HISTORY OF ART: WILL GOMPERTZ/ROBERT HUGHES

  Let me begin by saying I am not the average reader of this book. I have been reasonably obsessed by the history of art since I was at school (a long time ago when, on school trips I first saw Ucello Brueghel, Pollock and Dali – all of which blew my mind).

In recent years I have spent an inordinate amount of time on three projects – one to find a diagrammatic way of representing individual artistic groups, second to find a way of mapping the history of art and three, collecting together pictures and paintings of artistic groups for a proposed book project. Thus when this new book appeared I devoured it in a couple of days.

John William Godward, RBA (British 1861-1922) Violets, sweet violets tondo, 92 cm. (36 1/4 in.). Source: Bonhams

Gompertz was a former director of Tate Modern, responsible for their website and the Tate Magazine and is now head of BBC Arts. A thin voluble character with large specs and  flyaway hair, judging by a promo video on YouTube, he did a stand-up whiz through on modern art at the Edinburgh Festival which led to the commission for this book.

The book is, as you would expect, a chronological journey through the main artistic -isms of the last 150 years prefaced by one of his main treatises – that much modern art stems mainly from one man – Marcel Duchamp and his infamous urinal (signed R. Mutt and titled ‘Fountain’), a ready-made everyday object that by being exhibited in an art gallery became art. Thus art was no longer about painting on canvas or making sculptures but could be anything you could think of in any medium.

This is certainly the most accessible and unintimidating popular history of art available and is a great starting point as an introductory text to this fascinating subject. Its very readable, packed with interesting stuff and I learnt a lot by reading it.

I suspect his audience may be divided between those who would consider this work a dumbing down of art history and others, probably a younger readership, who would find his approach excellent and invigorating – and funny. They will, I think appreciate his contemporary references and jokey analogies and his determined attempt to blow the dust of art history and try and bring it to life for a contemporary audience. He writes: ‘There are times when those of us involved in the arts talk and write pretentious nonsense. Its a fact of life: rock stars trash hotels, sportsmen and women get injured, arts folk talk bollocks.’ His attempt to demistify the impenetrable and communicate his undoubted enthusiasm for his subject are to be applauded.

Now here come some caveats as the book is not without its problems which are worth examining, the most important being the relative shortage of illustration – limited to two 8pp colour sections, 39 black and white illustrations peppering the text and some very weak cartoons. This means that Gompertz has to describe in words a great many of the artworks he talks about which can get tedious and are difficult to visualise particularly if you haven’t seen the original before. There is also not a single picture of any of the artists themselves. Presumably the publisher would argue this is to keep the price down to make it affordable. The hardback edition as it stands is £20.

The book contains a fold-out which uses the London tube network graphic as the basis for mapping the art history the book contains  This time-honoured informational graphic has been used so many times to chart other subjects as well that it has become a bit of a cliché. But it works well with book to underline its strengths and weaknesses.

To follow the analogy, this is a main-line view of art history. The bid to create a strong narrative arc inevitably leads to simplification in the service of creating a tidier story – dominated by great men (Gompertz devotes one chapter to women artists), key moments, art groups and the –isms.

In actuality, a better model for the history of art would be a biological one – perhaps an unruly unpruned irradiated bush with thousands of interconnections growing from numerous root stocks which as it grows, mutates into unexpected formations and cross-pollinates with other plants to produce strange new fruit. (the intertwined nature of art and photography is still waiting to be properly evaluated and communicated).

The book ends with BritArt,  discussed in a fairly non-critical fashion, and the rise of street art (and, inevitably Banksy). Gompertz believes now that modern art is very market orientated and is dominated by a new –ism: Entrepeneurialism (a term he has personally coined) with its new emperors being  artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons and  the ‘Big Daddy’ of contemporary art dealing Larry Gagosian, who now has galleries in New York, Beverley Hills, Paris, London, Hong Kong, Rome and Geneva.

In a significant paragraph Gompertz writes:

‘For the most part, contemporary art has been devoid of a hard political edge, save for the odd intervention that has generally had the look of a bandwagon hastily being jumped upon. On the whole, even when the avant garde artists of our age have been at their most aggressive and challenging, they have tended to present their work with a cheeky grin rather than an angry scowl. The inclination has been to entertain not campaign. The big shifts in society that have taken place over the last twenty five years have been largely overlooked by high-profile artists.’

 

Source: ‘Art in the Middle East’  Prospero

This may be true at high-end of art but it certainly is not true in general terms. What the book lacks is a real understanding of the impact of digital technologies on art making practices, forms and styles. It also ignores the flood of work now emerging from Brazil, India and Egypt to name but three. Increasingly multimedia in form, totally global, permanently connected and fully engaged with the problems of our time – both aesthetic, cultural and political – the new art defies easy classification as its struggles to find ways of describing our post 9/11 world. Rauschenberg famously said something about that apocalyptic moment, that it was the greatest work of art created by the Devil. Time to bring on the angels.

*

Having given Gompertz his due, you’ll be thirsty for the deeper insights, wise judgment and sonorous language of what I and many others consider the greatest art writer and critic of our time – the recently departed Robert Hughes who died in August this year.

Fortunately all the episodes of his classic tv series ‘The Shock of The New’ are now available on YouTube. As is the remarkable ‘The New Shock of The New’ made in 2004. Everything that is good about Hughes is in this programme which starts with 9/11. Enjoy.

 

CULT BOOKS: GAO XINGJIAN & BAO NINH

This is a still from the amazing video portrait of GAO XINGJIAN by ROBERT WILSON – a pure and perfect work of art – on the amazing DISSIDENT INDUSTRIES INC site, whose body of work looks extraordinary and exciting. 

