Radio Arcadia
A ramble. Which is how it all started.
A walk through the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Adam Hoyle coding me a sound engine for a client, having a studio in the garden, these elements all conjoined in my creating Radio Arcadia a couple of years back…
An audio tape of birdsong from the Wiltshire garden of Digital One’s chairman has been used as the test transmission for various digital radio stations since it’s recording in the spring of 1992.
When it was last taken off air three years ago, the broadcaster was surprised to find it had dedicated listeners voicing complaint.
Radio Arcadia is my gift to all office and cubicle workers. Play gently. Escape.
For those of you without speakers it boils down to me tweaking Adam’s audio engine to generate an endless stream of British bird song.
Skip to the summer, news reaches Adam and I that radio birdsong has finally been taken off the air (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8076381.stm), Adam asks if I would mind if he, in return, tweaked the code back, and ported it to the iPhone.
Which he does, asks me for a logo, and sends it into Apple for approval. Apple vet every application for inclusion in the iTunes store. We get a reply.
Subject: BirdSongFM 1.0: Application Submission Feedback
Dear Mr.Hoyle,
We’ve reviewed your application BirdSongFM and we have determined that this application contains minimal user functionality and will not be appropriate for the App Store.
So it appears that if it hasn’t got a slider it’s no good. Dear Mr Mondrian, perhaps if the viewer were given a felt tip…
I particularly like Apple’s next line in the reply, “If you would like to share it with friends and family, we recommend …” Thanks Apple, I’m sure my mother will be very proud of me too.
So it seems that the iPhone is a closed platform. Adam is muttering about adding a tweet intensity control, but I for one think it may have ended for the best since I really hate the icon I drew, and publish it here to chastise myself for so fucking cute. Should have stuck to my guns too and called it Radio Arcadia.
Oh, and I learnt through the power of Google that Iggy sings “radio burning up above” and not radio birdland, although I kind of prefer my misheard version.
Christmasses
London, October 2009
Sometimes you can reel off a load of shots only to find it’s the initial test image that has it all…
Vaudeville Ruin portrait
‘Vaudeville Ruin’
Fire eater. Burlesque performer. Hula Queen.
London, October 2009
3 days of Lomoporno
The internet is both a blessing and a curse. But you knew that. Whilst allowing the easy publication of ideas and work that would never reach us in the mainstream media it offers one major drawback: it’s a little too easy to get lost in it’s flows and eddies when you should be working.
Lomoporno is a new venture from www.flashglamtrash.com, one of the destinations I stop off out to see what’s new in the world. A world where diamonds in the gutter come wrapped in suspiciously stained flyers from Studio 54 perhaps. Not always not safe for work.
Not sure they would want to be called nice people, so I shall just say those people at Lomoporno published a selection of my photographs. And now I discover it’s going off line because The Lomographic Society object to the site’s name. How often do you type ‘porno’ by accident instead of ‘graphy’? I understand protecting a brand but I find it a touch ironic given rule 10 at www.lomography.com/about/the-ten-golden-rules.
No hard feelings, and you might like to know The Photographers Gallery sells Holgas at £25, same price as eBay.
Handbag at BAC
I will not be dancing as part of Geraldine Pilgrim’s “Handbag” this Monday evening at Battersea Arts Centre. Do come along and not shake a leg. It’s rather uplifting and joyous.
In an empty ballroom a caretaker sweeps away the remnants of a previous event. A woman enters the space and puts down her handbag. A beat begins, a mirror ball turns and the sound of a classic dance track fills the air…
A witty and wistful performance that, in a few delirious moments, succinctly makes the point that no woman needs a man when she has got her handbag in tow. Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
Tickets and information at www.artsadmin.co.uk/events/event.php?id=619
Vaudeville Ruin
Today I learnt that like clowns who paint their faces on egg shells to register their unique look, burlesque performers are known and identified by their costumes.
Black Swan Crow
Black Swan Crow, an autumnal infestation of The Jungian Woods, part of an ongoing series
Parry, portrait
Parry. Carpenter. Artisan. Noisenik
London, September 2009
My original portrait failed so I asked for a re-sit. He threw a shape and now I can’t decide which to go with…
Carpaccio Magazine photography feature
Edition 6 of Carpaccio Magazine – “The New Birth” issue is out featuring a spread of photographs from my Jungian Woods series. Thank you Carpaccio Magazine.
