Twenty-five and a half degrees yesterday, the warmest day of the year. Today's not too shabby either, a positively Continental twenty-two degrees. In September. And not just September, so late-September that its basically pre-October.
Being not-so-much a glass-half-empty as a glass-in-shards-strewn-across-the-floor-like-the-shattered-remnants-of-the-dreams-you-once-held-dear type of guy, days like today only remind me of just how poo the rest of the year was. Remember the summer? No, neither do I.
Sadly complaining about the weather in Ireland is a futile as voting in a Presidential election. Luckily for Democracy I still plan on doing both.
Anyway, here's some pretty pictures of the sunset over Tipperary on Sunday evening, taken out the window of a rapidly-moving car on the M8. That's more information than you probably needed to know, but I'm still quite amazed that I found myself in Tipperary of a weekend, any weekend, let alone this weekend.
See, you don't need cataracts and an artificial lake to become an Impressionist, a nice fast stretch of motorway will do almost as well in a pinch.
In tonight's performance of The King's Breakfast, by A.A. Milne, the role of the King will be performed by Senator David Norris and The Cow by Dublin City Council. The voices of The Queen, Alderney and Dairymaid will all be sung by a Chorus consisting of other County Councils, and the Butter will be represented on stage at all times by a Presidential Nomination.
There will be no Intermission.
The King's Breakfast, by A.A. Milne
The King asked the Queen,
And the Queen asked the Dairymaid:
"Could we have some butter for the Royal slice of bread?"
The Queen asked the Dairymaid,
The Dairymaid said, "Certainly,
I'll go and tell the cow now
Before she goes to bed."
The Dairymaid she curtsied,
And went and told the Alderney:
"Don't forget the butter for the Royal slice of bread."
The Alderney said sleepily:
"You'd better tell His Majesty
That many people nowadays
Like marmalade instead."
The Dairymaid said, "Fancy!"
And went to Her Majesty.
She curtsied to the Queen, and she turned a little red:
"Excuse me, Your Majesty,
For taking of the liberty,
But marmalade is tasty,
If it's very thickly spread."
The Queen said "Oh!"
And went to His Majesty:
"Talking of the butter for the Royal slice of bread,
Many people think
That marmalade is nicer.
Would you like to try
A little marmalade instead?"
The King said, "Bother!"
And then he said, "Oh, dear me!"
The King sobbed, "Oh, deary me!"
And went back to bed.
"Nobody," he whimpered,
"Could call me a fussy man;
I only want a little bit of butter for my bread!"
The Queen said, "There, there!"
And went to the Dairymaid.
The Dairymaid said, "There, there!"
And went to the shed.
The cow said, "There, there!
I didn't really mean it;
Here's milk for his porringer,
And butter for his bread."
The Queen took the butter
And brought it to His Majesty;
The King said, "Butter, eh?"
And bounced out of bed.
"Nobody," he said,
as he kissed her tenderly,
"Nobody," he said,
as he slid down the banisters,
"Nobody, my darling,
Could call me a fussy man —
BUT
I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!"
Continuing on at the Biennale (and speaking of national propaganda)...
Although many of the off-site national pavilions were simply too far off the track that I was beating to visit in the time allowed, a sense of national pride not experienced by an Irishman in Italy since, well, Italia '90 I suppose, propelled me on past the herds at Piazza San Marco and on down a side street to a near-hidden building on the Calle della Pietà shared, somewhat ominously, with that bastion of democracy Zimbabwe. Are the Arts Council giving Enda tips on farm reclamations as the solution to all our economic woes, I wondered, and could wheel-barrows of Punts be that far away?
Passing through a sunlit courtyard and on into a single red-brick room I encountered the first of three pieces by Corban Walker, Please Adjust, having completely failed to notice the other two pieces covering the windows as I entered. Please Adjust is a large installation consisting of 160 interlocking stainless steel cube frames, each 16 inches wide. Multiples of four appear frequently in Walker's work, for he himself is four foot tall, something referenced in the second of the other two pieces, Modular, which consists of a series of blue vinyl pieces affixed to four windows, each approximating his height. The final work Transparent Wall is another vinyl-on-window piece with a series of black squares cascading down the panes decreasing in size and fading away into nothingness.
Walker lives and works in New York, and has done so since 2004. While it seems a fairly typical Irish story that an artist can only gain recognition when they leave their native shores forever, my first thought was that surely the Arts Council could have found someone that still lived in Ireland and contributed to what passes for our domestic culture? I mean, the government has been giving out Artist tax exemptions for donkey's years and NCAD keeps on pumping out a fresh crop of layabouts every year and there was a time when you couldn't walk into Grogan's on Dole Day without tripping over a dozen or so, so surely some of them stay around long enough to slap together an exhibition or two worth sending to Venice, or do we need to start importing artists from Asia and the Philippines because the wages here at home aren't good enough for our graduates?
Maybe just as there is talk of requiring our junior doctors to actually work in Ireland after having the State pay for their qualifications we should also require our art graduates to mount a minimum number of exhibitions before we let them leave the country? Is this, in fact, the secret purpose behind Dublin Contemporary, a massive Arts Council funded get-out-of-jail-free card for the great and the good of the Irish art scene all desperate to leave the country but held back by a sense of national guilt for those who would be left behind?
No matter, let them all leave, if an entirely expat-comprised Pavilion is good enough for Iraq, its good enough for us.
However, unlike Ireland, Iraq took the decision to showcase the work of six artists, so while none may actually be representative of the current state of Iraqi art, at least there is the chance that if some of the pieces are weak there will be others that will balance them out. By showcasing the work of a single artist, the Irish pavilion falls victim to the fact that, unfortunately, the pieces are neither representative of contemporary art in Ireland nor are they strong enough in their own right to carry a full exhibition at such an International level.
There is nothing inherently wrong with Walker's pieces, in a different context they may have had a chance to stand out, but in their Venetian setting they underwhelm, with the two vinyl pieces being almost indistinguishable from background room decor. As I walked around the Giardini the previous day I wondered if some countries, after setting up their own pavilion and then seeing what other countries had done, turned around and said to themselves "Oh, poo. They've got sharks with laser beams. Why did we even bother?", and then nipped off to the pub to cry into their aperitivos. After visiting the Irish pavilion I'm certain of it.
But in a way, isn't that the very essence of Irishness? Isn't that why we continue to show up at the Olympics year after year, only to be disqualified for taking drugs that make us go slower? Isn't that why we still enter the Eurovision believing each and every time that this year will finally be the year we win again, failing to realise that the rest of Europe is really creeped out by singing Irish siblings? Isn't that why we haven't actually had any significant football success since Italia '90, and yet we still consider a nil-all draw a moral victory? Isn't that why Bono is the most famous Irishman alive even though he is actually a tax-exile in Holland and his last decent record was made almost as long ago as Italia '90? Our national psyche compels to half-heartedly reach for the stars so that we may revel when we fall back down into the gutter, for if there is anything that six hundred years of colonial oppression has told us, it is that we love being beaten and keep coming back for more, not for the fight but for the complaining about it all afterwards.
In this way, Corban Walker at the 2011 Biennale is a triumph - just think of all the conversations in the pub that it will germinate - no Leone d'Oro for us, we waz robbed, its Schillaci all over, Olé, Olé-Olé-Olé, Olé, Olé, etc, etc. Well, maybe only in Grogan's.
