Max Oldenburg – ‘Green Air Bags’

Sponsored by London Overground, this work at Hoxton Station evokes the adrenaline rushes implicit in the anticipation and disillusion of travel. This quote from the artist’s statement on Platform One says it all: “The random inflation and deflation of the bags evokes the capriciousness of our transitory expectations. The green rictus grin below the platform level is a symbol of the wafer thin veneer of civilisation that prevents society from imploding.”

Mandy Long – ‘Mud Tribe’

This scatological statement by Mandy Long confronts our vicarious relationship with dirt. For many city dwellers the countryside is little more than a theme park and means of production. Each footprint was actioned by a rural artisan wearing urban fashion trainers during a house & garage performance hosted by Dr XOX.

Helmut Beuys – ‘Faith Shroud’

This is one of many pop-up ‘reliquaries’ by Helmut Beuys dotted around Hoxton over the next six weeks. The precariously clinging shroud is a metaphor for our inability to keep faith when tested, and each notch represents our self-flagellation for failing.

Nigel Judd – ‘The Pinnacle’

Nigel Judd’s totem in Threadneedle Street will be under construction for the duration of the Biennale. In his Culture Show interview, Judd neatly summed it up thus: “The Pinnacle is an uncompromising attack on the coiled inner ego of the outer id.”

Ella Creed – ‘Work No. 679’

Ella Creed continues to push the envelope on the thin red line that divides the prosaic from the extraordinary. Sponsored by Polyfilla, this bold installation consisting of 1000 sustainably sourced plywood boards asks important questions about the legitimacy of individual expression in the age of generic communications frameworks such as Facebook, Twitter, Entourage and iPhone.

Sophie Andre – ‘Enclosures’

Sophie Andre divides her time between studios in Shanghai, Los Angeles and Shoreditch. The concrete poetry on the left of the installation introduces the theme of owned and shared space. The fixed red post and moveable boards invite and inhibit us, signifying the tension between disputed emotional territories in the urban psychopathy.

Cicely Baldessari – ‘Three tickets’

The numeral 3 is a constant theme of this artist’s work. In her ‘Manifesto Tertiary’ she observes: ‘Three is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Three Tickets is a trenchant comment on the sequential terrorism of dualism.”

Dylan Emin – ‘CCTV phallus’

Dylan Emin has made a specialisation of labyrinthine explorations into Freudian theory. This is one of a series of site-specific works about castration anxiety suffered by alpha male commuters, triggered by fear of being degraded and dominated in the workplace.

Zanussi Rothko – ‘No: 56 (Beige and Pink)’

Zanussi Rothko has done more than any other artist to visualise bipolar disorder. In this piece sponsored by Platform for Art, mood swings are represented by nebulous manifestations of the bipolar spectrum. Note the assertive cross that represents the struggle to overcome the tyranny of adversity and conflict in childhood and the mother / father figures on the left.

Bert Koons – ‘Bonus Culture’

This vivid collision of glamorous fluff and freebasing squalor is a profound statement about the symbiotic relationship between hedonism and denial. Visitors are invited to climb into the frame and experience an ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ volte face.

Reg Hirst – ‘Gum Disease’

Reg Hirst’s visceral polemics tell us much about our obsession with oral placebos as our complexes about breast-feeding. Hire the audio-guide and get a complimentary branded memory stick containing the seminal track ‘From the nipple to the bottle’ by Grace Jones.

Tony Lucas – ‘Chair Shag’

Tony Lucas’s work is as sexually provocative as ever. It reiterates just how much his surgical perception cuts deep into our subliminal consciousness. It is one of twenty works commissioned by the Hoxton Biennale on this theme. Lucas says of this exhibit: “It’s my two fingers statement to the fuck-you culture.”

Jennifer Goldsworthy – ‘Solar System’

This poignant juxtaposition of opposites attracting is loaded with a finely tuned tension. Goldsworthy is exceptionally eloquent on the subject: “Each one of us is a miniature solar system orbiting around others and our cosmic orientation is decided by the strength or weakness of our charismatic gravity.”

