a fun day out for the kids

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The appreciation of nothing
8:57AM Saturday Feb 28, 2009
John Lichfield

In Paris, art exhibitions without exhibits are nothing new. Nothing has been a recognised art form for half a century. But the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris can claim a cultural first this week: a retrospective exhibition of 51 years of exhibitions without exhibits by nine different artists. How can a museum retrospectively exhibit nothing? With care. The 500-page catalogue costs 39 ($98).

The exhibition, Voids, a Retrospective, fills, or fails to fill, five rooms in the French national museum of modern art on the fourth floor of the Pompidou building. All the rooms are entirely empty. The walls are white. The floors are bare. The lighting has been arranged just as carefully as for any other temporary exhibition. The gardiens (guards) watch suspiciously to make sure that the visitors do not touch anything, or in this case that they do not touch nothing.

The aim of the retrospective exhibition - refused by several other leading museums in other countries - is to celebrate and explore a movement begun in Paris by the minimalist artist, Yves Klein. Klein, influenced by Zen Buddhism, was the first artist to present an exhibition of blank walls at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris in 1958.

AdvertisementKlein's exhibition of nothing has been revived for the Pompidou show (which can be seen, or rather not seen, until March 23). In theory, the Pompidou is not presenting the same nothing because these are not actually the same blank walls. There are, however, explanatory panels with the same explanations.

Klein's blank walls are a "specialisation of sensibility to raw materials through stabilised pictorial sensibility". In other words, by seeing nothing, you are encouraged to see everything more clearly.

Five curators have worked on the Pompidou's retrospective of nothing art, which includes works - or non-works - by seven other artists: Robert Barry, Stanley Brouwn, Maria Eichhorn, Bethan Huws, Robert Irwin, Roman Ondak and Laurie Parsons.

One curator, Mathieu Copeland, says the exhibition is partly an exploration of art as the rejection of art: a refusal to add to a world already cluttered with images. "But it is not just a kind of radical, conceptual art.

"You are also invited to explore, in a physical way, each different space, all of which have a different texture. It is a true experience."

Ah, art appreciation

happy anniversary

according to three news, it is the thirtieth year since bar codes were first used in new zealand.

when i was working part time at woolworths, they weren't using them and i had my own pricegun, which was always short of ink. and we always had a few people who would peel the stickers off cheaper products and put them on more expensive ones

apparently the bar codes are more effecient-meaning that a checkout opertaor can get therough a shopper 20% quicker
however, i've found that you can take that long easily just by trying to find the price of an item

incindentally, the prduct that has the bar code that supposedly maks the sign of devil is bag of tofu

my first million

just had an idea

i am going to write a phrase book for every language in the world

however, there will by only one phrase:

"i'm sorry, i don't speak your language"

this should be the only phrase any tourist needs

or maybe i should put it up on a website and get my money from advertising

i can't see how it can fail!

banking on the public's generosity

a couple of left wing bloggers have beeen going incadescent with fury over a report from the independant.
a number of british banks have needed to be bailed out with governement money. the government have asked that the "bonus culture" of the banks be curtailed.

the bankers have responded by saying that if they can't get the bonuses, then their flat salaries will need to be doubled, or even tripled.

there was also the news that the inital u.s. bailout of banks was spent on providing bonuses to their staff.

just because they caused the recession, doesn't mean they should suffer from it.

on the other hand, the message to me from my funder is to not expect any pay rise any time soon and the funding for day to day expenses (in terms of staff and training) "will not increase in your lifetime."

i think that if bankers need to be bailed out, there should be an expectation that their income reduces. the arguement they make is that without the high pay and large bonuses, they won't get the people to do the job. market forces.

well, at the moment, governements are the only people willing to invest in tehir busienss. and as such, gthey have the right to dictate pay rates. if the bankers disagree, they are welcome tto turn down the money and try to attract other investors, or put themselves on the open market and see if anyone else is willing to pay them what they think they are worth.