The fact that we never had a chance is not irrelevant, it is the entire point.
And there's even an app for that.
Links Ireland at Venice, the official website for Ireland's participation in the 2011 Art and Architecture Biennale.
The Black Arch, Raja and Shadia Alem
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Pavilion, Venice Bienalle 2011
Continuing on at the Biennale...
One of the obvious functions of the National Pavilions are as a tool for propaganda. This was the primary motivation for the construction of the original permanent pavilions and throughout their history governments both good and bad have bent them towards their ideological wills. A record 89 nations are hosting pavilions this year, spilling out across the piazzas and canal-fronts of the city, and even a quick perusal of the venues rented give an indication of the intent behind the exhibition within, with the biggest, brashest and most opulent palazzos playing host to the oil and gas rich states of the former Soviet Union. The intent is clear, "we are the new economic powerhouses", they are saying, "we have the money to buy your culture, and to impose our own".
But even here things did not always go according to the national script with Azerbaijan censoring pieces in its own exhibition on the orders of its President shortly after its official opening. Two sculptures by Aidan Salakhova were covered up after President Ilham Aliyev accused them of being offensive to both Islam and his country, though the official word is that they were 'damaged in transit'. I gave the pavilion a wide birth so missed all this excitement, but the challenges of interpreting and accepting State-sanctioned art presented themselves throughout the Biennale.
What should you do when you come across the Chinese Pavilion? At the start of the Biennale back in June artist Ai Weiwei was still under arrest and detained at an undisclosed location by the Chinese Government. Protests against his imprisonment were many at the Biennale, featured in the work of individual artists and the media-friendly acts of activist groups alike, and yet there didn't seem to be any great attempt to boycott the Chinese pavilion at the Biennale, folks were just wandering in and out the same as any other part of the exhibition. Its as if an attempt was being made to separate the actions of the State from the physicality of the national Pavilion, an absurdity given the Pavilion's existence as an arm of the State, with State-sanctioned artists being displayed therein.
Beyond a response to a single flash-point, how do you react when what is presented is objectionable in the context of the nature of the regime presenting it?
The Black Arch, Raja and Shadia Alem
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Pavilion, Venice Bienalle 2011
Take the Saudi Arabian pavilion at the Arsenale for example, comprising a single piece The Black Arch by sisters Raja and Shadia Alem. A large black oblong monolith sits in the centre of a darkened room, highly polished and reflective. On the ground to one side a series of metal spheres cascade way across the floor in concentric hemispheres, there surface reflecting and reflecting in the obsidian oblong the spill away from. In the midst of these spheres and defiantly off-centre there arises a polished cube, balanced precariously on a corner, a single Rubiks-cubelet absent from the top. Projections spill across the spheres and onto the floor with geometric designs, stylised Venetian and Arabian architecture and artworks, all accompanied by the sounds of water, bazaars and marketplaces and everyday human life.
Conceived by the sisters when sitting in Marco Polo airport on their way home from the 2009 Biennale, The Black Arch links Mecca and Venice, The Kaaba and the canals, Islam and the west and all the travelers between the two, all the time holding a mirror up at the audience exposing them to their own prejudices. As a piece of art it could hardly be a better flagship to the west of the warm and cuddly nature of the modern Saudi regime. "Look", they say, "its by two women (never mind about the way in which women are brutally repressed at home), it references our religion in a non-confrontational way (please ignore the way our state-sanction brand of conservative faith kills those with doctrinal differences) and it shows the way in which our two faiths have traditionally, and will continue to, coexist peacefully (pay no attention to the massive amounts of oil-revenue that we pump into terrorist organsiations intent on wiping you all from the face of the earth).
As a piece of pure propogandic artifice it works on so many levels, but can it be viewed purely as 'Art' in isolation to all these external weights?
Which brings us squarely to the American pavilion.
Track and Field, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla
from Gloria, United States of America Pavilion, Venice Bienalle 2011
Gloria is a series of six pieces by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla that occupy the interior and exterior of the building. As you approach you are immediately confronted by a upended tank resting on its turret with the barrel aimed squarely at you. Atop the treads sits a treadmill, and periodically throughout the day a runner climbs onto the treadmill, which appears powered by the moving tank tread, and runs. The performance continues inside where two resin replicas of business-class airline seats, one American Airlines, one Delta, play host to the live routines of former Olympic athletes decked out in full Team USA regalia, a Statue of Liberty lies within a sun-bed and a working ATM is connected to an over-sized musical organ, the notes played out by the live withdrawal of cash.
The artists are resident in Puerto Rico (Calzadilla was born in Cuba), and if asked will no doubt explain they are commenting on the nature of competition and nationalism of which the pavilions at the Biennale themselves are an integral part, and the contrast inherent in US promotion of Democracy and its militaristic misadventures abroad, all wrapped up in the banner of that most sacred of American cows, the concept of Free Speech. "Look," they cry, "we are using Government money to criticise both our own culture and the actions of the very Government that is paying for this. Aren't we subversive and radical? Isn't America great for letting us do such things?".
And herein lies the first of many problems with the pavilion, State-sponsored criticism of the State is still propaganda, no matter what the intent of the artist. You can't subvert a Government sanctioned exhibit when by tolerating such an attempt the State is signaling to the audience its munificence. The parallels with the Saudi exhibit here are obvious, both are presenting a public face to the world, its just the Americans (as usual) are wearing much more make-up.
Body in Flight (American), Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla featuring David Durante
from Gloria, United States of America Pavilion, Venice Bienalle 2011
My second issue with the pavilion lies with the nature of the work itself beyond who is holding the purse-strings. Even if the artists are attempting to subvert the global US war machine they still end-up glorifying it, no matter how ironic the original intent, and that for me is unforgivable. To refer once again to Badiou's Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art, the central proscription for Contemporary Art should be against promoting Empire. "The only maxim", he states, "is not to be Imperial" and finishes with the fifteenth and final thesis, "It is better to do nothing than to contribute to the invention of formal ways of rendering visible that which Empire already recognizes as existent".
A tank is a tank is a tank, and you cannot subvert it, even if you painted it pink and sold ice cream and flowers from its turret it would still only serve to highlight the fact that it is a tank, an embodiment of death and oppression and, regardless of the original intent of the artists, slapping an athlete on top twice a day to the virtual chants of "U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!" while the innocent are slaughtered in Afghanistan and Iraq is genuinely obscene, the only work in the whole Biennale against which that label can actually be applied.
Illuminations and observations (Presidential Interlude)
A metaphor waiting to happen
Farrow of Wild Boar, Mitchelstown Co Cork, September 2011
Whilst you may all have come to know and love the occasional political fervour that grips us here at Booming Back, wherein we have been known to travel thousands of miles to attend a political rally in a foreign country because nothing much of import had been happening here at home, even if you have not, no doubt, you will have been wondering why we have been so quiet of late on the subject of our own Presidential Election when we have, in times gone by, been extremely vocal on the elections of others.
"Surely," I hear you cry, "with all the intrigues, horse-trading and general goings-on involved with the nomination process alone, surely you must be happy as a pig in muck?"
Would that my head were so easily turned.
