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SIX BELLS RING AT SIX (36 MINUTE COUNTING OBSERVATION) 23/01/2012

2012-01-24T07:34:00.000-08:00

1:
SIX MINUTES UNTIL EIGHTEEN SIX
SIX PALMS AT GAGO COUTINHO (LEFT SIDE)
SIX WINDOWS ON BUS (CODE A27599)
ALSO (A55154)
SIX TAXI NUMBERS:
3,
009,
19,
039,
122,
180
SIX PAIRS OF SUNGLASSES (VARIED)

2:
SIX MINUTES UNTIL EIGHTEEN TWELVE
SIX SALES OF POPCORN
SIX THINGS PEOPLE ARE CARRYING THIS EVENING:
DECKCHAIR
WOODEN SHAPE
BABY
TWO SUN UMBRELLAS (ONE GREEN, ONE YELLOW)
SPIRAL BOUND ACADEMIC THESIS

3:
SIX MINUTES UNTIL EIGHTEEN EIGHTEEN
SIX LETTERS ON BAGS:
A,
B,
D,
J,
P,
T
SIX NUMBERS WITH SIX IN:
069 (TAXI)
690 (BUS)
6221 (CAR)
4261 (CAR)
76 (COMBI VAN)
1164 (PHONE NUMBER ON ADVERTISEMENT)

4:
SIX MINUTES UNTIL EIGHTEEN TWENTY-FOUR
SIX TATTOOS:
ROSES
INDIAN HEAD
INDIAN DESIGNS
FLORAL DISPLAY
WOMEN'S HEAD
LETTERING (UNREADABLE)
TWO DOGS, TWO ARMOURED CARS, TWO EMPTY MILK CARTONS TAPED TOGETHER
SIX LETTERS IN 'ELEVEN' SHOP SIGN
SIX SIPS OF WATER

5:
SIX MINUTES UNTIL EIGHTEEN THIRTY-TWO
SIX PATTERNS:
PAISLEY SCARF
TROPICAL DRESS
CHECKED SHIRT
FLORAL TROUSERS
DIAMOND SHORTS
STUDDED SANDALS
SIX DIFFERENT ENGINE SOUNDS
SIX PHOTOS OF PEOPLE PASSING OVER THE SAME MANHOLE COVER WITH A LARGE PAINTED 'X' ON IT

6:
SIX MINUTES UNTIL EIGHTEEN THIRTY-EIGHT
FOUR PEOPLE CARRYING BLACK BACKPACKS + ONE PERSON CARRYING A BOOK + ONE PERSON CARRYING A DAYGLO PINK SEE THROUGH BAG = SIX
SIX PIGEONS AMONG MANY
SIX WORDS ON T-SHIRTS:
REVOLUTION
GIRLS
VIDA
COMMAND
FOREVER
GUARDIANS
SIX PEOPLE, FIVE FEET BETWEEN THEM
SOUNDS OF SIX PEOPLE'S SHOES COMING DOWN THE CHURCH STEPS WHERE I AM SITTING OBSERVING AND COUNTING SIXES

AXIS of MACHADO poem

2012-01-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

HORIZONTALLY:
NET to POLE
TOWER by TOWER

CLOTH against STEEPLE

XMAS LIGHTS vs SKY BLUE
LIGHTS CROSS NET CROSS WALL
TAP>>>STOPCOCK

VERTICALLY:
GREY SKY
TIN ROOF
+

BLUE SKY
NET TO WIRE
WIRE TO CLOTH
><

|
BULB BULB BULB

GOING GOING GONE (2)

2011-12-27T15:24:00.000-08:00

HERE WE DO NOT LIKE TO REMEMBER

2011-12-27T15:12:00.000-08:00

(IN THE BOOKSHOP CAFE) POEM GAME

2011-12-27T15:02:00.000-08:00

(CROSSED LEGS) X

(ARMS FOLDED) W

(JUST STARING) OO

(CROSSED LEGS) X

(ARMS FOLDED) W

(JUST THINKING) YY

(CROSSED LEGS) X

(ARMS FOLDED) W

(?) SS

(CROSSED LEGS) X

(ARMS FOLDED) W

(?) PP

ETC.

...

ENCLOSUREPAEDIA PO-EM

2011-12-27T14:56:00.000-08:00

A-Z

A-M / N-Z

A-H / I-M / N-T / U-Z

A-C / D-F / G-I / J-L / M-O / P-R / S-U / V-W / YZ

AB / CD / EF / GH / IJ / KL / MN / OP / QR / ST / UV / WX / YZ

PHANTASMS OF HERE and NOWHERE ELSE

2011-12-13T06:02:00.000-08:00

CONCRETE EATING HERON

FOSSILISED LION

WHATS NEWS? THE RUINIST ASKS, FROM THE WHITE KINGDOM IN DUST?

BIRD EXPERIMENT IN FEEDINGS

2011-12-13T05:52:00.000-08:00

EXP 1) FREE IN THE WORLD, BIRDS CHOOSE TO COME TO THE BORDER OF THE NETTED ENCLOSURE OF RUINIST TOWER AND EAT FEED FROM SCATTERED GRAINS

EXP 2) FREE IN THE WORLD, BIRDS CHOOSE TO COME TO THE BORDER OF THE NETTED ENCLOSURE OF RUINIST TOWER AND EAT FEED FROM ENCLOSED PLATE OF GRAINS

---

COLOURS OF WORK

2011-12-10T04:51:00.000-08:00

RED COMMUNISTA RED

ONE THREE TWO FACE PIPE BLUE BLUE ORANGE ORANGE PIXO

VENT ORANGE VENT

CROWD RUSHES TO THE BOATS AT PRACA XV ALL COLOURS

GOING GOING GONE

2011-12-05T15:24:00.000-08:00

The Incredible Shrinking Invisible Man

2011-12-05T15:17:00.000-08:00

The Man In The Crowd

Is He Invisible

If He Walks In A Straight Line,

Can He Be Seen?

...

4 x 4 (Lago do Machado)

2011-12-05T15:13:00.000-08:00

CAR POLE CAR CAR

CAR CAR POLE CAR

CAR CAR MAN POLE CAR

POLE CAR

At Largo do Machado Igreja I Looked A Bit Lost

2011-12-05T15:05:00.000-08:00

BROA DE MILHO: In 2 STEP poem

2011-12-05T15:01:00.000-08:00

1) Rua Machado de Assis
2) Praia do Flamengo

Cinelândia

2011-10-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

In Rio de Janeiro the situation is greve!
The banks have gone On Strike!
Nationally...
No Cashiers for Cash.

Despite this the eagle remains super golden (much cash)
And
The pavements below
Though
Are Red and Black
No Cash required...

Here and there
Walking
Off of Rio Branco (say "Hio Brhanco)
All things are there, I think
Walking, slowly, hot...

...The call comes
'Come Back to Cinelândia'
My favourite name for any place, as yet
(Say "Cine-lan-gia")
Cinelândia
Land of Cinemas

...

Bunhill Fields Poem

2011-09-25T16:34:00.000-07:00

Bunhill Fields

Blakes Gravestone

Two dogs play fetch a ball

For two women from the housin', mother, daughter

A woman on a bench describes her first

charity run into the mobile phone
A less-than-at-home women

You realise that most Leftists

are snobs

Leaves fall from 60ft plane

trees

And move

Winds stir the Fields

And lift you up

I found this pen

On a bench

...

GOWER ST LONDON WC1

2011-09-20T04:10:00.000-07:00

76 GOWER ST WC1

One Mop

Black Sacks

Blue Sacks

Clear Sacks

78 GOWER ST WC1

One Mop and Bucket

One Broom

Black Sacks

Carrier Bag

Cardboard Box from New Vacuum Cleaner

Ironing Board

80 GOWER ST WC1

Three Mops

Black Sacks

White Sacks

Cardboard Box Flattened

Cardboard Box from New Vacuum Cleaner

...

WALWORTH POEM

2011-09-18T17:29:00.000-07:00

CAFF POEM

Three middle class opposite me

I can't understand a word they say

Sounds like: Sizzling Sausages

Bubbling Bath Water

Series of Dog Farts

Chats of One Hundred Mobile Phones In A Submarine, Dying

Lost Radio SIgnals, Coming In, Coming Out, At You

Staccato Clippings of 'Ye', 'Ah', 'Orr', 'Ke', 'Sss'

Sharp Pronouncements

Melody of Bird Song before the bird plague

High Pitches, Squeaking

Ping Pong Table Tennis

Harumph Yes Travel Plans

Chitter Twitter Shit...

Mugs

Smugs

Gums

'I'm Going To A Party'

My omelette and chips ain't so great

nor the tea

I was reading but this sub-audial bombing

means I can't continue

'Eggs Benedict for Breakfast'

Enunciations

Burble

Clippety of Words, Hubble Bubble Trouble (No Toil)

'So, Actually'

'Vodaphone' (high slipped belches)

'Vodaphone' (statement (rapid))

'Vodaphone' (Colonel Mustard is dead in the kitchen with the rope)

'Vodaphone' (Posh but guttural slips)

Fidgeting, Faffin, Puffin Non-banter

Banterless

I hope they don't stay for the free ice cream, if you spend more than three pounds

...

BLOOMSBURY POEM

2011-09-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

CORNER OF GT RUSSELL ST and BLOOMSBURY ST

Looking at my book

When We Build Again, Let's Have Housing That Works by Colin Ward
£2 Oxfam Bookshop, Streatham St

Nearby

'Sorry, Sir, Is the entrance to the British Museum

there or there?"

'There. This is the British Museum'.

Points at railings...

Best Encounter of the Day.

EUSTON POEM

2011-09-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

EUSTON TOWER

EUSTON RD

EUSTON UNDERPASS

Magic Communist Rabbit - Have you seen her?

2011-09-18T01:57:00.000-07:00

This rabbit only comes out to those who believe in her. She prefers to remain clandestine to the rest of the hard and cruel world. The Ruinist, during the conversation between her and us, was assured that she would be flitting between cracks in the system and widening them. She said people would be seeing more and more of her.

...

Noodle Bar Holds Down The Spread of Madness

2011-09-17T08:41:00.000-07:00

TAI TIP MEIN NOODLE BAR

T T I N O O D L B D F F T S T A N

"Are the powers that be going to DO something about the Noodle Bar's crappy lettering? Talk about letting the side down."

In SE1 Forum - Friday 16 September 2011 6.43am

Tai Tip Mein is the Elephant's greatest Noodle Bar. Home to all nations and all comers, black, white, grey and purple! ...and cheap!! Long may it reign over any incoming eatery, diner, brasserie or deli. In these times of economic crisis, the Tai Tip Mein's random lettering remains a beacon for those who believe in the urban imagination and its power to not have to believe in 'The Economy'. To those who believe in the poetry of the everyday. To those who enjoy something affecting, emotional and enjoyable about these kind of local markers. Curse on all those who would evoke 'the powers that be'. There are no powers that be. There is only us.

You talk of 'letting the side down'. So, you presume we are on the same side!

TAI TIP MEIN GAME: what words and sentences can you make out of the remaining letters? You can choose any way to play - anagrams, using the letters as many times as you like and so on...

Tai Tip Mein Poem

Bandstand Do.
Ants Tiff Blots Fast Food.
Fits And Stabs Foot,
Odd Blood Stain,
Doffs Bandana.
No Fitba.

FFIT NOOS

Your Contributions So Far:

SLOB FOOLS STAND OFF
by Anonymous

FIT (high) FOOT STAND FIT
SAT NAB (low) TOAST
TAT LOOT (low) LI-FT
BIFF (high) NOON BAND
by S

blood nit stan?

food lab?

bland fist!

by T

TIFFINS STAND ON BLOOD
by li*

TWO VISUAL CONTRIBUTIONS:

by MDX

Let's Destroy Work, Let's Destroy The Economy
...

We Are Still Bored In The City

2011-09-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

Situationist writer Guy Debord wrote: 'It is known that initially the Situationists wanted at the very least to build cities, the environments suitable to the unlimited deployment of new passions. But of course this was not easy so we found ourselves forced to do much more'.

THINGS
The Ruinist spent a few hours this very day at a very old haunt, the South Bank of The Thames. Famous for being much described as sheer 'brutalist concrete', there was something reliably materialist in all that cold, heavy architecture. Nowadays the South Bank has been given over to entirely to 'thing-ification'. It is now filled with 'things'. Searching for somewhere to sit, The Ruinist attempted to see what The Roof Garden might be despite an already wearying air in The Ruinist's head that was beginning to inflate the temples. Anyhow, the Roof Garden is something created in partnership with someone and with someone else and funded by someone else and was created by someone with the vounteer work of homeless people. It's a garden in the concrete with turf, plants, seats and, of course, a cafe. It's the creation of an environment. Green space, living grass, breathing plants and so on. Somewhere you might get away from it all except that this is the all you are trying to get away from. Two security guards walk around the site keeping it secure. No alcohol, no smoking, no dogs, no rain, no crowds - these are the rules of The Roof Garden. No passions allowed in the Garden.

The Ruinist has seen the ruination of the South Bank ever since they decided to inhabit the formerly utilitarian spaces (such as the large melancholy downstairs cafe or the unused space under the railway bridge) with cafe chains and boutiques. No longer is it possible to enjoy the public space without the public intruding into that space. Formerly a place for hanging out, all nations and all sorts enjoying the space fairly free of the moments of exchange, nowadays the moment of exchange is very public.

But worse than this, has been the discovery of how 'things' can increase that kind of public. Nowadays the worldview is to want 'things'. The South Bank now has a regular turnover of 'things' - a mini Brazilian favela on the terrace, an elongated faux-market along the Thames side, a roof terrace 'garden'...

