OLD SKOOL (NEVER LOSE THAT FEELING)

OLD SKOOL (NEVER LOSE THAT FEELING)

STUART BAILEY IRENE HANENBERGH MATT HINKLEY MATTHEW HUNT GEOFF NEWTON LISA RADFORD SODA_JERK DARREN SYLVESTER JENNY WATSON

CURATED BY HANNAH MATHEWS & ROBERT COOK

6 DEC 2007 – 27 JAN 2008 PERTH INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS

CATALOGUE DESIGN MATT HINKLEY NEVER LOSE THAT FEELING, NEVER LEARN being a fake, a nobody. Given that, and as you suggested before, I think old skool is very different from other culture or fashion Exhibition curators Hannah Mathews and Robert Cook talk discourses because you have to earn your old skool stripes. You about fluoro pants, phys ed, a bunch of artists and their old have to know the codes of fashion and behaviour and you have to skool moves. know them deep down: they have to be a part of you, not simply surface jiving. I guess that’s why I opened with that reference to This conversation happened in October and November via the fluoro kids, because my feeling is that what they are doing is hotmail and bigpondmail. Hannah was in Tokyo. Robert ‘mere fashion’ and not old skool. was in Perth. The typetalk, though, was preceded by hours of coffee, lunch and phone discussions about the show and Hannah the idea of old skool itself. They were floating and tentative, Yes, there is a significant gap between old skool and a fashion/ inquisitive and sometimes personal, and amounted to an trend. Actually, perhaps the fashion and consumer mecca of exhibition but not a fully tricked-out theory or history of old Japan reveals this difference. I have spoken to a few people skool. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this most recent back-and- here about the idea of old skool as we experience it in Australia forth has some of the casualness of our exchanges, and and have witnessed it in Europe and the USA. Their feeling while making an attempt to outline what old skool might is that in Japan it is more a ‘look’ – Bon Jovi boys and 50s be, we refuse (or fail) to pin it down once and for all. But, rock’n’rollers, etc – that is commodified by savvy marketers. you know, no apologies. That’s how we want it, especially In general, it seems consumers are not intellectually, politically since the work in this show is complex and open-ended in or spiritually interested in the source or initiators of the fashions its analysis of old skool culture. Indeed, what is beautiful to they employ, but are happy to adopt the lite version that us is that there is a spirit of excited inquiry in the exhibition identifies them in a crowd as a ‘type’. that is completely devoid of any of that unfriendly, nerdish grandstanding that typically surrounds pop culture inquiry; I think this is common world-wide and, as you point out, old skool has not been intellectually or formally mastered raises an interesting point about old skool that we have tried into submission by these artists. Instead, it has been used to draw out in this project. We have identified the existence as a way of connecting with the world of pop and other of old skool in many forms of culture through this project culture in an open and playful, honest and ethical way. – art, design, music, fashion, etc. Yet we also see the Hannah Mathews and Robert Cook existence of a genuine old skool, of true self-reflection and connection, that runs counter to the other lite, consumer version as marketed by multi-nationals. Robert I had a conversation at work today about the new fluoro fad. Given the diversity of old skool in our culture, it’s important You know, kids with over-sized fluoro cardigans, tight pants, big to note that we have invited texts from commentators in hair. That whole deal. For me, it seems like they are referencing various fields to relate the old skool nuances of their areas 80s surf culture, when fluoro was a key part of casual out-of- of inquiry – Clinton Walker (popular music), Kate Rhodes the-water attire (led, I think, by Quiksilver) as well as surfboard (fashion) and Justin Clemens (language, identification, and wetsuit design. Pink was big too. In one way, what these generational exchange and culture-at-large). To get the kids are doing is a riff on old skool. However – and maybe advertising take on the phenomenon too, we have ex-cool I’m just an old grey-beard – something feels wrong about it; it hunter Adam Ferrier talking at the Old Skool (never lose seems disingenuous or just plain stupid. It is not about finding that feeling) Forum. This juxtaposition of voices gets at the meaningful roots, but about styling. How do you figure the fact that old skool has its true fan routes but has also been difference between simply referencing the past and old skool? constructed (in part at least) by marketing dynamics; maybe this is the friction that actually defines old skool today. Hannah Fluoro... hmm... for me I think of ankle socks and nail-polish, Robert Madonna, Wham, Duran Duran and the like. For whitey-white I agree, but my J-take is different. I e-converse with a friend girls like me it didn’t work, but I remember girls with tans being in Tokyo about bikes and his sense is that the old skool track able to wear fluoro bathers, toenails and more. It’s news to me bike scene there is completely intellectually committed in so far that Quiksilver may be the origin for that trend… as knowledge about parts, bike heritage and stuff goes, even though track bikes have turned into a fashion statement over the And perhaps that’s the thing about the old skool discussions last few years. But, as you say, there is probably both going on we’ve been having for a while now, between us and with others. at the same time, even in commodity capital Japan. There is the Everyone identifies old skool as coming from a certain period, hipster thing and the old skool thing, and the lines between them being initiated by a certain icon, being practiced by a certain can be pretty blurry sometimes. Like you, I think that fuzziness sub-culture. But this actual reference point is subjective and is really interesting as both potentially corrupt/infect each other. seems to be based on age, geography and other interests. That’s why the idea of doing a show about old skool was so interesting to me when you mentioned it – the category is so While old skool definitely references the past it is more specific much more flexible and mutable and loaded than we generally than ‘the past in general’ – it is the adoption of tropes from think it is. So this show was never simply an exercise in picking a certain past, a certain moment, a certain style, a certain a cool, timely topic and making a hip or wryly ironic response or movement. By adopting an old skool style one adopts a style ‘intervention’. On the contrary, the artists included in the show that is ‘authenticated’ by its roots. It’s something like fandom, have each taken it in surprising ways, subjecting the category to but extending across time. Perhaps it’s the search for identity interrogation, but also finding creative ways to use it as a vehicle in an age where nothing seems new. Like an identikit-identity. to explore personal and cultural connections and problematics. Is that sad to say out loud?! Shall we talk about why we selected the artists we did?

