Breaking the Rules

The Golden Space City of God

The other Sunday I went to the opening of Richard Grayson's 'The Golden Space City of God' at Matt's Gallery.

Future art historians will debate about the 'dark cube' instead of the 'white cube' of the gallery. White space was where you were allowed to be avant-garde, break the rules. But there are so many video installations that the dark cube is perhaps now the experimental space par excellence.

Grayson's last piece at Matt's was a Country & Western version of Handel's 'Messiah', based on the anti-unitarian Charles Jennens' text. This time Grayson's libretto is based on the the teachings of David Brandt Berg's The Children of God/The Family David Berg. After the defeat of Antichrist at Armageddon, the world will return to an agrarian utopia, and eventually God's Heavenly Space City 1,500 x 1,500 x 1,500 miles will land, save the chosen ones, and leave for other worlds. 

Leo Chadburn has composed the music to the libretto. An American choir was filmed in San Antonio in 2009. It's a compelling experience and transcends the occasional moments when it reminds me of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. The choir entering and leaving parallel the Matt's audience arriving and departing. It's on until the 28th June.

Bank Holiday

Up to Scotland on Bank Holiday Monday to look at an archive and possible donation. Have a very enjoyable lunch with the owner and her other half. Train to Edinburgh and catch the Francesca Woodman show at the Ingleby Gallery  next to the Waverley Station - the relationship of the body to nature and man-made space and objects or animate/inanimate is disturbing - perhaps made more so by her suicide. The Fruitmarket Gallery is en route to the hotel so I call in at Willie Doherty's show Ghost Story & Buried. Willie shows with Matt's Gallery, so I had seen 'Ghost Story' before. 'Buried' is a sort of pendant piece. The next day is a meeting on Collaborative PhDs at RCAHMS Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. I'm on the panel of non-Higher Education Institutions hosts/collaborative institutions - will all PhDs in 10 years be collaborative?

Thursday night after a long hard day interviewing I call in at the Frith Street Gallery opening of Ingrid Calame's show, 'Step on the crack, break your mother's back'. She collects marks collected during a residency at the Albrecht-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo (which I visited in October 2001 and almost drowned on my way back to my hotel). The colour pencil on mylar drawings sometimes result in bold and bright abstract oil on aluminium paintings, enlarged details from the effaced industrial legacy of Buffalo. (Did you know buffalos never got to Buffalo - its etymology is "beau" "fleuve"?)

From e-books to books-on-demand

Monday's World Service interview saw me extolling the possible if under-exploited virtues of e-books. By Friday I'm on BBC Ten O'Clock news talking about he virtues of print-on-demand. I suppose there isn't a real contradiction - they are different channels, producing a product with different potential. Friday's interview is difficult - the crew are 2 hours late and the first cut is abandoned for technical reasons. That was probably my best shot: I prefer live to recorded any time.

Finish off Marinetti's novel  'Mafarka the futurist: an African novel'. It's almost the founding text of magical realism and you can see why Marinetti was jailed for indecency. Mafarka's creation, Gazourmah, I sadly equate/confuse with Anthony Gormley's sculpture, 'Angel of the North'. My copy of 'Mafarka' is published by Middlesex University Press, funded by the Arts Council,  and is almost (but not quite) a print-on-demand book. It's got an interesting introduction by Carol Diethe.

Wall hangings

Last night go to the Chelsea futurespace gallery in Victoria to see an exhibition of the collaboration between Marian and Peter Daglish. Peter would draw directly on Osnaburg coarse linen canvas, the lines then 'punched' with a needle full of yarn. I've seen the prints and the enamels, but these are new and forty years after are crisp and colourful. I used to look after Spot, the Daglish's cat, when they holidayed in their house in Seillans, a Surrealist retreat. Spot would not like leaving the living room at night, and having figured out he didn't like the sound of a vacuum cleaner, I'd resort to psychological torture and bring out the vac - no need to switch on. I'll pay for this in my circle of the inferno. Get back home to hear the second half of the incredible Chelsea-Liverpool game - funny how the Surrealist theme continued.