"hi. I was the ceo of a large company that lost 48 billion dollars last year. if you employ me, i will require a total pay package of $10,000,000 per year, full use of the company jet and my own mansion"

day of the triffid

another sunday, another cheap and tacky movie

now, don't get me wrong, i loved the book but the movie bears about as much relationship to it as instant cofee bears to a full strength espresso.

in the book, john wyndamn seemed more interested in how society fell apart and then reformed-the film cops out by suggesting that normality will be resumed. also, in the film you can kill triffids with sea water..

howard keel makes a manly lead, but you keep expecting him to burst into a chorus of "oh, what beautiful morning". the alcoholic scientest (a character not in the book) is badly written, several characters (such as the original love interest) are omitted and the most enjoyable bits are trying to spot the wires and wheels that transport the triffids around.

there is apparently, a new version that will be released later this year.

for now, i'm going to go back to reading the book

irony

ever since the game went professional, the new zealand rugby union has been fully funding the four national teams; the all blacks, the junior all blacks, the maori all blacks and the womens team.
however, money is tight these days-the public haven't responded to rugby for ten months of the year and a 150% increase in prices-so they claim that they are only able to fund two teams this year. the all blacks, of course, and the junior all blacks.

the womens team accepted this-i guess they're used to being underfunded-but maori were very upset.
after a couple of months of complaints, phil kingsley-jones and billy bush set about arranging a tour of south africa culminating in a game against the springboks.
the nzrfu objected as they "own" the maori all black "brand", jones and bush dealt with this largely by ignoring it, but now there is a bigger problem.

apparently south africa rugby has a rule that they won't play against racially selected teams-a rule added, in part, due to the protests against the springboks in the 70s and 80s.

ironic, huh.


UPDATE: jim anderton has, reportedly asked nelson mandela to intercede with the sarfu to make the game go ahead.

lost: a sense of proportion. if found, return to j anderton

almost autumn

it seems churlish to complain about the heat when over the tasman people are dying, but a week of 100% humidity is not a pleasant thing to go through.
afetr a week of poor quality sleep, everyone was getting a little scatchy.
so the rain yesterday was most welcome and today is pleasantly cool.
i've shifted taking my cilzapril from teh morning to the evening and it seems to have impacted on how i feel on the days after dialysis. i was energised enough to be able to go for a stroll over to the mount eden gardens and spend a couple of hours sniffing the flowers (i had to catch a bus back, though and am totally exhausted now)
its not autumn yet for another couple of weeks, but this sneak preview has been wonderful.

THEM!

in the new mexico desert, police find two crime scenes-a family on holiday and a local resident are both found dead. all their money is intact but the sugar bowls have been emptied. the sole survivor is a little girl, now catatonic. when released from this state she screams "THEM! THEM! THEM!
they take a cast of an unusual track and send it to the FBI
Soon an FBI agent appears and then a scientest with an almost english accent from the Depaartment of Agriculture with his beautiful daughter.
They have a theory but won't tell the cops until they find the truth
The atomic bombs tested in the forties have resulted in MUTANT GIANT ANTS.

ok, the giant ants look terrible, and there are enough cliches to justify a full on drinking game, but all in all i enjoyed this movie. just the thing for a wet afternoon.

it is briskly paced and manages to squeeze in some oddball characters-a pre davey crockett fess parker as a pilot and an alcoholic (make me a sargent, give me the booze)

unlike todays films, the ending isn't dragged out.

they don't make 'em like that anymore (or so i thought until i saw a bit of alien v predator on sky last night)

brief encounter

about a year ago, 15 year old pihema cameron and a friend decided to round off a day of smoking dak and drinking by spraying his mark on the fence of 50 year old bruce
emery, who had been tagged before, grabbed a knife and ran outside to confront the youths.
either emery stabbed cameron or cameron confronted him and fell on the knife-the end result was the same; pihema cameron died.
emery went home, cleaned the knife and went to bed.
he was arrested a couple of days later and was charged with manslaughter.
this afternoon, he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

this has been a contentious case. there is, of course, concern over the death of a "child" (15 is probably stretching that description), but there is also a lot of support for emery. tagging is a problem and had emery called the police, it was likley that they wouldn't have bothered taking the call.

did pihema cameron deserve to die? well, no, but it is disturbing that a number of my fellow citizens believe that he got what he disturbed.

there has also been the traditional cry of "where were the parents?"

then there is emery. he has lost his business and his freedom, his family have had to move as they have been getting death threats.

bad decisions all round

HIM!

synchronicity?
on the same day that the death of actor james whitmore is announced in the paper, my friend rob lends me a copy of THEM! starring (guess) james whitmore

nothing honours the death of a performer than playing his most famous work, even if it does involve giant ants in the desert

same story, different angle

having spent a day listening to the largely right wing views on the report about decreasing intellegence, the issue was picked up by a largely liberal panel on national radio.