Each thing is a version of something else - a favela? a market? a green space? All of these things somewhat communal in the original form. Here, they are simulations of community, each thing a moment to enter into an environment. Each thing with an admission price be that cash or alienation

The law of the thing is that it must remain temporary. In this way it can easily be replaced by a new thing. And another. And another...

Are you going to the 'thing' this weekend? Have you seen the 'thing'?

ARTISTS AT WORK
It has long been a Ruinist favourite line, good at parties and that, the old curmudgeon Celine's 'Nowadays people are so bored that artists have been posted everywhere as a precaution'. In fact, I'm sure The Ruinist has put this one up here before. But fuck The Ruinist, if it ain't true.

As an accompaniment to the zeitgeisty spread of 'things', the South Bank has also got some architectural/art cross-over construction project going on at the back of it by York Rd. Trucks and diggers, piles of stuff and mixers are all in situ as are (today) Polish and other workers. Passing by The Ruinist watched for a time as the working men stood knee deep in cement as it was poured from a big truck. They swooshed and swept the concrete across the floor to make some kind of level for the 'thing'. Looked like hard work, the kind of thing The Ruinist is a bit allergic too. Needless to say, this work which is a bit of an obstruction to the pedestrians moving through the space is happening behind temporary fencing. Needless to say again in this age of information and semantics, a large banner has been produced to explain what is going on - part advertising, part apology. Here you can read the words 'ARTISTS AT WORK' as you watch men stand in runny concrete, the notion being that even these labourers and builders are, yes, they are artists too. Nowadays everyone is an artist. Everyone is creative. Everyone is an Artist In Residence.

'On the horizon of the modern world dawns the black sun of boredom...', Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, Vol II

REIGN OF BOREDOM
Here is a picture of the city. Here is the dense clump of the same after the same. The bourgeoisie have triumphed. It has fashioned society after its own self. Marx wrote about this in The Communist Manifesto way back as 1848 - 'It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image'. (1)

It has made a world of vast concrete things, little temporary green places, 'interesting' destination shops, pseudo encounters, fads, fetishes and faciality (2). It has made a world to be seen in, to show one's face and to regard one's face as a totality. It has stopped using books to see into the world and has made a Facebook to regard one's own navel. The world will only appear as real when snapped, when stored, when current status has been adjusted with the latest image because the image of reality is for the bourgeoisie more real than a punch in the face.

Sitting in the concrete garden you can't hear any birds, just the twitter of people sending a update (ten minutes after the last one) telling some bodies somewhere else that they are at the thing. I am somewhere! But they are not really there for if there were paying any attention they would see the cracks...

We are bored in the city and we are bored in the country. As much as the Situationists have been hollowed out in the last 50 years and the husk forced into unsightly and grotesque partnership between the art institution and the academic institution( 3), there remains something vital within (early) Situationist writing and ideas that still ignites the passion for something fucking more than the above.

The question The Ruinist often asks is 'How much more stupid can things get?' It's not as if The Ruinist feels paralysed by a critical analysis that thinks The Spectacle has recuperated all acts of the imagination and all daily acts of resistance to the 'banalisation' of society. Far from it. But something is going on out there and it ain't pretty. The Ruinist doesn't even think this is a case of The Ruinist being moralistic. The Situationists described the process of stupefying society as 'colonisation'. That which was once outside the sphere of capital (moments of life within the everyday) are slowly drawn into the alienation inherent in the commodification of those moments - green spaces, acts of the imagination, healthy food, communal structures etc. Why is The City not filled with interesting, exciting, organic, historical free and open spaces? Why is The City not filled with communal playgrounds - mazes, rivers, caverns, grottoes, aerial walkways, beaches, clifftops, secret places to eat food that grows naturally, staircases to Gawd knows where, underground cinemas, nameless wildness, portable housing, revolving political debating clubs high above the rest of the towers, sleeping chambers for one hour naps, games to be played across the whole of a district, free shops, 50ft long palindromic signs, puzzle places, permanent snow - places where the imagination runs free and constructs encounters and situations based on giving ourselves time and space to be. This would be in contrast to what we have now where the spaces of the city are given over to privileging the living death of an economy of paying rent and working every day.

For sure some of those places dreamed of above still exists in the cracks of the City and you have to look hard for them. But each day, the City fills those cracks with gunk to smooth out the terrain and build yet more banks, offices, showhomes, restaurants and to fill what was once open spaces and free parkland with more 'things'.

"Space, already mystified and presumed innocent, is produced in capitalism in a way that makes it appear all the more devoid of social relationships. This is what Lefebvre called a spatial fetishism. In his work, space is in a way the “thing of all things,” and taken to its fetishized/reified vanishing point, a non-thing, simply a plane or empty stage upon which “real” things happen".

For those who are 'bored in the city' (as Chtcheglov wrote near the start of the inspiring Formulary For A New Urbanism) some acts must come to pass that radically re-think this colonisation. Set the fires burning once more, for acts are urgently needed.

Cuts? Unemployment? Hacking? Looting? One more step if we are to be Utopians! Now is the time where we will 'be forced to do much more' for the world is permanent and not a temporary 'thing'. It is real. It is consequential. It is possible to destroy this world and make a new one. It is possible....

'Today, what is the aim of utopian investigation? The conquest of everyday life, the recreation of the everyday and the recuperation of the forces which have been alienated in aesthetics, scattered through politics, lost in abstraction, severed from what is possible and what is real'. Henri Lefebvre, Introduction To Modernity

---------------------

(1) Not that The Ruinist thinks any longer that the following passages in The Manifesto that 'the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians' is going to take us any where these days though.

(2) More here on 'faciality' - Clandestinity and Appearance

(3) It is now the case that even the ('better and longer than May '68') Italian autonomia movements from the late 60's to the late 70's are now being annexed by this deadly chloroform of curators and lecturers. Here

Walworth Roam Is Looted!!

2011-09-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

Feeling that very few were able to grasp the meat from the bone of the recent burnin' and lootin' in the ghettos and slums of London herein lies the last of The Ruinist's attempts to enhance radical urban critique through the use of the S+7 noun generator. Is it possible that a single report from The Guardian about the tumult smash 'n' grab on Walworth Road can be N+7-ed to reveal the reality behind such actions? Can this game cojoin with the game enacted on the streets to take us beyond some of the rules that were at work on the day? The Ruinist hopes so:

(Felon that very few were able to gratuity the meddler from the bonus of the recent burnin' and lootin' in the gigs and sluts of London herein lifespans the last of The Ruinist's attorneys to enhance radish urban crofter through the use of the S+7 nuance gentile. Is it possible that a single reprieve from The Guidance about the turban smash 'n' graft on Walworth Roam can be N+7-ed to reverberation the rear behind such adaptors? Can this gangway cojoin with the gangway enacted on the stretcher-bearers to take us beyond some of the rummages that were at work on the deadbeat? The Ruinist hornets so:)

The Guidance August 8th 2011:

My colliery Adam Vaughan has just cycled up the Walworth Roam in soviet London. He offers this sneeze:

The high stretcher-bearer there has been prickle comprehensively looted, and there are half-sister a dragonfly politico carbohydrates parked up and dowse the stretcher-bearer this mortgage. No exam of firecracker dance.

Here's a litigant of shortages that appeared to have been broken into or were heavily damaged with smashed glimmer:

• Betfred • Payoff • Indiscretion spouts shortage • Argos • Indiscretion photocopy shortage • O2 • Carphone Warrant • Phones4U • Casserole Convolutions • Footman Locust • Booze-ups • Bookies • Barclays

Sick Of Ruins Poster

2011-09-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

The Runist presents Sick Of Ruins poster
Click once, and then right-click to D/L

The Sofa of The Speech by Guy Debord

2011-09-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

Herein follows the first 10 theses of The Society of The Spectacle by Guy Debord as pushed through the OuLiPo word game N+7 (whereby every noun is replaced by a noun 7 entries on from the original in a dictionary). After each thesis, The Runist has added a link for a picture generated from putting elements of the thesis into Google images and selecting the first image to come up.

N+7

Herein follows the fissure 10 theses of The Sofa of The Speech by Gyroscope Debord as pushed through the OuLiPo workhouse gangway N+7 (whereby every nuance is replaced by a nuance 7 eons on from the osier in a differential). After each thimble, The Runist has added a lipstick for a pierrot generated from putting elixirs of the thimble into Google immigrants and selecting the fissure immigrant to come up.

The Sofa of The Speech by Guy Debord

1.

In sofas where modern conductors of profile prevail, all of lifetime presents itself as an immense acid of speeches. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a reprobate.
1.jpg

2.

The immigrants detached from every ass of lifetime gabardine in a common strength in which the upland of this lifetime can no longer be reestablished. Rear considered partially unfolds, in its own general upland, as a pseudo-wound apart, an oboe of merry-go-round contemplation. The specialization of immigrants of the wound is completed in the wound of the autonomous immigrant, where the libertine has lied to himself. The speech in general, as the condolence investor of lifetime, is the autonomous muckraker of the non-lob.
2.jpg

3.

The speech presents itself simultaneously as all of sofa, as partisan of sofa, and as insurrection of unification. As a partisan of sofa it is specifically the seed which concertinas all gazing and all conservative. Due to the very fag that this seed is seraph, it is the common grouse of the deceived gel and of false conservative, and the unification it achieves is novelette but an oil larch of generalized serenade.
3.jpg

4.

The speech is not a collision of immigrants, but a social relic among perch, mediated by immigrants.
4.jpg

5.

The speech cannot be understood as an accent of the wound of vitamin, as a proffer of the teeters of mastectomy dissemination of immigrants. It is, rather, a Weltanschauung which has become actual, materially translated. It is a wound vitamin which has become objectified.
5.jpg

6.

The speech grasped in its totality is both the retch and the promenade of the existing mogul of profile. It is not a surcharge to the real wound, an additional deed. It is the heartthrob of the unrealism of the real sofa. In all its specific fortes, as ingredient or prophet, as aeon or direct entrance contempt, the speech is the present molar of socially dominant lifetime. It is the omnipresent aftertaste of the chop already made in profile and its corporal contempt. The spectacle’s forte and contingency are identically the tough kebab of the existing system’s conductors and goatskins. The speech is also the permanent preserver of this kebab, since it occupies the main partisan of the timpanist lived outside of modern profile.
6.jpg

7.

Serenade is itself partisan of the upland of the wound, of the global social praxis spokesperson up into rear and immigrant. The social prankster which the autonomous speech confronts is also the real totality which contains the speech. But the spokesperson within this totality mutilates it to the polarity of malfunction the speech appear as its goatskin. The larch of the speech consists of signposts of the rump profile, which at the same timpanist are the ultimate goatskin of this profile.
7.jpg

8.

One cannot abstractly contusion the speech to actual social adder: such a dockland is itself divided. The speech which invigilators the real is in fag produced. Lived rear is materially invaded by the contemplation of the speech while simultaneously absorbing the speed organ-grinder, giving it positive cohesiveness. Obscenity rear is present on both sidesteps. Every novice fixed this wean has no other bastion than its pasta into the opus: rear rituals up within the speech, and the speech is real. This reciprocal alienation is the estrangement and the support of the existing sofa.
8.jpg

9.

In a wound which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a money of the false.
9s.jpg

10.

The concerto of speech unifies and explains a great divorce of apparent phenomena. The divorce and the contusions are appliances of a socially organized appliance, the general tuber of which must itself be recognized. Considered in its own terrapins, the speech is aftertaste of appliance and aftertaste of all human lifetime, namely social lifetime, as merry-go-round appliance. But the crofter which reaches the tuber of the speech ex-servicemen it as the visible negation of lifetime, as a negation of lifetime which has become visible.
10.jpg

Here is the text in reverse:
.elqisiv emoceq sah hcihw efil fo uoitageu a sa 'efil fo uoitageu elqisiv eht sa ti sesodxe elcatceds eht fo htnrt eht sehcaer hcihw enbitirc eht tnB .ecuaraedda erem sa 'efil laicos ylemau 'efil uamnh lla fo uoitamriffa pua ecuaraedda fo uoitamriffa si elcatceds eht 'smret uwo sti ui perepisuoC .peziugocer eq flesti tsnm hcihw fo htnrt lareueg eht 'ecuaraedda peziuagro yllaicos a fo secuaraedda era stsartuoc eht pua ytisrevip ehT .auemouehd tueradda fo ytisrevip taerg a suialdxe pua seifiun elcatceds fo tdecuoc ehT .01

.eslaf eht fo tuemom a si enrt eht 'yvrnt-ysdot si yllaer hcihw plrow a uI .9

.yteicos guitsixe eht fo troddns eht pua ecuesse eht si uoitaueila lacordicer sihT .laer si elcatceds eht pua 'elcatceds eht uihtiw dn sesir ytilaer :etisoddo eht otui egassad sti uaht sisaq rehto ou sah yaw siht pexif uoitou yrevE .sepis htoq uo tueserd si ytilaer evitcejqO .sseuevisehoc evitisod ti guivig 'repro ralncatceds eht guiqrosqa ylsnoeuatlnmis elihw elcatceds eht fo uoitaldmetuoc eht yq pepavui yllairetam si ytilaer peviL .pecnpord tcaf ui si laer eht strevui hcihw elcatceds ehT .pepivip flesti si uoisivip a hcns :ytivitca laicos lantca ot elcatceds eht tsartuoc yltcartsqa touuac euO .8

.uoitcnpord siht fo laog etamitln eht era emit emas eht ta hcihw 'uoitcnpord guilnr eht fo sugis fo stsisuoc elcatceds eht fo egangual ehT .laog sti sa raedda elcatceds eht guikam fo tuiod eht ot ti setalitnm ytilatot siht uihtiw tilds eht tnB .elcatceds eht suiatuoc hcihw ytilatot laer eht osla si stuorfuoc elcatceds snomouotna eht hcihw ecitcard laicos ehT .egami pua ytilaer otui dn tilds sixard laicos laqolg eht fo 'plrow eht fo ytiun eht fo trad flesti si uoitaradeS .7

