macdermott's war song (project)

Jingo Karaoke
Multimedia Performance
We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do ...
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too!

It was 1878 when in the United States Edison patented the phonograph that later was developed into gramophone and was the most common device for playing recorded sound until the 1980s.
In the same year across the ocean the music-hall singer G. H. Macdermott (aka "the Great Macdermott") introduced in London Pavilion his song By Jingo (means By God in Old English).
This is one of the very first examples of modern propaganda since Macdermott was commissioned to change the public opinion in Britain with a popular song in the middle of the political crisis between the British Empire and Russia, after the war with Turkey in the Balkans and Caucasus.
The crisis ended with a diplomatic triumph of Britain's Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and after the song a politician from the opposition Laborist Party invented the term jingoism that now is used for describing "extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy".
It is amazing how political life changed forever since audiovisual mass media and propaganda charged pop culture were invented and eventually became an intrinsic part of the public life. In 2008 exactly one hundred and thirty years after, we can celebrate an anniversary of audiovisual industry and jingoism, with Russia becoming again the world's Evil, with the US presidential campaign in which a remote war that can be seen as a perfect example of jingoism was described as "God's Plan" and the Blue Ray (probably the last hard copy media) becoming world standard.
To remind for all these events media artist Petko Dourmana invited in his Chain Reaction Pavilion everybody who wanted to sing Macdermott's war song By Jingo with a karaoke set that uses a New Edison-Style Cup Phonograph.
In the plastic cups used as recording media visitors got free beer after singing.
By Jingo Karaoke performance was presented from September 11-14th, 2008 at Macedonia Square in Skopje, Macedonia as part of Upgrade International

jayce salloum at canadian cultural centre, paris

Alan Currall: Encyclopaedia

Two years before Wikipedia re-defined the nature of the encyclopaedic work of reference, transforming it from a compendium of expert views into a repository of collective wisdom, Alan Currall produced this endearingly quixotic People’s Almanac, assembled from ordinary people’s individual contributions. The people in question are recruited from Currall’s immediate circle of family and friends, and the answers they give offer a disarmingly local, if palpably limited and partial, perspective on the attempted elucidation of a diverse range of subjects (aspidistra, air, Abyssinia etc). Persistently confronted by their doubts and failings, displaying a tendency to falter or digress, the participants’ definitions highlight the inherent absurdity of universalising schemes of classification, and undercut the overweening will-to-order that sustains the pursuit of systematic knowledge.

Released as a CD-Rom (a format as passé as a morocco-bound multi-volume edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica), the piece’s homemade graphic style exhibits a deliberately earnest retro quality (that felt oddly antiquated even at the time). Commissioned in conjunction with Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent (Currall’s home town), ‘Encyclopaedia’ draws on his roots in this now relatively unsung, and increasingly marginalised part of Middle England to project an engaging, inclusive sense of commonality, in which the so-called ‘common people’ demonstrate the virtues, and the limits, of what passes for common knowledge.

A Film and Video Umbrella Touring Exhibition. Curated and produced by Film and Video Umbrella, Stills and Potteries Museum and Art Gallery.

Supported by the National Touring Programme of the Arts Council of England.

'Did You Kiss the Foot that Kicked You?' Ruth Ewan w/ Artangel (over 100 buskers in London who played 'The Ballad of Accounting' for a week)

Did you kiss the foot that kicked you?
"Give me the making of the songs of the nation, and I care not who makes its laws".
Andrew Fletcher, 1703
"Music is doing something to everyone who hears it all the time".
Arnold Perris, Music as Propaganda, 1984


Ewan MacColl wrote Ballad of Accounting in 1964.The lyrics follow a simple structure, considered to be unique among his three hundred compositions. The song offers criticism as self-reflection, repeatedly posing provocative and direct questions:
Did you stand aside and let them choose while you took second best?
Did you let them skim the cream off and then give to you the rest?
Government records released in 2006 through The National Archive show that from 1932, security service MI5 held a file on MacColl. One report claims that he was ‘a communist with very extreme views’ who needed ‘special attention’. The file also states, as a cause for concern, that MacColl had ‘exceptional ability as a singer and musical organiser’.
Ruth Ewan's Did you kiss the foot that kicked you? involves the co-ordination of over one hundred buskers around London. Performing both under and above ground, the buskers incorporate Ballad of Accounting into their usual repertoire. Their individual acts share a collective purpose. The week-long series of performances slips quietly into the rush-hour routine, as the scattered recitals filter into the subconscious of those passing by.
Busking is about something other than just being an able musician or a street entertainer; it is a raw performance, an autonomous act.
Legislation has almost eradicated busking; by-laws and policing keep all but the hardiest musicians from the streets, while others pursue bureaucratic routes into designated areas. The recent introduction of music licensing has restrained the natural spontaneity of performances across a range of live venues.
The entirety of Did you kiss the foot that kicked you? cannot be experienced by any one person. We may or may not be aware of the song’s fleeting presence in the city: a bold brass section as we cross the Thames or a quiet voice accompanied by a guitar as we turn off the main street.

