LONDON CITY NIGHTS: UCL

Saturday, October 24, 2015

'The Loris' at the Bloomsbury Festival, 23rd October 2015

Saturday, October 24, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

The Loris is a tricky bit of theatre to review. It runs on pure-grade surprise, sending participants pinballing around underneath UCL while hearing some very strange stories. The audience will spiral down staircases into the earth and see some of the Georgian industrial machinery that used to power UCL, all given context by a melancholy physicist and some excellent puppetry.

Much of the piece is set in and around UCL's colossal Senate House, once described as a "static, massive pyramid obviously designed to last for a thousand years". Critics dubbed it Stalinist and totalitarian; something George Orwell obviously agreed with when he based the Ministry of Truth on it in Nineteen Eighty-Four (the excellent John Hurt film adaptation also used the location).

The monumental design combined with ominous cultural associations give the building a spookily atmospheric pull on the neighbourhood. I quite like it, especially when viewed under typically London slate-grey overcast skies. It's all to easy to pause, stare up at it and think "Big Brother Is Watching You".

The Loris toys with these feelings of ominousness; plunging us deep inside the building to chambers we're assured are "extremely deadly". Our guide is the melancholy and reclusive Dr Snow (Gráinne Byrne), who has become wrapped up in her work to the exclusion of all else. She confidently stalks the backstage labyrinths of the building like a ghost, leading us down unprepossessing corridors that open out onto gigantically impressive rooms.

Assisting her is a security guard, Darren (Aaron Gordon). His Dad worked down here, allowing young Darren to play in the warrens of tunnels and pipes that snake underneath the building. He provides the humanity to offset Snow's aloofness, chipping in with little cheery comments when things get a tiny bit too heavy.

The Loris isn't exactly an uplifting tale - it's studded with betrayals, tragedy and death. Even the initially uplifting Darren gets his moments of regret in his past. As you leave you're not entirely sure what the moral was, though there's some irreducible core of sadness lurking at the heart of the piece. This enigmatic tone dovetails beautifully with the truly special places in which these scenes take place.

Going 'backstage' was the absolute high-point for me: I love being led beyond doors with pictograms of men being electrocuted and signs that read "DANGER OF DEATH" and finding myself amidst gigantic old machinery. I've unwittingly been mere meters from many of these places - there's a thrill in staring up from underneath the pavement and watching the footsteps of the students up above you. By the mid-way point I felt as if the building were some gigantic organism and I were a germ inside. Every surface bristles with pipes, gargantuan tanks squat under the ground and dark tunnels wind off into infinity.

I've always had a passion for subterranean London and though we're teased with the promise of tunnels so secret that we can't possibly go in there - it's still hugely satisfying. The Loris fills these naturally atmospheric places with a keenly conveyed sense of longing, using the disused spaces to underline some moving psychological truths..

It's a hell of an experience, beautifully performed by Byrne and Gordon, and one I'm unlikely to forget in a hurry. As I post this there's only two performances to go, both today! So hop to it!

★★★★

The Loris has just two performances left at the Bloomsbury Festival - today at 16:00 and 19:30. Tickets here. Chop chop.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

'Bono & Geldof are Cunts' by Jane Bussmann at UCL, 9th November 2013

Sunday, November 10, 2013 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

She's right you know. They are cunts. Bono and Geldof would be cunts even if they'd never wrapped their arms around the big-eyed and bony starving people of Africa. They suffer from Messiah syndrome; pumped up to bursting point on their own importance, concluding that by the sheer force of their internal goodness they can heal the world. By the time you're strutting across a Malian stage, maniacally whooping and throwing up peace signs as the local musicians exchange sidelong glances at each other you have inextricably plunged into the realm of cuntdom. But the obvious counter-argument is "so what?". Cunts they may be, but how many irrigation ditches have we scratched through the African dirt lately?

This is the crux of this show; a sometimes hilarious, sometimes depressing and always coldly furious analysis of the work of aid organisations in Africa. Jane Bussmann isn't the first person you'd expect to carry out this vivisection. She worked as a writer for The Fast Show, Brass Eye, South Park, Smack the Pony and Jam (among others), then moved to California, where she was sucked into a quicksand of fatuous celebrity gossip journalism. Sent off to interview Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, she'd have to file a piece even if they never showed up. As far as existential crises go, writing fictional interviews about practically fictional people is a pretty decent one..

