Volume 2 • Number 5 • Spring 1998 • Free Cross-Currents in Culture
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cross-currents in culture volume 2 • number 5 • spring 1998 • free p a g e 2 • variant • volume 2 number 5 • Spring 1 9 9 8 Back Issues letters volume 1 Axis bold as brass Selections from issues 1 & 2 (1984/85) at £2.00 contents Dear Editor The Board of Directors and Trustees of Axis have noted plus 50p postage. (photocopy only). John Beagles your article "Limited Axis" in your Autumn edition, 3 (photocopy only) £2 plus 50p postage. Make me wanna holler, which will usefully contribute to our monitoring and Original copies of issues 4,5,6 & 7 available at £20 throw up both my hands 3 review of our service. We would point out however, that Axis remains committed to providing an accessible for the 4 plus £1 postage. Neil Mulholland and democratic service, delivered through a number of 8 Sept 1990 Noam Chomsky on common sense Guaranteed disappointment 5 complementing processes and mechanisms to provide philosophy: Jo Spence on art, class & education: information which is useful and beneficial to both David Harding on community art in the '70s: Paul William Clark enquirer and artists. However, the growth of our out- lets, and progress towards our five year target of ten Wood on Scottish Art since 1900: Glasgow 1990 Megalomedia 8 thousand artists cannot be achieved overnight, and art reviewed. Kumal Sangha require considerable resources. 9 Sept 1991 Alastair Bonnet on the Situationists & Our service is free, except where printouts and con- psychogeography: Doug Aubrey on football cul- Ethnic cleansing 11 tact sheets are required, which are charged at their ture: Ed Baxter on Virtual Reality: Euan MacArthur minimum production costs. It is wholly erroneous to Michelle McGuire suggest that that (sic) the data supplied by artists ‘is on ‘Windfall’. Forced Entertainment 12 sold to drive’ our business, which mainly depends on 10 Jan 1992 Interviews with Mark Pauline of core funding from grants, supplemented by sponsor- Survival Research Laboratories: Calypso singers Ian Brotherhood ship and project income. The registration fee for artists Lion and the Lord Pretender: AMM member Tales of the Great Unwashed 14 is hardly excessive and, like the criteria for defining pro- fessional practice, is founded on extensive consultation Keith Rowe: New York conceptualist artist Leigh French with artists themselves. Our criteria is not elitist, but Lawrence Weiner, plus Poetic Terrorism & cen- Babes in toyland 16 practical, and we make no exclusive aesthetic of evalu- sorship in the USA. ative judgements, believing that the information we 11 April 1992 Interviews with video activists Peter Suchin provide should be rich enough to enable users to make Despite TV: Production company Big Star In A BLOCK Capitalism 18 their own judgements by whatever criteria is applicable to their individual needs. Wee Picture: Improvising guitarist Derek Bailey: R E Sammi We are also committed to developing full interactive Cyberpunk artist Stelarc: Video art in Slovenia: web access to the register, but there are issues of copy- From Experimental Film to Media Art in Red Rebel Song, right and protection of artists image which need Germany: Sean Cubitt on False Perspectives in Nikki the Warrior, 5662 19 addressing, and require more careful consideration. Virtual Space: Kathy Rogers on VR, and more. However, it is naive to suggest that the web itself is the David Burrows democratic solution, and it is precisely because of the Aug 1992 Interview with expressionist writer 12 Career Opportunities 20 current very class, race and gender exclusiveness of the Harry Mathews: Naomi Salaman on Women's Art web that we are committed to a range of access plat- Practice/Male Sex: Roland Miller on extremes in Marshall Anderson forms and mechanisms that together will ensure a performance art in East & West Europe: New 57 Working with children broader constituency of users. Gallery: Free Music in Berlin: New York Sound and the snake 23 The feedback we obtain from both artists and users, Factory. along with our very thorough monitoring, provide a Mick Wilson considerably more positive picture than your reviewer 13 Jan 1993 Interviews with Brian Eno, Genesis P. Articulate 26 suggests. Neither does your reviewer's negative pre- Orridge & AIDS activist Simon Watney: Richard diction for Axis match the rapidly increasing use of our Demarco's Edinburgh Arts: Moscow Art Now: New Stewart Home service, the regular success stories we receive from art- Queer Cinema: Canadian Artists Movement: Marlborough maze 27 ists who have benefited from being on the register, nor Seizing The Media: ParaPolitics: Generiqes; music the enthusiasm and support we received at the launch in December of our first London Axis point. artists’ projects, print & media reviews. Dan Stephen Yours sincerely 14 May 1993* Special Issue by Video Positive on Talking to Tom Leonard 28 Doug Sandle Chair of the Axis Board of Directors and