The art of language in Paris

I recently returned from an exploration of Paris. The heavily textual/literary character of the French nation is obvious for all to see. The French are proud of their language heritage and manifestly take pleasure in the French language in all its manifestations - the theatre posters in the metro, people reading, the obsession with Littérature moderne du monde francophone, the immense quantity of independent booksellers. Walking into one to browse one I couldn't help hearing the bookseller talking to a young lady whom I guess had asked him advice on reading matter.

Throughout the exchange, he walked calmly around the shop, woman in tow. A strong bright voice, pausing and pointing at the wares as if they were pictures of old friends. The monologue lasted for my entire stay in the shop - I was in there for about 25 minutes.

It went something like this:

...somebody you might like if you read Pennac, a beautifully written Native American narrative like the big epics of past times this is another French classic, and of course Michel Houellebecq if you like the radical. Let me see... Atiq Rahimi won the Goncourt last year we wait to see what he next produces - that was his first novel in French, the great story of an Afghani woman caring for her wounded husband in a repressive society,and another writer who explores the French language exceptionally well - of course, Yasmina Khadra you may know him - What the Day Owes the Night this powerful love story set in Algeria. Do you know Veronique Ovalde (mumble mumble in response) hers are stories to link things together and inseperable - and what about the bestseller Vincent Delecroix - one of my favourites La Chaussure each chapter focusing on a shoe - set in Gare du Nord...do you know the area? It's about loneliness poignant stories. Eric Reinhardt - great writing his is great writing the Cendrillon (Cinderella) novel a sweeping autobiography of four men - I know, I know. But it is autobiographical, and there are four characters...

No surprises, there, then. If all Parisian bookshops are like this one in Pernety, no wonder Parisians are all littéraire.

Museums Association 2009 conference - What I want you do to first is drink a glass of water

I caught up with a couple of interventions at this year's conference - both chosen because of relevance to the practice of using art interventions in museums - manifestly to "open up" collections, "encourage" visitor participation/exploration and/or radically change curatorial practice.

Two things of note.

Edinburgh's The Collective Gallery in 2007-2008 hosted an evaluative exercise on audience participation in interpretation, using works by Jason Nelson, Artur Zmijewski, and Freee (Dave Beech-Andy Hewitt-Mel Jordan) - picture above (http://freee.org.uk/works/how-to-be-hospitable). The gallery's attempt at harnessing multiple perspectives in the development of meaningful interpretations, while a laudable one, left me wondering whether most models of visitor/user generated meaning making are actually a self reflexive exercise that benefits gallery and museum practitioners in the sense that it involves a vocal, interested audience/curatorial panel, while leaving most visitors indifferent. In a postmodern sense, most of these panel based self-reflexive exercises seem to benefit those who take part in them, rather than the end user.

Does reflecting on the mechanics of meaning-making affect end users? Less than it could.

Is this practice legitimate? Even if you are not an artist?

The other excellent case study came from the session entitled "Artists and Museums: what's the limit?" during which Maria Bradshaw, Director of the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, explored what happens when galleries embrace new steps in interpretative practice by involving artists as curators - in this case, the "grande dame of performance art", Marina Abramovic, during this year's Manchester International Festival. In this clip, Marina Abramovic presents the unnerving and unforgettable (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/video/2009/jul/06/marina-abramovic-manchester-festival-adrian-searle).

The Whitworth was cleared of all its collections; artists took part in intimate audience encounters for the duration of the international festival, each performing for an exhausting 4 hours each day; the public were taken through a drill - a sort of initiation ceremony - and finally explored the building freely, observing artists exploring their responses to the space, the (secreted) collections etc.

The lesson learnt was potentially a very strong one: live hauntings, the "renegade energy" of live art injects (can inject) traditional museum/gallery practice with new life, the collections seeming "new" even to their curators.

So why am I cynical?

There is a sense that this style of interpretative intervention - which takes inspiration from promenade theatre and site specific installation work, which turns visitors into private viewers who partake of a bespoke ritual rather than visit... are not our day to day audiences.

When Ms Bradshaw stated "we took this experience as a statement of what we intend to do all the time" - I sighed. It is precisely the "event" nature of the experience, the out-of-the-ordinary exclusiveness, the tailor-made character of becoming one with the gallery spaces and the artworks... that makes this type of experience intensely attractive and socially successful.

