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Sunday, September 30, 2012
Sunday, September 30, 2012
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Arriving at the Wilmington Arms on Friday night was pretty dramatic stuff. Prior to the gig I'd been watching two oiled up men beat the crap out of each other in a car park in Bethnal Green, and had to jet up to Clerkenwell double quick so I didn't miss the bands. Everything felt vaguely apocalyptic as I cycled up Farringdon Road. The first inkling something was up was the large terrified crowd running in the opposite direction to me. This is usually a bad sign. A billowing cloud of smoke was headed my way too, and within it I could see flashing blue lights and police cars swerving to block the street. Had the bands started already? Was there a fire? (there was a fire) I headed up a side street, avoided the wailing sirens and ran inside to catch the beginning of the set.
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| 'Girls Girls Girls' |
It's hard for me to write an objective review of 'Girls Girls Girls', I've seen them maybe twenty times or so over the last few years and have lived with their drummer. Having a friend in a gigging band can be a minefield; if they're godawful then you've signed yourself up to some fantastically depressing nights in dive bars watching them struggle through the same five or six songs over and over again. Fortunately, 'Girls Girls Girls' are pretty damn great and even though I've heard their setlist an innumerable number of times, it is still a thrill to see them play. While their songs are now all familiar me, they're always good fun to watch and an excellent match for 'The Feminists', who were on afterwards.
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| Jeremy Williams |
'Girls Girls Girls' consists of Jeremy Williams, Adrian and Chris Wilcox on guitar, bass and drums respectively. Tonight they're dressed in torn black vests, with a crude smear of black facepaint across their eyes. It's a nice unifying look, defining the band as a cohesive unit. Jeremy and Adrian in particular seem like two halves of the same coin, often literally bouncing off each other on stage, or winding their bodies together to create a kind of bass/guitar conjoined twin.
Their music is a kind of circus-punk, all rolling rhythms coupled with some heavy riffs. It's difficult to describe (so why not just listen to some of it), but I've always thought of it as the soundtrack to a really fucked up burlesque show, or maybe what the Weimar Republic would have been like if punk rock had come along 60 years too early. The vocals are sung in a strange accent that's hard to place, alternating between plucked, glottal, over-enunciated consonants in the verses and screamed, distorted (occasionally yelped) choruses.
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| Adrian |
I've always enjoyed the motion and rhythm that 'Girls Girls Girls' have on stage. With minimal stagecraft they totally dominate the space they're in, moving around the stage, and striking angular poses. Adrian on bass is particularly great at this, thrashing his guitar around and throwing himself into the music with an infectious vigour that energises the crowd watching. There always seems to be some frenetic dancing at the front of these gigs, people hurling themselves against each other and violently spinning into the crowd. They have an unshakable confidence in their own excellence, one which helps them at times say, when a string breaks. It sounds ridiculous, but sitting around waiting for someone to restring a guitar can kill momentum at a gig, but the band's charisma and professionalism easily pulls them through. At this particular gig there were flowers scattered around and occasionally a shower of petals would be thrown up from the crowd at the band or vice versa. By the end of the set the stage was strewn with trampled botany, which made for a odd fragrance of sweat, spilled beer and flowers.
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| Chris Wilcox |
This is apparently the last gig that 'Girls Girls Girls' are going to do in London, as their lead guitarist is heading off to Germany. It's a damn shame. This is a city with thousands of bands gigging in it, but few of them can come close to the sheer energy and joy in anarchism of 'Girls Girls Girls'. You just don't see too many bands that can create an atmosphere where anything can happen while simultaneously being so tight and musically adept.
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| The Feminists |
Next on the bill are 'The Feminists', who are undoubtedly the finest transvestite glam rock band to have emerged from the seedy gutters of Berlin. Everything from their names on downwards is utterly fantastic. On lead vocals is Samantha Fuchs, on guitar Judith the Tongue and Dr Tranny, with Holli Bastard on drums and MisGyver on bass. Joining them on electric violin is Monique-Sabine von und zu Pößneck. They're all dressed up for the occasion in various feminine attire; everyone on stage looks utterly fabulous in their trashed out, clapped out, sexed out slutwear.
Musically they feel like a throwback to a purer strain of rock and roll. It's the kind of music you can imagine playing as you speed through the desert in a convertible, wind whipping through your hair. They sound like the psychotic cousin of Deep Purple, with 70s style riffs complimenting the trashy aesthetic of the band. It could all be the soundtrack to some washed-out drive-in Roger Corman B-Movie, refreshingly straightforward in its desire to shake hips and get bodies thumping up and down against the front of the stage.
