Wunderkammer

I'm excited about the up and coming Wunderkammer show at Margaret St, dans le foyer. The joint curatorial genius of Charlie & Kate should make this a good event. David Miller, a.k.a The Dandy a.k.a The Merman (from our own bevvy of collaborations) and I will be performing on the night. Last time we performed together for the Crowd 6 Mingling & Mistletoe show. It was a rad blend of modern myth making and Marshall mini amps for voice projection. This time we will (hopefully) be appearing in separate exhibition cabinets; I can't account for David's performance as yet; as for my own it's in its infancy.
A recent discovery of some old cassette tapes has informed my decision to do an extended sound piece called Kasegesicht. Thanks to Babel fish for this one: roughly 'Cheese face'. So named for the character I will be appearing as on the night. Anyway, back to the tapes.
I wrote a short synopsis for the press release and that's when I remembered the 5 or so tapes I'd made between 2001-2. These combined (and in order): learned ramblings; the Pleistocene epoch; newspaper readings of shark attacks; music; typewriter recordings; dense, multi layered voices and manipulations: whistling, breathing slowed down and sped up; eating; hiding in cupboards and screaming down cardboard tubes. Hilarious! However my aims were deadly serious, and the way I come across is urgently earnest and excitable. It's embarrassing! However these are important qualities I lack in my practice now. I want that feeling back. Like the art is the most important and cathartic, sometimes maddening but always uber relevant means of my self expression and self awareness. The means of becoming engaged with an idea, no matter how frivolous it seems.
In the Chronicles of Edward Winter I took that to it's extreme. Edward Winter was my main alter ego for the duration of 2001. I went to some significant lengths to explore the colour white (my then monomaniac pursuit): shaving off my eyebrows and bleaching my hair then pasting myself white all over for a photo shoot. Then came the tape - which was a culmination of all my discoveries and ideas surrounding the colour / non - colour. This was a piece by piece dissemination, my crazy attempt to categorise (like Melville in Moby Dick) the vast implications of whiteness. Like Melville I didn't come up with a definition, just a list. But the feeling was one of: 'Wicked, at least I've tried and come up with some good shit into the bargain.'
The rugged charm of these tapes - the very rugged charm; still exerts an influence on me. Admittedly I haven't had a practice since 2006. With Wunderkammer, and like performances I hope to build something up again. Sound pieces will very much have a part to play in this.

Wunderkammer, 9th April, 6pm - 8pm at Margaret St!

Warehouse

I've recently heard that the warehouse in which I lived for two years has been demolished. We all expected it, but didn't know when it would face it's inevitable demise. Leaving there was less emotional than I anticipated. Which surprised me. That place had drawn it's share of tears and roars of laughter - mine being amongst the most copious and loudest.
It felt like there was no time for cheery reflection as we were onset with the devastating prospect of a $10k bill for unpaid business rates. This, all of us faced with the determination and grim realisation that there was no way out. However one clown, and clown is the word - for this boy was a fool, an oaf in surfers clothing, who abused his position and his privileges - thought he could do away with the significant portion he owed. Month followed month, and as most of us were forking up preposterous amounts of money to keep the venom'd tongue of the council off our backs, Mr Dan Lindsell kept a monkish silence up in Northamptonshire, in between jobs, a pikey toss pot living with his mum. Once or twice we had ventured to let him know his position, that time was wearing thin. Silence. There is nothing worse than sending a messenger pigeon out to never hear it's wings beat on the homeward passage. Whether it's that phone call you've been promised, that letter or even a fucking text. Silence. Immutable as law.
Then, late as you like, late late late in the day when we had a mere wedge of Franlin$ to hand over; though enough to constitute a months wage from hard graft : this pikey dickhead has the unmitigated audacity to send us an email saying he won't pay his way because he's filing for bankruptcy! What's more he wangles out of the stranglehold by saying he wasn't on the tenancy agreement. Jesus wept.
So, it followed that after many angry words we had to hatch a plan to get the money together. We wanted to take legal action against the bastard, but eventually realised the extra time and money was going to work against us. So the bastard leaped.
You paid cheap rent for a place that would define you for years to come and would offer you the sweetest, craziest memories of hedonism and collective energy, the brilliant art, the videos, the table with a thousand tea cup stains - that housed meetings with Reactor, Ayling & Conroy, Franko B (!), AAS, Springhill Institute; the warehouse parties which attracted throngs of 300+ people each and every time; bands like SHIT, Greg now going on to greener pastures with Battle for Prague; whereas your pastures are brown for all the shit you've spoken, spilling from your mouth, surrounding you.

Disbelief at someone who could so flagrantly eschew his responsibility at the last hurdle, has overtaken my anger. Now it's a tried and tested lesson of be careful of who you choose to live with. We made a mistake in trusting this idiot. Whereas we lost Franklin$ over the affair, Dan lost his friends and much more besides. That should remain his lesson.

Casanova

I've been reading History of my Life by Giacomo Casanova for the last few weeks. It's a beautiful Everyman's edition; weighty; with it's own ribbon bookmark (always a nice touch). The content is no less beautiful. Here was one extraordinary man: a priest; a thief; magician; gambler; traveller, ultimately a wicked diarist, whose confessions read like a more lurid Pepys, with an equal eye for detail. I've already lost count of all the women he's fallen in love with. Can't remember who sang the song, maybe Ultimate Kaos - whoever they were they were shit, but the line sticks: 'I am not your Casanova.' True enough, he did sleep with scores of women (and maybe even some men) but that doesn't make him the uber libertine some would make him out to be. Unlike the Ron Jeremys, the Simon Cowells and Wilt Chamberlains* and countless others we all know and love (or despise); Casanova elevates his encounters to the level of genius. He has an affinity and a genuine adoration for the whole personality of his mistresses. He isn't a sexual predator or a fiend - and I suspect he was a lot better looking than Michael Douglas, to boot. His joy is infectious, and his intrepid pursuits of his ultimately all - too - willing darlings, will raise a universal smile for those of either sex. SEXY TIME!




* 'Wilt the Stilt' allegedly bedded 10,000 women!