末日的初探，末日的旋律，但要到達那塊樂土，先要感受人的喜怒哀樂。
不知他們覺得人類還有希望嗎？
只知他們的音樂底子打得很深，又或者他們無時無刻的創作狀態都是有毒品和美酒相伴。
完全不知如何解讀 Radiohead.
不知他們覺得人類還有希望嗎？
只知他們的音樂底子打得很深，又或者他們無時無刻的創作狀態都是有毒品和美酒相伴。
完全不知如何解讀 Radiohead.
Showing posts with label England. Show all posts
Showing posts with label England. Show all posts
Friday, 23 December 2011
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
No man is an island.
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624)
Meditation XVII
No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
John Donne (1572-1631)
Meditation XVII
No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
John Donne (1572-1631)
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Antony Gormley and my thoughts on humanity
Attended the talk hosted by British Council with the help of HKIA 2010 and HKMA.
Wish to share my notes of Antony Gormley's talk. He shifted from one topic to another quite rapidly, so I added the title and numbering to make it easier for the reader.
If his ideas are in anyway belittled or misinterpreted, that is entirely my fault and I would like to apologise in advance.
The Body as Workshop - A talk by Antony Gormley
1. Seeing the city of Hong Kong
Before digging into anything about his artwork or his concepts. His first comment was how the typography of Hong Kong amazed him. He in particular could not forget about how the low hanging clouds were all over the city.
The slow ferry across the sea made him feel like going back in time to an age when the industrial revolution seemed to have just started and technology was still timidly experimenting. The dialogue between human made things and the elements, the urban environment, the close connection of earth and sea, the sky and the changing qualities of light all left a big impression to his short visit.
2. What is the role of art?
If we acknowledge the fact that the world is not limitless like before. Then human as a species has a big responsibility ahead of us. If the great human project is to carry on, we have to ask ourselves whether we are moving towards self-destruction.
For people who thought that the centre of the world was their own island or territory, what was going through the person's mind who cut the last tree down in Easter Island?
If we take art as a place for potential transformation,
Can art address such big human questions?
Can art address our value system which places emphasis on surplus?
Gormley grew up in UK, 'was a good hippy' (as he called himself) and went to India for 3 years learning about Buddhism and Hindu culture, he then later paid a visit to Kimberly, Australia. It was during his visits, that he saw a lot of work of art that were more than 1700 years old. It was before Aboriginal painting and it was art before any specialisation or placed in any framework, before art was in surplus culture.
For them, survival and making of art was fundamentally intertwined.
If such possibilities existed before, will art become the central, basic human expression again?
3. The un-institutionalisation of art
The other issue is that of art becoming institutionalised. Can art return to being part of everyday life?
After the end of Impression, art went into a period of question the syntax and framework of the Impressionist and began to address more the viewer instead of institutions.
What followed were big transfers in the western canon of art where art lost its cultural, religious roots and began to touch the previously unknown spiritual realm.
Ever since, the pre-knowledge of iconography seizes to be of necessity. Art became to be open to interpretation. Artists uses the space of art as resounding board for our own existence. In a globalised world, we are our own author of our identity.
Can art also do so to assert our individual identity and individual spirituality?
[Slide show begins]
4. 'Event Horizon', 2010, New York
Our human condition in urban living can perhaps be best illustrated in Manhattan as the epitome of modernism. If over 50% of us relate to the urban grid and experience human life not through primary sources (sun light, wind, free flowing water) and rather look into video, monitor, window, what does that say about our human condition?
Gormley's project in Manhattan involved placing 31 sculptures in the area. 4 on the ground and 27 almost on the perceptual edge of the skyline. As these figures begin to inhibit the real world they act as a relational view for its surrounding. The gaze into the horizon that the embedded homogeneous of the city cannot see.
The body, in a sense is something that is temporarily occupying a certain space. It is a temporary aggregation of cells where we look at. When we observe, we observe subjectively from ourselves to others and relate things through our body senses. The idea of 'you' or 'the others' is only possible with subjectivity. If truth is found through the usages of our senses, then we all live on the other side of the visible.
Then how do we begin to acknowledge the perception of our space if it is so often limited by our skin or edge or defined category.
5. 'Sultra', Sadler's Wall, London, 2008
Gormley worked with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and 16 Monks from the Shaolin temple to do a play in London.
If we were to test the limit of the human bodies, we can also test the edges of our body in relationship to the space that our body occupies, which in this case were metal containers.
If we go back to basics. We have the human body, then clothes to fit that space. Then comes the bed, the room, the cubicle city space, then a residential building, then blocks of towering estates....
What are the potentials or limits of the human body under such a condition?
6. 'Space Station', Hayward Gallery London, 2007
The 'Space Station' is utilising and exploring the space within the gallery by making the piece as large as possible (fire regulations permitting). It is in fact a compressed fetus form with an opening under the elbow where people can crawl in and experience the same fetus form but in negative space and in a much smaller scale.
Through the action of crawling into that space, the viewer who enjoyed free mobility is devoid of his/her original freedom and experiences what the artwork 'Space Station' is experiencing within the gallery space.
7. 'Drawn', Hoxton Square, London 2000
In all these human figure piece, Gormley used his own body as the cast for the figures. The making involves him sitting still and silence and accept the condition of inertia of a sculpture.
The indexical body occupies a space at a certain time and it is the history of its own making. The body is not idealised and contextualised with the sense of architecture (that is, the boundaries of the gallery space). The body and elongated arms stretches out to sense the wall space and to sense the second space (negative space within architecture).
To him, good sculpture uses and emphasizes what it lacks. Rather than having the artwork occupy the privileged space, the viewer is in the prestige position and becomes the active, the moving, the thinking through the realisation of his / her own freedom.
If up, down, left, right, front and back are all subjective perspectives that we push to the space with our bodies. Then perhaps there is none better than directly addressing its limitations in order to make us revalue the space that we inhibit in. If art has moved beyond the duties of science, religion, mythology, then perhaps it is to address our body once again.
For nothing is fixed, everything is influx. The universe is continuously expanding, to fix sculpture at a defining space. The viewer becomes liberated.
8. '2008 pavilion for the Kivik Art Centre in Österlen', Sweden, 2008
In this lesser iconic Gormley piece, he collaborated with David Chipperfield Architects to create a 3 boxes with the same volume. The base is a tomb like experience as the viewer enters, then a stairs leads him/her to the second level where light and opening is contrasted with the ground floor experience to highlight the sensual body experience and how our body quickly adapts to different conditions of space. The third level is a tower like structure with opening to the top. Its vertical elements readdress the horizontal opening of the second level. Again to heighten and remind us of how our body senses the surrounding.
9. I shall skip the two piece 'Full Bowl' and 'Floor' because the lack of photo for these two piece diminishes the power to evoke thoughts.
10.'Inside Australia' to mark the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Perth International Arts Festival in 2003, Lake Ballard, Western Australia, 2003
In the vast Salt Lake system that has been around for million of years. Gormley scattered 51 sculptural pieces over a 10 square mile area. Place the sculptures on such vast landscape. The viewer is reassured of his own freedom of movement. The differen bodies hang like whiskers, almost leaning beyond the point of deception. As the viewer walks around the lake. The heat, the crunching sound of salt and the vastness reminds him/her of his own space and solidarity on this planet.
Our dependency of the urban grid may mean that our profound relationship with time, space and memory may be lost.
11. 'Another Place', Crosby Beach, Liverpool, 2007.
In the Liverpool piece, besides the layer of meanings already mentioned above, the tides come in and come out and temporary erase the existence of the sculpture. Calling on to the viewer to remember the piece's space and time.