The issue is to find ways of maintaining the secretive nature of interesting interpretation - to encourage meaning making in visitors even when there is no special event. Is the solution actually to "open up" collections and "make them more accessible" - or is it, rather, to keep them secret and explorable? Should we encourage visitors to see more - or should we offer them the opportunity of discovering for themselves?

Is access a free exercise, or an initiation ritual of which we partake not as consumers but as co-celebrants? Has access rendered void an encounter with the unknown?

Richard Long’s Heaven and Earth

I celebrated a special day on Monday in the company of Richard Long and Coco Chanel – definitely two people I would invite to my dream “who would you have to a soiree” quiz. (Audrey Tautou as Coco in the recently released film Coco avant Chanel directed by Anne Fontaine, is extraordinary.)

Richard Long’s retrospective – of the last 18 years – is on at Tate Britain until September 6. I wondered whether having just come back from my long mountain trek I was especially well placed to appreciate the works on show. I was more than usually aware of the act of walking – and hence more responsive to his art. In his words:

 

To make art only by walking or leaving ephemeral traces here and there, is my freedom.

 

I was wearing heels, and the clacking on the Tate’s wooden floors was a rhythmic reminder of the exhausting and sometimes mind numbing but spiritually liberating step by step of mountain trekking. The galleries are quiet and clean and... meteorologically stable.

One of the galleries contains sculptural installations, including Alpine Circle from 1990. (see the Richard Long newsletter at http://www.therichardlongnewsletter.org/item.asp?no=62&m=current&i=1080) I knelt in between the textured surfaces – physical recreations of outdoor surfaces walked on, and I was reminded – coolly – of the harsh steep large grey eroding Dolomites, the cragginess of red lava the splintering of the rocks in Lagazuoi the dust of the underground mines.

The flatness of charcoalled wood like a lattice, the skulls of white rock, the pink of dolomia. These I recognise as Alpine stones.

It was slightly bizarre that in the Tate, of course, you cannot actually walk on the art. And indeed, recreating that outdoor landscape and detaching it from the act of walking strikes me as an interesting evolution of Long’s art.

 

My work is completely physical and personal. I’ve walked or climbed to the place of each sculpture. I’ve made it with my hands (or feet) and energy at that time. To walk across a country from coast to coast, for example, is both a measure of the land itself – its size and shape and terrain – and also of myself, how long it takes me and not somebody else.

 

An extraordinary way of turning an outer geography into an inner one.

 

 

Flattening time in the Dolomites

I have just come back from high mountain trekking in the Dolomites – the northeastern part of the Italian Alps which are half Alto Adige (South Tyrol and German speaking) and half Veneto (Italian speaking). Eight days of walking with no other pleasures but hot tea once the rifugio was reached and a hot shower – when lucky. Extenuating, exhausting, exhilarating – I highly recommend it.

One of the great surprises along our way – we were following our own version of the historical Alta Via numero 1, comprising about 80kms of rough terrain over stone gorges, mule tracks, military roads and high peaks, in amongst the cows and the marmots – was the Rifugio Lagazuoi, standing at 2752m.

The Lagazuoi peak was a highly contested area of one of the most surprising and least well known mine wars of the First World War. When I say mine wars, I mean that each side – Austrian and Italian, opposing each other – excavated miles and miles of tunnels in the rock in order to blow up the enemy’s defensive posts – from underneath! An absolutely incredible story.

The opening to this tunnel – which frankly re-awakened my tired senses and my tired legs and spurred me on to keep climbing – gives onto a dark cramped slippery corridor climbing 230m up and burrowing through the mountain for 1100m. Walking in these mountains is hard enough – with all the technical gear of today’s mountaineers… but mining in them? While being fired upon? Through the damp weather of autumn, the freezing fogs and snowstorms of winter – wearing only leather boots and furs? The mining operations resembled in my mind those of 19^th century Wales mining districts – all on top of mountains.