The truth of the matter is that while the Kafka-esque process by which our Presidential ballot paper is being composed does have a certain discrete charm, I have such a problem with the existence of the Office of the President itself that I can wring little joy from the near hourly updates that Twitter pings across my desktop.
We are a small country governed by a dynastic ruling class, Dáil seats are handed down from father to son and husband to wife and the Senead is an unelected holding pen, a second chance for party hacks on the way up or the way out who have failed to convince the electorate to pick them over their brother. The Presidency is the embodiment of this nepotistic system, designed to fail from its very inception by the framers of the 1937 Constitution under instruction from Dev who saw it as his natural retirement home. It is virtually powerless, and yet when what limited authority it does have is exercised a national crises ensues. Old men go there to die, and women go to smile and wave, wringing their hands in angst as they slowly drown in tea and sympathy.
The last few weeks may have shone a spotlight on the farcically undemocratic nature of the nomination process, but this sudden illumination blinds us all to the inherently undemocratic nature of the position itself.
It exists to do nothing, an existential contradiction at its core that contaminates any well-meaning attempts by an incumbent to break free from their Government-sanctioned bonds, and thus we need the Office of the President in this country as much as we need an Upper House of Parliament, which is to say not at all without fundamental change to its nature and essence so drastic as to render it unrecognizable. If either body existed outside of the party political system, chosen by and from the citizenry themselves as opposed to the ruling aristocracy, with genuine powers of parliamentary or constitutional oversight that could in actuality hold a Government accountable to the will of the people, then there might be an argument for its continued existence, but even then given our population size of under five million it would still be debatable.
Thus while I do sincerely hope Senator David Norris succeeds in being nominated and ultimately elected, in truth I find it hard to project any enthusiasm; the election is akin to being told that wild boar tastes better than pig when you are a vegetarian, the entire subject itself is deeply unappealing and lipsticking up an individual candidate before you slice them into rashers seems both barbaric and offensive.
Who's Afraid of Free Expression, Norma Jeane
Venice Bienalle 2011
Continuing on at the Biennale...
Taking its title from a placard apparently held by a female protestor in Tahrir Square earlier this year, Who's Afraid of Free Expression is an installation from Norma Jeane, a pseudonym used by an anonymous artist or collective who focuses on works of a political or socially active nature. Part of a series of works by 83 individual artists curated by Bice Curiger in the Padiglione Centrale in the Giardini, Who's Afraid of Free Expression is exhibited in its own right and not as part of any national pavilion.
The piece began life as a three-dimensional representation of the Egyptian flag made out of three layers of coloured plasticine (red, white and black), sitting on the floor in the center of a white room. Visitors were invited to take lumps of the plasticine and create their own sculptures on the walls of the room. By the time I visited in September, three months after the public opening, the flag had been reduced to a heap of mangled clumps reclaimed from the walls by time and gravity, and every inch of the walls accessible without artificial assistance were covered in words, names and figurines.
The notion behind this all is that what began as a centralised authority disintegrated as the masses asserted their individual claims, and restructured it collaboratively and anarchistically to their own designs. No central planning, no order, no structure and yet what emerged organically is greater than what came before.
I wonder why it appealed to me so much?
Who's Afraid of Free Expression, Norma Jeane
Venice Bienalle 2011
Sadly I did not make it to see the Egyptian pavilion, which adressed similar theme but in a far more direct and painful way.
In 2010 Ahmed Basiony had filmed himself running in place with an array of sensors attached to himself and his shoes, with the idea of transforming the captured data into a visual installation at a later date. One year later he was swept up into the chaos, joy and terror in Tahrir Square, unable to resist documenting such a pivotal moment in his nation's history, and paid for this dedication to his art with his life, shot by police snipers and dying from his wounds on January 28th, 2011. 30 Days of Running in the Place juxtaposes the footage from his earlier piece with film and images he shot in Tahrir square and its environs in the four days leading up to his death, and it is one of the few regrets I have about my visit to the Biennale, that time prevented me from making it as far as this pavilion.
More photos from Who's Afraid of Free Expression can be found here.
More information on the life and works of Ahmed Basiony can be found on his site here.
Metro, Alessandro Gallo
Italian Pavilion, Venice Bienalle 2011
Not everything I was drawn to had to be a deeply political statement, in fact quite the opposite. The Italian pavilion in the Arsenale brought together a wide range of artists and much of the space was given over either to works reflecting on the impact of organised crime on Italian life, history and society in an exhibit entitled Art is Not the Cosa Nostra, or the theme of Italian unification, this being its 150th anniversary. Tucked away in a corner almost hiding from the gravitas emanating from everything else around it was a small piece by Alessandro Gallo entitled Metro.
A ceramic sculpture less than a meter high depicting a series of anthropomorphic animals riding the Northern Line of the London Underground, the detailing is incredibly intricate and manages to say so much about the banality of daily life through the body language of commuting critters. The scene is instantly familiar to any who have travelled on the Underground, a cavalcade of vacant expressions as everyone desperately tries to exist only within themselves, excluding the Other as much as possible, the animal visages allowing us in to stare in a way that their human counterparts could never do.
The whimsy of the mundane contained within this sculpture came as a very welcome break from a succesion of victim impact statements, crime scene photos and a massive waxen Italy melting on a giant crucifix, the Italian Pavilion can be accused of many things but subtlety is not one of them.
The Wheel of Fortune, Christian Boltanski
from Chance at the French Pavilion, Venice Bienalle 2011
And so on to the Biennale...
First off let's start with something that I really liked, The Wheel of Fortune by Christian Boltanski, part of his Chance installation at the French pavilion in the Giardini.
As you enter the pavilion you are immediately engulfed by what at first appears to be a massive newspaper printing press. As you walk through its labyrinthine structure, you realise that what is running through the rollers is not newsprint, but hundreds of photos of babies. There are two adjacent rooms with giant countdown clocks, and a fourth with large video screens that invites you to play a mix-and-match roulette with random photo segments of babies and old folks that I'm sure is saying something about life and death and multiculturalism, but the fun for me here was just in standing in the midst of the massive machine with photos clattering above and around you at breakneck speed, with the Venetian sunlight streaming in through the skylights above.
In fact according to my iBiennale catalogue: "Unlike the rest of [Boltanski's] work, which is dominated by death, here he opens up a broader examination of chance and fate. The unfolding of life and the incessant rhythm of birth raise the question of the universal and the unique in a new way, pondering what distinguishes one from the other."
The Biennale is actually a series of festivals that take place every two years in Venice, Architecture, Dance, Contemporary Music and Film all have their own Biennales (though they are not always called that, the Film Biennale is often just referred to as the Venice Film Festival), and not all happen in the same year (architecture tends to happen out of sync with the rest), so in effect the Biennale actually happens every year in Venice, making it more of an Annuale. But unless you are an architect, dancer or beard-stroking John Cage fan, the word Biennale almost always refers to the International Festival of Contemporary Art, and this year marks the 54th such event which first occurred back in 1895 at which many a fine mustache was surely twirled.
Running for six months the Biennale has two main components, a curated exhibition held in the Arsenale, the amazing 14th Century naval shipyards that were responsible for Venice's trading might, and a larger series of national showcases presented by individual countries in their pavilions. Most of these pavilions are permanently located in a massive public park, the Giardini, though are only in use during the Biennale itself. Those countries whom history and tradition have not afforded a permanent space in the Giardini set up temporary pavilions across Venice, as do the occasional individual artist or group, and this year a total of 89 countries were represented.