[My immediate thoughts: Is human not the same? Isn't the existence of our temporary life nothing but a memory of our occupation in a space and time. And this 'fact' is made concrete by others who are constantly viewing us. So what happens when technology enables us to create another virtual timeless self? And when all information can be uninterrupted recorded into virtual space, how then do we address the elemental space of pure senses?]
12. Feeling Material XIII, 2004
Gormley is exploring energy flow through this piece by using one line. What happen is the that line hits the wall, come back, orbits around in the middle and goes out to hit the wall and moves back to orbits again.
[My immediate thoughts: if the way humans assert our body in relation to our surrounding. Then how do we both philosophical and physically relate our body with the universe which is continuously expanding? It really fascinated me then, how the universe becomes the universe with all these chaotic energy flows creating a harmonious balance for humans to inhibit in. Should we not treasure and respect this miraculous balance?]
13. 'Blind Light', Hayward Gallery, London, 2007
Using a room of 10 metre square. The room is filled with 1/3 part of cloud. As the visitor enters, he is disoriented and loses all sensory anchor points. The disorientation draws consciousness to the viewer's body. This room helps create a no environment, without any subjectivity.
[My personal experience of my visit to the Hayward Gallery in 2007 was surreal. One can hear muffled voices in the distance, but only realise another person when he/she is about 1 metre from myself. Hence you always here 'Oops, i'm sorry', 'Oh, you are there' muffles in the distance and you can barely tell whether that distance is near or far. One becomes extremely aware of one's own body as one really has to concentrate and trust one's own senses in order not to bump into another person or to the glass walls surrounding the space]
14. 'One Another', The Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London, 2009.
The fourth plinth was originally planned for William IV, but it remained empty for a very long time until somebody came up with the bright idea to occupy it with contemporary art. Ever since, artists have used it to showcase their artworks temporarily.
In this 'experiment' (as Gormley terms the project) Gormley invited the 2400 members of the general public to participate in his artwork. Interesting participants would invite themselves through web entry / leaflets and they were selected by random to go on the plinth.
Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, different people would have the freedom to take the vantage point and do whatever they wish to do on the platform. Gormley is essnetially using the viewer to be viewed.
and there were of course... the usual expected performers.... but to this Gormley replied that nakedness is not necessarily a problem or a shallow show, as the globe becomes warmer, we may become more tropical.
15. 'Allotment II', Hayward Gallery, London, 1996.
If we return back to the question of what role artworks plays in the scheme of humanity. Can art seize to analyse its own internal framework and return us to our own vitality and our own consciousness? By placing body on the extreme conditions, on top of buildings at the very edge, perhaps we can then become more aware of our own consciousness as we as viewers relate ourselves with the other human scale and put that in context within the urban grid.
16. Angel of the North, Gateshead England, 1994.
This sculpture is a totemic, iconic piece and it marks the end of the industrial age. It address the change from industrial to information. It sits on top of ore deposits, in particularly, coal which sparked off the industrial revolution that have changed fundamentally how humans interact with his/her surroundings.
Gormley interesting noted that it is an angel that will never fly and is not invisible.
[My immediate thoughts: Humanity must rely on his own consciousness and own understanding to make his living space a better space and without reliance on any all knowing god]
17. 'Breathing Room', White Cube, London 2010
In day time, visitors enter and walk around the space experiencing with the many possibilities of how our bodies relate to space. Viewers than look at other viewers to make association of their own in relation to other viewers and the space around them.
The interesting thing about this piece is that it absorbs sunlight in the morning and begins to glow in the dark. Is this then a drawing, an architecture, a fabricated reality to regulate our bodies to fit certain spaces, or, as city dwellers, are we entitled to more choices?
18. Ending comments
Gormley felt that it is essential for humans to link ourselves with the landscape and hold on to memory in that sense. The land, time, space we occupy and space that others occupy.
We know now for certain the limitations of human civilisation. The idea of the other horizon is better is but a phony concept where colonisation of other planets is nothing but a lavish and extravagant dream that we are not capable of before our own planet runs out of resources.
As technology begins to divide us more and more from the elemental world we have to refocus our attention on the close ties we have to our land and hold on dearly to these elemental conditions that all species except humans have learnt to embrace and respect.
If there is nothing more, nothing better out there, then how do we face reality? Or perhaps there is nothing out there, but there is something right here, within us that we are capable of utilising to make this world a better place for everyone.
The final sentence he said in the lecture was this.
'We have to learn how to live barely and that will be difficult.'
19. My casual chats with Gormley after the talk.
I love how my t-shirt says 'I see dead people', can read that in context with Gormley's work =)
[G:Gormely, Juanjaime:J]
a). My first question was a bit dumb and self-explanatory. But I was very nervous talking for the first time to my idol. I blurted the question out without thinking through it carefully:
J: Your last sentence in the lecture was that 'We have to learn how to live barely and that will be difficult.' With all the sculptures you have produced, they try to explore body and its relation to space. But we are restricted forever in our own bodies. I suppose that is our limitation. But again, with our bodies we have created endless potentials.
So do you think the human species has more limitations or more endless potentials?
G: (smiles), I myself have not found the answer to this question.
b). I told him I understood EXACTLY what he meant by space, time, landscape and memory because I was engaged in the Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial. And he fondly recalled the experience of him finishing the work and lying down on the ground with an old lady who once lived in the house. Gormley thought that the project was already alright when she gave him a gentle grin as they look up into the 'Another Singularity' piece hanging in mid air of the house.
'Another Singularity', Echigo Tsumari Triennial 2009, Japan. 2009.
I then told him I was involved in the Setouchi International Art Festival 2010 and was surprised to learn that he didn't know about the project!
c). Then I made another stupid comment (I was really really very nervous, but eager to engage with such a humble but intellectual individual) when one of the audience asked him about public projects. He said that he planned to create a 120 metre transparent human figure which allowed the general public to walk through the legs and upwards through the body, into the brain and down the other side. It would be a double helix and placed near the Olympic arena.
I said this was very politically charged as you are placing the piece in Beijing Olympics, so it is an critique on Communism with one human figure controlling the flow of tragic and space allowed for the general mass. And he politely corrected me that it was the London Olympics 2012 and that it was based on the Tatlin model, which luckily, for me, still made references to the Marxist ideology.
Sigh, the embarrassment of one's ignorance and rushing to conclusions.
d). When conversing with Gormley, I was very excited because I first saw his piece the 'Blind Light' in Hayward Gallery, London. I was blown away by how there was no instrument of 'art' or 'art' related materials that we usually associate with. Just four walls of glass, some man made fog/cloud and room light. It made me greatly conscious of my immediate primary senses.
I told him bluntly that the 'Blind Light was his best piece if it tries to heighten our body senses while the other sculptural pieces were weaker. Although he very gentlemanly, kindly agreed with my comment.I would like to now, take back my comment.
After further understanding his pieces. I think 'Blind Light' enabled the viewer to heighten our own individual senses, but the power of relating to otherness and other space was more powerful in his signature sculptural pieces. Because it was the solitude which brought out the homogenous mass and asserted the mass with its individuality. While 'Blind Light' was more oriented inwards, the focus was on once individual experience through spaces.
20. Some interesting questions raised by other listeners.
Person 1, 'If your piece is based on the human body, then do you talk about the mind?'
G: ......(hesitates)....... yes, I also talk about the mind in my piece......
Person 2, 'In Hong Kong, we are desperately in need for good public art. You perhaps have seen and made good public art all over the world. We in Hong Kong have no resource and no support and artists are always limited and constrained by the authorities, what would be a good example of public art in UK? Perhaps the Angel of the North piece?'
G: No I would not say my piece is good in anyway. I am slightly embarrassed about the Angel of the North piece actually.