Jill Miro – ‘Self Portrait – London, England’

Jill Miro has created self-portraits from objet trouvé in many locations around the world. In her long awaited autobiography she explains the essence of her art. “A self portrait is actually a portrait of the viewer. I merely create empty vessels which they fill with perceptions of themselves.”

“For me writing is the outcome of an unquiet mind.”

Last year, Simon from St Jude’s asked if I would like to contribute to the first edition of Random Spectacular – a new occasional journal that would set out to explore the visual arts, writing, nature, travel and much more. I quickly fell on the idea of interviewing a very special writer – The Gentle Author of Spitalfields Life. Despite the popularity of the Spitalfields Life blog, the GA had remained a shadowy figure and no-one had yet interviewed her, or him. That intrigued me.

The interview was published in the first edition of Random Spectacular, which sold out in less than 48 hours. I’ve written a few words on why this new, irregular journal is such a welcome addition to the world, over here. Simon asked Justin Knopp of Typoretum to design a unique piece to accompany the interview. Justin created a lovely typographic page using hand-typeset antique wooden and metal typefaces, which you can see below.

My conversation with the GA covered terrain that may interest those working at the intersection of writing and technology, or readers with a taste for urban reportage. Or you might simply enjoy it as a portrait of someone for whom writing and life are one. Here’s the article.

From Random Spectacular, issue 1

‘In the midst of life I woke to find myself living in an old house beside Brick Lane in the East End of London.’ With these words the Spitalfields Life blog was born, back in August 2009. Today, thousands of people from around the world come to read each daily posting by its eloquent but enigmatic creator – the Gentle Author.

Typoretum typographic print

The spirit that pervades the blog is best captured in the Gentle Author’s extraordinary promise to readers: ‘How can I ever describe the exuberant richness and multiplicity of culture in this place to you? This is both my task and my delight. Let me disclose to you the hare-brained ambition I am pursuing, which is to write at least ten thousand stories about Spitalfields life. At the rate of one a day, this will take approximately twenty-seven years and four months… Like Good Deeds and Everyman in the old play, let us travel together.’

I wanted to find out more about the writer whose words transport me each day; whose stories take me through previously unseen doorways in my own neighbourhood in the East End. But that also required a promise from me – that I wouldn’t reveal the identity or gender of the Gentle Author. I feared that this guarding of the person behind the pen might go hand in hand with a reticence to talk. What I encountered was something else entirely. Here are some of the words we exchanged over a pot of tea in east London.

TR: ‘I woke to find myself living in an old house beside Brick Lane’; what led up to that awakening? Where had life taken you?

GA: I did have quite a big career as a writer, with a play due to open on Broadway in September 2001. For obvious reasons, it didn’t open, and then my father died quite unexpectedly a week later. My mother had dementia, and the only thing she knew was that she didn’t ever want to leave her home, in Devon. So I decided to give up my career and go to be her full-time nurse, which I did for five years. During that time I couldn’t really leave the house. It changed my view of the world and I decided I didn’t want to go back to the work I had done before. Being the only child, I inherited the house. I sold it and tried to buy a place in Lisson Grove. That fell through. I tried to buy another in King’s Cross and that fell through. And then a house in Spitalfields came up. I was reluctant to live in Spitalfields, but the house was so wonderful, and I was desperate by then, so I took it. The only person I knew in Spitalfields was Sandra Esqulant, landlady of The Golden Heart.

TR: Why did you choose to blog?

GA: I was attracted to the notion that you could write something and it would be published immediately, and that you could assume an intimacy with the reader comparable to the relationship I feel when I read novels, especially those from the nineteenth century. I also calculated that from then until I reached the age at which my parents died was around ten thousand days, and I found I could respect the idea of doing a story every single day through that time. It was the best possible life I could imagine for myself.

TR: Your promise to readers includes a picture of a sundial on Fournier Street that features the words ‘Umbra Sumus’ – ‘We are shadows’. Reading your writing for the first time, I had the immediate feeling that you were either pursuing or escaping something.

