And You Won't Believe What Happened Next 1 Elida Looked to the Future
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
08 – 25 APRIL 2016 Vol.2 No.1 FREE Fiona Jardine, Maeve Redmond and Sophie Dyer with: Mary Dunbar, Maria Fusco, Georgia Horgan, Mairi MacKenzie, Anna McLauchlan, Neil McGuire, Mhari McMullan, and Lili Reynaud-Dewar. Produced by Panel for the seventh edition of Glasgow International. Elida looked to the future by FIONA JARDINE THE PERSISTENCE OF TYPE was airport terminal. Silently, they stare at each presented as an exhibition and broad- other until he hands her the paperback sheet at Tramway in the summer of last thriller she’s dropped and stalks off. Pro- year, coinciding with the Glasgow run leptically, Warhol had used images of Liz of the National Theatre of Scotland’s (Jackie and Marilyn) in his iconic series of adaptation of Muriel Spark’s novel The portraits nearly a decade before meeting Driver’s Seat in the same venue. Paral- her in person for the fi rst time on Griffi ’s ibility precedes literacy and Renaissance tunities to explore Spark’s work within lels ran between our staging of an air- set. Reportedly, her fi rst words to him were centuries saw the clearance of visual the rhetoric of postmodernism, it is also a port waiting lounge, stuck permanently “So long as he doesn’t piss on the carpet.”1 space on the page – the dematerialisation text nuanced by the historical expression at 10 to two in a zone somewhere south of the text as object – in order to put of cultural values through the object-lan- of 1979, and the scenography of the As chance would have it (en route) in The written words to work democratically, guage of post-war consumerism. Stain-re- play which required a departure lounge Driver’s Seat, Lise has solicited the atten- effi ciently. 20th century fonts that refer- sistant fabrics – such a proud achievement and an airline cabin amongst the oth- tion of Bill, who purports to be the En- ence or replicate handwriting begin to pin for textile technologists and boon for the er sets. Taking advertising produced lightenment Leader of a macrobiotics cult: back rational delivery of meaning, aiming busy housewife – provoke moral outrage in principally by British Caledonian Air- “I’m your type”, he says to her. The phrase to work affectively on our emotions, (not Lise, who chooses to dress, nevertheless, in ways and Tennent's Lager between – a leitmotif in the novel – encapsulates unlike our airhostess, paid to suggest that ostentatiously garish ‘70s geometrics, (Liz 1960 and 1990 as our inspiration for the Spark’s dissociative wit and obsession for the duration of a transatlantic fl ight wore Valentino). She wants her clothes to exhibition, we had talked at length with the physical schisms writing requires. she might just be “your type”). testify to her state of grace, to register the about the changing roles for the ‘girl- On the page, it is as bold an affront to the scarlet split from her body as she leaves it next-door’ at this time. With the author as a piece of wood that laughs, cries Unsurprisingly for someone so wilfully en- behind. In fade-free, easy-clean, creaseless lure of foreign travel and glamour in and lies like a child might be to the carpen- gaged with crafting text, Spark employed slacks, Elida, our billboard scissor sister, mind, our Erica, our girl-next-door, ter in his workshop. At a typographical references to the diabolic mechanisation set her legs immodestly at fi ve to the hour aspired to escape the typing pool – level, the interplay between glyph and per- of words and the alienating effects of the and looked to the future. taking dictation nine-to-fi ve; and walk sona (two kinds of ‘character’) is relayed tools of communication more than once. the aisles as an airhostess, on parade most obviously in anthropomorphic and In The Comforters, her fi rst novel, Caroline as the lacquered apogee of slim, pliant erotic alphabets that combine bodies im- Rose is haunted by sounds apparently and patient service, smiling as she at- probably into letterforms. This performative generated by a Typing Ghost parroting tentively served drinks and fanned desire, seen by Max Brunisma to become her thoughts. She attempts to capture [1] Of Warhol's daschund, melon to businessmen and jet-setters. commonplace during the 1970s when it them on a Dictaphone, anticipat- Archie. Bob Colacello in Warhol: Liz (New York: Working for BCal, she was tartan smart, was fed by hippie appropriations of the ing the research of parapsychol- Gagosian, New York: 2011) wearing corporate cloth on the run- Kama Sutra and Tantrism, has stylistic ogists interested in E. V. p.11 [2] Steven Heller (ed.), ways of Barbados, Accra, Singapore, links to a time when words were to be seen P., auguring the kind of Sex Appeal: The Art of New York. in meditato rather than read.2 During the popular, technologically Allure in Graphic and Middle Ages, the ornate majescules of il- provoked anxieties that Advertising Design (New York: Allworth, 3 