Who I Write For

Thursday 17 February 2011

The Bubble Columns: Cameraman

Originally published in The Bubble Columns, available here.

‘Art’. It’s a nebulous term at the best of times. Nobody can agree on what it actually means, never mind what it does – or, for that matter, if it does (or should do) anything at all. Sticking with visual art (in itself quite a slippery concept) and leaving literature, music, film and the rest aside, there’s no better example than that thing we call ‘contemporary art’ – the realm of unmade beds, formaldehyde-treated sharks and everything on the Turner Prize shortlist which makes older members of my family repeatedly shout “What is that!?!” In a sphere where a blank canvas can be considered a finished article rather than a resource, it’s harder than ever to agree exactly what constitutes ‘art’.

Well, consider this: Wafaa Bilal, a professor of photography at New York University’s Tisch School of Arts, is taking one photo a minute for the space of a year to be relayed back to an exhibition in Doha, Qatar, with his position tracked by GPS. This week, however, the project has encountered problems – because his body rejected one of the metal posts keeping the camera bolted into the back of his skull.

Bolted. Into the back of his skull.

When interviewed about the thinking behind 3rdi at the end of last year, Iraqi-born Bilal recounts his escape from the war-torn country in 1991 (how times change). Fleeing his home in Najaf as bombs fell around, he had no way of recording what he was leaving and no connection to his former life: at least this is one year of which he has a full and permanent record. However, he also intends to make a quite serious comment on the “surveillance society” in which we live, forever followed and recorded by CCTV to the point where our lives can barely be considered private any longer.

After doctors refused to perform the procedure on the grounds of excessive risk, Bilal had the camera attached at a body-piercing studio in Los Angeles. Despite treatment with steroids and anti-biotics, he was still experiencing pain and, as the risk of infection grew, it became necessary to remove the device. Hoping that the wound heals quickly so that the camera can be restored, he is maintaining the flow of images by leaving the camera attached by a strap around his neck.

I don’t think I really need to state that I think this man is insane, but I just did. We’ve all heard of people who have done extreme things in the name of art, but this goes a long way beyond Method acting or, for that matter, everything else I can think of.

One of the many, many embarrassing anecdotes that my friends pull out on occasion was directly instigated by contemporary art. During my second year, my housemates and I visited Yoko Ono’s exhibition at the Baltic in Newcastle, and amongst the exhibits was a large, transparent plastic maze. Like many other visitors, I filed in through the narrow gap in the wall – but promptly got lost. This was not helped by the fact that, the maze being transparent, it had not occurred to me that there may actually be a wall in the place where I was about to walk. Needless to say, when the whole gallery resounded with a crash, I shouted “OW!” and the couple of hundred serious art fans in the building all turned to stare at me in outrage as I desperately tried to escape, I learned my lesson. Cringe as I might, and laugh as I know you will (it’s fine – my housemates are still giggling over a year later), this basically sums up my relationship with art: getting drawn in is easy, but I can’t negotiate it with any dignity whatsoever.

Bilal’s current work must be problematic even to people far more artistically aware than I. On the one hand, he does raise some serious questions about the world in which we live; the importance of memory as well as the ways in which Big Brother watches us every second of the day. The dominance of CCTV everywhere we go is a form of socially mandated stalking, to be used to our cost as well as our benefit, endemic to the point where we may as well carry our own camera around with us. Still, the extent to which Bilal has gone is quite disturbing – the extent of the danger and the pain he has put himself through may liken him to many great artists, but they were all somehow mad too. Moreover, it’s difficult to reconcile his ideas about privacy and observation with the fact that, though his girlfriend hasn’t yet imposed any limits, his institution has. To protect the rights of students at the Tisch School of Arts, while Bilal is at work he has agreed to keep the lens cap on. It may be art, but it would seem that it isn’t above compromise.

Wednesday 2 February 2011

The Bubble Columns: Blue-rovision?

Originally published in The Bubble Columns, available here.