Most people, 'Hi, I am bla bla bla, I work in bla bla bla, here is my name card, it was an amazing show, very interesting, it would be lovely to see your piece in Hong Kong, I have seen your works here and there, thanks for a very interesting talk.......'
Hence I barely remembered their questions.
He did pay particular intense attention to a teacher who wanted to ask him to help out in education. She mentioned something about the tragedy of people ending their own lives and poverty and Gormley being Gormley, was very concerned with tragic human conditions and asked her to write down her contact so he can try his best to help out in the future.
21. My afterthoughts
1. Why are we still wearing clothes, if clothes is not a necessity (excluding extreme weather conditions)? Have we not enough wisdom and confidence to acknowledge that the human body is perfect as it is?
A few answers:
As more and more people acknowledge the fact that we are facing limited resource (unless we suddenly get Superman's stone, whatever the name of it was) and with the 'Death of God' (no, I haven't read the book yet, apologies to Nietzsche fans).
The continuous rise in individuality and equality would ultimately mean that resources will be redistributed evenly. And if that happens, 'we will have to learn how to live barely and that will be difficult.'
But I honestly do not see the logic behind wearing clothes if it is of no necessity to our comforts (excluding extreme conditions) and is simply a cultural trait. People may begin to say, so what, after clothes, we start not living in houses, start bartering, is that not a going back in civilisation?
I think the phrase 'development', 'progress', 'civilisation' is waiting for a brand new interpretation that will lead us to a society that is created for the betterment of humanity and the space the humanity occupies.
2.Which is more likely to bring human civilisation to its knees? Continue war and exploitation of resources or stop wearing clothes?
3. Western ideology are turned more outwards while Eastern ideology is turned more inwards.
In the case of the Greeks, the looked outwardly for a perfect condition and debated that humans are continuing to strive for that perfection of beauty that lay somewhere hidden (i.e. there exists a model of a perfect chair somewhere in the cosmos and we humans are constantly refining our understand and skills to create that perfect chair).
The Jews carried on this belief with perfect truth and beauty embodied in a single all knowing God. His teachings then was manifested on earth through the Christians with Jesus Christ to emphasis the longing of the suffering humanity to seek faith, hope and love through a perfect human being. Colonisation was a belief in an outwardly better world beyond the horizon, the urge to discover new lands, collect exotic items, explore in the final frontiers was conscious in the minds of the west. Their believe in freedom, equality and liberty to all was to be done through the mass movement with big outward articulations. (i.e. French Rev., Marxism, Martin Luther King Junior)
The Eastern ideology ever since the beginning of Chinese civilisation has continued to look at the human condition more inwardly. Although the maps of China expanded and contracted, it was mostly within similar boundaries. Pioneers who traveled beyond the boundaries of China had little intention to colonise other countries as the orients saw themselves to be at the centre of their world already. Philosophers such as Confucius and Buddha gave advices and wisdom but did not ask their disciples to spread the good news as far as the sea can reach. They emphasis on the inward understanding and pursuit for spiritual truth through looking into oneself and in harmony with one's surrounding. The struggles of Chinese dynasties has also always been turned inward with the similar races attacking each other. Little was their interest in engaging with the others (with the small exception of the Mongols who were essentially non-Han Chinese race).
The dichotomy of the East and West may be perhaps because of the fertility of the land and resource of the East (at least in the emperor's eyes), enabling it to be sustainable on its own and not push for surplus elsewhere. [I shall not venture further in this topic, but a study into the different way Western and Eastern artist regards themselves in relation to their society may also shed some light on this issue].
Gormley also noted that the Western psyche is very used to linear development, while the East is more about writing a more stable circle. And it's about time our civilisation try to figure out a balance between the two before it's too late.
4. We are so familiar with our own body and relation to another that we forget about its possibilities and are trapped within our own assumed and defined limits. Gormley's piece enable us to see the limitations of our body in order so we can bare this in mind when we explore new ways of interpreting our body in relation to the space around us.
5. The marble tower of artist must come down to meet the mass and be at harmony with the mass. For this, not belittling artist, but artist must be humble and non-self centered if he/she is addressing the universal human conditions which looks at what makes us similar rather than focusing on the the idiosyncratic individual.
6. Ah, the irony of me using the internet to talk about space, time and memory of a site specific work. And perhaps the final frontier that has never ending resource is the internet?
7. Antony Gormley just become my third favourite non-architectural aritst, after Mark Rothko and Oscar Oiwa. And followed by Anish Kappor and JMW Turner.
8. Gormley is planning a work in Hong Kong!!!
The increasingly abandoning garage in front of the old Star Ferry pier. We should thank our government for taking the pier down and reclaiming the land. Otherwise, Gormley may have to find a more... remote place for his project.
9. 'Art is there to measure what we have lost to modernisation' - Fram Kitagawa
10. 'Art is using the limited to talk about the unlimited' - Alexander Hui Yat Chuen
Disclaimer
Before putting this on the blog, I seriously thought about keeping the article to myself and share it amongst my close friends. But if I only occupy a finite amount of space and time, perhaps more interesting discussions can come about if I made this open to the public.
I hope the owners of the photos which I randomly pulled from the internet will forgive me for not asking for permission and accept the humbleness of all human beings in the scale of cosmic relationship.
And if I have in any way offended any individual in this blog entry.
I apologies for my ignorance,'we all live on the other side of the visible' afterall.
Antony Gormely official website
http://www.antonygormley.com/
Wish to share my notes of Antony Gormley's talk. He shifted from one topic to another quite rapidly, so I added the title and numbering to make it easier for the reader.
If his ideas are in anyway belittled or misinterpreted, that is entirely my fault and I would like to apologise in advance.
The Body as Workshop - A talk by Antony Gormley
1. Seeing the city of Hong Kong
Before digging into anything about his artwork or his concepts. His first comment was how the typography of Hong Kong amazed him. He in particular could not forget about how the low hanging clouds were all over the city.
The slow ferry across the sea made him feel like going back in time to an age when the industrial revolution seemed to have just started and technology was still timidly experimenting. The dialogue between human made things and the elements, the urban environment, the close connection of earth and sea, the sky and the changing qualities of light all left a big impression to his short visit.
2. What is the role of art?
If we acknowledge the fact that the world is not limitless like before. Then human as a species has a big responsibility ahead of us. If the great human project is to carry on, we have to ask ourselves whether we are moving towards self-destruction.
For people who thought that the centre of the world was their own island or territory, what was going through the person's mind who cut the last tree down in Easter Island?
If we take art as a place for potential transformation,
Can art address such big human questions?
Can art address our value system which places emphasis on surplus?
Gormley grew up in UK, 'was a good hippy' (as he called himself) and went to India for 3 years learning about Buddhism and Hindu culture, he then later paid a visit to Kimberly, Australia. It was during his visits, that he saw a lot of work of art that were more than 1700 years old. It was before Aboriginal painting and it was art before any specialisation or placed in any framework, before art was in surplus culture.
For them, survival and making of art was fundamentally intertwined.
If such possibilities existed before, will art become the central, basic human expression again?
3. The un-institutionalisation of art
The other issue is that of art becoming institutionalised. Can art return to being part of everyday life?
After the end of Impression, art went into a period of question the syntax and framework of the Impressionist and began to address more the viewer instead of institutions.
What followed were big transfers in the western canon of art where art lost its cultural, religious roots and began to touch the previously unknown spiritual realm.
Ever since, the pre-knowledge of iconography seizes to be of necessity. Art became to be open to interpretation. Artists uses the space of art as resounding board for our own existence. In a globalised world, we are our own author of our identity.