Shelters, mountain tracks, tunnels were constructed predominantly at night or on foggy days. Rusty barbed wire, the signs of craters in the mountainside, old boot soles, trap doors like balconies overlooking valleys, signalling and firing posts, hollows hewn into the rock face to hold ammunitions, gun chambers, sleeping quarters…

The frustration of this kind of warfare is evident in the archival sources – which I browsed through that evening, in the warmth of the bar at the Rifugio Lagazuoi, while sipping an amaretto. Records of the Austrian 96^th Infantry Brigade in October 1915 state:

On the ledge of Lagazuoi is a machine gun nest. A real torment… To oppose the machine gun, a patrol of grenade launchers must be detached from the Lagazuoi emplacements to strike the enemy from above with hand grenades.

A war fought from vantage points above and secret tunnels underneath – an all immersive war, which changed the landscape using 30,000kg of explosives at a time, dislodging hundreds of thousands of cubic rock at a time.

One of the Italian heroes – by the name of Maggiore Martini wrote in May 1917:

At 22.10 on the 21^st, a tremendous rumbling shook the whole mountain, completely sinking the trincea avanzata (the front trench) and splintering the Guglia (spire) while the Dente Filiponi, prodigiously intact in its immense size slipped onto the Trincerone (large trench) turning into a providential bulwark for our further defence.

Imagine – the Austrians have hauled up between 24,000 and 30,480 kgs of explosives into the far end of the tunnel they have excavated, then lit it, then escaped, hoping this would be the master stroke to expose the enemy. The mountain rumbles like a frighteningly huge earthquake, and the entire rock slides as one piece – providing extra shelter for the Italians.

Sheesh – time for a martini.

This must be the highest open air museum in Europe. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the audioguide sign on the impressive graphic panels… who on earth would climb a whole day and then take out an audioguide as if they were walking down the Brompton Road in London’s museum district?

The faces of the soldiers staring out at you while you are struggling up the same mountains where they fought for months on end are a stark reminder that this is a place where history still breathes. The fact it is still a hard climb today achieves what I think is a great interpretative aim, applicable to many museums: it brings visitors up close and personal to the history. It flattens time, by making you share some of the physical struggle that was a day to day condition of these soldiers.

 

On the meaning of archaeology

As a museum professional, I have never had any doubt that museums are collective memories - that they have a public role, a responsibility to their community, and a duty to exist and communicate for future generations. As well as that, they represent some of our most precious treasures. They collect and present objects and stories that provide fuel for our wildest imagination and our most vivid scientific analysis. 

Nor have I ever had second thoughts about the public domain of archaeology - and the fact that finders are not keepers.

Last week I was chatting - as one does - with a bagnino (lifeguard) on the beach in Campania, southern Italy. And in speaking about ways of life we came onto the subject of underwater finds - archaeological remains that he has dug up over the last few years while fishing. He has held onto these, which are displayed in his home, and he told me of others who sell them on to interested foreigners for a small profit. 

I was shocked and appalled. Trafficking is of course illegal! Immoral, even! By holding on to something like a Roman amphora you are depriving somebody else from enjoying it, you are keeping part of our joint heritage to yourself! Surely surely he could see that! And selling it on... well, Italy along with Greece and Bulgaria are at the head of the illegal trafficking trade of archaeological heritage. 

But he spoke to me of his wonder in holding a terracotta fragment, in tracing the writing on it, in handling the jug as his ancestor would have done - and something was niggling at me.

Paolo - we shall call him Paolo - has probably never set foot inside his local museum. Nor has his local museum ever made any attempt to lure him in. Ne'er the twain shall meet - unfortunate, but true. And if he had never gone fishing, he wouldn't really care about his past, the archaeological heritage of Campania. He wouldn't - in the sense that he would probably be ignoring museums entirely. 

Even in a region so rich in heritage that it includes the stunningly well preserved remains of Poseidonia - today called Paestum - a city founded in the 7th century BC by colonists from Sybaris in mainland Greece. 

He would never know the touchingly beautiful tomb paintings found here - one of a diver in the act of flying through the air from a man made scaffold structure, into the deep blue sea of a summer's day in Campania. A sea that our bagnino knows so well. These most lovely pieces are presented in the most uninspiring way imaginable, behind a rope. It's as if the heritage that Italian museums protect for all to enjoy is all too much for those noble institutions to actually care for - care for in the way that Paolo cares for his amphora fragment. 