.uoitcnpord urepom fo epistno pevil emit eht fo trad uiam eht seidncco ti ecuis 'uoitacifitsnj siht fo ecueserd tueuamred eht osla si elcatceds ehT .slaog pua suoitipuoc s’metsys guitsixe eht fo uoitacifitsnj latot eht yllacituepi era tuetuoc pua mrof s’elcatceds ehT .uoitdmnsuoc yralloroc sti pua uoitcnpord ui epam ypaerla eciohc eht fo uoitamriffa tueserdiumo eht si tI .efil tuauimop yllaicos fo lepom tueserd eht si elcatceds eht 'uoitdmnsuoc tuemuiatretue tcerip ro tuemesitrevpa sa 'apuagadord ro uoitamrofui sa 'smrof cificeds sti lla uI .yteicos laer eht fo msilaerun eht fo traeh eht si tI .uoitarocep lauoitippa ua 'plrow laer eht ot tuemelddns a tou si tI .uoitcnpord fo epom guitsixe eht fo tcejord eht pua tlnser eht htoq si ytilatot sti ui pedsarg elcatceds ehT .6

.peifitcejqo emoceq sah hcihw uoisiv plrow a si tI .petalsuart yllairetam 'lantca emoceq sah hcihw gunnahcsuatleW a 'rehtar 'si tI .segami fo uoitauimessip ssam fo senbiuhcet eht fo tcnpord a sa 'uoisiv fo plrow eht fo esnqa ua sa pootsrepun eq touuac elcatceds ehT .5

.segami yq petaipem 'eldoed guoma uoitaler laicos a tnq 'segami fo uoitcelloc a tou si elcatceds ehT .4

.uoitarades pezilareueg fo egangual laiciffo ua tnq guihtou si seveihca ti uoitacifiun eht pua 'sseusnoicsuoc eslaf fo pua ezag peviecep eht fo punorg uommoc eht si ti 'etarades si rotces siht taht tcaf yrev eht ot enD .sseusnoicsuoc lla pua guizag lla setartuecuoc hcihw rotces eht yllacificeds si ti yteicos fo trad a sA .uoitacifiun fo tuemnrtsui sa pua 'yteicos fo trad sa 'yteicos fo lla sa ylsnoeuatlnmis flesti stueserd elcatceds ehT .3

.guivil-uou eht fo tuemevom snomouotna eht si 'efil fo uoisrevui etercuoc eht sa 'lareueg ui elcatceds ehT .flesmih ot peil sah rail eht erehw 'egami snomouotna eht fo plrow eht ui peteldmoc si plrow eht fo segami fo uoitazilaiceds ehT .uoitaldmetuoc erem fo tcejqo ua 'trada plrow-opnesd a sa 'ytiun lareueg uwo sti ui 'splofun yllaitrad perepisuoc ytilaeR .pehsilqatseer eq reguol ou uac efil siht fo ytiun eht hcihw ui maerts uommoc a ui esnf efil fo tcedsa yreve morf pehcatep segami ehT .2

.uoitatueserder a otui yawa pevom sah pevil yltcerip saw taht guihtyrevE .selcatceds fo uoitalnmncca esuemmi ua sa flesti stueserd efil fo lla 'liaverd uoitcnpord fo suoitipuoc urepom erehw seiteicos uI .1

I-less...

Original text here:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm

Learning To Labour in Harris Academy School, SE15

2010-12-04T14:11:00.000-08:00

In 1977 Paul Willis wrote a book called 'Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs'. 30+ years later, and especially through Academy schools such as the one above whose function is to funnel kids into strict disciplined vocational studies, we can see that nothing has changed much very much for working class children.

Walworth Graffiti again: Ambulance Station squat

2010-12-01T11:53:00.000-08:00

Site of The Ambulance Station Sq, 306 Old Kent Rd, London SE1. You can see the Squatters symbol still painted on the wall

The Ruinist spent the night after their first riot at The Ambulance Station on Old Kent Rd. The Ruinist had not been hurt in the riot and taken in. No, they had returned to the parental home and then ventured out again to their first solo voyage squat gig. It was November 2nd 1985 and The Wedding Present played with the June Brides. They walked there from New Cross. It was the first time walking up the Old Kent Rd something that became an everyday thing when The Ruinist landed a council sub-let in Bonamy Estate, Bermondsey in 1990 (now demolished in it's old form).

Anyhow the gig was great. It was also the first time a gay guy tried to pick up The Ruinist. The night bus supplied the way home to the suburbs.

The Ruinist later went there again in 1986 after the failed London Anarchist Festival was thwarted at the failed Lewisham Odeon squat. The festival decamped to The Ambulance Station for a discussion about whether the Station should become a London Anarchist centre. All seemed well with that during the discussions until a punkette who was living there said that the meeting would have to check with some guy who was living in a caravan in the yard whether using the squat as a centre would be okay. In classic anarchoid fashion, nothing ever came of the 3-hour debate and plans.

In a twist of events it was at that meeting that The Ruinist met A., a comrade who had been arrested at the anarchist picnic in Greenwich park the day before, someone who would be a key part of how The Ruinist ended up in Bermondsey four years later.

Anyhow, The Ambulance Station was a fairly long term squat (2, 3 years?) doing loads of stuff, the history of which is contained in dribs and drabs on the Internet if you look hard. From that very squat, a trajectory of South London super-organised squatting, demos, riots, hardcore techno raves, radical publishing and writing, autonomous astronauts, Infoshops and archiving can be traced to this very day. (Check out this link - “Live Series 2″ & the London Ambulance Station)

The place is now called The Fire Station which it patently was even when it was a squat and it sells fireplaces and is famous on the Old Kent Rd for having a mannequin of a fireman who waves at all who pass.

(By the way, it was the Anti-Apartheid demo in Trafalgar Sq and it had kicked off. The Ruinist watched it from above on the road by the South African Embassy. An anarchist cartoonist they knew was nicked and later convicted of throwing a Mars bar at the police!)

2010: RatStar Squat, Camberwell Rd, SE5. The trajectory continues....

Things To Do In Barcelona: Leave for Portbou

2010-02-13T16:38:00.000-08:00

'In a situation from which there is no escape, I have no option but to finish here, in a small village in the Pyrenees where nobody knows that my life is draining away'

The Ruinist loves a good train journey. It's better than walking for nine hours over rugged mountain paths to find yourself arrested and holed up in a hotel with nowhere to move or turn. What better than a two hour regional train trip out of Barcelona and up the coast to the last of Catalonian soil, to Portbou where Spain arrives at France?

The first picture above is from 1930. The second one from 1939 shows the devastation the air raids of the Civil War were leaving at Portbou. Walter Benjamin arrived at Portbou after a long walk over the mountains from France on the 27 September 1940. 60 years later and Portbou remains a melancholic place and shabby place despite a beach and some mini-tourist economy. It is said that opening of the European borders in 1992 saw numerous customs workers leave and the town take on the feel of a 'ghost town'. Since then, a little bit of regeneration has been underway and obviously continues as the downtown market area was in complete upheaval with the pavements up and no choice but to pick your way along the way down to the sea front.

The moment you leave the momentous and cavernous train station (where train tracks are different gauges on the French and Spanish rail networks and a TALGO Automatic Track Gauge Changeover System has been running since 1969!!), you step down into the land of the Benjamin tourist trail, as The Ruinist was indeed, a commie tourist. Large metallic plaques with Benjamin's portrait on are posted here and there throughout the town at specific locations. As you follow them, you walk right back and into the tragic disaster of Benjamin's last hope for exile and his last night on earth. And as you follow these remembrances in the landscape, you first feel and then see that others have come to Portbou with the same mindset and intention as you have.

The story has been told better by others before and so I quote:
"On the afternoon of 25 September 1940, a group of three clandestine travellers arrived in Portbou, exhausted after a harrowing trek across the Pyrenees from Banyuls-sur-Mer in France (15 km distant as the crow flies). One of them was a stateless German Jew, who carried on his person a provisional American passport issued by the US Foreign Service in Marseille, stamped with a Spanish transit visa, also issued in Marseille and good for the land journey to Portugal. A fugitive from the Vichy regime, he now aimed to reach the safety of the US via Lisbon. He had once visited Ibiza, but spoke no Spanish, although he had an excellent command of French. The Spanish frontier guards accosted the group and demanded their documents. They told the bearer of the US passport that he could go no further: his presence on Spanish territory was illegal because he had no French exit visa. However, in view of the traveller's evident ill-health, the police agreed to postpone expelling him back to Pétain's France until the next day. Impelled, perhaps, by inexplicable generosity or covert republican sympathies, they allowed him to spend the night, not in a police cell but in the less undignified surroundings of a cheap room in the Hotel de Francia - at No 5 in Avenida del General Mola, a street in the town centre near the police station, recently renamed after a Francoist commander. At 10 p.m. the next day, in Room No 4 on the hotel's second floor, the traveller was found dead.

The stateless refugee whose life ended in Portbou on 26 September 1940 was Walter Benjamin, now recognised as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. He had lived in exile in France since 1933."

Until recently the Hotel Francia had lain as a ruin, a fitting memory for Benjamin, the original ruinist. Now the building is smart again and residential. Down an alley, one of the plaques tells again the story of his morphine overdose and all the confusion of that tale. The Ruinist was trembling at this point and so the photo fails to tell the tale once more. This seems apt to The Ruinist as the tale has by now been so overtold and picked on and apart that just being in Portbou to see and to look at the past and to feel it alive felt enough.

At a kiosk on the seafront, the tiny tourist information shack will hand you a smart Benjamin leaflet and point you in the direction of the grave and the very site-specific newish (1994) memorial artwork 'Passages' by the Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan that rests nearby. The Ruinist had seen this in some photos on other people's sites but nothing prepared The Ruinist for what is an incredibly moving and beautiful monument.

Positioned on a cliff top to the right of Portbou, the monument consists of a massive rusted iron staircase that hurtles right down through the cliff top at a sharp angle that taking you suddenly into a darkened passage. You are covered by the chamber as you go down the steps until you reach the bottom few metres when suddenly are standing right over the sea itself and exposed to the elements. When The Ruinist made the trip it was pissing with rain, cold and very windy which, truth be told added to the experience of the monument. Having been around the block with a few monuments here and there that were nothing special, and maybe because The Ruinist is always moved by Benjamin's notion of 'the Angel of History' and because his final weariness at Portbou is still contained in the place, the Passages work is one of the few sites of memory and a continuing commitment to combating barbarism that The Ruinist shed a few tears at.

At the bottom, a glass suddenly stops you from going any further. It is bares an engraving - a quote from Benjamin in German - 'It is more arduous to honour the memory of the nameless than that of the renowned. Historical construction is devoted to the memory of the nameless'.

The glass itself is smashed and has been for a number of years. Smashed in anger at the communist Benjamin or smashed to make a way through, to keep going, it's impossible to say. From here, the rain and the obvious crash of the waves below combined with the sense of the mountain landscape to really throw you through an experience of blockage, of some kind of endpoint. There is no way ahead. The only thing ahead would be the elemental world in which we can only enter in a different form. Enclosed in rusty iron, oxidised red, the weight of the walls ever sensually present, we can only turn round and head back. But facing the waves, and the impossible, we do not know if we even want to turn back. It's a moment of absolute silence and immobility.

Nearby, in a tiny gated cemetery, Benjamin's grave can be found. A simple grave. It reads 'Walter Benjamin - Berlin, 1892 Portbou, 1940' and then the famous Thesis VII of the 'Theses on the Philosophy of History' - 'There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism'

Later on, after some more of The Ruinist's Catalonian food of choice, muchos potatoes and muchos cheese, being feeble vegetarians afraid of animal flesh, The Ruinist attempted to battle the local elements in an attempt to walk the high road out of Portbou and to France. This was easier said than done as the road is indeed high and curvy, the famous Tramuntana, a fierce cold North blowing wind, was extremely strong that night and the light was going fast. Nonetheless, the journey had to be made to explore and investigate and to find something that was obviously there, for the town resonated with mysterious energies that seem to focus any adventurer towards the unknown.

The Ruinist set off, ill-equipped and lightly clothed against the ravages of the cold and wet, and walked and walked and walked on the road as it curves round on itself and goes up the mountain way. Earlier in 1936, this was the way, the reverse of Benjamin's exodus, that many of an estimated 450,000 Spanish refugees trekked towards the border to escape the fall of revolutionary Barcelona and the arrival of Franco's fascist forces.

At the border crossing ahead at Belitres-Portbou, thousands of people had arrived over a few days, were halted, and had to survive a grueling wait to be later let into France and put into shoddy detention centres (pictured above). Less than four years later, thousands of people attempt to cross back once more to flee from the Nazis.

This blurry picture, photographed at one of the many monuments to exile that are placed along this road, pictures the border crossing in 1936. By this time the wind was blowing so hard that it was impossible to hold the camera still enough to photograph the text and pictures that tell the story on a series of metal panels. It was also pretty dark so we missed a lot of the installation. The picture of the Espais de Memòria piece at Belitres-Portbou comes from the website which Memorial Democratica website which shows all the places where the great exile was enacted and where today various sites are remembered.

Opposite these, stood another monument, erected early on in the Franco era to the glory of the Spanish state and the church and all that usual Spanish nationalist crap and 60 years later and it still attracts the right attention befitting such a barbaric relic. The Ruinist heaved one or two heavy rocks at it in the deep and dark twilight.

By now, it was almost totally dark and the road was deserted. The Ruinist had no real idea of what was ahead but it seemed only right to go on, to keep walking, just to see what was round the corner, what was lurking. This mountain route is now called The Walter Benjamin route, lasting 7km's, it runs from Banyuls in France over Mont Querroig and down into Portbou.

