best reviews of 2003

6 Greats

New Year's Predictions (that would have made you money)

From: J. Foreman
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 30 December 2002

Predictions are usually just a muddled version of the present. But here we go anyway, my predictions for 2003 are:

1 China to collapse soviet style 2 Uk/Us stockmarkets to rebound 3 Euro bullish 4 No war in Iraq 5 Arsenal for the premiership 6 England to win final ashes test match 7 Queen of England to abdicate 8 worldwidereview to make a profit 9 turner prize scrapped 10 capitalism triumphant again

The Bic Biro Ink Pen (Black or Blue) (a man's love for his pen)

From: Simeon
Category: Other stuff
Date: 17 March 2003

I just want to say how much I love the Bic biro. In our time products have to be meddled with to the point of design overload. Why can't things just be kept simple?

You could argue that the pen is a product designed to make a profit for the company that produces it and fulfil a basic need. That's true. The Bic is more than that though, much more. Bic was a business man, make no mistake, but principles of availability, affordability and above all quality were paramount in his thinking.

Let me explain. Just think about it. Have you ever actually bought one? When was the last time you went and specifically bought that type of pen? Like me you probably found one squeezed between the buttocks of your sofa or discarded on the street.

They are classless and international. I've seen nervous teenagers chewing on them, Japanese girls sticking them in their hair, and artists scribbling with them.

Does the ink ever run out? Ok you have a point, but what pen doesn't? The only problem you might face is poor flow. Get a grip (excuse the pun) all you have to do is rub the old faithful between the fingers. Pretend your making fire and she'll be as good as new.

In the end even if you buy a fancy Parker or Mont Blanc you'll more than likely lose it and have to revert to the old faithful.

The Bic is a philosophical system, a true Zen product of the modern age. Treat those around you like the pen. You might lust after a beautiful woman, a fast car, but ultimately love the everyday, that which doesn't shout out "look at me".

I don't want to get too sentimental and romantic but all the great rights of passage in my life happened with a Bic Pen from exam halls, to sketching "Iron Maiden" on my school book.

So next time you are struggling to find a refill for your new fountain pen spare a thought for the old faithful. Don't just toss it away casually. Bid it goodbye with a whisper and a prayer.

If the word disposable makes you melancholy then there is only one option: get a refill. Just slide the black stick into the transparent shaft (gently) and away you go.

Bic people, Bic houses? What a world that would be.

Rugby World Cup 2003 an English Perspective (Englishness triumphant quietly)
Reviews

From: Fatz
Category: Other stuff
Date: 23 November 2003

At the bus stop, in the English rain, it has poured for days; a drunk white South African with an English accent("been here twenty years") challenges the ethnically mixed group waiting for the 69 or 58 or 158, "Any of you English?". I cannot resist his challenge, to the Barbour badge of my wax jacket and my brown leather shoes, "Yes, I am." He grasps my hand to congratulate me then accuses us of not been ecstatic enough about being World Champions. I try to affirm some English values of restraint and multi-culturalism and also mention that I am tired.

I love rugby. If Hemingway had been white commonwealth he would have loved it too. It combines grace with violence. The final was all tension, the ghosts of recent England tragedies haunting us, Austalian fucking superiority a huge bogeyman to be overcome, our Englishness challenged on all sides, the sport, the team hated by class warriors, our scottish, welsh, and Irish brothers, all the ignorant.

And we, our players, were something novel, the best. Stronger in the tackle, little Wilkinson grabbing big men down, the Aussies were shaken by the thundering controlled precise force of our defence, they looked scared, they never once broke through our lines.

War. The best led by the calculating sardonic coach Clive Woodward, who prepared them to win, not to lose nobly or sadly, but to think and fight for glorious victory.

Johnson. A giant with a storybook face, few but intellgient words, captain. Robinson, a reformed Rugby leaguer, able to accelerate and sidestep, his try celebrated by the insane intensity of triumph, he punches the oblong ball into the air. And Wilkinson, a charmless figure in his good boy perfectionism, transcended all pressure, all failure, and broke free into greatness.

In the End, despite the lack of Sambaing in the streets of East London, in Sidney we English found ourselves again, strong understated brilliant thoughtful, victors.

Holcombe Beach in between Teingmouth and Dawlish, Devon (last swim in the sea)

From: Chloe Kimber
Category: Other stuff
Date: 05 October 2003

It was a reasonably sunny, warm late afternoon, as we stripped down to our undies in the late, autumunal heat. The train track runs right past the beach, as it does all along the coast in this part of Devon. The train journey, therefore is spectacular in its views of the coast even though the two towns the beach is wedged in between are not. A few families and Sunday dog walkers were out and about, but, as I enveloped my pale body in the water smugly, none were 'brave''crazy' or whatever to get in the water. The sun and the sky drew a mirrored reflection on the calm sea, it was surprisingly warm in the water. It had been warm for days, plus it was low tide. Nice. Next to the rocks that lurked threateningly beneath the surface of the water, were two huge rocky outcrops. Locally they are known as 'The Parson and The Clerk'. Pesonally, I couldn't help commenting that they looked rather more phallic than figurative. But then, swimming in the sea does have a funny effect on me. Great last British swim of the year. Yum. Come on, will someone else review something else that happens outside London?

