I came so far for beauty
Aug. 22nd, 2008 08:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus2000 kilometers -- on relentless autobahns and autostrade, up and down mountains, your Renault Clio being rudely rammed by a truck -- is too much to drive to see some art. But what great art (and what great atmospheres in what great buildings) Manifesta 7 gave us!
Stuck behind Beefheart
There's a two-tier, a twin-track system: the stress you feel on the highway, when a single lapse in concentration could kill, and the ease you're supposed to feel at your destination. In the car you must be sober, adult, responsible, tense, manly. When you get out you can be childish, irresponsible, silly, playful, spontaneous, original. Nobody likes a spontaneous, original driver. Nobody wants to drive behind Captain Beefheart ("How original, Captain, no lights at night!").
Ex Cathedra
After the excruciatingly long drive, to enter Ex-Alumix -- a disused aluminium smelting plant in Bolzano, something like a cross between Tate Modern and the Palais de Tokyo -- is a lift and a rush. Suddenly all's right with the world. This is what it's all about! This is interesting, and intelligent, and sane, and controlled, and just. It's better than drugs or champagne. The space is huge and lit from high windows. Cranes and pulleys still hang from the ceiling. It has the dimensions of a cathedral and a railway station, and gives you the feeling of uplift and onrush. It's better than that monstrous construction, the cantilevered road blasting across the high mountain pass. The light in this building is beautiful. Who'd have thought that industrial spaces could die and go to heaven in quite this way? That they would have this kind of afterlife?
Games for adults
The curators have laid out toys and sociological studies, surprises. A sort of climbing frame to clamber up, a Swedish pirate bus, an audio installation in the cellar, a diseased Russian doll, some Indian ladies working, some black helium balloons that lift you up into the sky, some phonograph records next to videos of rotating old ladies' heads, a book of inexistent flora, a man walking on the ice in front of an ice breaker, piece after piece rewards your attention with some sliver of poetry.
Clio rammed by a truck
Do you want to hear about my collision with the truck? The exit from the B12 to Innsbruck West was being worked on. It was narrowed. The truck in front of me didn't know this, and sped towards it, saw the dimensions, then slammed on the brakes so hard the linings burned. I stopped in time, but without looking behind the truck driver threw his monster into reverse and hit me, pushing me back into the stream of the highway. I blared my horn, but he never heard, and made off before we could exchange insults and insurers. My car's nose was put out of joint; later the Clio grille flew up and over the windscreen like a stray flip flop.
Binaries on a mountain
At the police station in Innsbruck there's a picture on the wall: a young, chic Austrian woman stands on a mountainside beside an old rural man in lederhosen. This picture -- I had time to speculate, as the broad-skulled policeman tapped out the traffic accident report -- combined an amazing number of binaries: old / young, rural / urban, short / tall, male / female, traditional / modern, poor / rich, old / young, ugly / pretty, functional / decorative, agricultural / consumerist. You seize all this in a second or two, and laugh. It's about Austria.
Futurism led to roads and buildings
Curator Adam Budak mentions that some of the Futurists were raised in these South Tyrolian valleys. I can see how the spirit of Futurism informs the anti-humanist clamour of the autostrada, and even the rude fist gestures Italian drivers make (when you push out into their traffic flow and falter rather than forcing your pace on its pace). Of the four northern Italian towns involved in Manifesta, we skip Fortezza because the place is too small to have its own autostrada exit (Marinetti would have approved). It's also clear that the Futurists helped pave the way for Italian fascism, never far away in the architecture here. Deco is never innocent in Italy -- it's always, possibly, on the side of Il Duce. So there's something creepy about Trento's Palazzo delle Poste, no matter how wonderfully bureaucratic are its corridors, how monastic its fountain-equipped courtyard.
Pleasant plethora
I want to film and photograph everything. There's so little time -- just a day to visit four towns and walk through so many installations -- and so much work. In Trento there are mini-museums within the Palazzo: the Museum of European Normality, the Museum of the Stealing of Souls, the Museum of Personality Testing.
Storied Centre
We have to expand our definition of the centro storico -- the storied city centre, the historical tourist district. Towns must now include their gigantic former working spaces -- their 20th century refurbished industrial ruins -- as part of the centro storico. The story must now include hammering, smelting, packaging and posting. (Written with the Thinking Allowed suburbs special in mind.)
