The Turner Prize

This article was published in the autumn Kensington & Chelsea Review: http://www.kensingtonandchelseareview.com/

This year’s Turner Prize exhibition, showing at the Tate Britain with the prize awarded in December, is notable for the variety but consistently high quality of all four nominees. There is little dryness or alienating critical distance in this immersive, captivating and highly enjoyable show. At its worst it draws the audience into the artists’ unique manias in a way that can feel slightly stifling; at its best – exemplified in particular by performance artist Spartacus Chetwynd – it showcases a fresh, multi-disciplinary approach that is both playful and thoughtful.

(Paul Noble. From the Tate's press pack)

Two names have dominated the discussion of the Turner Prize so far: Chetwynd, whose vibrant group performances present a rich mix of social and aesthetic concepts through a mad, often hilarious and sometimes very spooky theatricality, and Paul Noble, whose pencil drawings document an imaginary world in painstaking Escher-like architectural detail. Noble’s work is clearly impressive in terms of skill and commitment, though a painstaking work ethic is a defining feature of this years’ nominees. Several critics have pointed out the resemblance to excrement in his drawings, and although it is undeniable it’s rarely overwhelming. There’s an addictive beauty to his intricate patterns: they feel like illustrations in an impossible book. But in fact he is the least satisfying – and the least interesting - of the four artists. I want to get lost in his world, but I can’t: it is too mapped out, too limited by his artistic monomania. In the words of Bruno Schulz, there is ‘too much matter, not enough form.’

(Elizabeth Price. From the Tate's press pack)

Elizabeth Price has a lot more to say, and more to say it with. Her film ostensibly tells the story of deadly fire in a Manchester Woolworth’s. The disturbing subject matter is matched by a purposefully overpowering, high tempo approach to filmmaking that darts from source to source and image to image, melding contrasting narratives and ideas into a cohesive piece. But the quick, controlled pace and the merging of text and image are a little too reminiscent of advertising, making the work feel slightly hollow.

(Luke Fowler. From the Tate's press pack)

Luke Fowler presents a refreshing contrast to this. His film All Divided Selves documents the life, work and opinions of controversial psychiatrist R D Laing through a montage of archive film, found footage and new material. Unlike Noble, he’s firmly rooted in the real world, addressing Laing’s radical notion of schizophrenia as rational. His form perfectly reflects his subject matter: virtuosic editing weaves different strands of footage together, finding both beauty and thematic logic within non-linear expression – exactly the same way that Laing’s work treated expressions of schizophrenia. Implicit throughout the film is the idea that schizophrenic thought closely resembles artistic thought in its merging of imagination and experience. Through documentation, Fowler shows that Laing saw art in madness; through his own artistic process, Fowler presents the madness in art.

(Spartacus Chetwynd. From the Tate's press pack)

But he’s certainly dwarfed by Spartacus Chetwynd in that field. Her work embraces madness and irrationality on a level beyond most mainstream contemporary art. Chetwynd is the first performance artist ever to be nominated for the Turner Prize – highlighting the fact that, despite its outrageous reputation among tabloid rants, the prize is often relatively conservative. Although all the nominees are impressive, it’s Chetwynd who gives the exhibition its exciting, refreshing and immersive quality. Her performance piece Odd Man Out has two sides. In one room, masked puppeteers perform the Biblical story of Barabbas being spared crucifixion. In another, awkwardly acrobatic monsters bring a mandrake root to life which dishes out banal and gently negative oracular predictions about (among other things) oyster cards and gas bills. Everything looks amazing, from the photocopied images that coat the space to the ragged robes of the performers. There’s a lot to take away from the performance rather than a single prescribed meaning, which makes it frustrating to write about but glorious to see: if I talk about the telling parallel between the disappointing oracle and the crowd choosing the criminal Barabbas over the prophet, I have to reconcile this with the piece’s exuberance, it’s sexuality and raw energy; if I talk about the slick, Brechtian theatricality of the work, I’m in danger of forgetting the feeling I had while watching that this could fall apart at any minute and that I, as an audience member, was just as responsible for holding it together as the performers were. This is a challenging piece, joyful and manic but without a trace of naivety or tweeness. Perhaps it would be simplest to say there is an excess of meaning here, and that that in itself is its strength: a reminder that reality is not restricted to linear or singular notions of meaning and truth, but is rather a shifting, complicated and beautiful mess – just like Chetwynd’s work. And, despite the consistently high quality of the work on display this year, it is that feeling that makes the 2012 Turner Prize exciting, relevant and unique.