This is not an art dealers' fair where works are bought and sold, and agents try to thrust their clients onto the Contemporary Art museum circuit, the Biennale is primarily about exhibiting and display, and sales have actually been banned since the late Sixties, though I'm sure a fair amount do go on in the background. National pavilions are the primary focus, a showcase of what each nation feels portrays its contemporary art environment in the best light, a Eurovision of the art world if you will, and as with the song contest there are as many nul points awarded as douze, quality (and national tastes) very considerably.
I devoted two days to Biennale, and that certainly didn't do it justice. Six hours were spent in the Giardini and I only managed to see about 80% of the pavilions situated therein. The Arsenale was a lot easier to take in, both because it was much smaller and as the works were all curated there was a certain consistency to the choices, you didn't need to reset your mind every time you went into a new room as you did when leaving one national pavilion for another, and a healthy four hours was enough to take in everything I wanted to (although much more time could be spent there if you wanted, it just didn't float my boat really). Sadly the external national pavilions were a complete right-off, I made it to two or three that happened to be on may way to something else, and with this I feel I did miss out on something. I think the Biennale really deserves at least three full days, one in the Giardini, and two split between the Arsenale and off-site pavilions.
So what did I think?
The Giardini was the better of the two shows. The impact of wandering from pavilion to pavilion that themselves were often worth a visit just for the building itself cannot be underestimated. In a crass analogy it was almost an Art Theme Park, you plan your route to hit the more popular exhibits when you think the crowds will be at their smallest, stopping off for refreshments half-way along, some pavilions have age minimums, others have orderly queues and health and safety instructions (the British pavilion, obviously) and the pavilions are arranged like themed resorts according to when they were built - Great Powers-Land, Cold War-Land, We're-not-Communists-anymore-Land, The-Swedish-Pavilion-is-better-Land (though that last one might just be Finland on its own). Some countries have devoted their entire pavilion to a single artist or collective, others showcase the work of many, and the only constancy is inconstancy; quality, content and ambition varies greatly and that is the joy of the Giardini.
The Arsenale is a curated show, and thus the work on exhibit is all influenced strongly by the taste of a single person, and if your taste does not align with their's then your visit will be a fast one. Its also a much smaller show, so even if you are enthralled by the pieces it still won't take up too much of your. Luckily this allows you to take in the magnificence of the venue, Venice's principle shipyards for almost seven hundred years until the fall of the Venetian Republic to Napoleon in 1797. Much of the remaining buildings are 14th century or later, and it is difficult to imagine a grander setting for an exhibition. If only the exhibition itself matched its surroundings, sadly many of the pieces seemed overwhelmed by their surroundings, and many more fall into that large cup of tea that is clearly nether mine by ownership nor inclination. Notable exceptions included Christian Marclay's The Clock, a 24-hour long film montage of carefully edited movie scenes that include clocks and references to the time, all shown in real time (if its 3:34pm in the real world then the film is showing a scene from a film that has a clock showing 3:34pm, the sheer level of effort involved in its crafting is staggering), and the remains of Urs Fischer's full sized replica of Giambologna's sixteenth century sculpture The Rape of the Sabine Women that is actually a giant wax candle slowly melting away into nothingness, limbs collapsing down onto the ground around it in shattered disarray.
As for the rest, well, at times it seems almost impossible to view any Contemporary Art except through the lens of Exit Through the Gift Shop, that it is all a gargantuan staging of the Emperor's New Clothes with everyone afraid to actually say, "that's a bit poo really, isn't it?" for fear of bringing the whole world crashing down around them. Occasionally, however, I did find something that made me stop and say, "hmmm, that's quite good actually", or annoyed me enough that I feel compelled to write about it ("eewwww," I say, "doesn't this smell awful?", as I shove it under your nose).
The next few posts will try and give a sense of what excited and angered me, but I may try and slip an angsty post about the Presidential election or other political farce in between all the art stuff to keep the Philistines amongst you occupied.
Photos
Top: The approach to the Arsenale along Fondamenta di l'Arsenal
Middle: Angel Soldier, Lee Yongbaek, South Korean pavilion at the Giardini
Bottom: Shattered arm from Urs Fischer's wax The Rape of the Sabine Women, in the Arsenale
Winter (After Arcimboldo), Philip Haas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, September 2011
Speaking of pareidolia, and before we get to the Biennale, Venice also saw an afternoon visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
Ms Guggenheim was what I believe is euphemistically referred to as a 'Society Girl', niece of Solomon Guggenheim of museum and foundation fame and an avid art collector in her own right (though I believe she collected artists as much as she did their work). She lived in Venice from 1947 until her death in 1979, and her palazzo on the Grand Canal which had been open to the public intermittently throughout most her life in Venice was formally opened as a museum in 1980.
The Collection includes an array of works by Max Ernst (one of her husbands), Mondrian, Klee, Pollock, Brâncuşi, Maigritte and others, a very eclectic group of Modernists, Cubists and Futurists (oh my), and yet strangely I didn't really care for it at all, at all. It basically showcases the tastes (and conquests) of a middle-aged American heiress of the 40's and 50's, and the parallels between her Collection and the trophy rooms of the Natural History Museum a few vaporetto stops up along the canal are obvious.
Herein lies another of the tensions I have with the nature of Art, the fact that our tastes are shaped by what we are exposed to, and what we are exposed to exists largely because it is commissioned, bought, preserved and displayed by folks like Peggy Guggenheim. Art exists because of the wealthy elite, either institutional or individual, who create a demand and a market for it, and what we see on the walls of Public Galleries are the braggadocio of the aristocracy, thrown to the masses like table scraps. Public taste is by and large the result of trickle-down aesthetics.
In a Public Gallery whose collection has been amassed for the specific purpose of educating and enlightening the masses, you can sometimes ignore the invisible hand of capital moving behind it all, but at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection you cannot escape the fact that everything on display belonged to one single very privileged person.
I passed through it quickly and progressed the next day on to the Biennale.
(oh, and the pareidolia reference is to the above sculpture by Philip Haas that was in a temporary exhibition, a study of a much larger 15' high version that itself is of course based on the 16th century painting Winter by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who painted a series of portraits of faces composed of vegetables, fruit, trees and other flora, though in this case you would be forgiven for seeing a face amongst the food because that, I believe, is the intended effect. Otherwise Arcimboldo was a very, very bad painter indeed.)
Water tanks at the Arsenale
Venice, September 2011
Canadian author Peter Watts, who we have mentioned once or twice here at Booming Back, has an interview in Scientific American today on the subject of consciousness and, um, experimentation on conjoined twins.
SA is running a series of articles wherein they ask scientists and other scientific folk about things they would love to see investigated but don't think is possible at the moment. Entitled "Too Hard For Science?", I think they envisioned the series to explore the outer edges of quantum physics, sentient AI, widespread climate engineering and the like, and less so experimentation on children (though interestingly enough that's exactly what Steven Pinker would like to do given half a chance - what is it about linguists and child experimentation?).