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| Samantha Fuchs waving his/her weasel about |
On stage they're absolutely mesmerising, with lead singer Samantha Fuchs climbing his way around the stage, perching on shelves and waving what I think is a taxidermied weasel at the audience. Samantha seems to be some kind of embodiment of the ideal lead singer for a band. S/he's got the strut, the pout, and hip wiggle down pat. It's like s/he has memorised every possible rock star pose, and throws his/her body into them like every song is the soundtrack to the end of the world. He regularly makes trips into the crowd, you get a sense that s/he's asserting dominance over us, when Fuchs gets off stage he is not raising us to his level, he is deigning to descend to ours. The band demonstrates a confident and total control over the audience, and when Fuchs stands on top of the amps and orders us onto our knees we all get down on the beer-soaked filthy floor. All of this adds up to something electrically delicious, degenerate and dangerous on stage.
'The Feminists' never stray towards becoming a novelty act. Being this distinctive live seems like a dangerous tightrope to walk, and while I've got no idea how the band gauge their own success, it must be a little risky to be primarily known for your stagecraft and physical performance rather than the music. It's a bit annoying that listening to 'The Feminists' recordings is nowhere near as fun as watching them live. But then if this just makes me head to more of their gigs how can that be a bad thing? They're weapons grade fun.
It was an excellent gig, and a great farewell to 'Girls Girls Girls' from the London gig scene. The place was packed out, with people dancing their little guts out throughout. A wonderful evening. I hope I get to see both bands again in future.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Saturday, September 29, 2012
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| Jordan McKenzie and Kate Mahoney (with dog) outside the lockup |
The garage door was closed at the beginning of the night, and all we could hear was a rhythmic heart like beating coming from within. I couldn't tell if this was part of an actual performance, or just the artists tuning up. Regardless, it created a quite interesting image of the audience pressing their ears against the door to try and divine what was going on inside. (I've now found out that this was in fact a performance by 'less.', who seem to be living up to their name, it's extremely minimal performance art when the majority of the audience don't even notice it's happening!).
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| Katherine Araniello |
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| |Anne Redmond and Katherine Aranciello |
The focus here seemed to be on the contrast between the ultra-happy enthusiasm of Marja Commandeur as she moved among the crowd pronouncing everyone a winner and the quick way in which people hop out of Aranciellos way, which places the audience in a pattern of avoidance.
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| A very crowded garage. |
The second part of this performance began with a certain proportion of the audience being herded into the lock-up itself. It was actually pretty exciting being in the fabled LUPA lockup, but it was so packed it was hard to tell what was going on. After squeezing in just as the door closed (nearly bonking someone on the head) I was stood, pressed amongst the crowd at the back. All I could hear was some droning minimalist electronica, while Anne Redmond repeatedly asked us if we were having a good time and did we want to turn the music off? I think the point might have been that being trapped in claustrophobic quarters like this isn't actually much fun, but personally even with someone's knee wedged into my arse I was having a great time. I'm not entirely sure what the point of this part of the performance was but it's entirely possible that something was going on at the front of the crowd that I couldn't see. If the first part of this piece was about avoidance tactics, then I suppose us being placed into a confined space prevents us from disengaging with the artists. Either way, as the garage door opened, and a group of sweaty people tumbled out in a cloud of dry ice I felt happy I'd made it inside.
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| John William Fletcher |
After this finished John William Fletcher walked into the middle of the semi circle and began to strip off. When he got down to his pants he lit a cigarette, and proceeded to slather himself with some kind of liquid. From my perspective it was hard to tell exactly what it was, although it may well have been baby oil. At this point I was wondering where exactly he was going with this. The question was soon answered when Stuart Doncaster walked into the performance space and also stripped off, covering himself in the shiny liquid. The two men sized each other up and threw themselves into brutal combat.
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| KA-POW |
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| ZOKK! |
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| *pant* |
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| KRAK! |
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| SCRAPE! |
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| PIN! |
As they were pummelling the crap out of each other I realised the line between bare-knuckle boxing and performance art was fuzzier than I'd assumed. When you're standing behind a block of flats in the East End watching two oiled up guys viciously go at each other you feel like you should be wearing a flat cap and be chewing tobacco. The weird mood was exacerbated by a quite freaked out dog barking furiously as the two men grappled with each other's oily bodies. The audience winced as the men fell to the ground, their skin scraping along the rough concrete with a sickeningly slapping thud. As they rolled around, trying to pin each other we could see the raw, scratched and slightly bloody flesh on their backs. At the very least, this is performance art with commitment.