Can art also do so to assert our individual identity and individual spirituality?
[Slide show begins]
4. 'Event Horizon', 2010, New York
Our human condition in urban living can perhaps be best illustrated in Manhattan as the epitome of modernism. If over 50% of us relate to the urban grid and experience human life not through primary sources (sun light, wind, free flowing water) and rather look into video, monitor, window, what does that say about our human condition?
Gormley's project in Manhattan involved placing 31 sculptures in the area. 4 on the ground and 27 almost on the perceptual edge of the skyline. As these figures begin to inhibit the real world they act as a relational view for its surrounding. The gaze into the horizon that the embedded homogeneous of the city cannot see.
The body, in a sense is something that is temporarily occupying a certain space. It is a temporary aggregation of cells where we look at. When we observe, we observe subjectively from ourselves to others and relate things through our body senses. The idea of 'you' or 'the others' is only possible with subjectivity. If truth is found through the usages of our senses, then we all live on the other side of the visible.
Then how do we begin to acknowledge the perception of our space if it is so often limited by our skin or edge or defined category.
5. 'Sultra', Sadler's Wall, London, 2008
Gormley worked with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and 16 Monks from the Shaolin temple to do a play in London.If we were to test the limit of the human bodies, we can also test the edges of our body in relationship to the space that our body occupies, which in this case were metal containers.
If we go back to basics. We have the human body, then clothes to fit that space. Then comes the bed, the room, the cubicle city space, then a residential building, then blocks of towering estates....
What are the potentials or limits of the human body under such a condition?
6. 'Space Station', Hayward Gallery London, 2007
The 'Space Station' is utilising and exploring the space within the gallery by making the piece as large as possible (fire regulations permitting). It is in fact a compressed fetus form with an opening under the elbow where people can crawl in and experience the same fetus form but in negative space and in a much smaller scale.Through the action of crawling into that space, the viewer who enjoyed free mobility is devoid of his/her original freedom and experiences what the artwork 'Space Station' is experiencing within the gallery space.
7. 'Drawn', Hoxton Square, London 2000
In all these human figure piece, Gormley used his own body as the cast for the figures. The making involves him sitting still and silence and accept the condition of inertia of a sculpture.The indexical body occupies a space at a certain time and it is the history of its own making. The body is not idealised and contextualised with the sense of architecture (that is, the boundaries of the gallery space). The body and elongated arms stretches out to sense the wall space and to sense the second space (negative space within architecture).
To him, good sculpture uses and emphasizes what it lacks. Rather than having the artwork occupy the privileged space, the viewer is in the prestige position and becomes the active, the moving, the thinking through the realisation of his / her own freedom.
If up, down, left, right, front and back are all subjective perspectives that we push to the space with our bodies. Then perhaps there is none better than directly addressing its limitations in order to make us revalue the space that we inhibit in. If art has moved beyond the duties of science, religion, mythology, then perhaps it is to address our body once again.
For nothing is fixed, everything is influx. The universe is continuously expanding, to fix sculpture at a defining space. The viewer becomes liberated.
8. '2008 pavilion for the Kivik Art Centre in Österlen', Sweden, 2008
In this lesser iconic Gormley piece, he collaborated with David Chipperfield Architects to create a 3 boxes with the same volume. The base is a tomb like experience as the viewer enters, then a stairs leads him/her to the second level where light and opening is contrasted with the ground floor experience to highlight the sensual body experience and how our body quickly adapts to different conditions of space. The third level is a tower like structure with opening to the top. Its vertical elements readdress the horizontal opening of the second level. Again to heighten and remind us of how our body senses the surrounding.9. I shall skip the two piece 'Full Bowl' and 'Floor' because the lack of photo for these two piece diminishes the power to evoke thoughts.
10.
In the vast Salt Lake system that has been around for million of years. Gormley scattered 51 sculptural pieces over a 10 square mile area. Place the sculptures on such vast landscape. The viewer is reassured of his own freedom of movement. The differen bodies hang like whiskers, almost leaning beyond the point of deception. As the viewer walks around the lake. The heat, the crunching sound of salt and the vastness reminds him/her of his own space and solidarity on this planet.
Our dependency of the urban grid may mean that our profound relationship with time, space and memory may be lost.11. 'Another Place', Crosby Beach, Liverpool, 2007.
In the Liverpool piece, besides the layer of meanings already mentioned above, the tides come in and come out and temporary erase the existence of the sculpture. Calling on to the viewer to remember the piece's space and time.[My immediate thoughts: Is human not the same? Isn't the existence of our temporary life nothing but a memory of our occupation in a space and time. And this 'fact' is made concrete by others who are constantly viewing us. So what happens when technology enables us to create another virtual timeless self? And when all information can be uninterrupted recorded into virtual space, how then do we address the elemental space of pure senses?]
12. Feeling Material XIII, 2004
Gormley is exploring energy flow through this piece by using one line. What happen is the that line hits the wall, come back, orbits around in the middle and goes out to hit the wall and moves back to orbits again.[My immediate thoughts: if the way humans assert our body in relation to our surrounding. Then how do we both philosophical and physically relate our body with the universe which is continuously expanding? It really fascinated me then, how the universe becomes the universe with all these chaotic energy flows creating a harmonious balance for humans to inhibit in. Should we not treasure and respect this miraculous balance?]
13. 'Blind Light', Hayward Gallery, London, 2007
Using a room of 10 metre square. The room is filled with 1/3 part of cloud. As the visitor enters, he is disoriented and loses all sensory anchor points. The disorientation draws consciousness to the viewer's body. This room helps create a no environment, without any subjectivity.
[My personal experience of my visit to the Hayward Gallery in 2007 was surreal. One can hear muffled voices in the distance, but only realise another person when he/she is about 1 metre from myself. Hence you always here 'Oops, i'm sorry', 'Oh, you are there' muffles in the distance and you can barely tell whether that distance is near or far. One becomes extremely aware of one's own body as one really has to concentrate and trust one's own senses in order not to bump into another person or to the glass walls surrounding the space]
14. 'One Another', The Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London, 2009.
The fourth plinth was originally planned for William IV, but it remained empty for a very long time until somebody came up with the bright idea to occupy it with contemporary art. Ever since, artists have used it to showcase their artworks temporarily.In this 'experiment' (as Gormley terms the project) Gormley invited the 2400 members of the general public to participate in his artwork. Interesting participants would invite themselves through web entry / leaflets and they were selected by random to go on the plinth.
Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, different people would have the freedom to take the vantage point and do whatever they wish to do on the platform. Gormley is essnetially using the viewer to be viewed.
and there were of course... the usual expected performers.... but to this Gormley replied that nakedness is not necessarily a problem or a shallow show, as the globe becomes warmer, we may become more tropical.
15. 'Allotment II', Hayward Gallery, London, 1996.
If we return back to the question of what role artworks plays in the scheme of humanity. Can art seize to analyse its own internal framework and return us to our own vitality and our own consciousness? By placing body on the extreme conditions, on top of buildings at the very edge, perhaps we can then become more aware of our own consciousness as we as viewers relate ourselves with the other human scale and put that in context within the urban grid.
16. Angel of the North, Gateshead England, 1994.
This sculpture is a totemic, iconic piece and it marks the end of the industrial age. It address the change from industrial to information. It sits on top of ore deposits, in particularly, coal which sparked off the industrial revolution that have changed fundamentally how humans interact with his/her surroundings.Gormley interesting noted that it is an angel that will never fly and is not invisible.
