I am delighted to announce Christina’s Blog is expanding and will continue to support artists and galleries on a new site titled ‘Rolling Plinth’.

It will serve as an online platform and offer space for artists and gallerists to have a profile and announcement board for exhibitions and as usual it will feature reviews and useful tips and hints on what to see for art lovers. We are also offering art related services and an opportunity to view work and purchase work from artists on the site.

I do hope you will join us on Rolling Plinth and continue to enjoy being part of our creative community.

www.rollingplinth.com

RPF_flyer

The first Triennial three years ago and organised by Curator Andrea Schlieker with the Title ‘Tales of Time and Space’ hosted well-known names in the art world. Still on view by following the art trail that guides one toward the exhibits that are now permanent works installed at the first Triennial staged in 2009. These include works by Richard Wentworth, Richard Wilson, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Mark Wallinger Tracy Emin, Nathan Coley and more. Tracy Emin Baby Things 2009
On our walk, we found it really enjoyable to suddenly be reading about the Chinese origins of the ‘London Plane Tree’ on the fence of the dentist’s surgery on my way to the station. Richard Wentworths signage pieces remind us that trees have narratives origins and homes and like us are on the way to somewhere else are evident across Folkestone. Tracy Emin’s bronze casts, of baby things are still evident; we found one ‘washed up on the shore’,and Patrick Tuttofuoco’s piece looms large on the Horizon from the Harbour and has a great story to tell!

We picked the most glorious day to check out the new pieces are being installed, in preparation for he 2011 Triennial. Spencer Finch’s installation titled: The colour of Water was being installed that day.
Spencer Finch 2011

Spencer has created a special colour wheel reflecting the colour of the sea, during the Triennial each day an observer will use the wheel to choose a flag whose colour most closely reflects the colour of the sea, and then hoist the flag at midday on one of four flag poles in the city centre of the town.
Just for reference the colour on the day we were there numbered 552.
For other artists on the Triennial programme do check the main website.

We are very excited to announce that ‘Rolling Plinth’ is contributing with our own exhibition on the Fringe Stage of the Folkestone Triennial starting on the 25th June at 42 Old High Street,Folkestone Creative Centre.
See entries announcements and future commentaries for ongoing events at Folkestone Triennial on this new site and we hope you will fall in love with the place and the art and come and visit us there!
http://rollingplinth.com

Dash and Dem have been working with a team of Casualty trainers who act out and demonstrate in the most vivid and realistic way what accident specific wounds look like and how to handle the wounded.Who is the Casualties Union? At inception of the Casualties Union in 1942 it’s founder Eric Claxon stipulated that dummies were forbidden and instruction was only taught on real casualties. Today it exists to provide casualties and patients as teaching aid.
Dash and Dem passed me The Dictionary of Injuries, published as a guidebook for rescue operators after World War II bombings. One of the aims of their project is to extend the content in collaboration with the Union and update the dictionary. Dash and Dem instigated research into the kind of wounds that modern and future weapons like the laser gun can cause.

Shock-
“…It.all… happened… so quickly…” is the slogan for the photographic exhibition inside MOCA and it illuminates the extend of burning and tissue damage to the body such a lazar weapons cause.

A Video piece in the exhbition has one of the volunteers trapped under a piano simulating increasing pain a real time performance by one of the Casualty members lasting a 3 long hours.

Today, The Casualties Union provides trained volunteers to simulate injuries and medical conditions, to improve the realism of training in first aid, nursing and emergency rescue services.

Fete worse than Death was staged as day long performance event including a ‘Free injury face Painting disaster tour’ involving shops and businesses along the street where a series of staged incidents of ‘worse -case scenario’s that could happen when shopping.

Soon everyone all along the Bellenden Road was bleeding and had protruding facial or arm wounds. In the spirit of the fun of the fete the injuries were illusionary but real in the sense that it produced in us that instinctive panic that we can only describe as that deep down in the stomach shock when confronted head on with ripped tissue and blood and disaster. That is if you are squeamish!