 

In 2000, Gao Xinjian became the first Chinese writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for a body of work that includes this masterpiece which was begun in Beijing in the summer of 1982 and completed in Paris during September 1989. Known also for his plays and his large black and white ink paintings which have been exhibited widely. Out of all his work, since 1987 only one play has been published in China. He is now 72 and is a French citizen living outside Paris.   
Following a health scare when he was misdiagnosed with lung cancer and under pressure from the 'oppose spiritual pollution' campaign at the time. 'he absconded to the remote forest regions of Sichuan province and then wandered along the Yangtze river from its source down to the coast'. a journey of 10 months and 15,000 kilometres.
'Soul Mountain' draws on this experience but is also about one man's quest for inner peace and freedom. The book is experimental in style and is made up of many levels of thought and speech which, whilst initially confusing, soon flow into a remarkable river of stories and feelings. Gao writes like a painter and also looks deep into the soul of human nature. Reading this book is a mesmeric journey into both magical landscapes and deep emotions. Harrowing and beautiful by turn, this profound work will touch your heart and inspire your imagination.

‘After the Deluge’ by Gao Xingjian. Source: artnews.org

'The Sorrow of War' is a novel about a man writing his experiences of the Vietnam War, written by Bao Ninh who served with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade of the North Vietnamese army and is one of only ten survivors of the 500 who set out in 1969 to fight the war. 
The book's protagonist Kien feels a burdensome debt as if he's 'carrying with him the history of his generation.' and he is forced to relive in flashbacks the horrors he witnessed, scribbling at night as if his life depended on it. The opening jungle chapter catapults you into a visceral, surreal world of darkness and danger - one of many vivid scenes of front-line conflict that pepper a story which also encompasses a intense and tragic love affair. To cut to the chase, this is as powerful, visceral and moving as Michael Herr's 'Dispatches'. It is an outstanding work that provides a valuable insight and perspective on the War from the North Vietnamese side – a much-needed corrective.

MOVIES: THE FILM VS DIGITAL DEBATE

Due for release in the US this month is what looks to be a fascinating documentary, produced by Keanu Reeves called SIDE BY SIDE The Science, Art and Impact of Digital Cinema. Blurb reads:

For almost one hundred years there was only one way to make a movie — with film. Movies were shot, edited and projected using photochemical film. But over the last two decades a digital process has emerged to challenge photochemical filmmaking. SIDE BY SIDE takes an in-depth look at this revolution. Through interviews with directors, cinematographers, film students, producers, technologists, editors, and exhibitors, SIDE BY SIDE examines all aspects of filmmaking — from capture to edit, visual effects to color correction, distribution to archive. At this moment when digital and photochemical filmmaking coexist, SIDE BY SIDE explores what has been gained, what is lost, and what the future might bring.

 This is a real live issue. Check it out.

 Tribeca: Film vs. Digital in ‘Side by Side’By Mekado Murphy (New York Times). Interview with the director Chris Kenneally. 

Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling by Gendy Alimurung (LA Weekly/ Apr 12 2012)

'Martin Scorsese to abandon film to shoot movies digitally'by Nick Clark(The Independent 28 June 2012)

 'Taking their shot as realities shift:The cinematography Oscar nominees navigate a changing landscape in which film makes way for digital video' by Mark Olsen (Los Angeles Times Feb 12th 2012)

MUSIC: ROUGH TRADE ALBUMS OF THE MONTH

Rough Trade have come up with a neat Album of the Month scheme whereby you get what they consider the best new release with added RT exclusive extra track or disc, plus the heads up on another nine interesting albums. There’s download options and a no-fuss exchange system. Given the ocean of new music out there, its great to receive a random disc through your door that somebody else has chosen for your listening pleasure

Top left is ‘Manifest!’ by Friends, a Brooklyn quintet who pump out a punked-disco melange of New York sounds, including their two hit singles ’Friend Crush’ and ‘I’m His Girl’. Not blown away but entertained and, after a few drinks, would certainly jig around to it.

Chilly Gonzales is a class act. This is, would you believe, a solo piano record of originality and class. Ideal early morning or late night music. Chill out with Chilly.

Adrian Younge Presents Venice Dawn (great name) on an album entitled ‘Something About April.’ which is ‘an eclectic mix of heavy, psychedelic soul and soundtrack-ready instrumentals’ according to their label Wax Poetics. I’m grooving to it as I write these words.

I have son Louis to thank for this thoughtful gift so here’s a shameless plug for the first single from his new band Hands Make Fire featuring ‘Parting Shot’ and ‘Waiting for the Echo’. Released yesterday, check it out on I-Tunes.

COMIX: THE SOMEDAY FUNNIES

 

 This unusual xtra-large format comic compilation is legendary in the comic book world as it took some 40 years before it was finally published in 2011 by Abrams ComicArts. It's creator Michel Choquette was originally commissioned in the early 1970s by Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone, to produce a comic supplement for the magazine on the 1960s. When the project expanded it was going to be a book published by Wenner's Straight Arrow Press. Then the whole deal fell through. The full saga of what happened next is fully documented in the links below.

What makes it so special is the line-up of writer's and artists who produced work for the project - 169 in total from 15 countries including Tom Wolfe, Frederico Fellini, William Burroughs, Jack Kirby, Tuli Kulferberg of The Fugs, Frank Zappa, Art Spiegelman, Ralph Steadman, Pete Townshend, Goscinny and Urderzo of Asterix fame and Will Eisner.

Pleased to see work in there by several comrades from the British underground press including Mick Farren and Edward Barker, Malcolm Livingstone, Richard Adams and Roger Hutchinson. 

Now available at a reasonable price from your usual internet outlets, its a valuable international showcase of a wide variety of comic and graphic talents from the 70s, each bringing their own style to the book's grand theme.  