While it's difficult to say exactly what this piece was about, it certainly made me think about a lot of things. The violence of the piece was clearly shocking, especially in the context of taking place in slightly seedy surroundings. But then if this was happening in an arena with hundreds of people watching it'd be considered sensible, socially acceptable entertainment. In addition, the fact that we'd seen these two men, who prior to the performance could have been anyone in the crowd transform themselves in a gladiators for our entertainment seems to indicate that the potential for this kind of violence exists just below the surface in us all. The fact that we're aware that this was all a performance allows those of us watching to kid ourselves that we're enjoying the violence through an ironic lens, people were shouting violent encouragement with smiles on their faces. I think this irony is a self-imposed illusion; we're all cultured, arty people - far too classy to take pleasure in anything as base as violence like this. But it was undeniably thrilling to see two people inflicting pain upon one another, and I found the internal conflict as to whether I should be enjoying watching this quite interesting to ponder.
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| JB&TheBubbles (Josh Breach, Gabriel Duckens and Sorcha Mae-Stott Strzala) |
That was a hard act to follow, and I didn't envy "JB&TheBubbles", whose performance was a choreographed dance to Madonna's 'Frozen'. The three performers were dressed in white shirts, black tights or trousers and white gloves. They had makeup smeared crudely onto their faces, with a black smudge around their eyes and a red lipstick slash across their mouths. It reminded me a little bit of the description of the Joker's makeup in 'The Dark Knight' as warpaint.
After the violence that preceded it, this was a lot calmer. Madonna's 'Frozen' is a pretty damn good, vaguely surreal song and whenever I hear it I always think of the excellent Chris Cunningham music video. Here, less. swayed and moved around as one, striking poses that vaguely reminded me of tai-chi. Mid-way through they burst sacks of paint they'd concealed under the clothes and smeared it around them. It was pretty nice to look at, but didn't seem to have quite the same 'bite' that I expect from LUPA. Perhaps this suffered in comparison to what came before it, or maybe I just wasn't in quite the right place in the crowd to get a good view of the routine.
After this was another departure from what I'd come to expect from LUPA was Bill Aitchison, who gave us a talk about important musical influences on his life. He sat perched on the edge of the garage with a record player and explained to us exactly why these vinyl records he'd chosen were important to him. The records he selected were Clive Dunn's 'Grandad', The Portsmouth Sinfonia's rendition of Also Sprach Zarathustra, Europe's 'The Final Countdown', Heino, 'Komm in meinen Wigwam' and the Kinks 'Shangri-La'. All of these were related to various crucial moments in his life.
When I think of performance art, I generally picture strange costumes and out of the ordinary actions rather than a polite, nice man talking us through highlights of his record collection. Fortunately, Aitchison comes across as thoroughly charismatic, and what he has to say is interesting, entertaining and frequently very funny.
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| Bill Aitchison (I need to buy a better camera.) |
I understand that what can be termed performance art is an extremely wide umbrella, and depending on context and setting literally anything can be construed as performance. This felt more like an entertaining mini-lecture than any exploration of thoughts through art, and while Aitchison has some very interesting insights (especially about life under the threat of nuclear apocalypse in the 1980s) and has a number of very funny anecdotes, it feels resistant to any alternative interpretation other than treating it on face value. Maybe if I was more familiar with the rest of his work it'd make a bit more sense as a performance. Regardless, he's an easily likeable guy, and seems wholly comfortable talking to an audience.
After Aitchison finished I couldn't stick around long, I had to jet up to Clerkenwell to go off and see some bands. A night at LUPA is always refreshing though, and the sheer diversity of performances demonstrates the care McKenzie and Mahoney take in setting this up. Already looking forward to the next one, whenever it is I'll be there!
If I've got anyone's names wrong please let me know in the comments!
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Saturday, September 22, 2012
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'Jesus Christ Superstar' is one of those big cultural touchstones that has completely passed me by. Aside from the obvious fact that it was about Jesus, I had absolutely no idea what I was letting myself in for. Was it going to be some holy rolling preachy affair? Some kind of weird musical set in Biblical times? I'm pretty damn far from being a religious man, is this really the show for me? I got my answer pretty quickly. The house lights went down and slowly a group of young people in street clothes took to the stage and set up tents. They were followed by a line of riot police, and the two engaged in tightly choreographed but brutal conflict.
