Written City 2: Cultural Blackspot

Belgrave Gate, Leicester, December 2009

Some posts back I alluded to a lack of confidence in what I was doing with my work and gave clues about the confusion of ideas tangling my mind.  My solution is threefold as follows...

1:  Just keep working anyway and reject old habits of self-sabotage.

2:  Maintain a programme of reading into the various ideas that currently preoccupy me.  Calm research and critical analysis should help me order my thoughts and decide how it all relates to my work once digested properly.

3:  Accept that, for all the theorising, it’s direct experience that really underlies my work.  If in doubt, just get out there and keep looking.

These points aren’t novel and It's a little pathetic how long I've taken to recognise them.  Anyway, the first two points are taking care of themselves.  This post is about the third and how important a source of welcome chance it can be.

My regular drive to work passes a building that always captures my attention.  It’s in a dilapidated part of town between two major roundabouts and is essentially a shell from which the whole façade has been removed and boarded up.  I can’t remember what it was originally and can only assume it represents a failed redevelopment project and speculate on the reasons.  What originally struck me two years ago was the contrast between the overall expanse of blank, grey plywood above and the section at street level that became an evolving fly-poster’s bulletin board.

Since then, I’ve photographed the site repeatedly, relishing the tattered collage of successive posters and formulating ideas about the processes of transformation that affect urban neighbourhoods and the relationship between unofficial and approved information streams.  More recently, I’ve noticed the Council’s attempts, here and elsewhere, to obliterate fly-posters under coats of dismal brown paint.  One can only marvel at the covering of the polychromatic evidence of a vibrant entertainment culture with a uniform hue likely to remove all visual joy from the environment.  Does this really improve Leicester?  Is a shored-up monument to systematic shortcomings improved by preserving its facelessness?

Well, it really is a gift that keeps giving.  Recently, I noticed the appearance of ‘Cultural Blackspot’ posters on the plywood and on a couple of other fly-posting sites I regularly monitor.  They are already torn so the urgency to document them sent me back into the Friday evening rush hour with my camera.

Frog Island, Leicester

So what are these about?  Initially, I wondered if it was another bizarre tactic of the council’s but Internet research indicates that there may be more to it.  It seems the symbol has appeared around the UK for some years and there are numerous images of it on flikr but I’ve uncovered no definitive explanation.  Is it a straightforward anti ‘vandalism’ campaign or a protest against official attempts to stifle ‘street' culture or leave cities prey to planning blight and property speculation?  Could it be a critique of nearby cultural activity?  An artist called Brian Jones claims the image was stolen from him whilst there are suggestions it’s connected to the anti-Capitalist movement - particularly the Situationist inspired detournements of the Adbusters group.  

Photo:  Beatnic, London, 2007

Given my readings into Situationism and involvement with public texts this really fascinates me.  Does anyone know the real story?

Playlist 1

Readers of this blog will already have twigged that music is pretty important to me.  As with many middle-aged men, my floorboards groan under the weight of hundreds of CDs that I just couldn’t manage without, even if the format is now deemed obsolete.  Increasingly, I download stuff too, although, somehow, the acquisition is never quite as satisfying that way.

Here’s the first of what will probably become a regular bulletin on my recent listening habits.  It’s pure self-indulgence really but, as I’m often playing music while painting, there’s a sense that many of these sounds are subliminally incorporated into my work.  My taste is pretty wide ranging so be warned, - there may be the occasional prog. masterpiece.

‘Cahoots’, The Band

The recent death of Levon Helm caused me to revisit The Band’s back catalogue.  Whilst acknowledging the brilliance of their first two albums, I’ve also found much to love in this, critically despised, fourth outing.

‘Rock of Ages’, The Band

The Band on Stage

I never owned this one until recently.  It’s another of those monumental live albums from the 70s.  It’s not as spectacular as ‘The Last Waltz’ but does contain some truly poised performances.  The extra brass arrangements augment familiar songs really well and Dylan shows up as a guest on the last four tracks.