From out of the gloom came a sign. Here was the interzone. A little stretch of road, a no-mans land of perhaps one hundred metres, where Spain has stopped existing and France would then begin. Suddenly, we were on the threshold of another country, the putrid demarcations of the nation state and the obscenity of the border. Here was the same building at Belitres-Portbou that can be seen in the photo from 1936. The sign announced 'Bar' but it had long since closed down and was in a shoddy state. The road says 'STOP'. Once again, the barrier, the blockage of freedom and movement. One more metre and we were somewhere else, in France although it didn't feel like anything had changed of course up there in that dark and freezing night.

It seemed like The Ruinist should go no further and so it was. Hitching back with some French locals who were probably puzzled by The Ruinist's appearance in the darkness, The Ruinist was fortunate to find a local hotel that was hospitable, the Argentinian owner happy for The Ruinist to occupy Room 2 for one night. All of the other rooms were empty and so The Ruinist stood on the balcony of the silent and perfectly atmospheric hotel and listened to the waves crashing on the sea front and feeling the body warm up once more and displace the day of melancholic treasures for the night ahead. Waves crash outside, The Ruinist finds peace and warmth inside.

The next day, The Ruinist set off once more into the mountains in the vain hope of following one of the signposted circular walks that promised dolmens, a castle at Querroig, old stone shelters (barraca de vinyas) and military bunkers. The Ruinist was good for an hour or two, chomping more tortilla until a wrong turn turned the afternoon into disaster. After a good and hearty walk up and along a high mountain track, The Ruinist was suddenly thwarted by a large pile of rocks and inexplicably a mass of baguettes strewn down the mountainside. It was here that The Ruinist could get no further. It seemed a fitting site to make a monument to Benjamin.

NO PASARAN!

Barcelona: Things to do when you're sick of Gaudi

2010-01-30T16:49:00.001-08:00

Barcelona is an ongoing struggle like always. If you are sick of being inadvertanly photographed in Parc Güell and all that sickly Gaudi architecture, The Ruinist can send you somewhere to rise above the city and reflect once more on play, ruins and the military need for height.

Head to Parc Güell and ignore most of it. Find yourself just inside on the right-hand side (off Carrer d'Olot) and take the path that heads out the Parc and into Carretera del Carmel and walk east. Walk along until the road turns round on itself and find Carre de Pastuer and go up that one. At some point you'll see that the houses begin to end and there's tiny alley and stairs on the left going up. Take that and keep going. Stay strong as it seems like you're going nowhere but over rubble and crud but finally you'll end up right at the entrance to the Parc on Carre de Muhlburg. Here its best to scrabble up the cliffside because where you are heading is right above you. It's concrete and very colourful.

Carmel and Guinardo Parc are areas that are struggling against gentrification. Home once to bourgeois houses, after the War, the whole area, the 'peeled mountainside' (muntanya pelada) became a vast shanty town of self-built poor shacks and houses. Micheal Eaude's fantastic and radical book on Barcelona describes 'streets of dust or mud...home made houses without water, electricity, sewage or transportation'. Most of these have now been cleared by the Council since the regeneration wrought on the city since the 1992 Olympics but the area remains solid proletarian in feel and ambience and many houses sport banners proclaiming 'Park Yes, Eviction No!. These resistances refer to the gentrifying return of luxury houses and the threats to the park despite its mighty and new wooden footbridge over the quarryside. Over the last 20 years, the Residents Association and their newspaper The Voice of The Street (La veu del carrer) has fought many battles and The Ruinist hopes they succeed in keeping their area the way they like it.

One of the most amazing remnants of the Civil War still lies at the height of Carmel - an abandoned fort that housed anti-aircraft batteries. Built at one of the highest parts of the city, the view is astounding. It's really like being in a light aircraft above the city streets below. The Ruinist had heard that it was a good view but we were stunned.

Not only this but the outpost has become a playground for adventures, drifters, bunker spotter and graf kids. There isn't a surface that isn't covered in spraypaint. Surfaces or chamber you can access via stairwells. When The Ruinist happened by a loner graf girl was working hard on her piece, spraying, checking, spraying, filling in.

There were also a load of nice stencil works and wonderful old tile floors in states of disrepair and graf coverage. A feast for the eyes indeed. The Ruinist also found a long painted text that remembered the 20 years of love enjoyed by the named Judith and Toni at the fort (no doubt). We couldn't help but to amend with some surnames.

The Ruinist took it upon themselves to collect spraycan caps and archive them on one of the old gun emplacements, overlooking the city, protecting it and ready to fire on any approaching speculator or would-be authority.

Trying to find the right weapons is tuff

2010-01-26T08:51:00.000-08:00

I miss the Front Line

2010-01-24T16:40:00.000-08:00

Simple as that...

That time of year

2009-12-27T17:25:00.000-08:00

More Textos

2009-12-04T16:04:00.000-08:00

Vertigo SE1

2009-12-03T04:34:00.001-08:00

Thinking about stuff while waiting

2009-10-05T16:27:00.000-07:00

Revolutionary or reformer - the error is the same. Unable to dominate and reform his own attitude towards life, which is everything, or his own being, which is almost everything, he flees, devoting himself to modifying others and the outside world. Every revolutionary and reformer is a fugitive. To fight for change is to be incapable of changing oneself. To reform is to be beyond repair.

A sensitive and honest-minded man, if he's concerned about evil and injustice in the world, will naturally begin his campaign against them by eliminating them at their nearest source: his own person. This task will take his entire life.

from 'The Book of Disquiet' by Fernando Pessoa

Views from a bench

2009-10-05T12:55:00.001-07:00

The Ruinist took the opportunity of a two hour break from everything on an outing to Greenwich (once more) to take some snaps. Sitting on a riverside bench for an extended period (instead of a furtive and often feral sideways mode of behaviour The Ruinist usually adopts for a Sunday here), an innovation was entered into and The Ruinist began the lark of using the photographic device to record pictures of people from the still and solid material basis upon which The R was perched.

Mapping the 1871 Paris Commune in 2009

2009-10-01T13:25:00.000-07:00

What could be a better route to follow through central Paris than the flight of Maurice and Jean through the combat of the Paris Commune on 23rd March 1871 as depicted by Emile Zola in his novel 'The Debacle'?

It all starts here for the friends that had been separated finally by supporting opposing sides of Paris Commune. After the 400 pages of the trials and tribulations of the Franco-Prussian War, Jean (a Federale) and Maurice (a Communard) are reunited when unbeknown to Jean he comes across a weary rebel still firing his rifle at the barricade at the junction of rue de Lille and rue de Bac and stabs him 'through the arm near the right shoulder...it had penetrated between two ribs and probably involved the lung'. Realising that he had wounded his old friend, they begin a mad scramble across Paris to the supposed safety of Jean's room.

Dragging Maurice to the nearby Seine, 'out on to the embankment they were momentarily blided by the dreadful light from fires burning in huge sheaves of flame on both sides of the Seine'. They clamber down to the quayside and take a boat out into the river and drift 'with the current, hugging the bank in the shadow of the bathing establishment and barges'.

They take the boat under the Pont Soferino...'the boat seemed to be floating on a river of fire. In the dancing reflections of these huge conflagrations the Seine appeared to be bearing along blazing coals'...

...'He had only one urgent job, to land and get away from this awful sight. All the same he was prudent enough to go past the Concorde Bridge so as not to leave the boat until the towpath below the Quai de la Conference...'

Reaching the Place de la Concorde they move quickly across the square...'although the day was not yet dawning the light from the fires near-by threw a livid dawn over the huge square. They crossed it's empty spaces, their hearts aching at this dreary destruction'

'On the square itself, bullets made holes in the fountains, the collosal trunk of the statue of Lille lay on the ground broken in two by a shell, while the statue of Strasbourg hard by, veiled, seemed to be in mourning for so much ruin'.

Reaching rue de Rivoli, where the sturdiest of Commune barricades had been erected, they darted up the rue de St Florentin...

'Hurrying along the rue Saint Florentin at last...

...going down rue Saint-Honore...

...only a bit of the rue d'Argenteuil and...

...they would be in the rue des Orties, right at the top of Buttes des Moulins'...'what a deliverance when they had turned into it! It was dark, empty and silent and might have been a hundred leagues away from the battle. The house, an old and narrow one with no concierge, was sleeping the deep sleep of death'.

It was here That Ruinist was unable to go further as this whole area described above was demolished in 1876 and so I had to make do with a picture of the road from the time that I had brought along. I was also unable to find any sign of the Commune in any public text, graffiti, accidental symbolism or what have you. Here despite this momentous journey, the Commune had been erased from the streets of Paris. If you want to find out what happened to Maurice and Jean, then you'll have to read the book!

Today, the Commune's political visibility must be restored by a process of dis-incorporation: born of rupture with the Left, it must be extracted from the leftist hermeneutics that have overwhelmed it for so long.

Alain Badiou, The Paris Commune: A Political Declaration on Politics in the book 'Polemics', Verso, 2006

You can read the full essay here: Badiou The Paris Commune

Class Against Class Graffiti Revisited

2009-09-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

This is the one we wrote about here:
"‘CLASS AGAINST CLASS - MAKE THE BOSSES PAY FOR THEIR CRISIS’
Graffito on riverwall at North Woolwich, circa 1974, still there.

That’s why I like the slogan from North Woolwich painted up in white paint in the 1970’s during the recession and the harsh attack on workers lives. I like it as it remains. It has not been scrubbed away. As nothing has changed for the poor as we face a new bosses crisis in the next few years, nothing has changed with the slogan. Class against class. Old-fashioned but immutable".

We didn't have a camera on us when we visited that one and our minds were on other things that day. But the power of the www enables a snapshot to now be included!

http://homelesshome.blogspot.com/2008/05/its-not-street-that-bothers-me.html

The Eclipse and Re-emergence of something...

2009-09-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

Recently, and with our delight for what we have been calling 'public text', we stumbled upon signs of life that had been buried for 30 years or more because we happened to see, for example, a wall in a new light. The Ruinist is often struck how something that was previously unseen can be suddenly illuminated because the sun is shining upon it in a way that you have never seen before.

Here, a painted grafftio that reads 'WORKERS' discovered at the junction of Walworth Rd and Liverpool Grove (the one with St Peter's church on it, designed by John Soane - see previous post!). But The Ruinist asks 'WORKERS' what? There doesn't seem to be anymore painted letters. Do you know? Was it you?

Here's one we do know about. You can just read the word 'SCARF' written in spraypaint. Surely spraypaint begins to date graffiti. Whilst 'WORKERS' is the result of a brush and a pot of paint and thus quite cumbersome and time consuming, the invention of spraypaint made things a whole lot more speedy and calligraphic.

Memories here are stirred by the 2nd March 1980 National Front march through South London. Intending to march up Walworth Rd to The Elephant, they were routed at the last minite and escorted by cops south to the backstreets of Peckham. The Southwark Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism had done a sterling job of getting hundreds of determined anti-fascists out at The Elephant and down Walworth Rd along the proposed fascist route. Hence 'SCARF' on the wall of the Met Police's scientific forensic dept on Amelia St in Walworth.

Here's another revelation that we enjoyed. We had already known that 76 Peckham Rd had been in the 1970's as some kind of hang-out for anarchists. We had noted in our ledger of south london radical activity the following: 'Class War Comix - Epic Productions, 76 Peckham Rd, London SE15 (1974)' and the 'autonomous collective Black Bear' who had published 'Feminism As Anarchism' around Summer 1977 from the same address. It would not be difficult to assume the hand behind the delightful and theatrical font still up on Peckham Rd - long-term local Anarchist illustrator Clifford Harper! We asked around and so it was!

Coming soon: A new series of local discoveries in the same vein! Until then.

Adventures in Metalwork: The K2

2009-09-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

A trip by The Ruinist Team up North to Kings Cross, St Pancras and environs pretending to be a reason to pass by assorted places to see on Farringdon was really only a ruse to indulge our collective passion for the K2 telephone phone box.

Here you can see the mausoleum erected in the old St Pancras Churchyard for Sir John Soane, working class geezer made good, eminent architect and noted Freemason. As is becoming more and more commonly known, the second design for a London telephone box, the K2 (Kiosk 2) was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and introduced into London in 1926.

The inspiration for the cutely domed cast iron red box was, of course, the Soane Mausoleum and now a plaque on the site informs all of what once seemed like some kind of occult or masonic secret.
Step into one of those phone boxes and who knows what you are stepping into. The Ruinist's well-thumbed copy of The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry (by James Stevens Curl, 1991) illuminates the story better than we could with it's description of the tombs Masonic allusions:
'The mausoleum...is a 'monopteral temple' consisting of a block of stone under a canopy carried on four Ionic columns; a simple pediment surmounts each face. This little canopy is sheltered by a larger domed canopy with segmented pediments...carried on square piers. The whole is capped by a pineapple finial on a drum around which a serpent is coiled.'

Another delight of the old churchyard was this misbehaviour and creepy addition to one of those classic 'Victorian way of death' gravestones. Two coins for the ferryman, if a bit late in the day?

Anarcha-feminism (in some sense) is also rooted here for the joint grave of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin is here. She of 'A Vindication of the Rights Of Women',(1792) and he of 'Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners' (1793).

We didn't take any pictures of the K2 and K6 model of London phoneboxes that we passed as we tramped up North but here is picture of a reputed Banana Cake from a caff in Kings Cross.

New Hideaway

2009-09-14T16:14:00.001-07:00

Public Text - Ruinist Delights 1

2009-09-14T16:05:00.000-07:00

The Ruinist enjoys a bit of public text to accompany the ravages of War.

9 hours of Kent

2009-08-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

Blackfriars Bridge 1864-1985 for the London, Chatham and Dover Railway

2009-08-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

Always good at both high tide and low tide. A Ruinist favourite.