[My immediate thoughts: Humanity must rely on his own consciousness and own understanding to make his living space a better space and without reliance on any all knowing god]
17. 'Breathing Room', White Cube, London 2010
In day time, visitors enter and walk around the space experiencing with the many possibilities of how our bodies relate to space. Viewers than look at other viewers to make association of their own in relation to other viewers and the space around them.The interesting thing about this piece is that it absorbs sunlight in the morning and begins to glow in the dark. Is this then a drawing, an architecture, a fabricated reality to regulate our bodies to fit certain spaces, or, as city dwellers, are we entitled to more choices?
18. Ending commentsGormley felt that it is essential for humans to link ourselves with the landscape and hold on to memory in that sense. The land, time, space we occupy and space that others occupy.
We know now for certain the limitations of human civilisation. The idea of the other horizon is better is but a phony concept where colonisation of other planets is nothing but a lavish and extravagant dream that we are not capable of before our own planet runs out of resources.
As technology begins to divide us more and more from the elemental world we have to refocus our attention on the close ties we have to our land and hold on dearly to these elemental conditions that all species except humans have learnt to embrace and respect.
If there is nothing more, nothing better out there, then how do we face reality? Or perhaps there is nothing out there, but there is something right here, within us that we are capable of utilising to make this world a better place for everyone.
The final sentence he said in the lecture was this.
'We have to learn how to live barely and that will be difficult.'
19. My casual chats with Gormley after the talk.
I love how my t-shirt says 'I see dead people', can read that in context with Gormley's work =)[G:Gormely, Juanjaime:J]
a). My first question was a bit dumb and self-explanatory. But I was very nervous talking for the first time to my idol. I blurted the question out without thinking through it carefully:
J: Your last sentence in the lecture was that 'We have to learn how to live barely and that will be difficult.' With all the sculptures you have produced, they try to explore body and its relation to space. But we are restricted forever in our own bodies. I suppose that is our limitation. But again, with our bodies we have created endless potentials.
So do you think the human species has more limitations or more endless potentials?
G: (smiles), I myself have not found the answer to this question.
b). I told him I understood EXACTLY what he meant by space, time, landscape and memory because I was engaged in the Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial. And he fondly recalled the experience of him finishing the work and lying down on the ground with an old lady who once lived in the house. Gormley thought that the project was already alright when she gave him a gentle grin as they look up into the 'Another Singularity' piece hanging in mid air of the house.
'Another Singularity', Echigo Tsumari Triennial 2009, Japan. 2009.
I then told him I was involved in the Setouchi International Art Festival 2010 and was surprised to learn that he didn't know about the project!c). Then I made another stupid comment (I was really really very nervous, but eager to engage with such a humble but intellectual individual) when one of the audience asked him about public projects. He said that he planned to create a 120 metre transparent human figure which allowed the general public to walk through the legs and upwards through the body, into the brain and down the other side. It would be a double helix and placed near the Olympic arena.
I said this was very politically charged as you are placing the piece in Beijing Olympics, so it is an critique on Communism with one human figure controlling the flow of tragic and space allowed for the general mass. And he politely corrected me that it was the London Olympics 2012 and that it was based on the Tatlin model, which luckily, for me, still made references to the Marxist ideology.
Sigh, the embarrassment of one's ignorance and rushing to conclusions.
d). When conversing with Gormley, I was very excited because I first saw his piece the 'Blind Light' in Hayward Gallery, London. I was blown away by how there was no instrument of 'art' or 'art' related materials that we usually associate with. Just four walls of glass, some man made fog/cloud and room light. It made me greatly conscious of my immediate primary senses.
I told him bluntly that the 'Blind Light was his best piece if it tries to heighten our body senses while the other sculptural pieces were weaker. Although he very gentlemanly, kindly agreed with my comment.I would like to now, take back my comment.
After further understanding his pieces. I think 'Blind Light' enabled the viewer to heighten our own individual senses, but the power of relating to otherness and other space was more powerful in his signature sculptural pieces. Because it was the solitude which brought out the homogenous mass and asserted the mass with its individuality. While 'Blind Light' was more oriented inwards, the focus was on once individual experience through spaces.
20. Some interesting questions raised by other listeners.
Person 1, 'If your piece is based on the human body, then do you talk about the mind?'
G: ......(hesitates)....... yes, I also talk about the mind in my piece......
Person 2, 'In Hong Kong, we are desperately in need for good public art. You perhaps have seen and made good public art all over the world. We in Hong Kong have no resource and no support and artists are always limited and constrained by the authorities, what would be a good example of public art in UK? Perhaps the Angel of the North piece?'
G: No I would not say my piece is good in anyway. I am slightly embarrassed about the Angel of the North piece actually.
Most people, 'Hi, I am bla bla bla, I work in bla bla bla, here is my name card, it was an amazing show, very interesting, it would be lovely to see your piece in Hong Kong, I have seen your works here and there, thanks for a very interesting talk.......'
Hence I barely remembered their questions.
He did pay particular intense attention to a teacher who wanted to ask him to help out in education. She mentioned something about the tragedy of people ending their own lives and poverty and Gormley being Gormley, was very concerned with tragic human conditions and asked her to write down her contact so he can try his best to help out in the future.
21. My afterthoughts
1. Why are we still wearing clothes, if clothes is not a necessity (excluding extreme weather conditions)? Have we not enough wisdom and confidence to acknowledge that the human body is perfect as it is?
A few answers:
As more and more people acknowledge the fact that we are facing limited resource (unless we suddenly get Superman's stone, whatever the name of it was) and with the 'Death of God' (no, I haven't read the book yet, apologies to Nietzsche fans).
The continuous rise in individuality and equality would ultimately mean that resources will be redistributed evenly. And if that happens, 'we will have to learn how to live barely and that will be difficult.'
But I honestly do not see the logic behind wearing clothes if it is of no necessity to our comforts (excluding extreme conditions) and is simply a cultural trait. People may begin to say, so what, after clothes, we start not living in houses, start bartering, is that not a going back in civilisation?
I think the phrase 'development', 'progress', 'civilisation' is waiting for a brand new interpretation that will lead us to a society that is created for the betterment of humanity and the space the humanity occupies.
2.Which is more likely to bring human civilisation to its knees? Continue war and exploitation of resources or stop wearing clothes?
3. Western ideology are turned more outwards while Eastern ideology is turned more inwards.
In the case of the Greeks, the looked outwardly for a perfect condition and debated that humans are continuing to strive for that perfection of beauty that lay somewhere hidden (i.e. there exists a model of a perfect chair somewhere in the cosmos and we humans are constantly refining our understand and skills to create that perfect chair).
The Jews carried on this belief with perfect truth and beauty embodied in a single all knowing God. His teachings then was manifested on earth through the Christians with Jesus Christ to emphasis the longing of the suffering humanity to seek faith, hope and love through a perfect human being. Colonisation was a belief in an outwardly better world beyond the horizon, the urge to discover new lands, collect exotic items, explore in the final frontiers was conscious in the minds of the west. Their believe in freedom, equality and liberty to all was to be done through the mass movement with big outward articulations. (i.e. French Rev., Marxism, Martin Luther King Junior)
The Eastern ideology ever since the beginning of Chinese civilisation has continued to look at the human condition more inwardly. Although the maps of China expanded and contracted, it was mostly within similar boundaries. Pioneers who traveled beyond the boundaries of China had little intention to colonise other countries as the orients saw themselves to be at the centre of their world already. Philosophers such as Confucius and Buddha gave advices and wisdom but did not ask their disciples to spread the good news as far as the sea can reach. They emphasis on the inward understanding and pursuit for spiritual truth through looking into oneself and in harmony with one's surrounding. The struggles of Chinese dynasties has also always been turned inward with the similar races attacking each other. Little was their interest in engaging with the others (with the small exception of the Mongols who were essentially non-Han Chinese race).
