Volume 2 • Number 6 • Autumn 1998 • Free Cross-Currents in Culture
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cross-currents in culture volume 2 • number 6 • autumn 1998 • free p a g e 2 • variant • volume 2 number 6 • a u t u m n 1 9 9 8 Editorial There is a plaque on the wall of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary which states that it was here from 1861 to 1869 that Joseph Lister initiated his anti-septic proceedure for performing operations. Eight years is a long time to initiate anything. What it took him so long to convince the ruling bodies of was that doctors washing their hands between operations with carbolic soap and the use of anti-septic sprays to kill contents germs would greatly decrease the death rate in hospitals. It took him so long not Root 98 Lucid supplement because of the difficulty people had in grasping what he was on about, but because of resistence to his claims. Resistence from within. Doctors would find it hard to admit that the blood was on their hands. They found it hard to admit that they Backto the Old School 3 were the cause of death. The established proceedures were defended by those who had established them as the basis of their carreers. This should be regarded as an John Beagles advance. “There was one Italian who possessed the scientific spirit, that was Leonardo da Hungry Ghosts 5 vinci. But he confided his thoughts to diaries and remained unknown and useless Orla Ryan in his time.” Lord Acton, The Renaissance, Lectures on Modern History. A Means of Mutation 6 This is a remarkable fact. During renaissances censorship. A clash between new learning and old. The blotting out of significant thought which questions the order Matthew Fuller of things. For those who are in the ascendancy in a ‘renaissance’, but whose real methods Sound and Vision 9 of exerting power are hidden, for the infamous, a historical inversion occurs: “Lorenzo de’ Medici once said that his buildings were the only works that would Discussion outlast him; and it is common in the secular characters of that epoch, unlike the priesthood, not to believe in those things that are abiding, and not to regard organi- sations that are humble and obscure at first and bloom by slow degrees for the use Dumbocracy 12 of another age.” William Clark His crimes were not useless to the nation. Acton is saying that Medici’s—the Borgias—reputation lies now in the way they did things, not in the monuments and cultural artefacts they ordered constructed as a monument, as a facade. To the Judges 16 With the case of Dr. Ismail Besikci the scientific spirit was not kept to diaries or Ismail Besikci notebooks: his work “Socio-Economic and Ethnic Foundations of the Structure of eastern Anatolia” was rewarded by a 12 year sentence. Besikci was also one of the first Turkish intellectuals to support and defend the armed national struggle led by Tower of Babel supplement the Kurdistan Workers party (the PKK) which began in 1984. As he said to his prosecutors: “One of the most important prerequisites of modern civilisatiuon is the creation of an environment in which different voices can be heard, different views can devel- Moving History 19 op. I am not the defendant...I defend science ...I defend the universal values of my Chris Byrne, Malcolm Dickson time ...What they want to try is thought, science ...they are endeavouring to try me—but history will try them.” As we go to press we have been informed of a fire-bomb attack on the Kurdish Porn into Art 21 Community Centre in Haringay, North London. The centre serves more than Stewart Home 4,000 Kurdish refugees. This edition of Variant contains two supplements, from Hull Time A Quality Cinema Experience 22 Based Arts and Streetlevel Photoworks. Marshall Anderson We are open to future colloborations with other organisations. For details contact the editors. In the Eye of the Beholder 24 Editorial & Advertising address John Tozer 1a Shamrock Street, Cowcaddens, New Media, Old Technology 26 Glasgow G4 9JZ Dr. Future Tel/Fax +44 (0)141 333 9522 Virtual Migrants 28 email [email protected] Kuljit Chuhan Variant Volume 2 Number 6, Autumn 1998. ISSN 0954–8815 Variant is a magazine of cross-currents in culture: critical thinking, imaginative ideas, independent media and artistic interventions.Variant is a Society based organisation and Unsound Practice 30 functions with the assistance of subscriptions and advertising. We welcome contributions in the form of news, previews, articles, interviews, polemical pieces and artists pages. David Thompson Guidelines for writers are available. Subscriptions Individuals can receive a four issue, one year, subscription for Variant for UK £5.00, EC £7.00, USA & Canada & Elsewhere £10.00, Institutions UK/EC Uncle Sam’s New Labour 32 £10.00, Institutions Elsewhere £15.00. Opinions expressed in Variant are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the Robin Ramsay editors or Variant. All material is copyright (unless stated otherwise) the authors