Ecosustainable tourism

This is where I have been spending the last week - not specifically on this tarmac road - in the deep south of Italy, in the region of the National Park of Cilento in Campania, on the Tyrrhenian Sea. A place of blue seas, dry heat, lizards and cicadas, olive groves, rosemary thickets,  fresh figs and the world's primary producer of mozzarella di bufala. 

The resort is very pleasant but it borders onto another, and this is the road that divides the two. 

On the one side, the macchia meditarranea - a natural vegetation of centennial olive trees, fichi d'India (in the name a clue - these are prickly pears), cacti, carob bean trees, pitosphorus, rosemary - sturdy thickets and bushes and plants that require next to little water. 

On the other, the following. 

Freshly mowed lawn - LAWN??? With a swimming pool. A swimming pool?? With the warm sea just a stone's throw away? 

Fresh water fountains spilling onto the grass. Irrigation systems providing tourists with the feeling they are in luscious vegetation... as green as a Wimbledon court. And...

...brick and glass structures - in this climate, the only way to keep your brain from frying in one of these is to have enough aircon to cool the entire regione of Campania. The traditional way, the sustainable way, the environmentally friendly way, of keeping cool in these climates is to slow down and ventilate using the land's own thermal currents. That, and sleeping in the heat of the afternoon - it will be 39 degrees Celsius tomorrow. The resort I am staying in ventilates its communal areas such as restaurants etc with the use of ancient things (called open windows) that create a breeze within the spaces. 

Olive trees all around provide a speckled but dense shade and the most wonderful smell. 

Happy holidays everyone. 

BP Summer Big Screens

Picnics in this country are an art form, no less. The Brits will contentedly bring along their picnics - sometimes improvised at the supermarket - and sit on (gradually dampening) grass, each on a tiny spot of about 50cm2 for the duration of an opera that lasts about 3 and a half hours.

 

Tuesday evening The Royal Opera’s live performance of Verdi’s La Traviata was played on big screens across the UK - I was watching, equipped with food, wine and friends from the park in Canary Wharf. The temptation to raise glasses at the chorus Libiamo libiamo ne’ lieti calici, which reminded me of my dad’s singing, was too much to resist. Let us drink, let us toast with these happy flutes.

 

The story of La Traviata (the fallen woman) is one of partying, decadence, love and prostitution, jealousy, parental control, money, sickness and death. A 19th century bestseller, page turner and musical triumph (although at its first performance in Venice in 1853 the public hated it). Thank you to one of my friends who actually shed some tears at the finale - opera still tugs at our heartstrings in the 21st century.

The Jeff Koons Craze

Yesterday evening I was invited to attend the opening of the Jeff Koons: 
Popeye Series exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. The queues stretched around the block – which happens to be the entirety of one side of Kensington Gardens. And this was for the pulsed entry VIP visit, which I was luckily on time for. Inside the white gallery spaces, I could not believe the number of people – and these were not ordinary people! High flying artiste types, great American collectors (or so I was told) the fashionistas of the art world, lots of them young and beautiful. It struck me that for a world that presumes to commentate on the state of society, in some ways it is truly conventional.

Truth be told, I enjoyed myself - watching people people watch, drinking champagne, being obnoxious and over the top. It is a truism that you have to be part of that world to be part of it.

The art itself is quite surprising. Once you get over the thrill of the vibrant colours of the swimming pool inflatables and the Grosfillex chairs, the provocation of the vivid plastics (which are actually made of polychromed aluminium), the sexuality of the pin up airbrushed porn models, the superficial sense of banal fun – I found it deeply disturbing. In truly postmodern sense, the more garish it is, the more unsettling.

Take the 2D work Elvis - an oil on canvas depicting the same blonde female nude in two provocative poses. It resembles a diptych, with the famous lobster in the foreground between the two bodies. It is an attractive image, uneasily turning you into a voyeur, making you respond to the sexual come on (picture on http://www.jeffkoons.com search under Popeye and Elvis). And the more you look, the more you see. Very few words in the illustration-style grey and yellow background appear as you stare: Dance of Death.

I think this was the highlight of the evening – and the single thing that told me I needed to leave. 