Carpaccio Magazine is a monthly online publication and a quarterly print publication created to promote the work of ‘uncooked’ artists: emerging but very tasty artists.
Bum Bum go for 2010
For the last week and a half I have been rehearsing secret acts at a secret location deep in London’s East End. The fantastic You Me Bum Bum Train were awarded a research and development fund from The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust to showcase a new production, with an eye to winning a grant for staging a major show in 2010.
Regardless of winning the new scenes feature some of the best experiences yet, so yesterday evening with trepidation but satisfaction at a job well done the cast retired to a nearby snooker club, awaiting news after the founders had given the judges a post-train presentation.
With news of the winner coming through by text within hours, the atmosphere in snooker hall went what I can only describe as “ape shit”. There were tears and hugging, high fives and air punching, there was roaring and screaming. So much so that I could still hear the cheering from two streets away after I left . No exaggeration. Bum Bum won by the way.
So keep your eyes peeled in 2010 for announcements of the next show. Yes it is that good, is it an oxymoron to say that I wished I had never seen it so that I could again feel the exhilaration of taking that first unknown ride?
Congratulations You Me Bum Bum Train, thank you the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust in your wise judgement, and most of all congratulations lucky you, as the ride is on for next year.
“What has been one of London’s more obtuse treasures looks set to become one of Great Britain’s proudest moments” – Dazed and Confused, June 2007
Vic Godard portrait
Vic Godard. Singer. Songwriter. Punk maverick. London, September 2009
On September 20th 1976 Vic Godard and his band Subway Sect played the 100 Club alongside the debut of Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Clash and Sex Pistols.
While the other groups that night became mainstream Vic Godard has charted a more esoteric career over the last 40 years, including a 40’s crooner inspired album and recording with such mavericks as Dennis Bovell, Weekend, Edwyn Collins and being the catalyst behind JoBoxers.
He also wrote one of my favourite songs.
The Jungian Woods late summer
More archetypes from the The Jungian Woods, part of an ongoing series
Capturing light
I asked him what film he used to get such tones in his photographs. How they looked as if they belonged to another era.
“Well,” he said, “you know about homeopathy? You know, those pills that retain some microscopic measure of the poison, maybe not even that. They say that you can build immunity by swallowing very low doses of a poison and slowly building up the dose. With these pills the toxin is so diluted that it doesn’t really exist. You can’t touch these pills before swallowing them otherwise you’ll taint their power. They call it the memory of water…”
“People scoff, but there’s quite a lot science doesn’t explain yet. Light for instance, they can tell you that it’s both a particle and a wave but they can’t tell why or how. They say light lives forever, traveling from one end of the universe to the other, dead stars still blinking at us in the sky.”
“Light is like those little sugar pills, the memory of light, those particles pick up a little of what’s around as they pass through, and as they travel on, the friction of history brushes it off with fresh stuff getting stuck to them all the while. If you stood on Pluto you could watch television from a week a go, all those programs incessantly chatting away to themselves across the luminiferous aether.”
“Now, what I do, and I shouldn’t be really be telling you this, is rummage through antique and junk shops looking for old cameras. Searching for something in particular mind you, not any old camera, and not some specific make or model. What I need to find is one with a good patina of dirt on it, dust and fluff all jammed in the crevices and dials. Shows me it hasn’t been opened up in along time. I clean them up well, never tempted to open up the back and take a peek inside. Cameras being light tight means all the dirt and grime is on the outside of the lens and they polish up sweet.”
“Until it’s time to load the film that is. I use any photographic stock, doesn’t matter. What is important, what really counts is the loading. I use my own blackout bag, squash all the air I can out of it, just to make sure. Then load the film in quick as I can. You see between the lens and the film is a little pocket of light, trapped there in the darkness of the bag. A little bubble of light from decades a go, sticky with all the moods and fashions and attitudes of way back then, and just enough of that old light gets pushed against the negative when the new rays come rushing through the aperture as I take the picture.”
“That,” he said “is my secret now don’t you go telling everyone…”
Taking versus making
Without a camera I should have been writing, instead I have been thinking about not having a camera, and what having one means in terms of art.