Robert Hannah Yes, it is sad to say it out loud like that. But I can definitely relate Before we look at the artists shall we try and outline, in a clear to the quest for identity as being key to old skool; it is the quest way, what we perceive ‘old skool’ to be? Maybe it would be for something that will ground you and lend you a kind of personal helpful to give some points of reference to allow people to and social significance. In a sense, therefore, (and in pop-Lacan- navigate the intellectual and cultural space around the term speak) old skool is where we go to repair our fundamental lack, and the exhibition with some confidence. I actually think that’s the sense that there is a hole in us that needs to be filled (and yet important because as we were developing this show many of can never be, blah, blah, blah). Looking back, my own leanings to, the conversations we had showed that people are often unclear or pursuit of, old skool at various times in my life was always about on what is meant by old skool or are perhaps not confident that making up for a sense of dislocation and an inner feeling/fear of their connection is the same as others. Robert Robert Damn, I was hoping we could avoid that. I’ll start evasively and Most definitely. And hey, I am a generation and a half older than echo your comment above, positing (in an old skool Foucauldian you, but had phys ed too! Maybe we are temporal Phys Ed manner) that there is no old skool ‘as such’ but many old skools bookends! Anyhoo, now that we’ve conceptualised ourselves in action that are produced as practices within particular zones in and out of various corners, let’s move on to the artists. I of engagement! That is why there is confusion, but also why it’s remember we were sitting in a small park in Northbridge eating a rich topic. Despite that caveat – and this, mind, is a personal sushi out of plastic containers and the big thing we decided take; I have not read the Wikipedia entry to garner the official was to get folks whose works engaged with different aspects of version – what ties them together conceptually is that it is about popular culture as a matter of course, but who were also distant ‘being there’ (or, as is more often the case, associating with and critical of it, who could look at it as ‘a phenomenon’. We the time) when something revolutionary happened. Examples were hoping they could answer and unpick some of our own of moments that are taken as revolutionary in the popular old questions and thoughts. So instead of considering directing the skool canon are events like the first block parties, the first punk artists we were looking to them for clarity and direction. Let’s run gigs, the early days of pool skating, the first Jamaicans riding through them one by one. I’ll start. track bikes in NYC, Blondie and Talking Heads (as a three piece) at CBGBs and, say, first-generation Abstract Expressionism. Irene Hanenbergh: She does such great old skool, northern Legend has it that those moments were real, not fake. They European dreamscapes that seem to mix Altdorfer with happened between real people in real time and took place crazy 70s LP cover art. There are cats, forests, expanding- before aspects of them became watered-down commercial baroquely-abstracted forms; it is like some kind of Black Forest cultures. They were also moments that were about letting folk nightmare made real. These nightmares are produced as go of some kind of artificial restraint or the need to keep up drawings and as slick Zund prints on aluminium. As chaotic with so-called technological innovations that are themselves as her vision is, there is a superb clarity to the work; it is highly part of our culture’s tendency to manufacture redundancy. My focused and disciplined. Most of all, and most important to understanding is that old skool looks back to the styles and us, it offers a different way of thinking about visual heritage codes of those breakthrough moments in order to re-capture and the desire to get lost and overwhelmed by that. They are their vision and simplicity. So rocking Vans connects you to the un-aesthetic in a way. What I mean is that there is no way mythical, edgy, Dogtown scene in opposition to those pimply they should work as images, yet they do, every time. In this, puffy DC-shoed teens trying to be Ryan Sheckler with their her works draw on undigested, unpalatable folk action and over-tricksy show-pony manoeuvres. European figurative expressionism of the 1980s. Their finish as drawings and as prints, though, is perfectly contemporary, Now, as that implied, old skool leanings can be expressed with the effect being that they seem to span histories and in formal ways (the engagement with apparently surpassed traditions, holding past and present in balance. Before I met technologies or styles – Pacman over Playstation) – or it can be her, I wondered if they were ironic, playing with kitsch perhaps. far more loaded. What I mean is that to be old skool you have to I quickly discovered that they are far from that. The aesthetic walk-the-walk as well as talk-the-talk. Moreover, to be properly she uses is simply embedded in an expanded visual tradition old skool you cannot signify too loudly; overt signification (since that keeps alive a vaguely sinister past in its forms. It is not it copies the boosterism of marketing) is the kind of lame bullshit nerdy or over-smart. It is real and vital. In this way, Hanenbergh that old skool is a reaction against. In this way, we might see old is key to this show because she expands the idea of old skool skool as akin to modernism’s primitivism; it is a construct that beyond US consumer pop culture, connecting it to folk and takes us out of the passivity of consumerism and re-energises high cultures of different eras and places. us. Yet, in spite of these basic notions about it, old skool really is somewhat indefinable and fluid as an entity. One person’s old Jenny Watson: My personal passion for Watson’s work is skool might be another’s nostalgia might be another’s, ahem, its girly dreaminess and its girly canniness and sharpness. nu skool, etc. It is subjective and bloody slippery. No wonder To me, much of her work captures these beautiful periods people can feel confused by it. of introspection combined with a subtle declaration of the importance of that space. It is a space where the self is gently Hannah made in relation to the bigger cultural picture of friends and Indeed. So we gotta skate knowingly and modestly around records and stuff. She did the cover art for the first The Go- this idea in order to do it justice. Before we move on though Betweens album – Send me a lullaby. That’s where I first came I should confess my (originally naïve) position in relation to across her work in fact. For me, gorgeous pop music and Jenny this phenomena, which has been expanded through this Watson go hand in hand. Love goes on… Anyways, here she project. I remember walking home from work last year and is presenting two recent paintings of mods that capture the stopping at the Good Fortune Roast Duck House with the mod period of the 1960s and its more recent resurgences. phrase ‘phys ed’ swirling around my head. This short-hand Seems there’s always some kid finding their inner mod, and for high school physical education classes was something that is what Watson’s urgently wistful paintings articulate. that existed in my everyday and its punchiness really fitted The figures are thin and somehow imposed on by the rough with the short, sharp and snappy 80s. I know others of my surfaces that surround them. Their fashionable posturings are generation still refer to this class as Phys Ed but that other fragile, hopeful and strangely remarkable. There is a sense of generations perhaps experienced the class as PE or sport. hope here, in the ability to remake and remodel oneself, by I am sure my 6-year old nephew will know it as something addressing a moment outside of one’s own. It is both old skool different again. But the thing is that it’s a phrase that has and fashion too, and for me it shows the brilliant vulnerability in stuck in my memory, it represents a time and activity, it hints trying to engage with the past in the face of some of the more at nostalgia for the good old carefree high school days of boorish, border-patrolling aspects of old skool culture. smoking ciggies and embarking on some weird fashions. The class is one that all students take but it is experienced Darren Sylvester: I will be a dag and say I love his stuff because I via a different title and it is this variety of remembering a simply like how good looking and how self-absorbed all his folk shared experience that is of interest to me. Hand-in-hand are. When I regard them, they do nothing but look through me. with this was my increasing curiosity with the seeming My gaze does nothing to them, and it obliterates me. Such a regurgitation of culture and styles. Why were we constantly beautiful feeling – to be effaced and erased. I mean that. Above experiencing the recycling of fashion on a 15-year cycle? this, as everyone knows, his work is so clearly about the role (My sister refuses to participate in a fashion trend that has of pop culture in the marking out of personal and imaginative already occurred in her lifetime). Why was Ricky Swallow space and the pain and effort of it all, how it can all slip away making art about consumer icons of his childhood? It felt from you at any moment. It has a fundamental relationship to like the portal to the new was closing as the past was spun the problem of what it means to be true to oneself and is driven through the revolving door faster and faster. Am I making by a subtle awareness of a range of highly discrete, subcultural sense of this impetus? codes that evidence the problem, or stakes, of not fitting in that old skool itself generates and is bound by. The DVD projection torture techniques currently used in the Middle East. The works in the show presents a girl running through the streets of were tonally warm but nasty. I also recalled her more recent Asbury Park, New Jersey wearing an oversized Rangers jersey paintings of girls with milkshake container goggles and small to the sax solo from Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Jungleland’ played abstract paintings. All had a sense of the past, of a specific by a Springsteen tribute band. It’s a loop, so she just keeps on visual language. I liked this. When we talked to her about Old running. Obviously. She never gets away. The work is an ode Skool we didn’t know what angle she would take but it turned to Springsteen’s hopeless romanticism, and in this context, to out that she wanted to continue a recent project in which she the pull of this type of feeling in popular culture in general. Pop painted side-by-side with her Dad. I think we both thought culture is insistently pulled back to a mythical place of abandon this would be a nice exploration of old skool in terms of direct and letting go, the very same kind that arguably drives the lineage, the role of tradition and craft skills, and really a nice riff impulse of old skool itself. It makes me wonder whether we are on sampling from the past and present. For this project, they programmed to yearn for old skool in this way, whether it is a came together to research the Radford family coat of arms fundamental aspect of our shared culture. and develop a series of paintings from these sources. Both Lisa and her Dad also grew up in Coburg and they decided to Matthew Hunt: Matthew’s work has always been about finding extend their collaboration to include memory maps of their old those gaps and spaces in the popular culture sphere where the ‘hood. These four works are presented on a wooden platform past speaks to us. He is attracted to spaces and practices that have and empty paint cans that are reminiscent of the way her been bulldozed or almost bulldozed, but that continue to possess Dad painted when she was a kid. He was a sign painter, so a quiet resonance. For him, these sites say the most about our joint the nice thing about this project was the process behind it. aspirations, and they are not always flattering. The quest in general Apparently it was pretty warm and fuzzy as Lisa and her Dad is old skool in how it refuses to accept that the past is redundant and re-connected across their different experiences of art and that its surpassed values might have useful things to offer us today. politics while rehashing their shared histories of the ‘burg. The It doesn’t buy the idea that progress and our present aspirations are family coat of arms says it all. Ultimately, this project reflects always best. In this, he is always searching for counter histories and the beautiful possibility inherent in old skool to be a mode of, counter ethics. What he has found here is Perth band diode. Diode and avenue for, respect. Through this collaboration, old skool is made up of Kevin Robertson, Jenny Griffiths and Rosie Rooney. becomes a place where engagement with the past might Their sound is a mix of My Bloody Valentine, The Gentle Swans, actually take us beyond ourselves. aspects of The Triffids and Young Marble Giants. For this exhibition, Hunt asked them to learn and play New Order’s ‘Everything’s gone Soda_Jerk: Mashers, re-mixers, cut ‘n’ pasters... I am green’ from 1981. This was shot in black and white in a house not sure of the technical description, but Soda_Jerk have Jenny and Kevin are living in at the moment, and presented as been creating video works comprised of edited audio and a two-channel projection. One projection features Kevin playing visual material drawn from pop culture sources for some drums and Jenny to his side playing keyboards and singing. The time now. The artists liken their method to turntablists who other has Kevin and to his other side Rosie playing bass. The other create tracks from bits and pieces of different vinyl records. song projected here is called ‘Sirens’, a tune that is dreamy and Their work continues the sampling suggested in Lisa’s work floaty and mildly distorted, an abstraction, perhaps, of ‘Everything’s but takes it to a whole new level with an overt style that gone green’. The work is, very simply, an exquisite celebration of is often humorous and always political. What they have the beauty of old pop, and its continual reworking and ongoing produced for Old Skool is pretty damn interesting and is significance. It captures the old skool spirit of making culture for best described by the artists as an intergalactic narrative personal reasons not commercial ones, and pays respect to those that links the futurism of hip-hop with the alien-inspired small networks of creativity that are so sustaining, being based on audio practices of free jazz musician, Sun Ra, and sci-fi friendships and networks of likemindedness. inspired funk legend, George Clinton. The girls have taken samples from the original Sun Ra film Space is the Place Stuart Bailey: Stuart’s practice is wild and freeform, including (1974), Godzilla: Invasion of the Astro Monster (1965) and both massive wall paintings in a Beatle Bailey aesthetic and, hip hop documentaries such as Scratch and Wildstyle more recently, quirkily sculptural outings that investigate the along with music from science fiction films of the 1950s discursive and emotional status of culture-making. His work for and musicians who work with alien inspired sounds and this show is a re-presentation of the Minor Threat logo. Minor concepts such as Kool Keith, Mixmaster Mike and George Threat were a band led by Ian MacKaye and established in Clinton. Through the cutting and pasting of characters and Washington DC in 1980. They were known for songs that were events, Soda_Jerk’s work focuses on the distinctive sense fast, furious and lasted about one and a half minutes. They of futurism present in old skool hip hop (late 70s/early 80s were punk but faster and tighter, maybe they were new punk robotic styles of dancing, intergalactic inspired fashion and or something. Certainly, they were ‘anti consumerism’ in a big the privileging of music machines over live instrumentation) way. They initiated the ‘straight edge’ movement: no sex, no and locates it in the study of afro-futurism and the role drugs, no drinking, no fucking. That was the deal. They would of science fiction tropes in black cultural practices. This not give interviews in magazines that had ads for cigarettes or mapping feeds into the idea of ‘tru-skool’ hip-hop, a form alcohol. They were keeping it real, with their music and social pioneered by Afrika Bambaata, which doesn’t distinguish actions like selling cheap CDs and having cheap door sales. It between old and nu-skool but rather includes anyone who was about keeping the spirit of music alive and real instead of is true to the underlying ideals of hip-hop culture. Of course, following the usual idea about success, moving on to stadiums, this skool encourages the consideration of the ways hip- getting ads for consumer goods, etc. In his work for Old Skool, hop relates to the black sonic cultures that preceded it. In Bailey makes the logo out of lagerphones, connecting the can- mobilising these histories, Soda_Jerk track an amazingly do ethos of Minor Threat with Australian folk traditions. Both intricate lineage of cultural reference points, layering them are DIY, both are old skool and about notions of authenticity, over each other, allowing new conversations to form and that are buried, in a way, by contemporary commodity culture. forcing different aspects of the past to jam with each other. He connects these disparate cultures and histories, making us The past is never over, and the past is never what we might aware of a more general resistance to the marketing machines think it is. It can always take another form, speak to us and that define our imaginations and worlds. other pasts in new and, dare I say, damned freaky ways!

