It's French language week, in case you need to be informed... I think most people probably need to be informed - I certainly wasn't informed, and found out just in time to catch a couple of wonderful evenings of Oulipian recitals in different venues in London. Jacques Roubaud, Marcel Bénabou, Hervé Le Tellier, Ian Monk, Paul Fournel and Stanley Chapman from the Oulipo group were all on show on both nights, together with David Bellos, the man who achieved the amazing feat of translating George Perec's La vie: mode d'emploi.
Oulipo is a writing group which defines itself by the constraints it imposes on the writers. An example of one of the most simple to understand Oulipian constraints is the lipogram, where a certain letter of the alphabet - commonly a vowel - is prohibited, and the writer must not use words which use that letter. There are also far more complicated constraints which can serve as structuring principles for the text: the text in the spotlight on Monday night was George Perec's La vie: mode d'emploi. This text is structured according to all manner of constraints: the basis is that it is about a house with 100 spaces, and each space is dealt with by a chapter. I don't claim to have read the book, nor would I expect to follow it very easily.
This first gathering took place at L'Institut Français in South Kensington, where both the bibliothèque and the stage were totally packed (the latter was overflowing, in fact, and M. Le Tellier had to place a table at the side of him in case he fell off the stage completely). There followed a highly interesting talk by David Bellos regarding the difficulties of translating a writer such as Perec, in which he himself put together a technically entertaining inquisition about whether the few mistakes regarding laterality (left and right) in Perec's novel were intentional, how to translate such obstacles, and whether his translations of the obstacles were valid. Perec, it seems, had self-confessed problems with laterality, or dichotomies of any sort (the audience laughed when even the Capulet / Montague dichotomy was listed).
After the talk by the translator, the Oulipians performed some wonderful bilingual readings of Perec's work. It was clear that they were thoroughly enjoying the event, and the audience was too. It was no surprise, then, that on Tuesday night the Calder Bookshop in Southwark began to fill up well before the show began. The atmosphere that the group of writers was creating was very warm and welcoming, and there was a definite sparkle to the way in which some of them spoke. Paul Fournel in particular, who presented the show and participated, was very entertaining . At the bookshop, the Oulipians read from an array of texts (generally their own work, although Fournel and Chapman read some of Queneau's Exercices de style). We were treated to a variety of poetic brilliance that made the time just fly by.
I've been interested in Oulipo for some years now, so getting the opportunity to share the same room as some of the Oulipians was a very pleasurable experience. On both nights, the writers managed to make the audience ignore their uncomfortable chairs and escape into a humorous and entertaining world of productive texts. Who knows when such a gathering will occur again, but anybody involved this time around will agree that the events were very special indeed.
Tuesday 18 March 2008
Sunday 16 March 2008
Double Agent
The "Double Agent" show at the ICA this month proved to be thoroughly entertaining, and well worth more than one visit. It was a collection of installations, photos, sculptures, films, and performance art, some of which had a few surprises...
Actors, or agents, were the theme of the show. Sometimes, the spectator/viewer/customer was employed as the agent. In "The African Twin Towers - Stairlift to Heaven," a film was showing on a large screen, and you could ride on a stairlift to get up to watch another film that was showing behind a black curtain. Hmm...
In the room next door, there was the writing of an "Instant Narrative." The spectator could also read the narrative, which would generally be about the people in the room. But what would be the effect if the protagonist of this narrative were to write another story, about the other writer, that the writer of "Instant Narrative" couldn't know about? I played with my own idea of assymetric narrative information while the "Instant Narrative" rambled on about the possibility that I might be thinking about what I had for lunch.
The film by Barbara Visser, "Last Lecture," was well worth sitting on a bench for. Somebody gave a lecture about 2 previous lectures, which had both been given by an actress who was receiving answers to questions (about another lecture?!) from the artist, through an earpiece. Visser instructed actresses in a way that made them seem slightly strange to the audience, as they would always be waiting for instructions, and easily confused. There were subtitles. When there was English voiceover and English subtitles, there were differences between the voice and the text. There were so many agents that it was impossible for me to tell who was who. As one of them said towards the end of a lecture: "We all seem to have big ideas about fiction, but none of us really seems to know what is real."
Lars Von Trier's latest film, "The Boss Of It All" was also on show. In this film, an actor is hired to act as President and sell a Danish software company to an Icelandic firm. The real President is too scared to admit that he is in fact the boss, because he doesn't want to face the consequences of his actions. The actor is given a small script to follow, but his interpretation and delivery of it leads to confusion and disaster at the first attempt to sign the contract. The sale process is delayed and the actor remains at the company as "The Boss Of It All," perfecting his performance in preparation for the next signing of the contract. And so the play unravels... The film is utterly superb.
The highlight of the event for me was the talk by the artist Donelle Woolford. Donelle had been working on a sculpture in a makeshift studio in one of the gallery rooms. I hadn't seen her work, or her performance in the studio, but I was keen to hear what she had to say. She started her presentation by talking about the studio in the gallery, and how she likes to question what's real. She then brought up the story that there is a made-up historic town in the United States where actors are hired to play the roles of the workers...
I found some of Donelle's ideas rather surprising. She put chairs and palm trees in the gallery with her work, and claimed that she liked the chairs because they represented "the new", and the trees because they represented "the old"... And she liked leaving the chairs and trees and other things in the gallery, because it was like a collage. I was a bit surprised by what I heard, and eager to hear her elaborate on these ideas. But she never did: after giving her talk and answering some questions from the organisers, Donelle Woolford revealed that she was in fact an actress, and that her real name was Abigail. The brochure claimed that Donelle Woolford had been "invited" by Joe Scanlan. As it turned out, Joe Scanlan had invented her. Donelle Woolford is actually a fictional character, played by various actresses, who are given a brief education in art and then given clothes chosen by Scanlan to make them look like artists... The sculptures on display at her shows are his work, and he wrote the questions that Donelle was asked by the panel. But the performance of Donelle is always left entirely to the actors who play her role.