GA: Well, there’s a wonderful notion that Kierkegaard described – that being a writer is like being in the continual state of running through a burning house, trying to decide what to rescue. I do feel that sensation a lot of the time. Also, that people’s stories go unrecorded is a matter of grief to me. I think that arose after the death of my parents. I grew up in Devon around old people, and I used to knock on their doors and ask to spend a day with them. I suppose I have a vertiginous sense of all the stories in the world, and accompanying that is a sense of the loss of all the stories. So I have a compulsion to collect as many as I can, for as long as I can.

TR: Your stories became longer after a couple of months of the blog, and that coincided with you writing more pen portraits.

GA: I have a personal sense of responsibility to people that I’ve met to do them justice. The idea of trying to sum someone up in a thousand words is terrifying. That was why the stories got longer and longer. The other thing that happened in the first year – unexpectedly – was that a lot of readers came along. It gave me a different responsibility; to not disappoint the reader. You want to give them something wonderful. So I became more ambitious.

TR: That is a terrific counterblast to the common, pessimistic notion that people don’t read much any more, and that writing for the Web should always be short. You show that the Web can be a place for a longer and more personal form of writing.

GA: I respect the discipline of writing; that things should be well structured and a story well told. But I also aspire to write in an unmediated way, and to not withhold an emotionalism if that’s how I react to a subject. I am also attracted to use vocabulary in a way that it is not used in journalism, but is perhaps more common in fiction. I chose to be this voice speaking from the darkness, because I want to be in private with the reader. I want the reader to understand that the writer’s intention is benign, and that we can trust each other. And I hope the readers create their own sense of who they are listening to and take ownership of what they read.  In this sense, the Gentle Author is a conceit to bring readers closer to the subject, and I want the subject to be the people I’m writing about, not me.

TR: Do you have to get into the character of the Gentle Author when you write?

GA: Graham Greene said that reading Charles Dickens was like listening to the mind talking to itself. It is the internal voice that I aspire to in my writing – what I hear inside my mind.

TR: Tell me a little more about the ‘hare-brained’ task you have set for yourself.

GA: I wanted readers to know they could rely on something new every day. And I felt that if I created this cage for myself, then I could have no escape. I have written more than 700,000 words in the last two years, so it has worked to that degree. It’s a miracle. I spend most of the day running around the streets after people and doing interviews. In the evening, I sit down to supper, and then I write. The golden rule is that I can’t go to sleep until it’s done. People sometimes think that I knock off six stories in advance and press a button each day, but it isn’t like that at all. I may write interviews up a few days later, but it appeals to me that the Gentle Author has no choice but to write a story every day. I’m aware that it’s an excessive way to live but I think life is excessive.

Justin’s letterpress forme for the poster.

TR: Your interviewees tell you remarkable things about their lives. How do you earn their trust?

GA: You have to be open-hearted and honest, and you hope people see that it is just you, and that there’s no ulterior motive. That no one’s paying you to do it. That you are doing it for love. People are wisely suspicious of writers, so I commonly send someone a piece I have already written and they can see what the outcome of being interviewed will be like.

TR: Your neighbours in the City of London seem to be a difficult subject for you. You have written that you wander ‘like a ghost among the men in suits hurrying with such inexplicable purpose between the glittering palaces.’

GA: The City is an incredible repository of stories and tradition and myth. You go to speak to the Vintners Company and they have been there since 1546. Or you go to speak to John Keohane, the Chief Yeoman Warder, and he talks you through the ritual they have been performing at the Tower of London since the thirteenth century. But equally you are aware of it as a violent, corporate world, and it is hard to reconcile those things. One of the rules of what I do is that there are no bad people in this equation. The challenge is to try to understand what individuals are doing and why. With the City, that’s a challenge that lies ahead for me.

TR: Back in Spitalfields, you write about the tension between tradition and change, such as the spiraling rents that have threatened to push out merchants like Paul Gardner.

Unless you have gone and shaken hands with Paul Gardner...