In The Driver’s Seat, Lise, Spark’s protag- luminated manuscripts housed labouring surfaced in Poltergeist. New York: 2000) p.46 onist, has quit her offi ce job and taken off monks and fantastical hybrids, all manner Similarly, if the notion [3] Electronic Voice for Italy, ostensibly on holiday. Aged 34, she of fornicators, beasts and acephalus babe- of ‘type’ in The Driver’s Phenomenon would have most likely been married off wyns engaged in dirty looks and defeca- Seat provides literary and retired from in-fl ight service had she tion. Peter Flötner’s transitional (16th critics with worked for an airline: the airhostess was century) alphabet graphically poses ‘M’ a particular a youthful, single lady. Guiseppe Patroni and ‘V’ sphincter fi rst, legs akimbo. Leg- set of oppor- Griffi ’s fi lm of the novel, released in 1974, starred Elizabeth Taylor in full bloom as Lise. The king of silk-screen seriality, Andy Warhol, makes a fl eeting cameo dressed in a cream suit to play an English aristocrat who encounters Liz/Lise in the And you won't believe what happened next 1 by NEIL MCGUIRE ONE / GENT, BELGIUM, 11 March 2016: Control is undermined by ambiguity, woman, a feminist newspaper, I tried to Walking across Friday Market Square choice and complexity because subjective incorporate the visual projection of the (Vrijdagmarkt), a display hoarding factors in the user become more effective egalitarian, collective form of small group catches my eye. It hangs part way down and the user is invited to participate. Par- process ... Publications designed in such the front of the largest building on the ticipation undermines control. The over- a way look different from the way square. Just above the banner advert, simplifi ed, the unremittingly serious, the our national publications look; at the top of the building facade, it reads emphatically ‘rational’ are the consistent this difference is much less the ‘Socialistische Werkersvereenigingen’ attitudes associated with work adopted result of creating another style (Socialist Workers Societies), in large by our major institutions and the men than of designing structures gold letters. and few women who inhabit them. In the which encourage other values.” circle of cause and effect, these attitudes It’s a huge banner and it can’t be missed. are reinforced and reproduced as they are The banner is both incongruous and eye- visually and physically extended in to our catching for the same reason; it features the environment.”5 large (and enlarged) cleavage of a woman [1] In response to The Persistence wearing a mustard coloured v-neck jumper. Three / Clay6, 2008: of Type event; ‘Catch Phrases, Catch Images’, Tramway The image is cropped from her chin at the “Communication tools don’t get socially (Glasgow, 21 June 2015). top of the frame, to just above her waist at interesting until they get technologically [2] Eurotrash was a 30-minute the bottom. Not speaking a word of Dutch, boring.” magazine-format programme in English, presented by Antoine the text at the bottom of the banner is de Caunes and Jean-Paul completely indecipherable to me. Four / The Economics of Distraction: Gaultier, and produced by Rapido Television. It was fi rst broadcast by Channel “What is the focus of the new image in- 4 in 1993. I instantly make several assumptions. The frastructure? Attention – It’s all designed [3] Following further research, it turns out that the banner is advertising some kind of het- for capturing, tracking, quantifying, ma- building is still occupied by Socialist Trade Union and Health Insurance organisations. eronormative male-orientated consumer nipulating, holding, buying, selling, and [4] Sheila Levrant de Bretteville; designer, product, using a kind of bawdy ‘Continental controlling attention” writes Bruce Mau educator and co-founder of the Feminist Studio Workshop at The Women’s Building, Los Angeles. European’ representation of sexuality, à in Lifestyle, his weighty monograph come [5]Taken from edited notes of a lecture fi rst la Eurotrash2. The building must also have manifesto come ‘catalogue raisonné’. given by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville at Hunter long since been taken over, and no-longer College, Autumn 1972. The copy of the text directly referenced here is a reprint from a corrupt PDF fi le has any connection to its original function, Five / Understood, and Accepted downloaded via Firefox 43.0.4 on 4 February 2016 ‘Ons Huis’3. My friend who spends a little Quickly7: - with thanks to @andrewbrash, @keithisworking, @benjamin_duvall and Karly Wildenhaus (and @ longer processing the visual signifi ers A contemporary media literacy would not evening_class). The full text can be read here: bit. notices something else – at the bottom of just be evident in an ability to ‘read’ any ly/1XrbOqJ the advert there are fi ve logos, and one says combination of text and image, but to re- [6] Clay Shirky, taken from Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, (in English) ‘Equal Pay’.