I came across this quote
why do we talk of ‘taking’ a photograph rather than ‘making’ a photograph
in the flickr stream of the-g-uk. In itself a good question, and the best answer I could give myself is a word that keeps appearing in these posts – intention. I had wanted to lead onto another quote I saw regarding the mild controversy and debate surrounding Esquire magazines ‘moto’, but I failed to bookmark the web page containing it and instead merely made a mental note, a much more fallible approach to documentation.
First the quote out-of-context and paraphrased
it depends on wether you think photography is merely the art of pressing the shutter at the right moment, or wether the photographer’s preparation and intent count for anything
That word again, intent, which divides snapshots from photographs: it isn’t the act of clicking at the correct time but in deciding that there should be a button press. In setting out to create the image the shutter release is simply one mechanical part along the path from mental concept, through stages of organisation and decision, leading to the resolution of a final image.
The photo that accompanies this post sits on the borderline for me, in that there was no intent to take it, but there was a deliberate act in taking the camera with me that day, in seeing the potential of the cropped or framed image. Abstract painters don’t have this issue, pigment can lead to more pigment that completes a painting, whereas authors can not apply words they like the sound of to create a narrative; photography sits betwixt the two. Charles Harbutt in his essay ‘I don’t take pictures; pictures take me’ says this
Photography is not art; it is something totally new in human experience, something people have not been able to do before the last century or so. Photography is not art because the basic impulse of the photographer is diametrically opposed to the basic impulse of the artist at least in one large respect. The artist tries to bring into existence something new that never had concrete existence before. The photographer tries to bring into existence something new that preserves something that already has concrete existence but will cease to exist in just that way in the next moment or day or year…
Before returning to motos, a more personal aside. In the last couple of years I have radically reworked my view on photography and instead of mocking what is seen as an oriental approach is taking snapshots, namely always having people in front of landmarks, I now mainly eschew the landscape photo and instead focus upon the person.
Harbutt’s quote works particularly well for landscape but could be recontextualised for portraiture, in that the photographer is not trying to capture how the sitter appeared at that moment but how it felt to be in their presence.
The portrait photographer’s skill lies not in capturing the magic moment, but in making the subject feel relaxed, comfortable enough that they act without preconception and in doing so reveal a part their un-staged self.
Which would be a good way of looking at motos, a horrible compoundment of motion and photo. Debate arose surrounding the use of a RedOne video camera by Chase Davis when he shot a cover for Esquire magazine. In essence he filmed Megan Fox and then ran the footage through video editing software and chose a frame as the final ‘photograph’, thus by-passing the ‘decisive moment’ that marks a great photographer. Up till now at least.
The camera is just a tool, a stage, that sits between the interaction of the photographer and photographee. (And the possibility of motos in a world of plasma screens opens up new aesthetics, moving us one step closer to Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age).
But tools are decisions and therefore integral to the creative process, here’s two quotes from the sidebar of tokyocamerastyle.com, a blog documenting urbanites and their vintage cameras
I don’t think about what camera I should use that much. I just pick up the one that looks nicest on the day
William Eggleston
If you want to change your photographs, you need to change cameras. Changing cameras means that your photographs will change. A really good camera has something I suppose you might describe as its own distinctive aura.
Nobuyoshi Araki
Ostara
I had a small window to shoot in a deconsecrated church… no more omelette for me for a while…
I can’t decide which of these two shots I prefer, one of the advantages of digital portfolios perhaps, is being able to gauge feedback. Once popular opinion has weighted the decision I shall most likely remove the lesser of the two and officially publish the remaining as the definitive image. (Is it bad to be swayed by popularity? Is my artistic choice somehow better?, given that I can’t decide, that each photograph conveys something of the essence I was trying to capture.)
Black Holes album artwork
The Black Holes are one of my favourite folktronica outfits, although they have taken to labeling themselves ‘darkcore’. It’s over a year since I posted a link to their myspace as an unsigned band, now I’m delighted to repost the link with the news that their debut album is forthcoming, distributed via the Electric Label.
But my delight doesn’t end here, the duo are using my photography to adorn the sleeve. I would celebrate if everything were not so darkcore.
Imaginary video art
There exists on the internet sites that document work that will never be made, but not because of financial hurdles or practical difficulties: the intention is to never make it.
Intention is often quoted as the rationale behind modern art, an approach stretched to the limit in conceptual art; wherein the art lies in it’s own mobius like documentation of the concept itself without recourse to production. The movement born as a reaction against the commodification of high priced art works. Not all web sites reach for these lofty ideals, www.unphotographable.com avoids having to mourn missed opportunities by describing in words what the camera has missed.
