Tuesday, 1 June 2010

Wolves in Wolfsburg


I kept a keen eye out for Wolves in Wolfburg and finally discovered it when my friend Alexa showed me her photos. Naturally I didn't see the wolf at the time.

I wondered why this was not called Wolksburg, being the largest Volkswagon factory in the world just here. The factory itself employs around 50,000 people and the town has about 120,000 inhabitants. The town was build around the factory in fact. I have seen smaller versions of this civic-corporate marriage in parts of France but never really been inside it, so I was fascinated to get my own view of things.

Saturday I was in the Autostadt, which for those of you who have never been to Wolfsburg, is a kind of theme park design to house many different brands of cars. It is like mixing a post-modern corporate futurist aesthetic employing a Le Courbusier's modernist vocabulary combined with Henry Fords capitalist dream. I couldn't help thinking of the online Second Life game where a fantasy virtual world has been constructed on 'islands' not bound by financial control yet at the same time upholding a deep seated capitalist understanding of the world.

Below - image from Second Life. Perhaps based on Autostadt?


The picture here shows one of the car exhibit buildings in the foreground, next to the constructed lake and the Wolkswagon factory in the background.




This was an interesting space (one of many themed information spaces). The chairs in the middle are reclined like when you go to the observatory, it is a seductive position to be in staring up at the roof and unable to communicate to the people around you. On the screens are the design 'experts' who tell you why and how they have made design decisions with specifically you in mind. You cannot help feeling that you are one of the selected few who have this awesome privilege to sit in such luxury and have such important people address you. It is an elaborate indoctrination of materialism. Aesthetic and comfort are valued highly over content, you cannot help but feel you should just relax and enjoy the good life that has been mapped out for you.

It is interesting to come to a place like this as an outsider, even more so coming from a place like New Zealand which most certainly shares the same materialistic aspirations but doesn't achieve it publicly on this scale. As an artist you become practiced at distancing yourself from this kind of cultural indoctrination but that also allows you an objectivity.

So... it was slightly weird setting myself up in this space in the little house, I was worried that people might be expecting me to tap dance or at least blow up like a bouncy castle and invite people to bounce all over me.

Surprisingly then, I had some very interesting conversations with people, hearing what was on their minds. I met three people who were here to pick up their new car and this place was an extra reward for the experience of buying a new car, like the ultimate experiential packaging. You get to pick your car up from a 15 story glass tower building that in fact is a giant elevator stacker of new cars. Each new car glides down to it's new owner with hydraulic elegance like the ultimate coke dispenser, delivering the ultimate fetish object to it's new owner. Who wouldn't want that? Here is one of those new owners, come from a neighboring city, I think Hamburg, to collect his reward. And to honest he should be happy, he has achieved something many aspire to.
And here is the next Michael Schumarker, eyeing up what might be an impeding object.
And then of course people who come to these places as we all do, for leisure. The post-modern public space is perhaps not really public so much as constructed to feel like public space for the sake of belief in our materialist aspirations. Is that so different to the civic parks and promenades of the 19th and 20th century? Or the spiritual meeting places constructed by the governing religious regimes of the 18th century, or even the 16th century meeting places sponsored by the Medicis or the ruling classes of any culture.

What I find interesting is that ultimately we bring our individual view of the world even when we understand the social forces that bring us to this place for whatever reason. Here are some other folk I met who were here because this was a place to hang out. I am part of this system too, I have no arrived here by some act of altruism, I am paid to be here, to uphold the same values that I gently mock. We live in these systems because we are born into it, we make the most of what we have been given access to.

Here are some nice people I met in Wolfsburg.




Monday, 17 May 2010

From zero to Norwich in 6 seconds flat

Bugs, dragons, beetles, butterflies, monsters and things that go screech on your roof.
The sun finally came out and with it came a giant assortment of animals and monsters of every description. Sometimes it was hard to think in here. Got to have a few brief but interesting interesting chats to people though, including the 9 year old who have their own band (they are from a neighboring village) some girls whose interest in chemistry lead to some fascinating experiments, here is one of them. They reckon there are no harmful side effects, except for when their friend got dizzy and fell over.







I'll let the pictures talk for themselves.






This is Allen, my lovely assistant for the weekend, with a keen eye for 3 foot terrorists and an indepth knowledge of historic english parking laws.
And this is Kaitlyn with some pictures of her own and a few interesting insights into having a little brother who is four years younger than you.
Being in England for the first time with my little house I was intrigued to see if there were any differences between here and folks from the continent. Well here is where it begins...
And an indepth knowledge of extra terrestrial beings



I'm not sure I quite understand these markings but I really like them, halfway between wallpaper and a performed poem.

Who's gettin married?

Not everyone loves Apple tea...

You want to know where those gigantic red balls come from? Well here is the red ball lady herself, launching a miniature into my abode. I will watch it grow.

