The honey monster

My life has recently taken a bit of a shunt and I have found myself in London on a more or less full time basis, yearning for home, to see the plants growing and the quick pull of the early summer trout on the line. I always felt like that when I lived in London – 15 years of tugging 15 years ago. London has changed little, but the culture of London has changed a lot. The use of the mobile, smoking, shouting and screaming, all those street life activities have amplified hugley. No other capital in the world suffers from the kind of mobile use that you get in London. I struggle to find a reason for it, obviously it’s massively rude, that could be a reason for it in itself, an outward expression of the ‘f*** you’ mentality so uniquely and warmly embraced in the UK. Maybe UK dwellers feel less inhibited in the apparent confines of phone world, a bit like cars, where it’s easy to think you are in your own private world so its alright to scream moustache curling abuse at the most minor of infractions - like a micro second pause before pulling of at the lights. Anyway there seems to be an idea that using a mobile in public is really a very private act. Outside my bedroom window in superficially charming Bloomsbury a woman engaged is an extremely long and creatively abusive phone call with her – presumably soon not to be - boyfriend, ‘Yo shitf***er, am letting yo f*** wit ma booty, sheeetman yo need to tink bout feelings of udder people’ after about 10 minutes of this unrelenting and rather unfocused Westwood style phyco babble abuse I was forced to open my window and ask her if she could possibly find an alternative venue to continue her martial workout? To which she replied in the sweetest middle class voice, ‘oh I am terribly sorry, I did’nt realise anyone still lived in Bloomsbury 'a classic ‘full English’ put down (‘oh you know well it’s just a pied a Terre, I am usually in Tuscany/Gloucestershire’).
The other street related activity I can enjoy in my 1st floor bedroom is smoking, the fairly continuous stream of office refugees smoking in the street does provide a wreath of smoke that fills the street, and the bedroom, and we are talking a quiet street here. How will it be once the ban kicks in, the streets will become one big smoke filled series of channels. The London smog of yore recreated using the human lung. There does seem to be this lack of thinking things through going on in London/UK. London’s public transport system seems insanely complicated, catching a bus an absolute picnic in a dog pound, buy a ticket at a stop if there is a machine, on the bus if not, get an oyster card, a carnet and all to be achieved with absolutely no information of any kind as to what where and how - just an angry driver jerking his thumb at something and mumbleing. While I am briefly on drivers - the notion of driving a public transport vehicle for comfort of the passenger seems to have completely been lost. The drivers throw their buses into sharp turns, abrupt stops, to lurch and lean with the sole intention of knocking the passengers to the ground, buses excecute boy racer tactics, switching lanes, bunny hopping at the lights and so on. Taxi’s are as bad (for any taxi drivers out there I never tip if it’s an uncomfortable ride – make what you must of that). Anyway enough of this abuse of the wonders of London after all I did walk past David Guest which was great and where else is this going to happen (at first I thought he was Tom Jones or someone wearing comedy Tom Jones head and chest wigs), such special hairs, blinged up to the 9’s, he looked every inch the legendary R&B producer with a rather strong sense that he could be some sort of teddy bear type child’s cuddly toy, maybe it was just the fact that he is pocket sized. All in all the most exciting celebrity moment since a friend of mine sold a 10ft length of hose pipe to Sidney Devine at a car boot sale in Galashields (Sidney Devine is a Scottish MOR superstar for y’all south of the border there).

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 28/06/07 at 08:42 : 0 Comments

Topics: ''

Pope and Guthrie's 'It's a Lakeland Knockout' locals versus tourists versus landowners

There has been a lot of talk about the arts in the rural/regional of late. A recent Arts Council initiative called Art 07 brought together a body of arts people from the Northern region and included a debate on the rural/regional arts in relation to the urban/London scene. The debate was embarrassingly broadcast on Radio 3’s Nightwaves programme. The gist of it was that London is where it happens and everything outside of London is of little consequence and of low quality – of no particular interest to any but a local audience. This position was countered by local arts people suggesting that in fact there was a great deal of national and international level art going on in the rural it’s just that the urban audience doesn’t know about or have access to it. Just to quickly clear this one up, there is next to nothing of interest happening in the rural/regional and it is the fault of the artists and arts organizations. The insistence on apeing urban models, looking for endorsement, failing to creatively invent themselves,– that’s no way to make something useful, influential or significant.

