When you have absorbed these lessons in urban history, it is time to take a few minutes to watch Wentworth's videos. These sound un-watchable but are actually well made and don't last long. One simply follows a plane as it leaves a vapour trail in the sky above King's Cross Station; another wittily documents the deft artistry of workmen from the highways department painting road markings.
In these films Wentworth metaphorically states the theme of the show: that London is a kind of blank sheet on which everyone is writing, all of the time. Every generation leaves its mark on the living, changing city. We make it our own.
Wentworth's installation for Artangel will mimic this process. What I saw on the day of the opening is just the basic structure of a work that will change and grow from day to day as more and more material is added to it.
To ensure that the display doesn't become museumy and moribund, Wentworth has set up a half a dozen ping pong tables and announced the first King's Cross table tennis tournament. Anyone can drop by at any time of the day and pick up a game. For the next few months at least, General Plumbing Supplies will function like a neighbourhood social club.
Thanks to Wentworth's engaging, humorous take on everything he touches, the show is hugely entertaining - so much so that I forgot to ask myself what it all had to do with art. Then, after I'd left the show and stepped out into York Way, I realised that the work of art wasn't to be found on the premises of General Plumbing Supplies, but in the streets around me.
As I walked back to my car, I noticed the Italianate villa from which taxis are despatched at the side of King's Cross station. I stopped to read faded signs for shops that vanished long ago, and peered into old-fashioned cafes cheerfully dishing up the kind of food the Brussels health police will soon make it a criminal offence to serve.
Above your head you see planes you hadn't noticed before, and at your feet you become alert to the sheer complexity of road markings we spend our whole lives obeying, and yet never really see.
Wentworth's genius is to make us see the world from the fresh and original perspectives that he does, and to make us aware that, if London is a living city, it is simultaneously a dying one. Places we have known all our lives will become a memory in 10 years' time."
Full article here - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3582251/View-of-streets-we-never-see.html
Our culture no longer belongs to us.
The way we produce and share our culture is as important as the outcome.
In a system where it is too expensive to stitch your own clothes, we answer to the big producers whose practices we are increasingly at odds with.
Don't reject culture. Reclaim it!
To hell with trade secrets and copyright. We're taking back what is ours and we're sharing it with everyone.
'Who owns culture?'
henryflitton@hotmail.com
http://www.reclaimingculture.com
??The moon life foundation - Alicia Framis
Director of Moon Life Foundation, Alicia Framis speculates on the possibility that humans will live in space in the future. The project acts as a stimulus for artists, designers, architects to create futuristic radical political but humane concepts for an extreme lunar environment.
Alicia Framis is also the Lost Astronaut – an performance-installation at APF LAB, exploring the potentialities of living on the moon through the ironical activities and fictional character of a woman astronaut. Left on earth like all women who were never part of the moon race, she settles in to BaseCamp, in which she lived for the two weeks in a customized astronaut suit, among drawings and prototypes that aim to both parody and demand women’s presence on the moon.
Alicia Framis studied Fine Arts at the Barcelona University and Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. She completed her masters at the Institut d’Hautes Etudes, Paris and at the Rijksakademie Van Beelde Kunstende, Amsterdam.
Who Owns Outer Space? - Dr Jill Stuart
While the 'Martians Chronicles' might soon become real facts, Dr Jill Stuart will be discussing with us the ownership of space, so that we know where to land! She will explain us the history of cosmic governance and the future of outer space law.
Dr Jill Stuart is Fellow in Global Politics at the London School of Economics, and reviews editor for the journal Global Policy. She researches law, politics and theory of outer space exploration and exploitation. Her interests extend to the way terrestrial politics and conceptualisations such as sovereignty are projected into outer space, and how outer space potentially plays a role in reconstituting how those politics and conceptualisations are understood in terrestrial politics.
On observatories and observing - Jem Finer
Come along and meet with one of our space genies, Jem Finer who experienced zero gravity and realized a 1000-year long musical composition (Longplayer), as well as being artist in residence in the astrophysics department at Oxford University making a number of works including two sculptural observatories, Landscope and The Centre of the Universe.
The 'Gravitational Theater'- Julijonas Urbonas
Julijonas will talk about unique aesthetic manifestations of gravity in our highly technologised culture, from anti-gravitational shoes to deadly roller coasters.
Having worked in amusement park development – as an architect, ride designer and head of fairground – Urbonas became fascinated by what he calls the bodily-perceived aesthetics of ‘gravitational theatre’. Since then the topic has been at the core of his creative life, from artistic work to scholarly articles. Most recently this interest has matured into his PhD research based in the department of Design Interactions at the RCA.
The series is programmed by Nelly Ben Hayoun and Nahum Mantra.
KOSMICA is endorsed by ITACCUS, the International Astronautical Federation's Committee on the Cultural Utilisation of Space.
Julijonas Urbonas - http://www.julijonasurbonas.lt
Dr Jill Stuart - lse.ac.uk, www.globalpolicyjournal.com
Jem Finer - www.cosmolog.org.uk, www.onearthasinheaven.net,longplayer.org
Alicia Framis - http://moon-life.org/, www.aliciaframis.com
If you're afraid of experimental fiction (i know i am), this film should win you over.whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir runs endlessly, editing live in real time, with no beginning, middle or end, never repeating the same way twice. The movie is so extraordinarily beautiful and puzzling that i will go back and see it today, tomorrow again and probably over the weekend as well.
A level of control is granted to a computer software that edits the film in real time, live as you are sitting in the screening room. The machine culls scenes from a server loaded with 2637 video clips, creating suspense through unexpected juxtapositions. The implied narrative is communicated through voiceovers, wire tapped telephone conversations and snippets of a job interview between Mr. Holz and his prospective employer, Mr. White. It becomes evident that the character is controlled by a city and the code he is working on, as the course of the story is controlled by the code that edits the film."
See clips here - http://www.rufuscorporation.com/channels/
Roberto Christen very kindly sent me a copy of his These Are Patterns newspaper. More info below from creativeapplications.net.
Excited to finally try out newspaperclub, Roberto aka m8roberto created a small newspaper featuring 12 different patterns created using Processing.
The small newspaper has 12 patterns generated using a simple processing sketch that exploits repetition and randomness to produce a variety of effects using a limited set of line types.
Newspaperclub is a UK based company helping you make your own newspapers. You can use the online tool to upload and arrange your words and pictures or you can use the site to send us a PDF. They print every Tuesday afternoon, and you’ll get your papers in about a week.
Trees for Cities from STUDIO AKA on Vimeo.