Watts writes:
“One thing we have discovered is that consciousness involves synchrony — groups of neurons firing in sync throughout different provinces of the brain,” he says. “Something else we’ve known for some time is that when you split the brain down the middle — force the hemispheres to talk the long way around, via the lower brain, instead of using the fat high-bandwidth pipe of the corpus callosum — you end up with not one conscious entity but two, and those two entities develop different tastes, opinions, even different religious beliefs.”
“What this seems to point to is that consciousness is a function of latency — it depends upon the synchronous firing of far-flung groups of neurons, and if it takes too long for signals to cross those gaps, consciousness fragments. ‘I’ decoheres into ‘we,’” Watts says.
“Fortunately, there are developmental accidents that could potentially offer enormous insights into this phenomenon,” Watts says — that is to say, conjoined twins fused at the brain.
“We’ve already learned a lot from such cases opportunistically,” he explains. “For example, the Hogan twins out in British Columbia appear to have distinct personalities, yet can tap into each others’ sensory systems — they are fused at the thalamus, a structure that acts, among other things, as a sensory relay. Suppose they were fused at the neocortex instead? Would they still be individuals — would the signal lag across the depth of two skulls prove too great for a coherent self? Or would we be dealing with a single integrated person wired into two bodies, with two sets of sense organs and twice the normal complement of human processing power?”
Nice.
While Watts has already explored this theme somewhat in print (In Blindsight he speculates on a medically-induced multiple personality condition that allows parallel processing), his article brought to mind China Miéville's latest book "Embassytown", wherein genetically engineered twins are raised to communicate synchronistically with an alien culture whose language is based on dual voices, and the challenges that arise when separated personalities are in charge of the shared communication. But whereas Miéville's book is mainly concerned with the nature of language and communication, Watts explores the concept of consciousness itself through a very dark lens indeed.
Just as well Scientific American hasn't actually allowed him to go near any children, when asked by SA what the problem with experimenting on conjoined twins would be he replied somewhat tongue-in-cheek (hopefully), “I have no idea. Really. I can’t see any down side to this at all. I’m actually kind of amazed it hasn’t already been done”.
And he wonders why US Border Guards lost the plot with him.
All of which is basically just a blatant excuse to post a photographic exercise in pareidolia, the way in which we seem neurological hardwired to see human faces in random objects, using a set of particularly evil looking water tanks that I found sitting in the back of the Chinese Pavilion at the Arsenale, the huge 14th century naval shipyards in Venice that now host part of the Biennale. They give me the creeps just looking at them.
teleco-soup, Tabaimo
Japanese Pavilion, Venice Bienalle 2011
And so on to the Biennale.
The trouble I have with writing about art is that (to be somewhat disappointingly predictable) as the San Franciscan critic Gelett Burgess apparently said, 'I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like". If you were to ask me to explain a painting I would stare blankly at you and mumble something about it having colours and stuff, sculpture intrigues me in the same way as bubble-wrap (it cries out to be touched or chewed on, much to the dismay of gallery attendants), and video installations just leave me so cold that I need to be pulled away from their creators before I can ask, "so, couldn't make it as a painter then?".
In public galleries I am drawn to modern and post-modern works of Impressionism, Pointillism, Futurism, Surrealism, Cubism and other -isms of abstraction, but Realism does very little for me despite my professed distaste for the UnReal around me. I could walk through room after room of Renaissance masters (and have) and barely stop to glance, but have been stopped dead in my tracks by a fur-covered cup and saucer or a wooden mechanical head. And if you were to ask me what arrested my movement so suddenly I would be unable to tell you. That's just the way it is.
Despite this handicap I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time at exhibitions, have amassed a collection of paintings and prints far larger than my walls will accomodate, have been asked to join the Board of a gallery or two, and count one too many tortured artists amongst my friends, and thus I live in constant fear of being asked by someone when looking at an installation, "so what do you think of it?", and replying, "um, its got shiny stuff and string".
From Frogtopia, Kwok Mang-Ho (Frog King)
Hong Kong Pavilion, Venice Bienalle 2011
Now, Art Criticism also leaves me cold (as does most Criticism), explanations of the deeper meaning behind a work often reveal more about the neuroses of the critic than the motivations of the artist, and language used by critics often seems deliberately obfuscating, as if the function of criticism is to close the work away to be appreciated only be a small elite rather than to open it up to enjoyment by the masses.
However I find Walter Benjamin's description of the transition of art from objects of cultic value (wherein the main function of art is as an object of, or in assistance to, worship/devotion/remembrance) to objects with display value (wherein an object's own intrinsic beauty/effect is of primary importance, not its role as part of a conduit to the Other) useful here, because it goes part way to justifying my own mumbled response of "...but I know what I like". For me art often needs to work in isolation, if I need a detailed explanation of what the artist was trying to do in order to appreciate the work, then the artist has failed; a work should stand on its own visual merits and impact upon the viewer without recourse to an external Other outside the work itself as justification.
The challenge for Contemporary artists in the Information Age, it seems, is to express themselves sufficiently in a way both independent of external context and to an audience whose exposure to the works of other artists has never been greater. How does the artist ensure they are understood in a environment where the audience believes, rightly or wrongly, that they have seen it all before? Herein lies my second fail-point with Contemporary Art, the gratuitous and graphic approach taken by some artists who seem to confuse a viewer reaction caused by shock with one of comprehension, and if their intent is purely to shock without an underlining desire for communication, then I have even less time for them (this is also why I find little value in horror as a cinematic genre, with some notable exceptions). I have seen one too many video installation of naked folk hula-hooping with barbed wire (or maybe it was the same installation seen in multiple locations*) to have any energy or desire left to work beyond my initial revulsion and attempt an understanding.
from Art is Not Cosa Nostra
Italian Pavilion, Venice Bienalle 2011
A few years ago Alain Badiou delivered a list of Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art, well worth reading in their entirety (with the above caveat on what they say about Badiou more than Art), but his first is on this very subject, that "Art is not the sublime descent of the infinite into the finite abjection of the body and sexuality. It is the production of an infinite subjective series through the finite means of a material subtraction." He explains this further in a lecture given in 2003:
"Subtraction: the word subtraction has two meanings. First, not to be obsessed with formal novelty. I think it’s a great question today because the desire for novelty is the desire of new forms, an infinite desire for new form. The obsession of new forms, the artistic obsession with novelty, of critique, of representation and so on, is really not a critical position about capitalism because capitalism itself is the obsession of novelty and the perpetual renovation of forms. You have a computer, but the following year it’s not the true computer, you need a new one. You have a car, but the coming year it’s an old car, something like an old thing and so on. So, it’s a necessity for us to see that the complete obsession with new forms is not really a critical position about the world as it is. It’s a possibility that the real desire, which is subversive desire, is the desire of eternity. The desire for something which is a stability, something which is art, something which is closed in-itself. I don’t think it’s quite like that, but it’s a possibility because the perpetual modification of forms is not really a critical position, so the desire of new forms is certainly something important in art, but the desire for the stability of forms is also something important. And, I think we have to examine the question today.
The second meaning of subtraction is not to be obsessed with finitude, with cruelty, body, suffering, with sex and death, because it’s only the reversal of the ideology of happiness. In our world there is something like an ideology of happiness. Be happy and enjoy your life and so on. In artistic creation we often have the reversal of that sort of ideology in the obsession with suffering bodies, the difficulty of sexuality, and so on. We need not be in that sort of obsession. Naturally a critical position about the ideology of happiness is an artistic necessity, but it’s also an artistic necessity to see it as a new vision, a new light, something like a positive new world. And so, the question of art is also the question of life and not always the question of death. It is a signification of the first thesis; we have to search for an artistic creation which is not obsessed with formal novelty, with cruelty, death, body, and sexuality."