Claire Bishop explained how one of the recent trends for performance art has been for the artist to set up a framework and then delegate the performance to at least one agent. Whereas previously the artist would take part in the performance, now the artist merely sets up the game. Scanlan's piece was highly thought-provoking, and the discussion that it spawned was very entertaining. The delegation of the performance was yet another ingenious twist of trickery at the ICA show, and once more I saw a thousand questions being asked as the fiction unravelled. Some members of the audience seemed very perturbed indeed by the questions they were starting to think of.
The exhibition was superb. "Outsourcing" and "offshoring" are buzzwords in the art world at the moment.
Actors, or agents, were the theme of the show. Sometimes, the spectator/viewer/customer was employed as the agent. In "The African Twin Towers - Stairlift to Heaven," a film was showing on a large screen, and you could ride on a stairlift to get up to watch another film that was showing behind a black curtain. Hmm...
In the room next door, there was the writing of an "Instant Narrative." The spectator could also read the narrative, which would generally be about the people in the room. But what would be the effect if the protagonist of this narrative were to write another story, about the other writer, that the writer of "Instant Narrative" couldn't know about? I played with my own idea of assymetric narrative information while the "Instant Narrative" rambled on about the possibility that I might be thinking about what I had for lunch.
The film by Barbara Visser, "Last Lecture," was well worth sitting on a bench for. Somebody gave a lecture about 2 previous lectures, which had both been given by an actress who was receiving answers to questions (about another lecture?!) from the artist, through an earpiece. Visser instructed actresses in a way that made them seem slightly strange to the audience, as they would always be waiting for instructions, and easily confused. There were subtitles. When there was English voiceover and English subtitles, there were differences between the voice and the text. There were so many agents that it was impossible for me to tell who was who. As one of them said towards the end of a lecture: "We all seem to have big ideas about fiction, but none of us really seems to know what is real."
Lars Von Trier's latest film, "The Boss Of It All" was also on show. In this film, an actor is hired to act as President and sell a Danish software company to an Icelandic firm. The real President is too scared to admit that he is in fact the boss, because he doesn't want to face the consequences of his actions. The actor is given a small script to follow, but his interpretation and delivery of it leads to confusion and disaster at the first attempt to sign the contract. The sale process is delayed and the actor remains at the company as "The Boss Of It All," perfecting his performance in preparation for the next signing of the contract. And so the play unravels... The film is utterly superb.
The highlight of the event for me was the talk by the artist Donelle Woolford. Donelle had been working on a sculpture in a makeshift studio in one of the gallery rooms. I hadn't seen her work, or her performance in the studio, but I was keen to hear what she had to say. She started her presentation by talking about the studio in the gallery, and how she likes to question what's real. She then brought up the story that there is a made-up historic town in the United States where actors are hired to play the roles of the workers...
I found some of Donelle's ideas rather surprising. She put chairs and palm trees in the gallery with her work, and claimed that she liked the chairs because they represented "the new", and the trees because they represented "the old"... And she liked leaving the chairs and trees and other things in the gallery, because it was like a collage. I was a bit surprised by what I heard, and eager to hear her elaborate on these ideas. But she never did: after giving her talk and answering some questions from the organisers, Donelle Woolford revealed that she was in fact an actress, and that her real name was Abigail. The brochure claimed that Donelle Woolford had been "invited" by Joe Scanlan. As it turned out, Joe Scanlan had invented her. Donelle Woolford is actually a fictional character, played by various actresses, who are given a brief education in art and then given clothes chosen by Scanlan to make them look like artists... The sculptures on display at her shows are his work, and he wrote the questions that Donelle was asked by the panel. But the performance of Donelle is always left entirely to the actors who play her role.
Claire Bishop explained how one of the recent trends for performance art has been for the artist to set up a framework and then delegate the performance to at least one agent. Whereas previously the artist would take part in the performance, now the artist merely sets up the game. Scanlan's piece was highly thought-provoking, and the discussion that it spawned was very entertaining. The delegation of the performance was yet another ingenious twist of trickery at the ICA show, and once more I saw a thousand questions being asked as the fiction unravelled. Some members of the audience seemed very perturbed indeed by the questions they were starting to think of.
The exhibition was superb. "Outsourcing" and "offshoring" are buzzwords in the art world at the moment.
Friday 14 March 2008
Get naked
I watched Gok Wan's "How To Look Good Naked" tonight, thinking it might be a joke at first. But how I was wrong. This show was utterly captivating. Gok took a woman who was so ashamed of her body that she hadn't been naked with her husband for years, and as a result they were set for a divorce. He took this woman, and completely transformed her. With bold, yet feasible steps, he built up the woman's confidence, making her appreciate her body by looking at it and having people admire it. Then with delicate artistry, he transformed the presentation of her body. His craftwork on her body was spectacular. He understood her shape, and applied style rules to accentuate her beauty. By the end, she looked like a model, and she was fit for the catwalk. Her marriage was saved completely, ensuring the happiness of her son, as well as herself and her husband.
The course of action taken by Gok was amazingly effective: he used pure creativity to rise far above the swarms of TV programmes about dieting and body fascism that still pester us. Gok Wan is an absolute genius.
The course of action taken by Gok was amazingly effective: he used pure creativity to rise far above the swarms of TV programmes about dieting and body fascism that still pester us. Gok Wan is an absolute genius.
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