But why is this? Historically much of British Art and many Art movements emanated from the rural, Nicholson and St Ives, Wordsworth and Romanticism, Pastoralists, Constable in Suffolk, Gill and Ditchling, Guild of Craftsmen in Gloucestershire, Architecture and music at Dartington Hall, not to mention the plethora of material coming out of the country house, Capability Brown, Adam, the Portraitists, etc as well as the one-offs like Moore, Spencer, Lowry, Schwitters. Maxwell-Davis even Damien Hirst now, the list is long, what’s come out of London - The Euston road School!
The rural has sporadically housed weird mavericks, working individually or in tight groups but in comparative isolation forging new vision, really taking risks (rather than saying they are risk taking), being ostracized. The current regional culture is so keen to be accepted they sell out before they have even started, begging for a special dispensation to be taken seriously.

The ambition of the debate was to ask if the UK was defined by rural or urban culture. Where do you start? the question seems irrelevant. Define UK, culture, urban, rural before the question can even arise and by the way the answer is - if you could ever define either as separate - derr, both. However there is a divide/fusion and it’s an interesting body of ideas/material that many people/artists explore. For the rural - as a subject - it is perhaps not an end in itself but rather a route to defining a more pertinent way to expand the rural value. The countryside is understood by the nation as a culturally backward zone - which is true. That is perhaps the rural’s natural/real position, rooted in day to day isolated activities, in tune with the basics of growth, life and death (or more realistically the season of the tourist, there’s nothing like a good fresh run tourist covered in lice (this is a reference spring salmon that when they first come up the river system are covered in sea lice – it used to be seen as a good thing, I think now it’s seen as a sign of the degenerating environment)).

The urban migrant probably has more impact on rural culture than anyone else, moving to the country in large numbers to enjoy that vision of opt out and simple life, to play real communities (largely with each other). Consequently the country is full of people who reinforce and perpetuate a very cliched vision of the rural, in fact insist it stays that way when it is they that could radically shift it. Times have changed the rural has changed but the cliché about it hasn’t in fact it has been massively reinforced to the point where it has become the only vision of the rural swamping the delicate reality of a complex and sophisticated environment. Importantly those people who guide and mediate culture in the rural perpetuate the cliche, investing in lame culture that plays along to a tourist centred agenda.

A recent Germaine Greer Christopher Frayling debate discussed funding levels in the regions, principally an argument about comparative funding levels – in fact the regional draws more than adequate funding, the problem arises in how these funds are actually spent. Currently in Cumbria £100 million is being allocated to develop a rural arts visitor centre, promoted as a rural Tate (despite the Tate’s denials). The project has employed London consultants to show the rural how it should be done – they are using an urban model, will it do anything interesting in relation to a rural culture? Unsurprisingly it would seem unlikely, there is no acknowledgement that the conditions are different. It would be hard - at a consultant’s glance - for anyone to see anything other than this model with virtually all the rural culture brokers (galleries, museums, artists, writers etc) desperately adopting urban models. For example a local Cumbrian gallery markets itself as being the same size Joplin’s White Cube - the old one!

The debate for Art 07 brought suggestions from the floor that the rural should be given a special dispensation, positive discrimination. The rural/regional needs to change its own clichéd view of itself, it needs to develop ways of contributing to national and international cultural evolution offering material that is relevant, being amongst the leaders rather than followers and to do this the arts community needs to rethink it’s mechanisms, urban models don’t and shouldn’t work in rural space – that is so obvious. The rural’s introspective and ludicrously self congratulatory attitude, the suggestion of discrimination are all unhelpful ‘head in the sand’ positions that suppress real engagement with the complex and relevant issues as ever present in both urban and rural communities. Cultural practioners need to get with the programme – an example of this ‘off the mark’ approach was demonstrated in the most exemplary way at the afore mentioned Art 07 event. Local artists staged an Arts Council funded ‘Art Strike’ – I am almost certain that neither the commissioner ACE North West or the organization being funded to deliver this ‘idea’ had any idea of the precedents – which are of course multiple and go back to the early part of the 20th century, a quick Google would have filled in the gaps. The other main event was a 21st century barn dance with paid dancers to guide people through a series of country dances, the event was titled Loc–Glo-Bal, the music provided by a ragtaggle bunch of world music musicians wearing black t shirts. The Arts Council put £200,000 into this ‘celebration’ of rural culture. There were no interesting ideas put forward, no critical analysis, nothing added to cultural development.