Does art improve you?
I ask Joe and Emma whether they think art improves them. Not morally or ethically, but in terms of making them more creative, perhaps. They say yes. They'll make better songs after looking at art. They'll be enriched by it, be able to imagine better, relate better. I ask them if any of their friends hate art. No, they answer, but some fail to pay much attention to it at openings, preferring to give their attention to friends. That's understandable, I say.
(Full-size images on Flickr. Vernissage TV continues its coverage of Manifesta 7 here.)
Stuck behind Beefheart
There's a two-tier, a twin-track system: the stress you feel on the highway, when a single lapse in concentration could kill, and the ease you're supposed to feel at your destination. In the car you must be sober, adult, responsible, tense, manly. When you get out you can be childish, irresponsible, silly, playful, spontaneous, original. Nobody likes a spontaneous, original driver. Nobody wants to drive behind Captain Beefheart ("How original, Captain, no lights at night!").Ex Cathedra
After the excruciatingly long drive, to enter Ex-Alumix -- a disused aluminium smelting plant in Bolzano, something like a cross between Tate Modern and the Palais de Tokyo -- is a lift and a rush. Suddenly all's right with the world. This is what it's all about! This is interesting, and intelligent, and sane, and controlled, and just. It's better than drugs or champagne. The space is huge and lit from high windows. Cranes and pulleys still hang from the ceiling. It has the dimensions of a cathedral and a railway station, and gives you the feeling of uplift and onrush. It's better than that monstrous construction, the cantilevered road blasting across the high mountain pass. The light in this building is beautiful. Who'd have thought that industrial spaces could die and go to heaven in quite this way? That they would have this kind of afterlife?Games for adults
The curators have laid out toys and sociological studies, surprises. A sort of climbing frame to clamber up, a Swedish pirate bus, an audio installation in the cellar, a diseased Russian doll, some Indian ladies working, some black helium balloons that lift you up into the sky, some phonograph records next to videos of rotating old ladies' heads, a book of inexistent flora, a man walking on the ice in front of an ice breaker, piece after piece rewards your attention with some sliver of poetry.Clio rammed by a truck
Do you want to hear about my collision with the truck? The exit from the B12 to Innsbruck West was being worked on. It was narrowed. The truck in front of me didn't know this, and sped towards it, saw the dimensions, then slammed on the brakes so hard the linings burned. I stopped in time, but without looking behind the truck driver threw his monster into reverse and hit me, pushing me back into the stream of the highway. I blared my horn, but he never heard, and made off before we could exchange insults and insurers. My car's nose was put out of joint; later the Clio grille flew up and over the windscreen like a stray flip flop.Binaries on a mountain
At the police station in Innsbruck there's a picture on the wall: a young, chic Austrian woman stands on a mountainside beside an old rural man in lederhosen. This picture -- I had time to speculate, as the broad-skulled policeman tapped out the traffic accident report -- combined an amazing number of binaries: old / young, rural / urban, short / tall, male / female, traditional / modern, poor / rich, old / young, ugly / pretty, functional / decorative, agricultural / consumerist. You seize all this in a second or two, and laugh. It's about Austria.Futurism led to roads and buildings
Curator Adam Budak mentions that some of the Futurists were raised in these South Tyrolian valleys. I can see how the spirit of Futurism informs the anti-humanist clamour of the autostrada, and even the rude fist gestures Italian drivers make (when you push out into their traffic flow and falter rather than forcing your pace on its pace). Of the four northern Italian towns involved in Manifesta, we skip Fortezza because the place is too small to have its own autostrada exit (Marinetti would have approved). It's also clear that the Futurists helped pave the way for Italian fascism, never far away in the architecture here. Deco is never innocent in Italy -- it's always, possibly, on the side of Il Duce. So there's something creepy about Trento's Palazzo delle Poste, no matter how wonderfully bureaucratic are its corridors, how monastic its fountain-equipped courtyard.Pleasant plethora
I want to film and photograph everything. There's so little time -- just a day to visit four towns and walk through so many installations -- and so much work. In Trento there are mini-museums within the Palazzo: the Museum of European Normality, the Museum of the Stealing of Souls, the Museum of Personality Testing.Storied Centre
We have to expand our definition of the centro storico -- the storied city centre, the historical tourist district. Towns must now include their gigantic former working spaces -- their 20th century refurbished industrial ruins -- as part of the centro storico. The story must now include hammering, smelting, packaging and posting. (Written with the Thinking Allowed suburbs special in mind.)Does art improve you?
