Saturday 26 October 2013

after Tim Minchin

an art nerd


(after Tim Minchin)

She doesn't have a problem with drugs
She just doesn't get them
She's fine that her mates have tattoos
But she thinks they'll regret them
She likes going to pubs
But she hates when the music's too loud
She tends not to go to rock concerts
Cos she can't stand the crowd
But all she's ever wanted to be
Is an art star on TATE or MoMA
But she knows that it's not f@cking likely
She's already turned fifty

She knows that she will always be
An art nerd
She'll keep doing art works the world will never see
And though they won't be seen
She'll just keep doing

But you see the problem is
She always dreamt of being an art star
But she learned classic instead of art trash
Which in the nineties didn't get you very far
So while all the other kids were learning Hirst and Emin
She was learning Rossetti and Vigeland
But she was convinced one day
She'd art world star
Be an icon for the disenfranchised art masses
And she shaved her head bald
And rebel against the state
But just for now that'd have to wait
Cos she's running late for her ballet classes

And she will always be
An art nerd
She'll keep doing her art that no one knows about
And though it sounds absurd
She'll just keep doing

But you see the problem is
There's not much depth in what she's doing
She's a victim of her upper middle class upbringing
So she can't paint about the shit or porno
And she's not spent a single night in prison
She has no issues with nutrition
She has no drinking problem
And no drug addiction
Unless you count the drugs they put in chicken
And marijuana always tends to make her cough

While her mates all go out late
Popping pills and having fun
She goes home and showers
And gets a good eight hours sleep
She gets her thrills from her morning run
And while her mates all go on dates
Taking speed and drinking gin tonic
She stays home and cooks
Curls up with a book
With the boy she's had since she was sixteen

She doesn't know the difference between metal and thrash
She couldn't tell you nothing about Axel and Slash
She likes Ben Folds to the Jackson Five
She knows all the words to Imagine
And though she wants to be all grungy and cool
She spent eleven years in a private school

So it don't matter how she tries
She cannot hide behind her rock 'n' roll lies
Cos you've either got it or you don't
You'll either rock it or you won't

She knows that her art lacks depth
But it just can't be helped
She has nothing interesting to say
So she doing her art about herself
But she doesn't want to seem self obsessed
So she writes about her art in third person
In an attempt to seem more rock 'n' roll
But she suspects it's not workin'
And deep in her heart she knows
That she'll never be Tracey Emin or Damien Hirst
And even if she was quite pretty
She knows that she
Will always be
An art nerd
She'll keep doing her art the world don't care about
And though it sounds absurd
She'll just keep doing

You can criticise her
But she won't care
Cos she wants to do her art, and she will never be deterred
But she'll always be a f@cked up little, try-hard, wannabe art nerd








Tim Minchin



Friday 25 October 2013

What Happened to Art Schools? An accidental manifesto.

What Happened to Art Schools? An accidental manifesto. 

http://thismoaning.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/what-happened-to-art-schools-accidental.html 

 

In his blog post "A sick landscape and black holes"[1] Steve Dutton worries about the purpose of art schools today. He's a contemporary of mine. We remember art schools when they were different.

Dutton relates a conversation with a student who has been censured for stating that landscape can be 'sick'. The student has presented for discussion the following quotation from Jean Baudrillard's 'Between Difference and Singularity':

We can oppose this paradigm of the totality of globalisation, where all differences must be integrated, but as differences, not singularities... you must create your own underground, because now there's no more underground, no more avant-garde, no more marginality. You can create your personal underground, your own black hole, your own singularity.

I once enjoyed Baudrillard, but I now find that the only way to take statements like this one is as a kind of language mash-up, for in what knowledge field can a 'singularities' and 'black holes' (from astrophysics) be close to a 'personal underground'? If these terms are here meant as metaphors, then they cannot be strong ones if the author ignores or misappropriates the ideas that gave them legitimacy in the first place.

Obviously, I've become more concerned with the sense of such writing than with its power of affect. I'm struggling to understand how creating something akin to a singularity or a black hole (in which all matter is torn apart) can counter the homogenisation of society hinted at by Baudrillard.

Are we to take Baudrillard's "marginality" and "underground-ness" to imply the enjoyment of a high degree of personal sovereignty? I sympathise with his tone of disenchantment when I remember that, today, extremes of personal sovereignty are tolerated especially when their outcomes can be monetised. It sometimes seems that we're driving towards a point where this, alone, legitimates artistic (and academic) pursuits.

But now I'm one move short of thinking that Baudrillard's invocation to 'create your personal underground' is not particularly courageous; because in places where the sharing of supposedly radical ideas brings no social or economic benefit (for example, away from the well-defended academic centres), the corollary of residing in a personal underground is alienation and poverty...

It feels as if the question "what happened to art schools?" has become "what has happened to me?" Is my scepticism around Baudrillard a sign that I have changed in ways which align me with today's economic orthodoxy?

The art school I remember was a micro-society in which quite extreme forms of personal sovereignty could be enjoyed without alienation, and without the necessity for economic success. Can I defend the art school of my youth, and the public funding of students' time there? To the last question I can say "yes". I'll go further:

Art school should be compulsory for everyone, because a period of exaggerated personal sovereignty in a self-regulating micro-society is a good thing. Everyone should go to art school for one year at state expense. Further to that, agents of the private art world should fund the continuing education of those they wish to prepare for commercial success.

This, I think, would rebalance in a widely acceptable way the costs and benefits of art in public and private realms, including allowing everyone to have a taste of their own personal underground.

[1] http://duttsville.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/sick-landscape-and-black-holes.html 

 

source: http://thismoaning.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/what-happened-to-art-schools-accidental.html 

 

 

 image from: http://news.discovery.com/space/super-civilizations-might-live-off-black-holes-110430.htm

Jean Baudrillard

'we can oppose this paradigm of the totality of globalisation, where all differences must be integrated, but as differences, not singularities...you must create your own underground, because now there's no more underground, no more avant-garde, no more marginality. You can create your personal underground, your own black hole, your own singularity'
(Jean Baudrillard)

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/between-difference-and-singularity/

we are all a little weird...


Tuesday 15 October 2013

'Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get' (Mark Twain)




'…I’m someone who’s mostly dead inside but still has a little hope for something extraordinary, which, as I said, is the worst breed of human, because it means I know everything is bullshit, but that I secretly hope for the day when it might not be'  (Nick Miller)

Sunday 13 October 2013

The dodgiest and the most multicultural area of Hamburg?

The dodgiest and the most multicultural area of Hamburg?
Yes, that's right.
compare and contrast...

original article: http://pora-valit.livejournal.com/1762732.html

Hamburg, Neuallermöhe aria








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read more: http://pora-valit.livejournal.com/1762732.html


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The Beatles in Hamburg: 50 years on from the band's first concert

Adrian Bridge goes on the trail of the Beatles, 50 years after the then unknown teenagers headed to the German port.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/artsandculture/7949677/The-Beatles-in-Hamburg-50-years-on-from-the-bands-first-concert.html