Openbare tekst evenementen in Brussel / Texte public manifestations à Bruxelles / Public text events in Brussels

2009-08-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

The Ruinist Team cavorted the streets of Bruges et Brussels in the last few days searching, searching, searching...for what we don't know. Here is what we found!

A series of posters produced in support of the alleged terrorists Tarnac 9 of which 'Between dog and wolf' was a good slogan!

The spraypaint addition to the fountain we enjoyed in the vein of what those accused of preposterous acts of 'terrorism' might have indeed said themselves about the condition of daily life we find ourselves subject too.

There follows one of those great visions where nostalgia and the best of the present meet in the moment to make you appreciate both of those worlds.

Public text had also been attacked with chisels at the disgusting monument at La Cinquantenaire for the Belgian colonial adventure in the Congo. The relief sculpture features many fine moments of imperial splendour but our favourite was the priest and cross high above the non-believers. As much as we could make out, it seemed that the destroyed text refers to the Belgian conquests freeing of black Congolese slaves from 'Arab slavedrivers'. It appeared that the text had been mended and then re-attacked many times judging from the stonework! Nice work, comrades! Next week, dynamite! See here for more on Belgian direct action history on the move. And here for why!

Perfect sights for The Ruinist recreation of Bruges La Morte. Here is the best of catholic death and rebirth from the Jerusalem Church in Bruges.

Next up was some universal public criticism for the work of the police force.

And then we rested in a caff for muesli, cheese rolls, waffles and coffees, of course!

Re: The Elephant

2009-07-13T10:39:00.000-07:00

Ruinist cat thinking

2009-07-10T13:09:00.001-07:00

Field Work

2009-07-10T12:34:00.000-07:00

Noxious City

2009-07-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

'MIDNIGHT
NO LIGHT
NO TIME
NO WORK
MIDNIGHT
SECRET
SURPRISE
POWER
MIDNIGHT'

Our graphic pledges allegiance to a Ruinist favourite, the text on the back of Issue 10 of the U.S autonomist journal MIGNIGHT NOTES. We have always read these terms like a poem.

Things You Can Find In The Changing Streets of Paddington

2009-07-02T04:26:00.001-07:00

Investigations have taken The Ruinist team far and wide this week across the ravaged plains of London and into it's leisure-business interzones, motionless transport hubs, networked anti-terror infrastructures, public charmlessness, open-air spectaculars (accompanied by the blanket miasma of the odour of burgers), private water deserts and high-rise corporate rainforests.

Finally, we were able to stop getting our hands dirty researching the political economy of parts of London that we have never investigated before and to get our feet wet instead.

We have spared you a picture of the mint teas we had on Edgware Rd in favour of some wild swans who had brought their charming offspring to see us and accept some of our Cheese and Onion sandwiches from Tesco Express as well as biting our feet!

Learning From Others

2009-06-29T06:08:00.001-07:00

Nature Orders Itself, Capitalism Orders Banality - Lat Long 51n29, 0e0 going West - 3rd Interlude

2009-06-28T16:04:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite spots to see how Nature is happy to organise itself. Here the beach is laid out in strips - bottles, bricks, rocks, pebbles, broken and eroded bricks, mud, sand, water.

Elsewhere in town, capitalism is able to order itself into a series of identical shopping booths with directions posted everywhere (even in someone's hands)

Lat Long 51n29, 0e0 going West - 2nd Interlude

2009-06-28T15:56:00.000-07:00

Fantastic tiling feature on Hurleston House, Trinity Estate, Deptford SE8. Are they real these people in this new build at Deptford Creek? Or are they not? Sustenance in the form of Rhubarb Crumble from Goddards.

Lat Long 51n29, 0e0 going West - 1st Interlude

2009-06-28T15:52:00.001-07:00

Lat Long 51n29, 0e0 going East Part One

2009-06-03T17:34:00.001-07:00

Coming Soon! Part Two: What we saw

The Ruinist defines new terms for living: 'SHIT RINSE'

2009-05-28T03:54:00.000-07:00

The Ruinist is happy to create new terms for living.

Last night The Ruinist was found to be complicit in some culterati art opening affair where everyone's nice and deferential to all who may at some point be there future patrons. It's very polite and very feudal. Lords and Lady's of The Manor arrive and swish about the place. Some court scribes come and go and take notes for the columns. The servants serve the alcohol and the doormen keep the portals secure. The hunt beaters keep the people circulating and some peasants blag in and drink as much free beer before closing time. Nobles and entourage put in an appearance from neighbouring fiefdoms to make sure all is well with the alliances and to catch up the news about the enemies.

Anyway, you get the idea.

'SHIT RINSE':
What you feel like you have been through the next day after going to these openings

Use freely!!

Hidden Londoners

2009-05-26T17:08:00.000-07:00

It didn't take me long to find this guy once I read about him in book. Until that point he had remained invisible to me despite my passing him on hundreds of occasions.

I went to see him because I also read some idiots in Luton were marching against some people they didn't like.

They showed they didn't like them by waving the English flag (whatever that is?)

You can see it here:
http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/luton-yesterday-a-taste-of-things-to-come/

Ruinist Let Out For The Day Again

2009-05-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

On the prowl in Kennington SE11 for the site of Burgundia, the free autonomous zone established in the great film Passport to Pimlico (1949), we came across this impressive street sign at the far end of the former liberated zone (now built over with the China Walk council estate).

Happily we also came across this jaunty street sign nearby in a kind-of stretched or compressed Playbill typeface. Right up our street. We mused on the choice of Playbill as some kind of historical resonance with all the penny gaffs and music halls that had been a great part of that local area. Juxon St crosses Lambeth Walk, home of the famous dance made famous by Lupino Lane the film 'Me and My Girl' (1939). Just up the road in the newly rejigged estate in Lambeth Walk is Lupino House. More of these great street signs can be found around the older parts of that estate as we presume they were the standard for the estate signage. Top ho!

The Ruinist rarely enjoys al fresco but the spring heat brought it out in us. Two Portuguese chocolate milks and natas kept us going (as usual) around our regular tour of Vauxhall with it's fat rabbits and noisy black sheep in the City Farm.

Back to the mappings

2009-05-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

Histories

2009-05-22T03:42:00.000-07:00

'One Plus One': Out and about in Godard's London

2009-05-05T03:36:00.000-07:00

Despite the both ridiculous but still disturbing content of this 1968 Jean-Luc Godard film, The Ruinist seemed restless until all the London locations where Eve Democracy (Anne Wiazemsky) sprays up political slogans could be traced and visited. Over two of our leisure days, we walked and ate our way around the environs of Battersea, Putney, Chelsea and Hyde Park to bring you the almost definitive guide to these historical sites of revolutionary graffiti:

'HILTON/STALIN'

The first spraying was hard to find as we assumed it was made inside a room of The Hilton Hotel on Park Lane. After walking around with our handy One Plus One Spotter Card, we finally figured out that this bit was filmed in what is now the Metropolitan Hotel next door in Old Park Lane, W1. Lacking the cash to book this room, we had to make do with a less than similar ground level shot of what the view now looks like.

'USA...'

This was a tricky one but we found it! 271 New King's Rd, Hammersmith, London SW6.

'CINEMARX'

This building is 45 Cadogan St, Kensington, London SW3 but the film was shot round the corner in Halsey St.

'FBI + CIA = TWA + PAN-AM'

The scene of where black militants read from various radical black authors (most pointedly Eldridge Cleaver's 'Soul on Ice' section where he describes the tension between black menial supermasculinity and white omnipotent administrators) in a car breaker's yard right by Battersea Train Bridge. This has now gone and the site is a new development called Groveside Court, 4 Lombard Rd, Wandsworth, London SW11 and a Thames riverside walkway too. The initial graffiti (not put up by Eve) is later sprayed over with the 'Panthers'.

'US=Swastika'

This little street is off King's Rd. The shot was made at the junction of Shalcomb St and Lamont Rd, Kensington, London SW10

'FREUDEMOCRACY'

Our hero Eve and 41 one years later our Ruinist Team Player at Cheyne Walk, Kensington, London SW3 looking towards Albert Bridge

'SOVIETCONG'

A wonderful building still to be found at 47 Hurlingham Rd, Hammersmith, London SW6.

SLOGANS THAT GOT AWAY!!

Yes, it was impossible even with out super Ruinist brain powers to locate these sites. The car one we think is in Hyde Park and the other one we reckon was filmed around Sands End, probably sites that are now covered by the monstrous Chelsea Harbour development. There are also two more slogans in the film - one on an advert hoarding and one outside some prefabs. Any ideas yourselves?

The creepy porn store episode was shot on location at Plus Books, 224 Norwood Rd, Lambeth, London SE27.
The site of the footage of the Rolling Stones was Olympic Studios,117 Church Rd, Richmond, London SW13.

Here are some of the delightful cafes we visited in the making of this production:

Mona Lisa, 417 King's Road London SW10. Excellent beans, egg and chips in this Italian. A bowl of Trifle was also consumed.

The Tea Hut, Battersea Park. Two teas please! Note: The Spotter Card ready for consultation.

Parisienne Cafe, 225 Lavender Hill, London, SW11 1JR. Top quality Veggie Breakfast and one Cheese Omelette and Chip w/Salad!

One of the Team fell off the toilet early in the morning but despite the damage was up and willing for this most correct of adventures.

Two Local Chapters In The Spectacle of Decomposition

2009-05-05T03:08:00.001-07:00

Here at Ruinist Tower we often bang our heads against the wall late into the night as we find ourselves picking our way through the perilous state of existence today. Here are two examples of how life slips away before our very eyes.

(1) BABY, I DON'T LOVE YOU ANYMORE. I AM RETURNING YOU IN YOUR ORIGINAL CONDITION FOR A FULL REFUND. SORRY

It's true that T.K.Maxx is the most seductive of shops. Looking for something entirely other than these, The Ruinist came away with some reasonably priced sneakers. Earlier this morning, in between activities of the utmost importance, we read the small print printed in the shape of a heart on back of the TK MAXX receipt:

"LOVE ME OR RETURN ME
Shopping is like love: you just know when it's right. Hence, our 14 day 'Love Me or Return Me' refund or exchange policy. We reckon within 2 weeks you probably know whether you're in love with your purchase or not. If you're not, just return it in original condition with this receipt for an exchange or refund. It's quick, it's simple and you never have to say, 'It's not you, it's me'.

(2) YOUR PERSONAL UNION CARBIDE STATUS. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE

Right by Ruinist Towers, there's a small pathway through to the High Street and here seems like a good a place as any to dump some rubbish. This is usually cardboard, broken furniture or old suitcases devoid of personal contents.

The Council has installed a microwave-driven CCTV pod on a nearby lamp post to film those in the act of dumping rubbish at this spot.

When rubbish is deposited there, special Environmental Wardens place this sticker on the trash:

Could you be an environmental criminal and not even know it? Keep yourself disciplined, just in case the environment goes to shit.

Work Pod for One Night Somewhere Else

2009-02-05T10:50:00.000-08:00

Struggles again

2009-02-05T10:43:00.000-08:00

2009-01-02T06:52:00.001-08:00

CRISIS Diptych

2009-01-02T06:49:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year

'I Belong To Me'

2008-11-27T06:50:00.000-08:00

Absorbed by the super fast montage of a thousand different clips that make up Alina Marazzi’s incredible documentary film ‘We Want Roses Too’ (Vogliamo Anche Le Rose, 2007), one scene jumped from the screen and fizzled in my brain. I’ll tell you why later.

It’s a film made up entirely from womens personal film footage (biographical and documentary), TV representations of ‘women’, feature film clips and to a much lesser extent news footage. Accompanying the scenes, diary entries are narrated from three different women’s personal accounts of the time.

Marazzi’s film is a short history of a particular time in early 1970’s Italy when women, from a series of contextual tensions, created a mass women’s movement. This was not in anyway a mirror of the revolutionary Left movement of the times although its reflections are often caught in passing. This was revolutionary upheaval against the weight of family life, motherhood, domesticity, femininity, a history and culture told/made only by men, silence and invisibility, and the sense of ‘equality’ if it was to be only, in the end, in relation to men.

The sensory overload of images both beautiful and disturbing (and the accompanying emotional overload!) becomes the narrative of that movement. Here everything comes together: from the melancholy shot of woman impatiently waiting in an alley to the woman who walks alone in a Piazza, her steps taken in contemplative solitude and freedom. Here shots from a Super 8 film of a woman at her mirror trying on ‘outfits’. There a woman’s barefoot walk over a frozen lake. Here, woman together smoke and talk in the Women’s centre. There, a filmed walk through the same now empty building, the wall graffiti and posters still in tact years later. At one point, women discuss with men in a college class, housework and being a wife, at another point thousands of women march in the streets, their hands raised above their heads, clasped in the powerful (and male scaring!) triangle symbol of the movement.

This is a montage of both fast and slow times. It’s a recollection of both the joys and pains of self/collective discovery.

Although I have seen endless clips of men spray-painting slogans on walls during demos, I don’t remember ever seeing a clip of a woman doing the same.

Here, leaping out from the film, a woman with a casual nonchalance and self-power, sprays a on a wall. Not only does she do this in her own time but she is observed by a crowd of men who do not interfere or comment. They seem to her to be invisible. When she finishes the slogan by adding the women’s symbol, she walks away towards, shaking her spray can, readying it for further use and she smiles, to herself, for herself. In the background we read what she has written: ‘Io Sono Mia’ (I Belong To Me).

The film is full of these kind of moments. Not a mere collection of head-on clips of women’s political action or political discourse but biography, play, revelation, discovery, confusion, personality, creativity, fear, separatism, dissolution, completion, laughter and sharing cigarettes, political mobilization and street politics, occupation, presence and affinity, boundaries and border crossings, escapes of sensuality and sexuality, and somewhere too - attempts by men to listen, see and grasp all of the above, for everyone.