they referenced the flynn report, but rather than emphasising the decrease in iq, they noted the increase in violent behaviour and promiscuity

i noted yesterday how the righties saw the report and what was to blame through their world view. well, it was exactly the same from the left. rather than too much pc, it was the fault of the evil corporations, advertising junk food to children and putting violence on tv.

the one thing both sides agree on (and picked to discuss) was the influence of peer pressure, as in "my kid is ok, its those other ones who are dragging the down".

at last, consensus! the real reason kids are more violent, more promiscous and less intellegent is OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN.

i have the feeling that if i really want to figure out what is going on, i;ll have to track down the original report

intellegence defecit

a report came out yesterday from professor james flynn that the average iq of british 14 year old children has reduced by 6 points in the last 20 years, or as the newpaper put it, CHILDREN ARE BECOMING DUMBER.

my first thought was that if this trend continues, i'll be able to fund my retirement by selling buildings i don't technically own to young people.

naturally, there has been some discussion over this. most people do believe that kids are beoming dumber-this includes stories about how one person needed a calculator to figure out how much change to give for a fifteen dollar bill from a twenty, listening to rap and so on.

there have also been a number of theories as to why the iqs have been dropping; the two most common being the modern politically correct education system which bans winners and losers and the rise of welfarisim (aka dumb people having dumb children)

interestingly, most people commenting noted that their children were bright enough but were being let down by other (presumably poorer) children

flynn himself, according to the newspaper article, blames youth culture, playstation and television. however, when you dig down what he actually says is that tv etc has replaced imaginative play.

the idea that imagination is related to intellegence makes sense. after all, an iq is just a number, its what you do with it that counts

anyone can learn and regurgitate facts, but the people who can move from "what is" to "what could be" will be innovators and geniuses of the future.
i'm not going to bad mouth tv, i watch a lot of it, after all, but i have to admit that the shows that spoon feed you far outweigh gthe shows that ask you to think for yourself, or spark a train of thought.

if tv and video games are part of the problem, so to is the tendency by some parents to keep their children safe from everything. . yes,its understandable-it is a dangerous world, but in the ability to explore, or to theorise about the world around them can only benefit children in the long term. real life will become mundane soon enough-why not imagine that that house on the corner is haunted or that unicorns live in the forest.

for a chilling (and occasionally funny) view of the future, may i point you in the direction of "idiocracy", a movie made by mike judge of king of the hill and office space fame. luke wilson plays a soldier who is sent by time machine into the future where, thanks to a long regime of anti-intellectualisim, the world is populated by morons

look blue go purple

i've been upgraded to the purple needles which are wider
so i should get a better clearance.

the biggest prblem at the moment is the humidity which is hovering around 90-100%
i don't know whether i'm sweating because of the heat or because i'm about to faint

i'm really tired

have you ever noticed that a peach pit resembels a human brain?

i'm allowed ine peach a day (its a pottasium thing) and eating todays one, i couldn't help but worry that i was preventing the fruit equivilant of e=mc2 being developed.

i'm really tired

mixed messages

5.55pm
tv one news preview

presenter (smiling broadly to denote a warm and friendly personality-someone you can trust; and speaking in a bright and cheerful manner)

"coming up at six tonight, 108 people die in the australian fires and later, we'll tell how much your property has reduced in value"

glass half.....full?

no more guilt

speaking of maori, a new series on the treaty of waitangi started on maori tv.
written and hosted by mike king, it is a ten part series on how then treaty was created and signed

(yes, that's mike king the comedian. if i was cynical, i;d say that they meant to hire michael king, the historian, but he was unable to commit to a ten part history on account of being dead, so they hired mike king and hoped that no one would notice the difference. but i'm not, so i won't)

last nights episode was quite good. it is king's contention that the villans of the piece were the nz governement of the time, together with edward wakefield.
they sold it to the governement for a few hundred dollars. wakefield added a couple of zeros to teh price and onsold it. he also sold land that he didn't technically own fuguring that by the time that the settlers arrived he would have gotten the land one way or another. the settlers were blameless having bought the land in good faith. so, the breaches of the treaty are not our fault. its the bloody government and a dodgy property developer.

plus ca change, ces plus la meme chose

the never ending story

waitangi weekend having just finished; there has been some discussion, as there ususally is, on the state of race relations and the place of the treaty in today's society.

