lucas, Chicken Knickers, 1997
Sarah Lucas, Bitch (detail) 1995

Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of James Hamilton, Earl of Arran’, 2013

the kindness of strangers. an ode to marcus of st. lucia.

2013-12-02T18:25:00.001+00:00

Sit back with a cuppa. This is a story about how one man helped an old woman across the street. With added extras.

About ten days ago I had surgery.

It's a fairly basic procedure; one i've had a couple of times before. Keyhole fixing of problems on the inside. It's not a massive deal, except that I am especially restless at the moment and I am not a good patient at the best of times.

So, a few nights ago, after leaving the house just once in four days, I ventured out to fulfill an appointment - a speaking engagement of sorts. it wasn't going to be a big deal. I'd done it a stack of times before. District line from Monument to Sloane Square. I'd take it easy.

Fine.
Except: service disruptions.
Packed trains, no seats, jostling, having to reach up to hold on, stop/start. and me unable to really pipe up and say 'hey - i'm not well, lemme sit down'. It wasn't an obvious injury, i was shy and, well, headphones. I also got stagefright, lost my usual bluster.

Suddenly i was quickly losing the confidence with which I usually navigate london and its frenetic tunnels. I wished I had one of those 'baby on board' badges. Even though there was no baby - it would make sense of my clutching and sensitivity.

I held out until St. James Park.
There i realised that I wasn't going to make it. Physically, or emporally. I was in a *lot* of pain and getting anxious. I scrambled out of the train, got to somewhere i could find signal (and hopefully someone who might be able to help), rang my connects to cancel and then stood. Struck dumb.

Clearly the underground isn't designed for the infirm. And because I haven't spent a gazillion years of my life here, it's the first time i'm really discovering it. I have no back-up plan. I'm like a rabbit in headlights.

I couldn't afford a cab home. I didn't feel like i could ask my flatmate to come and get me yet. I knew that a good friend who also had a car was busy and everyone else was either at work, or about an hour a way by train.

I was still able to walk, slowly, and my stubbornness was still running the show. Besides, i was in the underground, so how hard could it be? I'll just make my way slowly back the way I came.

I realised, as the pain got worse, and I got less and less mobile, how different London is when you're not in sync with everyone. Like, really not in sync. so unsynched that it feels like you're in slow motion and watching the whole world go by.

Did i mention that the underground is not designed for the infirm? and, as such, no-one seamingly knows what to do when a young-looking white woman with a funny hair cut is shuffling along Bank station, holding onto all the rails.

They mostly just mind their business (which i was also partly grateful for), and go around. A few tuts. And a couple of young stoner girls whispering about being 'on it' and looking back at me. Thankfully I was just in pain and not 'on it' otherwise i would have been far more paranoid from then on.

Me and an old jamaican woman shuffling slowly in the opposite direction with heavy bags made eye contact and a brief nod of 'i year ya'. Solidarity in small doses, yo.

So i get to Bank DLR and, as i'm holding my guts, shuffling along the platform, a guy asks if i'm ok. He looks me right in the eye. And I say, no, not really, but thanks. And keep moving.
Because, well, i don't know what else to do. It's not clear what help I need.

Actually, it is, I really need to fast forward the world so that I'm in bed, laying down, not hurting. But i don't think this guy has that much power. Otherwise I would have jumped at him and pleaded it thus.

A point to note: I am not conditioned to say 'I'm not ok'.

I have become much more accustomed to it over the years and often let people know when i'm feeling rubbish, or even just mildly neurotic. Heck, i can even ask for help from health professionals and some friends, when and if i'm ready.
But never to a stranger in public.

Anyway, he sees that, actually, I'm not doing well. He shadows me and sees that get on the train OK. When a fine young dude goes to grab the last seat nearby he fends him off - hey man, she's unwell.

Bless this man.

Usuallly the trip home from Bank station is a pretty quick journey. this time it was the longest I've ever had. By this stage, I gave no fucks. I knew that mr tradesman was looking at me/out for me, concerned, so i just closed my eyes and tried to absorb the pain.

