neil cummings

the enthusiast has the same relationship to capital as the gift to the commodity

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London

Sunday 20th November, on my way to the Critical Practice Walk and Talk at the Royal Observatory. The walk (we were to meet at at 1pm) started at the Prime Meridian, Longitude 0° Latitude 51° 28' 38 N........ even if it rained. The walk was entitled from Science to Culture........

Anyway, on my way there I stood stunned before the gates of heaven in Mile End, and the walk unfolded through banks of fog pierced by sparkling winter sun, like in a Turner painting. Beautiful.

See Man on a Plate

Occupy, occupy!

Chelsea Cadence

Alternatives

Saturday 26th March

I went to the protest in London, it was a march to demmand [and propose] alternatives to the brutal ideaologicaly driven, financial cuts to public services.

A huge turnout, estimates are close to 500,000 people, meant that the multitude took four fours to pass a static point – a solid swathe of people from Blackfriars to Hyde Park. People travelled from all over the country and I even met people from France who had travelled in solidarity. It was a great day.

This was my favourite placard "Y ouren not sharing" which I took to be a sharp acusation to the bankers, bond traders, tax avoiders, derivative hedgers, dark-pool developers, our political-class and arcane financial instrument designers.

At the very moment our political class suggest there are no alternatives to an assult on public culture, this is the very moment to drive those alternatives home.

Let this be a sign.

Here's a nice blogpost, and the march anticipates Media Squares

Gold Rush

I saw Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush on Monday 3rd January 2011.

The Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Carl Davis played a live accompaniment to Chaplin's silent classic in a special performance at the Royal Festival Hall.

Featuring Chaplin in his quintessential Little Tramp role, the film was described by The New York Times upon its 1925 release as

‘a comedy with streaks of poetry, pathos, and tenderness, [...] the outstanding gem of all Chaplin’s pictures’.

Pain in the Arts

In Britain, the coalition governments destruction of public funding for university education, and the decimation of financial support for arts and their institutions, has indeed induced pain in the arts.

This is how members of parliament were protected while they voted to triple tuition fees.

sovereignty

I went to London zoo to participate in an extension of an exhibition and conference. The exhibition at Gasworks was Hydrarchy: Power and Resistance at Sea, which explores contemporary conceptions of the sea as a contested cultural, political, legal and socio-economic territory.

The artists in Hydrarchy: Power and Resistance at Sea explore themes of colonialism and the slave trade, commerce, tourism and offshore finance, as well as maritime folk history, piracy and the tyrannical figure of the captain.

Saturday 18th September 2010

Unfortunately I missed the conference, although clearly it was exploring some of the theoretical terrain suggested by the exhibition. The sea has functioned as a historic space for the exercise of violent, tyrannical and world-transforming power; like capitalism, empire, slavery, etc. On the other hand the sea offers a possibility of resistance, where alternative, sometimes revolutionary social orders can be imagined and practiced; pirates, mutinies, offshore finance, etc.....

Chalk & Talk

As part of Critical Practice I participated in a discussion organised by Department 21 at the Royal College of Art. Six independent, bottom-up educational initiatives shared their experiences of experimenting with different systems of teaching and learning, through radically reassessing accepted modes of knowledge distribution. For the future, we aim to compile a manual of good practice to explore horizontal, transparent educational models within institutions.

Chelsea Cadence

the educational turn

I will take part in a three day event FL∆G: re-turning the educational turn at Chelsea College of Art and Design

Education is increasingly a key concern for contemporary art practice and its exhibitionary institutions; recent events include PARADE, Documenta 12 and United Nations Plaza, or Transpedagogy: Contemporary Art and the Vehicles of Education at MOMA, and events covened by the Serpentine and Hayward Gallery like de-schooling society, could all be defined as art turning educational.

On the one hand, claiming pedagogic practices as a form of art for exhibition could be seen as a way of idealising art education, or as an attempt to aestheticise education for exhibition. On the other hand, it could be seen as a form of engaged, dematerialised and participatory art practice. Regardless of the hand we choose, the proliferation of interest in the educational turn, demonstrates a new and widespread interest within exhibitionary institutions, art practice itself and sites of art education for self-reflexion.