Digital Retouching

I went to see the Seth Price show at Sadie Coles HQ gallery. This took me in to a zone of central London I haven’t seen too much of. I first of all went to Davies Street, and took a long time figuring out which unmarked door led in to the gallery. There I learned […]

The Family Reunion

I went to see the opening night of House Of Ife at Bush Theatre. It was also the night of QPR v Sheffield United at Loftus Rd and so crowds of jolly people could be seen going by outside, along with police vans and officers on horses. The play is performed in the main Holloway […]

Action At A Distance

I watched some sci-fi series on Netflix about spaceships contacting aliens later in the 21st century. Another Life (2019-21) starts with a well-off young woman seemingly bored in a well-maintained villa, which the subtitles locate in Westchester, New York. She is talking to a team of make-up artists and cameramen, ready to record her for […]

Antic Hay

We went to see the exhibition The 1920s: Beyond The Roar at the National Archives in Kew. This is more than simply a trot through the usual images of the Jazz Age etc. as it includes material from the 1921 Census now available. How the national biopower was logged and inscripted: We can see leaflets […]

Le Futur

I went to the South London Gallery to see the latest exhibits. In Gallery 1 is the work of Shamica Ruddock: On the wall: The guide: In Galleries 2 and 3, Celine Condorelli with Ben Rivers and Jay Bernard: Gallery 2: In Gallery 3: Upstairs again, the SLG130 Portfolio: There was also a video display […]

The Multiple Demand Network

We hired a car and drove away on Good Friday. I stopped at a garage to top up the fuel and found all the pumps were marked out of use. I went on to another garage where a few pumps were available though many others were marked out of use. I got petrol, and we […]

The Mother-In-Law Joke

I watched The Family Way, the 1966 film based on the play All In Good Time by Bill Naughton. The story is set entirely in a nameless industrial town somewhere in Lancashire (Bolton was used for location filming) over a period of about 3 months. The central characters are Arthur Fitton, played by Hywel Bennett, […]

A Man Of High Morale

I’ve been listening to a hAon, the new album by Telefis, which is the latest project involving Cathal Coughlan, now working with Jacknife Lee. Musically the album is presented as what seems to be a broken transmission – the start and end tracks use what seems to be recordings from daytime television, and some unexpected […]

Sidewalking

Like millions of others around the world, I’ve been listening to the new edition of Terror Twilight by Pavement, which I also liked listening to when it first came out in 1999. I’m sure there’s a reason why we’ve had to wait so long for this, since all the other Pavement albums had their expanded […]

Rhodesia

I went to the NFT to see the screening of Cold Case Hammarskjöld (2019). About 100 people were in the audience. A “discussion” was advertised but in the event not all the potential panel members could attend. Instead we had an introduction and later Q&A with David Wardrop of the Westminster United Nations Association. His […]