Solaris, Yoshi
Venezuela Pavilion, Venice Bienalle 2011
While not quite saying, "Can ye not just paint pretty pictures of unicorns and sparkles instead?", his points are well taken. "I know what I like..." and what I like are works that elicit a positive response. I don't mean that I am drawn solely to works of joy or whimsy, I am more than happy to be challenged by an artist, but there are many ways to do so that do not involve shock for shock's sake, to me that smacks of laziness.
True communication, comprehension in isolation, sparkles and unicorns. It was with these prejudices that I approached the 54th International Art Exhibition in Venice, the Biennale...
* Sigalit Landau, who curated the [REDACTED] pavilion at this year's Bienalle. I saw her video Barbed Hula at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and while it definitely wasn't my cup of tea some of her other works, like DeadSee, are really quite beautiful.
Apparently "Natural History" means "things I have shot" In Italian
A Venetian Rorschach test
Seeking an escape from the relentless heat, humidity and thronging crowds of the Venetian afternoon, a suggestion was made to visit the Natural History Museum. Those of you familiar with either the Natural History Museum in Dublin, home of an assortment of ancient bones and poorly stuffed animals (both before and during the recent relocation of Seanad Éireann to within its hallowed walls), or its admittedly slightly more impressive sassenach counterpart in London, will, upon hearing the words "Natural History Museum", conjure forth mental pictures of dioramas tasteful recreating the environment in which the now regrettably deceased and taxidermied exhibits once roamed free, cavourting with their fellows in what can only be described in song as a Circle of Life.
Apparently no-one in Venice ever saw the Lion King, or if the did they immediately shot it, skinned it, and mounted it over their mantlepiece with a loud "harrumph!", or the Italian equivalent thereof.
An Ouranosaurus. Almost certainly not shot by an Italian big game hunter. Almost certainly.
After wandering through a rather good exhibit of the history of evolution (though admittedly the Museum contains no English explanations so it could very well have been a 'History of the Fraudulent Theory of Evolution as Proposed by Heretics, Unbelievers and Communists" for all I know) that contained bones both dinosaur and hominid, touchable exhibits, an amazing archaeopteryx and copious amounts of fossilised poo, you suddenly enter what can only be laughingly called 'The Twilight Zone', wherein Italy's past colonial glories (all three weeks of them) are chronicled in a series of items plundered from East Africa including, amongst an array of spears, shields and tribal head-dresses, the mummified corpses and shrunken heads of their former owners.
You then pass into the trophy rooms, where the stuffed and mounted carcasses of an entire savana have been carefully displayed on wall after wall of ink-blot butterfly patterns, along with the portrait of the beefy gentleman who shot them all.
Huzzah!
The next two rooms are a veritable cabinet of medical curiosities, with two headed cows, albino goats and a smorgasborg of preserved internal organs, human and otherwise, before retuning once more to gallery after gallery of stuffed insects, birds, fish, a smattering of beasts of hoof and horn, as wel as the occasional dolphin (yes, there are multiple dolphins hanging from the ceiling), and all of this in the faded grandeur of a thirteenth century palace, The Fondaco dei Turchi, sitting on the Grand Canal.
The most amazing part of this all (well, second most amazing after the stuffed giraffe heads) was the fact that we had the place almost entirely to ourselves, I counted less than ten other visitors the whole time we were there. According to The Very Understanding Girlfriend, less than a third of visitors to Venice actually spend the night there, something truly shocking when the official vistor numbers are between 15 and 22 million per year. Again this shows that just slightly off the beaten track (and the Museum sits squarely on the Grand Canal so its not that far off the track) Venice offers a different experience altogether.
A fossilized Fibonacci Sequence
Unfortunately photography is strictly forbidden in the Museum, but I, erm, have attempted to, ah, 'recreate' what I saw through the medium of, um, modern technology. Yes. Definitely. No surreptitious photographs were taken by me. No sir.
Many years ago, back in the deep dark mists of time known today as the Nineteen Nineties, and at the time also known as the Nineteen Nineties, there used to be a man who stood at the top of Grafton Street, an English man, and he had with him an easel, a flipchart, and a microphone and loudspeaker. He would draw a square on the flipchart, and in the middle of the square he would then draw two parallel horizontal lines running from the top of the square to the bottom. Between these two lines he would then draw a number of black circles, and ask passers-by to identify what he had drawn.
Always up for a challenge and seeking to push the boundaries of my knowledge to the very limits of possibility (though only after ignoring him for most of the previous month) one day I stopped to hear more.
Taking a step back
The answer to this question was, somewhat disappointingly, a giraffe walking past a window. More disappointingly this turned out to be an ad for Jesus, because as all good sales people know nothing sells Jesus like giraffes. The Englishman would then explain that sometimes when it is difficult to understand something you need take a step back and look at the wider picture. Apparently god likes to play Pictionary, because he only reveals parts of his grand design in stages, the Old Testament was one stage, the New Testament another, and to understand the final piece of the puzzle you need to be born again, which apparently is akin to seeing a giraffe pass by your window.
I asked him if this approach made a pretty compelling case for Islam, since the Prophet received his revelations a good six hundred years after Jesus, so surely more of the picture was being revealed. The Englishman, who obviously hadn't read Flatland, said "No", and turned over his flipchart in contempt. Religious folk don't seem to like theologians, though to be fair I was pretty drunk at the time.
The Nineties were like that. Good times, good times.
Can you tell what it is yet?
The point of all this is that like the miracle of the passing giraffe, you too can now see the bigger picture here at Booming Back, and you won't even have to carry an oversized piece of cardboard with John 3:16 with you to any televised sporting event you may attend afterwards, we're pretty relaxed about such things here. As you may have noticed (unless you are reading this via your RSS reader, in which case you should click back to the website, its looking rather nice now) we've recently joined the 21st Century and gone all widescreen, since I figure you all have proper sized monitors now and can handle an extra 200 pixels or so. This move allows me to increase the size of uploaded photos by 50%, all the better to stun you with my mad photography skillz (actual skillz may very, madness not a guarantee).
If this upgrade has any negative impact on you, like breaking your internets for example, please let me know. Unlike Google, who will casually tell you that your browser is no-longer supported for being old and sooooo un-cool (don't listen to them Camino, we still love you), I do care and will try to make things all better, perhaps with a Temple Grandin hug thrown in for good measure.
If you said "a giraffe", you'd be wrong, though I see why you might have thought that. If on the other hand you said "a Renaissance painting rendered in hand-painted wooden eggs by Oksana Mas, part of the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 2011 Biennale in Venice", then you'd be right, but it would have been a pretty lucky guess. A suspiciously lucky guess.