There's only so much meaningless bullshit you can stack on someone's shoulders before their knees buckle and it all comes crashing down in a rancid heap. So, in a Sam Beckett style quantum leap, she left ephemera and plonked herself down in Uganda. Her brief was to profile US conflict negotiator John Prendergast, but by the time she'd hopped off the plane he'd sodded off elsewhere. Stuck in a remote town in Uganda with no subject Bussmann figured that having been handed lemons, she may as well make lemonade. So she decided to start investigating Joseph Kony, the Lord's Resistance Army and his kidnapping of child soldiers. Pretty tart lemonade.

This credit card will save Africa.

These experiences were chronicled in her book The Worst Date Ever, published in 2009. Now Bussmann, currently living in Mombasa, is using this experience as a springboard and decided to expose the corruption and hypocrisy of the aid industry. Bono and Geldof are Cunts argues that the aid these agencies provide is not just mired in bureaucracy; not just applied in the wrong ways; not just having a short-term effect; but intrinsically bad those it's supposed to be helping. This is a ballsy position and makes the bleeding heart Guardian supplement reading part of me instinctively recoil in horror. "B-but, those starving kids I saw on that tube advert, they need just a pound to get a goat! Just one pound! And I have so many pounds!"

Bussmann responds like a Hydra, a panoply of snapping, angry jaws tearing bloody chunks out of these arguments. First for the chopping block is the paternalist notion that Africa is in need of "saving". Western media loves to infantilise Africa, presenting us an image of an irresponsible, diseased and desperate place just that can't be trusted to govern itself. We're shown lists of words those in the West associate with Africa and but for a few exceptions they're all "war", "disease", "famine" and so on. That Africa can only exist with a constant infusion of aid transforms the continent into a patient on life support, unfit to stand on its own two feet.

Conseqeuently her next argument is that, consciously or not, the aid agencies perpetuate the very problems they combat. The example given is the response to the Rwandan genocide. As refugees flooded across the borders into refugee camps the aid agencies began to distribute food. Unfortunately they failed to identify the huge number of killers among the refugees, so they were fed, watered and given salaries - using the camps as military training bases to get back on their feet. This process became known as "feeding the killers", the food aid being withheld to punish the enemies of the leadership, reward supporters, distorting the numbers of refugees to get more food, and even forcing the refugees to pay a tax on their aid. Anyone who spoke up against this structure or tried to explain to aid workers was subject to intimidation or even murder. Médecins Sans Frontières later stated "this humanitarian operation was a total ethical disaster" or more bluntly, a big ol' fuck up.

This example demonstrates that of blindly throwing money at a situation you don't fully understand is a very bad idea. It's important to note that Bussmann isn't wholly opposed to charity, just to the self-aggrandising nature of monolithic aid companies. She reserves specific venom for extravagant spending, pointing out that UNICEF workers travel business class, glugging down champagne and posh nuts as, hundreds of miles below, the people they're supposed to be helping continue to starve. Stories are recounted of senior UN workers who happily profess that they "can't tell the difference between black people", of huge hardship allowances given to those suffering through the daily misery of life in a modern, cosmopolitan African city, of 'help wanted' notices for people to clean out their swimming pools

Viewed in the harshest light, these huge aid organisations have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of Africa as a famine-ridden hellhole. Bussmann points out that you don't see banks in African countries collapsing and societies collapsing into austerity, arguing that the continent is going through financial boom times. Ultimately, her position is that Africa is a continent that requires investment rather than aid, that the perpetuation of a negative image discourages investment and this, in the long term, is harmful to African economic development and therefore harmful to the people. The ideal conclusion would be self-sufficient, politically independent African countries free from the yoke of Western paternalism and fully able to solve their internal problems, whatever they may be.