It could be that some imagery remains sharper when played out only in the mind. That in the act of envisioning it, it is created, bringing it to life in some incantation of a magic realism ritual. A criticism leveled at the film or television adaptations of novels is that the directors imagine certain aspects inaccurately, breaking our personal cinema.
Consider these a script or instructions for watching/producing an art video. It is a collaboration between us.
#1 Desire path
An ariel camera points straight down on a patch of grass, roughly the area you and a lover would utilise in having a picnic. The grass is a deep verdant green with wide blades, it’s grown to a length where light footfall will cause some strands to topple, the thickness of the leaf causing it to bruise and bend instead of snap, unable to sustain it’s own height. Definition and contrast is good, showing clearly the swirled patina caused by unchecked growth, you know that the blades will be slightly sticky should you puck one to make a whistle between your thumbs, and a faint moistness will linger near the soil from the dew, it’s lushness never fully allowing the sun to penetrate and dry out the ground.
A man steps into view bottom of screen and moves in a slight concave path towards the top. Perhaps he is wearing some form of canvas hat so that no personal features can be discerned. He is, as seen from above, essentially a head and shoulders with brown lace-up boots jutting back and forth as he walks. Behind him he leaves a slight trail causes by the disturbance in the weave of the damp grass.
A short period of time passes. He re-emerges at the same point and begins an arc upwards again, traveling at his chosen pace. The same interludes lasts until he appears again. You begin to anticipate his arrival and your eyes wait at the beginning of his previous paths. You notice what seems to be a thin cord tied to perhaps his belt loop. A modern nylon cord, thin and strong, it’s pulled quite taut, the far end vertically midpoint off screen.
Realisation dawns that it has been anchored into the soil or to a post, and by walking with the twine kept free of slack the man is able to traverse the ground in a consistent circle. He continues his episodic traversing across the screen, swathing a more and more defined path behind him. Perhaps the interaction between the rope and his movement is stronger, instead of assisting in traveling through a perfect arc it is forcing him into making this repetitious circular journey.
The grass in his wake is flattened now. He continues making revolutions at a set pace. You can sense how the smell of the scene will have changed as his regular steps have crushed the fallen grass, releasing a chloroform odour. With the change in fragrance the emerald green turns darker, starting to mush. In the cinematography of our mind the man’s cyclic trek can watched as both endless, boring his way into the dirt itself, the lighting perfect, our virtual sun not changing angle in the sky, keeping the shadows in an eternal day as he continues his pilgrimage; and overlaid with a series of cross fade fast forwards of the green turning almost dark blue before it starts breaking into streaks of brown.
The gradual process of cutting a canyon through eons is re-enacted by our mental visual trickery, we ourselves escaping what in real time could only seem as a sentence handed down, a duty, or punishment, wearing the vegetation into mire. Till a perfect circular ribbon of mud is coursed through the grass. Maybe the decent into sludge is colouring our perception and we are not watching a regression but a quest, an odyssey, to return the turf to a primal form.
#2 Vapour Trail
The sky overhead is a perfect blue. If prompted to name the colour you would compare it the shade of a 1950’s dress, strong but not to a Mediterranean depth of hue. It is cloudless, unblemished. No foliage interrupts your vision. It is not a screen but the vista, it encompasses all, your entire view.
A plane comes into sight, transcribing an up-tilted path across the sky. It’s momentum slow, graceful, fluid. The movement seemingly in harmony with the blue backdrop. You watch it drawing an airbrush line of cotton-wool white. Till the perfectly straight man-made line has bisected the sky.
The angled vapour trail, as if a celestial brush tip has bleached the colour from the sky hovers above you. No breeze discernible. There is no movement, all has become a still life before you. As you become conscious of time passing, that you have been watching without focus or purpose, the far end of the trail begins to softly fade, ever so gently. With a patience bordering on the devotional the white evenly blends out to the blue.
Till only the untouched sky is left again. Maybe a popular song can be heard in the background.
–
Circus girl
Until the last week and a half I had always thought the expression “Run away and join the circus” was a euphemism. I have learnt the error of my ways.