The rural is full of people escaping the perceived harshness of ‘real’ life which is fine but don’t then expect to be taken seriously and to be a part of national cultural discourse. I see this all around me amongst the local art community, angry artists making outdated work for their own pleasure hugely resenting the fact that they are not taken seriously by a critical audience (many of them make good livings which is more than your ‘cutting edge’ practitioner can claim).

The Bed and Breakfast scenario in the Lake District offers an interesting analogy/lesson. People move to the country to get away from other people and then open a B&B as the easiest way to generate an income. The basis of a good B&B is an open and friendly interest in people – do you see the problem?

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 28/06/07 at 08:00 : 0 Comments

Topics: ''

Lodore House - John Gill 1968

C F A Voysey - Little holme 1900

Troutbeck Youth Hostel - home-made early modernism

Proposed building - AKA The Love Shack Designed by Sutherland Hussey Architects

Not really a Grizedale project but relevant to the world of the rural and contemporary culture within it.

This weekend Karen and I took part in Architecture Week, opening the site of our ongoing attempt to build a contemporary house in the Lake District. The idea was to engage in a public debate on contemporary architecture in the rural, called ‘Building in the Rural’ strangely enough. Before I get onto the event/discussions themselves it is interesting to consider how the audience found out about the event.
Not a single person attended as a result of seeing it on the Architecture week website and few knew what architecture week was or had ever heard of it.
The biggest audience attractor was a small poster in the local supermarket (both branches of Booths).
Putting leaflets through peoples doors accounted for the second largest group and the mention in the local paper listings brought up the rear.
In total approximately 40 people attended – pretty remarkable for a non building (we are still after 4 years trying to get planning permission) in an area where there is apparently no interest in contemporary architecture.
The message re audiences is - as we have always found in Cumbria - that national advertising does not work at all, word of mouth and ‘folk’ marketing works by far the best (ie hand-made posters in unlikely spots). What this says about rural perspective and cultural isolation is interesting!

The audience was made up of architects, eco build enthusiasts and neighbours. There was a universally positive response to the proposed design and a great deal of discussion about the issues raised by our long battle with the planners and indeed the common experience shared by many of the attendees.
I wont go into the detail on our planning battles as it is too boring and petty for words, suffice to say the concensus of opinion at the event was that the planning authority were a dishonest and corrupt government department that worked through punative measures to achieve their personal objectives – principally to stop any contemporary design. Many people thought that the government at a strategic level was trying to move forward and that many people at ground level were keen to engage with contemporary ideas both architectural and environmental but that the government officers were incredibly and subjectively resistant to any change.
Generally it was felt that the planners chief weapon was money, if they could delay applications through fair means or foul the applicants would eventually give up – on average the planners seemed to be able to delay planning applications for 5 years (we are currently in our 4th year). This issue of money was further discussed in light of the contemporary obsession with property ownership and money making. People felt that no one wanted to take a risk with a contemporary build for fear of salability, that no one built houses that worked for themselves to live in but rather built with a priority to sell on.
The architects all complained that there was no opportunity for them to design as clients that wanted to build in a contemporary style in the Lake District did not exist.
There was also talk regarding historical precedent, if there had ever been a time when radical buildings had been built (there are a few examples of modernism, like 3 (see list of Lake District architectural highlights below)

In our gentle attempt to make an almost invisible contemporary building we have suffered a great deal of abuse from the locals, both neighbours and Parish Council, local tradesmen have refused to do work for us for fear of local opinion and outrageous stories have been circulated. Ironically the 2 biggest complainers in the village/hamlet are from holiday home owners concerned that we would live in the building! (80% of the village houses are holiday homes). We will hear the result of our current planning application in a couple of weeks time – watch this space for news!