I ask Joe and Emma whether they think art improves them. Not morally or ethically, but in terms of making them more creative, perhaps. They say yes. They'll make better songs after looking at art. They'll be enriched by it, be able to imagine better, relate better. I ask them if any of their friends hate art. No, they answer, but some fail to pay much attention to it at openings, preferring to give their attention to friends. That's understandable, I say.(Full-size images on Flickr. Vernissage TV continues its coverage of Manifesta 7 here.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 07:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 07:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 09:15 am (UTC)I often hear about one or another getting pulled after driving for like 48 hours.
At night they sometimes tear through my street at high speeds too ...
At least you got to see my city, although I could think of a better reason for doing that!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 09:58 am (UTC)The hospital looked so arty we thought it was the art school!
love those black balloons
Date: 2008-08-22 08:59 am (UTC)Re: love those black balloons
Date: 2008-08-22 09:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 09:06 am (UTC)Gary Glitter:
A young person:
Actually, Joe's looks more like a checkshirt, but you know what I mean.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 09:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 08:57 pm (UTC)Does art improve you?
Date: 2008-08-22 10:20 am (UTC)Re: Does art improve you?
Date: 2008-08-22 11:03 am (UTC)"The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling. And then to close the gap between everything that is you and not you, and in this way to pass from feeling to meaning."
Re: Does art improve you?
Date: 2008-08-22 04:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 12:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 01:24 pm (UTC)you know, you look kinda like a paedophile in your new picture.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 01:47 pm (UTC)Does art improve you?
Date: 2008-08-22 01:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 02:56 pm (UTC)I ask them if any of their friends hate art. No, they answer, but some fail to pay much attention to it at openings, preferring to give their attention to friends. That's understandable, I say.
Sane, too.
In recent years I've grown indifferent to big "A" art. I'm much more apt to appreciate decorative arts, design, crafts, and the cultivation (curation?) of living things--mainly because they tend to be more integrated into everyday life, and can perform their role without demanding your undivided attention; they can thrive under your mute, idle appreciation while you're chatting with friends.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 03:20 pm (UTC)By the way, should I leave the wax sealant tips in the top of the bamboo canes, your Lordship? I assume they're there to inhibit cane growth and encourage leafy shoots, but I quite want mine to grow tall.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 04:28 am (UTC)Have you given any thought to a terrarium?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 04:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 04:06 pm (UTC)Four in a Clio? I love nothing better than getting out of the car except on Sundays. The stress does carry over into the Parking though. Was all of the pod experience stressful?
The "road" isn't what it used to be.
I misread storied centre as steroid centre but what a marvellous phrase storied centre is to play with! Just watched a TV short on vertical gardening and another on people living in their storage sheds.
Given attention to friends and family is part of a supportive responsibility or commitment which sometimes eats into time for Art. This is why community arts at their best are an extension of these social commitments.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 04:15 pm (UTC)When you pack four people into a small car it becomes almost as environmentally-friendly as a train, per person per mile.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-22 08:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-24 11:32 pm (UTC)The death and life of industrial spaces
Date: 2008-08-26 01:11 am (UTC)Newham - the weird, arriveste mush of eastern, industrial London - once held a large presence of the Dane Group, which specialised latterly in pigments and resins, having previously also worked in metals, and heavy engineering. After vacating their premises in Stratford, squatters moved in, while people continued to argue over what should happen to the building. Despite the eventual decision, the most recent group of squatters (so far as a friend and I could tell) had demonstrated a very pragmatic attitude to their newly claimed space: they had installed bedrooms in the office space, and were letting rooms out via Gumtree!
We were unable to tell exactly what plans people had for it, in terms of design - but the building permission was obtained for was significantly larger than the area Dane had occupied, and even though it's still standing I'm not sure how long it will do so. There's housing to build, as part of the scheme, but you never know. They might convert things cheaply, keeping the existing three storey structure intact, given the financial vultures circling housebuilders at the moment. There's always hope.