The dichotomy of the East and West may be perhaps because of the fertility of the land and resource of the East (at least in the emperor's eyes), enabling it to be sustainable on its own and not push for surplus elsewhere. [I shall not venture further in this topic, but a study into the different way Western and Eastern artist regards themselves in relation to their society may also shed some light on this issue].
Gormley also noted that the Western psyche is very used to linear development, while the East is more about writing a more stable circle. And it's about time our civilisation try to figure out a balance between the two before it's too late.
4. We are so familiar with our own body and relation to another that we forget about its possibilities and are trapped within our own assumed and defined limits. Gormley's piece enable us to see the limitations of our body in order so we can bare this in mind when we explore new ways of interpreting our body in relation to the space around us.
5. The marble tower of artist must come down to meet the mass and be at harmony with the mass. For this, not belittling artist, but artist must be humble and non-self centered if he/she is addressing the universal human conditions which looks at what makes us similar rather than focusing on the the idiosyncratic individual.
6. Ah, the irony of me using the internet to talk about space, time and memory of a site specific work. And perhaps the final frontier that has never ending resource is the internet?
7. Antony Gormley just become my third favourite non-architectural aritst, after Mark Rothko and Oscar Oiwa. And followed by Anish Kappor and JMW Turner.
8. Gormley is planning a work in Hong Kong!!!
The increasingly abandoning garage in front of the old Star Ferry pier. We should thank our government for taking the pier down and reclaiming the land. Otherwise, Gormley may have to find a more... remote place for his project.
9. 'Art is there to measure what we have lost to modernisation' - Fram Kitagawa
10. 'Art is using the limited to talk about the unlimited' - Alexander Hui Yat Chuen
Disclaimer
Before putting this on the blog, I seriously thought about keeping the article to myself and share it amongst my close friends. But if I only occupy a finite amount of space and time, perhaps more interesting discussions can come about if I made this open to the public.
I hope the owners of the photos which I randomly pulled from the internet will forgive me for not asking for permission and accept the humbleness of all human beings in the scale of cosmic relationship.
And if I have in any way offended any individual in this blog entry.
I apologies for my ignorance,'we all live on the other side of the visible' afterall.
Antony Gormely official website
http://www.antonygormley.com/
Monday, 16 March 2009
Why there will never be total equality between men and women
I'll keep this short and concise. The day we might be able to attain equality is when:
1) Men can get pregnant.
2) Men are not allowed to be topless / when women are allowed to be topless in public.
3) Women will open the door for men and it does not appear strange. (and the whole idea of being a gentleman for the ladies is discarded)
On a side note, you know how you always get people saying oh American English is for dumb people and they use simple words and phrases. That thought just came to me and then I realised why. Because traditionally, it began as a cultural melting pot. And you have people from all over the world with English as their second language. So the natural evolution of language will find its course along the most simplistic means. If you compare that to the evolution of British English which is used by native speakers for thousands of years, of course it has a much more complex system.
I bet somebody has found that out already, just that I've never read that article yet.
1) Men can get pregnant.
2) Men are not allowed to be topless / when women are allowed to be topless in public.
3) Women will open the door for men and it does not appear strange. (and the whole idea of being a gentleman for the ladies is discarded)
On a side note, you know how you always get people saying oh American English is for dumb people and they use simple words and phrases. That thought just came to me and then I realised why. Because traditionally, it began as a cultural melting pot. And you have people from all over the world with English as their second language. So the natural evolution of language will find its course along the most simplistic means. If you compare that to the evolution of British English which is used by native speakers for thousands of years, of course it has a much more complex system.
I bet somebody has found that out already, just that I've never read that article yet.
Why do people visit museums (6 theories)
Why museums have become our home from home
People are visiting our galleries and museums at a startling rate. Is it the cafés, the absence of swearing... maybe even the art?
Why do people go to museums? It's not easy to find out. Frankly, there's a lot of waffle. I've spent the past week in them, trotting up to people and saying: “According to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, museum and gallery attendance is rocketing in Britain. Why are you here?” Everybody is polite, because people always are in museums and galleries, but nobody really knows. “I was interested in the exhibition,” they might say, not all that helpfully. Or, “the kids like it”. It's hard, at first, to see the thread. People go for all sorts of reasons. Or so they think.
A friend and I, for example, once went to the Saatchi Gallery, drunk, to understand how our other friend Jez had ruined his shoes. He'd been a few weeks before, also drunk, and he'd blundered into Richard Wilson's 20:50. Do you know it? Big room full of reflective engine oil, with a walkway down the middle. Totally disorientating. Amazing. Jez had flailed around, bewildered, and scooped the stuff on to his feet. Art all over his Nikes. We went to see if we could replicate it. It sounded, like, mind-expanding. Hey, we were students.
It turns out that this was actually a very old-fashioned way to behave. According to the various histories of museums into which I have delved (Giles Waterfield's Palaces of Art is particularly good on this), I was buying into the German Romantic idea of the museum as a temple, in which the visitor “should enjoy a quasi-mystical experience”. Sounds about right. None of the many museum-goers to whom I spoke in the past week was doing anything like this. So, here's theory No1: museum numbers are up, because, quite suddenly, museums aren't much like museums.
I've a few theories to come, but this one makes a lot of sense. It certainly does in Liverpool, which, as 2008's EU Capital of Culture, saw museum and gallery attendances soar by something like 400 per cent.
“We decided to take a real look at the audience,” says Phil Redmond, who was the creative director of Liverpool 2008 and also, just so it clicks, the guy who created Grange Hill, Brookside and Hollyoaks. He says: “If you have people who are used to bright and breezy entertainment with TV, you have to make the venues a lot more bright and breezy too. You make them more kid-friendly. Have a kid zone. Education workshops. Follow the dinosaur prints.”
Redmond adds that you need to balance this with the ability for people to sit quietly in museums and reflect, and that some things should be family-friendly and some perhaps not. It's notable, though, that when it comes to attendances, family-friendly is what works. Consider: Tate Liverpool (bright, breezy) up 67 per cent; Merseyside Maritime Museum (likewise) up 69 per cent; The Lady Lever Art Gallery (austere, heavyweight) down 16 per cent.
You could call theory No1 the “dumbing down” theory, only none of the punters I met was dumb. There was Sean Barron, the bar manager from Brighton, who was up to see the Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery and was “particularly pleased to see Picasso's interpretation of the Las Meninas” because he liked the Velásquez original. There was the Carter/House/Downing family from Woking and surrounds, all three generations, who were in the British Museum only because little Abigail, 8, was doing a project on the Egyptians, but knew their stuff about the mummies and had been to St Albans the other week when she was studying the Romans.
Quite un-dumb, in fact, which allows me to sluice neatly into theory No2, as expounded by the likes of Melvyn Bragg, the broadcaster, and Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum. This is what you might call the “dumbing up” theory. In other words, museum numbers are up because people are getting cleverer.
There's a lot to be said for this. This is the Britain where everybody loves watching Stephen Fry on QI, and more people listen to Radio 4 than Radio 1. “There is a huge desire,” MacGregor says, “to understand and to address complexity, and to spend the time that it takes to do so.” For the museum's Babylon exhibition (which ends tomorrow), the average dwell-time was an hour. For Hadrian, it was an hour and 40 minutes. For the current exhibition on Shah Abbas, it is about an hour and a half. It is not true, MacGregor says, that we live in an era of dropping attention spans.
Nicholas Kenyon, formerly the controller of the Proms and now managing director of the Barbican, reckons that there is something very British about the pace of a museum: “There is something in our culture that is free-flowing. People can take as long as they want.” He notices it particularly, he says, coming from a background in the performing arts.
