unrehearsed theatrum mundi

I’ve been trying to juggle my art practice, full time work and an emmerging writing practice over the last few months… Below is an exerpt from a piece I wrote for Darren Banks (http://www.darrenbanks.co.uk/) about his Blobs series of drawings and prints….

The eponymous Blob first crept onto movie screens, and into the collective consciousness in 1958, as an unstoppable, flesh-eating, gelatinous mass. Just as mankind pushed the frontiers of human exploration and endeavor to the outer limits of space (Sputnik was launched in 1957) and the innermost realms of the human genome (discovery of the double helix, Watson and Crick, 1953), the semi-conscious, amorphous Blob creature, came to epitomize a latent and horrific vision of life that could be excavated in these remote and unexplored territories of human experience. In 2010, the uncharted worlds are less the distant regions of space, or the microscopic iota of life, but increasingly those spaces of artificial life worlds created by the collision of biology and technology. These undiscovered worlds represent the new frontier of human experience. The semi-conscious blobs which we encounter there, will be the new form of alien life; hybrids of genetics and technology, culture and programming, and imagination and artificial intelligence.

From the crucible of Darren Banks’ imagination, ambiguous mutant forms, menacing and contaminating blobs are distilled (or invoked) into our flimsy concept of reality. Hovering in the white space of creation as if examined under a microscope, these amoeba-like phenomena seem to occupy the fragile states between animal instinct and artificial intelligence. The intricately rendered entities have the organic, visceral qualities of genetic material, something tumescent, and protean, mutating like a cancerous bunch of cells. But these are held in a tenuous equilibrium with the industrial looking elements, though warped and melting, which bespeak an uncomfortable degree of organization and intelligent purpose. These monsters of the deep regions of the psyche seethe with delicate menace. The titles offer no clues to these paradoxical beings, and offers us no key to signification or understanding there, Blob 19, Blob 20, Blob 21, merely points back to their shapeless, unknowable form, enclosing them in their ever unresolved system of mysterious evolution. They are the uncanny, fragmentary stuff of nightmares, that cannot be fully remembered upon waking. Instead these hybrid, impossibly ambivalent things (benignly familiar, so we cannot entirely separate ourselves from them) contaminate and destabilize our systems of knowledge, because they are unquantifiable, contradictory and impossibly ‘other’. The monster of mythology, and of science fiction, reflects as much upon the society, ideology and cultural climate from which it is born, as upon the anxieties, fears and obsessions of its creator.

…for full text please go to

http://schediosunrehearsed.blogspot.com/2010/06/19th-june-darren-banks-first-draft.html

Whilst my sister Rosie was visiting this week we talked about art jobs and opportunities in Newcastle and Glasgow. Although she has done internships at Sorcha Dallas and bits and pieces of voluntary work for Transmission and other places (plus, crucially, a degree in Art History at Glasgow University, which she tailored to contemporary art history – artists such as Matthew Barney etc), it seems that positions which come up now, she is either over qualified for (as places specify volunteers with no prior experience) or else under qualified (where PHD students/graduates are taking on even the unpaid internships for galleries)…

In Newcastle, the situation isn’t quite the same… if you’re a motivated, astute practitioner and want to be involved in the gallery aspects of the art world, there are plenty of opportunities available if you’re prepared to negotiate what you require in terms of experience/skills development, alongside what the institution requires of you as a volunteer…

In the past I’ve volunteered for a number of places in Newcastle and Gateshead including The Mushroom Works, Globe Gallery and Workplace… all of these have taught me different things, but predominantly that, volunteering is a two way exchange. You need to enter into that relationship with a gallery not only knowing what you can give to them, but also being able to trust that they will provide something of equal worth to you. Whether it’s building your confidence, opening up networking opportunities, or providing experience, it’s important to always be mindful of this relationship and make sure it is, as much as possible, an equilibrium.

It’s very easy for places to (sometimes inadvertantly) treat the volunteer as an unpaid, menial serf, but this only does disservice to everyone involved. I’m not saying that, as volunteers, we shouldn’t sweep up the rubbish or scrub the floors, but rather that this should be balanced with activities which help our own development e.g. admin tasks, writing press releases, constructing exhibition furniture etc. And I’ve spoken to a number of volunteers who regarded it as the galleries’ responsibility to provide the opportunities which catered to the volunteers needs/ aspirations, but as a guy once said “naybody has a glass heed”. As in every relationship, communication is the most important part of the gallery/volunteer exchange, and it is the volunteers reponsibility, just as much as it is the galleries, to be clear from the outset about what they want, what they can provide, and what they expect.

Dogtooth Kynodontas

The feeling of guilty bewilderment a person gets upon arriving five minutes late into a quiet, subtitled screening (and squeezing in beside a stranger, knocking them with your beer bottle) didn’t subside with this film… even after we were well settled into our seats, happily munching on peanut m&ms, the confusing sense of alienation continued with the aberrant and impenetrable relationships we were witnessing… a woman, talking like a girl, whilst sitting in a bath tub and speaking an impenetrable, insider language about taps and play to two other ‘kidults’ set the tone for a film which was so ‘other’ it left one feeling like a continually stupefied voyeur…

Kynodontas is a surprising gem of Greek cinema, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (and 2009 Cannes Film Festival Award winner). The basic premise of the film is of a couple who keep their 3 children confined within the borders of their home and prescribed routines, in order to preserve their child-like ‘innocence’. The children have been indoctrinated to believe that the outside world is a dangerous and inhospitable place, with only their father permitted to leave the confines of the house every day in his car (a vehicle of shelter against the exorbitant threats of that other world). And the only outsider permitted to enter the closited world, a woman Christina, whose sole duty it is to be an outlet for the son’s natural ‘urges’.

The totalitarian control of the children – which keeps them in a perpetual oedipal bond – evokes parallels both to the Josef Fritzl case in Austria, but also to the conditioning of reality in regimes such as Nazi Germany and Communist North Korea. Reality for them is so acutely manufactured that when outside words or concepts seep into their bubble, the parents dismiss them, or rework them into ‘innocent’ explanations; under their reign “pussy” becomes “…a large lamp… when it goes out a room is plunged into darkness…” or “zombies” are explained as “…small, yellow flowers”.

The children characters in this work represent the antithesis of the ideals of the ‘noble savage’ or Rousseau’s idealized notion of primitivism, and the reality when those ideals are put into practice. Namely that the carnal, animalistic and undesirable aspects of human nature will manifest even without the corrupting influences of society. Perhaps more so.

This is a beautiful film, shot in such a way that the immaculate, and antiseptic environment of the home, and it’s claustraphobic atmosphere, is heightened. The perfect shots are only ever ruptured when the outside world defiantly assserts itself (or is introduced) upon the confined nuclear, stagnant world of the family.
I left this film feeling utterly shaken. It’s no exagerration to say I sat in the bar next door with my friend for an hour as we waited for its impact to subside enough for us to function like normal human beings again…..

http://schediosunrehearsed.blogspot.com

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