or Variant. Variant acknowledges SAC support towards the payment Tales of the Great Unwashed 35 of contributors to the magazine. Ian Brotherhood PAGE 2 • VARIANT • VOLUME 2 NUMBER 6 • AUTUMN 1998 Back to the old school John Beagles There’s a crisis in contemporary art. The jump into In a culture cancerously con- uniformly found across the artistic the laissez faire joys of the popular and profane, pro- sumed with misogynist contempt sphere. To repeat this idea only pelled by a surge of deceitful anti-intellectualism and for women, over loaded with goes to further entrench such pap travelogue art criticism, has left a vacuum where images of pubescent ‘chicks’ and essentialist gender positions. once there was a proud reflective heart. As the homo- where statistics of male violence Questions of skill and competence geneous products of years of economic selection and are escalating, this celebration of a are important in the construction pruning in art schools stumble forward, bereft of an masculinity of social irresponsibili- of value in art, but I think what understanding of what exactly the conceptualism of ty, stupidity and ignorance has Reitmaier misses is that in partly neo is all about, those with memories long enough to none too surprisingly deeply rejecting the titillation and shock remember effective political action, critical discourse angered many. For not only has tactics she sees in Lucas’ work, she and radical art sharpen their collective knifes ready for the new lad been held up as a para- ignores the formalist conservatism the innocent chipmunks of British Art. digm of nineties masculinity, but central to de Monchaux's success. A backlash is under way. perhaps more troubling this cut- If in Reitmaier’s argument assimi- The powerful combination of boredom, irritation out has become the sanctioned lation is equated with failure, then and anger at the inane, self satisfied, distended head template for ‘successful’ women I think she has to acknowledge that of British Art has seen to that. The vapid marketing of artists. The spectre of the female de Monchaux, like Rachel an art purporting to celebrate the popular, the every- lad shouting 'bollocks' and flashing Whiteread, is also capable of being day, has exhausted itself and its audience. This redis- her tits haunts much of the discus- securely slotted into a dominant covery of the joys of nestling next to the glory of sion about 'yba'. paradigm for the very reason that in playing off 'mas- popular culture has been marketed as conveniently In the recently published book 'Occupational culine' technical skills against 'feminine' craft skills, side-stepping the traditional image of art as elitist and Hazard' Heidi Reitmaier succinctly articulates her own she keeps faith with a division that maintains gender socially exclusive. However the self serving belief that hostility at this resurrected fake in a pointed critique of polarity in the art world. deep rooted political, economic and social gulfs can be Sarah Lucas’ work. For Reitmaier, Lucas’ constructed I think Reitmaier has mistaken de Monchaux’s con- magically vanished by popular gestures—‘some techno persona and coverage are all too familiar. Granted the servatism for radical resistance because, justifiably music in a gallery’—is once again crumbling. That honourary position of being one of the boys, Lucas’ angered and bored by the hyperbole of 'yba', she has we’ve been here before is perhaps all the more fright- transgressive acts are then arrogantly ‘rubber stamped’ jumped from a backlash position, capable of critique, ening. Such transparent moves towards the popular by male critics. Her work far from being emancipato- to a reactionary, knee jerk one. ‘yba’ is a spectacle of were the easy crutch of many a second rate curator ry, is for Reitmaier, all too easily assimilated, dis- consumption, market driven, over saturated (the use and artist during those ‘halcyon days of the sixties’. As cussed and categorised. As Reitmaier writes, the of the catch-all brand name ‘yba’ tells you as much), Robert Garnet has written, this tourist infatuation with consequence of all this is to “reduce the work to trite and inevitably it is flatulent with inane pronounce- the pleasures of the popular is “the easiest and oldest clichés which demand attention only because of how ments and incestuous bed hopping. But Reitmaier, in move in the book”.1 loud one is shouting rather than what one is shouting offering de Monchaux as a alternative to the excesses Similarly while reports of their demise are no doubt about”.3 of contemporary British Art, seems guilty of hankering over exaggerated, the architects of much of this hog- This scenario is depressingly familiar. From the after the kind of scrupulous shiny package of ethical Above Right wash, the international super curators, are also finally Bloomsbury group to the abstract expressionists, artis- moral and artistic tidiness that was thrown up in the and below: starting to get some flack.