Beuys and ping pong

[imomus]

James Goggin, designer of the wildly popular Otto Spooky sleeve, has finally relaunched the website for his graphic design practise, Practise. If you click through the work section you'll see that a lot of his commissions come from art institutions; he's the man who does the posters, catalogues and brochures for Tate Modern, for instance.



The new show at Tate Modern is Britain's first major exhibition of the work of Josef Beuys. This is an incredible fact, because in the 1980s the art world considered Beuys and Warhol to be the two most important living artists (they died within a year of each other, in 1986 and 1987), and London hosted so many Warhol shows that his work started to look like wallpaper. (Well, it was wallpaper. And floaty silver helium cushions. And painted money.) I suppose we have to put this down to the fact that British people can look West all day and all night and suffer no ill health, but as soon as they look East they get a nasty crick in the neck.

I Like America and America Likes Me was the title of a 1974 Beuys action in which he spent a week locked in a New York gallery with a wild coyote, some felt and a shepherd's crook. Tate Modern has generously hosted a 24 minute RealPlayer video stream of another action on their site, the 1972 Information Action held in London.

Caroline Tisdall's book on Josef Beuys, published by Thames and Hudson in 1979, was the first contemporary art book I bought. I can honestly say it changed my life. I fell under Beuys' shamanic spell and, when Richard Demarco announced in 1980 that Beuys would deliver a lecture in Edinburgh as part of the Free International University (Beuys' informal university), I made sure I was there. About twenty-five of us sat in a little room in a courtyard off Edinburgh's Cowgate as Beuys, rather enfeebled by his hunger strike in solidarity with Jimmy Boyle, sipped from a glass of water and made one of his tortuously intricate spidery blackboards explaining the connections between the striking British Aerospace workers at Coventry and ancient Celtic snakelore. There is a connection, you know. Let's find that blackboard and I'll prove it.

I'm happy to announce that there's a connection between me and Thames and Hudson, the publishers of that fascinating book on Beuys. I'll be writing a book for them (well, really a series of texts) on the subject of photoblogging, to be published later this year. James Goggin also has a new job -- in spring he'll take over as art director of music magazine The Wire. Congratulations, James!

And now the sports news. Ping pong is a particularly musical game, and today's Art Harbour stream is the sound of a ping pong game recorded by a student at the Future University and chopped around by me until it becomes a Tati-esque 'Ping Pong Symphony'. I also used a lot of ping pong sounds in a remix I made of Digiki and Darsh's new track Cash. Mainly because they were right there in the remix materials Antonin Gaultier (who is Digiki) posted on his blog. He's inviting anyone and everyone to make a remix, so have a go. Here's mine:

Cash (Hokkaido remix by Momus) (stereo mp3, 3mins 30secs, 3.5MB)

Comments

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the book. And nice remix!

[robotar.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the book!

[(Anonymous)]

cheers to the book! about time...
-roddy

i like surry hills and surry hills likes me

[bimmelbimmel.livejournal.com]

there are no coyotes (nor blackboards) but three lone wolves and friends inhabiting the mememememe gallery in sydney australia from yesterday for the 'wildboys' show - see our blog community at www.livejournal.com/community/thewildboys
x0x0x0x

[emxii.livejournal.com]

i'd been meaning to inquire about the sleeve design. their work is definitely in the echelon of newer visuals.

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

I was going to the Beuys exhibition yesterday, but my friend didn't show up. In an act of gushing devotion, I had dressed up in my own grey felt suit and hat combo. So I walked along Bankside and went for a drink with a few friends at the Embankment. Entering Charing Cross station later, I was then followed by group of eight people who followed me down a corridor muttering "dirty fucking Jew" and "yid bastard" and those non-verbal noises that make your hair stand up as you prepare for fight or flight.

I'll admit that the beard is getting kind of long in parts and I even live in frum Stamford Hill, but I'm not aware of a local group that wear grey felt suits, not to mention entirely the wrong beard style. I turned around and asked if they had a problem. They said I was a Jew. I asked if they thought that was an insult. It soon degraded into a fairly standard surround and poke session with me shouting louding they were a bunch of ignorant whatever until I was fortunately rescued by some London Underground staff.

I'll be heading back to the Beuys exhibition on Thursday and I'll certainly be wearing the felt suit again. Should this tiresome scene replay itself, might I ask, What Would Joseph Do?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Jeez, that's completely outrageous. A city as big as London should have got used to racial and cultural diversity by now. Racists need to visit the V&A to do a bit of costume research, presumably civilising themselves in the process. And anti-racists need to dress in confusing multi-referential ways, just to confuse the bullies into silence. I mean, it's already happening. Boy George was a pioneer with his first Culture Club video -- was he a Hassidic Jew, a rastafarian, or a big girl's blouse? Or all of the above?

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

I was reading a piece by Howard Jacobson not long ago about how it was no longer fashionable to be Jewish. As he put it, they had been exotic in Britain once (the "Japanese girlfriend" of their time?) but that position has been taken by others since. These days, Jewish seems to equal Israeli domestic policy alone. If I was confused for Orthodox, they seemed rather ignorant of the very mixed attitudes towards Israel amongst the community in London.

They claimed to be Muslim. I asked which particular of the 99 Names of Allah (http://www.sufism.org/society/asma/) they were acting in. It was effectively the same ignorant situation as twenty five years ago when skinheads would hassle me over my hair colour and playing the know-all card in defence is no more effective now than it was then!

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I was once called a 'Black Bastard' on the streets of, well of Greater London. I am not actually black. I am, in fact, quite pale. This confused and upset me at the same time. Anyway, my sympathies and congratulations on standing up to the bastards.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Don't know why I capitalised 'Black Bastard'. Maybe it was the way the person said it.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Bastards. I'm glad you are now safe, sir.