Curb your enthusiasm BBC4 TV (unenthusiastic review)

From: JJ
Category: TV
Date: 27 February 2003

By Larry David,the cocreator of Seinfeld and starring the good man himself, this reminds one much of the Larry Sanders show. Celebs, a blurring of reality and fiction, stylistically too, and cynicism. I think it is probably rather easier to just write a show starring yourself and about yourself and get it shot like a documentary, overlaying some ridiculous fairground music in a cool kindaway. By not attempting to distill or heighten the humour to the brilliant levels of Seinfeld,, you still end up with an ok wry and watchable show about an obnoxious tv comedy writer. Rather in the vein of Alan Partridge or the office, more documentary than human poetry. This is why Seinfeld was great art and Curb your enthusiasm and the rest are just the butt end of avant garde theatre.

street caracas (crack ass caracas)

From: 60d
Category: Other stuff
Date: 30 November 2003

10 minutes max walk from anywhere in Caracas and you are in a zone full of street commerce. half of the city streets are paved with stalls. legal, illegal, and mostly half legal (where the government charges them for being there but would never check what they sell) what they sell includes the widest choice of copied/surrogate/imitated goods, from oster kitchen blender spares, to roxy clothes, to levis to all football, basketball and baseball shirts, chinese tools, books illegally printed -unfortunatelly not with illegal contents, but rather cheap best sellers- and all kinds of cds and dvds, programs, even 2004 computer programs, the latest films, the covers of these can be professionally printed, inkjet-home printed, or just photocopied. sellers can be fanatics kof what they sell, be it salsa or the latest international hip hop. prices are lower than a blank cd in a suburban shop in, say, london: 50 pence. there are still 'normal' music shops in caracas. i do not understand to the day how they survive. like with most shops. imports are rare, but still the countrie´s industry is not developing as it should. and of course you find food. Venezuelan food reflects all the cultures that made this country, and the current difficulty to bring imported ingredients. amerindian, including the andes culture. portuguese, galician, spanish, african, italian. basic street food include arepas and empanadas, patties of round or half moon shaped corn bread. spiced but not hot meat, black beans, and soft white cheeses are the usual fillings for these. today i saw a sunday street market with live chickens killed and feathered to the taste every minute. I hadn´s seen that for some years now. wonderful. JUICES in every corner you can find a stall that will squeeze 3 oranges for you in a plastic cup for less than 10p and every food shop will have the best choice of juices in the world: guanabana, guava, passion fruit, watermelon, pineapple, mango. a big glass of these would still cost you no more than half a dollar, or 1500 bolívares. you can certainly live on these juices, they are made with just enough water as to make the oster blender work. but what explains this citie´s rythm best to my view is the way you drink coffee. here it is a service, not a luxurious thing. is like in some places in italy or portugal where people drink small coffees standing up, on their way to somewhere, just when you need them. and as hourly services they are priced and served. hope this is enough to bring you here. soon i will post reports on the art world and more.

4 Craps

house floods

From: John
Category: Other stuff
Date: 05 January 2003

The cellar of my terrace house has around 8 inches ( 20cm) of water covering its dirty floor. My neighbour alerted me, the water has probably been there since the 26th of December. All my treasure is sunken, old tvs and paintings and an enormous pile of knives and forks look pretty in their underground lake. I assumed it was general rainwater, because it doesn't smell, and that's what my neighbour had thought too. When the people who work for Thames Water finally came, they gave us the good news that it is filtered sewage water. The problem only affects around five of us in a row, so their is the delicious imagining of whose sewage one has downstairs. You do a piss or a poo, or your neighbour does one or two, and then minus the solids it collect in your basement. A place where all the rubbish you want to forget goes. A runny tummy might be caused by the e coli down there, and its results end up there too. The musty smell, quite Venetian, creeps upwards through the gaps in the floorborad. Now I wait for the sub contractor's shit tube attached to the big truck with its flashing lights to suck all the water out. Presumably it will drip a little of its contents on my floors as it works. Last night I dreamt my sister dropped sewage on me from a window, and was only woken from my hallucination by the knocking of the water suckers at my door (pimply good natured men accustomed to other people's smelly waste). Perhaps the whole thing is a dream and some freudian can explain it.