Frame from Harry Buckinx's 'Titul and the Burning '60s'.

'Michel Choquette's Astounding, Iconic 1960s Time Capsule' by Tim J. Luddy (Mother Jones). Contains audio interview.

Review by Dan Nadel in The Comics Journal

 

KAPUŚCIŃSKI REDUX

 'To what extent may one distort reality in order to reach the deeper truth that refelects the 'heart of the matter'? Where are the lines that mark the borders between fiction and non-fiction? By introducing elements of invention, by processing reality, do we shift our text from the 'journalism' shelf to the one marked 'literature'? Is literary reportage - as Kapuściński thought....a legitimate literary genre...?'

These questions haunt this  truly remarkable biography of an extraordinary writer, hailed by the likes of Salman Rushdie as one of the great foreign correspondents of the 20th century but whose reputation since his death in 2007 has been seriously besmirched by revelations that he fabricated many of the facts and accounts in his most famous books and embellished the story of his own life.

I was the first British journalist to interview Kapuściński when he arrived in the UK for the publication of 'The Emperor'. In 2007, I wrote a series of posts about the various meetings I had with him in London - at one of which I had the pleasure of introducing him to Bob Geldof, at another we met at the Royal Court Theatre and saw a performance of 'The Emperor' directed by Jonathan Miller - and about our correspondence over several years. There is also a reprint of the piece I wrote about him for 'The Face'. In 2011, I wrote a piece about this book (sight unseen) and collected a great many links which followed the original Polish publication of the book.

 All the above is accessible from this Previous Post: Kapuściński Revisited. 

That post, in turn, links also to a further series of investigative posts on Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' - widely and wrongly hailed as the first non-fiction novel. As the years have past, the 'factual' content of the book has been seriously questioned and it is now clear that much of the work was the product of Capote's heated imagination. In other words, a useful historical parallel to the Kapuściński story.

I call this book remarkable for a number of reasons. Firstly, Domosławski, a personal friend and a celebrated journalist in his own right, considered K a maestro and a mentor so it was with growing unease that, following K's death, he uncovered the secrets of both K the man and K the writer. The scrupulouseness of his investigation threatens the reputation of a man he loved and admired. 

He writes: 'Not for the first time I catch myself fearing that, without meaning to write an expose, I am discovering facts about the master's life which I would rather not know at all, and that I am creating a platform for massively negative opinions of him.'


Secondly, the translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones is especially good as it captures the Polish style of prose, full of author's thoughts and rhetorical questions, which makes this intimidatingly long and detailed book really fascinating, unexpected and gripping to read.


Thirdly, Domosławski sets K's adventures - he is always the real centre figure of his books - in the broader context of the extraordinary birth of the Third World that K witnessed at first hand and the modern post-war history of Poland.

K was an enthusiastic communist until 1981, had friends in the Central Committee and wrote briefing papers and reports of utmost fidelity and factual accuracy for various branches of government. His groundbreaking expose of working conditions at the Nowa Huta steel works won him national acclaim and gained him the golden opportunity to travel the world.


The books that emerged from these experiences were written in a powerful literary style, a form of 'New Journalism' that was compelling, visceral, atmospheric and fresh. For obvious reasons Domosławski's revelations have seriously affected K's standing in the eyes of his fellow journalists for betraying his profession -  which he told me personally was, in his eyes, 'a vocation.'. 

Yet despite K's conrfabulations - he may have met Salvador Allende but he certainly didn't meet Che Guevara or Patrice Lumumba as has been widely claimed - there is still a wealth of excellent reporting and writing that will survive as great literature.

What he was certainly great at was 'capturing the essential mechanisms of any authoritarian power'. After all, he did witness twenty or so revolutions, uprisings and coups d'etat in the Third World. Both 'The Emperor' an 'Shah of Shahs' can also be read as metaphors for the reality of the Polish political structure which he was so adept at working within. He told me personally: "Human nature doesn't change that's why Machiavelli and Shakespeare are contemporary works."


Thanks to Domosławski, we now see K as a real-life complex figure - traumatised child, unfaithful husband, absent and cruel father, passionate communist - and as his own fictional creation. Finishing the book, walking through K's personal library and following K's final notes on his last journey to another world, one is left with a profound sense that his exploits and writings will continue to fascinate far into the future.


'Ryszard Kapuściński : A Life' by Artur Domosławski is published by Verso Books.

See also: Interesting audio assessment of the book on The Economist website: http://www.economist.com/node/21557299

The Guardian review

JACK HENRY MOORE/VIDEOHEADS ALERT

Top: Jack & The Videoheads Archive; Centre: The Videoheads team back in the day; Bottom: Jack with John and Yoko

JACK HENRY MOORE is one of the unsung heroes of the 1960s/1970s youth culture revolutions. A video pioneer, he handled the sound and lights for the UFO Club and the London Arts Lab, organised the Alchemical Wedding in 1968 at the Albert Hall and established the MIkweg (Milky Way) in  Amsterdam in 1970, which became the base for Videoheads.

Jack still lives in Amsterdam in a huge archive containing 72,000 hours of video - possibly the biggest and most important archive of underground/counter-culture footage in the world.

 Jack (on right) with Videohead pioneers Kit Galloway and Dave Jones outside the Melkweg (Milky Way) in Amsterdam in the 1970s.

Unhappily Jack and the Archive will be evicted from their premises unless we can find 4000 Euros - as a gift or a loan - in the next 24 hours. We need your help and support urgently. 

 STOP PRESS/1 August 2012: Jack makes the deadline with two hours to spare. Phew! Search continues for interim funding while rescue package assembled.

A ghostly and atmospheric video of  Pink Floyd performiong in the "RockCircus" festival in the Amsterdam Olympic Stadium, May 22nd, 1972.