‘Returnal’, Oneohtrix Point Never

There’s been plenty of disagreement about the importance of OPN’s output so I thought I should judge for myself.  I don’t know if it fulfils all the claims made in ‘The Wire’ but I’m loving the way these washes of sound seem to comprise layers of subtle complexity.  I want to hear the other albums now.

‘Hazyville’, Actress

Actress seems to typify the way that contemporary dance-derived music is increasingly salami slicing and reprocessing its own archives.  Parts of this first album sound like the fragmented and degraded remnants of a culture that have been salvaged and put on endless repeat.  It’s pleasingly hypnotic.

‘Splazsh’, Actress

Even better than the first.  I need to hear the new one next.

‘Soundtracks’, Can

I listen to plenty of German stuff from the 70s but never really found my way into Can.  I’m trying again at present and have decided to start with the earlier stuff this time rather than the three supposed ‘classics’.  Early signs are encouraging.

‘Tango N’ Vectif’, µ-Ziq

Mike Paradinas, (µ-Ziq)

For some reason, I urgently wanted to hear µ-Ziq again the other day to satisfy a need for some wilfully barmy ‘intelligent’ dance music from the 90s.  Frighteningly, this is nineteen years old now but still stands up really well.

‘Lunatic Harness’, µ-Ziq

See above.  This might actually be my favourite µ-Ziq album.  It combines the expected wide-ranging experimentalism and bloody mindedness with some genuinely stately atmospheres.  'Hasty Boom Alert' is a pretty perfect track title too.

‘The Tumbler’, John Martyn

I wanted to introduce a work colleague to John Martyn the other day and unexpectedly found myself playing this one.  It doesn’t represent his better-known later echoplexed sound but does have a charming and playful romanticism.  I’m a sucker for the late 60s/early 70s Folk revival, (she enjoyed it too).

‘Hard Nose The Highway’, Van Morrison

He may be lost in the MOR these days but it’s hard to beat Van Morrison in his pomp.  Coincidentally, he also shows up to guest on the first recording on this list.  I didn’t know this often overlooked album well until recently but I’ve really enjoyed discovering it.  ‘Snow in San Anselmo’ and the title track are both fantastic and Van even pulls off a cover from the Muppet Show, (trust me).

Sport, Leisure & Shopping

During the excursion outlined in my last two posts I documented a couple of other building sites that are symptomatic of the redevelopment of our local area.  Significantly, my house is now situated in the newly branded 'De Montfort University Square Mile'.

For many years the preferred local amongst my social circle was the Pump and Tap on Duns Lane.  Situated a short walk from my door, the Victorian building was originally a Railway hotel backing onto arches that once supported the disused Great Central line.  A few metres away, the imposing Bowstring railway bridge spanned a canal and the junction of Western Boulevard and Braunstone Gate.

The Pump was a relaxed and slightly alternative boozer and attracted a wide range of clientele that included genuine eccentrics and dedicated hedonists, without ever being threatening.  For years it hosted live music under the arches and retained its character even after a major refurbishment.  It was the venue for memorable moments in many lives and provided a haven for those keen to avoid the standard family Christmas Day.  Numerous framed photographs celebrated the survivors of those annual sessions. 

Despite concerted campaigns to save them, the Pump has gone now, along with the bridge.  The junction now offers widely expanded vistas and has completely changed in character. On the pub site has emerged a minimalist steel and glass box that will house the ever-expanding De Montfort University’s new sports centre.  Its cold modernity faces off against a dark rampart of truncated railway viaduct that has become a new landmark in its own right.  The marketing material attached to the site claims it will become a community facility, as indeed was The Pump.  The only difference being that the community chose The Pump.

There's That Tower Again

My final stop was the construction site of a Tesco supermarket.  I’ve been intrigued by its use of a sophisticated timber frame and the way that the clearance of its site has again revealed previously obscured views of the buildings beyond.  These new perspectives on the city are a feature of these upheavals that I find genuinely exciting.

Of course, it’s Tesco that best symbolises the ‘supermarketisation’ of Britain and the ability to annexe the grocery pound of entire neighbourhoods.  I’m guessing that the increasing influx of new De Montfort students has reached a critical mass of potential supermarket shoppers.