Antiwar letter to Tony Blair (a war starts and never stops)

From: JasperJoffe
Category: Other stuff
Date: 27 February 2003

I sent this to Mr Blair today. If his office has to open a million antiwar letters perhaps he will listen. Please write and send your own letter to Mr Blair or use mine with any adaptations you like.

27 February 2003

Tony Blair 10 Downing Street London SW1A 2AA

Dear Mr Blair,

I write to you because it’s the only way I can think of to try to make you listen. I do not want Britain to attack Iraq. I think it is wrong for us to make war against a country that has not attacked us or any other countries since 1990, and that poses no immediate threat to the world.

Some reasons why I think we should not attack Iraq:

· Because you have not made a convincing case for war.

· Killing many thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians will not make the world more peaceful. It is morally wrong to kill these people.

· There seems to be no coherent plan as to what will happen once Iraq is occupied. Afghanistan sets a bad precedent for trying to create a democratic nation by force.

· Attacking Iraq is unlikely to make us safer from terrorism. It seems more likely to make people hate America and Britain, and ready to support or become terrorists.

· There is no evidence to suggest that Iraq has provided or will provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

· There is no obvious or urgent need to disarm Iraq by force. It is more risky to invade a country than to use diplomacy to disarm it.

· I think a priority of our government should be to protect the people of Britain from terrorists, for example Al Qaeda, and that war against Iraq will distract from this purpose.

I hope you will listen to the people who elected you to represent them. The million who marched through London probably have many different reasons for why they are against the invasion of Iraq. But in our hearts we just feel that is the wrong thing to do. Please don’t attack Iraq in my name.

Yours sincerely

Jasper Joffe

A review of La Biennale di Venezia 2003 or the 50th Venice Biennial (not that hot stuff)

From: RS
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 15 June 2003

Subtitled Dream and Conflicts The Dictatorship of the Viewer.

As with most authoritarian oligarchies that have ruled in the name of the masses (see market capitalism, state socialism, european fascism etc), the viewers never picked Bonami and the other high falutin clowns who created this jamboree, to represent them.

The dictatorship of the viewer turns out to be the patronising assumption that people prefer a whole load of crap (bits of hardboard, computers, typed out scribbled on notes, websites, video projections, stickers) to beautiful, wonderful, or truthful, art works. The premise is either that great art is too difficult to make so why bother, that great or good art is a ridiculous old fashioned idea so why bother, or worst of all that viewers can only like interactive junk that they could have made themselves if they had enough time to waste.

Let remember that this Biennale in this beautiful city of Venice, which is in itself a testament to human creativity, is meant to, does, represent the best or at least most of what is going on in the global art world. The Biennale shows what we are doing, what we can do.

And the results, the endless installations which satisfy only the context of the show, dismay even the aficionados (viewers are intelligent enough to unpick all the tired attempts to subvert cultural and institutional contexts, and they see the art works for what they are: that is nothing, that is worse than emptiness). People whose job is art, said without whispering, as the icecreams melted on their sunburnt arms, this Biennale is shit isn't it. Have you seen anything good? No.

Even artists with talent have failed. Chris Ofili vomits up his own opticality, green and red, green and red, we got it already, now move on, and do some surprising paintings. The big painting show, (all the usual name checks from Guston to Richter, to Hirst), shows why merely painting, the return to a technique, leads to as much to failure as all the rest.

Question: If all is bad, what is good? Try to remember when you felt or thought something significant when looking at art. That is near to being what good art is. Next time you're in Venice go see Veronese's "Feast at The House of Levi" at The Accademia Gallery( actually referenced in Fred Wilson's USA pavilion), consider why you like it more than so many other paintings of the same type. This shows that the useful faculty of judgement probably exists.

Now cry out for the democracy of the viewer, not the well dressed happy few telling the many that this junk is all that art is or can be or should be, but the shabby many, those without invites to parties, saying they want to be moved by the truth and beauty of great art. We, the viewers, expect to be inspired. We want more.

Zmas (xmas for the zth time)

From: Slim
Category: Other stuff
Date: 11 December 2003

I hate Zmas. The end of the year, stuck in the sauna of old familial relationships, the freedom to repeat yourself forever, the longrunning mousetrap of life that terminates at the station of death, enjoy the ride and mind the gap. Jesus. Zmas sums up all the worst of humanity: conformity, cupidity, and crap. No more zmases please. Let's have a moratorium, a ceasefire, a cessation of festivities/hostilities. Give up pretending we like to be in the same room, cold turkey, small tv sets, and the frantic indoctrination of the children in capitalism and waiting and wanting. No more, we don't like it, we're alienated, thank god, so we can give up on Victorian sentimentality and the notion that electric light and aeroplanes hasn't freed us from the winter gloom. After Zmas, Nyear, worse upon worst, forced friendship and jolliness, the fascism of parties!

Happy Zmas! Happy Nyear.