SEE: VIDEOHEADS main site and VIDEOHEADS ON YOUTUBE
Contact Jack here: jackhmoore@gmail.com

LED ZEPPELIN: TRAMPLED UNDER FOOT

'One of the reasons people feel there is something satanic about the lure of their music is because its very primal - what it did to your head and the way it captured you. With the Stones, I thought about sex; with Zeppelin you felt....danger' 
 - Bebe Buell, celebrated rock consort and girlfriend of Jimmy Page


THE GENERALIST makes no claims to being a Led Zep expert but I was there at the time. 

I played their first album virtually the day it came out at a gig I was DJing for at the old Hotel on Eel Pie Island. 

I saw them at the 1970 Bath Festival whilst sitting in a tent with about seven heavy trippers and catching a contact high. They headlined on Sunday 28th June. Also on the bill that day: Frank Zappa and The Mothers, Moody Blues, Byrds, Santana, Flock, Dr John, Country Joe and Hot Tuna.

I was also there at one of the two simultaneous premieres in London for their film 'The Song Remains The Same'. They entered the balcony area and the whole audience stood up - except me and my mates. It all seemed a bit pompous at the time -  the film certainly was. 

The original 1976 ticket for Led Zep's film premiere [The Generalist Archive]

This book tells in unprecedented detail, the story of Led Zep, a monstrous rock construction, carefully designed and built to conquer America. Which they did, in a series of lightning raids that elevated them to rock god status - outselling the Stones. Yet mysterious: no singles, no tv appearances, no press. Protected by a man-mountain of a manager and an agressive and powerful 'connected' music lawyer, and handled by the best booking agency in America and Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records, they unleashed their thunderous magic and captured the heart and soul of working-class kids in America, who didn't give a dog turd what Rolling Stone said. They worked it like a military operation, reaching stratospheric heights before the exhaustion kicked in - and the road madness - the drugs, the girls, the mayhem, the violence. In retrospect, ironic that the first Zep album featured the Hindenburg crash on the cover.


To date, the biggest-selling book on Led Zep is 'Hammer of the Gods' by Stephen Davis -  a book, as I understand it, largely based on the memories of Richard Cole, the band's long-time frighteningly agressive tour manager who, after long years of service for relatively modest return was summarily dumped by the band. The story is well told and has helped establish and embellish the mythological status of the band, peppered as it is with hair-raising rock tales and salacious incidents.


This new fat and heavy 550pp+ tome by Barney Hoskyns has these too but its a dark horse of a different order. Firstly its form: an oral history almost entirely based on first-hand quotes from more than 200 witnesses and the principals themselves. The ones who are dead are represented by referenced quotes from the past; the living were assiduously tracked down by Barney and interviewed by phone or in person. It makes me tired just thinking about the work involved in stitching the cut-up transcripts into a seamless narrative.


The structure of the book works: - a great  lick-your lips come-on intro, two chapters pre-Zep, the rise and fall of the band (the bulk of the narrative), ending with the adventures of Page and Plant following John Bonham's death.


Pre-Zep is good stuff. One chapter focuses on Page's rapid rise to becoming the hottest session guitarist around and his adventures with the Yardbirds + the background story to John Paul Jones, also a remarkable session man, multi-instrumentalist, genius musical arranger. For the rest of the book, Jones is virtually absent, a shadow figure but, as Barney makes clear, one who made a major musical contribution to the Led Zep sound. The other charts the interesting Birmingham music scene of the time and Plant and Bonham's musical adventures and background.


The multi-voice narrative throughout is full of contradictions. Was Peter Grant a psychopathic monster or a sad charming man with a frightening appearance. Was Page really into practicing Crowleyesque magic and was he the dark manipulative heart of the band or a nice quiet sweet-natured almost feminine figure. Was John Bonham an out-of-control physically abusive liability or a homesick sweetie who loved his prize bulls and hated flying. By all accounts Planty was a babe magnet but is he as distanced from all the bad behaviour as he would like to make out. Make up your own mind.


Zeppelin's saga is part Spinal Tap, part Good Fellas, part Fear and Loathing and part Dante. Quote after quote emphasises the total overwhelming magnificence and power of their best live performances alongside the olympian drug-taking, pre-pubescent sleaze, physical violence and a body count of those who couldn't keep up the pace or who were summarily dismissed as surplus to requirements. Its a mighty Machiavellian tale which would have been to Caligula's taste.


Happily Barney balances all the mayhem with valuable insights into the actual music making, explaining in some detail how they developed their sound which combined Bonham's huge prowess as a drummer, Page and Jones' complete mastery of their instruments, an Plant's impressive vocal style into complex material that ranged from Delta Blues to Tolkeinesque prog, Moroccan ragas to Welsh folk, the heaviest of metal to the most ethereal of acoustic soundscapes,


There's also valuable material on Zep's relationship to the punk scene and on the story of their Swan Song record label which unleashed Bad Company to huge success but failed to deliver for Maggie Bell and Dave Edmunds. Interesting stuff also on Roy Harper and his relationship to the band -  a 'crucial chum'.

The post-Zep stuff is also of interest as it documents Plant's constant search for a musical way forward, leading to his major hit album with Allison Krause, in the process of which his relationship with Page shifts to one of equals. Surprised that there is no mention of Page's painstaking remastering and reissuing of  Led Zep's back catalogue which introduced their work to yet another new generation.


'Trampled Under Foot' is a remarkable chronicle which adds considerably not only to our knowledge of the band but also to our understanding of what went down in those dark unhinged days of the 1970s. Its a book haunted by the voices of the living and the dead who took that flight to the highest apex of Rock Olympia only to discover a dark vaccuum that led, in so many cases, to paranoia, complete exhaustion, drug-soaked madness and total addiction.


