Is a social contract implicit in our daily social contact? Is the ‘r’ simply a formality? While Facebook and other social networking sites are a fantastically democratic way of raising issue awareness, is social contact simply being reduced to lists and categories? We’ve all been to those ‘media folk’ parties masquerading as mia casa, sua casa social gatherings where many guests barely even know the host. Walking and riding the streets and underground of London most people would probably think that the ‘r’ is now defunct. Many know nothing of the unwritten social contract in cities such as New York where personal space is respected (most-times). Londoners are so bad at keeping ‘A’, let alone ‘THE’ social contract on the underground that a loudspeaker voice has to remind them of letting people off the train before pushing themselves on.
And this week we were reminded of contracts that for commuters don’t seem to be remotely worth the paper they’re written upon:
Metronet to cost taxpayers £1.7 billion
Every family in Britain has been saddled with an extra £3,000 debt because of the Government's promise to shore up Northern Rock, opposition MPs claimed.
Multi-billion pound funding package to invest in London's transport network confirmed
Underground resistance (Alex Clark in The Observer)
And the Mayor's plan to tax fuel guzzling cars in the capital £25 per day. They'll be some angry denizens now but a greener city sometime in the future.
This week, BBC Radio 4's In Our Time focussed on great minds that have grappled with the notion of the greater social contract - Rousseau, Hobbes, Grotius, Locke, Plato and Hume – and the conflict between obedience a citizen owes to the law and State versus individual freedom. Hot on its aural heels (ear lobes in earthling speak) was The Trial and Death of Socrates (BBC Radio 3's Nightwaves).
And with the demise of the cheque, I guess there’s no back up to the digital age when the Stone Age hits us again:
It's farewell to the cheque as cards rule
But even I’m getting excited about the mobile web and Opera Mini that reduces your download (like video compression) to the essential 20% of the original content, downloading in 6-7 seconds with standard GPS (BBC's Click) . And check out the embryonic 3D TV on the site. The Richard Gregory/Polanski project lives on! (see last blog)
Channel Four’s ever provocative Dispatches Heat or Eat: The Pensioners' Dilemma
showed further failing contracts in the British welfare state. The people featured here were poster pin-ups of pensioners that a welfare state should indeed help as they could barely help themselves.
Alexander Rodchenko: Revolution in Photography shows how multi-talented Rodchenko espoused the wrong kind of socialism in Stalinist Russia. And I guess socialist overtones vibrate in Transport for London’s current scheme of piping classical music in its tube stations. “We want to give people a greater feeling that someone is in control, making things secure and safe,” said a spokesman. I heard Wagner in one, but as you’ll learn if you read the following article, it’s only because he was out of copyright. Years ago the autumn/winter unintended joke on delayed train commuters was ‘leaves on the line’ amended by the commuter as ‘wrong kind of leaves on the line’.
You can buy a double ticket for Rodchenko (upstairs) and the Laughter show (downstairs) but head upwards first, as this is really an extraordinary show deserving of some time. In a very socialist move the Hayward provides you with a 32 page free Rodchenko booklet. The show resonates with even more fascination if one sees it in close temporal proximity to the From Russia show at the Royal Academy, with its final room of artistic revolutionaries including Rodchenko’s painting. It was a trip to Paris and viewing the Eiffel Tower that began Rodchenko’s troubles but art history’s gratitude. He started thinking too much about how we see things, a spanner that usually clogs up the workings of most social contracts. “I saw [it] from a distance and didn’t like it at all. But one day I was passing on a bus, and when I saw the lines of metal receding upwards, right and left, this perspective gave me an impression of the mass and the construction.” In the same year, Rodchenko had continued the photo-montages concurrent with his early painting, probably the best known being the woman in a headscarf shouting out the word BOOKS (KNIGI) in the shape of a mega-phone (made famous on the Franz Ferdinand album). Returning from Paris, he began photographing his apartment block in odd angles (using a fixed ‘hyperfocal’ focus lens) that continued into his 1930’s photos of a Pioneer camp outside Moscow. The extreme angles, such as right under the chin of a young trumpeter, provoked outrage and he was accused of being a ‘formalist’ - too avant-garde. “Why does the pioneer look upwards? It is not ideologically correct. Pioneers and the youth of the komosol must look forwards,” his detractors shouted. The irony was that Rodchenko really was a socialist pioneer wanting to make documentary not artistic photos. Art for art’s sake was “useless” art to him.