one thing that most people seem to have agreed with is that things are going pretty well. the two people who jostled john key have been dismissed by idiots by pretty much everyone-even though the point they were trying to make was valid-that without the protests of the past, there would be no kura kaupapa, no kohanga reos and so on.

key has gotten a lot of goodwill over inviting the maori party into a coalition when he didn't need to. its a good result for national. if maori don't reap the benefit from this, the blame will fall on the maori party for becoming sell outs-not from national because there are such low expectations on them

it is interesting to note how the messaging has changed. national's core belief of self-responsibility seems to be mirrored by maori leaders as self-determination.
phil goff has tried in vain to point out how much labour has delivereed to maori over the years, but this is being depicted as labour ruling with a kind of benign paternalisim, trapping maori into victimhood. one academic on this weeks "focus on politics" noting that labour had promised a lot, but hadn't actually delivered.

the policies that national have delivered have been spun as being beneficial to maori-the 90 day probation bill being presented as a chance for maori to increase getting employed (whether it actually works out that way remains to be seen).

then there were the changes to the resource management act. the maori party objected to the notion of removing the need to take the principles of the treaty into account, but to a lot of maori didn't. when asked why they weren't concerned about overdevelopment, one maori leader responded "now we're the developers, bro"

the proposed tax cuts will not benefit maori, but i heard an interview with one of the ngai tahu elders say that his ambition was to raise maori incomes to a level where they do care about tax cuts.

all of this is, i guess, positive, but isn't there some negative news? well yes, and it all comes back to the changes in nz society.

while there have been several large settlements overr the years, the benefits of these have not filtered (or should that be trickled) down to street level and some people are starting to grumble.

another dimension is that while the treaty is, to a large extent, predicated on a bi-cultural society, nz is increasingly a multi-cultural society. maori tv screened a debate on waitangi day with the proposition "this land is may land". it had three teams debating-maori, pakeha and others. in one of the debates high points, mai chen objected to the nomenclature of her team. she wasn't an "other", she was born and raised in new zealand.

its an interesting point that the first generation of non-pakeha (asian, african etc) children of immigrants are coming of age (if you see what i mean). who this will impact on the sociological future of the country will be interesting to see.

any excuse

sunday.
weather fine and hot
could go to the beach
or to the lantern festival at albert park
or watch the regatta on the harbour
or into town to buy an ice cream and trawl the market in aotea square

but

last night my vascular needle leaked and it took my forty-five minnutes after dialysis to get my blood level over 100/30

so i'm just going to lie here for a while

a scanner darkly

how many richard linklaters are there? i think there are at least three-ican't believe that the same guy who did dazed and confused made before sunrise, and as for the one who made school of rock and the bad new bears.

"in a scanner darkly" screened on sky this evening, using the same technique that he did on "waking life". i'll avoid the joke about how this is the most animated keanu reeves has been in years
i thought waking life was very funny (in a wry sort of way) and since the recent trend is to turn philip k dicks books into big dumb actioners, and linklater has gone for the audience friendly, i thought this would be another in that trend

not so. as the identity issues compounded (and its already been a long day) i was as confused as if i'd been taking substance d myself.

i'll probably have to see it a couple more times before i can fully get to grips with it. still robert downmet junior was good (as usual)
and there is winona...

de-lux

as mac said on facebook, bummed about the death of lux interior of the cramps
actually saw them when they were in nz, when was that now?
(actually 85 or 86)
dug out my old copy of a date with elvis and gave it a spin

have also put my favourite cramps song-kizmiaz-on my blip.fm profile

rip lux

waitangi day 2009

thank god its a friday.
last night they moved me up to tthe big (purple) needles, whivh means the blood flow can be raised to 350mls a minute

still, a typical waitangi day. 27 degrees and humid as hell

john key was jostled by a couple of protestors at waitangi
three peoplr have died as a result of alcohol and automobiles
matinee idle is on the radio, playing all nz music

have a happy waitangi day

don't blog when tired

things you can do while waiting for your laptop to boot up

1. make a cup of tea, then pour it out because you are not allowed to drink it
2. peel two potatoes and put them on to boil, while seasoning a chicken thigh and placing it in an oven
3. calculate pi to 225 places
4 have two ten inch needles inserted into your arm, attavh tubes and sticky tape them in place
5 forget what you wanted to blog about in the first place

guess which ones apply today