an emerald city

Murshid

Fazal Inayat Khan, Murshid Fazal was my parent's Sufi Teacher. When I was born I was taken home by my parents to The Khankah which they were caretaking following the break up of the community he formed there. It was also his house. I knew him from then on til we moved away when I was six years old to spend two years in The South Pacific. In 1990 when i was seven we heard of his illness, my mother was preparing to fly home to help him - she was his doctor for years- when they called to say he had passed. That was 20 years ago. and he was the first person I knew who had died. We stayed away, unable to do anything and missing the events immediately following his death and his memorial. To this day I feel more like I left him behind than like he left us, he was just no longer here when we returned, absurd as it seemed.

What can I remember of Fazal?

A belt he gave me, as a baby or at least before I can remember. I was told he gave it to me because I was the first person he saw after deciding to give it away. I have it still, so that is not perhaps a memory, just an object. It is snakeskin and narrow, it can't have been his to wear, it's a small size; it fits me now and I often wear it.

He took us all, kids, I must have been about four, to London without our parents. I remember it clearly as a special occasion, a great sense of importance. An adventure. We went to the cinema! Fieval Goes West, An American Tale, to my mind then I was certain that Fazal was every bit as excited as I. Next the Funfair, all of us went on The Gravity Wheel together even my little sister Brigit, held tight and safe in his arms, of course! No one was 'too young'. The Gravity Wheel is a big deal, it changes which way you think is up. I see in retrospect all kinds of meanings but at the time there was no question of why one did such things, you did them because they were tremendous and it was important to do them. An adventure.

Perhaps he was the first person I perceived as any kind of Authority in the world and it seemed to be strong, his authority, and sure, without ever to me being frightening; but he was also one of my very earliest friends. I knew that I knew him and that we trusted eachother.

I was never conscious as a young child of being treated as such or talked down to at The Khankah by anyone, least of all Murshid Fazal. When I was very young, before he died, i never considered it. I considered it all my business, whatever it was they all did, as much as it was theirs.

His voice in lectures and meetings was a familiar sound. I would fall asleep in Mama's lap while he would speak about all the things he would speak about. It was once so familiar to me that it seems ridiculous that I don't hear it in my mind, perhaps it was too familiar, never thinking it would stop I only remember that i knew it.

I remember that i always felt i understood what he said, whether listening in to meetings before sleep or when he spoke, as he often did directly to me. I don't remember what he said but that it was often as if I had known it before he told me. I always thought that this was funny; to feel like you'd known something for ages, only you'd just found out. I supposed since he could make everyone feel like that that that was because he was Murshid.

They have all told me so many stories of him since then and now he becomes a mystery, but what i most remember is that when I knew him, he seemed quite the opposite.

a chickpea

A Cosmology of Cosmologies for 2009 (all pictures by Hestia Peppe except diagram of reflecting telescope from Wikipedia)

Robert Kusmirowski at the Barbican

Forgive the creekiness, this is my first writing assignment for MFA Computational Arts. I'm not entirely sure how any of this works right now...

Robert Kusmirowski
'Bunker'
The Barbican Curve Space.
23.11.09
Hestia Peppe

Animism. Things and collecting them. Nostalgia of matter. Collective memory. Relationship to the narratives of preceding generations.

Architecture of /from dreams.

My first thoughts on entering the installation are that these objects have real histories of their own which are overwritten by greater narratives of History. Both are 'true' but perhaps do not pertain equally to the physical objects and the conceptual content of the work. There is this uncomfortable relationship between a plurality of histories competing for my attention.

Small instances of glitch occur throughout the work; seemingly accidental but almost certainly intentionally allowed to remain if not deliberately concocted. One layer of constructed artistic reality catches on the constructed institutional reality; The Barbican's fire safety equipment remains visible throughout and allows the artist to draw our attention to his methodology of deliberate illusion. Our immersion in it is never quite complete.

Self conscious handprint. A trace of 'The Artist'.

Curtain at the back of the installation behind which the mechanics of the illusion are exposed, the artist's workspace. Like the reveal in The Wizard of Oz. Backstage. Pictures of Emma Watson cut out of a magazine and stuck on the wall.

A disorientating sense of absurdity will not allow the viewer to succumb to the passive manipulability encouraged in museum installations. Wires are not connected, pipes don't go anywhere. Theatre. Facade. The space is not associated with use but with spectacle. Walking experimentally up the rail tracks the sense of transgression is strong, there are things behind things but only so far, then you hit the institution and its familiar boundaries and interdits.