It’s a point that has thundering resonance even these days. The ostracising of American Noam Chomsky, essentially a linguistic semiotician, still amazes me as he was only pointing out in his writings that oftentimes hidden views (if not truths) about government foreign policy are freely (if not always readily) available if you choose to seek and compare sources. He never even advocated revolution!
John Pilger's The War on Democracy (DVD) is another in his tireless efforts exposing the shortcomings of the United States social contract in its Latin American foreign policy: “In the CIA we didn’t give a hoot about democracy...if [a government] didn’t co-operate then democracy didn’t mean a thing to us. And I don’t think it means a thing today,” says Philip Agee, CIA agent from 1957-68. Another CIA op tries to convince you that there were negligible deaths under the Chilean dictatorship. Familiar if ever harrowing stuff from Pilger.
Australian photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson has repeatedly returned to Iraq.
Latest Errol Morris film at this week’s Berlin Film Fest S.O.P. (Standard Operating Procedure) on the media coverage of the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison by the US military.
Rocket Science (Optimum UK DVD), (HBO DVD)
is directed with a consummate indie tone all its own by Jeffrey Blitz (known for his doco Spellbound on American spelling competitions). Hal Hefner (Reece Thompson) is a stuttering 15-year-old kid of Plainsboro, New Jersey. As Blitz recounts on the interview extra, Thompson proves that luck is often everything in entertainment as the original Hal dropped out after a 6 month casting search and Thompson was on an audition tape destined for the trash as HBO breathed down Blitz’s neck for a decision. Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick) persuades Hal to join her debating team (reminiscent of a cruel Neil LaBute character). For the Brit viewers, the art of ‘spreading’ (speed talking your arguments) will be completely new and possibly explain the often-empty rhetoric spewing from American politics. Nifty score by Eef Barzelay.
Rodchenko wrote in 1928: “since photographic documentation became available there can be no question of any single, immutable portrait. Moreover, a man or woman is not a single summation, but many, sometimes totally contradictory sums... record a person’s life not just with one ‘synthetic’ portrait, but in a mass of momentary photos.” Another Rodchenko irony is that almost every photo equally resonates as a single entity. A well-known critic at last week’s viewing asked me what I thought the woman (bottom of frame) was up to in Gathering for a Demonstration (1928). And what fascinates about these photos is that there is indeed an objective reality e.g. the woman seems to be dustpan and brushing her balcony. While on the balcony above, a more foregrounded but more shadowy woman looks down at the demo. But there is really no real foreground or background to this photo only multiple planes of seeing as in his friend Tatlin’s Constructivist sculptures. And it’s this genius that puts Rodchenko decades ahead of many other world re-known photographers. It must also be remembered that photography was not considered a ‘serious’ art form on par with painting until decades later. Concurrently in America, Paul Strand was photographing people almost trapped and made powerless by the big city its capitalism whereas Rodchenko was celebrating people as pioneers rather than victims. Hounded out of Moscow he reluctantly undertook an assignment to document the slave-labour construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal in 1933 yet it changed his life, “I just photographed without thinking about formalism.” Truly remarkable photojournalism. The final irony of Rodchenko’s life, and another example of his ‘making the most it’, were his photos of sport and circus movement allowing him to placate the Stalinist authorities. For most of the 1940’s circus photos he uses his ‘30s Leica but with a soft-focus Thambar lens. As he wrote in his 1939 autobiography Black and White, “Surely the country of socialism still needs ventriloquists, magicians and jugglers, flying carpets, fireworks, planetariums, flowers, kaleidoscopes?”
Aleksandr Rodchenko retrospective 1998(MOMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York). Excellent quick link overview.
Is Roman Signer (Hauser & Wirth) a latter-day anti-Constructivist - Signer’s objects are given a Frankenstein existence? I could do without the ballet for electric lawnmower and chairs Stühle, but his video work with everyday objects taking on lives of their own is intriguing.
The Bridge (More 4 TV Tues 12 Feb 10pm)(my blog review) has been staunchly criticised for sickly voyeurism in documenting the suicides from San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge. Decide for yourself.