Your turn. Matt Hinkley & Geoff Newton: Now these fellas have worked together before but their practices are motivated by different Hannah: schools. You can possibly speak more directly to Geoff’s Well... general practice after working with him earlier this year for Lisa Radford: Lisa came to mind after working with her on a Octopus, but for this show we selected two canvases that show in 2005 in which she exhibited water colours that used were kind of homages to Pollock and Rothko. Laced with a nostalgic 1940s style of children’s book illustration to depict irony, these works look to the sources of old skool in visual art and in their act of mimicry seek not only to comment on the vernacular and reflecting the way the phrase has been their lineage but also denaturalise their stylings to allow us the turned into a marketing tool, a logo. As knowingly as we are space in which to examine the political structures in which they doing this, it still makes us both feel like chumps, like try- were conceived and received. In our exhibition these works are hard tools. Still, it remains the perfect exhibition title for us presented on a wall papered in silver foil. Apparently, this type as it gets at both sides of the entity that is old skool. Even of exhibition design was employed in the National Gallery of so, we wanted to leaven it, or open it out with the reference Victoria’s opening exhibition, The Field in 1968 and I guess it’s to Swervedriver’s incredibly gorgeous song ‘Never lose that a further nod to the old skool – modernism was such a big, feeling’. This tag-line evokes the libidinal and emotional rush bold, masculine thing! It also makes the most of the Aussie that colours all genuine old skool passions; it also helps us flag old skool dependence on American old skool even way back the fact that the show is more than an old skool anthropology when. Yikes! Matt also presents his work on this background and more about the real complexities of old skool as a felt, with a small, framed hand-drawn planometric illustration lived thing. I think that sums it up. Peace out. on pantone paper. Matt is mad about the history of design, particularly pre-computer design. To me, his repetitious use of Robert the cube declares his interest in the commodification of design Word. via digital technology. His work also brings our attention back to the craft of drawing. So the collision of Hinkley and Newton’s sensibilities in this huge work makes us aware of the varieties of old skool forms as they exist and compete against the same ground. Together, they oppose the Abstract Expressionist’s arm to the designer’s hand; they oppose gesture to detail, and in the process shatter the idea that there could ever be any one authentic artistic old skool style. Plus, they implicitly pitch the idea that maybe all art is based on a series of old skool type dependencies of one sort or another.

We should also mention that Matt has designed this Old Skool reader. I for one think it is hard core! It hurts my eyes, but I like its determination, true to its intent, perfectly imageless. I guess that’s why we’re calling it a reader. People weren’t vibing a ‘catalogue’ with no images.

Robert Huh? Really? Damn those people! Okay, you mentioned I’d worked with Geoff Newton and might have a little summary. I do. As you suggest, his is an incredibly restless, incredibly energetic, practice that moves in and out of art discourse to question how art is constructed socially and formally, and how our responses mediate and move through this terrain. Though their styles couldn’t be more different, Newton’s provocations can be seen as Lacanian or Derridean in so far as they open up spaces of sometimes uncomfortable inquiry only to throw us back on our own reactions to determine exactly what is going on. So, in a nutshell, his work plays with the way authority works in the construction of culture, which is obviously a perfect background for an artist to explore what old skool is and how it functions.

Okay, more generally now, a lot is obviously said about old skool in all of the work in this show, and in this reader and the rest of the material in the exhibition. But what is good is that it doesn’t feel like a thematic show in a sense, or a didactic show. Thank god! It was important to both of us that we weren’t making a manifesto exhibition. Not only would that be ridiculously hard, it’d be boring. Who wants the last word on old skool? This way, the complexities remain gently open; there are just more and more questions. That’s as it should be since it is such a mobile concept, and will, no doubt, be used by teensters and scenesters and hipsters and other folk to claim some territory in their lives in ways we can’t envisage. Who knows what the new old skool will be? No one, and as we grow older it’ll be fun to see what gets picked up from our present era.

I feel tired. Do you want to say anything else? It’s been hot in Perth today, but I have been indoors listening to Jimmy Eat World over and over and over. Oh, and Matt Hunt came over and we looked at his videos for this show. Super! How has Tokyo been? Hmmm, maybe you could sum up how icky we feel about the spelling of old skool we’ve been using?

Hannah J-town is blue skies and hijinks from dusk til dawn and back again. It’s cocaine rings on toilet seats and hi-fives with N*E*R*D. I don’t think I’ve slept in a week! But, yeah, um, seriously, old skool and not old school. Well we’re both using WORKING WITHOUT A NET really old skool (the Stooges, New York Dolls), the really, really old skool (the Standells, ? and the Mysterions), and the vast When the curators of this exhibition initially approached me to diaspora of post-punk (of which 80s’ indie hardcore was but write these words, I thought: well, they’ve come to the right one sub-genre). Old skool heavy metal, according to Wikipedia guy, because if anything’s old skool, I am! I am 50 and still (at the time of writing at least!), is bands like Iron Maiden and happily resisting the call to have a mobile phone or website. Judas Priest. But again, I thought that was more hair metal, or A friend joked that I should get business cards printed to that glam-metal. Surely real old skool metal, before it even had the effect: No mobile. No website. And I write books! It’s old skool name, was Zeppelin, Sabbath and Purple. enough to read books, let alone write them… But as soon as I accepted the commission I realised the difficulty of it, because The term, as Amazon was selling it, very much crosses over like so much in contemporary popular culture, old skool is a with the same idea of classic rock, or dad rock, that’s driven quite slippery concept, loaded with irony (as everything is these commercial FM radio in Australia since it was first launched thirty days) and relative at best… and so constantly changing. years ago, and which still dominates it. Homer Simpson once said, ‘Everyone knows rock’n’roll attained perfection in 1974. In some ways it’s easier to define what old skool isn’t. In the It’s a scientific fact’. Old skool can pre-date 1974, and itcan Sydney Morning Herald in June this year, a feature on The post-date 1977, but I’m not sure it’s as 80s-centric as many White Stripes’s new CD Icky Thump opened in this way: ‘The like Amazon would have it. To me, the 70s are the motherlode. White Stripes were once resolutely old school. They shunned Much in the 80s drew on the 70s anyway. In the 70s themselves, modern recording equipment, issued only vinyl copies of their rock was still so young it didn’t even have a history. Punk’s first albums to journalists and insisted their roadies be dressed wave of 1977 had to be post-something – it thought it was in formal wear. Now, they’re on MySpace with 58,984 close dancing on the grave of rock, after all – but it was hip-hop, in personal friends’. In other words, spelling aside – more on the early 80s, with its DJs making new music out of old records, which soon – MySpace is definitely not old skool. So neither that emerged as penultimate pioneering post-modernism. And it are The White Stripes, not anymore. would become, indeed, the old skool’s first class.