The British Museum, perhaps, sits bang in the centre of competing notions about what a museum should be. There are cafés and a restaurant, and it's certainly family-friendly. But there's a dose of mystery here, too. In Liverpool, Redmond insisted that the whole point of collections is that “they are there to contextualise our past”. We have to view them, he said, “in terms of the stories they can tell. People often think that collections themselves are the point, and don't need to be explained.”
This sits uneasily with more oldfashioned notions of custodianship, which many still feel is the purpose of a museum. Still, he has a point. I thought of his words when I went through to the Duveen Gallery to see the Elgin Marbles and hunted in vain for a sign to told me that, yes, these actually were the Elgin Marbles.
I walked through the V&A on a Monday afternoon, and in some sections - South- East Asia, Japan, European Textiles - I didn't see a soul. This is your proper quasi-mystical museum experience. Take your German Romantic friends, if you have any. They'll love it. To stand alone in half-light on a polished floor, staring up at a 16thcentury tapestry of men with crazy beards, lambs in armour and a soldier shaking the hand of a bear is a bewildering experience. You can feel the ticking in your head. It's not what crowds want. The V&A was down last year by 15 per cent - although perhaps that's because they did so well the year before with the Kylie exhibition.
You might be alone, but you don't worry about getting mugged. The V&A says that it rarely has more than a couple of security incidents a year. The National Gallery is bang on Trafalgar Square, but even they need to kick people out only every couple of months. That brings me to theory No3. Museum numbers are up because museums are safe. “They attract only a certain type of person, let's face it,” says Margaret Child, 79, from Essex, visiting the National with a group of older ladies and then heading off to see Sunset Boulevard: “In any museum, do you ever hear the F-word? You hear it up and down every high street. In the cafeteria, all ages, all denominations, no one swearing.”
I meet Debbie Norton and Sarah O'Connell, both from Haringey, in the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, which is part museum, part playground. They are with their respective two-year-olds, Jessie and Leila. “It's a safe space to play,” Debbie says: “We can have something to eat, they can entertain themselves.” Sarah says that the kids can run off and she can wait a minute or two before having to chase them. “It's also safe as in health-and-safety safe,” she says. In Tate Modern, I was struck by the number of disabled folk in buggies.
Aside from me and my drunk friends, people really do behave themselves in museums. Redmond jokes that this is because there is “more security per square metre than anywhere else on Earth”. He agrees, though, that there is something about museums that people respect. Neil MacGregor , at the British Museum, agrees. “The Great Court has become London's village green,” he says. “It's where you bring the children. It's where you meet a friend. It's the space that belongs to everyone.”
Free entry has a huge amount to do with this. That should probably be Theory 4, the credit-crunch theory. People are going to museums because museums are free. Most of Britain's biggest museums have been free for years, but, as MacGregor puts it, it's the rhetoric of free admission since 2001 that has had an impact, as much as the fact. When the Tory culture spokesman, Hugo Swire, spoke of reintroducing entry charges in 2007 there was national uproar, and a few months later David Cameron sacked him.
When I asked Redmond his best tip for getting people into museums, he snorted and said “create a recession”. Everybody going to a museum approves of free entry, even if (and this is the crucial bit) they are then paying extra to see a special exhibition, such as Picasso at the National (£12.50) or Shah Abbas at the British Museum (£12). Free admission to museums has given the public a sense of ownership over them. This ties into Theory1, and the way that many museums no longer feel like somebody else's country house. They feel like they are ours.
And so to Theory5. They're coming thick and fast now, these theories, but this, I think, is my favourite. People are flocking to museums because museums are the best public space we have. Britain is too secular to value its churches and too divorced from local governance to give a damn about town halls. Schools are not the social hubs they once were. Museums fill a gap.
All the other theories, I reckon, trickle into this one. Museums are as much about activities, these days, as collections. Debates at the British Museum. DJs at the Royal Academy. The Museum of Childhood, as discussed, being used as a playpark. In East London, galleries stay open late every Thursday, as nightlife. The V&A does the same on Fridays. Cafés. Restaurants. Places to go.
The National Wool Museum in Wales had 24,344 visitors last year. That's a bad Saturday morning for the British Museum, but it is 11 per cent up on last year. Ann Whittall, the museum's manager, tells me why. “We've got a very successful family trail,” she says. “The Woolly Trail. It helps families to understand what they are seeing. It's interactive and you get thread at the end. We've a café that sells local produce, and mills. We're 16 miles north of Carmarthen, so in the winter we rely on our local audience. We have a carol concert and a craft fair at Christmas time. We have a knitting club, and nursery groups meet here, too.”
That's almost every theory, in a single tiny package. See how they all work? Only the German Romantics need feel left out.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article5901145.ece
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Stokes Croft in Bristol
Stoke Croft is like no other places. It is special, a hotbed of the creativity that abounds Bristol. The relative "poverty" of Stoke Croft meant that its character has remained unique, and has not been swallowed up by the forces of mass media and consumerism.
Here's two paintings I pulled from the items sold there.
...imagine that...
Dims: 100w x 81h
Aerosol Stencil on canvas discarded from Jamaica Street Artist Studios.
Artist: Deborah Weymont
...imagine that...Dims: 100w x 81h
Aerosol Stencil on canvas discarded from Jamaica Street Artist Studios.
Artist: Deborah Weymont
SOLD: £85
I don't think John Lennon saw that coming....
Helicopters over China
Dims: 73w x 45h
Aerosol and Paint over Other Artist's Work
Artist: Kit Merryfield
SOLD: £44
Western army helicopters over Chinese landscape painting.... hmmmm.. I bet they are just doing humanitarian aids.
Sunday, 22 February 2009
A quote on skyscrapers of our generation
"Designs that are vast only by their dimensions, are always the sign of a common and low imagination. No work of art can be great but as it deceive, to be otherwise is the prerogative of nature only"
-------- Humphry Repton (1752-1818) quoting Edmund Burke
In plain simple English:
Designs that are merely big in scale are a sign of lack of imagination. All artworks that are great are artificial. Only nature is allowed to do artworks that are natural.
That was written in the 18th century, and it refers to British landscape designing, so I guess we have moved ahead of their times and realised that this statement is faulty?
And we should continue to race against each other to build the tallest, highest, most expensive building in the world to prove that we have great engineering capabilities and inventiveness.
While the electronics world are coming out with products that are becoming more compact with more functions and memory; buildings are becoming bigger, taller, grander.
Well, I guess they are the same afterall, they are simply consumer products of our age, with price tags stuck on them to see who becomes the most famous brand as well as help consumers make 2nd hand profit on ebay or in the real estate market.
-------- Humphry Repton (1752-1818) quoting Edmund Burke
In plain simple English:
Designs that are merely big in scale are a sign of lack of imagination. All artworks that are great are artificial. Only nature is allowed to do artworks that are natural.
That was written in the 18th century, and it refers to British landscape designing, so I guess we have moved ahead of their times and realised that this statement is faulty?
And we should continue to race against each other to build the tallest, highest, most expensive building in the world to prove that we have great engineering capabilities and inventiveness.
While the electronics world are coming out with products that are becoming more compact with more functions and memory; buildings are becoming bigger, taller, grander.
Well, I guess they are the same afterall, they are simply consumer products of our age, with price tags stuck on them to see who becomes the most famous brand as well as help consumers make 2nd hand profit on ebay or in the real estate market.
Friday, 20 February 2009
Sudden thought on the difference between English and Chinese language.
A sudden thought came to me while i was clicking through the internet and sauntering in my studies.
I just thought about capital letters in the English language and how Chinese does not have capital letters.