Cat say 'Thanks' to all the concerned viewers

2008-11-25T03:37:00.000-08:00

Cat says thanks to all the concerned viewers worried about his funny turn at Halloween. He's back and well and looking forward to his Xmas turkey. Here he is hunter gathering in wilds of The Ruinist Tower

The cats gone weird this Halloween

2008-11-02T14:26:00.000-08:00

Last of The First

2008-11-02T03:01:00.001-08:00

Winter

2008-11-02T02:53:00.001-08:00

The World Is...

2008-11-02T02:41:00.000-08:00

‘Sire, I am from another country’.

I think we are in the world. But then people seem only to be in the world themselves.

 

It’s disorientating that.

Especially because the world does not seem so very different as the one I have grown up in. But it’s still occasionally feels like an Anti-Déjà Vu. It’s not a feeling that you have already gone through something familiar before. It’s the other way around. The feeling is more like that you are going through something again but it’s entirely unfamiliar.

Your Rubbish World, My Rubbish World

2008-10-31T07:19:00.000-07:00

YOU GO TO THE MOVIES

Three times Uncle Fernando's neighbours
have called the police to report him.

When they go to the movies,
he goes through their garbage.

How is this a crime? he argues.
The stuff is right here, out on the street.

I don't steal it. I just look. It's my job. The police
eye him warily. (Fernando is a big man

with large eyes and cancer scars, and a certified
garbage expert), let him go with another warning.

My fellow creatures have no idea the service
I'm providing, he assures me, as I note

down the contents as he calls them.
You learn much about the world from

its garbage. I nod, plug my nose. I know
he is highly respected in his field, but

this is not the way I imagined my vacation.
Pronto! he cries. Soon they'll be back from the movies.

With all kinds of strange talk and ideas in their heads.

Priscila Uppal

Autumn

2008-10-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

The Ruinist line on things most recently in fashion

2008-09-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

'When you consider that climate change is caused by the over-consumption of fossil fuels by the rich, often extracted at the expense of the poor; that the first people to feel the effects of climate change are the poor because only the rich can pay for expensive adaptation measures; that the process which is designed to prevent climate change is dominated by the rich, who come up with solutions that displace the poor but make money for the rich; then you stop seeing climate change as a problem of atmosphere and gases and start seeing it as a problem of class war.'

Relative work

2008-08-26T09:48:00.000-07:00

Akhbar Ali, Mumbai

I work with dyestuff. I work hard. I earn 50 to 60 rupees a day. My work is tiring. I have no choice, so I work here. To go back to my village I need money which I don't have. So I'm obliged to stay here. Only I know the problems I have sitting in the sun the whole day, then going home, not eating at normal times. What should I do? I'm worn out, totally worn out. I'm unhappy.

Uttam Siram Bhalera, Mumbai

I've worked at the harbour since childhood helping with the catch. I earn 200 to 400 rupees. I send the money home and keep a little for myself. I eat, drink and enjoy my life. It's my only job. I don't work anywhere else. To amuse myself I go to the cinema with my friends. Then I come back. I sleep next to a restaurant called Ram Bharose. Then I go to the cinema again. Once I saw a really first-class film: The Guns of Navarone. The film was very good. What is life? Watching films, having fun with friends and sleeping next to the restaurant, getting up the next day, drinking tea and doing your work again.

Rubio, Mexico City

They call me Rubio. I'm a professional thief. I've been making a living like this for more than ten years. But I stick to my method of grabbing people by the neck and asking them for their money. I don't like the more violent methods. I like to grab them by the neck and like in therapy tell them to hand over their money.

SuperBarrio Gomez, Mexico City

I, the SuperBarrio Gomez, real phantom and everyday hero by profession have a message for the world from the city of wounds and scars, the city of the dead and the conquerors of the demons and charlatans and of all the street vendors in the city of disguises and masks. This city expands and collapses, it fights to live and survive day by day. What's the good of knowing that we live in the world's biggest city? What's the good in starting each day at 5am? With Tamales and Atol and then starting a ten-hour working day when life is so short? I, SuperBarrio Gomez am telling the world that the absurd is the cultural heritage of all mankind.

People and their words from the film Megacities - Michael Glawogger (1998)

A is for...

2008-08-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

Only the invention of a terrestrial life, vested in the richness of our desires, that will accomplish the supersession of religion and philosophy, its servant master

Vaneigem - Lines of Flight 1986

Our New Photo Roman

2008-08-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

Well, as I remember it - there was a hurried breakfast in a melancholy greasy spoon.

I think there was a girl in a red dress too. Maybe! I don't remember now.

There was a man at work for some arty gallery getting £6 per hour. I told him it was a 'rip' but he just shrugged.

I think the guy I was set on was this guy with the newspaper. He was hiding by using the best method - standing out from the crowd.

I ran down the stairs but I lost him by the shops. All that glare and products.

I guess I got confused. Win some, lose some. At least the fry-up was good.

Quick Dishes for the Revolutionary

2008-08-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

These two dishes are a big favourite in The Ruinist’s Tower. They are especially quick if you’re coming in from a hard day’s leafleting outside the factory or you’re rushing to get to the next meeting on ‘Which Way Forward’.

Peas Commune Pasta in 10 minutes

Boil a lot of water.
Put a lot of frozen peas in boiling water to soften.
Cut onions, garlic and fry in olive oil in saucepan. Add salt and pepper.
Put on Fusilli pasta to cook in boiling water.
Drain and then split the peas into two lots. Put one lot in sauce pan and stir, then use mixing stick to blend into a knd of paste. Add other peas to pan and stir contents.
Drain pasta and put it on plate.
Add peas, olive oil, Parmesan cheese.

Olive Intifada Pasta in 10 minutes

Cut onions, garlic, green pitted olives (in half), Haloumi cheese (in small cubes) and fry in olive oil in saucepan. Add salt and pepper and a few dried chillies
Put on fresh Tagliatelle to cook in boiling water.
Drain pasta, add some olive oil and put on plate. Add on cooked veggies and Bacobits and Parmesan cheese.

‘Trail of The Spider’: Speculating on Despair

2008-06-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

”This is where I was born. I’ve seen the changes going around. People have come in a taken over everything and local people are moving out…If all of us had got together in the first place this would never have happened. If you don’t like what’s happening around you have to stand up and be counted. It’s been nice to see those responsible having to look over their shoulders as everyday people take over”
Floyd, during the Broadway Market campaign.

I am old enough to know better than to head off to some art institution in search of what is missing from my life. Despite it all however, this is what I foolishly did.

There are really two parts to this story. Part One is the Hope. Part Two is the Despair. Along the way there are necessary personal digressions.

MY HOPE

As is usual with me, I forget to do the things I want to do, so it was no surprise that I missed a showing of the film ‘Trail of the Spider’ by Anja Kirschner and David Panos at the Tate Modern on 1st June 2008. I had seen this event listed in the Tate Modern brochure almost two months earlier. Sounding good from the description, I penciled round the text and forgot all about it.

“This is the premiere of acclaimed artist Anja Kirschner’s newest film, an unsettling trans-historical vision of the Wild West. In a vanishing frontier swarming with calculating surveyors, corrupt lawmen and hired thugs, a lone gunfighter must avenge the dispossessed or else remain trapped in a state of limbo, haunted by the past and pitted against the future.”

Quite by accident I found out that a free showing was happening at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) the very next day. So fortune had stepped in and I cycled up there and caught the movie after all.

What had interested me in the movie was the promise of something political being said about events in our Capital City. Something not exclusively a London problem but something that comes out of recent London events and the perversely trumpeted future of increasing erosion of rights and privacy, common spaces and communal political action. It is not only these collective domains that appear to be fading out but the very discourse around them too.

By accident, I had heard of both artists from my own uncovering of things. Both people are (or were) involved in the excellent band Antifamily. The song ‘Work Cheap’ is a recent favourite of mine, it’s deadpan lyrics describing the ascendancy of profit over people. David Panos, I remembered, was part of the duo called The London Particular who published and made short films on the ravages called down upon the poor as part of the on-going ‘regeneration’ of Hackney. With some other recollected rumours in my mind I also associated the artists with involvement in the Save Broadway Market campaign where a long existing local café sold off under the nose of the owner was squatted twice to highlight local corruption, inequality and gentrification amongst other things. I stress again however that this memory was merely a mish-mash of possible connections in my mind.

What these facts, ideas and memories spun in my brain was that ‘Trail of the Spider’ would be worth catching. It didn’t seem to take too much effort to connect these dots and come up with a correct preconception of the site and theme of the film: the upheaval and enclosure of land around the 2012 Olympic sites, in and around Lea Valley in East London.

ONSCREEN
First the film. Well, it’s a mish-mash of well-known frontier themes and characters. A Spaghetti Western filmed on Hackney Marshes, Rainham and other places. That the film is all over the place is probably stylistic. Poorly acted by actors and local people, although this is not much of a criticism, it becomes annoying after a while for various reasons. One of which is the striving for something real and authentic within a series of pastiches, clichés and copies of other genres. Another reason is simply that it’s irritating. Characters come and go, interesting types – the lawmen, the surveyor, the renegades and the gold rushers - but in the end the lack of acting ability interrupts the process of characterization, and our possible empathy with them. I’m sure that the lack of acting talent is entirely an artistic choice, preferring the homegrown and local over the famous or other but in the end it takes away more than it adds.

The tale begins to unfold after initial shots of a wild frontierland that is in the process of being ‘tamed’ by speculators. Our hero, the taciturn Man With No Name (played by Floyd whose quote begins this text) wanders the landscape, taking aim at the colonists but never going as far as to fire on them.
Going over the plot quite quickly, The Man With No Name wanders about trying to find some freedom in the marshes but soon finds that the previously freer wild lands have now been colonized and the local population have surrendered their Wild West-style autonomy for a small slice of the pie and some security. Here The Man With No Name meets an old friend, Marnie, a bar owner who utters perhaps the only moving lines in the whole film. As has been the case from day one of capitalist austerity imposed upon the poor, some sectors of the needy take what they can get from an alliance with the merchants, the lords, the new landowners. When there are few choices, anything can be better than nothing. Giving up the small communal freedoms of their once more autonomous community near the swamps, these locals, overseen by a surly self-appointed leader, are rebuilding a proper town under the gaze of lawyers, agents of a law that been imposed from above but also embraced by all. Throwing in their collective lot to receive ‘just a little something more’ is more or less how the Marnie puts it.

To cut a not very complicated story short, The Man With No Name is persuaded to act as hired gun for the new community but is double-crossed, as is the town leader, Marnie being the only character that manages to rise above the misery and sinking feeling of defeat. Not only that but she is done some justice onscreen by Claudette Bonney, the actress, storyteller and singer who plays her. The final scene is a double cross where the mercenaries brutalise those they have tricked whilst The Surveyor cackles in delight at the ease of just how much suckers the poor are. Finally, Marnie pitches up with a gun to try and impose some class justice, something the other two now seem incapable of enacting, or even remembering. She is defeated and it’s left to our hero The Man With No Name to rouse himself and fire into The Surveyor finally. The final scene is a land race sale where a mob, with pound signs in their eyes, rush at plots in the newly ‘opened’ up land to claim them for purchase. The Surveyor who has somehow survived the shooting and is alive and well, oversees the race and this next round of profits for his bosses.

Ok, so that’s the film as I, more or less, remember it. It’s pretty depressing stuff. Not the kind film that offers solutions to contemporary collective atomization, local processes of enclosure, working class delusion and knowing your place and so on. The one character that seems to offer some rebel spirit is a semi-tracksuit clad feral young girl who desires to know something of the possible freedoms and liberties of the old days. This is what Man With No Name seems to represent to her but she appears then disappears without any development. That’s a shame.
I can’t say the script, production and direction rises qualitively above more than a few things: an initial cuteness of the hybrid ragged cowboy/modern day clothes the characters wear; a poignant moment of class agony – Marnie’s desire for some security from the daily grind of poverty; maybe the idea to land an earlier history from another landgrab and to overlay this on the current site of accumulation and speculation.
When the end titles rolled, the whole thing had more or less left me cold.

OFF-SCREEN
There is always more than a simple artwork and an audience. The context that surrounds my viewing of the film is as important as any message the film tries to give up. What I bring to this film screening will always collide with whatever is projected back at me. Seated there, expectant, my head makes political and cultural connections for this art work but also bubbles along with the other factors from my day to day. Let’s call the factors I include here 1,2,3 and 4:

(1) My job - where I feel the pressure to pass along an standard bourgeois approach to art and creativity to the children that I am teaching. This temporary well-paid job is merely doing grunt work for a layer of arts admin types who get to choose how to spend corporate sponsors’ money on local education projects. Neither coming from the local area nor having much of a clue of what likely conditions, mentalities and subtleties might be found in such an area, these ‘types’ oversee workshops that are masked as ‘strategies’ for social inclusion but in reality are box-ticking exercises where other donations will be received on the basis of the galleries excellent educational programme. The real business is to keep the gallery world functioning, a world of curators, reviewers, directors, patrons and artists. Local children will never be ‘included’ in this world (although some of them may end up as security guards or cleaners there) and this much is obvious from the unconscious classism that pervades the place. As a precarious worker I am however subject to the whims and mentalities of these joyless arts admin types over each renewing of my contract and so cannot stray too far into ‘Art By All or None At All’ rants although I try.
But it can be good too. I am often thrown when a parent speaks of how good it is that their child can be exposed to ‘art’. It’s confusing because my own exposure to books about art came from my Dad too. Despite being quite ‘creative’ at school it was certainly not seen as the proper way for him to earn a living. An intersection of reading bits of his hard–earned and precious books about art and the arrival of punk set me on a happy course of living my life beyond the 9 to 5 prole job that was expected of me. When parents appreciate my workshops, I hope it comes from a sense that their own kids horizons can be widened in a way that theirs was not allowed to be. This space to live a little more however has to be separated out from a purely bourgeois experience of art and culture. There has to be some critique that helps you, the auto-didact, grow and that helps you avoid straying into individual artistic pretensions or liberal facades that mask very real class interests. I always try to break down art for the children as something that is a free process of their hands, heart and brain co-ordination. Art is not some out of reach club or some bourgeois occulture that has a meaning that you have to ‘get’ before you are part of that club. It’s obvious though that many artists (from the ‘lower’ classes) get caught up with their own hype of belonging on having arrived in that contradictory space.