Eleven days of flame throwers, fire eaters, high wire dancing girls, angle grinders, arc welders, tattoos, big tops and tents. The working day is going to seem a little tame for a while…
Daisy chains
Sometimes everything gels just how you envisioned….
Daisy chains…
…and schoolyard games,
a list of things we said we’d do tomorrow
The artist’s studio
I recently learnt that three of my tiny fictions are to be published in web lit-zine, this should enthuse me to put fingers to keyboard and yet I find myself unable to tear my enthusiasm away from the Holga. I feel I am somehow cheating, that writing is facing the creative rock wall – the proverbial white sheet. While photography has that little leg-up, pointing the camera at something that is in itself already visually arresting.
I justify it with a modern art rationale – it’s the intention that makes the art, not the form. The reasoning that setting up a photograph is akin to writing out a scene. An internal bickering forever in the back of the mind. Guilty feelings that it is laziness stopping anything new being written. Having spent the weekend fooling around with a new ring flash and some hundreds and thousands this snippet I read recently throws a different light on such musings…
“Writers always envy artists, would trade places with them in a moment if they could. The painter’s life seems less ascetic, less monkish, less hunched. Instead of the austere mess of the desk there is the chaos of the studio: dirty coffee cups, paint-smudged cassette decks, drawings of the artist’s girlfriend, naked, on the walls… In the age of the computer the writer’s office or study will increasingly resemble the customer service desk of an ailing small business. The artist’s studio, though, is still what it has always been: an erotic space. For the writer the artist’s studio is, essentially a place where women undress.” Apparently quoted from ‘Out of Sheer Rage’ by Geoff Dyer.
Hard to argue with that isn’t it. Although I know I need to devote some time to my chosen partner writing, the mistress of photography still lures me: the shots failed from the Holga and a digital image has been resorted to, temporarily. It irks me that it doesn’t resemble that in my mind’s eye, and I am keen to reshoot.
(This paragraph will only of interest to those Googling Holga, diopters and ring flashes. The Holga normally suffers from under-exposure, but it seems that a ring flash throws out a lot more light that it’s built-in version, and combined with a close-up lens the glare bleaches everything out. Film rated at 100ASA is massively over-exposed. A test roll is needed pulling 50ASA stock back a stop). After I’ve put pen to paper of course.
I found both the quote and the marvelous picture of George Dyer, boyfriend of British painter Francis Bacon (shot in his Reece Mews Studio by an uncredited photographer in 1964), on the excellent ‘Sympathy for the art gallery’. Given that Dyer senior was gay I suspect that Geoff and George aren’t related, but it is serendipitous that their pairing should illustrate so aptly why I find myself drawn to photographic portraiture when I know I should be honing my writing.
Appearing with Bum Bum at Glastonbury
The ‘You Me Bum Bum Train’ is going to Glastonbury. You’ll find it as part of Mutoid Waste’s Trash City.
I leave next week to help build the set and today we were assigned our roles… very excited.
Can’t say more but but it should be a fantastic ride… if you’re going to be at the festival it’s well worth the effort to get on board. (Like the man from Remington I liked riding it so much last season I joined the company).
Dancing at Burst festival
Ironic happenstance aside, I will be appearing in a dance piece, or site specific event, or as I have learnt; a scratch performance.
‘Handbag scratch’ by Geraldine Piligrim is on for two nights as part of the Burst festival currently on at The Battersea Arts Festival.
Handbag Scratch
Geraldine Piligrim
28 May 2009 – 29 May 2009
19:00 Performances at 7pm, 7.45pm & 8.30pm
£5.00 (Concs £3.00)
Book tickets
A scratch performance is a work where the action is derived on location from what is at hand, both cast and set. From scratch so to speak.
Not much more to say (feet do the talking) so instead here’s a fantastic poem centered around a handbag, ‘Crocodile’ by Anne Baker
Crocodile
1975 Crocodile Handbag
One only
Republic of Kenya
Game Department
Legal Possession Number: 602485
Export allowedThe black scales
and shiny buckle
Momentarily caught the light
Almost ready for a fight
It must have been the moon
There was no street lamp
In that municipal darkness
of the South CliffsThe park
Dark
Near the Coast
Close to the Dutch Spa building
Walking
Talking
On the way back from a wedding indeed
Trying to save on the money for a cabA man ahead
Surely he was behind us
Before
UsDragged down the steps
By an arm around the neck
Scimpy clothes
Panty hose
Plenty of scope for a grope and worseFrozen
Scared
In spite of those self defence classes
Bloody useless when disabled by sheer man weight and fetid anorak breath
Death turned his head
And said
Don’t be afraid
I have made
An exception
In your directionWhack
Crack
And a crocodile once lazily skulking in the waters of Kenya
Now proudly rears its dried out self to meet a prey of a different kind
Killed, skinned, dried and tanned
No longer slithering but flying
No mud
But thud
Contact made
This crocodile is not afraidTo be saved by a creature
From another continent
Modelled into a fashion accessory
May be necessary
In this mad world.