Whilst also checking for phone signal.
I had been in touch with the a friend who was diverting his ways, to come and help. i had also tried both flatmates.
nothing.
I was relying on the kindness of strangers. And mostly with eye contact. I wasn't talking much.

On the way through the station, down the lift and across the street, Marcus - this man's name, is making sure no-one got in my way, Asked where I was from. When I said I was Australian, he smiled.
His boss was Australian and an old tradesman of his was too - someone who took him under his wing and taught him everything.

He said "everyone says Australians are racist, but Australians are some of the most generous people I know and they reached out to me when they didn't have to"
He also said, you know, black, white, whatever, you got to be there for people. He said. And he lived.

Because this black man was the only person who had bothered to ask if i was ok in that trip.
It's like white folk act like they don't have to look after one another 'cos they think 'ah, she's white, someone's got her back'. Or 'ah, young white girl that looks a bit unconventional, walking slowly holding onto things' - she's probably out of it.

I dunno, but I saw the people of London in a new way that night. Hardened, in their own privileged box. I've been that person, I know it. This story shouldn't be unusual for me. But it is.

Anyway, Marcus got me to the cafe where i would wait for my friend. He made sure i was as OK as i could be and then headed home.

I hope I run into him on the street again. Because I doubt that, at the time, was particularly articulate or gracious. I probably looked like i was terrified of him - being a stubborn woman in pain.

Marcus from St Lucia, thank you. I'm incredibly grateful for your kindness.

Thank you for:

a. not dumping my arse on the street when you found out that I was Australian and, by reputation, probably racist.

b. not ignoring me because i'm a young white woman who may or may not be scared of you based on your race and all the complications that come with racism still.

c. not ignoring me because i'm a young white woman who may or may not be scared of you based on your gender and all the complications that come with male violence.

d. following you sisters' advice: treat a woman how you'd like men to treat mama. You did. You treated a complete stranger like a sister - just another a human.

lyrics versus anthems

2013-10-30T12:25:00.001+00:00

During some conversations at the hip hop arts club recently, quite a few of the blokes I was chatting with about hip hop lyrics were quite nostalgic and sentimental about the ol' lyricists:
the KRS-Ones, Chuck Ds, Rakims, Bustas, Biggies, Jean Graes, Kwelis, Nas, Black Thoughts and Kendricks.

And, of course, I love those peeps; it's why I put the damn workshop on.

They have ways of telling stories, painting pictures of our lives, our words, our worlds - even if the only attachement to those lives/worlds is through a feeling, a reminiscence.

They're master craftsmen. They can flex their vocabulary, their wordsmithery, their technique - virtuosity is impressive and we awe at their skills. Hip Hop Legends.

But in the club or at carnival, even in the cars cranking past, the music that goes live is not the lyrical or poetic.

It's the anthemic.

It's what lifts the whole damn room. And that's the kind of stuff that makes your day sometimes. The whole crowd going up.

To the bass lines, trap beats, the cheap shots and ear candy.

Chief Keef, A$ap Rocky, Odd Future, YG, Young Jeezy - all those kush, money, cash money kids.
Just like the one-liners in art - the sight gag, the cheap shot and irony crew (most of Frieze 2013), tacky TV, most musical theatre, 'entertainment'.

They lift people quickly, unite them simply, like a smile or a round of sweets.

And whilst I wouldn't want that as a staple in my diet, it's not 'bad', per se.

But have the fortune of being quite clear about it: it is about balance.

The depth of songs with lyrics at their core are full of metaphor, form, subtext and a depth of meaning. They are an excellent platorm for being able to listen to and imagine a story deeply. To understand complexity - mostly the complexity of the (ultimately flawed) human condition. They contribute to my character.

Same goes for similar kinds of art - lots of painting, post-war sculpture, durational performance, theatre, dance - a way to talk about difficult things* and often it's not easy to digest.

And it's often super SERIOUS.

But who wants to just have fiber all day? You gots to have ice cream once in a while.
You have to just let things be a bit fucked and just have a good time with what you got. Sometimes, you just have to let a smile lift you, even though you know it's not really the deepest or the kind of message you want in your life all the time. They contribute to my lightness.