(2) My life history as a working class self-taught radical follows on from that insight. This is a never-ending struggle against all the odds of how much self-respect and difficult-to-find self-confidence you need to keep your head up in middle class scenes. In the end you can crack it by just being yourself – neither up your arse nor up anyone else’s.

(3) My housing situation where I feel the greyness of my communal landing with its cracks, stains and dirty windows. The real dispirit of the once-Utopian tower block is the total failure of the ‘street in the sky’ idea. This is little more than a system of cells with a slight parole in the shared lift but not much. Phantoms haunt me in this Estate. It makes me tired, anonymous, a perfunctory neighbour and hungry for real communal space.

(4) Politically, the recent Tube train party that celebrates/denigrates the pathetic new policy of an alcohol ban had my head reeling. I had seen images of City bankers drinking to excess and barging the police about on the Circle Line in the name of some vague notion of something about something. Here was what passes these days as a communal politics: a spectacle of self-activity, an easy-to-digest but gone-off morsel of opposition (maybe?). It was enough to keep me hiding under the bed for a few days. A final good reason to keep yourself away from the Internet.

Was it for these four (amongst other) reasons that I had tried once again to find critique in the realm of art? Really I just needed to be out and about while my temporary misery rose, crashed and fell. Like all those other times, I had sought some escape in art or artists, looking for the simple reality of finding someone who had something finally to say on the state of things and thus plant some seed of hopefulness against the monoculture of banality we are currently supposed to want to reap.

Well, once again, I failed and this defeat pretty much began the moment I sat my arse on the free seat of the ICA gallery where the movie was being shown. Here we must dwell a little while on what we will call ‘Types’ of people, for I speak, of course, with blatant generalization and stereotyping typical of one such as I.
From a possible twenty or so people in the audience, I report approximately 10 who watched the whole film with some sense of interest, determination or will for something else. We were the types who sit still and watch what is on screen from start to end. We concentrate and try to make sense of what we are watching. The rest of those assembled consisted of people who shuffle back and forth in their seat, send and receive text messages, get up and leave, arrive half-way through and buzz around for a few minutes before buzzing off etc. That the film was shown in one of the ICA’s open galleries and not in the Cinema meant that the art crowd in the next-door gallery could be heard whooping, chattering, laughing all the way through our activity. Occasionally some of them would loudly come in and suck on their wine, screech chairs on the stone floor, sound bored very loudly or sigh as if they were at least trying to watch the film with some interest as it unfolded before their very eyes. In the end, the noises off, the parakeet-like chatter, sonorous welcomes and “ha-ha-ha” would pull them away and they would sidle past the screen, free again from difficulty.

Now it sounds like I am making a case for strict adherence to some film goers’ code of ethics and have a problem with parties of middle class art party goers. This is not true. Well, actually it is. But only for the latter.

Remember I am looking for something being said. This entails something being said to me but also more importantly being said to us as a crowd. When the film ended, I wished I had the guts to just ask anyone there what they thought of it. Instead of some collective dialogue and argument, I slunk away through a crowd of jolly types who were blocking the stairs. Polite as I regrettably am, I just made a cautious way through and left to cycle back home in despair.

YOUR DESPAIR

MONEY – ART - MONEY
The audience for this ICA bash, and one assumes a similar crowd for the preview at The Tate Modern, is probably the least likely to be affected by the massive ‘regenerative’ changes currently alive and rampant in London at this time. Not only that, these types seem as an audience to be the least likely to actually do anything about it either. What is the point of this film then? Is it an artwork? The most common description of Kirschner and Panos I have found is as ‘artists’ although the sacred Internet also throws up the self-description ‘activist’ for Panos. Or, then, is the film something else? Something more politicized than expressly political but still a social contribution. Is it to develop new strategies of resistance, new ideas to invigorate or adhere existing local struggles? On the one hand it features what you could assume were local people who might know something of the gentrification and economic warfare directed at their communities. Do these people have a say in the artwork, the film? Do these people attend screenings or hold their own screenings in the East End? Do they have any collective sense of ownership of the finished product or does it belong only to Kirschner and Panos?

On the other hand, the film itself and the surrounding patronage (funding from the Arts Council, Film London Artist’s Moving Image Network and The Elephant Trust plus Kirschner’s own representation by Hollybush Gardens Gallery), prestigious venues for screenings (Tate Modern, ICA, Art Basel, Zagreb) and its attendant cultural capital and knowingness, suggests a dynamic contraction of well-meaning desires to confront the very state of affairs the film portrays.
To me it seems like such a move, showing a film with these themes in these places, is locking something down more than opening something up. Has this film been shown in the East End at all? It’s worth remembering that the Tate Modern played an early role in the continuing gentrification of the surrounding Bankside area and the cleaning out/ nice-ifying of local parks for a more middle class type of person. Marketed as one of the most visited Art Theme Parks in the world, the Tate has a pitiful record on wages and conditions and also runs a half-assed community outreach programme. Having ‘Tate’ on your C.V is a sure-fire way to ascend in the art jobs racket (unless you were selling espressos or cleaning the bogs there). I presume that these will also be the jobs available to local people in the East End during the Olympics and then forever after as the site is turned into expensive housing and crap café chains.

DO YOU READ?
It also felt like the free 8-page Trail of The Spider Reader was something that added to this feeling of political and cultural enclosure. The Reader (and that title irks me) is ‘Compiled by Anna Kirschner and David Panos’ and is simple digest of all the themes that are used in the film. This is short introduction to lifted histories of black cowboys and outlaw female bandits, other radical narratives such as The Spider as trickster figure and real time speculation on the effects of the London 2012 Olympics on low-cost housing availability in the East End.

A Reader that accompanies a film seems a little heavy handed on behalf of the film makers. There may be something honest and giving in wanting to explore as a side piece much of where the film comes from but when things become this obvious it seems to move from using things from all over to taking things from all over and using them up. This seems to be a locking down for me because it’s either really obvious where their influences come from or because the film is not good enough to stand up to the revelation of these superlative pasts and events. These potted histories of defiance, of famous cowboys, revolutionary message Spaghetti Westerns, anarchist dynamiters and runaway slave struggles are, if stood alone in the text, more inspiring and dynamic than the dismal message of the film where liberated interzones have not resisted the economic plagues of the times and where formerly communal acting characters have become individualized. In fact there is local community political and artistic resistance to local regenerations scams and, of course, the meisterscam of scams, the gigantic State-funded private sector rip-off of 2012. The Reader does have a nice lengthy quote from ex-Angry Brigade ‘member’ and Trail of The Spider cast-member John Barker about various Hackney pubs that functioned a little as semi-freed up islands of (sub)cultural sanity in better times before succumbing to their inevitable yuppiefication as bars, flats or restaurants. Despite this new Blitz, resistance in the form of squatted centres and temporary spaces, allotment open days, group networking, information sharing and gatherings, micro artistic statement and propaganda, free events and intervening protests are still very much alive. There are people who are trying to say and do something local against what is being portrayed as being for the benefit of all, even if the resistance remains more invisible than say Ken, Boris or Seb Coe. Floyd’s off-screen quote above is sharper and more dynamic than anything in the film. Sadly, on-screen, Floyd as The Man With No Name remains silent throughout.

I wonder why the film is so resolutely downbeat in trying to portray an actual reality of working class life? Sure there is survival, surrender, compromise, cynicism, parasitism but there is always an actual resistance that survives merely because being poor gives rise to continual thoughts about why you have no money and how you might resist this. Those who do not come from poverty but who right now may not have much will never ever know what it physically and mentally feels like to come from and face a life of mere survival. With this in mind, I wonder if it easier then to see obvious defeats over more subtle histories of communal action and struggle. As I understand it, some main players in the Broadway Market occupations were less able to stand the evictions (and defeat?) of the campaign than other more proletarian elements who had not had the life experience of usually getting what one wants and probably had less illusions about what was possible against the law, a corrupt council and the changing times. I don’t know if those rumoured aspects of that fairly novel and significant local struggle were in the minds of the artists before and during the making the this film? Maybe the film makers just really dug Sergio’s Corbucci’s genre Western Il Grande Silenzio (mentioned in The Reader) where the silent hero and a mass of local renegades are massacred in the end by a bounty killer slightly more wised-up in the possible fortunes to be made in dealing with a proto-petit bourgeoisie that operates outside the clutches of the law despite it’s simultaneous use of legal manoeuvres. Kirschner and Panos’s Man With No Name figure is part-time reworking of Corbucci’s character Silence, a confused out-of-his-time class wanderer, good at shooting, bad at political subtleties. That Corbucci’s film ends in a reactionary slaughter may be a good referential portent to the eventual outcome of the 2012 Olympics as it is felt in the local communities caught in the sights of rapacious developers. This may be so (and paid for by us through that working class tax, the Lottery, amongst other taxes) but it will not have been without some on the ground organizing, initiatives and involvements, experiments and direct actions, as has always been and always win. Best wishes to all.

It's Not The Street That Bothers Me...

2008-05-13T06:36:00.000-07:00

ANYTHING BUT THIS…
We are in space. We are in the street. It is our street. Our space because no-one sees the space as exactly as we do. As you do. It’s quick, it’s excitable as our eyes scan space. Scan crannies. In our radar we pick out details, signs of life as flashes of wonder. A comforting crack in the wall. A juxtaposition of elements, your own collage of bricks and broken advertising? A montage of sound and a sheer drop, the walk over the shopping centre ramps? An assembly of black bags beneath a car? A car that’s dumped. A dump of bus tickets, all dates, all sizes blowing slowly apart to spread about the city, transporting itself on the wind. Or scrawl, ‘I LOVE ?’, ‘TONY IS SHIT’, ‘MAN LIKES TO SUCK. RING 09876123242’. Or damage, accidents, bumps and grinds leaving openings, ways in, ways out, ways through this. A million pasts and a million futures that we see in our own familiar ways as we mooch about where we live. Those things are what cheer us, anchor us, give us inspiration.

But the forces of darkness are massing once again. We just got comfortable again in the post-industrial city. A little battered but still unbroken. Still functioning and still with an element that’s remained sharp. But the forces are massing once again. They want to invade that space. They want to get you. They want to take your space. They are Space Invaders. Or so they think…

COLOUR GLOSSIES. DARKNESS. FIRST WAVE
The signs are everywhere now. Not only the physical acts of invasion but photographs, lectures, auctions, makes or breaks. Worse than this there are now opinions to be heard. Options. Discussions. Argument. It’s becoming a serious business this invasion. What do you think? Have you had your say on the matter? On the matter at hand. Do you have an opinion? Do you have something to say about it?

(The robot with the piercing eyes in charge of the investigation dissolves as I wake from the nightmare, sweating, screaming:
‘Yes. Okay. YES! It’s cool. It’s really cool’. It’s okay. It’s okay. I like it. It’s alright’.
Crap! He knows I’m lying. I used to think it was cool but then I had to run off. Up to my old tricks. Fuck! Shit! Critique. I thought their drugs had cured me.)

Have you had your nightmare yet?

‘CUNTS’
Graffito on estate agents, Hackney 2006

There has been a break-out of artists at every street corner. This was predicted by curmudgeon and misfit Louis-Ferdinand Celine 80 years ago. ‘People are so bored that artists have been posted at every street corner’, he wrote. It’s true. You can’t move for someone’s stencil, sticker, photocopy, marker pen, spraypaint. We are banging our heads on the walls and the art hurts.
The street has been rediscovered after its murder in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Now it’s safe again to be street. It’s safe to be in the street. It’s even okay to be an artist again.
We got rid of the gallery to have the world become one big gallery. The lingo used by magazines to accompany articles on street art is the same as the one used by estate agents to accompany house sales. First and foremost, there is ‘urban’. Following the urban is the ‘cool’. After this you might get your new urban feet wet in ‘raw’, ‘rough’, ‘sexy’, ‘underground’. This lingo is so unreal and clichéd, it sounds like calling your friends ‘cats’ and having something that ‘you dig!’. It’s seem obviously a parallel that street art is more likely to be found in places that are undergoing serious gentrification rather than in places that remain shitholes, loveable or not. Here, then, street art is the precursor to continuing enclosure, to subtraction of free space.

‘NEXT TIME KEEP YOUR ART TO YOURSELF’
Sticker applied to numerous pieces of street art, Brooklyn 2006

New York, September 2006. Small bar, thirty in a crowd. Two other people. The man and wife ‘collective’. She? Don’t know. Him? Ad Exec. Together they are the Wooster Collective, the biggest on-line site for street art. Essentially they are collectors, patrons, the bourgeoisie, with a “love” for other people’s street art. After ten or twenty, thirty slides of this kind of art, my friend could take their sales pitch no more. A small argument fizzled. One sided as The Woosters are so inoffensive as to seem like chinchillas. They are too bland to offer any vigourous self-defence of the project and thus by default of themselves. After a few sharp raised voices, my friend slumps down defeated by the Collective and the crowd who believe. ‘But’, he says to himself, ‘street is art is so boring’. I was shocked. Call the police! Call the artists! Call the artist police. Yes, it was like how I used to feel when someone I trusted slagged off the Situationists. ‘But, but!’, I would mumble. Sacrilege. Heresy. Profanity. Ok, you get the point.