The meeting of skins
The conjunction of violence
Epidermis
SkirmishNot rape
But escape
Becoming yet another unreported statistical event
Reproduced with thanks to Anne Baker
Appearing at Burst festival
Hot on the heels of my pecha kucha debut at Peachy Coochie I am flattered to be asked to cooch it again. David Gale brings his night of 20 slides for 20 seconds to the Burst Festival at Battersea Arts Centre. So I shall be doing a rerun.
Can you be heckled about typefaces? Seems the answer is yes since I was asked “Where is microgramma?” Pecha Kucha is an unforgiving format, in the end old favourites had to go in favour of a broad historical overview. All of this will make perfect sense if you have seen the presentation, or indeed come along to
Peachy Coochie Nites: Reason For Living
Battersea Arts Centre
Lavender Hill, SW11 5TN
15 May 2009, 9pm
£5.00 Book tickets
The omission of microgramma could be deemed ironic given I used it as the base in creating the logo for Spceco.
Coming across like an infusion of My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins, Spceco are purveyors of nugaze, or dreampop to you. Their debut album is out and can be purchased by paying as little or as much as you want. They, like a lot of bands have come to the realisation that revenue streams don’t come from CDs anymore. The topic is too broad to diverge into here but the band have written about their feelings on the subject. Stateside people can buy an actual CD from here. Personally I make a habit of seeing any band I like play live so dosh goes into their pocket, least one can do.
Below is their fantastic single “You’re alright” which can be brought from iTunes.
And speaking of playing live, I am delighted to be sharing the stage with John Hegley on Friday, perhaps a much better reason to purchase a ticket.
Slow Club portrait
I am rather taken with Slow Club, so asked if I could do their portrait. Turned out nice as they say.
They are as delightful live and in person as they on record, www.bandstandbusking.com is currently featuring them so you can judge for yourself, along with the very great Emmy the Great and Psapp going acoustic. The Black Cab Sessions on a bandstand if you will.
Fact: Slow Club like my home-made bread.
6Sv2 available from Amazon
I have two tiny fictions “Marriage” and “Minicab driver” in the second anthology of very short stories from Six Sentences.
You can buy it from Amazon or Createspace
I’d go for Createspace but those of us in the UK may find Amazon’s postage cheaper.
In fact, until the failamazon issue is satisfactorily explained I’d rather you did buy it from Createspace regardless of postage costs, I am.
You can read one of my stories and lots by other people at the six sentences site.
Appearing at Peachy Coochie
I am appearing.
David Gale’s Peachy Coochie Nights is an evening of pecha kucha held in the Arts Admin bar at Tonybee Studios, Aldgate, compared by the inimitable Mr Gale.
Pecha Kucha is a presentation format created by Klein Dytham Architecture in which the presentee has 20 seconds to orate 20 slides, developed ostensively to halt young architects talking endlessly about buildings and building during pitches. You can see why they dreamt the concept up. Pecha Kucha is apparently an ideophone for the sound of Japanese being spoken.
Since it’s inception it has been hijacked by the arts movement amongst others, and here steps in Mr Gale who has been involved in performance for, well for a while. I have been to quite a few of his peachy evenings and so can attest to their high entertainment value. So much so that I am stepping up to the plate and will be cooching at this month’s show.
Arts Admin
April 30th 2009
7.30pm
Book tickets
I was originally going to read aloud some of my tiny stories, but this would be playing with the form. Not in a good way, at least for a debut. To wit, there are rules. The 20 slides can not be random, and must form a sequential narrative, on a sustained subject. Like ‘Just a minute’ with added hurdle of being invigilated by fascistic time and motions fanatic. No transitions, no durational slippage, no stopping.
