“Katherine Boo’s debut about the vertiginousness of existence in a “Mumbai slum” is the antidote to mainstream books and films on the subject from the English-speaking world.”
Category: a gram of gujarat
on a frieze review of ‘the country of the blind…’ with CAMP at folkestone triennial 2011
2011 Folkestone Triennial
VARIOUS VENUES, FOLKESTONE, UK
Scroll down for review…
[NB Collaborations are a particular, demanding and beautiful form of work which I seem to have developed a taste for, at least in a visual art context and since 1997!
2011 was a year of varying forms of artful collaboration, each very special but none quite so intimate as this one for me; how it came about, whom it involves and the result of our efforts. To avoid the obvious-but-hideous potential problems of collaboration, a certain more or less unspoken [else endlessly detailed!] but deeply-shared approach to all-things essential is elemental. Continue reading “on a frieze review of ‘the country of the blind…’ with CAMP at folkestone triennial 2011”
on the country of the blind in full detail & downloadability
The Country of the Blind and Other Stories Installation shots CAMP with GM-A Folkestone Triennial [ongoing]
CAMPuter.org now has a good page on the film here with cat. text, shot-lists, stills, credits… There’s also a link here to pad.ma where the film is archived…
But I strongly recommend heading down to Folkestone, not only to see the film in situ where it’s installed beautifully and offers optimised-viewing, but also to see all the other art on show throughout a fascinating town. The harbour tastes irresistible and in the pubs on the water front a version of the film is always looping…
Folkestone Triennial’s page is here and they have weekend tours conducted by some high calibre guides not least this weekend with Achim Borchardt Hume here. It takes 53 minutes to get there…
Thanks everyone for the positive feedback.
on the country of the blind and other stories, first art critical response
In the Country of the Blind and Other Stories Installation NCI Folkestone [Ph. Guy Mannes-Abbott]
Adrian Searle’s review in The Guardian is so generous about the film I’ve been working on with Shaina, Ashok and Iyesha [CAMP] that I can’t help but post it.
“In the National Coastwatch Institution cabin, perched on a cliff above Folkestone, the volunteer guards scan the sea. Mumbai-based collective CAMP recorded the view, the constant traffic plying the Channel, and the volunteers’ casual commentary The result is an almost hour-long film recorded over a year. French church spires break the horizon, seen through a telescope. We follow tankers and canoes, ferries and fishing boats – and there’s the archbishop of Canterbury, helping out at an archeological dig along the coast, his hair a white, fluffy windsock in the distance. The artists in Mumbai recorded the observations and anecdotes of the volunteers via broadband. It’s a case of the watchers watched, and we watch too, following near-collisions out at sea, and blokes hauling up lobster pots. “Lobsters are giant Jurassic insects,” someone says. I’d happily stay all day.”
Read the piece here.
AS’s warm words had a warm affect, though I would only point out that it’s not a documentary and say no more -other than that Fruit Store loyalists and Dostoyevskians shouldn’t need me to!
Read the letter from the man, jocularly referred to as the ‘archbish’ on the soundtrack, here! And beware similar assumptions!
Probably should resist saying that I agree with him about the ill-judged mermaid too… I was too involved to see very much else other than Zineb Sedira’s very beautiful and complex film installation Lighthouse in the Sea of Time. I’ll post on what I think might well be her best work so far in time and definitely take the 57 minute train back for more of the Triennial and more of Folkestone itself too…
on your way to Folkestone for the Triennial?
PV Friday 24th 8-Late
Opens to public Saturday 25th June – 25th September
Don’t miss this at the NCI on the east cliff [best view in and of the town]:
CAMP (Shaina Anand, Ashok Sukumaran, Iyesha Geeth Abbas, with Guy Mannes-Abbott)
Title: The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories
go, go , go…
on the varne, with CAMP at the folkestone triennial
The Varne NCI Folkestone’s channel map [Ph. Guy Mannes-Abbott]
The Varne is a mid channel sandbank, slightly closer to the French coast than the coast at Folkestone. If I stood on it, you might see my hand waving above the water. This is where the Varne Lightship Automatic of radio legend is permanently anchored, where massive ships can and do run aground. A place that obtains peculiar potency when watched from the shore.