Chasing Beckett: tension and sound

As of today I'm starting work on a sound design and pre-recorded score for Chasing Beckett, a dark comedy showing at the London Theatre in New Cross from the 9th to the 14th of October.

It's a very enclosed piece - a hostage situation in a small but classy upstairs flat, and the dialogue between the hostage and the captor.

Reading the script I thought of Hitchcock's Rope - a very different piece but with a similar tension to it. Rope's use of sound is truly inspiring: almost all the sound is diegetic, with the exception of the music at the beginning and end of the film. Within this diegetic sound are key instances of music, most notably a recurring piano piece that one of the main characters plays, Poulenc's Trois Mouvement's Perpetuals. It's a beautiful piece but a very strange one, a mix of constancy and surprise that perfectly reflects the experimental intellectual criminality of the narrative.

Here is Poulenc himself playing it - a little faster than others have interpreted it:

The fact that a character plays a piece that itself is a perfect soundtrack marks a brilliant merging of diegetic and non-diegetic ideas - the effect is to heighten the realism of the performance through stylisation, rather than detract from it. Stylising represented reality in this way - as in expressionist painting, or poetic prose - has the effect of placing sensation and emotion on the same level as image and sound; arguably, the position they occupy in actual perception. The tension between the two characters, the hidden knowledge and secret motivations, the clash between social convention and expectation and a fascistically anti-social acceptance of violence - all become elevated to the conditions of music; no longer replicating or imitating reality but creating it anew; 'all the others translate,' says Auden - taking on musical qualities takes us beyond translation to creation.

There's a brilliant essay on way that music in Rope corresponds to subversive sexuality, Unheard Sexualities.

'a miscellany of anthropomorphic sea creatures'

Here is Julie Sokolow, author of 'The Lobster Kaleidoscope', describing the brilliant Dadaoism anthology from Chomu Press:

1) Metaphysical Portals:  As a devotee of Borges, Kafka, and Beckett, I get kicks out of masterful meta-ness, psychological terror, and gallows humor, all of which Dadaoism’s opening piece, “Portrait of a Chair”, possesses in levels of toxicity.  In Reggie Oliver’s story, a retired antiques dealer, keenly aware of his mortality, attends an auction where he purchases a captivatingly simple portrait of a chair.  The portrait is not just some symmetrical schlock to mount over a mantel, but rather, a metaphysical portal to a dimension in which inanimate objects are paradoxically conscious, and the narrator, having undergone a paralyzing transformation, must fight through telepathic intellect alone to survive. 

2) Street Cred:  Dadaoism ends with two poems by Bjork and J.G. Ballard’s darling favorite, Jeremy Reed.  Called by the Independent, “British poetry’s glam, spangly, shape-shifting answer to David Bowie”, Reed’s poems read like lyrics to a song you’ll want to air guitar solo to.  That is, before the anxiety-provoking subject sinks in.  In his poem “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicides”, he samples the true story of Joe Meek, the pioneering record producer, songwriter, and paranoid occultist, who shot and killed his landlady before turning the gun on himself.  Reed weaves together the details of Meek’s particular story and the greater mythos of rock ‘n’ roll’s dark side.  Meek’s loft is “a sounds lab–pop and Ouija and blue pills…”.  Reed canonizes Meek with those other archetypal “death-inducers” (e.g. -Presley, Hendrix, Cobain), “excess bingers hallucinating in the drop/into the roaring underground.”

She goes on to explain that her own story - 'a miscellany of anthropomorphic sea creatures' that sits somewhere between these two poles - was conceived on LSD. Seems pretty fitting considering the perception-altering nature of the anthology itself.