As far as I can tell, the idea of old skool as it pertains to music, But how meaningful is a term when it now expands to where it arguably began, was certainly a reaction against the encompass both bellbottoms and stovepipes alike, Afros and digital revolution. Old skool is not new software, obviously. razorcuts? You can’t be into Coke and Pepsi, right? In a story The zipless fuck of Pro-Tools recording is not old skool. A called ‘The New Canon’ on the cnn.com website in July this smoking valve amp is sick. Old is kool. The iPod shuffle is not year, it was pointed out that back catalogue sales still account old skool; Lido Shuffle maybe, but not iPod. But at the same for a big niche in the music marketplace, and that of those, time, as time marches inexorably on and the sliding scale of the highest sellers are not, by any stretch, clustered around cool keeps wavering, it may be that the MySpace backlash the twin peaks of 1974 and 1977, but rather cross over into is already on but that doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t bounce definitive 80s’ stadium-rock/metal-pop, in the form of AC/DC, back as soon as the day after tomorrow. Old skool electronic Metallica, Guns’n’Roses and Bon Jovi. For an album like AC/ music may seem like an oxymoron, but it is a thriving genre. DC’s 1980 hymn to the late Bon Scott, Back in Black, to sell After the end of history, history keeps repeating itself in almost half a million copies in 2006 makes it a bigger hit than ever-diminishing circles. My 13-year daughter is currently most current chart items. wallowing in nostalgia over the Spice Girls reformation; she was an original 5-year old Spice Girls fan in the late 90s. In the neighbourhood where I live, a quartet of the coolest sk8 kids under 15 have formed a band called Kill Appeal, whose It is customary for old farts of my inclination to refer to our influence list on their MySpace page is, well, classic old skool. children in situations such as this. I beg your indulgence then. It includes Faster Pussycat, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, I asked my 10-year old son, who hears vintage Doors and New York Dolls, Hanoi Rocks, LA Guns, Guns’n’Roses, Kiss, Stooges tracks on his Tony Hawke playstation game and is a Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, Alice Cooper, the Beastie Boys, Lime Green Day and Blink 182 fan, what he understood by the term Spiders, Screaming Tribesmen and others. This tendency to old skool. He replied – The Ramones and Nirvana. Pretty good glam-metal echoes uncannily the soundtrack of Beavis and answer, I thought. The term does seem to have sprung out of Butthead or Wayne’s World, very likely because these boys the music scene, as so much does, but more particularly, I think, grew up watching these films. its origins were black (as so much innovation in music is). The term ‘old skool’, spelt that way, first started appearing as the As far as I can tell, then, the only common feature to any 80s gave way to the 90s. I understood it then as a description conception of old skool is that it is pre-digital. It was in the 80s of the first wave of hip-hop from the early 80s, originators like that digital technology started coming into popular culture, and Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaata, and the Sugar Hill Gang. it was music, as often, that led the charge. Most people had a It was a typical black art ploy of appropriating the pompous CD player, after all, long before they had a computer, or they titles of the old imperialist class structure. The ‘old school tie’ superseded their VCR with a DVD. Slacker grunge of the 90s, was a euphemism for a whole set of values intrinsic to the British then, was the last wave, as even my 10-year old son seems empire – the old boy network. Changing the spelling changed to understand; Nirvana began their career on 7” vinyl singles the meaning, making it a reference to someone from the ’hood, and ended it on CD. Bands played electric guitars through a sort of cultural warrior. Das respeck! The term grew out Marshall stacks and recorded not onto computers but multi- from there, spreading sideways and forward, into music more track reel-to-reel tape. ‘Back to Mono’ was Phil Spector’s war- broadly, and creeping closer and closer to the present-day. cry come the 70s, and it was picked up on, first, by punk rock. Now it’s back again, as old skool. The original rappers, before I Googled, of course, ‘old skool rock’, and the top two vaguely there was any such thing as sampling and sequencers, spliced coherent returns were an interesting contrast. On one hand, tapes into loops to create the bedrock grooves. Present-day you get a weird list at Amazon, CDs for sale by John Cougar old skool electronica is defined by its revival of vintage analogue Mellencamp at the top of a Top 20, followed by the likes of synthesizers just like Kraftwerk or Depeche Mode used. Springsteen, Kenny Loggins, Kid Rock, The Eagles and Los Lonely Boys, whoever they are. On the other hand, you are Disco gave hip-hop the 12” single, still the best-sounding audio directed to the screasmfromthegutter.com website, which format ever devised. The album, similarly, was an almost perfect subheads itself as ‘old school punk’. Yet its list of essential CDs format. Spread over two sides of vinyl it could hold maybe 40 is comprised almost entirely of 80s’ indie hardcore – that’s not minutes of music, up to a dozen tracks, and from the late 60s punk! The History Wars, of course, are as alive and virulent in it virtually defined a culture as a repository for the modern pop- popular music as everywhere else, but everybody knows (even song cycle. That this idea was the first casualty of the digital Wikipedia) that punk was born in 1977, with the Sex Pistols revolution, the CD, is telling in itself. Introduced in the mid-80s, and the Ramones, and that that was just the apex between the by the early 90s the CD was the dominant music format. Almost just as quickly, it became apparent that filling up the entire 78 minutes of a CD wasn’t necessarily a bargain for the consumer because a whole bunch of filler (as indeed it used to be called in the vinyl days) didn’t do anything to enhance the handful of decent material already stretching to reach forty minutes. Unlimited access seems to observe only the law of diminishing returns. Like good old, old-skool Bruce Springsteen sang as far back as 1992 – ‘There’s 57 channels – and nothin’ on’. Still. Free file-sharing on the internet has boomed not only just because it became possible, but also because people were jack of buying CDs to get one hit track plus a lot of filler.

Old skool in hip-hop terms meant great 12”ers; in rock terms, even stadium rock, it meant albums that were all killer/no filler, even when they were double-albums! – think of Exile on Main Street or Physical Grafitti, or the Clash’s London Calling, or the Gunners’ Appetite for Destruction. I wouldn’t put Pink Floyd’s The Wall in there, although their earlier (1969) Umma Gumma I might! By the turn of the century, many acts, led equally by so-called ‘new rock’ bands like the Strokes and by old skool, almost-heritage rock acts like the The Go-Betweens, had realised that more is less, and were turning in extremely punchy 11-track, sub-40-minute CD albums.

More than anything, I think, old skool harks back to a more innocent time, a wilder, freer time. The attitude today cannot help but be loaded with irony, because that is everybody’s safety net these days, but the old skool was of itself not ironic. Perhaps the ultimate in old skool thinking is genuine commitment. That is, passion, not coolness, or distance; sincerity (now there’s a word you don’t hear much these days). Working without a net. When things were, it seemed, so much tougher, yet it produced such sparkling results with so much longer legs.

But given we know so much now, isn’t that just the futile quest to recapture innocence lost? I’m not sure. For instance, when Kill Appeal sing songs about ‘going down to best cathouse in town’, it’s not ironic, it’s aspirational! Not reconstituted but real innocence; these are teenage boys barely up to petting stage, after all. Kill Appeal leader Odin may have been greatly inspired by Angus Young, but he is the embodiment of rock as it gets ever younger and ever shorter.

In an article reprinted in the Financial Review in August 2007, Robert Sandall, former Virgin Records Director of Communications, describes how the music industry pyramid has inverted. Where the big profits were once in CD (and previously album) sales, and bands begged their labels for ‘tour support’ to offset on-the-road losses, now the record companies are prepared to virtually give away CDs in return for a piece of the booming touring action. This, says Sandall, is symptomatic of ‘the increasing value of shared experience to the isolating nature of electronic or online virtual worlds… Being in the same place at the same time as a live performance, music fans appear to have decided, is the rarest and most precious presence of all’. Music as a shared community experience? How quaint, how old skool.

