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Recently I attended a conference where G, my partner and sometimes collaborator, was presenting, and I was not. What surprised me was the level of confusion about why this was the case. It hasn’t happened to me when I have presented on my own without him.

It’s clear enough to me that sometimes G works alone, sometimes I work alone, and sometimes we work together - though what might be better to say would be that we always work together but only sometimes produce jointly-authored work. We share a bed but sit on individual chairs. There are differences, arguments, and separations. We have a history of occupying very intimate shared living spaces (tents, shepherd’s huts and the like) but we also spend plenty of time apart. Too much sometimes.

I often wonder how other artist couples manage it, the dynamic of sharing living space, with or without the art that they might make together. What are the dynamics of this specific relation of collaboration - is it qualitatively different or ‘better’ than other forms of collaboration? And what are the risks, for the practice, and/or the relationship? Is it inevitable that the collaborative practice is ultimately subsumed into a) the biography of the relationship, or b) one of the individual practices, in a hierarchal format?

I’ve been compiling a list of artist couples who also collaborate on occasion, or as a mainstay of their practice. Other contributions are welcome… Nina Canell and Robin Watkins; Marina Abramovic and Ulay; Christo and Jeanne Claude; Claes Oldenburg and (I’m ashamed to say I don’t know the name of ‘his wife’). Are Allora and Calzadilla in a relationship? Not sure about that one. Jennifer and Kevin McCoy; Heather and Ivan Morison.

More thoughts on this to come.

I recently came across this comment on the jezebel blog: 

The hottest porn I’ve seen recently, by the way, was on some site where they had a video of the day and it was from the 70s. Two girls, one guy, real tits, unwaxed bush, shaggy-haired guy with chest hair … it was hot. People looking normal having sex

Nostalgia for ‘authentic’ porn. Where will it end?

[and that's right, I didn't feel it necessary to add a visual to this post].

Last night I saw the film This is England.

I’d heard good things and generally was not disappointed - was a very well directed, superbly-acted skinhead flick, to be reductive about it. Given my interest in nostalgia and collective memory, particularly in constructed memories and the collision of the pop with the political, I was interested in how the texture of Thatcher’s England would be portrayed. It was actually fairly intoxicating - Rubik’s Cubes, Buckaroo, clock radios and 80s fashion-fashion-fashion was interspersed with the Falklands war and miner’s protests. It was kind of gorgeous.

The kind of nostalgia used in the film portrays the issues (nationalism/ racism and its associated nasties) as entities discrete in time, that can be reflected on from the same comfortable distance as Doc Martens, Culture Club eyeliner and clunky analogue technology. Skinny jeans have made a comeback in recent years, so maybe this is an unfair assessment. Does ideology get recycled with fashion or is it an empty recuperation?

The throwing of the flag into the sea was an implausible closing gesture… it did strike me though that most of the significant action in the film took place within the timespan of one little boy’s haircut, which seemed accidentally, significantly poignant.

Film website

This blog is not usually used in the interests of self-promotion, but the content seemed to fit here, this time, so here goes.

Above are two recent works exhibited at a show called City of Ideas at a self-storage warehouse in Galway, Ireland. The show was curated by Human Resources (Ben Roosevelt and Emma Houlihan).

Foreground:

Model for Experiencing Economic Panic/ Excitement

Background:

Landscape of Desires and Manias [Tulipmania, 1640s; South Sea Bubble, 1720; UK Railway Crash, 1830s]

These are experiments very much informed by the research themes in this blog, and the sense of emptiness and excess that pervaded the storage space. I’ve also recently been investigating the ‘Economic Worry Matrix’ and ideas of irrationality and so-called ‘market sentiment’.

A show at the Whitney I’m sorry I’m missing. More here

Image: Richard Serra, Television Delivers People, 1973

A previous post dealt with the Sligo Silver Rush - now the propsecting focus has shifted to Co. Mayo.

A company’s plan for a “small scale” gold mine in Co Mayo is running into determined opposition from groups who fear the project would damage the landscape and environment. The controversy echoes the row which embroiled mining companies Glencar and Andaman Resources when they tried to exploit gold resources at Creggaunbaun, near Louisburgh, and Croagh Patrick in the early 1990s.

“Mayo’s Gold Limited”, a subsidiary of Aurum Explorations, is seeking the go-ahead for what the company describes as a “tourist gold mine” at Creggaunbaun which would primarily be involved in the manufacture of jewellery. Mining would be carried out in an environmentally sensitive process similar to “keyhole surgery” the company promises, and Croagh Patrick would be out of bounds for the venture.

However, concern was expressed at the weekend that Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan had declared his intention to grant prospecting licences to the company in respect of 135 designated townlands. Mayo County Councillor Margaret Adams says there are a lot of unanswered questions about the company’s plans. Representatives should be invited to a meeting to explain their exact proposals, she said. Westport Tourism has also discussed the company’s proposals and says all its members are strongly opposed to them.

Paddy Hopkins, chairman of the Mayo Environmental Group, says the proposal will meet the same level of determined opposition as the plans by Glencar and Andaman to mine gold at Cregganbaun and Croagh Patrick did on the last occasion. “We are trying to get as many groups and individuals as possible to write to Minister Ryan opposing the granting of the prospecting licences.”

In a document sent to local landowners in the Creggaunbaun area, Mayo’s Gold Limited says it is offering “a completely new approach” to any potential extraction of local gold resources.

Company spokesman Tom O’Gorman said it is thought sufficient gold resources can be established to provide a sustainable development which would provide long-term employment and a unique tourism attraction in the area for 20 or more years.

From Tom Shiel at The Irish Times & Friends of the Irish Environment

Richard Florida was the keynote speaker at a Creative City Regions conference in October, hosted by the Dublin Region Authority and the Dublin Employment Pact. (Info on the conference here)

Florida’s presentation didn’t say anything he hasn’t said before, but the North American, evangelical-influenced delivery was extremely impressive. He is at points very persuasive in his thesis of what the ‘Creative Economy’ is and what it needs. He paraphrased the conference chair in his diagnosis of the ‘Knowledge Economy’ (old hat terminology now) as being “the last gasp of the industrial age”.

However, while the conference was eager to attach Florida’s prestige to the proceedings, the presentations that followed him (in his absence, having jetted off to another conference) showed a notable difference in their opinions/ agendas. The talk was all about the Knowledge Economy, not the Creative Economy: even the DRA website fudged the issue by describing the conference as addressing ‘the creative knowledge economy’.

Florida himself is part of a broader trend in culture where economics is becoming ‘pop’: described as a public intellectual (and he has earned a PhD so I don’t wish to imply he is in any way underqualified), his manner of delivery draws on that of the motivational speaker, informed by the legacy of North American television and evangelicism.  

In Ireland, Eddie Hobbs and David McWilliams have become similarly vocal pundits in the national media, particularly McWilliams, whose economic background has seeped into a large scale social trendforescasting. He is particularly fond of coining neologisms (Breakfast Roll Man, Decklanders, the Pope’s Children, etc – see his books and TV programmes, The Pope’s Children and The Generation Game). From this perspective, the field of economics is undeniably more enmeshed in mainstream popular culture than it has previously been.  

Richard Florida visited Ireland in October 2007.

See www.creativeclass.com and www.creativeclass.typepad.com

A full report on the conference will be published in the Visual Artist’s Newsheet, January 2008 

Image held here