Breaking the Rules

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.