The full article is online on the HTML Giant blog at http://htmlgiant.com/word-spaces/chomus-pure-liquid-lsd/.

Reviewing the anthology on Amazon, I called it the best book of 2012 so far and I've still yet to read a more satisfying or exciting new book this year.

'And now I draw the map': Ursula K. Le Guin discusses Earthsea

Here is Ursula K. Le Guin - one of the most wonderful writers of our time, whose Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels brilliantly combine a fascination with language and belief with an in-depth, highly sensitive analysis of political and societal systems - talking about her Earthsea books, a fantasy collection for young adult readers.

And now I draw the map. The first thing I did for the book was the map.

working from pictures

Standard procrastination when you need to write music for someone else is to end up writing music for yourself. New song down at the bottom of the page.

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell

it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned 
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

(William Carlos Williams, Landscape with the fall of Icarus)

Remembering in flashes

The stings and the rashes
(I lie when I tell you I don't)

soundtrack to medical melodrama

Doing some more research for soundtracking Kill The Beast's The Boy Who Kicked Pigs, on at the Lowry in Manchester later this month. Today: the music of medical melodrama -

General Hospital was brought to you by Wizard Room Deodorizer...

newspapers, cops, operas

Queen of Pop

Quote 'Jubilee' at the Box Office for half price tickets, today and tomorrow (June 4th and 5th)
Touched... Like a Virgin
Soho Theatre, Dean St. London
**** The Daily Mirror
**** The Daily Telegraph
**** What's On Stage
**** The Public Reviews

Peter Carey: The Chemistry of Tears (Kensington and Chelsea Review)

The new Kensington & Chelsea Review is out, featuring (on p.23) my review of Peter Carey's new novel, The Chemistry of Tears. You can read the whole magazine here (I've put a transcript of the review below it):

(if that doesn't work go to www.kensingtonandchelseareview.com)

A careful layering of reality and unreality runs through Peter Carey’s new novel. It mostly takes place in a fictional museum, but detailed localism and the intrusion of a utilitarian, centre-right Coalition government seem all-too familiar. Here a fictional object is being restored: a clockwork automaton of a duck – or swan, depending on which narrator you believe at which point in the book –based on Vaucanson’s famous ‘digesting duck’ that appeared to eat and defecate. The overall effect is reminiscent of Angela Carter’: a world so close and vivid as to seem realistic, but where something unreal always threatens to break the surface.

music makes the people come together

Reviews are pouring in for Touched...Like a Virgin, which runs for another couple of weeks at the Soho Theatre. Here's what they're saying about the music:

'a collection of singing postcards - the script jumps between 1984 and 2010, and each vignette in the life of monologist Lesley is paired with a Madonna track. [...] David Wickenden - better known as one quarter of 4 Poofs and a Piano - croons Like a Prayer and Hung Up in the basement venue of Soho Theatre like a born cabaret performer. With glittering silver shoes he purrs into the mic, doling out a wink here, a smile there. Ben Osborn’s stripped-down arrangements of the songs we know and love also deserve a mention.'

The Stage

'The thread which holds the story together is the music of Madonna, provided brilliantly by Ben Osborn on piano and guitar and Dave Wickenden on vocals who, with a twinkle in his eye and sparkles on his shoes, invests Madonna’s greatest hits with a warmth and touch of camp which is both charming and funny.'

The Public Reviews (****)

'The story is underscored by songs from Madonna's back catalogue as sung by David Wickenden (4 Poofs and a Piano), ably accompanied on piano and guitar by Ben Osborn.'

What's On Stage (****)

'A black piano has overtaken the small stage space as David Wickenden (who you may know from 4 Poofs and a Piano, a singing quartet that appeared regularly on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross) sings portions of the Immaculate Collection, which accurately coincide with Lesley’s story. His rendition of “Justify My Love” just about threw me over the edge with laughter. Musician Ben Osborn seamlessly switches from piano to guitar to vocal back up, completing the three-person ensemble.'

