Kristina Keneally confuses mindless populism with leadership. The nimby-burghers of Glebe confuse concerns about the urban environment with selfishness. And the Vivid Festival… another white middle class baby boomer nostalgia wankfest.
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is episode 4 of The 9pm Edict. Finally.
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[Update 6 March 2010: I really should link to the material I discuss. That’s the Harold Park redevelopment plan and the local residents’ objections, the Vivid Festival, Laurie Anderson’s Language is a Virus, Dom Knight’s The Premier, the portrait and the paedophile and NSW Premier Kristina Keneally’s video A New Direction.]
[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]
Oh, you were definitely into the groove tonight. Wonderful.
The Kerouac of Sydney pops the bubble of performance art and shows it up for the pop it is.
Well, the Vivid festival is a wank in some ways.
It’s an attempt to drag people into the city – an area which otherwise has almost nothing to attract people in the evening. It is however allegedly more than just lighting up the sails of the Opera house; there was a light sculpture walk (local artists mostly) that went with it, and a series of concerts (mostly actually from emerging artists – workshops too which is where the ‘ideas’ part of the festival emerges). The series of concerts that Eno himself performed were all live improvised performances with people like The Necks and Karl Hyde from Underworld (who really is amazing).
Are artists like Eno, Reed and Anderson making crappy art these days? Or do they exploit their fame to create without being encumbered by other concerns? I’m not really sure about that. But as your own brief history of them all shows – they’ve moved a long way from ‘pop’.
However, they certainly represent the Baby Boomer class of artists getting in the way of subsequent generations being heard.
Personally I’d like to see people like Carl Craig from Detroit or Ellen Allien from Berlin produce the festival. And perhaps that’s what will happen, eventually, if these current artists do end up becoming festival directors when their artistic output shrivels up and dies.
I’ll have to admit I got a bit lost with in that part of the show with the sledging of the fictitious family. My fucking god you hate them.
Also, perhaps it’s just the accent… but I detect a hint of Palin in Kenealley’s commercial.
@Glengyron: Goodness, you’re taking it seriously again! 😉 But yes, the next generation of musicians will presumably come through in due course. Arts administrators know how to choose “curators” — such a pretentious word! — who will choose acts that their target market will like. In the case of Vivid, it’s people who are generally of an age where they don’t have kids to take care of in the evening and plenty of disposable income.
I’m starting to like my hypothetical middle class family. I think we might be hearing more of their story in the future.
Also, James Purser has suggested Gary Coleman as the next Vivid LIVE curator. Huh? Gary Coleman?
Also, I have previously ranted about Laurie Anderson.
@Sylmobile: Jack Kerouac? Really? Thank you!
If you put yourself through the tedium of writing a script and recording it, I’m more than happy to put a few paragraphs down.
Interestingly New Matilda also ran a piece on the death of community arts funding this week (well, maybe not too interesting… it’s all fucked, yada yada).
I think the ironic part of what’s happened to arts is that they’ve become aspirational, found a place in the mainstream – which has finally led to audiences many artists could only dream of – and in the process also circumscribed the kinds of events and artwork that can be produced. It now has to also fit a bigger social / consumer model.
The idea of a mixture of light sculpture, music and environment is so appealing that it becomes a ‘BIG EVENT’. The yearly portrait competition is such a big media event that the Premier is asked to comment on a relatively crappy portrait of a public figure…
The problem isn’t the art itself, it’s the way it’s now sits within the current rigid puritanical social norms.