This was the opening night of this new production, which upon finishing up 3 nights in the 02 will travel around Britain visiting all major city arenas. It's a star-studded show, but always feels intelligently cast. Tim Minchin plays Judas, a good fit given Minchin's talent for machinegun quick lyrical delivery. Melanie Chisholm plays Mary Magdalene, a bit of a resurgence as the last thing I remember her doing was a single with Bon Jovi a very long time ago. Playing Jesus is Ben Forster, who is apparently the winner of a reality show called 'Superstar'. I'm not familiar with anyone else in the cast with one exception: Chris Moyles plays Herod. My initial reaction on hearing this was that it reeked of stunt-casting, I assumed it was something to get bums on seats purely through curiosity.
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| Tim Minchin as Judas and Ben Forster as Jesus |
This show is pretty bombastic stuff, with the steps that make up the stage coming apart to reveal performers within, flames erupting from the ground and during the climax a shower of rose petals and a giant illuminated cross. The 02 seats about 20,000 and for quite a lot of those people the performers are going to closely resemble ants. This means any production here must be larger than life or it's going to be swallowed up by the size of the venue. Certain performers seem to be able to enthral the enormous space more than others, particularly Ben Forster and Mel C. When they're singing, they turn the fact that they're a tiny shred of humanity on a huge stage into an advantage rather than a disadvantage.
I didn't see the TV show that picked the Jesus for this show, but the rejects were milling around the guest box office picking up their consolation tickets before the performance. They looked like a gaggle of tuxed, overly waxed and primped mimbos, this that didn't fill me with a huge amount of confidence. If their Jesus is cut from this crowd then the show's going to be unbearable. But it's clear from the first time Forster lets loose his remarkable voice that the judges made a fine choice. Forster performs some amazing vocal gymnastics in this performance, but thankfully it never feels like his singing is extravagant just for the sake of it. A good example is the screeching, angry falsetto he falls into when ejecting the money lenders from the temple (or, er in this case, the techno strip club). Though he's working through some complex songs, he always emotes, his acting performance doesn't falter at all. The best example is in in 'Gethsemane' where he's pleading with God to spare his life. Forster manages to enrapture everyone here. You could have heard a pin drop when he finished. A good sign.
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| Melanie Chisholm as Mary Magdalene |
I suppose if anyone in the cast is used to singing to arena crowds it's going to be Melanie Chisholm. She's pretty damn brilliant in this, with a strong, clear voice that manages to encompass both the purity of the character, and also make her lascivious past believable. When she on stage mournfully singing "I've had so many different men, in so many different ways" it seems both tragic and down to earth. Despite the character being a prostitute Chisholm imbues her with a definite dignity, but at the same time we can see why Judas disapproves of her Yoko Ono like influence upon Jesus. Like Forster, Chisholm manages to hold the audience in the palm of her hand during her solo numbers, the strength of her voice underlining and supporting the character's convictions. I'm not sure what Mel C's been up for the last few years, but it's to paid off in spades.
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| Chris Moyles as Herod |
Also worthy of praise is Chris Moyles. And believe me, that's a sentence I thought I'd never write. What business does Moyles, the egotistic breakfast radio presenter have in a touring stage show? I'd initially figured that the logic was that if you're going to have a character that calls for the death of children, then it sounds almost believable coming from him. But, annoyingly he's great. You'd figure in this kind of stunt casting that he'd be playing himself, and while this Herod is a chat show host and entertainer he's quite distinct from Moyles radio persona. Of all the cast he's the only one that doesn't quite fit into the 'musical' ethos, but he works this to his advantage. He half-sings, half-talks his way through the funniest song in the play, dancing around and mocking Jesus in a cruel parody of, I guess, the very type of show that got Ben Forster the part in the first place.
Not everything here works quite as well as it should though. Surprisingly, one of the weak points is Tim Minchin, although I suspect that this is more of a technical issue than any fault on his part. If you wanted to cast someone who can deliver rat-a-tat singing, enunciating every word, he'd be the person you'd go for, right? Anyway, he's already got the hair and beard to play a disciple, so you're saving money on costuming and makeup already. Minchin has just come off his critically acclaimed adaptation of Roald Dahl's 'Matilda' in the West End so he knows the ropes of musical theatre. Despite all this, he never quite convinces.
To fill such a large space, they've cranked the volume way up. This is a loud show, very loud. I go to a lot of concerts, and at times even I thought it was a bit too much and some audience members were apparently constructing ear plugs out of tissue paper. Despite it being so loud, the mid-levels seem to be crushed together, meaning that the complex vocals get drowned out but the instrumentation. The character of Judas in this play explores his state of mind surrounding the betrayal of Jesus, but the problem here is that we can't make out what he's saying. This means no matter how fine the performance, much of it never reaches us. This acoustic problem affects most of the cast to some degree, but it seems to particularly impact upon Minchin. I've seen him before, and I know he's got the skills to pull off a role like this. Maybe if I was nearer the front I might have had a different opinion, but in an arena show like this you absolutely need to reach every single audience member in the room.