Clinton Walker I LIKE YOUR NEW OLD STUFF BETTER: them in magazines, but in their neighbourhood. This like-like FASHIONING OLD SKOOL dressing for the male consumer of hip hop fashion is a sign of self-empowerment, protection and defiance without being Like cool, old school is a set of dialects, not a language. It is one hyper-masculine. It’s a kind of dress that talks about where of those slippery terms with both a dictionary definition and a the wearer is from, rather than where they want to be. The series of shifting cultural meanings that trickle up from the street old school tracksuit exemplifies the informality associated into common usage. It oozes in and out of literature, seeps with casual dress but co-opts the notion that leisure equals in and out of conversation. Old school fashion is especially luxury by claiming it as an ‘authentic’ lifestyle signfier. difficult to pin down, continually evolving and even contrary when looked at historically. From a fashion perspective, the So pervasive was old school – a predominately black street significance of old school depends entirely on who you ask, on style, articulated by working class youth – that it became how old you are, the music you prefer and how much money the source of multi mullion dollar profits for companies once you have. The only safe thing to say about old school is that devoted to white men’s sporting needs. Even during a period it relates to anything widely understood as ‘authentic’ that marked by recession in the US, the super consumption of resurfaces outside its own time. recognised labels at the heart of old school fashion, and the addition of swathes of gold jewellery: ropes, chains and The phrase old school probably derives in part from the grills, represented an interest in the ‘social membership’ predominately English concept of the ‘old school tie’ – the that brands communicate.2 exclusionary masculine networks based upon breeding and education which are denoted visually in the patterning and This vein of old school is not a DIY subculture in the style colour of a fabric strip. School ties indicate the wealth and of Punk, but of ensemble building or bricolage using off the status around certain grammar schools as feeders for elite peg and customised clothes and accessories: interchanging business and political ambition. Like the US preppy look, old shoe laces of various colours and thicknesses or taking school tie gains its authority from being squeaky clean and can them out altogether, matching your yellow cap with the be found anywhere there is a desire for a look associated with yellow racing stripe of your track pants. Old school fashion, financial comfort. Seen the kids carrying those canvas logo in this instance, shows clothes worn for leisure activities totes from Country Road? That’s a kind of self-styled old school. to be symbolically powerful, ‘open’ sources for identity Australia’s biggest lifestyle brand released their duffle tote construction and forging class cross-overs.3 bag, an accessory for men and women, after Armani-wearing American gigolo Richard Gere made rich-casual so attractive. The old school associated with rap emerged along with footwear Since then, Country Road has built a reputation on up-market brands, each feeding the other. In 1986 sport met fashion and clothing with Cape Cod leanings (think Ralph Lauren). The music in one of old school’s most famous handshakes when durable ‘workwear’ tote, with its ‘had it for years’ softness and Run DMC recorded its devotion to street wear on the track fade is sun bleached not to signal careful long-term use but ‘My Adidas’. Unwittingly synchronised with subcultural style, the numerous tennis matches and summer holiday spots it has Adidas gave the threesome a million dollars to formalise their supposedly been casually dragged to. The tote is a ‘classic’ relationship with the brand and turned a look into a full-time sports bag because old school – at least this variant of it – is identity, rather than a costume. While Run DMC radically wore sporty, casual, social and healthy. their sneakers sans laces, mimicking prison uniform, the deal linked economic entrepreneurialism with creative resistance Generally speaking, old school is the old fashioned or charming and provocation. Fans hugely boosted Adidas’ sales in the and describes nostalgia for a value, process or object from following years, motivating copycat deals that redrew the the past with residual real-world functionality. In light of this, market for leisure footwear. while old school tie fashions are defined by their conservative associations, old school more broadly can also be a fashion But while its longevity has drawn old school into fashion of the past, present or future. For example, the conservative nostalgia, that it refined traditionally rigid masculine dress fashion houses of Hermès and Burberry have been successfully codes remains critical.4 Menswear, due to its super slow re-branded to remain relevant for today’s consumers desiring evolution, can act as an acute barometer of social and cultural a modern twist on their establishment brands. But, old school change.5 The dress-up-but-down-at-the-same-time-concept – and frequently old skool – is also a fashion that references deliberately emphasises the act of dressing itself, posing, the casual street clothes and accessories worn by hip hop relaxing and ‘performing’ casual, like a kind of sportive dandy. and rap musicians and their fans in New York and Los Angeles Not surprisingly, the rise of old school styling also powered during the 1980s. Again, like old school tie, it is a fashion that growing expenditure on, and design for, casual outfitting from depends on an understanding and reading of its (sometimes this period onward. While clothes worn in the workplace tend quite complex) visual codes. to express social status, leisure clothes express identity.

In the distinction between old school and old school tie, Right now old school is back. Casualness is back as is a ‘casual dress’ is a fundamental point of connection and also renewed consumer devotion to trainers. For now, let’s call it a point of departure. While casual dress might be the domain old skool. Old skool isn’t new, it’s old new and draws on the of the off-duty white collar worker, the subculture fashioned clothes worn at the heart of old school rap and hip hop, and, to after rap artists and its style leaders gave a new and crucial a slightly lesser extent sports. Nike’s current release of Air Force dimension to casual fashion terminology. This is where old 1’s have ‘‘82’ inscribed on them and Converse have designed school fashion was really first defined, even if it feels mildly sneakers without shoe laces but with regular shoe lace holes. anachronistic to say so now. Its impact lies in the fact that Old skool styling is people younger than you wearing the stuff a fashion developed by kids on the street of New York went you wore when you were at school and who know you wore it global. Sportswear – because it was street wear – was the at school and now look better in it. key: brightly coloured designer tracksuits, bomber jackets, branded trainers and a hat or cap.1 Fashion by definition is new but as we know, more often than not, new is also a fashion. What is mostly true about Unlike old school tie, the old school associated with rap fashion is that it is about recycling, where the old is regularly and hip-hop is fashioned out of necessity, local dress reformulated as the new. Old skool is not new but new codes and local knowledge. This is a period of fashion found. It’s a return to the old by a new generation or even the that mirrors regional identities, pre the global networks that generation who thought they experienced it for the first time now allow trends to travel so quickly and easily. The gear but mostly in a new form as old skool shuns technological used to assemble this subcultural style manoeuvred what advances. But old skool isn’t just old stuff brought out again. already existed to make its own fashion system. The early Its mostly new stuff that references old stuff, that looks and stars of rap dressed like gangsters not because they saw feels so much like that old stuff it could be that stuff except that old skool isn’t worn out. Old skool isn’t found at the op shop, it’s in stores right now parading its been-there-done- that cred’ without the smell of the past.

Old skool also tends to cost a lot of money because by the time a fashion, a fad, a trend is old skool it’s in revival mode and revivals need research. You can get a job at Adidas in their Heritage Division. Old skool is your new old favourite. Wise to the commercial spins offs of subcultural style, the companies furnishing the resuscitation of old skool have ensured that you also can’t have too much, meaning consumerism and old skool go hand in hand. And don’t mind the fact that in the late 1990s Nike was boycotted because of the sweatshop labour used to make their gear. As is the case with many fashion revivals, the original political basis of identity and class-based resistance is jettisoned in favour of an unproblematic adherence to fetishism. You’ve convinced yourself you’re not a mindless consumer – you’re a CONNOISSEUR. It’s not even so much about specific knowledge, but the pleasure in understanding the field. Even writing about this stuff is stressful because the point of old skool is that there is always someone out there who knows more than you, has more than you and wants it more than you. Today’s old skool fashion is a package and it’s pay to play.

Kate Rhodes

1 Carol Tulloch ‘Rebel Without a Pause: Black Street Style & Black Designers’ in Juliet Ash and Elizabeth Wilson Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader (London: Pandora Press 1992) p92. 2 It also meant, however, that more than one American kid was murdered for their crispy Nike Air Jordans. 3 Certainly rich white kids also hunted out the gear defining the casual look of the moment. 4 While hip hop and rap style was sported by both men and women and many female rappers and graffiti artists were widely recognised for their dress, the look – based on male sportswear – is a predominately masculine one. 5 Diana Crane. Fashion and Its Social Agendas (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press 2000).p198. For example, think of the burgeoning discussion around metrosexuality that exploded after David Beckham wore a sarong in public that also led to an increased acceptability of male grooming. While women have worn trousers for more than one hundred years without social ridicule, it is still, in the main, not possible for a man to wear a skirt in public without his identity being questioned.