Everything that goes on in the world’s water, as observed and imagined from the NCI at Folkestone, is the subject of the film I’ve been working on with CAMP -during intensive bursts in Brussels and Folkestone itself. The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories will be installed in a bunker-like room at the back of the NCI Folkestone, high up on the cliffs overlooking the industrial scaled port of Folkestone and English Channel during the Triennial. It will be worth the walk…
Folkestone Triennial opens on Friday 24th June and to the public on the 25th June until 25th September. Continue reading “on the varne, with CAMP at the folkestone triennial”
on the living of patrick leigh fermor
Patrick Leigh Fermor – still from BBC film 2008
Ninety six is a good age to have lived. Both my grandmothers lived into their mid-90s, one of them to 96, a pivotal experience in my own life. Why am I telling you this?! Well PLF is such a vivid presence to me, principally from his writing and words and their conjuring of his feet and ‘heart’, that the news of his death is sad and yet the confirmation that he lived until today makes me happy. Continue reading “on the living of patrick leigh fermor”
preface to epitaph, anne carson and nox in london nov 2010
Anne Carson Iceland 2009 [Photo Einar Falur Ingolfsson]
[Notes on Carson’s London reading of Nox, a couple of years after the last advertised event -in the wake of Decreation and also at SBC- was cancelled. They posted themselves raw a few days ago, here they are at least spell-checked…]
The first and easy thing to say about my obvious need to catch Anne Carson reading in London [Southbank Centre Poetry International Festival opening event Tuesday Nov 3] is that having gone only to see/hear the most significant poet in the English language actually read, perform, be in public the whole event was an instructive delight.
Carson was the last on of 6 poets, all of whom were worth seeing/hearing -if not memorable as such or as yet- but notable for me Continue reading “preface to epitaph, anne carson and nox in london nov 2010”
nb, visual art noticeboard [alternatives to friezing…]
![Dirk Stewen untitled [bronx monkey II]](https://i0.wp.com/maureenpaley.com/system/assets/files/1319/large/DS5-300.doc)
Dirk Stewen untitled [Bronx Monkey II] at Maureen Paley
I’ve been enjoying quite a few shows recently which are likely to be blown out of the water by the imminent frieze fair and so with mighty respect to the latter I thought I’d flag them up as alternatives…
Future Movements Jerusalem at Liverpool Biennial [18 Sept-28 Nov 2010] is an essential exhibition of work from and about Palestine. I posted on Raouf Haj Yihya’s Meter Square here, the New Statesman bravely ran a rather muted piece here and my own review will run at Babelmed shortly. Surprise yourself if you can get to it, or wait for it to travel south as I know it is scheduled to do. But be sure to see it.
Otherwise, Liverpool is a far better Biennial than scarce notice of it by lazy old journos suggests; everyone rightly notes the almost painfully compelling acid-Warhol-mashup-vids of Ryan Trecartin’s but there’s much else, including NS Harsha’s very nice installation [right] at 52 Renshaw Street and not least at Tate Liverpool -where a dubiously conceived but actually nicely put together show called The Sculpture of Language by Carol Anne Duffy exhibits some great and rarely aired works.
Dirk Stewen at Maureen Paley [08 October — 14 November 2010] is the most winning new work in town for me. If you do make it to the frieze jamboree then add this show to your bottom-line schedule otherwise you’ll have failed yourself and London. If you’re not friezing it then take advantage and spend some time in a show spread over two floors, beautifully arranged/hung works combining utopian gesture with extraordinary concentration, tentativeness and beauty. The work seems hardly there at all and yet surprises/delights with a precision that makes for indelibility. It’s Stewen’s first show in London, I’d never seen the work before and this exhibition made me happy to be alive; don’t miss it! Continue reading “nb, visual art noticeboard [alternatives to friezing…]”
on not meeting edward said, who was right then and is right now
I enjoy unlikeliness and it seemed unlikely to me that Candia McWilliam would find herself in Edward Said’s memoir of his early life; Out of Place: A Memoir [Granta 1999]. That she does so in her own memoir [What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness Cape 2010/Vintage 2011] is one of many endearing things about it and its author. Also a high recommendation for Said and his own memoir.
I spent a number of mornings in June this year running past one end of Edward Sa’id Street in Ramallah, actualising the way he and his work feature near the beginning of my adult life and have been returned to repeatedly ever since. I’m posting an old review I did for The Independent of his collection of pieces The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and after [Granta 1999 -out of print/PenguinRandomHouseUS 2001 -linked] [BELOW]. Read almost anything of Said’s [especially on the question of Palestine] and the absence of a voice like his today makes you weep.
Continue reading “on not meeting edward said, who was right then and is right now”
NOTES FROM A FRUITSTORE 