Still Hanging On For Now...

Liberty

Part of the appeal of adopting a Psychogeographic attitude is in the making of unexpected discoveries and psychic or temporal connections in a location that may not have been predictable on setting out.  It’s about taking vertical slices through the strata of history and multiple meanings within an environment.

In my last post I discussed the new tower block under construction near my home.  That resulted from a planned trip out with the camera and a clear intention to document it.  In seeking out different camera angles I actually covered a significant portion of the surrounding area on foot, gaining a deeper sense of the building’s impact on an entire neighbourhood and of the physical and atmospheric identity of those streets in their own right.  It also allowed me to focus on a monument to the economic heritage of the area and to make lateral connection with contemporary social issues in the process.

In a previous incarnation the area around the new tower was fairly industrial. The Liberty Shoe Company – a mainstay of local manufacturing, once stood opposite having adopted the name in 1921 when a stone replica of the statue of Liberty was erected on the factory’s parapet.  Lady Liberty was a noted landmark for decades and, amongst other things, a good luck totem for Leicester City fans bound for nearby Filbert Street.

The long decline in Britain and Leicester’s manufacturing base over recent decades saw the factory abandoned.  The statue was ‘decorated’ by pranksters, (at some personal risk), then put into storage prior to the building’s demolition.  Superstitious fans maintain this coincided with City’s decline and fall into the third tier of the football league.  However, Liberty has risen again as redevelopment of the road layout has seen her renovated and placed on a plinth to preside over the traffic sweeping/crawling around the new 'Swan Gyratory’.  The Foxes have undergone a partial revival but still pine for Premiership status.

Whilst taking photos, I thought about how the tower of student homes and Liberty’s transformation from mascot of local manufacturing back into a more abstract symbol, (be it of a noble aspiration or the branding of a ‘quarter’), represent the transition from an economy based on making to one of knowledge and ideas.  I also noticed that, as is usual nowadays, my movements were monitored by a CCTV camera perched high above the junction.  The ironic juxtaposition of liberty and surveillance was reinforced by a fortuitous graffito discovered as I walked away along the river bank below.

Maintaining or Curtailing?

Towering

Last weekend the rain finally abated long enough for me to photograph some of the current building projects occurring round our way.

The most noticeable one is a dramatic new tower presiding over what is colloquially known as the Liberty junction.  I’ve passed it repeatedly over recent weeks and been struck both by the visual complexity of its incomplete skin and its domination of the surrounding area through  vastly incongruous scale.  I'm also slightly reminded of Breugel's depictions of the Tower of Babel under construction.

Pieter Breugel the Elder, 'The "Little" Tower of Babel',
Oil on Panel, c. 1563

The completed tower will comprise student accommodation.  In recent years blocks of such apartments, amongst other major buildings, have multiplied rapidly to the west of central Leicester and signify the burgeoning ambitions of De Montfort University.  This one has massive architectural impact and with its elliptical foot print and generically corporate high-tech aesthetic, it seems to belong to the financial quarter of a major city more than the low-rise red brick environs it inhabits.

Juxtaposing this immense monolith with adjacent terraced housing emphasises just how times have changed.  In my student days a brief first year sojourn in halls of residence usually led to a succession of low-rent houses of just that type and many by-passed institutional accommodation altogether.  Different neighbourhoods and communities were sampled and, erratically, a degree of worldly independence acquired.  Student expectations regarding laid-on facilities have clearly changed.  In turn, universities and housing corporations have realised the potential of housing a captive market of tenants in multiple occupation blocks - particularly where lucrative foreign students are concerned.  They're certainly piling them high round here.

I’ll confess the building excites, (in a Ballardian kind of way), and intimidates me in equal measure.  It’s easy to reach for post Situationist interpretations of it as evidence of the globalised commodification of ‘The student experience’ and of students no longer fully inhabiting a locale but gazing down on it with lofty detachment.  Part of me recognises the validity of such views and the imposition of such architecture of spectacular alienation by corporate interests is clearly transforming the area’s entire character.  However, another less ideologically aligned part of me prefers to relish a less politicised range of subjective responses and psychic disturbance aroused by the existence of such a crass statement.  If I'm honest - there's a guilty thrill in it.