The sun came out, the book arrived and I devoured it in two big chunks over two days during which it became my reality. So its readable and addictive. Its also a roller-coaster ride of emotions which leads you inevitably and quite rightly back to the music itself. And the wonder of it all.

 

Led Zeppelin at the Royal Albert Hall 1970

'Trampled Under Foot' by Barney Hoskyns is published by Faber & Faber on September 6th 2012.


PS: I do have one ancedote to add to the historical record. As Dick Tracy working for the NME, I wrote a story about this punk band in California who'd had the temerity to record and put out on some itty bitty label a punk version of 'Stairway to Heaven'. As a result the entire weight of the Zep legal apparatus landed on their shoulders. Investigating this, I put in a call to Zep's manager Peter Grant. No response for several days.


Then, late one night, when I was working away in our little rented house in the Cotswolds, the phone rang. It was the dark voice of Peter Grant - intimidating from the start. I can't remember the gist of the conversation but I do remember how it ended. Grant suddenly said: 'I've got to go now. My rabbit's just died of Myxomatosis.'



[I then spent several hours trawling through my NME Archive but could not find either a printed or original typescript version of this story. Happily thanks to the great blog 'The Devil's Music' all is revealed. The band was Roger and the Goosebumps, a pop/rock band from San Francisco active during the 1970s and early 1980s and resurrected in 2006. The band is best known for its single "Gilligan's Island (Stairway)", a song combining the lyrics to the theme song of the television show Gilligan's Island with the music of "Stairway to Heaven". Led Zep did put their lawyers on to them. Read more on the site, where you can actually see a pic of the original single and listen to it. By the way Plant has since gone on record as saying that it's his favourite cover version of 'Stairway.']

BEAT CULTURE: BRION GYSIN

 

Regular readers of The Generalist will know that one of the consistent features of this blog over the last seven years has been Beat Culture. I was fortunate in the 1980s to interview both William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg but I was entranced by the Beats from my late teens onward and remain to this day a beat aficionado. 


So naturally I know about Brion Gysin or at least I thought I knew until, thanks to Matthew Levi Stevens, I was turned on to this remarkable 72-minute documentary by Nick Sheehan on Gysin's life and times entitled 'FLicKeR' on the UBUWEB site - a truly amazing repository of arcane/occult/cult material in which its easy to get lost for hours - be warned.

 Gysin's reputation has always been overshadowed by Burroughs all-pervasive presence and achievements yet it was he who invented the 'cut-up' technique that Burroughs made his own. 

Brion Gysin staring into the Dreammachine. Photo entitled 'Flicker' was taken by Ian Somerville in Olympia, Paris in 1962.

 He also invented the Dreammachine (with the help of Ian Somerville), the first work of art designed to be experienced with your eyes closed - a radical piece of art technology capable of giving you a drugless high by stimulating the brain's alpha waves. 

He also discovered the Master Musicians of Jojouka in Morocco, running a nightclub where they played regularly, and enabled Brian Jones to make a legendary recording of them. [I have a rare if slightly battered copy of the original 1971 vinyl release on Rolling Stones Records - now a collector's item. Just discovered it was rereleased in a deluxe package in 1995.

Trailer for a film enitled 'The Master Musicians of Joujouka Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival 2008', directed by Daragh McCarthy. Not clear wjhether it has been released yet.

What I didn't realise before was his accomplishments as an artist. At the of 17 he joined the Surrealists but his work, which was inclued in a major Surrealist show that also featured work by Picasso, was withdrawn at the last minute after Andre Breton expelled the young man from brotherhood. His in-depth study of Japanese calligraphy and Islamic art lie at the roots of his visual expression.


The film includes contribution from such luminaries as Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithful, Kenneth Anger, Genesis P. Orridge, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and John Giorno amongst numerous others, and contains remarkable archive footage. Its a stunning production but - be warned - this is not for the faint-hearted or for those prone to a reaction from flickering lights.


Extraordinary to discover that a) at one point Phillips the electronics company were interested in the Dream Machine and that b) W. Grey Walter, the cybernetics pioneer, was also interested in the 'flicker effect' and its stimulation of the brain waves.


As if this film was not enough to take on-board, Gysin's work is further illuminated by a wonderful website that provides a valuable showcase of his life and achievements: http://briongysin.com/


So I now understand Gysin in a larger way I think that we are only now beginning to really grasp what an important figure he was - or rather is  - because his work continues to have a huge influence.

Fire-damaged front cover of Gysin's Moroccan-based 
novel, a hardbacked 1st edition copy which I bought
in a Harrod's book sale in 1971. I strated re-reading
it this morning and its recpatured my imagination.

 Gysin remains an illusory figure with many identities and personnas who operated at the meeting point between science and art, the occult and the arcane, blending cultures, exploring other dimensions. In the same way that Marcel Duchamp influenced developments in modern art, Gysin's thoughts, artworks, projects and ideas permeate the networks of our electronic culture. He and Burroughs anticipated the Age of Control we live in and devised tools and methods to subvert it and gain true enlightenment.

 

The work of Matthew Levi Stevens and his partner Emma Doeve can be found at http://whollybooks.wordpress.com/ 

Stevens' booklet 'The Forgotten Agent & The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs', describing his own experiences in the 'Chaos Magic' scene of the 1980s and his meetings with Burroughs and Gysin, is available for purchase from the site.




FOOTNOTE:


A major documentary on The Beat Hotel is due for release at the end of this year. More details on the Gysin site and here: http://www.thebeathotelmovie.com/

For the full list of Previous Posts on the Beats, see The History of The Beats. This post is also tagged under Beats.

