Category Archives: Influences

Video Art is bollocks!

How can video still be classed as a groundbreaking Art-form? Why do people bother to display it or make it? Video is a simple handicraft that anybody can do – just like those hideous bits of shit you can buy in craft centers that are made from glass – what are they called? – (don’t laugh) – StaINed gLaSs – c R a P!

Video was a great new medium in the 20th century which in its infancy did question ‘identity’ – but the stuff now is just repetition of boring pseudo-concepts……. video became usable when Sony manufactured the Portapak and released it in 1967. This was the machine we used to make a video of a slaughterhouse.

The introduction of the Portapak had a great influence on the development of Video art. Suddenly not only could rich production companies afford to make movies, but artists could experiment with an easier form of recording. You could play it back instantly instead of waiting to process film, and it was much more affordable. It was still difficult to edit it but this machine was the catalyst for the cancer that has spread through out galleries across the world.

“ The Portapak would seem to have been invented specifically for use by artists. Just when pure formalism had run its course; just when it became politically embarrassing to make objects, but ludicrous to make nothing; just when many artists were doing performance works but had nowhere to perform, or felt the need to keep a record of their performances; just when it began to seem silly to ask the same old Berkleean question, ‘If you build a sculpture in the desert where no one can see it, does it exist?’; just when it became clear that TV communicates more information to more people than large walls do; just when we understood that in order to define space it is necessary to encompass time; just when many established ideas in other disciplines were being questioned and new models were proposed – just then the Portapak became available ” Quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portapak

YouTube is a valid alternative – the scale and diversity of banality is by fAR a greater artistic statement on modern day experience than twee screens in a white space. Even YouTube is a pile of puked up masticated bananas – Holby City is real life and Art – I must watch it tonight.

Who is your muse? Are you a muse?

There are poets, painters, artists, musicians all over the place in history who need a M U S E , amusing don’t you think?

Stella Cartwright was the muse who entranced a cohort of Scottish poets and inspired passionate, love poetry (20th century). Her correspondence gives a glimpse into tragic the story of a femme fatale – who held some of Scotland’s greatest ‘rhymers’ in the palm of her hand.

As a young girl she dreamed of becoming a poet, but she was destined to earn her place in literary history as a muse. She was introduced to the “Rose Street Poets” by her proud (bohemianesque) father as a ‘bubbly’ 17-year-old. This group of poets were fuelled by alcohol and they drew this teenager into its grasp, a cruel and sadistic act. Drink is the friend with a knife that turns to stab you (based on a quote by her lover George MacKay Brown). Stella’s life fell apart. While her lovers went on to success, marry, or to return back to their wives, alcoholism became her escape and she died alone in 1985 at the age of 48.

She did write poetry but her poems are only footnotes in history books. Victorine Meurent, Manet’s muse was a painter but yet again was designated to the margins. The creative need the weak to clamber over to reach success.  Who is the greater the artist or the spark?

Cuban Heroes

After years of speculation about the Cuban President’s health, Castro has stepped down handing over the revolution to his younger brother.

Castro wrote in a letter published online in the official media that he would not accept a new term when the newly elected parliament meets on Sunday.

“I will not aspire or accept – I repeat I will not aspire or accept, the post of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief,” read the letter in the Communist Party daily ‘Granma’.

Staying in Cuba was one of the most important events in my life – it changed my life.

Slaughterhouse

In 1977 I was asked to ‘crew’ for a video (In those days the equipment was huge, I had to carry a box the size of a suitcase). The video was of the processes involved in producing meat in a slaughterhouse, I did this for a painter who was creating images based on dead things. I witnessed the slaughtering of pigs, lambs, and beef. The video shoot was over three days and although horrific it was surprising how quickly I adapted to the  mass slaughter – the analogies between what I witnesses and the images of Jewish concentration camps during the Second World War were obvious – what I was surprised with was the speed in which such volume could be processed.

I’ve just read an article on American Slaughterhouses. The same issues and questions exist 30 years on. – Define cruelty when you take a life? What isn’t fit to harvest?

Zurich – Tzara

I love Zurich – The  ‘world of art’ and the ‘world of everyday life’ had already been discussed in Dada. “Life and art are one,” proclaimed Tzara. It is all just a metaphor …. read more

Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Tristan Tzara and Benjamin Peret