Putting on a show like this in an arena is both an opportunity and a huge headache. You've got the space and the facilities to produce some pretty damn spectacular effects, but at the same time you have to consider how you're going to let even those in the 'cheap' seats get a good show. If you're in a West End theatre, then these restricted view seats would be heavily discounted. Here, as far as I could tell, the cheapest seats were on sale for £45. At this price, you need to guarantee value for money. Unfortunately this production doesn't - if you're sitting off to the side on a high level you simply won't be able to see a large amount of what's going on.
At the rear of the stage there's a large video screen, and throughout we're either shown closeups of who's singing, or pre-produced video clips and effects as a kind of virtual scenery. These range from CG brutalist buildings, to news footage, even to streaks of blood as Jesus is whipped. Being able to see a close up view of the action on stage is vital for those of us far away, but unfortunately if you're far enough away to really need this screen it's generally obscured by the set and the lighting rig. It's a shame, because while the cast seems to be having a great time, and while I'm sure the audience in the expensive seats are having the show of their lives, it feels like those of us left up in the gods are treated with slight contempt.
Another aspect of the show that slightly bothered me was the appropriation of imagery from the Occupy movement. Much of the merchandise for the show features vaguely anarchistic slogans, and this punky aesthetic continues throughout the show. The problem with this is that it's just that, an aesthetic. As someone who was involved in Occupy it's a bit strange to see it co-opted so quickly into mainstream popular culture with nothing but lip service paid to the politics behind it. In fact, though it remains sympathetic to those protesting, it manages even in shallow musical form to portray Occupy in a misleading light. One of the major ideological thrusts of the movement is a move away from centralised demagogery and towards collective, inclusive decision making. Rhetorical speeches and highly visible leaders were something explicitly avoided, but this show posits the Jesus character as the object that everything else orbits. Obviously within the constraints of performing a set text like 'Jesus Christ Superstar' it's going to be difficult to inject too much genuine political thought, but even so, it seems a bit cynical to appropriate an on-going and relevant political movement to promote an Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical.
I did have a good night out seeing this, and there's a reason why this show undergoes regular revivals (resurrections?) - it's got a lot of great songs, and there's rarely a dull moment. However, this production never takes advantage of the space given to it by the arena setting; there's nothing here that couldn't be accomplished on a West End stage. Considering even those in highly restricted view seats will be paying £45 a ticket, it's difficult to recommend.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Friday, September 21, 2012
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When I attend art events I generally end up in
dank basements, industrial warehouses or rooms above pubs. So it’s a bit of a change of scenery to be
invited to 4 Cromwell Place in swanky Kensington. The building is a 19th
century townhouse in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods around. This week it’s being inhabited by what are
billed as some of the most exciting new experimental designers, thinkers and
makers from the UK, Europe and Africa.
The building is labyrinthine, four stories of
rooms each with a separate installation within. I arrived on the
night of their open evening and the place was packed out with thin, fey,
immaculately coiffed studenty types with the thickest glasses frames
imaginable. The place was perhaps a
little too busy, and at least on the ground floor it was pretty
difficult to navigate your way through to the pieces on display.
The first room I entered showcased food related
design in a project called ‘Kopiaste’ by designers Haptic Thought and
DesignMarketo, exploring the Greek cultural relationship between food and how this relates to their current economic strife. Unfortunately by the time I’d arrived most of the food had was gone. Had I arrived sooner I would have
seen a model of the Acropolis in Athens constructed of feta cheese but
unfortunately someone had eaten it. It’s a pity I missed it, as I like
both feta cheese and ancient buildings. The justification for this is that it represents a
confluence and mangling together of the Greek identity, the cheese monument becoming an emblem of the resurgent nationalism that’s
growing in Greece. They also had some
delicious bread in the shape of a Euro, which I ate dipped in some honey. I’ve eaten quite a bit of political art food
of late (most memorably a delicious cake version of Marx’s Communist Manifesto), and I think I like the concept.
If regular art misses the mark, it just sits there being bad, but if
it’s edible and delicious then at the very least it’s a decent meal.