Of course, the slightly disturbing aspect is when they're the only message you hear, or when you base your whole life on Bang! When all you see are cheap shots at the money and simplistic talk a dem hoes.
And when all the money in various industries goes that way.

I don't think it's helpful to just say 'all that crap is crap' because it sets it up as the ONLY option that's available to people. I think it's about foregrounding what is amazing and knowing that candy dissolves eventually over time.

*(which i think is going to be the name of my next business or novel or full-length mixtape).

when oppression spreads: why racism and feminism are absolutely linked

2013-10-28T21:31:00.000+00:00

tonight i spent a good 30 minutes taking a couple of young dudes to task about this tweet that ended up in my feed, thanks to an ignorant RT:

on the back of a couple of general WTFs, stupidly, i tried to 'educate' a little. even though that's a problematic tactic. and i think i know why*.

one of the examples i gave them was - that attitude was similar to the idea that dressing puffer and being black justified being beaten by police.

to which they both responded/agreed:

which shocked me.
it shocked me that they believe that to be OK and they're not angry with that. at all.

they have, thanks to a white supremicist system and the racism within the media (not just the police force), come to believe that the key to not being beaten by police is to not look like hood yute.

they are so conditioned to believe that a young black man deserves to be harrassed by the authorities because of the way he dresses.

and so they believe that a young woman deserves to be raped because of the way she dresses.

and they are so conditioned to these ideas, that they're not angry about them.

they're fact.
reality.
ways of staying safe.
and a reason to castigate others for not adhering to the codes of staying 'safe'.

despite the fact that young black men from the hood in puffers are no more likely to stab someone than angry young white men in the suburbs.

despite the fact that women are raped regardless of being as sexually bared as possible, or as modest as full niqab.

and that rape is not punishment for social disorder.

and this is why white feminists need to study racial oppression.
because the conditioning is comparable. and each one supports the other.

*i've blocked one - who doesn't care about [my] opinion' and monitoring the other (the guy i originally was following).

tees

2013-10-21T16:52:00.005+01:00

Hip Hop Arts Club at Culture Blast

2013-10-08T13:04:00.001+01:00

Backing up after the exhibition in Dublin, my very first Hip Hop Arts Club is kicking off as part of this weekend's Culture Blast at Wimbledon Library.

Organised by Ash Akhtar from the Arts Development (and amazing actor/film-maker in his own right), it's going to be a super fun event that gets high on the mashup of art and words and music.

Inspired by Busta Rhyme's verse on Scenario by Tribe Called Quest (and that crazy video) Hip Hop Arts Club is something that has been brewing for a while, first kicking off at the Collingwood Housing Estate, chatting with the young people as part of their input into the Everybody's Favourite Song CD.

Everyone has a favourite Hip Hop lyric* - something that sticks - a click of poetry or beats or the particular flow that can paint an image that resonates. yes, even with all those mixed metaphors.

And for young people, hip hop is a genre that speaks very clearly to their actual experience (rather than an abstract one). These lyrics, these styles, a certain beat, the way a set of 16 will just capture a time and a place - they're meaningful.

And that meaning isn't always easy to articulate and sometimes it's just a feeling, and that's why it grabs.

The Hip Hop Arts Club uses that as a basis for making art - images from lyrical imagery, picking up on the cycle between poetic rhymes of rap and the feelings and states of art. It's an opportunity to give words to pictures and vice versa.

Ash has organise Culture Blast along similar lines - connecting music and words, books and technology, public places of knowledge and enjoying tunes together.

WrongTom, Sam Underwood, Graham Lawrie and a couple of others are all making work that overlays sound, art and words. And we're taking over the old Wimbledon Library! How cool is that!

I'll be commandeering their Internet Space, surrounded by an old frieze done by the Wimbledon Arts School years ago, so I feel pretty privileged.

It'll be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Anyway, I know that some of you are into hip hop or art, so if you're in London and can get to Wimbledon, come on down.

*OK, not everyone, but most people my age and younger do.