This upgrade happily coincides with a loverly new lens that I got just before heading away last week (a Tamron SP AF17-50mm F/2.8 XR VC if anyone is interested) on the recommendation of those nice people at Gunn's Camera shop on Camden Street. I had been looking at a Canon EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS for the last year or so but couldn't really justify it on the basis of cost-to-mad-photography-skillz ratio, so the good folks in Gunn's recommended the Tamron as an alternative (and less than half the price of the Canon). It is worth saying that while I certainly could have picked up either lens for less on the internets, the service in Gunn's is what keeps me coming back to buy equipment there; I am a light hobbyist by even a generous stretch of the imagination, but the time they give me and patience they show seriously outweighs any internets saving that could be made.
And isn't that exactly the sort of bigger-picture revelation that would make the blessed St Giraffe so proud?
I have never been to anywhere like Venice before, possibly for the very good reason that there is nowhere else like Venice. All the cliches are true, a half-sunken collection of ramshackle monuments to faded grandeur, a time-capsule, a stage-set, a period play prostituting itself on endless loop, all collapsing under the weight of its own history and the footsteps of fifteen million visitors a year. All these things are true, but there is far more to it than these cliches alone.
Dusk falls over the Accademia Bridge as seen from Ca' Rezzonico
Venice, 9th September 2011
Away from San Marco with the Doge's Palace and the Bridge of Sighs, away from the Rialto Bridge with its graffitied shops of souvenir tat and the bleating hordes of cruise-ship passengers surging forth on a glacial flow of consumption, away from the Accademia and its endless rooms of Titian reds and Tintoretto panels there is another Venice, perhaps just as much a cliché in its own right, but one worth savouring every minute of.
Night time at San Toma' on the Grand Canal
Venice, 12th September 2011
The first thing you notice is the silence. It is a city without cars, and at times even in the height of the afternoon the tranquillity can take your breath away. It is as if the presence of so much water constantly lapping around earshot drapes a blanket of calm upon the populace. Where people congregate for work, to play, or an after-work spritz spilling out of the Osteria and into piazzas drenched in the late-afternoon sun there is life and noise and laughter, but a minute's walk away down a narrow street scarcely big enough for two to pass the silence of the historical reclaims you.
Sunset over the Grand Canal
Venice, 11th September 2011
That silence feels safe. Walking from San Marco to Dorsoduro across the Accademia Bridge at 4am felt as comfortable as at 4pm, if not more so. The bars close early here, most by 12 midnight, the only drunken people to be seen on the streets are lost tourists and even they are a rarity. As with any city there are those who have fallen through the cracks, abandoned to the streets and reliant on the fruits of an outstretched hand, but the aggression that fuels such enterprises of destitution so common here at home is absent. The unfamiliar narrow back streets are warm and inviting, calling out to be explored, their quiet a comfort, not an intimidation.
Rialto by Moonlight
Venice, 11th September 2011
The city is clean. Venetians are proud of their home and the streets are kept almost preternaturally tidy, household and commercial waste are collected daily by canal boat, litter is not thrown, dogs are cleaned up after and the pavements are free from the odours of human abuse. Walls are graffitied, like in every urban setting, but here the city's outernet is overtly political, decrying corruption, political malfeasance and the rise of fascism, the simply self-aggrandizing notes of "I woz ere' are conspicuous by their absence - it seems if a Venetian is to despoil their own walls, the message better have content of significance.
The Bridge of Sighs masked by ad hoardings (well, to be fair, it did make me sigh) Venice, 13th September 2011
For a city that pimps its history out to every passer-by with a dollar in their pocket, its soul seems remarkable untarnished. There are no advertisements here, no billboards, no posters, no poster-decked hoardings, no neon glow or angry light of monstrous LED screens, all are banished from the walkways and alleys of Venice save, ironically, from that most famous landmark of St Mark's Square itself where renovation scaffolding has left The Libreria covered with an ad for German cars and the Bridge of Sighs a prisoner to the choking plastic wrapping of a leather-maker. Perhaps the city planners reason that if their civic heart is polluted by the feet of a thousand tourists a minute the sacrilege of such a gaudy covering is an ignominy small in comparison. In this they are wrong, deeply wrong, but if by sacrificing San Marco on the altar of Mammon the rest of the city escapes his clutches, perhaps the price is bearable.
A Vaporetto approaches San Silvestro on the Grand Canal
Venice, 15th September 2011
Venice has the best public transportation of any city that I have visited. It doesn't have the fastest, nor the cleanest, the most efficient and certainly not the cheapest (at €6 for a single journey the weekly unlimited tickets start to seem reasonable at €50 a pop), but for sheer enjoyment the Vaporetto, the water-buses that cruise up and down the larger canals and on to the outlying islands, simply cannot be beaten. They can be crowded, extremely over-crowded and standing room only, and even when seated the stifling heat can come close to overwhelming you, but all that dissolves when a fresh breeze from the canal hits your face and yet another stunning 14th century palazzo passes by. The wonder begins even before you set foot on board, standing on a floating platform station that bobs up and down in the wake of passing water craft, a sense of movement later replayed by the body, a phantom motion as you close your eyes and lie down at night to sleep.
It is the water and this sense of quiet motion that it brings that I think I will miss most of all, something unknowable in cities of hard concrete, asphalt and right angles.
The Grand Canal by night
Dublin, 16th September 2011
Speaking of the "I Can't Believe It's Not Biennale"...
So, irregular and/or infrequent readers of this blog may, if they have noticed that it has been almost two weeks since my last post (not guaranteed, given their irregular and/or infrequent nature), have assumed that I had jetted away to distant climes, fed up with all the misery and pitiful-excuses-for-a-summer that Dublin has to offer. More frequent and/or observant readers may have expressed some not-unwarranted concern that such a lengthy silence boded ill for Unkie Dave and heralded a return, once more, to the confines of a hospital bed.
Well, my friends, I am sorry to say that like the capitalist running dogs of a high street bank or mobile phone company that only offer their best rates to their newest customers, for once the lackadaisical and fair-weather amongst you shall be rewarded and the faithful and most loyal cast aside like an allegorical biblical narrative tormented by a Judeo-Christian deity, or the Coen brothers, for fun, profit and sport.
This week I have mostly been... in Venice.
The (other) Grand Canal by night
Venice, 8th September 2011
I have never been one to respond well to the prospect of possible future rewards in return for extended effort in the present, as a vegetarian with a restricted diet carrots just aren't that exciting, with or without an accompanying stick. However during my extended bouts of illness I have found it useful to work towards the prospect of attending two separate weddings of friends, a goal that while in hospital seemed ridiculously ethereal. Still, in April I left the shackles of my hospital bed behind for three hours and made it to the contrastingly surreal environs of Dublin Zoo for the first of these weddings, an act which convinced my consultant to let me go home the following day. This time round the venue was a little more daunting, and the challenges associated with getting there a little greater, but I was, and am, in considerably better health than five months ago, and the thought of getting there motivated me every bit as did Dublin Zoo in April.
And so to Venice.
The wedding was fantastic, two really good people both amazing in their own right, a small circle of family and friends, an intimate and self-authored ceremony both secular and spiritual at the same time, something intensely private that was a privilege to be a part of and to respect that privacy that is all that I am going to say about that.
On the subject of Venice, however, I feel compelled to write more than you are probably interested in reading about, so I will rein in my baser instincts over the next few days and hopefully a happy compromise will be reached.