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| It's like I'm IN Mongolia. |
In the next room was an installation by London cashmere clothing brand OYUNA. Now, when doing write-ups of things like
this I try and evaluate it fairly in terms of what the installation or piece is trying
to achieve. There’s no point in
resorting to hyperbole, and nearly everything can be analysed maturely and have some meaning
gleaned from it. With this in mind,
OYUNA is a load of winky wanky bollocky bollocks of the highest degree. This is a company whose slogan is “cashmere
for global nomads”. Try saying that with
a straight face. To quote from their
literature this is a “symbolic
installation which brings alive the beauty and artisan craftsmanship of the
cashmere pieces while capturing the brand’s Mongolian nomadic spirit”. Oh fuck
off! You’re selling DRESSING GOWNS (for
£799!) and BEDSPREADS (for £1650!!!). This is a company that has completely disappeared up its own arse. I guess if you’re the type of person who’s going to go out and spend a
thousand pounds on a throw rug you’re probably stupid enough to fall for this
rubbish.
Alright, moving swiftly on (and via the somewhat
incongruous giant barrel of ‘Farmhouse Cider’ sitting in the corner).
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| ....ok? |
Occupying a similar space is a series of
multi-disciplinary pieces based around a found photograph of a slightly dumpy
young girl who they’ve named Vera eating candyfloss on a seafront. Designers have then been tasked to create
objects based on their interpretations of the photograph. So we have an earthenware pot, with the
caption “As the Ferris Wheel reached the
top the wind started to pick up, huge black clouds began to form over the end
of the pier, goosebumps appeared on Vera’s arms and legs, she went to reach for
her cardigan but it was no longer there.
She desperately peered below looking for a mark her cardigan would still
be there, there was no sign. She knew
her mother would be cross.”
It's at this point that I twig why this is
annoying me so much. This isn’t
art. It’s wearing the trappings of art,
and using the language of art, but it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing! This is marketing. And pretty lame marketing at that. Recently I was at an art event where someone was
simulating sex with a folding chair, it was a completely half-baked concept but
dammit, at least it was sincere! This
stuff isn’t sincere, it’s trying to fool me into engaging with it on the level
of art in order to empty my wallet. I
suppose gussying these objects up with meaning is the only way you can convince
people to buy them. When you’re buying
an expensive pot, it’s far more attractive to think you’re buying a slice of a
conceptual art installation based on a mysterious, lost girl’s childhood rather
than a plain old pot to put your keys in.
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| I don't know what it does, but it looks nice. |
Things improved a bit after this. Coincidentally this was around the time I
realised that the beer was free. In the
back rooms were objects of a more technological nature. Their purpose mostly remains a mystery to me,
but at the very least they seemed to be doing
something. The most interesting thing in
the room was a keyboard which was in some manner hooked up to a fancy looking
record player. When a record was played
on the turntable, the keyboard sprang to life, and actuators clicked away as
the keys played themselves. The guy in
charge was handing out headphones to people, and while I’ve got no idea what
was being played through them, the listeners looked happy enough. In the corner were some lightbulbs whose
switch consisted of conductive ink. The idea is that tilt the bulb and it turns off and on (or rather it didn’t, because it wasn’t
plugged in). Further back was another
room, but the purpose of this place I couldn’t work out. It was full of people nodding attentively
while a guy talked about making the internet spherical. I took that as my cue to move on.
I passed by the bar again and headed up a nice spiral staircase.
This level was a lot more pleasant than the
hustle and bustle of the ground floor.
In a huge, ornate room was the “exhibition within an exhibition” ‘StudioInsights’. It’s a series of desk like
cabinets showcasing each designers working method and cultural context. Frequently setting can inform my enjoyment
more than content, and the fact that this room was much more spacious and less
crowded was a breath of fresh air. The
walls were covered in floor to ceiling mirrors, making light bounce around the
room quite nicely. Each individual
cabinet was neatly laid out, full of tiny details and intricate design
choices. I would have liked to have had
more of an explanation of who these artists were, but even so, the sheer
variety here was fun to explore.
On the first floor landing was another kind of
food display, although again when I got there most of it had been eaten. I think it might have been to do with coffee,
although there didn’t seem to be anyone around to explain. There was a bowl of kumquats on the table, so
I helped myself to a few of those. To
whoever was running this exhibit, I’m sorry I can’t really review it as I don’t
know what it was about, but thanks anyway for the kumquats.
Further upstairs was a room full of baskets; the
fruit of a two year design partnership between Kingston University’s Business and
Design Schools, the National Gallery Zimbabwe and the basket weaving enterprise
Lupane Women’s Centre. It’s laudable
stuff, promoting social empowerment of marginalised groups and allowing the
basket weavers to explore their creativity, craft and identities. It’s a bit of an interesting example of
mini-globalisation, baskets being weaved in Zimbabwean communities, and then
sold in Conran shops on the high class streets of Kensington. I don’t know anything about basket weaving so
I’m not best placed to evaluate the baskets themselves, but they all looked
pretty sturdy and aesthetically pleasing.