GA: It’s very difficult to trace what’s a right or wrong way for change to happen, but it’s vital that good things don’t get destroyed. For me, Paul Gardner, the Market Sundriesman, incarnates the essence of Spitalfields. Unless you have gone and shaken hands with Paul Gardner you can’t really say you have been to Spitalfields. His shop is where all the small traders in East London go to get their bags. What happened in Paul’s case was that the landlords showed themselves to be enlightened and recognised he is a special case. I hope people appreciate that the things that make this place distinctive are worth holding on to. One of the lessons revealed by the crash in the City was that the short-term profit motive is destructive and people need to take a longer-term view.

TR: You seem to revel in those lively nights out with the Bunny Girls and the transvestites and the boys’ club reunions, but how do you feel about Spitalfields on a Saturday night – the drinkers and clubbers?

GA: I think it’s a very beautiful phenomenon. I often go out and walk the streets just to see the crowds on a Saturday night. Nothing has changed much there. In the 1860s The Eagle Tavern on the City Road was getting 12,000 people turning up a night and there were complaints about the crowds then. I think the young people who dress up and come to show off their outfits on Brick Lane embody a wonderful flowering of culture. So many people compete for ownership of this place, but the truth is that it belongs to everybody and nobody. There is a magic in Spitalfields, but if you love the area you must also be generous to others who love it too.

TR: Will there be enough space in your life to do other types of writing, as well as your daily report?

GA: Well, Dickens wrote six or seven stories a week for Household Words, but he wrote the novels of Dickens as well. My background is in fiction, and originally I envisaged that there would be a chapter of a novel by me on the first of the month through the year. That has been sidelined, but as I get more confident and more in control of what I’m doing it could resurface. I’m attracted to the idea that the Gentle Author might have fictional adventures.

TR: What about visits to other places far from Spitalfields?

GA: I am a favoured person in that I have had so many experiences and lived so many lifetimes in my life already. I remember, I went to Los Angeles for the Millennium and I was with a friend in a car on New Year’s Eve, and we turned left onto the freeway into oncoming traffic. She said: “We’re going to die.” And I said: “I don’t mind because I’ve done so much stuff, but what about your son?” There are lots of places I would like to go back to – Beijing, Cuba – but what I do now forces me to live in the day. My mind is so crowded I don’t have much space to think about anything else.

TR: Of course, I must ask about Mr. Pussy. How is he?

GA: Yes, I should explain about the cat. My father died and my mother was inconsolable, so I bought a cat to give to her and that was Mr. Pussy. He was alone with her for the first year and he acquired this very calm personality from her. Now he carries all that emotional history with him. His age marks the time since my father died and his peaceful nature stems from my mother. For these reasons he means a great deal to me, and he is always a presence. Most of the Spitalfields Life stories are written in bed late at night, with him sitting there.

TR: You said something curious in a story on Dennis Severs’ house, which was: ‘Much as I love a good chat, I have many times wished that I never had to speak again.’

Dickens in Old Spitalfields Market

GA: I think talking is hard. We take people’s words to be the expression of who they are. But I have always felt, with me, that was a contradiction because I didn’t feel that in speech I could represent who I was. That was why I began to write, because by writing down I could wrestle with words and become more truthful to who I am. So yes, I think it would be wonderful if I could get through the rest of my life without talking. I once lived on an island in the Outer Hebrides. I was the only inhabitant and I had to row 45 minutes to the shore to get my mail. I would not see people for months on end and I did so much writing then. Your internal monologue becomes much more apparent when all the interference of external conversations is gone. Walking is very important in that respect too. I long for the release of the mind.

TR: So, writing is a release from the deluge of thoughts in your head.

GA: Yes. For me, the act of writing is writing it down. So I write it out first time and that is it. There are no drafts. Writing is the act of recording an internal monologue. Coming back to the notion of the mind talking to itself – for me writing is the outcome of an unquiet mind, I suppose.

TR: How has Spitalfields Life changed your life?

GA: I walk down the street and sometimes people lean out of windows to wave and come out and shake my hand. It is a beautiful thing, yet for that to happen in the middle of this huge city is bizarre. Generally, I don’t understand why people don’t talk to each other more. I think this is a political construct, this situation where we are all alienated from one another. A book that was important to me as a student was Raymond Williams’ Culture and Society. I think one of the outcomes of mass distribution through the printing press in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was that it made everybody strangers to each other. We see all those people out there as ‘the masses’. It’s rubbish. It’s a lie. The hope of the internet is that it allows everyone to talk to each other again, and not be strangers.