Rachel Howard’s How to Disappear Completely (Haunch of Venison) creates quite stunning large paintings on the theme of suicide using household gloss and acrylic on canvas. Gloss paint is traditionally a ‘presentational’ paint for doors and window frames. Howard traps and preserves her inhabitants and abstract presences in the beautiful shiny amber of gloss for all eternity.
The photos of Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens (from Fri 15 ICA) have now reached ‘la circus’ fantastical dimensions. This doco, directed by her sister Barbara, is a good overview of the highs and lows of her career. No dissenting voices though (that’s a loyal sister for you). I happen to be a fan of her celebrity photos where subjects are captured in a visual dialectic of their fame
NPR (National Public Radio) interview
Julie Taymor (The Lion King fame) has been experimenting with the dialectics created by stage masks for almost as long as Liebovitz’s photography. Across the Universe, MySpace, New York Times article.
had a rather unfavourable Brit reception on its cinema release. But this DVD is worth considering even though the film’s great failure is its lack of dialectic. In the wake of 9/11 and Iraq, Taymor chose a young, talented cast singing their way through Beatles songs in her evocation of the 60s - a fantastical way into the future when every reality in the new millennium present seems rootless. Amazing production design from Kyle Cooper (title credit ‘guru’ on Seven, Mimic and too many other films to mention). Good disc extras, too.
Extraordinary isn’t it that women still have to fight a socialist campaign in the new millennium for equality. They can even run companies and write dissertations with a family of kids and a grumpy hubby nipping at their heels.
The glass ceiling isn't broken - in fact, it's getting thicker (The Observer), Glass elevator (Financial Times)
Jerry Garcia (The Grateful Dead) was a Liebovitz capture and there’s still a chance to catch his favourite fantastical 3 hour B/W film Wojciech Has' The Saragossa Manuscript (1965) re-issued in the UK by Mr.Bongo
Cambridge Picturehouse (11-15th February)
Edinburgh Filmhouse re-scheduled screenings 15 & 16 March
Garcia put up the initial restoration funding with Martin Scorsese bankrolling the final project after Garcia's death and making a new negative from the only existing print of the full-length film. Francis Ford Coppola assisted in distributing the film re-released in 2001. The film’s based on the early 19th century novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1813) written by Polish nobleman Jan Potocki with hints of Spanish Renaissance dramatist Calderon de la Barca’s Life is a Dream. This site tells you all you need to know. Back in December at the BFI Southbank, there was a one-off screening with live score by The Recording Angel Ensemble: Aleksander Kolkowski, Sebastien Buczek with his ‘robot musicians’ and automata and Zbigniew Karkowski’s electronic compositions. I’ve only seen heard a DVD of that performance and while the live score sounded overwhelming, it probably was fairly true to the hallucinogenic initial 60s screenings. The spooky, spare original score was by contemporary ‘classical’ Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. This film is rarely if ever seen, so if you get the chance, go! Vertigo article
Jerry Garcia was also the force behind getting the gigantic symphonies of British ‘classical’ composer Havergal Brian recorded.
Rock photographer Anton Corbijn's film Control (Momentum DVD)
about Joy Division’s young suicide Ian Curtis (riveting newcomer Sam Riley) is out on DVD with a dry if informative director’s commentary and Corbijn’s video of Atmosphere as extras. It would have been nice, though, to have had more of Corbijn's personal reminiscences from the 70s. (His fetish for old telephones is quite funny). I read somewhere that though it was always intended to be shot in B/W, it had originally been filmed on colour stock to lessen the graininess. (Don’t remember hearing anything about that on the commentary). Almost all the band’s photographs from the period were in B/W. But the sense of graininess is exactly what I liked about it when I saw the cinema screening in all its widescreen anamorphic glory. The DVD transfer obviously looks cleaner and less grainy on the smaller screen. The film becomes far more than just a bio-pic and more a meditation on that vibrant period of music history in grey northern England. Samantha Morton is brilliant, as always, as Curtis’ first love wife through thick, thin but not quite coping with another woman. And Control's writer Matt Greenhalgh won the Carl Foreman Award Special Achievement Award BAFTA Sunday night. As I said when I first reviewed it, you emerge from a viewing shaken but inspired. And when funding fell through, Corbijn used his own money to finish it.