Concept Milano

Milan strikes me as the Italian capital of all that is fashionable, sophisticated and decadent, abstract, conceptual - and where image is all important. 

The ECSITE farewell party last night, held in the chic and newly opened spaces of the Fondazione Pomodoro, is a case in point. We were welcomed by music and conceptual performance art, woven amidst the sculptures of Magdalena Abakanowicz. (The works shown below are Abakan Red and Bambini.) There was nothing to aid understanding - sculpture and performance staged in a goldfish bowl of perfection, remote from the outside world, devoid of other substance that was not simply projection of image, an aesthetic category of perfection.

The spaces are extremely powerful, and the performance was staged to invite voyeurism. The building itself, on 3 levels punctuated with mezzanine suspended platforms, invites you to view things from above, below, through steps and cast beams - to invent and appropriate your own vista, to surprise yourself watching others watch. 

This young performer sat in the corner of the Embryology installation for the duration of the evening. 

Female. Male. Black. White. Semi nudity. Slow, controlled movement against the sculptural stillness of the works on show. The monumentalism of the works contrasting with the fragility of the human body - the perfect human body. The dancers could have been fashion models, and indeed their movement resembled at times a catwalk. I was reminded, in this bizarre and incredibly powerful space, that Milan is full of models - it breathes fashion design style flair - it is the citta' della moda, even when presuming to "do" art.

ECSITE one month on

ECSITE this year - the annual conference of the European Network of Science Centres and Museums - was held in the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnica in Milano, the most important national science museum in Italy, located a few steps away from the beautiful Romanesque church of Sant'Ambrogio. The amazing thing was that the Museum remained closed to the general public because of the conference - what a weird strategy, to isolate museum professionals from museum audiences! 

Having grown up in Milan, I remember the Museum from my childhood. It hasn't changed much, still priding itself on an amazing 1950s collection of wooden models of Leonardo machines - but I have. And returning to see it as an adult, and a museum professional, I couldn't but compare how these detailed - and aesthetically beautiful - models stand very little chance of making impact with any modern audience - even visitors to the extraordinary 2006 exhibition at the V&A entitled Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment and Design. 

There - a celebration of genius, a translation of a technical mind well ahead of his time into contemporary sophisticated computer animations centred on the Codex Forster, the manuscripts revealing the workings of his mind - truly his ideas and the contamination of languages. Here - a slightly dusty, self indulgent corridor of silent wooden models, accompanied by graphic panels. Little sense of the eye of the mind, of the man's curiosity, of his imaginative capacity. 

* * * * * * * *

While the Museo della Scienza's marketing campaign is highly visible, this image made me think about how the museum actually thinks of its visiting public on site - don't come through! no access! far from a welcome, the spaces seem shut, inaccessible, closed off. Mixed messages if ever I saw them. The banner, in Italian, says: How on earth can we claim to be open? Indeed - and I don't mean that just for the redevelopment phase.

Consider the following two images: both positioned on two station concourses, both illustrative - not truly interpretative, but giving the space a mood, communicating with visitors/travellers, enhancing the journey for passersby.

The question, obviously, is - which one do you prefer? The first one, glossy, quite fun - or the second one, placed behind a protective banner?

The first one makes me smile every morning during my commute through London Bridge railway station - especially the guy who has just been lobotomised, and the crying screaming kids.

This second one graces the solemn corridor concourse of the Padiglione Ferroviario (the Railway Pavilion) in the Museo della Scienza.  

Kind of desperate - impersonal, and once again - ALL VISITORS TO STAY BEHIND THE BARRIER!!! Do not approach the... graphic panels? Also - beware the risk of electrocution!

Oh dear. If museums are about communication, which I truly believe, the Museo della Scienza has still a long way to go. Even train companies are better. 

Milano text

I am spending the weekend in my home town of Milan. The city hosted this year's ECSITE conference - the European Network of Science Centres and Museums. 

Coffee this morning with a friend in a trendy bar in town - this quote is Oscar Wilde's "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it". It's different, drinking espresso and spremuta (freshly squeezed orange juice) and eating a brioche (light croissant) while staring up at this quote! It's not so much the quality of the espresso or the croissant... so much as the fact that it is a temptation - and one must yield! 