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| Generating the headline. |
In the final room, and what I’d actually come to
see in the first place, was ‘Out of Print’. It's an attempt to digest the chaotic,
lightning fast world of online media using traditional print techniques. The process works like this: there’s an iPad
set up that allows you to generate random headlines. You pick your news sources (The Daily Mail,
The Sun, BBC News, Vice Magazine and so on) and the software generates a headline. These naturally tend to the bizarre; “GIANT
PANDA IS NUCLEAR”, “GHOST WAREHOUSE REFUSES 14 PEOPLE” or “BRITAIN KNIFED A
COUNTRY”. When you’ve decided on
something suitably weird sounding you send it off to the printer. The “printer” is a beautiful, hand-constructed wood
block affair that looks almost Victorian.
The printers set each letter individually, place a piece of paper on
top, fasten it down and then pull a giant rolling pin over the top. It seems to take a surprising amount of
effort to print just one page, and everyone working there seems to have
ink-stained hands.
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| Setting the type. |
This is all pretty far from clicking the ‘print’
button on a computer and having a piece of paper neatly slide out a few
seconds later. The complexity and
strenuousness of the process seems to make a mockery out of the fluidity and
speed of the online news world. The fact
that their printing press looks so solid lends what comes out of it a kind of
inherent importance too; if people are going to this much physical effort to make
copies, then the product must be worthwhile somehow. This importance is then humorously undercut
by the bizarre nature of the headlines they’re printing. Of everything on display here, ‘Out of Print’
might be the only thing that succeeds both conceptually and practically. After so much po-faced design wankery, it’s
good to see something that’s not afraid to be a bit silly.
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| The result. |
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Thursday, September 20, 2012
- 0 Comments
‘Dredd’ is a straightforwardly pared down action moviecut from the same cloth as the 1980s work of John Carpenter and Paul Verhoeven. The premise is that futuristic “judge, jury and executioner” Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) and rookie Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) are trapped inside a huge residential building controlled by a narcotics gang, and must fight their way to the top taking out anyone in their path along the way. It’s a pretty thin plot, but one that serves its purpose of delivering near constant extreme violence and deadpan dialogue.
Judge Dredd occupies an interesting place in British popular culture. Uniquely among the stable of 2000AD characters he’s entered mainstream discourse: if a police federation enacts some variety of ‘zero tolerance’ policy, invariably they will be referred to as a ‘real life Judge Dredd’ (one example of many). Even though the character is American and his stories are set in the gargantuan future US metropolis ‘Mega City One’, he feels very British. Dredd as a character emerged from the punky aesthetic of 2000AD, a comics magazine which began publication in 1977. The Judge Dredd comic strip is a satire of fascism, a wickedly dark imagining of what the world would be like if every goggle-eyed right winger’s fantasy world came true. It's important to understand that Judge Dredd is not a hero, he has personally nuked a city containing 500 million people, shot pro-democracy protesters and carried out an unimaginable number of summary executions in the name of a warped justice system.
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| Karl Urban as Judge Dredd |
Travis’ film, written by Alex Garland goes relatively easy on the satire and politics that infuse the comics. Working with a relatively small budget, they’ve gotten rid of a lot of the overtly fantastical and futuristic elements and replaced it with a modern ‘realism’. The look of the future resembles African and South American cities, everything is bathed under dusty yellowish smog, there’s an omnipresent stifling heat and a populace seemingly on the edge. There are some neat moments that impress upon you the brutality of the surroundings, my favourite being the subtle squeak squeak of the cleaning machine as it washes the blood off the floor after a particular brutal episode of violence. It speaks volumes about the state of the this city that things like this seem banal and unremarkable.
Karl Urban is a great Judge Dredd, although this isn’t a role that requires a huge amount of range. If you can scowl convincingly and talk in a Clint Eastwoody growl you’re most of the way there. Dredd almost isn’t a character at all really, he functions more as an embodiment of a inflexible authority. In this film Dredd has no backstory, no motivation other than the law and no emotion other than steely determination. Further dehumanising him is his helmet, which covers most of his face and is never removed during the film. The fact that you never see his face is important, he shouldn’t be a human being per se, he should be seen as a man who has completely surrendered his identity to authority.