Took a wander round the Iveagh Gardens today to see some of the sculptures for the forthcoming Dublin Contemporary 2011 being put up. The event, our national International art exhibition, or the "I Can't Believe It's Not Biennale" to use the Vulgate, kicks off on the 6th and runs through to the end of October. It will be mainly based in Earlsfort Terrace at the side of the National Concert Hall, where a fresh lick of paint was being applied this evening to the new pavilion entrance specially constructed for the event, with other exhibitions taking place at the RHA, Douglas Hyde, Hugh Lane and the National Gallery.
As you stroll through the show secretly fuming that your taxes are funding such degenerate filth, keep an eye out for young Alan Butler, friend of us here on Booming Back and whose UpStartposters graced the page of many a foreign newspaper during the election. He will be exhibiting in Earlsfort Terrace along with many other fine and worthy ladies and gentlemen who represent the best our nation has to offer in the fields of contemporary art.
A one day ticket that gives entry to all Dublin Contemporary venues is €15, which may come as a shock to those used to the normally free entrance to Dublin public galleries, a three day ticket is slightly better value at €35, and you can buy these online or at the Earlsfort Terrace box office.
Sadly with the economy in the state its in thanks to criminal mismanagement and the Arts budget disappearing faster than the Aral Sea, such ticket prices will no doubt be the new norm, not the exception.
Links Dublin Contemporary, happening in Dublin, contemporaneously (or even sooner).
Apparently Stewart Brand, who we've mentioned a fewtimes here at Booming Back, is the originator of the phrase "Information wants to be free". According to John Brockman, founder of Edge.org, the phrase arose during a panel discussion with Steve Wozniak at a hacker conference in 1984, where Brand replied to Woz with the following:
"On the one hand, information wants to be expensive because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is lower and lower all the time. So you have these two things fighting against each other."
At an Edge conference in Munich earlier this year Brockman elaborated further:
"That remark was picked up by Kevin Kelly in the CoEvloution Quarterly, published in 1985. And somehow, all of you forgot half of it, and information wants to be free became a mantra, it became an ideology, for some it's a religion, for others it's a cashbox for stock or speaker fees. But I've always been wondering about the tension of the two fighting against each other and what happened to one half of the fight?"
These exchanges, both Brand and Wozniak's original and Brockman's more recent rhetorical challenge, came to mind as the figure of Julian Assange loomed large in the media once again.
When Assange feared for his safety during last year's the Swedish police investigation and this year's extradition hearing in London, he threatened to release all the leaked US diplomatic cables in an unredacted form, saying that he had given the full file to supporters and if anything happened to him it would be released to the wildes of the internets, the hyperbolically named 'nuclear option'. Unfortunately it seems that neither Mr Assange nor his supporters have ever suffered through Uncle Vanya long enough to realise that the gun introduced in Act One must surely be used by Act Three (if only to free one's self from the misery of enduring yet another three hours of Chekhov), and so the world woke up on Thursday to discover that somewhere, somehow, the full unredacted files had been released to the world even though Mr Assange was sitting comfortably in the stately pile of Ellingham Hall in the rolling Norfolk countryside, and not, for instance, rotting in a Swedish jail waiting for the masked men with the spare orange jumpsuits to bundle him through Shannon on his way to a permanently undisclosed location without even letting him out for a quick bit of Duty Free shopping along the way.
Information, it would appear, does indeed want to be free.
Twelve hours earlier I was sitting in the Science Gallery at an excellent workshop on 'Data protection and communication security', given by Wojtek Bogusz from the NGO Frontline, a group that specialises in supporting Human Rights groups around the world. Bogusz's current project is 'Security in a Box', a pretty comprehensive tool-kit for those working in the human rights field to protect their online and offline communications from interception, tracking or unwarranted exposure. Over the course of two hours he gave a whistlestop tour of the tool-kit which, while pretty comprehensive, was definitely targeted at the novice or non-technical audience, which is exactly the level most human rights activists would probably be at.
On the subject of passwords, the 'Security in a Box' toolkit offers this fairly straight-forward advice: "Make it long", "Make it complex", "Make it practical", "Don't make it personal" and then it advises the user to "Keep it secret", adding:
"Do not share your password with anyone unless it is absolutely necessary. And, if you must share a password with a friend, family member or colleague, you should change it to a temporary password first, share that one, then change it back when they are done using it. Often, there are alternatives to sharing a password, such as creating a separate account for each individual who needs access."
and then to "Make it unique":
"Avoid using the same password for more than one account. Otherwise, anyone who learns that password will gain access to even more of your sensitive information."
and finally to "Keep it fresh":
"Change your password on a regular basis, preferably at least once every three months. Some people get quite attached to a particular password and never change it. This is a bad idea. The longer you keep one password, the more opportunity others have to figure it out. Also, if someone is able to use your stolen password to access your information and services without you knowing about it, they will continue to do so until you change the password."
Pretty basic stuff I think you will agree.
Unfortunately Mr Assange, it would appear, has read as many books on internet security as he has seen plays by Chekhov, for according to The Guardian:
"Earlier in the year... Assange gave a copy of the cables file to the Guardian, one of the news organisations with whom he had agreed to work to publish the cables in redacted form. He provided the Guardian with a password and access to a special online server, on which he said he would place a copy of the cables file, which would only remain in existence for a short time. What Assange did not reveal was that he had not followed conventional security practice and created a new password for the transaction. Instead... he had merely reused the existing master password, already known to others within WikiLeaks"
Oops.
That sound, by the way, is the gun from Act One being loaded as we move slowly through Act Two, or 'February' as the Guardian likes to call it, when they published a book on the Wikileaks incident which included the password to the file that they had been given by Assange, assuming that he would have followed basic security precautions and changed it.
Double-plus oops.
The wonder of this all is that the file has been sitting on Pirate Bay since December, and the password has been out in the wild since February, and we are only hearing the first outcry about the unredacted data being freely available now in September. I suppose the media and/or the State Department had a lot on their plates these last few months what with the summer holidays, and Libya and the last Harry Potter movie being released (I'm being unfair to the State Department, in truth nobody cared about the last Harry Potter film, not even Hillary).
And thus we wake up on Thursday morning, the curtain rising on our own unseemly Act Three, with the revolver of Assange's 'Nuclear Option' well and truly fired and yet no-one seems to have their hand on the trigger. Its a good thing that something like this could never actually happen with a really nuclear 'Nuclear Option'.
Never.
Honestly.
Almost certainly never.
The moral of all this (for there must be one at the end of four hours of 19th century Russian theatrical misery or why the hell did we sit through it all when there were literally a million other things less painful that we could have been doing, like Pancreatic surgery perhaps, which I can highly recommend as a pleasurable alternative to Three Sisters, having endured both but recovered much faster from the surgery) would appear to be that information wants to be free, and human beings are fecking morons.
Links Wojtek Bogusz's workshop in the Science Gallery was organised by film-maker Aoibheann O’Sullivan at Distilled Ideas (and good friend to us here at Booming Back), and Gavin Sheridan of The Story - keep an eye out for the next in what will hopefully be a long series of workshops, which should see Sheridan talk about Freedom of Information Requests in Ireland, a topic on which he probably knows more about than anyone else in the country.
The 'Security in a Box' toolkit can be found on Frontline's site here, and their main human rights defenders website is here.
And if after all this you are still not sure what an 'Assange' is, I can offer you no better series of explanations than those provided by the sharply loquacious Mr Sean Lock.
