Breaking the Rules

Ankara

Travel to Ankara for a meeting of The European Library. The planes and an early pre-meeting mean I have to get there on Saturday night, so I have some time to see Ankara. But it's wet and cold and Ankara is a difficult city for a pedestrian - steep kerbs and footbridges over road junctions. It's a bit like Washington - long boulevards and state buildings - but with lots of barracks and minarets Ankara. I spend three hours in the  The Museum of Anatolian Civilization and learn about the Hittites, neo-Hittites, Phrygians and Galatians - I'm impressed by a metal deer ornament to be mounted on a ceremonial pole, small gold mother-daughter tokens and the Gilgamesh reliefs from Eastern Turkey. 

The meeting next day is largely about the relationship between TEL and Europeana. The National Library of Turkey are our amiable hosts and look after us.

The journey back is difficult - a boy racer taxi driver (and the seat belts don't work), and a long queue for the connecting flight in Munich. I get home after 10.00 and discover winter has arrived - time to put on the central heating.

Skulls, Madrigals, Swedish Films, David

Robin asks me to do an obituary for David Troostwyk who died on the 29th September. It's for Art Monthly which won't come out until November: how can you sum up a man's life in 300 words?  I see the obituary in the Guardian David's obituary : and we cover much the same ground - his dealing in photographs and letters as David Koos (his middle name) and his trajectory at an odd angle to the art establishment. Where we differ is the Guardian obituarist's focus on David's Euan Uglow Review, and my emphasis on his desire to remain a painter: "For me, the act of painting was never considered, never possible unless only painting could provide the means of sustaining legitimate calls of the mind."  Space doesn't allow us to capture the man:  I wrote the catalogue introduction to his 'Private Act' (1999) and interviewed him to do this  - there were stories of his radio am days, sharing a bed with a Welsh (?) farmer as a wartime evacuee, an obsession with canasta...I hope I can find the black T-shirt he gave me at my Chelsea leaving party with the transfer text SB ELIXIR = EX LIBRIS (a typical David word game) which I'd like to wear for his funeral.

Paul invites me to the private view of Damien Hirst's sub-Mexican 'The Dead' exhibition at the Other Criteria. There's an interesting PhD thesis (compare and contrast) to be written on the contrasting fortunes of David and Damien (and conceptual art). It's heaving with the Frieze Fair hordes.

I get home and watch the DVD that Anna-Karin has sent from Filmform in Stockholm, where we met at the ARLIS Norden Conference - very wet I seem to remember. The Lars Arrhenius animation is both funny and sad, and I like the film about the artist Zdenko Buzek, a Zagreb artist. The voiceover by a child gives me an idea for my metonymy show next year.

Sunday is madrigals in Canonbury, so I use it as an excuse to visit the Estorick Collection, which has an exhibition of the Hockemeyer Italian ceramic collection: ceramics had a surprising (to me) at least centrality to the work of Marino Marini and Lucio Fontana. It's amazing how our preconceptions write out chapters of history.

David's importance will eventually surface to its rightful level.

The End of Summer

Don't know where the summer went - had a week up in Lancashire to see my mum (and it rained all the time). Last couple of weeks I have got back into the exhibition circuit - Paul Carter's 'Hotel' at Matts, Susie Hamilton at Paul Stolper, Bloomberg Space, Gina Medcalf at Chelsea Futurespace. Also caught the end of 'Futurism' at the Tate - having reviewed the catalogue I was disappointed by the realisation of the exhibition - not the work. The futurists always get a bad press and this doesn't help.

On Friday afternoon I was on the Birgit Skiold prize jury with Elizabeth and Gill at the London Art Book Fair. This is a very different show and includes trade and gallery publishers. This is my first visit to the Whitechapel Art Gallery since their revamp and I get disorientated until I map the old space onto the new.

I treat myself to acquiring a Mark Pawson treated map of the Allegheny Highlands Mark Pawson. So much for saving up.

Vertical integration

Spend a quiet weekend dodging the showers. I'm half way through reading Norbert Lynton's 'Tatlin' for a review: he died before it was finished, and John Milner, completed it - so it sounds a little strange at times, quoting himself. It's kicking off lots of Science Fiction thoughts.

Explore making three dishes from one - I boil a piece of beef (brisket) with celery, onion and carrot, and have some warm with a green sauce. I recycle the stock in a stracciatella soup (with egg, parmesan, breadcrumbs) - simplicity itself. Later I finish off the cold beef in a poached beef salad with spring onion, capers, gherkins, parsley and eggs in a dijon mustard, olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.

Look through my papers for the Warwick-Duke Humanities Project.

From Frankfurt to The Hague

Feeling a little tired, having had two quick Thursday night / Friday trips in a row to Frankfurt and then The Hague: the hour's difference means an overnight stay. Frankfurt was a meeting about key performance indicators for The European Library. This would be relatively easy to do this for a national library, but for a portal this is quite difficult. The morning goes well but in the afternoon there is too much detail about file logs. The following Friday is a meeting, convened by The European Library and europeana, to explore an eScholar project for European funding: what tools does the digital scholar need? Are some researchers not using digital research methods because they are too difficult to learn, combine, or just because the right tool for them has not been devised? I must be cursed as each time I fly to or back from The Hague there is a storm, and the plane is usually delayed. Time to catch up on my new reading, Mary Shelley's 'The Last Man' - the plague could almost be the swine flu pandemic.

Artist's book as photo-book

Just spent most of Sunday writing up the slides for my talk last month for ARLIS Norden in Stockholm. I always mean to write out a talk in full before I give it, but I rarely do. Now I have to rekindle the performance and it's difficult. I had a great time in Stockholm and the Scandinavian ARLIS members were very hospitable. The downside was the endless rain. On the day of my flight back had two hours in Moderna Museet and saw some familiar icons of modern art. My gift after the talk was a copy of 'The History Book: on Moderna Museet 1958-2008': it has an  intervention in the form of a chronology to 2058 by Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska, two artists I know well and whom I mentioned in the talk ! chance publications

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.