I've got some reservations about the idea that the goal of African economic development should be an emulation of Western capitalism and it sends a shiver through my socialist soul to hear the establishment of a consumerist bourgeoisie espoused as a positive thing. Like aid, foreign investment comes with its own shackles and a country at the mercy of the free market is existing in a questionable state of freedom. There's a whiff of trickle-down economics theory too, Bussmann essentially arguing that the consequence of rich Africans buying luxury cars and building swanky apartment buildings means that those living in poverty will see their standards of living rise.

At this point I should also point out that despite all the war crimes, economic theory and corruption this is a really funny show. Bussmann's not afraid of heading to some fucking dark places, showing us her 'rapron' (an apron created by rape victims) and arguing that Geldof would have provided catering services to Auschwitz. Bussmann's fury is such that, while the comedy is pitch-black, there were portions of the show with little laughter. This show was the final performance at the One World Media Festival, and there were some stony, not-particularly-happy looking faces in the crowd. I realised that some of the people she's railing against are more than likely likely to be in attendance By way of an example, while waiting to get into the venue I was explaining what I'd heard about Bob Geldof tax arrangements only to be interrupted by Geldof's accountant's wife - who was anxious to set me straight about the tax payments of Sir Bob.

Bussmann's show shone a light on an unhappy hypocrisy here. The walls were plastered with photos of unhappy Bangladeshi men standing in rivers full of poisoned fish, bodies plucked from collapsed factories and garbage piled up in slumtowns. Meanwhile in London we're sipping on free ice-cold beer, placing us on the exact spectrum of charity-funded luxury that the show rails against. So, the conclusion I took away with me was that intelligent, precise application of charity is helpful. But the vague, monolithic aid agencies' primary function is to pop a sticking plaster on wounded liberal hearts, administer a painkiller that washes away the guilt of Western privilege and give us a way for us to compartmentalise Africa as a unsolvable, intractable, neverending problem.

Bono and Geldof are responsible for the propagation of a stereotype of Africans as poor, dumb, hungry and violent - an infantilised global 'problem child'. A continent in need of a white saviours to descend from the sky and solve their problems by the sheer grace of their presence. For this, and much else, Bussmann is right - they are cunts.

'Bono & Geldof are Cunts' is at the Soho Theatre from Mon 18 - Sat 23 November, 7.30pm, tickets £15 (£12.50) available here.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

'Buried on Campus' at the Grant Museum, 12th July 2012

Thursday, July 12, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

The wonderful Grant Museum

Another day out and another pile of dusty bones unearthed from beneath London. Today I hurried along to the penultimate day of ‘Buried on Campus’ at the Grant Museum at UCL. The exhibition’s been open since April, but as it’s only open 1-5pm on weekdays, it’s hard to find the time to get over to it if you work during those hours.

The small exhibition showcases a macabre discovery and the mystery surrounding it. In 2010, builders carrying out some routine maintenance work began to find human bones buried under the ground in the Main Quad at UCL. A huge collection of skeletal remains began to be unearthed from the ground, eventually totalling some 7000 bone fragments, comprising at least 84 individuals. The first reaction naturally, was one of suspicion. Was this evidence of some horrible crime? The Metropolitan Police were immediately called, and after some investigation by UCL’s own forensic anatomist, Dr Wendy Birch, and forensic anthropologist Christine King it was established that the bones were quite old, and were not evidence of suspicious activity.

The Metropolitan Police investigate.

Theories began to fly thick and fast amongst the London archaeological crowd as to whose bones these might be and why there were there. The location has a relatively storied history prior to being part of UCL, being previously used as a rubbish pit, a duelling spot and as the site for a steam railways exhibition. The initial theory was that the builders had broken the seal on a 17^th century plague pit. During the Great Plague cemeteries were unable to cope with the piles of bodies, and the inhabitants of the city resorted to digging trenches and tossing the bodies in haphazardly. People suffering the agonies of the plague were even known to throw themselves onto the pile of corpses to save their relatives and friends the danger of transporting their infected corpse.

But this theory didn’t hold up. Bloomsbury in the 17^th century would have been far outside the City of London, and an unlikely place to bury plague victims. Additionally, if the bones pre-dated the University, it seems unlikely that they would not have been disturbed during the construction of the university buildings in 1826. Other possible theories were also discounted, for example that it was posited that this might be an example of a forgotten non-conformist or private burial site – but in case you'd expect to find complete human skeletons and fragments of grave markers.