Wednesday is busy. A Collection Heads meeting followed by a Web Archiving Programme Board. Talk to a BBC journalist about a World Service programme on e-books. Get home at around half six. Create an old favourite - meat ravioli mixed with soured cream, black pepper and white vinegar. It's derived from a Russian restaurant in Helsinki: for me dining out is a form of culinary research - how can I make this meal myself.

Back from holiday

A week off means a week of emails to catch-up with: do we want to be part of two European Library projects?  - well, just one. Finance want information on Acceptance in Lieu items and donations over £10K for this financial year for the accounts. HR want examples of professional competencies on promoting cultural diversity in interpretation. A French writer wants information on europeana and British Library involvement for an article. Quarter 4 of the business plan needs updating. Sign off an invoice for the acquisition of Zweig 2. Deal with some web archiving questions. In between is a one to one with Peter, a meeting about our forthcoming e-book reader display, a meeting with Nick about any HR issues in European & American Collections, and a one to one with Carole. The CEO's PA rings to see if I could go to Paris later in the month for the launch of the World Digital Library at UNESCO in Paris. Print out the slides for the Scholarship & Collections Review and our meeting tomorrow in Peterborough. Have another discussion with Helen on the domain crawl of free public websites in the UK domain. Time to go home and pack for tomorrow. 

A long time in politics

Last Tuesday the British Library had an a reception in the House of Commons to open its exhibition on its contribution to Digital Britain, opened by the Right Honourable John Denham MP. We showed our Turning the Pages TTP, our JISC Newspaper Project British Newspapers 1620-1900 and our web archiving project UK Web Archive. Until there is further regulation based on the 2003 Legal Deposit Act, we have to ask permission of every copyright-holder of every site in the UK domain we want to archive, so this is very labour-intensive and costly. Every MP I talk to - and there are many there - agrees to sign up on the spot. And they want to help.

Friday, see my Brazilian PhD student, Paula, for the penultimate tutorial. Her section on 19th century self-medication is almost there. Next it's the Digital Library Programme Board DLP

Richard and I then meet the Hungarian cultural attache and the minister of culture who are looking at possible sites for a UK exhibition on Liszt in 2011.

A quiet weekend. Two long swims and the rest is devoted to reviewing the Futurist exhibition catalogue: the show is coming to the Tate in June.

Monday morning I chair the first session of our  Advances in Paper Conservation Conference, and introduce myself as a speaker on research strategy - it's a bit like the film 'Inherit the Wind' when Spencer Tracy gets the prosecutor, Frederic March, to testify for the defence. (Actually it's more like Sgt Bilko (Phil Silvers) in 'The Court Martial' - interestingly another Monkey Trial, and, thinking about it, an intended reference to the earlier film.)

In the afternoon have a meeting at CILIP of the Privacy in Libraries Task & Finish Group to review our guidelines - I've done the bit on cctv. All the time I'm thinking of a paper at the British Library's Digital Lives conference which suggested that privacy isn't necessarily a good thing for a society.

Tuesday: a good day when everything seems to go well (tomorrow may reverse all this): we have secured the funding for another major acquisition. I decide to go home at 5.00 whilst the euphoria lasts.

John Riddy

Thursday, get to Frith Street Gallery just after six. For some reason Golden Square - like the old Opera in Paris - disorientates me: I'm sure the gallery moves around the sides of the square. It's the private view for John Riddy's Low Relief exhibition of photographs. John is talking to Charlotte as I arrive. The show looks good and I can tell John has done the hanging. There are ten archival pigment prints each in an edition of 5. They are all London locations - the Garrick Club from outside, a south-east London estate, Burgess Park. The one of Wapping could be a 17th-century Dutch townscape - Vermeer's 'View of Delft'.

They are mostly winter/autumn scenes and at dawn or dusk, when the light lets the structural forms of the city stand out: a light on the side of some flats stands out in 'London (Wyndham Road)', a small detail against the sky.

There's a mixture of natural and artificial light, and a modulation between colour and black, as when a distant boat is black but is coloured when it gets nearer. I think of Tarkovsky's film, 'Stalker', (1979) where the film starts in black and white but bursts into colour as they enter the Zone, only for the last scene where the stalker pours his dog milk to be black and white, but filmed in colour.