...and he jiggled to the beat in his black and blue tracksuit

2013-10-06T12:26:00.000+01:00

On Thursday night, the exhibition Implicated opened at MART in Dublin. Curated by implicate collaborative, the show "aims to investigate the boundaries of privacy" and I am one of the 7 exhibiting artists; which is pretty grand (to get local with my lingo).

I'm showing an extended remix of an earlier work about headphones as mobile privacy units.

Starting from a twitter feed based on the search term 'headphones', the work has two branches about their place in society and the way we use them to manage our engagement with public space to create an idea of privacy.

The first investigates a recent occurrence - i feel like it's a legal precendent - which occurred in Ireland. John Dundon, charged with murder, wore headphones and listened to music whilst being sentenced. The work features a court sketch done by Ireland's one-and-only court artist of him giving two fingers to the system (literally). This questions what our role as citizens is in accepting the nature of being one. There is no legal requirement, clearly, to listen to our punishment. Dundon pushes the boundaries of privacy all the way into the law.

The other branch features a range of headphones 'branded' with the words we say to the world when we wear them (above: a small detail)

Also taken from the twitter feed, these are the unspoken codes of headphones as fashion, headphones as units of privacy, headphones as contemporary objects.

In speaking with people at the exhibition's private view, there is a clear generational split of those for whom headphones are 'standard' and those who aren't. BH and AH. People of my generation and younger are all pretty-much raised on them and either choose to wear them or not. We take them for granted and are the ones who read them as a social 'norm' for delineating privacy.

The responses to the work have been great so far, including props by Jimmy Deenihan, Irish Minister for the Arts in his opening speech - that's pretty great. Not to mention the great conversations about privacy, my work and multiple references to Elizabeth Throop's book Net Curtains and Closed Doors.

There is a fantastic catalogue for the show, including an essay by Dr Paul O'Brien from National College of Art and Design. He will be speaking at the Artist Talk on Friday 11th October, which you should attend if you're anywhere near Dublin.

Deets:
Implicated
4th - 20th October, 201
MART Gallery
190A Rathmines Rd Lower
Dublin 6

the sounds that we ignore

2013-09-27T14:08:00.000+01:00

this is a follow-on from jade's story. and other women's stories.
my friend's stories and my own.

last week, as i was walking home from an amazing evening working on a friend's solo dance work, i was accosted by a young guy in my local neighbourhood.

he was a charming young man, menacingly telling me how sexy i looked ('babes'), did i want it?, the old 'you know you want it', delightful displays of his 'big dick' and threatening to give me one, even if i didn't want it. rapist-in-training type shit.

the whole thing pissed me off. the system in which that interchange exists is a common one and i'm sick of it.

after going through a particularly intense session of identification at the police station, i rang a friend, a trans* woman, who was incredibly supportive. and it occurred to me that she actually hadn't spent her whole life rejecting the unwanted advances of men.

i can't even imagine it.

most women, since the age of 10 (or younger), spend the rest of our lives in some act of ignoring the unnecessary sexual words and actions of men:

in the street, from cars, right up in our ear whilst our hair is being pulled, in our faces, from across the room, behind us, towards us, sideways, from scaffolding, under their breath, on the tv, on twitter, in memes, passing on the footpath, on the bus, on the train, in the office hallway, in a pub, outside a pub, at a gig, outside a gig, on the dancefloor, outside the club, at night, early morning, whilst walking, whilst jogging, with kids, without kids, in a group, on our own etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

etcetera.

we develop a reaction early - the paying attention of those words and sounds, the instant assessment of them on our character and varying levels of disregarding them, depending on our character and our self-esteem.

it's fucking boring. and surely a waste of our energy by now.

i'm sick of hearing it. i'm sick of ignoring it.
guys, please, give it a rest.

hey you, you, hello, hello? hey slut, dyke, freak, nice hair cut, show us your tits, whistle, kiss noises, heyy, sexy, nice tattoo, nice legs, hey sexy, hey, hello?, oi!, slut! nice hair, nice tatts!, show us your tatts, tits, car horns, oi, ladies, hey lady, miss, hey miss, excuse me, you right? can i get your number, heyyyy, shamood, shamout, butana, yo ho', belle femme, kissy kissy, check this one aaaart...