Hello Flotsam ! Hello Jetsam ! I've been thinking a lot about Art lately. Not ol' BrightEyes Garfunkel you understand. Actually, I've only been thinking about Art this afternoon and even then not all the time, but I've already reached some unstartling conclusions of quite bottomless vapidity. First up, I thought about going to check out some of the contenders for this year's Anthea Turner Prize - y'know, Tracey Ermintrude, the Andrews Sisters, that Momus fella, Barry Sheene. But then I realised that I simply didn't have to; I'd already formed thorough and quite incontestable opinions on all the nominees simply by reading about their work in the papers. It would seem that Tracey Thing and the Thompson Twins have made the Next Great Leap in becoming genuinely conceptual artists. Oh, you'll hear Damien Thorn, Captain Peacock and all the rest describe themselves as conceptualists, but they still have to fill the bloody tanks full of formaldehyde, and chop up the sheep, don't they ? All in the name of creating a tangible object with which one is then supposed to share the same approximate physical space. Sod that. Making stuff ? Looking at stuff ? Old hat, pal. Just make it up. Tell people you've suspended a packet of Ritz crackers over a trough of liquid helium and called it "The Impossibility of Tea-Time in the Mind of A Young Conservative", but don't actually do it, for Pete's sake ! My 'installation' which is currently *not* at the Serpentine Gallery (or anywhere else for that matter) consists of a video loop of Sarah Martin mouthing the names of UK racecourses ("Chepstow", "Goodwood", "Epsom"...) inside a fragranced booth of frozen puppies. I call it "No Sir, I Can't Boogie". Better than gawping at some stinky bed, surely ? Stevie Truffaut said something a while back about the failure of oft-promised narrow-casting in the media to materialise and how everything had basically gone to cock. Or tits. He'd do well to remember Gus Anabaptist's 1977 concrete poem, "where it is, not need be": --- When they start to micro-niche We'll all be left reading micro-fiche --- Think on, young man. Ooh, I see the BWP is provoking a little discussion on this side of the pond now. For what it's worth, I'm siding with the Ginger Avenger, as opposed to Love Troucheon. My blood was positively refrigerated. I guess it depends on the frame of mind in which one watches the film; Lickle Stevie and his Speshul Fwiend were obviously distracted. I've stopped wasting your time now. You may continue to knit. Steady. ===== __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the reborn Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". WWW: http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "jelly-filled danishes" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+