Football, cookies and the artist formerly known as

Since there is a good chance that if you are reading this then you were probably at Cactusfestival on the weekend, I will tell you about all the things that Cactusfestival wasn't. For everything else festive, including; music, food, conversation, sunshine, happy people, you can presume that these things were here in abundance.

1

Football

This is a picture revealing the secret world of music festival technicians. Not far from the rocking crowds huddle a close-knit group of predominantly male technicians. Their purpose was clear, the tiny 14 inch screen on a trestle table with a makeshift aerial made from microphone wire and cable tied as far as up the tree as the ladder would allow. All in all, the reception of the television image was their greatest success of the evening, since their deep-rooted allegiance to the Netherlands needed a goal which was sorely denied from them till the very very end of an extended game, and when it came it was the wrong net, and too late to do anything about it. The technicians had to slowly stand and console themselves that at least the musical backing of Admiral Freebee and Tori Amos made a frustrating game spectacular by association.

The inside story for why none of the huge screens at the festival were broadcasting the world cup final, is that because the festival was a paid-entry event, FIFA insisted that 1 Euro per head should be paid to their coffers. In a festival of 10,000 Euros that becomes an expensive spectator sport when the town square in Brugges just a kilometer away was playing it for free.

I watched most of the first half, it was a frustratingly tight game between two teams that both deserved to win.

2 Cookies

There were no cookies.

Not in my house anyway.

But the suggestion made me nervous. Saturday was hottest day of a hot week in what is shaping up to be a hot summer. If there were any cookies in this oven, the cookies were me. The leafy covering provided some shelter but it was baking hot for most of the day and despite my best efforts at drinking warm tea to keep cool, the lack of breeze was intensified when the windows clogged up with visitors.

The answer to the following notes I received in the mailbox are: yes, yes I do - yes, utterly out of the question - shit, I hope you don't mean roasted - yes, I surely should - and no, not on your life I need all the space I can get.

It wasn't until I got out of the house, compelled by a need to see what this festival I could see only through my front window was all about, that the rain finally came and cooled the crowds off.... which brings me to the third absence.

3 Prince

The rain fell like bad ideas fall on the heads of the misguided. It was a necessary antidote to the heat of the day but in the night air it quickly turned soggily chilly. Elvis Costello played on, his self confidence growing with the enthusiasm of each soggy front row fan. Then came Jamie Lidell, a musician I only previously recognised through his one pretty cheesy radio-hit, but he proved to be a wonderful wonderful performer. He played with the ego of olympians, the musicianship of someone playing for their life and the energy of the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince. Hang on a minute.... what did you say?... Back up the soundtrack a moment...

Jamie Lidell "thanks for your applause, we just just got here after playing support for Prince"

Me (standing now, but on soggy ground, and spoken through thought bubble) "What?"

JL "It's a great night for us"

Me "Did he just say he was playing support for Prince earlier this evening?"

Informative guy next to me who had seen the speech bubble appear mysteriously over my head "yeah, Prince was just playing at the Werchter Festival up the road"

Me (Speech bubble now expanding to the size of my ignorant disappointment) "I didn't know that"

But wait, the story gets worse. Not only did Prince play 30 minutes away from here, he also played a second very small impromptu concert in Brussels later into the morning.

Don't get me wrong, I was very happy to see JL on Saturday evening, it was a great way to rediscover my legs and to finally take the advice of many house visitors earlier and have a cool drink or two. This is the privilege of being in the centre of Europe, if it's culture you want you're right in the thick of it. So in many ways my house has become a miniature Belgium; never far from the centre of the action and you can be pretty sure that sooner or later the talented, the beautiful or the curious was just turn up in your front yard unprompted.

Here is my own version of that particular anecdote.

Every now and then you meet someone who's looking for the big talk not the small talk. This is one such guy, someone who knows what it is to do what you mean and mean what you do.

And finally I leave you with an image of what families do best.

What are you doing in there?

Three notes - from one child. Given to me in this order. Architects and planners take note, this is the mind of a 3 year old and perhaps representative for the greater London population.

I was in London for three days so the text below is a work in progress, hopefully all the threads of thought will connect up by the time I finish in the next couple of days.