Sadly, this sort of thing is becoming more common: I was (hilariously) accused of being a Jew In Durban last year by some crypto-fascist anarchist types. They even quoted from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Nice boys.

Joseph might have sicked his Jew-lovin' coyote on your friends, then use the fat in their heads for a project.

W

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

I might design some concealed Spider Man gadgets that shoot webs of grey felt. Although having a coyote well might be the way to go in these times.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

After mentioning him as a pioneer, I've now got Boy George's "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?" stuck in my head. Since he sang the song in the video dressed as a rastafarian, a Jew and a gay, I'm trying to imagine the song recast as "Which Do You Really Most Want To Hurt Me As?"

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Ha hah.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Not so funny: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1401659,00.html

beuys keep swinging!

[(Anonymous)]

so there is where jeremy deller's history of the world, his large wall drawing of interconncetions between brass bands and acid house, came from!

erik

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Marvelous news about the book..

Beuy's blackboard scribblings bring to mind Mark Lombardi's conspiratorial flow charts, which manage to be both topical and beautiful.

http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardi.html

I saw a show of his right after he had killed himself, sadly.

W

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, I had an entry last year about Mark Lombardi, Who paid the dripper? (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/10858.html)

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Now, how did I miss that one?

The actual pieces are quite large, and the images on the web serve them no justice.

W

[(Anonymous)]

did you hear jeremy dellers brass band covers of acid house? what is it like? sounds like a momus cross-over (folk-electric)



erik

[dzima.livejournal.com]

The book on Beuys you mentioned was also one of the first books on contemporary art I read, and it had the same mind blowing effect with. Later on, I was a bit put off by his evangelism and discovered other Fluxus artists I liked more: Wolf Vostell, Ben Vautier, Nam June Paik... (Yoko Ono too). But I still am very fond of Beuys.

[w-e-quimby.livejournal.com]

Omomus.

[cementimental.livejournal.com]

Beuys is great! Thanks for reminding me about the exhibition, gonna have to go + see that!

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

There was a Beuys exhibition on in the Tate Modern a couple of years ago.

<- And here's the smallest Beuys excibition

[bugpowered.livejournal.com]

at the left

[auto-appendix.livejournal.com]

Nick, just to xpost from the ilm thread about 'Nathan Barley' but that person with the flipflop hat clearly IS you in a bit wig!

[(Anonymous)]

Many of the characters in Nathan Barley represent aspects of Momus. Dan Ashcroft is clearly a derivative in the sense of being an older person worshipped by young 'Idiots'.

[(Anonymous)]

Look familiar?

[(Anonymous)]

wow! great design!


erik

[(Anonymous)]

I too was captivated by Beuys in the 80s. Now I'm embarrassed by my naivite and credulity. Look at all those earnest young people in the audience with Beuys, all looking for a wise man to explain the world to them (in lieu of a father). It seems that mockery is not the worst thing one can do to the mentally unhinged - it's veneration.

JC

[imomus.livejournal.com]

What struck me about that action was that someone very intelligent spent much of it humiliating Beuys by asking practical questions about technology in the third world, etc. Beuys gave pretty inadequate answers, but for me it's a waste of time expecting concrete political solutions from Beuys or any artist. Beuys' political actions are symbolic, a sort of shamanic pantomime. It seems to get close to politics at some points (including his stint in the German parliament with the Greens), but it really isn't politics as we know it. That the blackboard lectures were often incomprehensible is not to say they were worthless, just that their worth was not the same as a speech by Tony Blair. They invoked spirits. Beuys left behind an enchanted world of hares, blood crosses, felt, fat and urine. 'Political action' was a condiment, a way to add the flavour of seriousness. He was 'unhinged' in the best possible way, as Artaud was. We need 'unhinged' artists to lead us into valuable realms of otherness. "On the aggregate", rationality does not hold all the answers.

[bugpowered.livejournal.com]

That the blackboard lectures were often incomprehensible is not to say they were worthless, just that their worth was not the same as a speech by Tony Blair.

You don't suggest that Tony Blair speeches:

a) are not incomprehensible

b) are of any worth

do you?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to say they're prosaic, whereas Beuys was about poetry. But your rhetorical point is taken.

[happylantern.livejournal.com]

Dear Momus,

Last night I had a dream that you, your friends and I were playing in the snow in the front yard of my old home in Michigan. We were having a blast sledding and flopping but then I spotted an enormous airliner flying very low just a few blocks away.

You and I rushed inside my home to no avail as when the plane crashed, the whole neighborhood was burnt to a crisp!

From,
A stranger.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

We do but sport, and play, and jest
Aye in the shadow of... death's jets

[auto-appendix.livejournal.com]

Beuys' 7000 Oaks project is still the most fantastic artwork ever. There was a symbolism that everybody could relate to and even participate in. Beautiful, elegant, moving. I think this is where Brian Eno sees his work these days but it lacks the breathtaking application of the oaks. This justifies everything that Beuys did in his puzzling and varied career.

http://www.diacenter.org/ltproj/7000/postcards.html
http://www.tkffdn.org/partner/beuys/history.shtml

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That artwork is so great I wrote a line about it in one of my songs (Germania on Philosophy of Momus):

A thousand acorns trampled upon make a thousand oaks...

FOLKTRONIC packaging differences?

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, this is a little off-topic, but speaking of album art, can anyone tell me the difference between the US and UK packaging for "Folktronic"? I understand that they have two different sleeves, and two different types of cases. Which one is "better"? Which has more artwork (in the booklet or whatever)? I'm just curious. Thanks!

[rciaodree.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I had no idea the Tate was doing a new Beuys show, but I was inspired, for some unknown reason, to post about Beuys last month (http://www.livejournal.com/users/rciaodree/22342.html).

Congrats on the book!