NO SKOOL LIKE minor, the mere auxiliaries whose relative failure provides the backdrop of mediocrity upon which the great stand out as, Untitled well, great. Boosters and support-staff or towering original? ‘There ain’t no skool like the old skool’ is one of those phrases Time may well tell, but you can never quite tell whether the that races about contemporary culture like a headless electronic time has come to tell once and for all. chicken. Perhaps it’s just me, but I come across it and its variants everywhere, spurting its crazy conceptual blood out into the Evaluation ethersphere, staining allegedly pure thoughts like they were a If you can’t place yourself in time, you can’t take up a position; butcher’s apron. Out there, it’s now also in here — and I couldn’t without a clear position, the problem of your affiliation is stop thinking about why the phrase does that without me ever equally compromised; with the compromising of affiliation, stopping to think what it might mean. Until now, that is. the status of evaluation is radically destabilised. It’s almost beyond good and evil, beyond judgement, beyond explanation Time or interpretation. Once you start to look and start to feel and You can’t come out with a statement like ‘there ain’t no skool like start to think about any particular work, you’re in an orgy of the old skool’ without presuming that time is of the essence. The intense affects that derange your person, place and position. very notion implies a particular relation to time. There’s the old There’s no god’s-eye view from which all the variables can be way of doing things — respectfully or sardonically designated accounted for, their significance adjudicated, the weighing up by the moniker of old skool — and then there’s the currently of souls concluded. Here-there, now-then, us-them, good- dominant way in which we do things, unqualified but implicit in bad… the song remains the same, only different. There’s no the very position that denominates the other as such. It’s the once and there’s no for all, only onces and un-alls. Young Turks versus the Old Boys, here and now. All of which is to say that time is split. Here and now is fractured by the Timing insistence of then, a then somehow still persisting despite things Time, position, affiliation, evaluation, timing: today’s about now. having moved on. Which is also to say that time somehow also In our time, there’s only now-time. Time no longer passes as hasn’t moved on; or, at least, that there are those who haven’t it used to in the heroic days of modernism, when we could all moved with the times. They age, but without progress; they’re easily identify and laud the new, and lambast the old as, well, stuck in the past. Even more strongly: it seems that there are just old. In the old days, things still happened one after the those who insist on not moving with the times, who continue to other, which lent the powers of discrimination a certain clarity cling to the old ways, against the tides of history. Immobile or and stability. Perhaps time itself has sped up to the point that immobilised by time. A paradox: here-now not only proves to new and old can no longer be definitively (or even plausibly) be now-then, but we-here are cleanly severed from they-here. distinguished. Time’s not a wheel or a line or a spiral anymore, There’s a wrenching of and between the generations, a gap of if it ever was. If time is anything now, it’s like an infinitely non-transition, a clear separation. Yet old and new commingle accelerated revolving door that’s spinning so fast you can’t now, bound together in their heterogeneity in and by time. tell you’re moving and so sickening you feel almost euphoric. Revolving without revolution, dissolving without solution, old Position skool becomes new age without anyone quite getting hold of The statement directly raises the question of position, too. After how or why or when that happened. But that means time itself all, who would say such a thing, to whom, and in what way? has changed with time, that time is no longer time, or is a new Is it the sort of thing a Young Turk would say? In that case, kind of time or times. It’s kind of the time of the end of time, a the statement is probably ironic: it’s not praising the old, but timeless time. A time that remains, as if it were an ever-shifting saying ‘what can you expect, that’s their stuck-in-the-mud pastiche of an ever-vanishing eternity. Then again, perhaps it way of doing things’. But you can take it in quite a different was never any different. Time’s always been out of time. sense, with a different ironical inflection. ‘There ain’t no skool like the old skool’ can imply that anyone who might state such Round about a thing doesn’t really know what they’re talking about. Their Now’s not only about now, it has to become now — knowing grammar sucks. They can’t even spell. Ill-educated, nearly as it does so it’s got a use-by date. Which is now. Now, then, illiterate, they’re not worthy of our attention. Maybe they’re just is already over. Which is kind of a bummer. Being new’s not repeating the old guys anyway, but without having a clue that enough to make you now anymore. Better, perhaps, to do that’s what they’re doing. Even worse, they’re repeating the old yourself in in advance, to be born old or even dead, as if that guys badly, by mangling — ignorantly or stupidly — what the would enable you to evade the ferocious and giddy voracity of old guys used to do very well. Then again, it is precisely that the revolving-door policy of the times. Born old, you can’t be mangling that might indicate that the young ones do in fact rendered out of date, because you’re that already. You might know what they’re doing — they’re doing just what they need be dismissed as old skool, but then, as we’ve seen, today’s to to piss off their antecedents. The old have been hanging old is as now as now, and certainly as new. Old now could round for an indecently long time, and they’re now so impotent well be better than new new. Art as anticipated nostalgia from and irrelevant one doesn’t have to bother fighting them an impossible point of view. Round and round it goes, a crazy anymore. You can just dismiss their way of doing things in an whirligig of hobby-horses and canned music. off-hand way. At least two ironic modes, ironically commingling in a single statement: said about the old, by someone who isn’t Generation (or at least wants to be distinguished from them); or said by the This uncomfortable temporal situation links the old skool to its old (or someone on their side), affirming that the tried-and-true outsides. That makes it, as some people like to say, inherently methods are still the right road to travel. Yet the statement itself ‘relational’; that is, itself about a relation to the world that in turn doesn’t enable you to establish any way of distinguishing who creates new sorts of relationships. Yet being now is so hard to is who or which is which. be it’s hard to know if it’s even possible to be. You’d have to look at a lot of not-now stuff in order to do it, so now is already Affiliation then, a recycling in a slightly-modified form. Even if the form is It’s about taking sides, even if it’s not clear who’s on whose not visible or legible or audible or conceptual — just the sense side, or what those sides mean, or even who’s speaking. Are of an incomprehensible gap. The problem of time re-intrudes you old skool or young gun? Who are your associates? Even again. As does the problem of the body. For the sense of the if there are people you’re hanging about with, who you know body is now changing all the time, but so fast and so weirdly it’s quite well, and believe you’re on the same wavelength as, you probably impossible to get a sense anymore of just what a body might also be quite confused about their (and your) status. is. Maybe you’ve just not yet been born as yourself, you’re still Art history is full of groups, but it’s not always the group that unborn, yet to be or become, but without quite managing the proves important. Rather, they’re like catapults into the future: trick of non-existence. Unborn, undead, uncanny, unart. Which some figures get flung forward, celebrated as great artists; returns us again to the bizzareries of indistinction: the problem others in the very same group disappear, or are rendered of untimely, intemperate parturition. Inauthentic Still, you might say, the old skool were at least authentic, that they were doing it genuinely, in a serious and committed way, without all this to-do about the backward-glance or the anxiety-of-influence. Yet being explicitly old skool when you’re not-quite is to bring the question of authenticity to the fore. Perhaps you’re exposing that the authentic actually wasn’t, that it was just as caught up in these paradoxes as you are — but without knowing it or without admitting it. Perhaps it’s most authentic to show you’re inauthentic. After all, authenticity can often look like unauthorised pretension; inauthenticity can save the appearances, but dump the pretension. Even more strongly: the inauthentic might even show that the very distinction between authentic and inauthentic is false, that the stakes are in fact elsewhere. You could even inauthentically affirm your inauthenticity. You can be so inauthentic that you burst through into an entirely new zone, one in which derivativeness is a condition to be affirmed and not a deleterious or embarrassing state to be dissimulated.

Repetition Is the dominant mode of now-time then repetition? A weird, atemporal or polytemporal repetition, not just of elements within a work, not just in the work’s dense allusiveness to others, but in the very means of its construction, in its exposing the very means of its construction? Repetition-multiplicity is thus linked to new experiences of and ideas about time. The same thing happens over and over again — the revolving door policy spoken of above — with tiny differences. If you don’t repeat, you’re not new; if you do repeat, you’re not really new either. Maybe it’s like having some kind of echolalia or psitticism: squawking like a parrot, not knowing what you’re saying or even that you’re saying, just doing it. But maybe you’re doing it beautifully? Beauty in art is very old skool, if not downright oddball. Old and new at once, repetition and original, here and there, now and then, ugly and beautiful. The whisper just keeps on going around, jerking and stalling: ‘there ain’t no skool like the old skool’.