GLOBAL ISSUES: ANTI-FRACKING MOVEMENT

Fracking protestors convicted

PHOTO. KEVIN McGUINNESS. Anti Fracking protestors Ed Lloyd-Davies and Lauren Pepperell appeared at Preston Magistrates Court

Tuesday 17 July 2012 20:58
Three protestors who stormed a drilling site in a protest against fracking have been found guilty of aggravated trespass.Lauren Pepperell, 26, and Edward Lloyd-Davis, 38, scaled a pipe rack at the Cuadrilla Resources site in Bonny Barn Lane, Banks, and hung a banner in protest to the technology being explored at the site.
Barbara Cookson, 61, also went on to the site in the early hours of November 2 last year and along with Lloyd-Davis has also been found guilty of assaulting a security guard who tried to stop them.
All three defendants have been handed two-year  conditional discharges and ordered to pay £750 towards prosecution costs after District Judge Peter Ward said there was a long history of “civil disobedience” in a democratic society. [Source: Lancashire Evening Post]

Posted on January 26, 2012 by fred. 

Source: frack-off,org

Source: Anti-Fracking Movement on Instagram

Image above: GoogleEath image of quake locations around Lincoln, Oklahoma. From (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelley_mcdonald/6319498888/in/photostream/). Source: Island Breath blog

When kelleymcd (an anti-fracking activist) uploaded the above image to Flickr in November 2011, he/she noted that it showed:

"earthquakes in Central Oklahoma over the past 36 hours. Another 3.3 happened while I was making this image. This patch is 10 miles x 14 miles in size. Then 5 more aftershocks in the 3.0 range since that."

Kelleymcd clearly attributed the large amount of earthquakes to recent drilling activity—and not without reason. The US Geological Survey (USGS)had already linked 50 Oklahoma earthquakes to fracking, and a British fracking operation had recently fessed up to causing earthquakes in England.

Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono have created  Artists Against Fracking
They have gained the support of 120 artists including  Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore, musicians such as Lady Gaga, producer Mark Ronson and The Strokes, and other celebrities like spiritual guru Deepak Chopra and author Salman Rushdie.

CNN EXPLAINS FRACKING

Not everyone is against fracking, See: 

In Tiny Bean, India’s Dirt-Poor Farmers Strike Gas-Drilling Gold

GLOBAL ISSUES: FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

Xuyen Pham’s Garden
East New Orleans, La.
From the Lexicon of Sustainability

 This month, more than 100 growers, co-operative workers, researchers, campaigners and activists met near London to begin the process of building a food sovereignty movement in the UK. [For a detailed account by Amy Horton see the World Development Movement site]
A group called Via Campesino, founded in 1993, first coined the concept of "food sovereignty" ( from the Spanish soberiana alimentaria) which they presented to the World Food Conference in 1996. The concept has evolved and grown and was defined in 2002 as follows:

“Food sovereignty is the right of peoples, communities, and countries to define their own agricultural, labour, fishing, food and land policies which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances. It includes the true right to food and to produce food, which means that all people have the right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food-producing resources and the ability to sustain themselves and their societies. Food sovereignty means the primacy of people’s and community’s rights to food and food production, over trade concerns.”

Via Campesina (from Spanish la vía campesina, the campesino way, or the Peasants' Way) describes itself as "an international movement which coordinates peasant organizations of small and middle-scale producers, agricultural workers, rural women, and indigenous communities.' Organised into nine regions,Via Campesina is a coalition of over 148 organizations in 69 countries, representing 150 million people globally, advocating family-farm-based sustainable agriculture.

In 2007 more than 500 representatives of farmers’ networks, unions, social movements and other civil society groups from more than 80 countries gathered in Mali for the Nyéléni World Forum for Food Sovereignty. The outcome of the forum was a call for a radical restructuring of the global food and agriculture system to replace the current system which is largely dominated by the powerful interests of transnational corporations (TNCs). They instead advocated for local and national food systems that empower peasants and small scale farmers.

The forum also defined food sovereignty as 'the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.'

They defined the six pillars of food sovereignty as:  1) focuses on food for people; 2) values food providers; 3) localises food systems; 4) puts control locally; 5) builds knowledge and skills; 6) works with nature.
 
In Mali, European groups committed to a similar forum to build food sovereignty in Europe. This happened in Austria in 2011, with the Nyéléni Europe forum, which led to a call to us all to transform our food systems in Europe and realise food sovereignty here. 

 

 

SEE ALSO:

Food Sovereignty on 6 Billion Ways

'What is Food Sovereignty on the Fertile Ferment blog

TREE NEWS: SUDDEN OAK DEATH

 

 The recognisable sign of a P. ramorum infection in broadleaved trees is large brown-black cankers on the lower portion of the trunk that seep dark-red sap. Source: Woodlands.co.uk

Eight years ago, the magazine I edited Tree News was the first in Britain to feature a major story on the spread of a microscopic pathogen Phytophthora ramorum,which, at that time, had already infected several species of oak in California and Oregon causing 'Sudden Oak Death' and which had just been detected for the first time on trees in Britain. The worry then was that this could devastate our native oaks.


I conducted interviews with leading experts in the UK and US including Professor Clive Brazier, an emeritus mycologist who was the co-discoverer of the new strain of Dutch Elm disease in the 1970s. He told me: "Phytophthoras are potentially threatening the health of trees and the stability of woods, forests and ecosystems worldwide." 


A few days ago, The Generalist was sent a press release from the Forestry Commission to say a new strain of Phytophthora has just been identified in the UK. In this post, I reprint the intro from the original news feature, which provides a good summary of the background story, followed by the latest developments.