The Gentle Author’s stories can be found at spitalfieldslife.com.

Tim

You can buy a limited edition Typoretum poster here.

Limited edition poster by Typoretum

Some time I ago I wrote about a peculiar anti-busking sign by Southwark Council that employed a line from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Now a second gem from the Council’s resident team of poet-bureaucrats has come to light. This one was spotted and snapped by Karl Sharro (who, by the by, writes brilliantly here). Once again, it’s an intriguing mash-up of quip and quibble. There’s another line attributed to Wilde that might work well as an addition to the sign: ‘Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.’ Or better still, this: ‘Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.’

Spotted by fellow copywriter Mike Reed, who rightly comments: 'If music be the food of love, this is a famine.'

Tone deaf

You’ll find this sign down by the Thames, on London’s Southbank. The setting explains the allusion to Shakespeare – the Globe Theatre is nearby. So you can imagine what might have happened here: A brief to create a warning notice about busking surfaces in the council’s communications department. Someone with a touch of culture flowing through their veins thinks, ‘Hmm, buskers are performers, so let’s create a friendly notice that picks up on the link to Bill, while gently pointing out that you can’t perform here.’ Hence that rather nice idea to lead with the line from Twelfth Night. Perhaps their original draft then went on something like this:

We all love music, but there are times when we all need peace and quiet too.

Unfortunately, busking can be a real nuisance for the people who live in this area.

So we ask would-be performers to please find another spot – somewhere you can play on while everyone enjoys your performance.

Thank you.

It’s not the height of poetic expression or clever copywriting, but it links the Shakespearean reference with the communications objective in an engaging way. Unfortunately, the version that made it into the public realm transforms the warm voice of culture into a crackling megaphone announcement from a crotchety, authoritarian bureaucrat. The ‘but do not play on here’ is a sharp linguistic slap, while ‘busking causes a nuisance to local residents’ seems an obscure way to ask for consideration of others. They then paste in a statement from the legal department, but this distracts from the first two points by introducing other reasons why you can’t play on – obstruction and unlicensed selling. So, in fact, the ban isn’t entirely intended to combat anti-social artistic activity, it’s about policing commercial activity in a public space too.

The design language of the sign reflects the bossiness of the words. They use hyphens instead of dashes or bullet points, and the second dash is pushed up against the word ‘busking’, so it looks like a word is missing. Bizarrely, they add a stop after the first point, but not after the second. And they start each line from a different place, instead of ranging it all left, or centering it.

The message ends with a more personal element – the name ‘Southwark’ rendered in handwriting. But another side of the council’s personality has already stamped its mark on the language. It seems a long way from the nicely expressed celebration of the area on their website: ‘Borough and Bankside has a reputation as the racy side of the river across from the City. History shows the area as a roistering quarter of theatres and taverns with rich and poor all out to party like it’s 1599.’

In Shakespeare’s time many of the locals disliked the play houses and the lively crowd they attracted. Perhaps their spirit lives on.

Tim
PS Thanks to Mike for permission to show his shot.

Cover by Mark Hearld and Emily Sutton

Any day now, the first edition of Random Spectacular will be flying through the postal system to homes around the country. Designed and published by St Jude’s, this occasional journal promises an exploration of the visual arts, literature, nature, travel and much more. A sneak preview here suggests there’s a visual treat on every spread. Typophiles should find much to savour. I’m also looking forward to immersing myself in the words when my copies arrive. All profits from sales will be donated to Maggie’s Centres.

At a time when many design and culture magazines are struggling – Grafik magazine closed last week, for example – it’s heartening to see a new title, especially one that has high production values and a confident approach to the sheer enjoyment of creativity. This magazine is all about reading for pleasure.