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| Olivia Thirlby as Judge Anderson |
While Dredd is the protagonist here, the character development comes from Olivia Thirlby’s Judge Anderson. She’s a failed trainee, only being considered as a potential judge because of her mutant psychic abilities. Unlike Dredd she hasn’t completely bought into the ideology of the brutal Judge system. She begins the film a bit nervous and unsure, but gradually toughens up under Dredd’s tutelage. Anderson is initially shocked by the brutality of the justice Dredd dispenses, especially when she’s asked to summarily execute a wounded man. The arc the character takes is actually a bit depressing, starting out as relatively normal and slowly being desensitised into a fascist thug. She also functions as a useful audience surrogate: Dredd can explain things to her (and us). Although Anderson appears vulnerable in comparison to Dredd (especially as for the majority of the film she has no Judge’s helmet), she demonstrates her mental strength in her psychic interrogations and when she’s placed in danger herself. It’s a fine performance by Thirlby, who somehow never manages to be eclipsed by the huge cultural icon she’s partnered with.
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| Lena Headey as Ma-Ma |
Rounding out the main cast is our villain, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey). She’s a sadistic, torturing gang leader who’s wiped out all her competitors and taken control of the Peach Tree residential block. She’s confident, in control and considering her introduction involves her ordering men skinned and thrown off buildings, slightly sympathetic. We’re shown in brief flashback her vicious rise from an exploited prostitute to ganglord. Despite this slight glimmer of humanity, she is absolutely a villain and her casual sadism makes Dredd’s slaughter seem almost clinical and reasonable in comparison. Maybe she is a little one-note, but at least it's a good note.
Ma-Ma has risen to the top of her game because she controls the only production facility of a new narcotic that’s sweeping Mega City One: SLO-MO. This drug slows down time to 1% of its normal speed, which results in fabulously beautiful slow motion shots of users on the drug. Generally this is a drab and washed out looking film, but when we shift to a SLO-MO perspective colours become over-saturated, and water or broken glass floats and sparkles gently through the air. It all looks very beautiful, especially in 3D. There are a number of extremely violent scenes that take place from the viewpoint of someone on this drug, and even bullets blowing through people or bodies exploding take on a mesmeric, graceful quality. It’s interesting that this drug doesn’t appear to have any side effects, the only reason it seems to be illegal is because the beauty it creates throws the harsh reality of life in this dystopia into sharp focus.
‘Dredd’ is a difficult film to analyse because I think someone who’s familiar with the satirical nature of the comics will ‘get it’, and someone coming in blind will see an unapologetic fascist slaughtering his way through masses of people. Both the comic and the film have their cake and eat it to some to degree. While intentionally satirical, the character of Judge Dredd is undoubtedly ‘cool’, and the power he wields is attractive. But Travis and Garland have played it a bit too safe, while we see Dredd dispensing justice, it’s a justice that seems just, his morality isn't called into question.
For my money, the character of Dredd is at his most compelling when he’s committing horrific acts in the name of preserving the law. In this film it’s easy enough to cheer him on without any sense of irony, and that’s a big problem. We need at least one scene where we’re scared by what this character represents. There is an excellent opportunity for this when Dredd and Anderson are being held at gunpoint by two young teenagers. Dredd tells them that threatening a Judge is punishable by death or time in the ‘juve-cubes’. The teenagers eventually open fire, but Dredd switches his gun to ‘stun’ mode, merely knocking them out. This seems a bit cowardly, Dredd should have killed those children and the audience should have rightly been disgusted by it.
I don’t think it’s enough that those ‘in the know’ can recognise that the overall thrust of the film is satirising fascist ideology. The film can easily be read as a ringing endorsement of fascism, with Dredd as a figure to be respected and emulated. I get that this is a film made under tight budgetary constraints, a film which has to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, but even so it seems irresponsible to portray an heavily armed totalitarian police force as both attractive and effective.
If there ever was a time to properly satirise a vicious and corrupt police force, then it’s now. Look at the London Metropolitan Police, whose modus operandi when they murder people is to smear the name of the deceased as quickly as possible with a campaign of outright lies and misinformation. This is prime material for satire and releasing what is essentially a ‘straight’ Judge Dredd movie seems like a huge missed opportunity.
So I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand Dredd is a great action film - a refreshing throwback to the ultraviolent, grimy films of the 80s like ‘Robocop’ or ‘Escape from New York’. On the other hand, the film dials the satire way, way down and as a result Dredd’s methods don’t seem so extreme after all. If you take a satirical hyper authoritarian 'hero' policeman and remove the satire what's left? Sitting in a cinema watching an audience taking vicarious thrills in fascism is quite a disturbing experience. What’s more disturbing is that it thrilled me too.
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