I have witnessed people not talk but staple objects to themself, use a number other than twenty, show video, and speak utter nonsense. All of which is indeed justifiable in performance and entertainment, but for my initiation I wish to experience pecha kucha in it’s purest form. Except I wont be talking about buildings.
Be lovely to see you.
Nineteen year exposure
Today there was closure.
Five months ago a taxi returned a cardboard box containing the detritus I had left forgotten in an old studio. At the bottom amongst artwork and proofs lay the unused slides from a session I had shot for a record sleeve by the group See See Rider back in 1990.
Holding the transparencies up to the window I was struck by the richness, the depth, the wonderful analogue grain of film and resolved on the spot to abandon my digital camera. Within a week a Holga had arrived and my enthusiasm for photography rekindled.
My curiosity was also piqued with regard to whatever had happened to See See Rider. They were the favourite of all the bands I designed for, going beyond a working relationship, marking me a proper fan-boy: I still regularly play their EPs to this day. You probably haven’t heard of them, being probably the most criminally underrated group of the nineties (although No Man could also claim heir to the title).
Fronted by lead male and female vocalists, with a mini Keith Moon on drums they were for me, the essence of rock and roll. Songs about sex and drugs, hell, on sex on drugs, with no loyalty to any one style or genre. A fiercely intelligent song writer whose conversation would veer from porn to literature and back; perhaps you can see why I loved them. Tweedy their drummer was like hanging with all four Beatles at once. The only news I had of them was a couple of chance meetings with the other vocalist who became a fine art curator after they split.
During the months between designing the two EP sleeves I happened across a semi-detatched being renovated. The gutted parlour with it’s cane chair spoke to me of some dilapidated 70’s Performancesque glamour, tinged with overtones of a mock sexological test, the kind where you describe yourself as a path, a room, a wood. It struck me as being so very See See Rider. With the forthcoming album in mind I returned to photograph the house. That album was never to be, the record label disintegrated, the group moved on, and I was left with only my memory of some great songs from the handful of gigs they played.
Google is like magic. A few finger clicks later and it was revealed that a web site had recently been created about them. Outlining their brief career with a discography. I was amazed to see there, nineteen years later, the unreleased album available to download free, legally, as high quality mp3. At the time spurred on by the fact that Hallelujah had just hit number one and Jeff Buckley’s band of alt country was back in favour, I was going to post a little entry pointing to it, with a few words on how incredible these songs still sound. But I never did. (We shall forgo the fact that Hallelujah is really a Leonard Cohen song).
One of the reasons that See See Rider failed to set the world on light may have been their scant regard for the fashions of the time and instead playing some form of twisted Glam Country Soul, whoever uploaded the album had tagged the tracks ‘Eccentric Country Rock’. These tracks even as demos still sound fantastic, Gram Parsons gets a baby oil fisting from Suzi Quatro while Bolan riffs on wearing only see-thru plastic pants, perhaps accepting a line, toke or blowjob from Lou Reed. I surmise that by never being in fashion one never becomes dated.
I still have that transparency I shot intending to be on the sleeve, wouldn’t it be quite an act of closure if it were to be embedded in the mp3 tracks. The site is nothing to do with any members of the group so it has taken a while to track one of them down and email them the image. But today I received an email from the singer saying he would be delighted to use the image for the download. After nineteen years the photograph has finally come home.
You can download both the EPs and the album from www.seeseerider.co.uk. I’m not sure if or when the hand that graces the web site will upload updated mp3s with the image in place, so in the meantime help yourself here to the ‘new’ cover image in either PNG or JPEG format. Below is ‘White Flake Elite’ to whet your appetite.
* Technically it should be a nineteen year development not exposure, but that’s not such a snappy title.
2s in 6sv2
Curiosity got the better of me, and bowing down to the pressure of my internal voices (you are just jealous because they don’t talk to you…) I asked Robert McEvily, editor of Six Sentences, which of the two stories I submitted were chosen for the second anthology.
I’ve received his reply and can now decode the cryptic headline to this post – both stories are to be included in the new volume of six sentence long tales. Particularly pleasing as one of them, “Wedding” was especially written for the collection, the other one is “Minicab driver”.
There’s more, the industrious Mr McEvily who deserves thanks and praise from writers everywhere for his hard work in providing such a splendid platform, has set a publication date – March 31st.
Volume 1 is still available from Createspace or Amazon.