Protest Songbook A project by Big Hope: Miklós Erhardt & Dominic Hislop | Radio Broadcast

CLICK HERE

My Father is a Certain Kind of Man, December 2010 (Israel)

My father is a certain kind of man.

A few years ago we were in Greece together. He sat on a bench with another man. And they understood each other.

Their Language was their cigarettes,

Their ears grown large with age,

Their noses red from good times and bad times,

What a life we’ve had

Their hands ingrained with dirt from long ago

My father’s a certain kind of man.

And I sometimes wish I was too

(accompanying music: Mrs McGrath: The Sergeant Said)

ICA Boston: exhibition

http://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/exhibit/acting-out/

marxism today: Phil Collins

marxism today

Phil Collins

Phil Collins’ work in film, video and photography often provides a platform for the overlooked or the disenfranchised. Shining a light on what is generally perceived as the losing side in the political and social upheavals of the past two decades, ‘marxism today’ is an ongoing project that began by following the fortunes of former teachers of Marxism-Leninism in Communist East Germany. Collins’ short film ‘marxism today (prologue)’ (2010) mixes contemporary interviews with the ex-teachers alongside archive material, to form the centrepiece of this exhibition, which also includes a new video in which a number of concepts central to Marxist economic analysis are introduced to a new generation of students. Relocating from the start of this school year to Manchester, where Engels wrote ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’, Collins’ project prompts a wider reflection on the city’s formative place in the history of radical thinking. Initiating a series of interactions with nearby schools and the local public, it also enquires into the continuing relevance of Marxist ideas in the present day.

‘marxism today’ is co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, Cornerhouse, Abandon Normal Devices, Berliner Künstlerprogramm/DAAD, Berlin Biennale and Shady Lane Productions.

SEEKING FORMER
TEACHERS OF
MARXISM

Did you teach Marxist-Leninist philosophy at school or university before 1989?

How did your life and career change as a result of perestroika?

Did you have to give up your profession forever?

Find a new subject to teach?

Or find a new career?

Documentary filmmaker Phil Collins is looking for people willing to share their story.

Get in touch with us by email
info@shadylaneproductions.co.uk

Or leave your name and contact information HERE.

Confidentiality guaranteed.

Muslala: Chiara's Stairs, Matan Israeli

link

Susan Philipsz

Commissioned by GI, Susan Philipsz presented a site-specific outdoor sound work combining three versions of the same song, ‘Lowlands’, as sung by the artist, and offering an extra-ordinary connection with this hidden and little used space.

Claire Bishop

Socially Engaged Art, Critics and Discontents: An Interview with Claire Bishop

'aesthetic is being sacrificed on the altar of social change.'

http://clairebishopresearch.blogspot.com/

Rogue Radio

Research and Resources on
Micro Radio/Low Power FM

see also: Testuo Kogawa

Down at the Bamboo Club

Down at the Bamboo Club
2008 - 2009

Down at the Bamboo Club project explores legacy through participation, historic sites and events with 3 commissions, an exhibition and a publication.

Down at The Bamboo Club: Film, participation and re-enactment was developed by Picture This as a response to national and city wide projects marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery act.

Picture This was keen to develop participatory projects involving re-enactment through workshops and community events. Re-enactments offer sensitive ways to link to diverse communities and gain newly produced material. Re-enactment is a means of expression that has sympathies with oral traditions of storytelling. It has the potential to reconcile the dynamics of contemporary and historical perspectives of slavery and to respond to the specific site, place and context of Bristol.

Through a period of research and development Picture This invited artist Harold Offeh to start conversations with three organisations in the city with links to sites and moments in the city's history of slavery, abolitionism and community relationships - The Georgian House, Wesley's New Room and the Bristol Black Archives Partnership.

These conversations developed into a brief to three commissioned artists (Barby Asante, Mandy McIntosh and Mark Wilsher) to produce new film and video works with communities and partner sites.

Following the commissions Picture This curated an exhibition bringing together the three new works with existing film and video pieces which share ideas of legacy, re-enactment and community.

blog

The Use of Money
by Mark Wilsher

Bamboo Memories
by Barby Asante

STAN DOUGLAS: Television spots/Monodramas

TELEVISION SPOTS (1987/88)
In 1989, his first series of short works for television, the twelve Television Spots, were broadcast in Saskatoon and Ottawa amid regular programming, as if they were commercials. Unidentified, the short scenes depicting open-ended, banal activities baffled viewers.