There were competitions on who could limp better, and who could win at playing dead, and guess the accident! Medals and Rosettes were presented and prizes awarded for best act in faking pain. Fascinated spectators and participants engaged in pain and dripping with blood were having fun at the fair!

I left the scene unscathed, dipped into one of the new coffee shops in this lively street, to eat a most delicious cake with the excuse that it would stave off that sinking traumatic feeling one get’s in associations with injuries. So be careful it can ‘all happen so quickly’!
More about the Casualties Union here: http://casualtiesunion.org.uk/1organization/history.php
More about Dash and Dem here: http://www.dashndem.com/Home.html

It is based on the idea of a public library where authors can bring their manuscripts, “the unwanted, the lyrical and haunted volumes of American writing’, Such volumes as: Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms, My Trike and Love always Beautiful, a book rejected four hundred and fifty-nine times. Also mentioned is the Culinary Dostoevsky the author of which, it states, was a cookbook of recipes he had found in Dostoevsky’s novels. ‘Some of them are very good, ‘ he said. ‘I’ve eaten everything Dostoevsky ever cooked.’
Brautigan according to his first wife Virginia Aste, never went anywhere without his Dostoyevsky.

Abortion An Historical Romance, inspired the UK library of Unwritten Books http://www.unwritten.org.uk/con.html a project in which ideas for novels are collectedand stored. It also I believe it inspired Haruki Murakami to write ‘Kafka on the Shore’ in which a similar beguiling heaven for literary enthusiasts is portrayed. Brautigan regularly spent time in Japan seeking inspiration for his writing. After the 1970’s his popularity waned in the US but continued to be read in Europe and was translated into Japanese.
Brautigan was enigmatic in life and death.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti said of him, “As an editor I was always waiting for Richard to grow up as a writer. It seems to me he was essentially a naïf, and I don’t think he cultivated that childishness, I think it came naturally. It was like he was much more in tune with the trout in America than with people.”[8]Brautigan’s writings are experimental, romantic,poetic, ironic and above all humorous and rock bands, writers and filmmakers have borrowed from his books, and in the 70′s at the hight of his fame, children were named: ‘Trout Fishing in America’.

More recently it has inspired Adam Curtis to title a documentary ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’ after one of Brautigan’s best-known poems. It is to be screened on Mon. 23rd May 2011 BBC2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/05/all_watched_over_by_machines_o.html
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is a BBC documentary series[1] by filmmaker Adam Curtis, well known for other documentaries including The Trap and The Power of Nightmares. It starts on Monday 23rd May 2011 at 9pm on BBC2.

I find Viginia Aste’s interview with Arthur Magazine about their life together the most informative see this link:
http://www.arthurmag.com/2009/12/25/virginia-aste/
Arthur: What do you think he would’ve thought about current technology, the Internet?
Virginia Aste: In “All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace” [1967], Richard anticipated the impact of computer technology. He was happy to get an electric typewriter. It was a lot of work making corrections on copies of his work, and typing it over and over. It took a lot of time. It was a lot of work.
He would’ve been a great fan of the word processor because he couldn’t spell.
I think he ran out of things to write about, unlike Styron and Mailer—who he didn’t like. Alcohol shut down his spontaneity and depressed him and accelerated/exaggerated the parts of his personality that was pessimistic about people. I’m pretty sure he did not believe in God or an afterlife. He believed in art and the arts as the highest people could live for.

presents

BEN WILSON – THE CHEWING GUM MAN
The last time I stumbled across Ben Wilson’s figure crouched on the pavement and amongst his working utensils was in front of the Royal Academy. I had just been to see the Van Gogh Exhibition when I saw Ben, was putting the finishing touches on a commissioned piece outside the gates of the RA. Ben is a long time and dedicated pioneer of, Pure Street Art in and around London. See previous entries and an interview on this blog. The opening of his solo show at ‘for one week only’ included bigger canvases and a series of humorous pieces of carefully painted figures and scenes on reclaimed finds of the everyday rubbish in the street. The event was so busy, that it was not the right time to ask Ben about the stories that had prompted him to make the individual pieces on show. But catch him another day and he will tell you how every one of the small gum pieces links to a person he comes in contact with or relates to an event he witnesses on his working days out in the streets. ‘For one week only’ website provides a map to the Ben Wilson’s ‘gum trail’ in and around St. James’s. The exhibition is on until the 8th of May. Recommend!