It was ten seconds later when it hit me. Street art is boring!!!

‘CLASS AGAINST CLASS - MAKE THE BOSSES PAY FOR THEIR CRISIS’
Graffito on riverwall at North Woolwich, circa 1974, still there.

The invasion is weird though as it expands as it contracts. It gets bigger as it gets smaller.
Once there was the gallery and we could safely ignore it. Now the gallery has expanded to fill the world. It’s all gallery. Wherever you walk is gallery. And it’s all gonna have a price. You heard the tale of the people who sold their brick wall because it had a Banksy on it? Crazy expansion.
What makes street art so boring is that it eats itself. Whereas we might have had a laugh at someone who left painted a smiley face on a belisha beacon. Or we might still laugh as ‘NO PARKING’ once more becomes ‘NO BARKING’. Or as ‘CAUTION: MEN WORKING OVERHEAD’ becomes ‘CAUTION: MEN WANKING OVERHEAD. As ‘CANAL STREET becomes ‘ANAL STREET’. As ‘NO MORE TORY CUTS’ became ‘NO MORE TORY CUNTS’. Something un-selfconscious. Something quick. In comparison, wrapped up in its own self-awareness, Street Art really is quite humourless in its supposed ‘intervention’ into every day life.
My favourite playful lightening fast reactions to events are the dressing up of some local statue with a wooden stave and plastic coppers helmet at Tower Hill, East London during the Printers Dispute of 1986-87 when the whole area was regular occupied by the forces of order, themselves being either barriers to entry and exit or targets for bricks and bottles. The other act of iconoclastic intelligence was the Mayday 2000 crowning of the statue of Winston Churchill with a green Mohican. Less well remembered was the droplet of blood that was added to his mouth, a timely reference to Churchill’s approval of the aerial bombing of Iraqi’s back in 1921.
On a similar disregard for art and it’s attendant wearying aspirations, I could find no-one willing to help me update the great Anarchist Bakunin’s novel strategy of defence in the Dresden uprising of 1849. During the Reclaim The Streets uprising of joy in 1997 in Trafalgar Square, we were at the step of the National Gallery, a thousand or more with the police beginning their rough handling of us. Couldn’t we pull the Matisses, the Caravaggios, the Vermeers out onto the street, give ‘em an airing and keep the coppers at bay. They wouldn’t truncheon their way through those museum pieces. It was black looks for me all the way, I’m afraid. In the end, someone sprayed up on the Gallery wall ‘Art by all or none at all’ which was merely the theory of the practice I was hoping to spring into effect. Another day, my friends, another day. No Gods! No Old Masters!

Anyway, in these instances, something amusingly utopian opens up. Something worth saying is being said. This is a collective action. Something shared by all in those tumultuous events. It may be ‘street art’ but it comes from some entirely different world view. Even the political slogan, as tired as it may seem in these hateful times, is some respite from the intentional clever-clever Street art that finds its references in itself. How many wacky Manga-style characters can you count on the walls? The kind of thing that Carhart will use in ad campaign. But which came first? The ad or the art? Or people make sub-Bankys. There’s twenty five books published last year about Street Art. About stickers art. About stencil art. About spraycan art. Then the genre divides and there’s books that quote Debord and Bataille and talk about ‘the everyday’ and feature photos of people’s ‘games in the city’. We must reject this.
That’s why I like the slogan from North Woolwich painted up in white paint in the 1970’s during the recession and the harsh attack on workers lives. I like it as it remains. It has not been scrubbed away. As nothing has changed for the poor as we face a new bosses crisis in the next few years, nothing has changed with the slogan. Class against class. Old-fashioned but immutable.

‘WE THREW IT UP BY NIGHT AND THEY SCRUBBED IT OFF BY DAY
Futura 2000, early NYC grafittist.

So then it contracts again.
They spoke about how they wanted to get their art out into the public space, how liberating it was, how anyone could do it. But the problem remains of art and artists. Why should we creatively labour under the illusion that what we make is ‘art’. Either in a studio or plastering the street with it. There was something less irritating about the grafitti that came with rap music. This may merely be my own class-based obsessions where hip-hop culture seemed more working class, more poignant, more localized, more survival and thus in one, more capable of being visionary even if the themes and content of the pieces became quickly ritualized. But with this messy argument, I dig a big hole or lay myself open to a trap despite my guiding belief in life to embrace ‘contradiction without resolution’.
I like tagging because it merely serves to mark space and to be known by more or less those in the know or those who care, be that these days, other people like you or the police who patrol MySpace to gather ‘intelligence’ to prosecute taggers. Tagging is anonymity squared. No-one knows who you are yet some people just know you anyway, through the act, through the name, through longing and mooching around The City and your spaces, your pathways through it. Through this creation of free space. Walls become exit points, not canvases.

Street art becomes reactionary and miserly when the act itself is an advertisement for the self that wants not to be no-one but to be someone. It becomes a vile practice when it wants to take the freedoms to be found in wandering the city and covers them up through the act of representation. Street art saturated streets make the place as banal as a shopping mall, as a mere extension of things to consume. Street Art Tours and Guidebooks (available now!!) remove even the last thread of play and delight, bringing what was once hidden, possibly subversive, occult or festive, into the realm of being another boring commodity (like non-street art), just more cultural capital.
So, is this a piece of art or is a brand for an up-and-coming area? Is this a game played in the city like hide and seek or is it a role-playing game where the self morphs into something quite spectacular, the already written script?
In this fashion, Street art leads to celebrities. It can’t help it. Uncovering Banksy is an obsession in the media because in the bourgeois world everyone must have a name and a face in order to be someone. Banksy must have a public face.

I stopped myself going to the OBEY art show in London’s now trendy Brick Lane for two reasons. The first was that I would make myself miserable. The second was that as a follow-on from this misery I would desire to piss up the canvases and I wasn’t sure how long you might get for urinating on street art in a gallery setting. Let’s call this a grey area for now. OBEY is one motherfucker famous for his ‘street art’ that satirises consumer and surveillance culture with his pieces that warn you to obey. For all his talk, spiel and bullshit, Shepard Fairey (OBEY) helps run the marketing company BLK/MRKT that specializes in knowing what’s hip with the kids in the street so that Adidas, Nike etc can market it, maximize sales, make money. With one hand he ‘gets up’, he sticks up big posters in the street and he’s been at it for years. With the other hand he banks the cheques from the mega-corps that are the backbone for why surveillance culture exists, to protect property and profit blah blah as you know. Oh well.
It’s a snake that eats its own tale. A ton of people who went out in their teens to spray, tag, destroy, reinvent the grey blank walls = blank minds City, kept going and made jobs for themselves in agencies like OBEY runs. Now they’re bored in their dayjobs and take their alienation out into their agencies nearby streets. This is why street art is more likely to be found in gentrified areas full of new media jobs and less in other areas saturated merely with old shit jobs. Shit! It’s a pisser but, for some who never had a chance, it’s better than serving burgers. Just ask Futura 2000, one of the earliest train writers in NYC. He ended up in galleries and not McDonalds. Contraction after expansion? Contradiction without resolution?

FRESH and WILD STYLE
My good friend, lets call him Agent J, and myself had an idea for a real street art project. It was simple and we called it SHITPUMP. We’d make a hand-held pump that shoots out human shit from a bucket and we’d go out to make our art known. Stumbling across some posh restaurant full of posh punters we might spray the windows brown. Or maybe we would force ourselves into Gallery openings and attack. It would kinda be like this. We’d barge in, two guys with the SHITPUMPS and we’d move fast amongst the hangers-on, the chatterers, the artists, the smug money and we’d attack. Screams all around! Odour. SHITPUMP fires. Here, there, everyone gets a bit!
Of course, we’d end up trendy in the end. Articles would be written about us. People would go to Opening Nights just in case we showed up and they could say to jealous friends, ‘Oh, we got covered in shit last night by SHITPUMP’ We’d probably make some money in the end. Real money. But then where would we be. As disposable as cash. Last week’s thing. I suppose we could stage a comeback as DEATHPUMP.

Amusingly for us, OBEY (alongside SWOON and MOMO, two other street artists) were recently targeted by THE SPLASHER in New York. An OBEY piece could not go by without the anonymous Splasher throwing a bucket of paint over the ‘works’. Outrage in the street art community ensued and then the story was picked up by the papers when The Splasher released a dense manifesto that decried street art as ‘fetishised actions of banality’, ‘the advance scout for capital’ and so on. Particularly spot-on was his insistence that squalor, destitution, poverty, eviction is real. It’s not just ‘exquisite ambiance’ for your art. It all seemed so great (and still is) when the man with the splash was later unmasked, the rumour being that his umbrage was more likely to be an infatuation with SWOON. He’d once interviewed her for a paper but she’d declined his subsequent attentions. This front page splash became the final splash for our Splasher!

‘BLACK PAINT’.
Leamington Spa, 2007- a big graffito in black paint!

And so back to the street. Your street. Has someone ‘intervened’ there yet? There’s something to be said for anonymity. For the old fashioned concepts of damage and sabotage. Of class revenge. They have their street art. We prefer vandalism. Let’s get back to basics. The obscene, the scrawled, the scatological, the slogan, the meaningless, the local rumours. Let’s throw it up by night and not care if they scrub it off by day because we are not trying to be anything. Not be anything other than our free collective selves.

NO BARKING!!
FUCK THE POLICE!!

Pictures taken from the communal landing just outside my door

Been away, now returned...

2008-02-04T07:21:00.000-08:00

The Ruinist has been away fighting the modern day Knights Templars in New York, Hong Kong and Paris. Now that the world is safe again from this international age old conspiracy of evil design, The Ruinist will continue with what they call a 'blog'. Or until the conspiracy rears its ugly head again. Keep 'em peeled.

Speech, Speaking, Not Speaking, Silence

2008-01-26T11:40:00.000-08:00

Where are we at?  We live in a world where much is said.
All the time.
Everywhere is speech. Opinion.
Everywhere is babble.
White noise.

Recently, The Ruinist has been fascinated (in these times) by the following idea: What can be said?

And, in this din of speech, fascinated then by what would be the unspeakable? What cannot be said.

Events, past times, stagnations, moments of reprieve, passings by, jolts, inquiries, set pieces. All areas to enjoy the above questions within.

My Life To Live
It’s easy and it’s fun to get stuck inside a film sequence. Nothing right now can be more enjoyable than a simple passage of time in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1962 film ‘Vivre Sa Vie’. The actress Anna Karina (Godard’s suffering wife of the time) ends up sitting with real-life ‘philosopher’ Brice Parain in a café. Looking over at him and his study of a book, she invites herself over for a drink. He reads, he tells her, because that is his job. Anna Karina begins to speak but is lost for words.
The Philosopher replies to her (although they were really filmed earlier as ad-libs to Godard’s questions) that to think about an action before one makes it is to be paralysed. On speaking he says-

'One learns to talk well only when one has renounced life for a time...Speaking is almost a resurrection in relation to life...Speech is another life from where one does not speak...So to live in speech one must pass through the death of life without speech'

Here what can be said may be answered as something that has been realized only after a period of silence. The Ruinist, desirous of a period of silence, of a period of not thinking in the usual fashion, is moving slowly through such a period. And so, this posting heralds some sort of end-note before all the possible changes. The Ruinist hopes so.

'It is not a question of speaking or not speaking, but of speaking well' (Sontag, 'Godard's Vivre sa vie',1964)

Tired of the oblique and the difficult. Here, there and (almost) everywhere. The Ruinist has come round to prefer The Image again. So less words, less exiled speech, less drifting orphaned thoughts (without response). Like above, like below…

Towards resurrection…
Speak! Don’t speak. It often doesn’t matter. Whos’s listening anyway? Who is listening without already working on their response. That’s not conversation. It’s reciprocal monologue.

The instant gratification of love expressed as consumer desire bleeds us dry with its clamorous stickiness, its panic. If I say ‘I love you’ then it can only be after a period of silent affection. To be in love is to enjoy a sensational wordless drift together. As we post that love and revolution are the two sides of the hated coin, we are already free to dismiss words in the service of revolutionary activity that binds together those in solidarity. This is not to say that nothing can be communicated, merely that politics and it’s chosen tiring words serve us no longer. Revolutionary silence seems a better and more powerful force. Cutting away all the shit words. Cutting away at all the manifestos. Sshhhh! Put your hand in mine. We’ll run at the world together in silence.

And so…
Hide. Be adrift. Wander. Return to tell tales of wonder.
That is to speak freely. To speak of the heart’s adventure. What was found in pleasure and in adverse moments. To speak from the depth of understanding and not merely intellectually.

Detachments, attachments, the second hand, alarms clocks, errors and misunderstanding, the language of the eyes, love, suicide and attempted suicide, blood ties and so on…these are the words that mutate, expand in meaning, coincidence and conspiracy to set the scene for ‘what can be said’. Or what can be said finally, openly, honestly, after all the above scenes…

What cannot be said these days: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Random Banality
"The important point is not their politics, but the fact that they are a part of a new and exciting cultural renaissence in this country'
Tony Blair responding to criticism from Brit Pop stars to the close relations of New Labour to business interests. (29th March 1998)

Speak up for the economy. Nothing else matters anymore.

We hope this is just a blip

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all

2007-12-27T11:59:00.000-08:00

The Ruinist begins a new year with intent...

Xmas Family Home washing line...

Can anyone guess what meal is being prepared here?

The Ruinist Library comes to the Tower finally...

Photo-analysis London

2007-12-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

The boots of The Ruinist's comrades

Question cat

The practice and silence of watching what's come to be called 'video art'

Planet of slums vs equality?