Here's a rather strange photograph of me-



I took it in about 1977 in my back yard with a pinhole camera I'd made myself. The exposure was about 5 minutes, which is why I'm a bit blurred. The thing round my neck is a kitchen timer. I'd loaded the film with photographic paper not film, so the image was negative...until today when I remembered it, dug it out and reversed it. So today is the first time I've seen it properly - 32 years later!

Pinhole photography has fascinated me for years, although I've never actually practiced it since I took this.

Newly enthused, I've just spent two hours making one of these-



I'll let you know how I get on.

(with thanks to Jayne Taylor)

This is the latest installment from an ongoing series by 2:13 TV (John Bisset and Ivor Kallin). This one features Adam Bohman. It's fantastic.

So is this one, it's a bit scary too-



Collect the set. Swap them with your friends.

Some of you may know that in an earlier life I used to put on gigs. A LOT of gigs as it happens, weekly gigs for over five years, then monthly ones for a fair bit of time and weird one-offs.

I've started a Gallery featuring some of the flyers for these gigs - most of which I made myself. Some date from before I had any access to DTP, and many date from before I could even send out emails or advertise the gigs online.
The best you could hope for was that Time Out or The Guardian Guide mentioned you, or somebody picked up one of these flyers...

A few of interest-

The I-couldn't-even-afford-Letraset "Club Room International Newsletter from April 1997 (these were posted and sometimes delivered by hand)

A gig I know for a fact strictlytrue was at, some 6 years before I knew him.

The Bloke Newington Festival of Men's Improvisation.

Goodness knows what I was running on back then...

I wasn't always a New Labour Stooge you know. There was a time (about '96/'97) when I was very interested in Situationism, and produced and handed out flyers like the one below.

The funny thing is, after all these years I still agree with it. After all, the sentiments are not a million miles away from a recent post on Michael Jackson. I may even start printing them again...

Looking through my box of old fliers this afternoon, I came across this old flier for Exploding Cinema - which I probably picked up at event that Rob Flint and myself performed at*-



What really caught my eye was the anonymous, but highly applaudable text on the back of the leaflet-



The gist of which still stands I think- and "cultural diversity" is still a buzzword umpteen years after this leaflet was produced.

*A pretty brutal performance that consisted of Rob projecting a video of TV adverts with the horizontal hold screwed up, whilst I provided a soundtrack of over-amplified tiny loops from a tiny Yamaha sampler

I love this image (discovered via New Scientist)-



This is a solargraph. It shows the path taken by the sun as it travelled across the sky above the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, UK, between 19 December 2007 and 21 June 2008 (between the winter and summer solstices). It was taken in a single six-month exposure by photographer Justin Quinnell, using a pinhole camera strapped to a telephone mast.

Fantastic isn't it? Very psychedelic.

I'd also love to see Clifton suspension bridge sometime, I don't know that part of the world at all.

The photographer has his own website, with some astonishing other work - check out the "mouth cam" pics.

New Scientist has a nice gallery of anamorphic art which includes some very familiar stuff like Holbein's slanting skull, but also completely unfamiliar stuff like this mind-bending ceiling mural by William Pye from, of all places, Vauxhall station...

An average view-



From the correct angle-



The ceilings were whitewashed over two years ago...

A very very good reason for going to Zadar, Croatia.

The Morske Orgulje, or "sea organ"-



Organ pipes under the steps, played by the waves.

Sounds lovely too.

Do you think Boris might make one for the banks of the Thames?

(No)

Bah, for the first time in many years I'm missing the Blackheath Firework Display - the children are a bit too young you see. I'm trying to console myself with the knowledge that the publicity is promising "music" again, which I still think is a really stoopid idea - when will people realise that fireworks make their own music? I blame Handel.

I'm also consoling myself with this astonishing video that billyplimsoll drew my attention to - you know those photographs that look like pictures of incredibly intricate models, a technique called "tilt shift" apparently?

How about a moving version? (I recommend it without sound)


The North Wind Blew South from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Stick around for the wedding footage - breath-taking.

But sorry, for the first time since I started this blog there'll be not "ooooh!, aaaaah!" post this year.

Walking through Trafalgar Square this morning I noticed a sign pointing to the ICA, and announcing (if I read it right) that admission is now free till 11.00pm.

When I was much younger, the ICA seemed to be almost the epitome of everything I wanted out of life - a place where arty, avant garde types met to listen to cutting edge music, watch extraordinary films and view eye-poppingly neu art - in Teesside, the nearest equivalent before the days of MIMA was the humble Dovecot Arts Centre, where indeed I did waste a lot of time in 1980- but with its little touring rep theatre companies, and art exhibitions forever reflecting the "industrial heritage of the north" or some such, it wasn't really what I was after.