Is there a paper about this difference and what that means to English and Chinese as a language and how people are influenced or not influenced by that?
I just thought about capital letters in the English language and how Chinese does not have capital letters.
Is there a paper about this difference and what that means to English and Chinese as a language and how people are influenced or not influenced by that?
The beauty of chance reflections that city dwellers perhaps lack there of
'if a man was to take notice of the reflections that came into his mind on a sudden, as he was walking in the fields or sauntering in his study, there might be several of them perhaps as good as his most deliberate thoughts'
-----Alexander Pope, English philosopher
-----Alexander Pope, English philosopher
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Chip Tsao (陶傑) compares HK students abroad in UK and HK local students
http://hk-magazine.com/feature/vote-your-feet
For me it was very uninspirational, condescending and very generalised.
But perhaps I should learn more how the HK government uses its money on subsidising students to go abroad and how it uses its money to do education reform in HK....
But Mr. Tsao who claims to be The number one scholar in Hong Kong (香港第一才子) should know that not all things are skewed to one side.
1) “patriotic education” - go to any country and tell them that learning one country's national anthem and mandatory hoisting one's national flag is an ill founded idea and see what they say to you.
2) Would the Labour government in UK or the Democrats in US educate their children about the corruption of their own party and reveal all the dark secrets behind the scene?
NO.
Why do we know about that then?
Because they have different ruling parties who know how to play politics to reveal that to the wider public. China has one and only one ruling party, why would it let you dig up its dark secrets?
Would you dig up your own dark secrets Mr. Tsao? Or does paparazzi generally dig it out for you?
So there is nothing wrong with not including “Mao: The Unknown Story” by Jung Chang in their high school education, it's the political, social system of China that is different if you want to be precise.
3) Lan Kwai Fong is crowded with foreign students and they can tell 'a martini from a Babycham' because their studying environment provides them with the skills to do so.
When have you seen a foreigner study in local high schools?
And when have you seen local HK students integrating foreigners into their circle of friends like what Singaporeans do?
It's because UK boosts cross cultural exchange and when you are a kid studying abroad, you try your very best to get to know other cultures so you won't stick out like an odd ball.
The so-called 'government official’s children' (which I am not one of) can tell the difference between one drink from another because they can integrate with other cultures easier than, say foreigners can to HK culture.
The root of all evils is the dominant language called English, which is taking over the world.
Why don't you ask a foreigner whether they can tell one dim sum from another?
4) Modern education basically started as a result of Industrial Revolution, there were too many kids in the filthy dirty streets, and intellectuals saw fit to house them in proper institutions so they can becoming a functioning part of an element in an industrialised society. Now we have come a long way from that and the British have refined their model according to their own needs and wants because they have been the ruler of their country for the past centuries or so.
Hong Kong, being a British colony in the past, obviously created an education that was favourable to the British which meant that the education system would work as a factory to create a cream of society who would want to go to Britain for further education.
But Hong Kong have just took back our autonomy for 11 years and the government is struggling to come into terms with post colonialism and has failed to provided a successful education reform, and a lot of people has lost hope in that reform. It doesn't mean adopting or assimilating Chinese education into our system is not good. Look how prestigious Beijing University and Tsing Wah University is in the world.
So please stop being fearful of being patriotic and be proud of being a Chinese, because whether you like it or not. Hong Kong is going to become directly under Chinese rule in 2047. And the best is not to breed misunderstanding and mistrust between Mainland China and Hong Kong, but to actively engage in cultural exchange that is not only driven by economic forces, but through educational reforms.
If you don't want to be patriot about loving China, then don't.
But at least love Hong Kong and give suggestions on ways of improving local education instead of dreaming about the past. Rather, try and understand the past so you can try and predict the future.
For me it was very uninspirational, condescending and very generalised.
But perhaps I should learn more how the HK government uses its money on subsidising students to go abroad and how it uses its money to do education reform in HK....
But Mr. Tsao who claims to be The number one scholar in Hong Kong (香港第一才子) should know that not all things are skewed to one side.
1) “patriotic education” - go to any country and tell them that learning one country's national anthem and mandatory hoisting one's national flag is an ill founded idea and see what they say to you.
2) Would the Labour government in UK or the Democrats in US educate their children about the corruption of their own party and reveal all the dark secrets behind the scene?
NO.
Why do we know about that then?
Because they have different ruling parties who know how to play politics to reveal that to the wider public. China has one and only one ruling party, why would it let you dig up its dark secrets?
Would you dig up your own dark secrets Mr. Tsao? Or does paparazzi generally dig it out for you?
So there is nothing wrong with not including “Mao: The Unknown Story” by Jung Chang in their high school education, it's the political, social system of China that is different if you want to be precise.
3) Lan Kwai Fong is crowded with foreign students and they can tell 'a martini from a Babycham' because their studying environment provides them with the skills to do so.
When have you seen a foreigner study in local high schools?
And when have you seen local HK students integrating foreigners into their circle of friends like what Singaporeans do?
It's because UK boosts cross cultural exchange and when you are a kid studying abroad, you try your very best to get to know other cultures so you won't stick out like an odd ball.
The so-called 'government official’s children' (which I am not one of) can tell the difference between one drink from another because they can integrate with other cultures easier than, say foreigners can to HK culture.
The root of all evils is the dominant language called English, which is taking over the world.
Why don't you ask a foreigner whether they can tell one dim sum from another?
4) Modern education basically started as a result of Industrial Revolution, there were too many kids in the filthy dirty streets, and intellectuals saw fit to house them in proper institutions so they can becoming a functioning part of an element in an industrialised society. Now we have come a long way from that and the British have refined their model according to their own needs and wants because they have been the ruler of their country for the past centuries or so.
Hong Kong, being a British colony in the past, obviously created an education that was favourable to the British which meant that the education system would work as a factory to create a cream of society who would want to go to Britain for further education.
But Hong Kong have just took back our autonomy for 11 years and the government is struggling to come into terms with post colonialism and has failed to provided a successful education reform, and a lot of people has lost hope in that reform. It doesn't mean adopting or assimilating Chinese education into our system is not good. Look how prestigious Beijing University and Tsing Wah University is in the world.
So please stop being fearful of being patriotic and be proud of being a Chinese, because whether you like it or not. Hong Kong is going to become directly under Chinese rule in 2047. And the best is not to breed misunderstanding and mistrust between Mainland China and Hong Kong, but to actively engage in cultural exchange that is not only driven by economic forces, but through educational reforms.
If you don't want to be patriot about loving China, then don't.
But at least love Hong Kong and give suggestions on ways of improving local education instead of dreaming about the past. Rather, try and understand the past so you can try and predict the future.
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Banned kissing on no kissing zone in front of railway station
A ban on kissing in order to stop the delay of taxis from leaving the train station.
Are you kidding me!?!?
Are politicians stupid!?!?!
'O, I will definitely vote for Mr. Smart Guy. He did many things for the community but mainly I am voting for him because he helped pushed the legislation so we now have a ban on kissing outside Warrington Bank Quay railway station'
I can't even think of a comparison to this magnitude of stupidity..... wait you even have a passion police to monitor the couples?
Virgin Train's statement: At a time of recession, this is some much needed fun and it will not expand to other station.
Sure, I just lost my banking job and has a rent to pay and 2 kids to feed. I want to kiss my partner before I go hunt for a janitor job... oh wait, I can't kiss here... and I have to go to the kissing zone. Oh this is much needed fun and it soooooo brightens my life up.
Oh, I found a comparison. You ever had a romantic night out gone wrong, cause you made all the wrong moves and gave all the wrong signals?
Well, kissing is about romance, kissers aren't smokers, kissers can't have designated zones to make out. It totally kills the romance.
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