The promenade form of the installation lends itself immediately to narrative but ironically also reinforces an impression of a Disney Land style attraction that permeates the experience. This is noticeable in the first instance at the point of departure from the Barbican's foyer where brighter lighting gives the viewer their first view of the installation's aesthetic and under which it appears decidedly more artificial than it does in the interior of the installation. Juxtaposition with the design aesthetic of the Barbican's interior decor enhances this incongruity and certainly lends a layer of irony to the viewer's perception of the work from the outset. The sense of entering an illusory space where our usual narrative context is suspended is one that in a society dominated by Capitalist Spectacle is so familiar that we cannot help but retain these associations even in contexts where apparent seriousness of content should preclude thoughts of theme parks and funfairs.

It seems to me to be a central issue in this work that generational disparities in our relationships to media, matter and things conflict with the smooth transmission of cultural memory. Perhaps dreams and fictions are the only places where this ambiguity can be dealt with effectively and specifically. The grand fictional narrative of the post apocalypse and the connection it creates between the dual imaginary realities of past and future is a fine site on which to found work of this kind. It is said that children can inherit the dreams and nightmares of their parents. Objects from the past carry history into the future.

Comparisons with Gregor Schneider/ Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster/Mike Nelson/Thomas Hirschorn/John Bock. Also Anselm Kiefer.

The grey painted surfaces. The Hum. The Rubble.

a threshold-crossing playlist special

for these darkest of days and dedicated to Hanny Ahern and other timely revolutions.

There's no way i can be bothered to work out how to post a playlist to the web Right Now but herewith is the tracklisting for you to do wish as you will because i love you all so very. Includes done to death and loved to pieces favourites and some topical stuff too.

Tori Amos - Emmanuel
Hefner - The Hymn for The Cigarettes
Afrirampo - Oni Pika Heart
Bjork - All Neon Like
Gang Gang Dance - Princes (feat. Tinchy Stryder)
Amanda Fucking Palmer - Runs in The Family
Amy Winehouse - Addicted
CocoRosie - Rainbowarriors
Electrelane - On Parade
Kristen Hersh - Your Ghost (feat. Michael Stipe)
Kimya Dawson - Chemistry
Fleetwoord Mac - Gypsy
The Raincoats - Void
Leonard Cohen - Tower Of Song
The Dresden Dolls - Necessary Evil
Scout Niblett - Kidnapped by Neptune
Hefner - May God Protect Your Home
Gang Gang Dance - Glory in itself/Egyptian
Nina Simone - 22nd Century (from tom moore's recommendation)
Amanda Fucking Palmer - Another Year

Did I fall asleep?

2009 the year of TWITTER, MIMI GETTING WHAT SHE DESERVES(THE BEST), TAVI, FINALLY BECOMING COMPUTATIONAL, DOLLHOUSE, AMANDA FUCKING PALMER, NOT BEING ABLE TO AFFORD FESTIVALS AND NOT HAVING ENOUGH TIME TO GO TO PARTIES. DID I MENTION DOLLHOUSE? IS IT ME OR DO I ACTUALLY FEEL LIKE I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING? BEING AN AUNT (AND A GOVERNESS) BEING FULLY AWARE OF THE WONDER OF TIME SPACE AND GEOMETRY AND THE INTERNET. MICHAEL JACKSON DIES. FLEETWOOD MAC AT ALL TIMES IN ALL PLACES. FRENCH RETREATS. SHARING BOOKS. PARTYING IN ESPONDEILHAN, DARREN HAYMAN GIVES THE KIDS WHAT THEY WANT AT EOTR FESTIVAL. GIVE THE KIDS WHAT THEY WANT. GIRLS WHO FIGHT. MONSTER EMPORIUM PRESS. BLANCH AND SHOCK. EAT YOUR HEART OUT. NINA POWER(INFINITE THOUGHT). LIGHT A CANDLE AND LISTEN TO NINA SIMONE'S 22ND CENTURY. PLAYING IN MAYFAIR. GOING LEGIT. DOING A MASTERS YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO AFFORD. MISS HANNY AHERNE( JUST IN TIME). SENDING THEM OFF TO COPENHAGEN. NOT GIVING UP YET. CAROLINE HERSCHEL KEEPING THE HOMEFIRES BURNING.

MERRY CHRISTMAS LIGHTS IN THE DARK