Architecture in the Lakes – additions welcomed
Lodore Falls – John Gill 1968 The sole example of great design, now utterly ruined by the appalling conversion, however original plans exist if it ever finds a champion to restore it. Currently used as a lodge for the Lodore Hotel so you can stay in this tragedy of abused design – what a missed opportunity by the hotel – how special this could be on an international level if the original interiors had been maintained.
Motor Boat Club, Broadleas – CAF Voysey
Kendal House – Little Holme - CAF Voysey
Blackwell – Baille-Scott
Troutbeck Youth Hostel – an amateur enthusiasts home built stab at modernism circa 1920 and the first concrete shuttering build in the north of England complete with Arts and Crafts interior and battlements (A personal favorite fusion building).
Wordsworth Trust – Benson Forsyth – slate clad at the insistence of the planners who fought the scheme for 5 years and then attended the funeral of the man they had thwarted for so long (he died a year after the building opened)
Ambleside - Hutchinson Lymath Architects, a contemporary build in progress

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 17/06/07 at 12:13 : 1 Comment

Topics: ''

We just had the first workshop for the second round of Höfer Goods in my home village, Höfen, in Southern Germany (see http://www.myvillages.org/en/ourvillages.htm#waren) .
We, that's about 25 women from the village, product designer Angelika Seeschaaf and me.

Everybody brought some textile samples and things, and aprons were the most popular one.
Ranging from never worn practical, to worn out everyday to old and elegant. There must be hundreds of aprins in a village with 200 residents!

There was an interesting generation gap when it came to the appreciation of this item of fashion, and the new generation village aprons seem to be T shirts, wide and eays to wash and don't need ironing.

I was thinking of the new Lawson Park uniform and the notion of what is practical for whom.
The most popular apron in Höfen are the "Kittelschürzen" (second and fifth from the left): loose dress like aprons with a front zip and two pockets. Made from cotton and with strong patterns to hide the unevitable stains.

Posted by Kathrin Böhm on 06/06/07 at 13:54 : 0 Comments

Topics: ''

I took these shots during a talk on art on roundabouts, see blog entry 'Sculptoric'

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 21/05/07 at 11:34 : 1 Comment

To Adam Sutherland

How do you do?
I'm a reporter on a Japanese local newspaper,Tokamashi branch office of NIIGATA-NIPPO.

The other day,I interviewed Kimio Yamazaki in Toge Tokamachi.
Yamazaki explained me his experiences in Grizedale, and that's very interesting for me.
so I want to report it for my newspaper.

I'm going to write about GrizedaleArts and you too.
So,I have a questions.

Q1,Could you tell me your date of birth?
Q2,How do you want to be mixed up with people in Toge Tokamachi?

I'm happy if you will answer my questions.

(My English is so poor. I'm sorry.)

--------------------------

Dear Ishii-san

Thank you for your mail and for your interest in this project

Firstly my date of birth is 18/12/1958

Regarding involvement with the village of Toge
We are interested in the situation in Toge and rural Japan. There is a point now where the villages are making descions about the future, to farm or to make tourism or maybe other possibilities. In our area we have already made the descion to do tourism and now we are finding the problems with this approach. We wanted to explore with Toge some other possibilities and we wanted to introduce a cross over of cultures and ideas. Many times in the past this cross over has produced the crucial results that make for fruitful change.
We hope to work again with Toge in our or thier future projects, this year we will be making a new TV station and we will show and discuss ideas from Toge, next year we will make a many culture resturant for an art biennale and I hope Toge will take part in that project in some way.

Lastly be sure to promote the website address for the Toge shop - the best rice in the world!

www.sevensamurai.jp/shop_en/index.htm

Any further questions be confident to ask, your English is very good

Adam Sutherland

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 15/05/07 at 12:12 : 0 Comments

On this picture my father does a drilling on his farm, his name Eerde means soil, ground, earth. My name has a connection to watersources they have told me, our family name Feenstra means; coming of the peat. What does your name mean?

Posted by Wapke Feenstra on 13/05/07 at 13:49 : 1 Comment

Topics: 'farmer' 'name'

In Wjelsryp on the farm I did a cultureSOILdrilling, cousin Eva is curious what we will find in the ground.