Its randomness is a sensible strategy; there’s no requirement for the publishers of such an epic collaboration to be defeated by their own promises of regularity. Besides, there’s something rather tantalising about not knowing when a magazine you enjoy will appear next. As an aside, I’m hugely impressed by the people behind Eye magazine, who have somehow managed to publish a stunning issue regularly since 1990, come hell, high water, recessions and the proliferation of design blogs.

Talking of blogs, my contribution to Random Spectacular is an interview with The Gentle Author of Spitalfields Life. In fact, it’s the first interview the Gentle Author has given. I think my subject is one of the most interesting writers in Britain today. The interview discusses aspects of east London life, and of a writer’s life. I start by drawing out the surprising background to the extraordinary promise made on the blog, which says:

Let me disclose to you the hare-brained ambition I am pursuing, which is to write at least ten thousand stories about Spitalfields life. At the rate of one a day, this will take approximately twenty-seven years and four months. Who knows what kind of life we shall be living in 2037 when I write my ten thousandth post?

A Typoretum typographic print accompanies Tim’s interview with the Gentle Author.

Buy the magazine to read why the Gentle Author felt compelled to make this commitment. To promise a story every day is the opposite strategy to that of Random Spectacular, but it also makes sense. The web has enabled this writer to form a consistent connection with the reader. And by imposing a daily deadline the writer is forced to produce; forced to create the momentum that will transform thoughts into words that can be shared. Even slow writers can become prolific when there’s a meaningful deadline hanging over their head. The Gentle Author has written more than 700,000 words in 2 years.

Prolific publication is made possible by the web. Indeed, Spitalfields Life is an important counter-argument to the ridiculous but common notion that people don’t like to read online. Many of the daily posts are more than 1,000 words. Some much longer. Even friends who rarely touch a printed broadsheet tell me they consume the Gentle Author’s post each morning. People will read online if writers write well for them. The greatest obstacle to better writing online is the miserabilist mantra that attention spans are shortening and ‘web readers’ can’t understand anything unless. It’s written. In very. Short. Sentences.

It’s partly the variety and unpredictability of the subject matter in Spitalfields Life that keeps people hooked. Each story is a surprise, like a gift. One day we are taken up a church tower normally off-bounds to visitors, the next we’re with bunny girls in Wapping or inside a small factory on the Hackney Road. Spitalfields Life is always somewhat random, quietly spectacular.

Tim

Tim

I discovered that curating a show like WORDSTOCK requires a kind of pragmatic theatricality. Communication is all about conveying information but the way you tell it must be dramatic. People will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. 26 is packed with extraordinary people who have broad terms of reference. Once the word was out, offers to facilitate events poured in and the WORDSTOCK programme began to firm up: A writing workshop exploring the crossover between words and music; A discussion around linguistic analysis, metaphor and brands; Two best selling authors on the dynamics of agents, editors and publishing; A group therapy session for timorous Tweeters; The launch of a new 26 project inspired by litter; A case study of 26 Flavours – a Cornish festival of food and language; Advice on how to keep the inspiration bubbling faced with looming deadlines; A smorgasbord of activities investigating music festival nomenclature, song lyrics and memories provoked by golden oldies; A performance around verbal seduction and how to make yourself a more attractive proposition to potential partners – business and pleasure.

Come the big day, the halls were decked with weeping willows, mountain ash, ivy clad pergolas and autumn leaves. I have never experienced such drive from a group of people so determined to make something extraordinary happen. I’m increasingly convinced that authentic change is not achieved by grandiose schemes, but by incremental interventions that gather momentum through sticky enthusiasm: Conjure up a loose framework that bristles with opportunities, stand back and watch the sparks.

So here are my 12 Top Tips for designing and running a fruitful festival.

1. CONSTRUCT & DECONSTRUCT. Create an ambience of heightened awareness around a fixed timetable allowing plenty of room for idiosyncrasy.

2. FOCUS & CONTEXTUALISE. Create themed centres of attention with a few signature landmarks, and set the scene with inveigling temptations.

3. INVITE & ENGAGE. Begin with a chaotic icebreaker that inspires participants make their own marks and establish terr

4. FASCINATE & PROVOKE. Provide concurrent choices of speakers and events offering challenging content and thoughtful interaction.