Trustees creative video & electronic media art. Articles on Ewan Morrison Soft Future by Richard Wright: Film, Cyberpunk Cynicism and postmodernity 30 Variant Replies & Cyberfeminism by Sadie Plant: Sound by originally we had no intention of printing the above Women Artists in Britain by Jean Fisher: Black Ed Baxter 'response’, but on Marshall Anderson's request we Art & New Technologies by Keith Piper: What's Homage to J G Ballard 31 undertook to publish it. Readers familiar with Wrong with Video Criticism by Sean Cubitt. anderson’s article in Variant, issue 4 will have * Available from Video Positive. Adele Patrick noticed that Sandle provides nothing to address or These boots aren’t made for walking 32 refute any of its carefully argued points. Instead he 15 Aug 1993 Interviews with Steve Reich, Beryl just blabs away with all this blatant hyperbole on his Korot and Cornelius Castoriadis: Timex & Robert H King own organisation. The huge amounts of money PostModern Scotland: Fotofeis: History of the Third Soundscape 34 seemingly wasted on Axis have in our opinion still Eye Centre: Gender & Technology: Summer to be accounted for, this was their chance to reply Solstice: Bill Douglas: Stockhausen Boycotted: Euro Cover Image “Rainbow” (one of a series of four), Brigid Teehan and they can’t, or won’t address any of the real issues. Also, who is on the board of Axis and how Music Festivals; plus new music, artists' projects, Editors William Clark, Leigh French Design Kevin Hobbs Advertising did they get there? print & media Reviews. Paula Larkin Printers Scottish County Press Ltd. Distribution Variant 16 Interview with Diamanda Galas, Jim Kelman and John La Rose: The Destruction of the Avante- Variant Volume 2 Number 5, Spring 1998. ISSN 0954–8815 Subscriptions Individuals can receive a four issue, one year, Garde as an Institution: New Primitives: Gender & Variant is a magazine of cross-currents in culture: critical think- subscription for Variant for UK £2.00, EC £3.00, USA & Technology: plus the usual mix of aural, visual and ing, imaginative ideas, independent media and artistic inter- Canada £5.00, Elsewhere £5.50, Institutions UK/EC £5.00, live arts. ventions.Variant is a Society based organisation and functions Institutions Elsewhere £5.50. All £4 plus 80p postage. with the assistance of subscriptions and advertising. We wel- Opinions expressed in Variant are those of the writers and not come contributions in the form of news, previews, articles, necessarily those of the editors or Variant. All material is copy- Complete issues from 1 to 16 available for serious interviews, polemical pieces and artists pages. Guidelines for right (unless stated otherwise) the authors or Variant. collections. Write for further details, to: writers are available. Advertising address Variant participates in the ‘Critical Writing Section’ M. Dickson, 70 Saint Vincent Terrace, Flat D7, Glasgow of the Visual Art Department’s ‘Exhibitions and Projects Fund,’ PO Box 1269 Glasgow G3 6QA and acknowledges SAC support towards the payment G3 Tel: +44 (0)141 552 3436 Fax: +44 (0)141 553 2660 of contributors to the magazine. Cheques payable to M. Dickson. Editorial address 1a Shamrock Street, Cowcaddens, Glasgow G4 9JZ volume 2 Tel: +44 (0)141 333 9522 Fax: +44 (0)141 553 2660 1,2,3,4 Winter 1996, Spring, Summer, Autumn 1997 available from: Variant’s website is under construction as we go to press, but you can contact us by E-Mail at: 1A Shamrock Street, Glasgow G4 9JZ include SAE (50p stamp) [email protected] PAGE 2 • VARIANT • VOLUME 2 NUMBER 5 • SPRING 1998 John Beagles Make me wanna holler, throw up both my hands I WANTED TO ENJOY Tracy Emin’s performance on the The art world was very fond of its tortured, heroic will [luvvie]”8 it’s impossible to escape the feeling that Tate gallery after dinner ‘round table chat’, but I could- male geniuses. Modernism’s church was after all built we are again in the presence of the “charismatic power n’t. Despite my satisfaction at Roger Scruton’s inability with the supernova life-force of its worshipped deities. of the creator”9. to disguise his misogynist contempt for the worthless Struggling away in the garret, tortured by the likeli- Such a collapsing of the distinction between the piece of seaside flotsam he took Tracy Emin to be, it hood of misunderstanding, such biographical details artist and the work has powerful and worrying prece- was impossible to suppress the thought that she had of male artists’ victories provided the grist to the mill dents. The monolithic power Picasso wielded via the been set up. Sure it was enjoyable to see the tedium of of the mythology of modernism. Artists had to be out fusion of his personality and art was so potent it was television’s professionalism ripped apart, to marvel at of control, possibly slightly insane; insanity was a frequently impossible to get any critical perspective on the drunken pomposity of David Sylvester, but once trademark, a byword for authenticity, originality and his work.