Justin Clemens OLD SKOOL - PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES in Printmaking at the Athens School of Fine Art (1995) and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Painting and Sculpture at the Academy Hannah Mathews was born in 1977 and graduated with a of Fine Arts Minerva, The Netherlands (1988). Since 1998, Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne Irene has lived and worked in Melbourne where she is currently in 2001. She has worked as an assistant curator at the Ian undertaking a Master of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Potter Museum of Art (1998–2000), Vizard Foundation (2002) Arts, Melbourne. Irene has held a number of solo exhibitions, and Monash University Museum of Art (January–April 2005), including Freedom holidays, Gertrude Contemporary Art and as a project manager at the Biennale of Sydney (2000– Spaces, Melbourne (2007); Vlad July Egoiste, Neon Parc 02), Next Wave Festival (2003–04) and The South Project Gallery, Melbourne (2007); and Presence between Alborz and (2003–04). Hannah has curated a number of institutional Hekla, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne and independent exhibitions, including Rhys Lee: Capitol Hill (2003). She has also contributed to group exhibitions, including Rooting King, RMIT Gallery (2003); The birds and the bees, KIDS STAY FREE, Neon Parc Gallery, Melbourne (2006); Drops RMIT Project Space (2003); Porte publique, Spacement in the ocean, Het Wilde Weten, Rotterdam (2005); Magic, (2004); Drawn Out, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts Vamialis Gallery, Athens (2005); A portable model of…, La (2005); Winners are Grinners, Meat Market (2006); Paper, Trobe Regional Gallery, Morewell and tour (2005); Slave, The Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2006); and I took a Margaret Lawrence Galleries, Victorian College of the Arts, deep breath…, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2007). Melbourne (2005); and Instinct, Monash University Museum She recently completed a curatorial internship with Creative of Art, Melbourne (2004). Irene is represented by Neon Parc, Time, New York and participated in the Australia Council’s Melbourne. Curators Professional Development program at the Venice Biennale. Hannah has been the Curator at the Perth Institute Matt Hinkley was born in Narrandera, NSW in 1976 and of Contemporary Arts since early 2005 and in late 2007 she completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Queensland College undertook an Asialink residency in Japan. of Art, Griffith University in 1998. His solo exhibitions include Neon Parc Gallery, Melbourne (2006); JA!, Clubs Projects, Robert Cook is Associate Curator of Contemporary Melbourne (2004); and Safe from books and botany, TCB Art. Art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA). His Inc, Melbourne (2003). He has also contributed to a number of curated exhibitions for AGWA include striptease – Max group exhibitions including, Lion, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney Pam photography (also shown at the Australian Centre for (2007); Inverted topology, Australian Centre for Contemporary Photography, Sydney); Swamp Op: Brent Harris; mix tape Art, Melbourne, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne; (with Jenepher Duncan); John Nixon: matter; Raised by Artspace, Sydney (2005–06); In the making, Monash University Wolves (with Jenepher Duncan, Melissa Harpley and Clotilde Museum of Art, Gippsland and 1st Floor Artists and Writers Bullen) and Brutal, tender, human, animal: Roger Ballen Space, Melbourne (2002–03). Curatorial projects include a photography. In addition to curatorial work, Robert writes group show at Neon Parc in May this year, See Attached (with about objects, design and need for art and non-art national Nick Selenitsch) at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces (2008) and international publications. His series of long essays about and Out of the Blue – Heike Baranowsky (with Liza Vasiliou) at cultural consumption, identity and desire have been published Ocular Lab, Melbourne (2006). Matt Hinkley is represented by regularly in Broadsheet. Robert’s essay ‘New Deeds: A Frontier Neon Parc, Melbourne Practice’ was included in Andrea Zittel: critical space (Prestel Books: New York) and with Mark Braddock he wrote the essay Matthew Hunt was born in Fremantle, WA in 1967 and ‘From flat tops to moral philosophy to relationships in motion’ completed a Bachelor of Arts (Art) from Curtin University of for Open Manifesto 3. Robert has produced several small Technology (1993), receiving Honours in 1995. Matthew has fictional pieces forISNOTMAGAZINE and has guest edited an held a number of solo exhibitions, including; The end of the issue of Object magazine, the book Friends 430 (AGWA), and earth, Conical Inc, Melbourne (2007); Cause I see the light the sad’n’lonely edition of Photofile (with Bec Dean). Robert surrounding you, so don’t be afraid, Turner Galleries, Perth (2007); recently guest curated Octopus 7: don’t show me your poetry Backwater, Holmes à Court Gallery, Perth (2006); Scattered for Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces. order, Kaskadenkondensator, Basel, Switzerland (2004); Civil savages, West Space, Melbourne (2001); CORE, Perth Institute Stuart Bailey was born in Newcastle, NSW in 1970 and of Contemporary Arts (2000); and Grey Matter(s), Perth Institute completed a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts) with Honours at of Contemporary Arts (1998). He has also contributed to a the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University number of group exhibitions, including In every dream home in 1996. His solo exhibitions include Low level week (with a heartache, Sydney College of the Arts Gallery (2007); We Rozalind Drummond); RMIT Project Space, Melbourne know who we are, Octopus 6, Gertrude Contemporary Art (2007), Party H.Q., Enjoy Gallery, Wellington (2007); Crafting Spaces, Melbourne (2006); mix tape, Art Gallery of Western self-esteem (with Basil Hadley), Fremantle Arts Centre Australia, Perth (2005); Space to place, Perth Institute of (2007); Carpetweed (with Rozalind Drummond) Victoria Park Contemporary Arts (and tour) (2005); FLUX, uncertain states: Gallery, Melbourne (2007); NEVER UPSTAGED EVER AGAIN, new art from Western Australia, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Canberra Museum and Gallery (2005); Sticky palms, ANCA Perth (2003); and Mnemotech, Perth Institute of Contemporary Gallery, Canberra and Uplands/TCB, Melbourne (2003–04); Arts (2002). Matthew has participated in number of artist-in- and Woodpecker, Canberra Contemporary Art Spaces (2001). residency programs, including the Artsource Basel Residency Stuart has also contributed to a number of group exhibitions, in Switzerland in 2004 and a stay at the International Art Space including Dislocated, Toronto Foreshore, Canada (2006), Kellerberin (IASKA), WA in 2001. In 2005 he co-founded the Process cave (with Geoff Newton and Noél Skrzypczak) ‘zine Acquittal Report with Robert Cook. Kings ARI, Melbourne (2005); Mixed business, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne (2004); Clash of the Titans, GalleryWREN, Geoff Newton was born in Yackandandah, Victoria in 1977 Sydney (2003); In da haus, Canberra Contemporary Art and completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Australian Spaces (2002); and So you wanna be a rock star?, National National University, Canberra in 2000. Geoff has held a Portrait Gallery, Canberra (2001). Stuart completed a three- number of solo exhibitions, including: Geoff Newton paintings, month residency at the Australia Council’s Los Angeles Studio Neon Parc, Melbourne (2007); Strictly commercial, Neon Parc in 2005 and has curated a number of exhibitions, including (2006); Hygiene Genie, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne (2005); Slowing down and Wolfgang Sievers: work at the Glen Eira Jammin’, TCB Art Inc, Melbourne (2005); Frozen blood, Bus City Council Gallery, Melbourne (2007) and World famous in Gallery, Melbourne (2004); and KIDS STAY FREE, Canberra New Zealand at Canberra Contemporary Art Spaces (2005). Contemporary Art Spaces (2001). In addition, Geoff has been part of the following group exhibitions: Octopus 7: don’t Irene Hanenbergh was born in The Netherlands in 1966. From show me your poetry, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, 1988 to 1998 she lived between The Netherlands, Athens Melbourne (2007); One god, no masters, Hamish McKay and London where she completed a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Gallery, Wellington (2006); Some new, some old, some collaborations: Vivienne Binns, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Photography, Tokyo (2004–06); Bittersweet, Art Gallery of New (2005); Selekta, West Space, Melbourne (2005); Merde on South Wales, Sydney (2002); Happiness, Perth Institute of the dancefloor, MIR11, Melbourne (2005); A portable model Contemporary Arts and Adam Art Gallery, Wellington (2002); of…, Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart and Latrobe Regional Gallery, and Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1999). Gippsland (2005); Process cave, Kings ARI, Melbourne Darren has received a number of awards and scholarships, (2005); Clash of the Titans, Gallery Wren, Sydney (2003) including a residency at the Australia Council’s Greene Street and Analogue technologies, Canberra Contemporary Art Studio in New York (2004). Spaces (2002). Geoff is currently co-director of Neon Parc in Melbourne and is a member of the artist group DAMP. Jenny Watson was born in Melbourne in 1951, and currently lives and works between Australia, Europe and New York. Lisa Radford was born in Melbourne in 1976. She completed She completed a Diploma of Painting at the National Gallery a Diploma of Education at the University of Melbourne (2000) of Victoria Art School, Melbourne in 1972 and has been after graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Victorian holding solo exhibitions at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney College of the Arts, Melbourne (1999). Lisa has held a number since 1983; Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne since 1993; of solo exhibitions, including I should’ve done this years ago, and Greenaway Gallery, Adelaide since 2002. Jenny has held Austral Avenue, Melbourne (2007) and Grey wing blue, TCB Art numerous solo exhibitions in Australia and overseas, including Inc, Melbourne (2002). She has also participated in a number of Paris Fashion Week 2006 (with Arno Carvel and Martin Grant), group exhibitions, including 40 degrees, Gertrude Contemporary Peloton, Sydney (2006); Material evidence: Jenny Watson, Art Spaces, Melbourne (2007); Reflections in a Golden Eye, works on fabric 1981–2005, Dell Gallery, Queensland College Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, Melbourne (2006); of Art, Brisbane (2005); Child’s play, Galerie Gaby Kraushaar, Drawn out: a drawing project, Perth Institute of Contemporary Düsseldorf, Germany (2004), Yokohama Museum of Art and Arts (2005); Together again (DAMP + ACW), BaskeKamp, Hatano Fine Arts, Osaka, Japan (2003); and Doll House, Philadelphia (2004); Lets kiss and take out the trash, TCB Art International Art Space Kellerberin, WA (2003). She has Inc (2003); Drama is conflict, Linden Centre for Contemporary also been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Arts (2003); For the ladies, Penthouse & Pavement, Melbourne Innocence and experience, Gimpel Fils, London (2007); The (2002); Octopus 2, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces (2001); idea of the animal, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne (2006); So you and Going nowhere, Grey Area Art Space, Melbourne (1998). wanna be a rock star: Australian painting for the National Gallery of Victoria Shell Collection, National Gallery of Victoria Soda_Jerk is a collaborative partnership involving Dan touring exhibition (2005); Heavenly creatures, Heide Museum of and Dominique Angeloro, Sydney-based remix artists who Modern Art, Melbourne (2004); Fieldwork: Australian art 1968– work across the mediums of video, photomedia and 2002, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2002); Wit’s installation. Dan Angeloro was born in Sydney in 1977 and is end, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1993); Australian currently undertaking her Doctorate in the School of English, Perspecta, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1987); 5th Media and Performance at the University of NSW. Dominique Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales (1984); Angeloro was born in Sydney in 1979 and has completed and Vox Pop: into the 80’s, National Gallery of Victoria (1983). a Bachelor of Art History and Theory at the College of Fine Jenny is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne. Arts, University of NSW (2005). Together the sisters have held numerous solo exhibitions, including The dawn of remix, Justin Clemens is senior lecturer in the School of Culture and 24Hr Art, Darwin (2007); This is Pop Tronic (Back to Future Communication at the University of Melbourne. He has a Dub), Artbox, Sherman Galleries, Sydney (2006); Super Sonic PhD from that University and has written about contemporary Bionic Robot Voodoo Power, Phatspace, Sydney (2005); and art for most Australian publications. He has published Pash me, gash me, kiss me, kill me (love song dedications), numerous books of poetry as well as non-fiction titles on art, Francis Baker-Smith, Sydney (2004). Their feature-length philosophy, and psychoanalysis, including The romanticism of remix video Pixel Pirate II: Attack of the Astro Elvis Video contemporary theory: institution, aesthetics, nihilism (Ashgate) Clone has screened nationally at ForePaw, Melbourne (2007), and, with Dominic Pettman, Avoiding the Subject (Amsterdam Chauvel Cinema, Sydney and Electrofringe, Newcastle (2006), UP). He is the visual arts writer for The Monthly. His most and internationally in Berlin, Hong Kong, Rotterdam, Prague recent book is Black River (re.press). and The Netherlands. Soda_Jerk have also participated in a number of group exhibitions, including Video Brazil (2007); The Kate Rhodes is Curator at Craft Victoria, a Melbourne-based visitors, Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest (2007); craft and design gallery, Cultural Program Manager at the Our lucky country (still different), Hazelhurst Regional Gallery L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival and an advisor to Object (2007); Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship Exhibition, magazine. She was formerly a curator of Australian and Artspace, Sydney (2006–07); Living Elvis, RMIT Gallery, international photography and contemporary art at the National Melbourne (2007); Projector, Fremantle Arts Centre (2007); Gallery of Victoria. In 2004 she was co-editor of a special edition Flim Flam, Canberra Contemporary Art Space (2007); Moving of Photofile on fashion photography and is currently completing image 1, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2006); Kiss a Masters thesis in the area of fashion and the aesthetics of of the beast, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2005) and poverty at RMIT University. Turning tricks, Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney (2005). Clinton Walker is Australia’s pre-eminent rock and pop music Darren Sylvester was born in Sydney in 1974. He has held a critic and historian. His journalism has appeared in newspapers number of solo exhibitions, including Darren Sylvester, William and magazines since the late seventies. His first book was Mora Galleries, Melbourne (2007); I want to carve a future, 1981’s Inner City Sound, which was recently reissued; his devour everything, become something, Sullivan+Strumpf third, 1994’s Highway to Hell, the classic biography of Bon Fine Art, Sydney (2006); Our future is ours, Johnston Gallery, Scott, became an international best-seller. He was co-writer of Perth (2006); Recent work, William Mora Galleries, Melbourne hit 2001 ABC rockumentary series Long Way to the Top and (2005); We can do anything, Australian Centre for Photography, his fifth book, Buried Country, the story of Aboriginal country Sydney (2001); and Life together, Main Gallery, Melbourne music, was also made into a documentary. He has more (1998). He has also contributed to many group exhibitions, broadly written social history in Football Life (1998) and Golden with recent shows including The one and the many, Dell Miles: Sex, Speed and the Australian Muscle Car (2005). He is Gallery, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane (2007); The an art school drop-out. roving eye, Gallery 1601, Washington, USA and Gigantic Artspace, New York (2006–07); Raised by wolves, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth (2007); NEW06, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2006); Supernatural artificial, Nanyang Academy of Fine Art, Singapore; Chlalangkorn Art Centre, Bangkok; and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of LIST OF WORKS Geoff Newton Leviathan, 2005 Stuart Bailey acrylic on canvas Straight Edge, 2007 112 x 210 cm plywood, dowel, nails, screws, rubber, acrylic, gaffer tape, bottle caps, bicycle Stunt Double, 2005 bell, horn and bells, digital video on acrylic on canvas DVD 156 x 116 cm 220 x 710 x 5 cm 3 mins, 50 secs Courtesy of the artist and Neon Parc, Melbourne Irene Hanenbergh Cheetah (Augustus), 2007 Lisa Radford Zund print on aluminium Maps and Coats of Arms (lesson 180 x 120 cm exchange with my Dad Charles), 2007 acrylic and enamel on MDF, wooden Lake Onega, 2007 extension ladder, cans of paint Zund print on aluminium installation dimensions variable 60 x 40 cm Soda_Jerk with Sam Smith Sunnyboy, 2007 Astro Black: A History of Hip Hop Zund print on aluminium (Episode One), 2007 60 x 40 cm DVD with sound 6 mins, 35 secs Truth, 2005 Zund print on aluminium Courtesy of the Penrith Regional 60 x 40 cm Gallery and the Lewers Bequest

