You might think it’s a first world problem or a high class issue, but just how does a human being get through a seven hour traffic jam?
Such was the predicament of Micheál O’Connell, aka Mocksim, snarled up on the M25 in what it soon emerged would be a history-making tailback.
But while his phone ran out of battery, his digital SLR had enough charge for him to shoot apocalyptic scenes of stranded traffic through his windshield.
On his car stereo was a sound piece by Stace Constantinou, with which he was planning to work. So Mocksim timed shutter clicks to coincide with moments in the composition.
Constantinou’s piece was already a response to a nightmare journey: a once daily and claustrophobia-inducing commute from North Lambeth to Morden.
But this had been displaced in his imagination by what sounds like a raid on the BBC radiophonic workshop. Field recordings from the tube mix with scripted actors.
His protagonist does eventually reach the far side of a river thanks to a ferryperson and we learn that this place is called, with grim inevitability, Mord.
Mocksim meanwhile cut holes in each of his shots, animated and stacked them to make a virtual tunnel which the viewer can finally fly through to freedom.
The two works combine in a dryly amusing way at the Horse Hospital, itself once a pit stop for London cabbies. A place for breakdowns and delays.
So the travel issues just pile up. The UK road and rail infrastructure is not one of the great themes of western culture, but it’s still a pain in the ass. Why not make art about it?
(c) Kaffe Matthews. Courtesy the Bluecoat, Liverpool
“Okay, we’re 30m underwater on a ley line and we’re heading for some squid,” or words to that effect. Such is my greeting from artist Kaffe Matthews.
My response is helpless excitement. I lie on my back on the shark platform and look up at the murky green light. You can well imagine the hammerheads are up there.
Oscillators pump out a generative soundscape. Tremors pass through me from the matted platform. And it feels as if we are really travelling at speed.
Matthews is a diver as well as a composer. And she has really swum with hammerheads so has really earned a right to the data which drives this piece.
The raw materials for this music are the topographies of the ocean floor and the depths, speeds, and directions of six tagged shark specimens.
And here is where it gets cosmic: hammerheads navigate using electromagnetic fields. So as this piece follows them, it recreates on dry land the invisible forces which bind oceans in place.
As a result it is hard to get off the mat again, hard to break free from its magnetic pull. It is thrilling, yet as free from danger as Matthews’ dives must have been fraught. whatever she says.
Up until now, one might have figured that Damien Hirst was responsible for the world’s most badass shark art. But his pickled tiger now has a serious contender.
And surely everyone will come out of the water here singing the praises of this art, not to mention the joy of sharing minutes of your life with some prehistoric fish.
This piece can be seen in the exhibition Galápagos at the Bluecoat, Liverpool, until July 1. See gallery website for more details and read my interview with Matthews on Culture24.
Here’s the first of a series of new features in which artists talk about their own work. This is what Oliver Beer had to say about his film Deep and Meaningful:
“For some time I had been quite fascinated by the structure of hidden architectural spaces, but also I read about these urban explorers. They break into sewers in London or all over the world and explore underground. I think considering all the ends of the earth have been explored, there’s actually quite a lot to explore under your feet. Then I found out that on occasions Southern Water let people into Brighton sewers and it’s an incredible space…”
Three locations are evoked by the film Deep and Meaningful by Oliver Beer: the sewer in which the original choral performance was filmed; the type of church where you might expect to hear such a thing; and the gallery environment in which it might end up.
The correspondence between church and art gallery is self-evident. To many both are sacred spaces. Both offer a place to reflect. Visitors to either may hope for revelations or the appearance of truths.
But the links between church and sewer are less clear. There could be straightforward blasphemy in the work. Or perhaps it is that both perform perform civilising roles and both absolve the user.
Finally this piece brings the sewer into the gallery. In a more polite way, it is a similar gesture to that of Duchamp and his urinal. It could suggest art is a functional and dirty business.
Seven well-trained voices join in harmony for the performance. Their song is pitched to vibrate with the sewer and echo around the gallery. It elevates the former, and raises questions in the latter.
The church is conspicuous by its absence. ‘Amen’ is sung without an obvious referent. It could be affirming Victorian architecture or possibly contemporary art. But you can find religion in both.
Oliver Beer, Deep and Meaningful, is currently on show upstairs at 20 Hoxton Square Projects until 24 July 2010.
This blog entry is being put together to the sound of The Fall, in an attempt to understand why so many artists claim, or are said, to draw or paint to the sound of Mark E Smith’s timeless band.
Usual conditions for producing these musings are, for the record, a joyless silence. There seems to be a need to isolate thoughts in order to put words down on a page or screen, for me at least.
But apparently, not so for artists, and at least three reasons suggest themselves for choosing The Fall over the many thousands of competing soundtracks: lyrics, rhythm and modus operandi.