You Know What Thinking Did...

Here’s an attempt to detail something of the tangled internal monologue over my work mentioned in my last post.  Forgive the length and style of this one, - the form reflects something of the mental over-activity that has sometimes halted my creative workflow.  I emphasise the past tense there because the whole point of this is to demonstrate that ‘I don’t do that any more’.  This is an initial splurge but I intend to keep breaking these issues into manageable chunks and keep working in the expectation that various issues will find resolution in the paintings in their own time time.

Jaques Villegle & Raymond Hains, 'Ach Alma Manetro, '
Torn Poster Collage, 1949

I recently read a book called ‘Art, Word & Image – 2000 Years of Visual/Textual Interraction’ [1.] and for the first time really started to appreciate the linkages between Cubism Dada Surrealism Post War radical movements including Letterism Nouveau Realism and Situationism through to Pop Art and Conceptualism and more recent phenomena like Punk aesthetics and Street Art and my eye was caught by the work of Jacques Villegle and also of Raymond Hains and Mimmo Rotella ...

Raymond Hains, 'Sans Titre', Torn Poster Collage,  1998

Mimmo Rotella, ' With a Smile', Torn Poster Collage, 1962

...who all worked with torn posters which chimed with my own fascination for them and numerous photos I’ve taken of the subject including my images of tattered hoardings at New Year and the amalgamation of reclaimed posters into my own recent paintings and also how my house is currently full of coloured billboard tatters collected on recent local forays and that I hope to use in collages somehow plus I also thought about how those artists drew on Duchamp’s Dadaist tradition of the Readymade and employed a rip and paste approach to text and image fragments to subvert standard meanings or invent new ones randomly and to regard the city street as a valid arena for expression in its own right and thus to look back to ideas of the urban flaneur and forward to the theories of the Situationist International whilst retaining a distinct Pop flavour and also about a  contemporary Street Artist called Vhills/Alexandre Farto who I became aware of a while back who’ s also done some striking work with torn posters...

Alexandre Farto, Billboard Collage, 2008

Alexandre Farto, 'Compro Logo Existo', Torn Poster Collage

...and suddenly I felt that my own things are quite polite and limited in scope in comparison being essentially about the street rather of it and quite quickly I’ve found that my researches have led me to investigate the theories of Guy Debord and The Situationist International whose ideas about textual manipulation developed the word-games of Surrealism and the Letterists into the still-common subversive strategy of Detournement and who also embraced the notion of the Derive as an aimless but observational urban wandering to propose a formal urban psychogeography...

Guy Debord (With Glasses at Head of Table) & Members
of the Situationist International, Gothenburg, 1961

Situationist Derive Map of Paris

...where different quarters and zones might be defined by mood atmosphere or subjective response in reaction to the alienation and boredom that result from the imperatives of bureaucratic authority and capitalist economics and this made me recognise how these slightly barmy notions actually reflect something of my own responses to the environment I inhabit and just how important a sense of place has always been to me both in my work and my life but how so far I’ve usually regarded it in a largely personal context like when I haunt specific hometown locations significant to my personal history whereas Situationism became ever more politicised and arrived at a form of Post Marxist Geography that inevitably degenerated into the self-defeating theoretical dead ends and pedantic infighting typical of all self proclaimed revolutionary movements notwithstanding some really interesting ideas about the spectacular but ultimately alienated nature of modern societies and the fact it became a significant contributor to the radical uprisings in Paris in 1968 not least in the use of provocative if obscure graffiti slogans and a strong sense of the street as territory reclaimed through staged actions...