On this picture Eva looks very much like my sister Maaike when she was a kid. We grew up more than 40 years ago at the same farm.

Posted by Wapke Feenstra on 13/05/07 at 13:44 : 0 Comments

Topics: 'rural girl'

Alistair shows his green boots. The boots that I bought in Friesland are a bit darker and they were very cheep only 9,95 euro. Guess they are made in China, will have a look.

THE FUNCTION of the farm itself? Lawson Park is a hybrid monsters. So a monster we have spotted, but to less animals. For me it is strange to have a farm and have no cattle or horses or other big animals that you threat well because you earn money with them. This farm is not depended on what comes literally from the ground or out of the animals, from that point of view it really is artificially this farm. But because of its presents and its being there, it is not.

For ME at the moment it is not so interesting in seeing the “other location” or “the other way of working” in this farm. I know something about farming, I know something about art, I know something about villages and closed communities in art and in the rural. So lets start to differentiate and associate what we see here. What kind of tradition we step into? What is this FARM? What does the farm brings to art and visa versa. No answers, just a list.

First draft of a planned longlist set up to see different points of view on the FARM
THE FARM Seen as a ready made that needs attention.
Duchamp made a travelling suitcase with his oeuvre, I have to go into thinking about local art and portable art. Object rooting discussion is strange here, you cannot move the farm only the mental space. The farm needs attention on different levels. It is screaming for interaction, as the first readymades did. (To remind you the interaction keywords are piss, umbrella, bottle..).

THE FARM Seen as a catharsis place for stressed out art workers.
Farming as a going back to nature activity? Or the treatment for an art and sculpture crisis? – English gardening is a religion I am not familiar with. I grew up on a Dutch cattle farm, but catharsis HUM farming as catharsis is for art workers that have money from other grounds, maybe we have to invite some more European independent farmers over. To make us see what this farm is and does. Why not.

THE FARM Seen as an anti-action towards the roots of sculpture.
Mid nineties there was in my surrounding set up a polarisation in process art and object art. Ignore the object – Manifesta 1 advertised with NO sculptures no … I like the boots of Alistair. Also bought green boots in Friesland. We have to resee the object (and ignore the market in art (YES TRY!!) and see the ground of an object, which is just material that interacts with us. Mostly material we shaped and marked with a function or more functions. Are there objects without a function? I don't think so -

THE FARM Seen as a collection of goods, plants and people.
The body of the whole Grizedale Arts. Lets mingle a bit. What is collecting, collcting is a root and a ground of contemporary art. Mostly there is a subject in the collection, what is it here?

THE FARM seen as a loading time and space capsule of experiences.
Can you see this farm as an away from the rest of the world? No, but maybe physically when you are there in the winter. What kind of experiences this 'object' loads us with? The mix of experiences you can have here in one week is interesting. I had lunch with among others Zhang Wei - the only Chinese curator I know. Made the water running with Adam by using a Frisian trick. Did a drilling and asked for a drawing of Alistairs' boots. (GOT IT).

COMING soon
Does the periphery tell us something about the centre?
I think we can learn a lot by moving around these terms. What kind of objects are seen as centre in art?
Is this Farm periphery? And ask more. Whatever

First draft of spotting the connections of the Farm.
The Village
Residencies and contacts
The Network
Our network and their network
The Moods
Suicide and overkill
Lost – In the lake district the word MUSEUM has no vital meaning anymore / what about the object?

and so on.

Posted by Wapke Feenstra on 12/05/07 at 21:24 : 7 Comments

Topics: 'overkill' 'something'

Lawson Park – is that the park that by law was given to the son? We have to find out what this name means? Focus on the farm and from there look on how it works.
You have an object, material and it is local, it is a farm, it has ground, soil, trees, plants.
What do you do???
Lets look at it if it was an art object: What do you do???
1 isolating
2 giving value to it
3 telling others about it and put it into a network of stories and contacts
4 collecting: because a farm is local you can add things to it, invite people to it, or collect stuff into it. To let it be a farm and not a museum all things have to be functional – that is an idea Adam brought up. I have to get what this means.

Posted by Wapke Feenstra on 12/05/07 at 21:18 : 0 Comments