As the bones were examined, the forensic team began to find clues as to what this macabre treasure trove might be. It was noted that a large proportion of the bones seemed to suffer some kind of disease, that many of them suffer the signs of being cut with saws or scalpels, that a few of the bones seem to have writing upon them. A conclusion was reached; these are bones from an anatomical teaching collection.

Examining the bones.

So, the ‘what’ has been conclusively established. The ‘why’ remains somewhat more elusive. A prime piece of evidence is a jar of Bovril that was found buried with the bones. The Bovril Company were contacted, and after conducting a search of their archives concluded that this style of jar was produced between 1886 and 1920, this means that the earliest these bones could possibly have been buried is 1886. 1886, to some degree is relatively recent history, so you would think there should be some record in a dusty tome somewhere of this anatomical collection. Victorian curators, anatomists and zoologists tended to be quite fastidious in their record keeping and preservation of specimens, as the people in charge of navigating the vast archives in the Natural History Museum or the British Museum will testify. So it seems odd that not only would someone decide to throw all of these bones away, that they would decide to do in the Main Quad of the university and with at least some degree of secrecy.

On display at the exhibition are some of the more interesting specimens from this find. There is a quite striking bone that has a root system growing through it where the marrow once was, as well as some which demonstrate signs of being clinically examined and cut. We also see the Bovril jar which helped to date the bones. The main attraction though is a complete skeleton constructed from many separate bone fragments found at the site. This shows us examples of forensic science used to help age, sex and date skeletons. We are shown part of a skull, and it is explained that we can tell that this is from someone in adolescence judging by the degree of fusion of the plates which makes it up. Similarly, we are shown an arm bone with a separated epiphysis, which is evidence that growth has not stopped and therefore that the owner of this bone was young. It is an informative, yet strange exhibit, and the fact that it’s assembled from many skeletons lends it a bit of an impersonal quality. After all, if these bones were once some kind of Victorian teaching set, then perhaps it is appropriate that we should continue to learn from them.

But the mystery still remains – why were these bones dumped into the ground? Then, as now, there were rules governing the disposal of human remains. Today we are governed by the Human Tissues Act 2004, which sets out stringent guidelines on the treatment and ethics surrounding the use of human remains. Victorian law was a somewhat less stringent, but the location of human body parts was legislated, and you couldn’t just chuck them in any old hole in the ground. Attitudes seem to have shifted towards sympathy for the corpse in the modern era, and there were signs prohibiting photography of the specimens in this exhibition as a ‘Violation of the Human Tissues Act’. It seems faintly bizarre that these bones have gone from being dumped into a hole like rubbish to being protected by legislation forbidding even the photography of them. There have even apparently been a few complaints that the bones are being exhibited in the same space as animal specimens, something which I hadn’t even considered as potentially offensive.

While we may never know the reasons behind these bones being mysteriously buried on campus, they fit nicely into a peculiar ongoing narrative regarding UCL and human remains. Notoriously, the university exhibits the mummified body of philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) who influenced the foundation of the university. This body has been wheeled out to meetings commemorating significant anniversaries at UCL, where it is recorded as being “present but not voting”. Additionally, Jack Asby, the manager of the Grant Museum has records of human remains being disposed of in skips in the 1950s and 60s – the rise of genetic science meaning the anatomical teaching collections being regarded as outdated and dumped.

Jeremy Bentham. Wax head on top. Real head below.

Personally, I like to think that some Victorian anatomy professor was sitting in his office late one night, despairing over a lack of storage space or maybe in a cantankerous mood after having stubbed his toe on a box of femurs. Through his window he sees an open ditch having been dug in the quadrangle and thinks “sod it, they’re going in, someone else can worry about them”. The next day all of the unwanted specimens have mysteriously disappeared, only for us to discover them again in the 21^st century.

I'm sorry I didn't get to this exhibition sooner - recommending a visit now seems a little sadistic as the last day of the exhibition is tomorrow, but everyone should visit the Grant Museum at some point, it's got a wonderful atmosphere and is packed full of fascinating specimens.

LONDON CITY NIGHTS