But back in 1977 I paid my first breathless visit to the ICA at the age of 16. I'd come down London with my parents for some reason, and then I'd arranged to get a later train and spent most of a very hot summer's day on my own. The ICA was my first choice of destination, a few weeks earlier Patti Smith had been photographed looking cool in a windcheater there, and Coum Transmission's "Prostitution" exhibition was still quite recent - culminating in a notorious performance by Throbbing Gristle. I was 16, so Patti Smith and Throbbing Gristle seemed important and thrilling at the time (rather than a tedious poet and silly nazi-flirting bad-racket-makers)



I don't remember much about that visit now - I remember having something to eat in the restaurant, in which every surface was covered in brushed aluminium, and being surprised by how many hippies worked there. Coming from up North I'd assumed that, in London, all hippies in the arts had been swept away overnight by the "punk revolution"TM, it was only much later that I realised that the punks, or at least the interesting ones, were actually hippies anyway.

There was an exhibition by an artist called Laurie-Rae Chamberlain called "Six Talented People (Xeroxed)" which consisted of... (go on, guess!)... six portraits of artists made with a colour photocopying machine. It looked punk and new, and there was some connection between Chamberlain and Warhol which made it extra appealing to the Velvets fan I was at the time. I bought a badge of the show - a black badge with scratchy writing stating simply "STP(X)" - which was ambiguous and minimal and cool, and I wore it for many years. "STP" was also a very dangerous drug, apparently...

Then I walked to Kings Cross and went back to Middlesbrough, still buzzing from the excitement of visiting this avant garde shrine.

Many years later, I actually performed at the ICA's "50th Birthday Party"*, in a trio with Peter Cusack and Kaffe Matthews - I've even got a leter from Phillip Dodd thanking me for it - I met Will Self, and had a piss next to (the then fatwa'd) Salman Rushdie...

...and I've hardly been back since, apart from a memorable LMC Festival.

It'd be nice if the ICA still holds a grip on the imaginations of young provincials in the same way as it did me back in the seventies, but I'd be surprised if it did. After all "cutting edge" art is big business now, and even Middlesbrough has a temple to the avant garde in the shape of the impressive Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art - and when any cabbie can have an opinion on conceptual art, Patti Smith hosts festivals, and Damien Hurst is the only person bucking the financial trends, it doesn't seem so secret and appealing any more.

Still, it's nice you can get in for nowt.



*and guess what, the free admission is part of their 60th Birthday celebrations

My friend Anita is up to interesting things again-

Deptford 45s

Deptford 45s is 7 x3 min films, listening posts, workshops, a limited edition giveaway CD & website with gallery, a virtual archive of the area created through a subjective process. The CD & films are not a definitive re-presentation of Deptford merely a reflection of a moment in time.

Gathering the everyday sites and sounds of Deptford, sign posted by local residents through the use of a market stall & a series of workshops, the project documents a moment in time in SE8, an area currently under major development. By recording the everyday sounds of Deptford, offered by local residents and my own experience the area is re-presented in an idiosyncratic way.

Anybody who's aware of Anita's previous project Memphis 45s will know this is going to be fascinating.

I might take up the remix challenge too - I need to do something creative on these long evenings stuck at home....

Like most people interested in left-field music and radio oddness I subscribe to WFMU's "Beware of the Blog" (or wfmufeed if you prefer), but one set of words I never expect to see in an entry is Middlesbrough Town Centre. But there they are-

In March of this year, Forma commissioned People Like Us to make a series of new soundworks for the AV Festival "Now Hear This". Now Hear This is a series of site–specific audio works presented in various public spaces across Middlesbrough, UK. The project featured audio works by artists including Marcus Coates and Zoe Irvine, selected for their various interests in the complex relationships between sound, space and location. Adopting diverse modes of broadcast and public address, Now Hear This offers a range of listening experiences and unexpected sonic interventions into our everyday urban environment, creating surprising and engaging encounters with broadcast material.

People Like Us produced this series of short audio works to be broadcast via Bluetooth in Middlesbrough Town Centre. These brief musical compositions explore the humorous side to communication breakdowns in all their varied and surprising forms. Pair up with People Like Us for a series of misfiring musical arrangements, exploring the entertaining aspects of miscommunication, disharmony, bad connections and missed calls

All the MP3s are there....


Middlesbrough Town Centre, yesterday

My very good friend and one time flatmate (some **cough** 22 years ago), Sean Dower has got himself a website, imaginatively called www.seandower.com.

Sean is an artist (sculpture, film, performance, film and video) and a quite successful one at that. The site is worth a visit, not only because Sean's works are clever, precisely executed and thought provoking, but also because they are bright and witty. Check out "Leigh Bowery in a Glass" and "6 Legged Creature" from these selected photographs, or the marvellous mixture of stalking, forensic detective work and hilarious obsession that makes up Zou Zou's Mime reconstructed. He also shares with me a fascination with 3D photography.

Go have a look



A print of Sean's work "H.H.A.F" was given to Ruth and I as a wedding present in 1994, and has hung in our dining room ever since!

More lovely linoprints by E.L. Turner from the 1940's schoolbook I found recently.
We may find a use for these...

Click on the images for enlargements.

Music - - still enjoying a bit of a racket (although played quietly after the kids are in bed), including Æthenor (who despite the connection to Sunn are actually closer to old school free improv), Fuck Buttons, KTL, and a group called "Teeth Mountain" who have a sort of Third Ear Band vibe- droning cellos and four people drumming on one drum kit. They haven't got a record out but some of their stuff is floating around on the internet. Also got time for Nigerian funk, mid 80's hip hop, and gone back to listening to Carl Stone's monumental pioneering sampling record "Mom's" (and you can too with a free download of one of his best pieces).