Always Free, 2007 Darren Sylvester Zund print on aluminium Time Keeps Running, Never Changing, 60 x 40 cm Never Ageing, 2006 single-channel DVD with sound Courtesy of the artist and Neon Parc, 4 mins Melbourne ‘Jungleland’ saxophone solo by Dave Matt Hinkley & Geoff Newton Frank, courtesy of Bruce Springsteen Untitled, 2007 tribute band, ‘Stone Pony’, Cleveland silver foil Ohio, USA. dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist, Sullivan+Strumpf Courtesy the artists and Neon Parc, Fine Art Sydney, Johnston Street Melbourne Gallery Perth and William Mora Galleries, Melbourne. Matt Hinkley Untitled (safe from books and botany), Jenny Watson 2003 Mod memory, 1965, 2007 pencil on pantone paper oil on cotton (unstretched) 63 x 53 cm 213 x 117 and 9 x 7 cm

Courtesy the artist and Neon Parc, Courtesy of the artist Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne

Matthew Hunt New Mod, 2007 Untitled (Everything’s gone green: the acrylic over rabbit skin glue primed bedroom session), 2007 Italian organza (with damask backing) two-channel DVD with sound and acrylic on prepared text panel 3 mins, 40 secs 153 x 138 cm and 60 x 48 cm

Untitled (Sirens: Rosie’s place), 2007 Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz single-channel DVD with sound Gallery, Melbourne 4 mins, 45 secs

Untitled (Mustang songlist: c. 1993- 94), 2007 scraperboard 61 x 50 cm

Untitled (diode songlist: c. 2006), 2007 scraperboard All works courtesy the artists unless 61 x 50 cm otherwise noted. Hannah and Robert would like to thank the artists for their interest and participation, Matt Hinkley for his dope Old Skool reader design, PICA for their support and each other for getting through it.

We would also like to acknowledge John Stringer, a true old skooler and generous human being always.

Stuart Bailey would like to thank Minor Threat (Ian MacKaye, Lyle Preslar, Brian Baker, Steve Hansgen and Jeff Nelson), Fayen d’Evie, Rosemary Forde, Dylan Rainforth, Geoff Newton, Danny Jacobsen, Karra Rees, Rosanna Verde, Bradley Meekcoms, Andy “Moose” Newton, Imogen Beynon, Kings ARI, Victoria Park Gallery and Neon Parc.

Irene Hanenbergh would like to acknowledge the support of Sumo Visual Solutions.

Matt Hinkley would like to thank Tom Mùller and Lauren Hinkley.

Kate Rhodes would like to thank Daniel Palmer, Rebecca Jobson and Danielle Whitfield for assistance with her essay.

ISBN 1 875386 81 5

PICA’s ongoing programs are primarily supported by an investment from the State of Western Australia through ArtsWA in association with Lotterywest, assistance from the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. PICA is supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.