I should start with a confession. I’m sure you have mental images of me as the highly refined, serious intellectual who slaves to entertain the masses with her astute and serious observations. Alas, these are illusions of which I must rob you. Ladies and gentlemen, I love the Eurovision Song Contest.

It might be the cheesiest, tackiest, and generally most pathetic arena in which our great nation has ever allowed, and in fact paid for, its own humiliation. It may be the site of some of the most disturbing and confusing scenes you’ll ever witness. It is certainly the most ludicrous way the people of Europe have devised to tell Britain that it has no friends (except for Ireland, and sometimes Cyprus or Portugal if we’re lucky) and reinforce trade links between neighbouring countries. But for all that, it’s obscenely entertaining, and those who watch every year admit it with a mixture of pride and shame.

As a nation, though, we approach the Eurovision with the most cynical of attitudes, chiefly because we always know that we will lose. Britain being isolated from Europe in both geographic and figurative terms, we have nobody to give us those all-important points out of a sense of regional camaraderie (which is why so many obscure Baltic and Balkan countries have done well in recent years).  Less important, but more easily changed, is the fact that we keep entering diabolical songs. Last year’s entry was written by Pete Waterman – a man who hasn’t been cool since the late 1980s when he worked with Kylie Minogue – though before that, Andrew Lloyd Webber had written a ballad that came fifth. The woman who sang said ballad is now a Sugababe. Everyone lost.

Luckily, however, it seems our Eurovision despair may well be coming to an end. We have an entry for this year. The news that made my week: the United Kingdom’s Eurovision 2011 entry is entitled ‘I Can’, and it’s by a little boy band called Blue. Yes, Blue. Just in case you haven’t had your fill of reformed boy bands in the past few years, the early 2000s group consisting of Duncan James, Lee Ryan, Antony Costa and Simon Webbe, who reunited in 2009, intend to stage a comeback with the performance of the song, penned by Duncan and Lee (the blonde ones), in Dusseldorf in May.
 
BBC One will be airing an hour-long documentary in April following the band recording and promoting the single, as well as getting advice from fellow musicians (who I desperately hope will include these former Eurovision winners), as part of the run-up to the contest. Head of entertainment and events Katie Taylor said of the announcement “We’re enormously pleased to have found an act that not only meets but exceeds all the criteria for a great entry… Blue are the perfect choice”. Duncan claims that this will be “a great way to mark the occasion” of their tenth year together, while Simon has said that he has “always wanted to represent my country, so this is a truly exciting experience for Blue”.


They do have a better resume than most entrants – 13 million album sales, three number one singles, and insanely catchy tunes like All Rise, Fly By, and One Love, all of which could stand us in very good stead come May 14th. That said, they are also responsible for some pretty terrible covers; they even managed to enlist both Elton John and Stevie Wonder to help them mutilate Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word and Signed, Sealed, Delivered respectively. Either way, though, Britain at least is in the grip of a mania for returning old-school boy bands; if Europe shares this nostalgic sentiment then we could be on to a – well, not a winner, but maybe a little less of a loser.

Still, it does beg the question of how successful this comeback will be. Entry into the Eurovision is widely acknowledged as career suicide- the vast majority of UK entrants are neither seen nor heard from again. Former Blue manager Daniel Glatman has described the decision as “reckless insanity”, insisting that “they will have to win. Anything less and their reputation would be in tatters”. I disagree- Blue are a cheesy boy band whose fan base now regard them with nostalgia rather than genuine adulation, and since nobody ever expects a UK entrant to win, they have little to lose if they don’t win. If anything, the damage will come from the stigma of being a Eurovision contestant, which basically means that they will never be taken seriously again. Still, they’re Blue. Who would take them seriously anyway?

Maybe it will just add to the cheesy kitsch we associate with reformed boy bands like them. Take That may have managed to break out of that category, but they did so by producing some genuinely brilliant new music- and coming from someone who would rather listen to Led Zeppelin or Nirvana, that’s saying something. Maybe Blue can do the same. Either way, we’ll find out along with the rest of Europe on May 14th.