MONODRAMAS (1991)
Douglas's "Monodramas," ten 30- to 60-second videos from 1991, conceived as interventions into commercial television, interrupted the usual flow of advertising and entertainment when broadcast nightly in British Columbia for three weeks in 1992. These micronarratives mimic television's editing techniques, but as kernels of a story they refuse to cohere. They are tales of dysfunction and dislocation, misanthropy and misunderstanding. When the videos were aired unannounced during commercial breaks, viewers called the station to inquire about what was being sold, their responses evincing how the media can refocus attention from content to consumption. -- Nancy Spector

Francis alys: seven walks

santiago sierra

the body as site for cultural representation.

the artist pays 200 (mainly black) men to get their hair dyed blonde

REMAKE OF "GROUP OF PERSONS FACING THE WALL AND PERSON FACING INTO A CORNER"Lisson Gallery. London, United Kingdom. October 2002 / Turbin Hall, Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom. January 2008

"As in all his subsequent actions, the artist himself was the protagonist, yet surrendered his active artistic self to the decisions of others"(frieze issue 113, on jiri kovanda)

Carey Young/Richard Long

A Line Made by Walking 1967

Photograph and pencil on board
image: 375 x 324 mm
on paper, print

Purchased 1976

P07149
This formative piece was made on one of Long’s journeys to St Martin’s from his home in Bristol. Between hitchhiking lifts, he stopped in a field in Wiltshire where he walked backwards and forwards until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line. He photographed this work, and recorded his physical interventions within the landscape.
Although this artwork underplays the artist’s corporeal presence, it anticipates a widespread interest in performative art practice. This piece demonstrates how Long had already found a visual language for his lifelong concerns with impermanence, motion and relativity.


CAREY YOUNG's

Lines Made by Walking
Louise Menzies

First published in Scape Biennial catalogue , 2006

Experienced as a series of projected 35mm slides unfolding at automated one-second intervals, Lines Made By Walking (2003) reveals the certain actions of an individual amidst a crowd. More specifically, these are the actions of the artist herself walking back and forth as she attempts to crave a line within the space of a crowded strip of commuters in central London. Intentionally recalling Richard Long’s 1967 piece A Line Made By Walking, Young inserts in our memories the politicised acts of the neo avant-garde, while suggesting how such actions of an individual can still offer a negotiation of space within our late capitalist situation.

Performed in public space, Young’s work sharply sketches the globalised daily reality of the worker and suggests an attempt at updating contemporary relationships between corporate and cultural politics. Dressed in a suit like those around her, in many ways Young is a nameless face in the crowd; collapsing the distances of artist, worker and audience. Over time however, her self-directed and purposeful walking offers us a form of resistance drawn from the very structures it seeks to resist. In place of Long’s flattened grass, we are left with negative urban space.



© Copyright Louise Menzies and Scape Biennial Trust, 2006

Carey Young

carey young

A small stall was set up in a marketplace, close to other market stalls and in sight of the facades of multinational businesses. At the stall, the services of a local professional ‘arbitrator’ was made available, without charge, to the public for the period of one day. Arbitration is the process in which disputes are settled by the use of a professional mediator. Arbitrators are primarily used in commercial situations in which conventional discussion processes have broken down, but in which peace must be created. The process may be familiar to anyone who recalls the clashes between trade unions and their often-corporate employers in the days before the globalised erosion of union power.

The arbitration service was on offer for the period of one day for two (or more) people who had a dispute – any dispute - to resolve. The arbitrator was situated at an office-style table, with two office-style chairs for members of the public to sit down. Prior to launch, the service was advertised in the local media and signs were also placed next to the stall.

The piece also made reference to larger questions of conflict. Arbitration is inherently concerned with the attempt to create peace. Thus this tiny site, almost as small as a picnic table, alluded to notions of a peaceful Utopia, whilst it nevertheless seemed vulnerable, dwarfed by the size and architecture of the surrounding environment. The site offered a tiny and temporary peace zone that was gone all too soon.

jiri kovanda

jiri kovanda

kissing through the glass
www.flashartonline.com/

extract from frieze interview

JM I’m very interested in the transition that occurred between the performance of your actions and their translation into documentary photographs. There are no audiences present at some of your actions. The only people who know they’re art are you and the photographer. But the resulting photograph isn’t the art work, it’s the action, isn’t it?
JK  The question is when communication takes place. I think it’s at the moment when the thing is referred to as art. That means that if an action has an audience, it happens straight away. If no spectators have been invited, however, I think it doesn’t take place until afterwards, in the artistic space – in other words, either at an exhibition, or in print, it doesn’t matter. In short, when it’s presented as art.
JM In retrospect, then?
JK  Yes in retrospect, although you can’t draw a clear dividing line. Without the action, it wouldn’t exist. The action has to take place.
JM In this respect time has quite a particular status. In the act of documentation, you’re calling attention to something that happened earlier: the action without an audience.
JK  But the action has to be there. An idea isn’t enough, it has to really take place.(*) I’ve had many ideas and scripts for different actions that I haven’t carried out, but I’ve never published the ones that didn’t happen.

*why does it have to take place, can art exist in an iddea only?

but if you tell your idea the tellig of it is the art and not the idea? so you couldnt present an idea only as art?