at the

Julian Hartnoll Gallery
37 Duke Street St James’s
London, SW1Y 6DF

2-8 May 2011 10-30-4.30

For more information please visit our website.
foroneweekonly.com
vivienne@foroneweekonly.com
+44 (0) 7973 932271
href=”http://ceberhart.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/dscf6933.jpg”>

Does one ever consider what might be the width of one’s collarbone or the with of one’s shoelace, or a sheet of the wingspan of a plane? I was delighted to be able to follow this performance and read the lyrics on the printed sheet available to visitors. For more about Athanasios Argianas work: http://tetraktysmag.com/2011/02/athanasios-argianas-of-the-length-of-your-arms-unfolded/is

This work can be experienced until 22. May at The Barbican Exhibition featuring Pioneers of the Downtown Scene in 1970 Gordon Matta Clark Laurie Anderson and Trisha Brown. Check out the Program of Events.

I am adding some of the lyric’s by Athanasios Argianas here:

A strand of the width of your arms unfolded, woven to form a sheet. A sheet of the width of the wingspan of a plane, a plane of strands of the width of your arms unfolded, folded to form a cylinder. A sheet shaped into a cylinder with an inside, and an outside. An outside as long as it is inside, an inside much shorter than it’s outside. –To consider a fold; A fold of the width of the cylinder’s diameter, at any point of its length, facing any direction, of any degree, a fold wit ha cut along its crease, a cut as wide as the cylinder’s end, that end now folded in the cut’s opening; with an inside and no outside, just one surface, a single endlessly long strand of the length of your arms, unfolded. The width of your shoelace of the length of your nail, the width of a coral snake unfolded. Of the length of a coral snake, curled up. The width of the wingspan of a finch of the length of a strand of your hair. The width of a finch’s feather the width of a piece of string. Cut at length of its circumference the width of a bedsheet, the length of a bed. A strand of the width of your arms unfolded, woven to form a sheet. A sheet of the width of the wingspan of a plane, a plane of strands of the width of your arms unfolded, folded to form a cylinder. A sheet shaped into a cylinder with an inside, and an outside. An outside as long as it’s inside, an inside much shorter than it’s outside…..

Gaudi’s legacies extend and can be enjoyed throughout the town, so does Miro’s and Tapies’s. Save for contemporary art you can find everything.
Even though the art map lists 25 contemporary galleries in town, and many of them in Conseil de Cento, so after a long stroll down which, I am disappointed …… there was nothing new to discover at all… ‘Nada’. The couple of galleries I rembered from a previous visits and that were doing anything close to exciting must have closed down because I could not find them again.
Off the Ramblas is that delightful vegetable meat and fish market. It is Calcot Season, calcot being a mixture of spring onion and leek sold in big bunches on the stalls and is eaten roasted at this time of the year. The market is a magnificent display of fresh vegetables and fruit produce, large fish counters alive with crabs and lobsters fuming bubbles in its last throws. I feel sorry for them but they are appreciated on a plate!
So Gaudi and the Park Güell it was, and we went to join a crowd of visitors at the entrance, and we stepped over all the touristy goods laid out by the sellers on blankets on the floor. Gaudi would have approved of the music and drums sounding from the busy Ronda with its round mosaic seats. We stepped higher into the gardens and found a quiete spot away from the main arena under some trees furnished with tables and benches drenched in glorious sunshine. From this height a fantastic view unfolded of the ancient and new city of Barcelona and lay at our feet suspended between the sea and the blue blue sky. It was a good place to be munching on a very good jamon sandwich , while we agreeing on that: “This was a perfect peaceful moment in a time of so much upheaval around the world.A new extension to the Sagrada Famillia has recently been opened by the Pope and is open to the public. Personally I prefer Gaudi’s drawings of the Sagrada, or the view from afar, to standing at the foot of this monstrously intricate building the cacophony or dictionary of styles is distracting, I think Gaudi would be aghast at the additions. This project was a life long occupation for him and it was only 25% finished at his death.
Now a permanent building site, this unfinished work by Gaudi constantly reminds one of his genius and the single mindedness and trust he invested in his goal. At the time his experiments in social architecture and the successful materialisaton of the new ideas opened a pathway to creativeness and permanent change in future architecture. Although to this day not many architects have been able followed in Gaudi’s steps and continue his work resounding with regard for the environment and the human need for social interaction. ‘The continuation of the Sagrada Familia by the successors of Gaudi assumes at the very least a lack of understanding of the conceptual changes which our times have brought about in architecture and which for better or for worse, connect works intimately with the genius of their authors.’ (Gaudi, Don Juan Bassegoda Nonell, Academy Editions 1987)