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Phytophthora ramorum is one of a genus of some 60 species which attack a vast number of plants including soybean, cacao, strawberries, pineapples, avocados and forest trees. (The Irish potato famine of 1845 was due to potato blight caused by Phytophthora infestans.) The name Phytophthora derives from the Greek and means 'plant destroyer'. Disease caused by Phytophthoras costs agricul­ture, forestry and nursery industries hundreds of billions of dol­lars each year in the US alone.


Phytophthora pathogens are especially difficult to control because of their origins. They come from an entirely different kingdom of life (Protista) to most other plant pathogens and are impervious to most pesticides. The organisms, though fungus-like, are not plant or animal, neither bacterium or virus, nor fungus or algae. They spread easily through air, water and soil.


Global trade in plants and forest products means that there has been what Clive Brasier describes as 'an increasing international spread of Phytophthora pathogens, by man, over the last 200 years'. This has introduced Phytophthora pathogens to new habi­tats and hosts that have not evolved any resistance to them, with damaging, even devastating, results.


Equally significant are the discoveries, over the last ten years, of six new plant pathogens that are all fungal hybrids; these include a new species of Phytophthora and the Dutch elm disease pathogen. Before 1990, records of natural species hybrids in fungi were rare, with fewer than ten clear examples known.


There is a greater possibility of hybridisation when fungi spread beyond their normal geographical ranges. Such accidental hybridisations open the door to the emergence of new diseases, capable of posing threats we cannot yet identify. Computer modelling shows that conditions favourable for Phytophthora attacks on forests are likely to become more common as global warming progresses.

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FOR MORE ON THE CURRENT SITUATION READ ON 

BAREFOOT INVENTORS: HONEY BEE NETWORK & AFRIGADGET

 

Lets turn the traditional model of development on its head by uncovering the knowledge, ingenuity of the people at the grass-roots and enable them to develop their insights and inventions. Welcome to the world of the Honey Bee Network. 

 

This intro to an interview with its founder Prof. Anil Gupta in SGI Forum, a Buddhist quarterly, explains the basics. Full text here:

'Working with the poor of India, Professor Anil Gupta was struck by the creativity and innovativeness that he saw. In 1988, he started the Honey Bee Network to discover, share and promote grassroots innovation to the benefit of both innovators and the global public.

'One method of discovery is twice-yearly treks (shodh yatra) by members of the network through the rural areas of India. The network now exists in 75 countries, and its newsletter is published in eight languages. Gupta has also since established the Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (www.sristi.org) and the Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (www.gian.org) that, respectively, help scale up and convert grassroots innovations into viable products.

'In cooperation with the government of India, he established the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), which holds national competitions, including among children, to encourage new inventors and helps sustain them through the National Micro Venture Innovation Fund. The NIF has a database of more than 160,000 innovations and traditional knowledge practices, the largest of its kind (for examples, see www.nif.org.in/bd/product_list). Gupta has also established an online portal (www.techpedia.in) to challenge university students to solve various problems of the poor and micro, small and medium enterprises.'

 

Mansukhbhai Prajapati was making clay water filters in 2001, when the Gujarat earthquake struck. A newspaper carried a photograph of him the next day, with the pieces of his shattered clay pots around him, above the caption “the broken fridge of poor.” This was the inspiration behind his own double-walled clay refrigerator, Mitticool, the first version of which was sold to a local civil engineer in 2005. Today, a few awards and several magazine and newspaper stories later, Mansukhbhai has become one of the faces of indigenous innovation in India. Prof. Anil Gupta, of the Honey Bee Network, holds him up as “a shining example of a successful enterprise that combines technology with traditional knowledge to deliver sustainable solutions.”

Source: 'The Business of Rural Refridgerators'  by Avinash on Little Design Book [2nd Nov 2010]

Links:Anil Guptar's Honey Bee manifesto on SlideShare [posted 29th Sept 2009]

The Honeybee Network: Grassroots Innovation by Kathryn Lewes on the ETSY blog [5th Nov 2011]

Anil Gupta and the Honey Bee Network by Sarah Rich on WorldChanging [21st March 2007]

A Hive of Ideas by Peter Day [BBC News 11th Jan 2006]
The Honey Bee Network is one of the most remarkable organisations on earth, and if you have never heard of it, then you probably ought to have done.

Big thanks to Andy Stirling for tipping me off


LEARN HERE ABOUT AFRIGADGET and ERIK HERSMAN

EARTHED: ECOCITIES / RICHARD REGISTER & PAOLO SOLERI

Richard Register, Bejing, China

Richard Register is a pioneer of ecocity thinking and is widely credited as the man who coined the term. His work and thoughts have found practical expression in many countries of the world through Ecocity Builders, the organisation he founded in 1992. 

Site includes a very long A-Z list of some of the world's other leading eco-city practitioners
 


Source: '5 Most Crucial Eco-city Projects'. on 21st Century Architecture

Ecocity Builders are consulting to the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city Administrative Committee (STECAC) that is responsible for the building of a flagship Chinese ecocity project currently in construction. The size of Manhattan, it will eventually house 350,000 citizens. It is the prototype for a new generation of compact pedestrian cities that will use 1/10th of the energy and 1/5th of the land of a traditional city.

Video report on the Tianjin project and others in India can be found on a BBC World Service site. The eco-city film is Part 10 of a larger project entitled 'Horizons: An Insight Into the Future of Global Business' (sponsored unfortunately by Dow Chemical).