Paul Morley new book Joy Division Piece by Piece and Kevin Cummins's photographs capture the band (Sean O'Hagan, The Observer)
More B/W in The Frightened City(1961), one of the best of Optimum’s British Thrillers series. This is London B/W gangland 60’s noir with petty crim Paddy Damion (Sean Connery) falling in with the big boys directed by a relatively inexperienced John Lemont but helped by very accomplished cinematographer Desmond Dickinson. This is Connery the year before he became James Bond and he’s one of the few actors that can believably threaten violence while in the next scene suavely seducing Yvonne Romain (Circus of Horrors) with a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ line like: “Do you have a pain in your head?” she asks, to which Connery replies, “No, it’s a bit further down.” Herbert Lom (Peter Sellers’ foil in the Pink Panther films) is great too. The catchy, twangy score is by Norrie Paramor responsible for The Shadows and Cliff Richard No.1 singles and scoring 26 No.1 hits in the UK.
Payroll(1961) set in the rarely seen Newcastle (Mike Figgis chose the city for his atmospheric debut Stormy Monday) is a little disappointing as it comes from director of classics Night of the Eagle and Circus of Horrors (also on Optimum) Sydney Hayes. But women get their own back and get in on the act with Brit treasure Billie Whitelaw (Samuel Beckett’s preferred actress for his plays) always worth watching. But it hasn’t the classiness of Melville’s French thrillers.
The Long Arm (1956 - British Thrillers) was Ealing’s last film before moving to the Borehamwood studios and one forgets that its portrayal of police work ‘reality’ (assisted by the Met Police) ushered in the hitherto new Brit ‘cop’ TV shows of the 60’s.
Samantha Morton really exudes the aura of a River Queen YouTube trailer in Vincent Ward’s latest film that was beset with production problems (Ward was fired, the cinematographer took over with Ward returning in post-production) and has taken awhile to reach Brit shores. Set in Ward’s native New Zealand in 1868 it’s a fictional story but based on many real incidents in which Sarah O’Brien (Morton) of the British colonial camp bears a Maori son who is kidnapped but re-united when Sarah breaks ranks to heal the Maori chief only for him to wage war on the colonials. To make matters worse she falls in love with the boy’s Maori uncle. It’s a far from satisfying film and though disjointed, as in all Ward’s films (his early Vigil, and The Navigator are must sees), there are pearls worth waiting for but they take quite a few dives before being revealed. His Map of the Human Heart (1992) was beautifully flawed too and Ward spent 3 years developing The Last Samurai before passing it over to Edward Zwick. I really liked, too, his Robin Williams vehicle What Dreams May Come (1999 Oscar for Best Visual Effects). Whatever failings his films exhibit you know you are always being shown the world through the eyes of a poet.
For multi-faceted opposing politics and art of battle Shinobi is also well worth a look. Over an hour of extras on the special effects and weapon history.
And London Fashion Week has begun:
Savile Row (3-parter on BBC Four) about London’s street of tailors surviving new millennium retailing and the arrival on their corner of jeans and T-shirt American mob Abercrombie and Fitch.
How ethical is your fashion? (BBC's Newsnight)
Cocaine Cowboys about the rise of the Miami drugs trade out now on DVD
Taskforce for fair fashion
BAFTA Red Carpet fashion highlights
Lagerfeld Confidential, YouTube(DVD-out 18 Feb) on the ‘Futurist’ French designer is refreshingly inspirational for a fashion doco, though there are a few too many ‘atmosphere’ takes of hotel lobbies, airplane and car interiors, and Paris but thankfully no voice over. He loves “piss [ing] off the bourgeoisie” and his other quotes say everything:
“I hate people who can’t be alone.”
“The best things I’ve done have come from dreams.”
“If you want social justice become a civil servant.”
“Fashion is ephemeral, dangerous and unfair.”
“There’ a German proverb that says you can’t borrow from the past. I love the futurism of the job.”
“I have no roots, that’s all bullshit.”
“I don’t want to [be] reality in anyone’s life. I want to be an apparition. That’s the secret of it all.”
to be continued ...
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