Breaking the Rules

Themerson Evening +

Last week was busy. I was wrong about the end of the ad campaigns in the last entry - on the Piccadilly line I glimpsed a poster at Piccadilly, whilst the person opposite had his newspaper open at an advert for Breaking the Rules. The numbers are building back, helped by parties of students from Chelsea, Camberwell and elsewhere. There is even a party from the Art Institute of Chicago - a special journey no doubt just to see the show! I joke with Simon who is the lecturer with them - I remember him as a PhD student at the Royal College of Art, writing on Fluxus. At his degree show he showed a recreation of a Fluxshoe tour performance - I remember the tour coming to Blackburn Art Gallery in 1973 and being asked to invigilate - the gallery staff thought that there would be paintings to steal!

The big event of the week is the Themersons evening. Nick and Jasia expertly choreograph the evening of films, images and reminiscences. Lux have been involved in bringing out a video of some of their few surviving films. The audience is a great mix of old and young, and I speculate on how some of this young audience had found out about them. The films look back to Clair and Man Ray and forward to Polanski.

Captions

I try and find some time to finish checking the labels for the exhibits - this is difficult given the competing demands of my job.

On the captions/labels consistency is a problem. The 20 or so-curators have all been involved in writing the book to be published shortly by British Library Publishing: they have their own house style. The Exhibitions team have another. And both are different to the standard one that we use as librarians.

Trying to think of enticing headlines for each item is equally problematic - is my rendering of 'The French Cock v the German Eagle' as 'Cock 1 Eagle 0' going too far? Fortunately many avant-garde publications have unusual titles - 'Tango with Cows', 'Blast' etc. etc.

They all should not exceed 100 words, so editing down but not diminishing the sense or content can be tricky too.

Kevin from AKA emails to ask me to cut down the chronologies for the section we call 'mastheads' - a walk-through chronology with maps and quotes.

Primavera emails to see if I want to add some posters and scores to the film of Hilde Holger dancing (re-created). Geraldine emails to ask me to remind of dates for Primavera to see the film editor.

I'm starting to worry about the films we want - we started very late on this. And some time this week I must collect the remaining London loans - from the Themerson Archive and Chelsea College of Art and Design.

Alex emails me to arrange a briefing day next week for the education programme. And Anna emails to ask me to arrange a preview for Time Out. Some time next week I need to do the texts for the Independent and Times Higher. Will I suffer from writer's blog?