Richard Register and Paolo Soleri, Ecocity World Summit 2008

Richard Register was inspired as a young man by meeting - by chance - Paolo Soleri, a visionary architect/philospher - who was at that time (the 1970s) engaged in building Arcosanti, an experimental town in the mountains of central Arizona, to demonstrate how urban conditions could be improved while minimising the impact on the earth. Over 6,000 people have helped in its construction and work continues to this day. The guiding principle behind his work is arcology (combining architecture and ecology).
SEE PREVIOUS POST: URBAN AGRICULTURE

CORPORATION 20/20

 

 The Rio Earth Summit 2012 has past and and gone, resulting in a wishy-washy document called 'The Future We Want' full of bland fine-sounding language and very few action plans. This was a meeting of heads of States who, at the 1992 Rio Summit, created two intergovernmental institutions to tackle the urgent issues of climate change and loss of biological diversity. Both institutions have failed to get signatory governments to follow through on their commitments.

In a thought-provoking piece in Nature, entitled 'The Corporate Climate Overhaul'  Pavan Sukhdev argues that this is not working because the private sector is not at the table.This is essential because, writes Sukhdev, 'The private sector produces almost everything we consume, generating more than 60% of global gross-domestic product.' But, he argues, corporations must evolve if they are to play a major role in achieving a sustainable world.

'Today's corporation is, on average, an economic agent lacking in social purpose and focused on financial return to shareholders...It produces today's 'brown' economy, delivering private gains at the expense of public losses by increasing environmental risks and ecological scarcities.'

'Corporations not consumers are in the driving seat and they are driving us in the wrong direction.Corporate advertising converts our insecurities into a chain of wants, needs and excessive demands, which have made our ecological footprint exceed the planet's ability to produce resources and absorb emissions by more than 50%.

'We are now consuming nature's capital, not its interest. And yet we have enshrined this corporate model in business law and practice, and, indeed, celebrated it as a crowning success of our times. The rules of the game need to be changed.' 


'The new type of corporation, which I call Corporation 2020, can still be profitable while contributing to a 'green economy': one that increases human well-being and social equity, and decreases environmental risks and ecological scarcities.'

There is now an organisation called Corporation 20/20 dedicated to exploring the possibilities of this system redesign thinking. One of their mission papers concludes: ' Amidst unprecedented growth in the scale, reach and footprint of corporations, sufficient evidence exists to support the possibility of a latent but powerful movement to reshape the purpose of corporations in a form that aligns with 21st century imperatives.'

ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS: GÖBEKLI TEPE

Source: Terra Antiqvae. Scroll down for English text.

The most important archaeological discovery of our time is only slowly seeping into mainstream awareness.Göbekli Tepe is a gently rounded mound rising 50ft above the surrounding landscape in south-eastern Turkey. Its name means ‘belly hill’ in Turkish.

This gigantic Stone Age site site is an artificial hill containing  huge temple structures made of massive stone pillars arranged in circles, much of them elaborately carved with a menagerie of menacing creatures.

Each ring (the largest is 65ft across), has two large T-shaped pillars in the centre; the tallest so far found is 15ft high and weighs 7-10 tons. The site is reliably dated at around 10,000BC.

This makes it the oldest known large-scale human structure and ceremonial site, predating Stonehenge (3000-2000BC) and the building of the Pyramids (which reached its zenith at 2575-2150BC).

Abundant remains of the bones of wild animals (more than 60% gazelles) and no sign of domesticated animals or farming, confirms this site was built by hunter-gatherers.

Only 5% of the site has been excavated to date, by Dr Klaus Schmidt and his team over the last 18 years. They have uncovered or partially-uncovered five ring structures so far. Detailed scans of the 22-acre site reveal at least 16 others buried beneath the surface.

Revealing the full-scope of this extraordinary site may take another 50 years. Understanding why and how Göbekli Tepe was constructed may take even longer.

Göbekli Tepe is not only possibly “the first human-built holy place”, says Schmidt, but also “the real origin of complex Neolithic societies.”

The standard view is that it was only after humans had discovered agriculture and built settled communities that they then had the resources to support the building of temples and complex social structures.

Göbekli Tepe suggests that it was the process of building the temple,which would have required hundreds of workers, that led to settled communities in the surrounding area and the birth of agricultural practices.

Deeper still, believes Schmidt, lies the structure’s real purpose – it was the hunters’ final burial ground or the centre of a death cult.

 

The basic facts in this intro are drawn from two great magazine pieces which provide a excellent starting point.

Göbekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? by Andrew Curry (Smithsonian magazine/Sept 2008)

Göbekli Tepe: The Birth of Religion by Charles C. Mann(National Geographic/June 2011). Short extracts from an article that sets GT in a much wider context.

‘Göbekli Tepe is the oldest known example of monumental architecture—the first structure human beings put together that was bigger and more complicated than a hut. When these pillars were erected, so far as we know, nothing of comparable scale existed in the world.’

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‘Puzzle piled upon puzzle as the excavation continued. For reasons yet unknown, the rings at Göbekli Tepe seem to have regularly lost their power, or at least their charm. Every few decades people buried the pillars and put up new stones—a second, smaller ring, inside the first. Sometimes, later, they installed a third. Then the whole assemblage would be filled in with debris, and an entirely new circle created nearby. The site may have been built, filled in, and built again for centuries.

‘Bewilderingly, the people at Göbekli Tepe got steadily worse at temple building. The earliest rings are the biggest and most sophisticated, technically and artistically. As time went by, the pillars became smaller, simpler, and were mounted with less and less care. Finally the effort seems to have petered out altogether by 8200 B.C. Göbekli Tepe was all fall and no rise.’

‘In 10 or 15 years," Schmidt predicts, "Göbekli Tepe will be more famous than Stonehenge. And for good reason."

Portrait of Dr Schmidt. Source: Fortean Times

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GOBEKLI TEPE UPDATES is a blog containing images, videos and sound interview of the unfolding story. Frustratingly designed !

Gobekli Tepe official site

SEE PREVIOUS POSTS: ANCIENT ART and ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS: AMAZONIA

This post was triggered by talking with two friends of mine who have just spent a month travelling round Turkey visiting archaeological sites.