I have been reading a book called BLDGBLOG by Geoff Manaugh (http://bldgblog.blogspot.com) whom apparently many people have been reading for years, but my recent discovery of his writing has really opened my eyes to the role of architecture in a city. So it was with interest that I went on Thursday night to a screening of an archive about the building of the South Bank and the public buildings along it. It surprised me that it was only made in the mid 70s since the whole area has a very strong sense of establishment about it. In fact the weekend was an interesting observation in itself about how people use public space. But to get back to BLDGBLOG, the general sense I get from this book is that the spaces around us, whether real, virtual, imagined or transformed through scale or time or even by the experience of people around you, all have a significant impact on the way we think about ourselves and how we relate to each other. Manaugh's definition of architecture not only challenges the traditional definition, it opens you right up to think about what ISN'T architecture (to steal the sentiment of Laurence Olivier was asked in an interview for the above mentioned film 'can we afford such a grand theatre complex on the south bank?', replied "can we afford NOT to have a theatre building of this scale", spoken like a politician).

On the face of it, if my only view of the world was through the front window of my miniature house, you might think architecture was a description for smiling faces through the picture frame of a victorian window.

Perhaps that was the idea behind the picture frame window of the Victorians in the first place, certainly it was the idea in terms of looking in. But take another look...

What seems more significant is that the faces of all these people have an easy familiarity about them because we have just had an intimate conversation (intimate in the sense that we sat very close).

And warm perhaps because the scale has transformed this part of them for a moment so sit and look.

The architecture that they encounter has transformed them, physically and through their imagination, be a different version of themself.

I was speaking with a young woman (Laura) and her mother?? perhaps, and at the end of the conversation she gave me this book, to write things into. It's very nice to receive a gift, but it's especially nice when it's from someone you have only just met.

I was thinking about a theatre performance I saw in a Vietnamese temple once where the audience came up and put money and gifts into the hands of the performers in the last scene of the play, but this is slightly different because

I also spoke with a woman called Lesley, who saw my house in Singapore in 2008 and went so far as to send me some of her photos then and again now (pictured below),

Singapore 2008 London 2010

(Spot the difference? The roof is a different colour and the London house has a new roof. The handmade epoxy resin roof I made originally just wasn't cutting it)

Singapore 2008 London 2010

...and she asked me whether I got bored with cute kids in the window. I have never been particularly fond of 'cute', I have no pictures of kittens in my diary and I don't look up internet videos of puppies playing with string, but I do enjoy these photos because they have an openness that I don't come across very often in the standing world.

Is it Wimbledon? No it's Watch This Space summer festival of events at the National Theatre in London. A gigantic green astroturf that drinking Londoners and open-minded kids call home for an afternoon or evening.

Some guys seem to think wearing pink is rather effeminate...

... I strongly disaggree

Tell you what though, I read recently that in the 1880s red and pink were strong masculine colours and blue was thought to be a feminine colour - just shows how culturally susceptible to suggestion we are (particularly market driven ones)

These guys (below) stuck around long enough for us to have a good discussion about what art might be able to offer the world, that is to say, if you can define something as art. I enjoy the rhetoric that word brings up, it allows people to stop trying to think there is an answer or an absolute reason for doing something. I think art should be a word that gets applied to everyday life, getting to work, going on buses. Actually, last week in Brussels I saw a sign for 'the art of carwashing' hanging over a driveway.

And here they are from the outside, enjoying the art of conversation in their own private way.

Jerome and friend (I'm sorry I forgot her name but she is from Brasil) who met in China last year. Today they were meeting again for the first time and meeting me in my house was somehow mixed up in all of that. Distance isn't what it used to be, that's for sure.

And here is some videos from Nathan who had a wazzy little video camera that fits in the palm of your hand - Click Here and Click Here





And this is the half face of the very charming Russian woman who has moved to London recently to study acting. Perhaps she has a future in writing too, we played a word game together that spawned a few good turn of phrases.

More text to come

London southbank

A tempting sample in the hope you might come back to this site tomorrow. There are some great shots of life on the communal lawn outside the National Theatre where I had some very intriguing conversations, just give me a couple of hours to upload the photos, meanwhile I'm back out on the southbank Saturday 1 - 3 and 4 - 6, then Sunday 12 - 1 and 2 - 3, hope to see you there.