We’re back from our holiday and read some great stuff whilst away. The first of them was Ryan Gander’s ‘The Boy Who Always Looked Up’. Being a children’s book it carries certain childish connotations, however, this book is no less intelligent and carefully laid out than any other. It tells a story of a boy who befriends an architect. The Modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger and his Trellick Tower in London are strongly hinted at through the entire book which falls in line with Gander’s other works where he plays with notions of fiction.
Next up was ‘The Outsider’ which was pretty bizarre. The narrators matter-of-fact tone in which he talks about such emotive things such as love and sorrow gives the whole book such a creepy, nihilistic feel. The last of the novels was ‘Satin Island’ which we felt was a good lead on from Dave Eggers book ‘The Circle’. It has similar themes of technology and a future world (that maybe isn’t quite as far in the future as it may seem) but is maybe more mysterious and dark that ‘The Circle’; there are less characters and more ideas making it a more dense piece of writing. The man behind the famous ‘Pervert’s Guide to Cinema’, Slavoj Žižek, has a book titled ‘Demanding the Impossible’ which is made up of an interview with him. The book covers a crazy number of topics such as the uprisings of the Arab Spring, the global financial crisis, populism in Latin America, the rise of China and even the riddle of North Korea. He analyses Hollywood films, Venezuelan police reports, Swedish crime fiction and much else. He also explores possibilities for change as well as the current state of affairs. What sort of society is worth striving for? Why is it difficult to imagine alternative social and political arrangements? What are the bases for hope? A key obligation in our troubled times, argues Zizek, is to dare to ask fundamental questions: we must reflect and theorise anew, and always be prepared to rethink and redefine the limits of the possible. We weren’t in agreement with everything that he was talking about and he was quite absolute which we find concerning at times but you can’t argue that he has commitment.
‘What Money Can’t Buy’ is a frustratingly logical overview of the markets and how money can corrupt and permanently damage our views of potentially important ideas such as health, education and politics. Another one by Ryan Gander was ‘Ampersand’, a book which coincided with the opening of one of his exhibitions at The Palais de Tokyo in Paris. It consists of stories of a succession of disparate items, ranging from a mushroom knife to a worn blackboard to a pair of pyjama bottoms emblazoned with the ‘I LOVE NY’ logo. Each item is the subject of a brief description and a long essay that have been collected together in this book. Displayed in adjacent vitrines, these documents seem to reaffirm the relationship between the objects and their capacity to form a cohesive whole. It was a strangely voyeuristic feeling since it was a direct insight into Gander’s thought process.
Now that we’re back we’re all into preparing for our upcoming exhibitions. The 63Hz submissions are going well; got about 40 submissions so far which is just over half the content we need if we want to fill the 6 hour set without any repeats. We’ve also got the ‘Intimacy’ show with Brooks and Groves; we’ve purchased the photo album and just need a chair (which is in our sights) and a bedside table.