What would The Sagrada be like if he was still alive? What if today’s architects and planners were more open to experimentation? Would our towns would have gentler, humanistic lines to follow, and be more pleasant places? Gaudi’s proposal for the Sagrada included that the end persued is: ‘to recreate the language of symbolic forms, so as to revitalize the communication that could be offered by religious objects. And so it was to be in the new church of the Sagrada Familia.

Plasticity and rounded edges characterise all of his works, his inspiring designs and creations are so much closer to the natural forms found in the environment around us. Elements of the very beginning of art noveau are clearly recognisable, but there is so much more, there is a middle eastern influence in the lattice work and baroque curls on others, he combined it all and made it his very own new style based on humanitarian principles. This is far our city made from the sterile straight lined office blocks. Hundertwasser who is one of the architects that followed in Gaudi’s footsteps wrote this poem on the straight line: See below:

The Paradise Destroyed by the Straight Line
by Friedensreich Hundertwasser
An ecologist without a conscience is doomed
to failure, and the same is true of an artist
who does not bow to the laws of nature.
The world has not improved.
The dangers felt have turned into reality.
Nevertheless, today, although
nothing has been done,
my longstanding warnings are at last
being taken seriously.
Yet there are still no lawns on the roofs,
no tree-tenants, no plant-driven water
purification plants, no humus toilets, no rights
to windows, no duties to the trees.
The essential reafforestation of the town
has not come about.
What we lack is a peace treaty
with nature.
We must restore to nature the territories
we have unlawfully taken from it.
Everything horizontal
under the sky belongs to nature.
Everything touched by the rays of the sun,
everywhere where the rain falls is nature’s
sacred and inviolable property.
We men are merely nature’s guests.
In 1952 I spoke of the civilisation of
make-believe, the one we must
shake off, myself, the first of all!
I spoke of columns of gray men on the march
toward sterility and self-destruction.
The same year I used the term
”transautomation” to show the way beyond
the rationalism of technocrats
toward a new creation
in harmony with the laws of nature.
In 1953 I realised that the straight line
leads to the downfall of mankind.
But the straight line has become
an absolute tyranny.
The straight line is something cowardly
drawn with a rule, without thought or feeling;
it is a line which does not exist in nature.
And that the line is the rotten foundation
of our doomed civilisation.
Even if there are certain places where it is
recognised that this line is rapidly leading to
perdition, its course continues to be plotted.
The straight line is the only sterile line,
the only line which does
not suit man as the image of God.
The straight line is the forbidden fruit.
The straight line is the curse of our civilisation.
Any design undertaken with the straight
line will be stillborn.
Today we are witnessing the triumph
of rationalist knowhow and yet,
at the same time, we find ourselves
confronted with emptiness. An æsthetic void,
desert of uniformity, criminal sterility,
loss of creative power.
Even creativity is prefabricated.
We have become impotent.
We are no longer able to create.
That is our real illiteracy.