5. STROKE & EVOKE. Provide counterintuitive encounters that inspire people to turn abstract meanderings into tangible experiences.

7. REFLECT & ABSORB. Give participants the time and space to explore themselves and bring back even richer gifts back to the table

8. OUT & ABOUT. Break the day with a blast of fresh air and an ambulatory workshop to trigger pollination and serendipity.

9. IMAGINE & INTUIT. Draw upon rich veins of subliminal memories and amplify them in Technicolor.

10. HARMONISE & BOND: Create magnetic attractions that dissolve inhibitions.

11. LIBERATE & ANIMATE. Peel away years of socialisation and encourage all that visceral stuff to emerge.

12. ASSERT & EXPRESS. Fuse the new empowerments into triumphant expressions of lusty joy.

Tom

Tim

I’ve been to St Katharine Docks many times but only noticed this strange piece of art at the weekend. It hangs from the end of the rather austere Tower Hotel and seems to hover in its frame. It reminds me of some religious icons I’ve seen in very Roman churches. As I stared at the block, all around me danced the merry chaos of the Thames Revival festival of boats. An old steamer insisted on sounding its horn, emitting with each blare a heady waft of oily smoke and steam. From the main dock came more sounds of aquatic jollification, as people wearing vintage outfits messed about on the water beneath bunting and clinking masts. Despite these distractions, I wanted to know more about the artwork. Seeing a small panel beneath it on the wall, I went to read its story. It said:

The Silver Jubilee Crystal Crown was sculpted on this site by Arthur Fleischmann KCSG, FRBS, MD, who pioneered carving in Perspex. The block measures 10’9″ by 5’9″ by 8″ thick and weighs two tons. It is the largest solid block of Acrylic in the world. It was originally made in 1968 for Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001 – A Space Odyssey”, but was rejected by the director in favour of the now famous black basalt monolith. Her Majesty the Queen unveiled the sculpture on June 5th 1977.

Just to be crystal clear, it was the block itself that was commissioned for the film – Fleischmann only worked on it after Kubrick had rejected it. In the novel/film it is suggested that the monoliths are indestructible, and that they might be considered to be an advanced form of networked robot. But in 3001: The Final Odyssey the three monoliths known to mankind are destroyed – by infecting them with a computer virus. At this point I would normally attempt a comic finale that links destruction by computer virus to Fleischmann’s artwork and our dearly beloved Queen, but that seems to be beyond me. Perhaps it was all that maritime merriment.

Tim

A seemingly indestructible monolith that's been around for aeons... Add your own punch line here.

So, the installation you can see in the image above is by Joseph Kosuth, and you’ll find it in Southwark. The words are from the closing chapter of Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers. It lights up at night, but I rather like the darkness of the daytime version. The letters have been there for some years now and are nicely weathered. A ‘the’ has gone off for a walk too, perhaps down to the marshes of Kent. The full piece reads:

There are dark shadows on the earth but its lights are stronger in the contrast. Some men, like bats or owls, have better eyes for the darkness than for the light. We who have no such optical powers are better pleased to take our last parting look at the visionary companions of many solitary hours, when the brief sunshine of the world is blazing full upon them. CD.

Here are some more words from Dickens to be found living on the streets of London. In this case it’s an excerpt from a piece he wrote for a magazine he co-owned, Household Words. You’ll find these in Spitalfields Market, adorning what used to be an electric power substation. During the day the text is intriguingly subdued – white on white. At night the writing box lights up, and its warm, glowing colours lure in passers-by as they move through the otherwise empty market space. Seb & Fiona created this piece of public art with design agency Imagist and architects Jestico + Whiles. It’s certainly a great way to turn a functional bit of a building into a delight, and I like that the words they have chosen are relevant to the context and full of the personality of the writers. Here’s a view of the construction from another side, this time with some writing by Spitalfields author Jeanette Winterson. I’ll try to photograph the remaining sides, which carry words by Samuel Pepys and Peter Ackroyd.

Tim

The Brand /