OneStopArts.com

The Telegraph also gave us four stars, as did the Mirror.

In my dressing room last night

Seriously:

Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, Actress/Designer Sadie Frost, Supermodel Kate Moss.

Obviously I'm not in the picture. Only a matter of time though, right?

(from The Daily Mail)

Touched... Like a Virgin: composing after Madonna

From next Tuesday night onward I'll be performing alongside actress Sadie Frost - a bit of a hero of mine because of this video - and singer Dave Wickenden - of the legendary Four Poofs & Piano, formerly Jonathan Ross's house-band and Edinburgh Fringe stalwarts - at the Soho Theatre in London. The production is a play called Touched... Like a Virgin, by playwright Zoe Lewis, produced by Sally Humphreys Productions.

This is exciting not only for the obvious reasons but also on a personal level: my mother, playwright Marta Emmitt, was Writer-in-Residence at Soho in 2000; her play Cadillac Ranch was performed there. This a place that excited me when I was twelve years old, and now I'm performing there, which for me is the most amazing thing about this.

It's also extremely challenging, not least because the play is about an obsessive Madonna fan and - while it is emphatically not a Madonna musical - it calls for a selection of Madonna's songs to be used as musical interludes, as well as original music to underscore the scenes.

Writing after Madonna is very interesting: if you want to read a really great piece of musicological analysis, try a wikipedia page on a Madonna song (e.g.): you can see how the songs display different styles at different points, how they move between textures and vocal registers, etc. I've been trying to arrange the songs in ways that reflect the various mental states of the protagonist. One challenge is choosing which aspects of the piece I can bring out with the minimal set-up I've got (a loop pedal borrowed from sound artist Sholto Dobie, a glockenspiel borrowed from Sleeping Passengers bassist Will Kerr, an upright piano and an acoustic guitar). While I wouldn't normally do this, I'm putting up a demo I've done - with help from fellow Sleeping Passenger Nina Scott - of Material Girl; I'd be interested to see what people think of it.

The clouds cast moving shadows on the land.

John Banville's article in yesterday's Guardian, reviewing the Complete Poems of Larkin (edited by Archie Burnett), was a reminder of how exciting Larkin's poetry is. Banville notes that we need not take Larkin at 'face value' - that is, we need not see Larkin's persona (or indeed his authorial voice) as the definitive interpretation of his work. Burnett is a 'definitive' editor, writes Banville, and we should be grateful for this; the work can speak for itself, the voice of the author being a (sometimes useful) parallel to its reality.

Larkin is one of those poets that gets in your head and doesn't leave. It doesn't matter if it's been years or days since you read him, he's still present, still there; an extra voice in any conversation. Lines like 'never such innocence again', 'this is the first thing I have understood' and 'the clouds cast moving shadows on the land'; isn't there something of them that is now, that is the way we live now? Here is a shifting bitterness that comfortably accommodates an honest relationship with death (something we've always looked for in poetry, since Homer; poetry being perhaps the only place that it can be found).

This was your place of birth, this daytime palace,

This miracle of glass, whose every hall

The light as music fills, and on your face

Shines petal-soft; sunbeams are prodigal

To show you pausing at a picture’s edge

To puzzle out a name, or with a hand

Resting a second on a random page –

The clouds cast moving shadows on the land.

Are you prepared for what the night will bring?

The stranger who will never show his face

But asks admittance; will you greet your doom

As final; set him loaves and wine; knowing

The game is finished when he plays his ace,

And overturn the table and go into the next room?

(II from The North Ship, 1945)

I saw the Turner Prize exhibition at the Baltic in Newcastle; the programmer for George Shaw, a painter from Coventry, had given the poem above, one of those Larkin pieces that's never let go of me, as an example of the corrolation between the poet and the painter. At the time I thought it was inappropriate, a misunderstanding of Larkin based on biography rather than on poetry, but now I look at Shaw's paintings again and I understand: Larkin is a poet of this moment, just like Shaw is a painter of it, and the richness of their styles is a celebration - both ironic and heartfelt - of the arbitrary place of birth alongside the inevitable next room of death.