Paris 1968

'Society is an Carnivorous Flower'

'Beneath The Pavement, The Beach'

...which all seems quite apposite just now because its possible to see how these ideas about urban space permitted access and territorial control all feed into contemporary phenomena like the anti-capitalist Occupy movement and the 2011 riots and the multiple ways in which private or government interests seek to annexe public spaces or deny access in the name of security or direct our movements through increasingly controlled permitted channels or exert social control through housing policy or simply price the poor out of neighbourhoods or redevelop well established areas of cities with questionable effects or create magnificent palaces of leisure and consumerism or use economic drivers to shape population distribution or even how the plethora of textual interventions in our streets cover the whole gamut from the strictly authoritarian and utilitarian through the commercial to the strategically subversive and just plain criminal...

...and I realise I’m increasingly attuned to all this as I traverse my own city and observe the rapid changes its going through and the constant tension between decay and renewal revealed in its physical surfaces not to mention the transformations that Britain has undergone in my own lifetime sometimes for the better but sometimes also in an alienating way and making those connections really was exhilarating and there’s no denying that distinct elements of all this have been creeping into my work of late but in ways that again seem a bit superficial and it raises loads of questions about how I want to order and prioritise it all in terms of the visual/observational versus the textual/conceptual and if it's preferable to maintain a detached philosophical stance or risk straying into political engagement or whether art is most like itself when it just seeks to witness and reflect the visual world which may well include multiple clues to all of the above whilst resisting any particular position on it because I can never get away from my deep engagement with the visual as primary stimulus.

Belgrave Gate, Leicester, 2009

...and by the way see paintings as so much more than just culturally obsolete tradable product and anyway these radical cultural movements always seem to conclude that no pre-existing art form can be tolerated just violent gesture or politically correct strategy and everything else must be subsumed in anarchistic nihilism and perpetual revolution despite the fact that they all end up in museums and books and academic curricula just like everything else and this is certainly true of the Parisian student uprisings of 1968 and the Punk movement both of which are now memorialised and periodically rehashed...

...whilst street art readily creeps into galleries and fills numerous glossy books and even Situationism itself could simply be seen as the last gasp of the twentieth century Avant Garde and in passing I wonder why I wasn’t more aware of Situationism years ago given that my teenage years coincided with the relatively brief moment of Punk...

...so returning to my work I oscillate between the feeling that creative practice carried out in our period of historical crises should attempt to incorporate something of this radical tradition even though it moved past painting long ago and probably reflects a political sensibility that has more to do with the last century than the current situation and the feeling that by now we’ve surely outgrown the idea that paintings can only be tradable artefacts of a spectacular society and I wonder if actually I should permit myself a much wider remit that with Gerhard Richter's admirable stance of engaged neutrality in mind permits more open-ended responses to the relationship between text and the urban environment within an overarching psychogeographical umbrella...

Leicester, 2012

...and that has made me go back to re-read Merlin Coverly’s excellent survey of the subject [2.] but mostly I agonise over how to encompass some of all this without resorting to trite or obvious clichés or over simplistic signifiers to which I fear I can be too subject or indeed how to find my own voice within it all rather than just travelling already well trodden paths and at this point I can almost hear you shouting JUST SHUT UP YOU’LL NEVER GET ANYWHERE IF YOU DON’T STOP OVER ANALYSING EVERYTHING!

I don’t necessarily expect you to have read all the way through that but I do feel better for putting it down.  It does seem that one of the functions of a blog is to externalise things that might otherwise remain as mental barriers to creativity.  It’s likely I’ll return to these themes in future posts in which case I’ll attempt to exert more order over my writings as well as my thought processes.

[1.]:  John Dixon Hunt, David Lomas & Michael Corris, 'Art, Word & Image - 2000 Years of Visual/Textual Interraction', London, Reaktion Books Ltd., 2010

[2.]:  Merlin Coverly, 'Psychogeography', Harpenden UK, Pocket Essentials, 2010

Other Sources:

Guy Debord, 'Why Lettrism?', Paris, Potlach No. 22, 1955

Guy Debord, 'Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography', Brussels, Les Levres Nues, 1955

Guy Debord, 'The Society of the Spectacle', 1967, Trans. Ken Knabb, http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/

Ken Knabb, 'Situationist International Anthology', Berkeley CA., Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006

Marco Livingstone, 'Pop Art - A Continuing History', London, Thames & Hudson, 1990 

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/