Sinister: Emergency Kisses

[Michael Jones]

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.

=====

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