Friday, 30 April 2010

2010 begins.... NOW

Evening ladies, evening gents, so here we are in 2010. This performance is now coming up for it's third year in existence, perhaps in many ways it has reached a certain point of arrival since I will be returning the house to England this summer, the colonial architectural copy returns to the mother-ship. Meanwhile I'm here in Brussels today after spending the weekend in Apeldoorn, Netherlands for Queens Day. As you may recall Apeldoorn has more reason than most to be acknowledging this day since the strange events last year in the city. People spoke to me about it without clarifying too many details, perhaps a dark day in history to be remembered but not relived.

It was a busy busy day in Apeldoorn, the rumours about Queens day are all true, I would compare it to some kind of public ritual and explosion of instinctive feelings of belonging and embracing the cliches of nationalism for a moment in an attempt to know who you really are. In New Zealand we have the Rugby 7s which appears similar in some ways, thousands of people dressing up in outfits, displaying their subconscious desires of identity and drunkenly screaming at the top of their lungs to some tune by The Mockers or Dave Dobbyn. I'm not sure who the Dutch equivalent is but it sounds like an endless loop of a computer generated Abba chorus, sung to the lyrics of La La La La La so that everyone in the street can sing along with it.

Somewhere in this mix is me, in the wee house, huddled under the verandah of a shop front from the rain, playing a Chinese toy piano and stopping from time to time to say hello to those brave enough to get down on the wet carpet to see who is inside.

I should also mention the free-market stalls on Queens day where everyone who wants to can sell their household goods on the street. It was a spectacular sight (despite the disappointing presence of rain) and I couldn't help myself from snapping up a couple of real bargains (including a had to keep my head dry).

Thanks Apeldoorn for introducing me in the ways of the spirit of national pride and thanks to the folk who sat down for a chat. Here is a sneak preview at a couple of pics, I'll upload some more over the next few days and fill in some descriptions.

If you're reading this blog for the first time, welcome to my interior world. If you are returning welcome back and let's see what Euro 2010 has in store. For a list of dates and places have a look at the Fransbrood link to the right where there is a full list.

Cheers

Stephen





Thursday, 24 September 2009

Day two - twice the fun

Today I felt like I knew what I was doing there. Kind of.

The day started with gifts. I'm not sure what I did to deserve them but my birthday was last week and I didn't get any gifts so maybe this was like a Karmic Makeover. Here's one of the gifts, a toy with a big head and one eye, potentially the result of a summer of Lowlands festivals.
Happy family - brother and sister.





And this is a girl who spent all of the last day in the campsite toilets feeling utterly sick. So today she was taking it easy, we had a nice conversation and then she came back with this little guardian angel, who is now permanently installed as a kind of guard for the front door.


And this is Jessie, the kiwi guy who is an old school friend of Josh's (yes I know what is the likelyhood and how incredibly common is that and aren't kiwis all one degree of separation anyway) who showed us some kiwi hospitality last night. You don't quite see his black eye and black toenails here though, apparently once we'd had enough he just keep right on dancing.

Now excuse me if I'm wrong, but I think this is Suzan and her sister who stayed and talked for a while and just yesterday wrote to me on this website to say hello. So you see, even though these worlds we create for ourselves are a contrivance, they inform our lives and go with us into the future as every experience does. Actually I know this is weird but there were three sets of sisters that I spoke to that day so I will use my scatter-gun approach to show a picture of them all...


Ok, maybe this isn't funny to anyone else, but I'll show you anyway. This is technically a house party and it all started with my new Bontempi (that's a shittier version of a Casiotone presumably of Italian origin). It started out as a jam and ended in a full scale party hit sensation. Who said you can't have a one-man house party...? The video is the song that just kind of wrote itself, I'm sorry I have forgotten the names of the singers but they did a great job of lyric-writing and general ambiance-setting. Today Lowlands, tomorrow the hit sensation of Ibiza 2010.

I'd say this makes up for a lack of birthday cake wouldn't you.
Here's the video - hit play on the bottom left corner. I left the Arabic version off in case it was just getting a bit culturally inappropriate - what am I thinking?!
And yes, this really is another one of those band shots that is totally uninteresting to anyone who wasn't there. But speaking as one who was there to Gang Gang Dance... WOW.

I think possibly I am giving a rose-tinted version of Lowlands, but that is because my experience in house really was like that but of course that is not the whole story. That night we stayed in a tent with the other 20 thousand or so tents with a physical rocking of the tent walls to the deep sub-base from one of the stages nearby. The next morning we cleared out and it struck me what a materialistic world we live in and that even though experiences like this festival were about ambience and collectivity, it was managed (quite brilliantly though I must say) by a slick consumer machine that was really like every other consumer machine. We live in an age of incredible consumer excess, we all wear new new clothes, we throw away plastic things used once, we buy a new tent because someone in village somewhere is prepared to package it for next to nothing, we have more choice than any other age of human, we have access, wealth, privilege... it's a double edged sword isn't it. I had a great weekend, don't get me wrong. I came away on kind of high. I'm glad I've been to a festival like this. I'm very happy to have been there in my own home.