Books - finished Rupert Thompson's glorious "Divided Kingdom", and now I'm approaching the end of "The Insult" which is very dark and quirky - still haven't decided whether I like it. My commuting book is David Peace's "Nineteen Seventy Seven" which is beyond dark, and positively grotesque. A Yorkshire James Elroy and deeply unpleasant, but keeping me reading. Also read John Braine's "Room at the Top" which was dead depressing.

Film - I don't have time for film anymore - but I'm still waiting for a UK release of The Man From London. I've got it on my computer, but I can't bring myself to watch it before I've had a chance to see it on the big screen.

Telly - mainly 64 Zoo Lane and the RubbishDuffers, any possible extra time seems to be spent being baffled by Dr Who and Heroes, the first because the plots are cramming too much into too little time, the second because I missed a couple of episodes and haven't got a clue what's going on - other than that everybody who dies at the end of the last series seems to be still alive, and there's a sinister Sgt Bilko type who wants to poison everybody, or something.
The occasional good doc on BBC4 like "Jews"

Art - Uta Barth at the Alison Jacques Gallery - just finished though. Thinking about going to the Cy Twombly biggie, and the Martin Creed installation at Tate Britain - I like Martin Creed. The Chapman Brothers continue to disgust me, giving their money to Nazi Memorabilia collectors. Amoral f*ckheads.

Radio - Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone is really very good. The Archers and Front Row when it's not my turn to put the kids to bed.

Links to be added at my leisure.

Found this lovely old childrens' reading book, dating from the late 40's-



It has fantastic lino-cuts by E.L. Turner-



I'll copy a few more when I have time...

(Click on the photos to enlarge)

Fantastic set of photographs on the Guardian website by Frank Watson of the Thames Estuary. It's an area about to be reclaimed to make way for the new homes and developments of the Thames Gateway project. Beautifully desolate- oddly enough the only time I ever see the Thames Estuary is when coming into London by aeroplane, when what usually attracts my attention is the patterns of the mud flats.

The photos come from an exhibition called Soundings from the Estuary which also features work by my friend Germander Speedwell including a piece called "The Rise and Fall of the Lower Hope"-
"the reaches and features of the Thames Estuary – its islands and inlets, settlements and sandbanks, towns and attractions; including some now lost due to erosion or human intervention, or newly created by development. Names and language both ancient and modern, formal and informal, are combined in this piece."

The Guardian also provides audio for this.

The exhibtion is running at the "Novas Contemporary Urban Centre" in Southwark from the 20th June to the 20th July.

I can't help feeling that the pictures could be used to illustrate the work of JG Ballard, and there's a great feature about him from the Guardian Review which is well worth reading. (Thanks bad_cb) - including this pertinent stab at political commentary-

"Today only bad actors can lead a nation, as Reagan and Blair showed. Poor Gordon Brown needs six months at Rada and a tryout at the Old Vic....

This lunchtime I went to see the exhibition of photographs by Uta Barth at the Alison Jacques gallery.

The exhibition is called "Sundial" and is very simple, and rather beautiful.
The pictures are basically still lifes taken in the artists living room - they record the movement of sunlight across the room - shadows through glass, and corners suddenly illuminated. It's a very quiet, incredibly understated and curiously touching study of time and space. Recommended. Especially on a lovely day like today.


Uta Barth - Sundial

I was reminded of John Smith's wonderful 1975 film "Leading Light", which explored the same domestic theme, with an equally poetic use of film capturing the movement of light. John Smith's house seemed a little more lived-in than Uta Barth's lovely, but rather antiseptic Sunday Supplement apartment though!


John Smith - Leading Light

ednawatley correctly identied this as something I'd be interested in.

"If you believe artist and inventor Paul St George then his "Telectroscope" connects New York and London via a (very) long tunnel running through the earth's crust, with the images bouncing back and forth using mirrors.

The other explanation is that it is all done by optical fibres - take your pick."

Has anybody been to see it yet?

We're hoping to take the kids and meet up with markhammonds and his family tomorrow in London Town Centre, so maybe we'll go and see it...



The official Telectroscope website is here. Looks rather groovy in Jules Verne/HG Wells paleofuturistic kind of way...

Suspicions that Boris Johnson's reign is actually not going to make much difference look more likely to be coming true.

Following the embarrassment over the re-introduction of the Routemaster, (ie it probably won't happen) another of his popularist policies - to give over the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square to a statue of Sir Keith Park rather than the changing displays of modern art, has been dropped -

""I recognise that this revolving programme has proved very popular and I welcome the important contribution it has made in shaping public debate about contemporary art."

Conservatives are not happy about "Boris's First Blunder". Good.

I like the fourth plinth - even when the art has been woeful (the Alison Lapper statue, that godawful head/book/tree arrangement) the knowledge that something else will be along to replace it within a year keeps me interested, and I remain a fan of the current incumbent, Thomas Shutte's "Model For A Hotel"

via Sunny at LibCon