The Hague et al

The week begins early with a Sunday afternoon flight to The Hague. There are delays because of high winds - this seems to happen every time I go there. Train from Amsterdam to The Hague and walk to the hotel -fortunately it has stopped raining. The last time I was here I was mistaken for a diplomat, but not this time. The European Library Management meeting begins on Monday morning. We discuss the annual report, budgets, changes in the governance and the relationship with europeana. Get back home around 9.00 at night. 

Tuesday is really busy - chairing a resarch committee to discuss research strategy, two one to ones with Peter and Richard, deal with four days of emails and enquiries ranging from Public Sector Information to the draft press release for our exhibition at the House of Commons. And at the end I have to go to Mile End for a Trustees meeting for Matt's Gallery. The debate there again is about whether we should move and how to generate money. I travel back with Christopher on the District Line. Raid the fridge for anything I can eat without cooking - a couple of hard-boiled eggs and a salad.

Wednesday isn't much easier. A South African architect, Jo Noero, is visiting - he's involved with the construction of a digital library in Port Elizabeth. Then it's off to the Middle Temple with Ronald to advise them on moving away (or not) from print. It is interesting that their users don't really use periodicals.

Back at St Pancras I have another one to one and then a discussion of a business case for philatelic security. Next is my annual performance review. I intend to go to a private view at the Haunch of Venison at the old Museum of Mankind building - but I doze off on the tube and miss the Green Park stop: my body is telling me something.

At home I make an asparagus risotto washed down by a couple of glasses of rose rioja. Listen to the football on Radio 5 Live - it's the United Champions League game, but my team are playing too in the Premiership. They beat Fulham away 2:1 and we are out of the relegation zone. Just as well as they play Arsenal on Saturday.

Lost Words

Friday night private view at the German Gym at St Pancras. It's upstairs and it's rather like a school gym. There's a weight restriction on the floor so when it gets busy it has to operate on a one-out one-in basis. But it's early and meet Bridget. One of the artists, Lizzie, comes over and we have a long chat. It's time to look at the work. The exhibition has been organised by text/gallery. The works have been chosen from a dictionary for their infrequent use - hirquitalliency (Sam Winston), Skirr (Lizzie Ridout), Visotactile (John Morgan), Fabrefaction (Freda Stark). I get worried - I use some of these "endangered" words - boustrophedon, flosculation, maieutic...

Bump into Elinor again - two Friday nights in succession. I tell her I've finished the proofs for the review in Art Monthly. She introduces me to John Morgan who designs her books. 

It's an odd show - the theme seems to have created a greater scatter of approaches. The works are on sale to raise money for the National Literacy Trust.

Raven Row

Friday night go to the opening of Alex Sainsbury's new space at Raven Row, near Liverpool Street. Bump into Clive and his wife crossing Bishopsgate: I can't imagine where they could be going. The first show is Ray Johnson, collagist, mail artist, concrete poet - ignored by Richard Kostelanetz's 'Dictionary of the avant-garde'.  Taught by Albers at Black Mountain, the Bauhaus grid structures his collages. There is a sad angle to the art world - Fluxus, Pop, insatiably curious, not quite name-dropping. In 1955 he began a series of 'moticos' (is this the founding etymology of emoticons?), collages on the cardboard inserts of laundered shirts. Three years later he started to send out mail art, and began to request recipients to ' please add to and return' - pioneering interactive art, way beyond the surrealists' exquisite corpses. This was later called 'The New York Correspondence School' - distance unlearning?

Get round the show before it gets busy - it's a wonderful space but I imagine very expensive to invigilate. It suddenly gets busy and it's full of the jeunesse doree - then equally suddenly I begin to recognise friends. Steven greets me - he's lent some material, and we talk about mail art - and he wonders (as I do) when I'll finish my book on the subject. I tell Elinor I've written my piece on artists' books for Art Monthly, which includes two of her books. Then Louisa comes down the stairs and we are into mail art again.