Goethe in Frankfurt

A couple of weeks ago I visited Frankfurt - my first time. I decided that I would take an experimental walk through the city, on the traces of the famous Book Fair. That idea didn't quite take shape as I wanted it to! The fair seems pretty invisible when it's not on, apart from one installation I came across - by artist Franz Mon, 2008 - carrying the text "The Frankfurt Book Fair originated in the Buchgasse".

However, I stepped inside Goethe's Haus in search of one of Germany's most important writers, on the 260th anniversary of his birth.

This was an interesting experience, in a disappointing sense. I walked in, a la recherche du Goethe, and I found his home, his mother's linen cupboards, his sister's bedroom, his writing desk, a vertical piano, his father's Library, the family painting collections, the kitchen pantry, traditional heating stoves, a grand central staircase, the secret window from which his father watched warily over his children...the 19th century home of a successful pro-Prussian Councillor. There is a contemporary annex too, which houses an art gallery - the making of the myth of Goethe, the origins of Sturm und Drang, the fascination of German Romanticism.

But...where was Goethe, the writer? Where his words? Where his poetry? 

It felt like the sociological side of the now trendy "behind the scenes" approach to interpretation has overridden and taken over the primary purpose of having a Goethe Haus Museum in the first place: meeting Goethe! 

What a shame! What a shame that nowhere does the power, resonance, verbal strength, romantic sensibility of his great works seep through! What a shame that such an amazing opportunity has been passed by! 

In talking with the very kind gentleman on reception, I asked him about access to the Library - and of course, where opening times allow, it is publicly accessible. But the problem with that is that it is a study centre for German speaking academics. Who surely know lots about Goethe anyway!

The curious traveller, the language lover, the teenager empathising with Werther's troubles, the international visitor who may not know enough German to read Goethe in the original - well, obviously these people are not the primary audiences. 

Goethe lost.

Cycling and strange sights in London

Jenny, Alex and Lucy - my some time cycling companions. Needless to say, in the 24.5 seconds we stopped to take this photo on Friday, it chucked down! 

A few months ago on my regular cycle into town, I was overwhelmed by the smell of manure in close proximity to an industrial warehouse...and on an uphill stretch, which meant I was inhaling deeply. Fellow cyclists and I eventually made this extraordinary discovery: a real horse, in a field, in a (urban) park just off the Old Kent Road. It's a remarkable sight. And makes me think of the working horses that worked this canal since the early 18th century. The Grand Surrey Canal - of which the Peckham branch was opened in 1826 - was used to transport coal and timber using tugs and barges, and horses of course!

I don't know why - it could have been the rain - but the sight of this flag hanging forlorn from the arches of the Old Canal bridge was quite touching. I wonder who put it there, and - why?

Peckham Library is a Will Alsop design - Will being the weird and always surprising architectural genius of a few of my favourite buildings in London and elsewhere, including the Palestra building in Southwark, the flexural covers of the airconditioning system at Guy's Hospital in London Bridge and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Finally, spaces that we can play with - the Library is a friendly orange and multicoloured beacon on those cold dark nights in winter. 

This is another extraordinary sight - a book installation cut through the glass front of this house. I discovered it a few years ago when first moving into the area, when it was inhabited as a 'normal' house. It has intrigued me ever since. I have never seen anything like it anywhere else. I discovered on Friday that this is the home of the John Letham Foundation (of which more at http://www.flattimeho.org.uk/project/16/) I had a chat with the Foundation's friendly archivist on Friday, admiring his hard work - I was cycling home after a long week, he was about to go into the office! I look forward to attending some of their events and reporting on them.

I caught this gentleman cleaning the wall of this bunker art space in close proximity to the Library - of what appeared a Banksy-like poster of a tank with the name of a major supermarket on it. The guy seemed to be wearing full soldier's outfit, complete with hood, and brandishing a semiautomatic gun - which was only to blast the fresco off the wall. The paper and glue dissolved under my eyes. 

A final note on this garden fence, made in what looks like grey steel...reeds. It's quite beautiful. I hope to be eating my own tomatoes soon - thanks to Alex, who gave me my very first tomato plant... which I carried home marsupial like, on my bike.