Smith says in the Tate film (above) that his lyrics are open ended, but the reverse should be argued. Fall songs are packed with concrete nouns, names and places. Things get nailed down and perhaps visual artists relate to that.
However, the band’s krautrock(abilly) rhythms can easily be understood to help with long periods in the studio. The Fall lay down some of the busiest grooves in rock. One imagines that disciplined, purposeful lines and brushstrokes are the result.
The other apparent reason to paint to The Fall is their anti-muso stance. As Smith says, he tells musicians what to do and constructs the tracks like an engineer. Who wouldn’t want to work with pictorial elements in the way he works with instruments?
So there you have it, the wide appeal to artists of a unique band, as written while listening to the music itself. I’m sure it could have been finished in half the time without this racket, brilliant though it may be.
Your Future, Our Clutter by The Fall is out now on Domino Records.
Take one iPod and Spotify addict, give him the text of a lecture by John Cage, take away his music for a week, and see what happens. It was a recent, quite unscientific experiment and the guinea pig was me.
The first few days were harsh. Putting on the stereo was one of those things that helped get me out of bed in the morning. I resorted to singing in the shower, whistling on the way to the office. Back home at night, the silence stretched out like dead time. Life seemed a blank. TV was no substitute.
By day five I had begun dreaming about music and in my dream I was making preparations to listen to Wouldn’t It Be Nice by The Beach Boys. ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘it will be very nice,’ but my fix of melody never came to pass. I woke up, to more, depressing silence.
That weekend there was a party and I was expecting wine, women and song: in reverse order. But the longed for music was a disappointment. Watching guests dance, I missed the sound of washing machines, traffic or dogs barking. Okay, that may have been the drink thinking.
But the next day I got a bus and sat at the back, over the engine, and for the first time really got into some background noise. Each burst of acceleration seemed like a dense, reverb-filled chord. I think it helped that engine noise is loud, more attuned to my rock sensibilties.
The real acid test was switching on the football last night to watch a World Cup game. It was Spain versus Honduras and the two goals were not bad, but you know what? The much maligned drone of the African vuvuzelas does sound, in fact, fantastic. Then again, so do the Beach Boys.
An exhibition of paintings by John Cage, Every Day is a Good Day, is on show at BALTIC, Gateshead until 5 September 2010.
Exhibition: Cage Mix – Sound and Sculpture, BALTIC, Gateshead, until September 19 2010
If ever a course sounded challenging, it was this one: Experimental Composition at the New School for Social Research; tutor: John Cage.
Cage taught the classes towards the end of the 1950s and his students were by and not musicians, but artists. So few memorable tunes resulted.
Nevertheless it was here that the 60s craze for ‘happenings’ was born and also where the Fluxus movement got going. And 60 years on artists are still drawing inspiration from the avant garde composer’s life and work.
Indeed, the current show at BALTIC features a response from eight contemporary artists to a piece of work developed while Cage was at the New School, Fontana Mix.
This piece was scored on transparent sheets which, when overlapped, would result in random compositions and new pieces of work.
These must have inspired the 165 sheets of paper which make up Paper Moon by Paul Ramirez Jonas. Repeating the phrase “I create as I speak” he builds a map of our lunar satellite which viewers are invited to read aloud or to themselves from a loose sheet presented with a microphone.
Fontana Mix also finds an echo in the composition of loose musical instrument parts arranged on the gallery’s slate floor. But Katja Strunz’s astral-type arrangement reflects that ultimate chance event, the big bang.
Meanwhile local artist Richard Rigg suspends a brass bell in a vacuum sealed bell jar which when rung can be seen and not heard. Surely, an echo of Cage’s famous 4’33″ piece.
Clearly, Cage’s impact on art has been massive. Has there ever been an artist who has done as much for music?
No animals. No nudity. No feeding the customers. Apart from that almost anything goes at No Soul For Sale. 50 non-profit art organisations from around the world have been invited to set up a stall in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. By the time dusk falls, the scene is a wonderfully confused mess.
They have come from as far as Vietnam and Columbia and from as near as Liverpool and Leeds. T-shirts and bags are hawked. Bookmarks and stickers are given away. Serious-minded literature is scattered to the four winds. And then there is the art, lots of it.
On the ground floor bridge the lights are night-club low and drinks are being served. Crowds mill around a bouncy castle and a luxury car. The chatter is loud and multilingual. The statement haircuts and fashion choices are coming into their own.
Music booms up from the stage at the foot of the entrance ramp. Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed plays a set of conceptual punk-rock numbers, then anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis steps up to sing five songs about the history of Western Civilisation.
Upstairs you can wander through the other floors and view the permanent collection. But tonight the art is competing with the music, which is competing with the bar, which competes with just taking in the nocturnal views. It all certainly beats a normal Friday night out.
