Monday 30 July 2012

An Outside Chance





My motorcycle had burnt-out, somewhere just short of St Jean de Luz and I walked with it alongside me.  This hadn't frustrated me but some guys had taken mercy, recognising my surf allegiance and so I hitched with the bike and board, hanging out the back of their pick-up.  They were a few Basque country bronzed, sinewy guys with raffish hair and deep eyes, wanting the sea; pausing to watch her roll and glisten.  Making for short life stories and about places along the coast, the throngs at La Zurriola and the lissome in Biarritz; about freedom, the waves, and maybe a vague story of loss by their words but a truer story of escape intimate in their bodies, but stories, that in the end didn't go anywhere. Sometimes the company of people can remind you of a warm place by the fire or breathing again to the pace of normality and of the far distances since.

My mind had drifted again; imprints with the feeling of gentle breeze.  "Like the winds that come and goes, let them flow through your mind."  Passing a few rag-tag surfers looking like strays on land.  I had become used to the outside roads, it was easy and solitary.  Some stops, along the way, there might seem that ready place to stay, because things seemed pleasant and everyday and stable, but always, I ended back on my motorcycle and the engine already sounding, on it's way to somewhere.

Terra firma, fixed in its ways.  But the water, so vast and always moving.  Once on the water far off shore, the ocean wave would gather and I would wait, as it rolled towards me.

Thursday 19 July 2012

Ephemeral - the art of no longer existing

If you think for a moment, about the last thing you remember feeling, that no longer exists outside of that moment, then that feeling will overtake you and you will have reflected in something beautiful.

As much as words, must be more than communicating.  Art must be more than the end product, and in Live Art, the end product may no longer exist, belonging to no-one, independent of market, the art only prolongs in sentience.

The Tanks are a new space, dug out of the industrial bowels of the power station structure that stands as the Tate Modern on Bankside, London.  It is dedicated to forms of Art in Action including Performance Art - which the Guardian describes as "art that is more direct and more human".  Part of the Live programme, performed in the central chamber, was Anne de Keersmaeker's Fase: Four Movements , a mesmeric piece of synchronicity, loss and chaos.





And the future?  Will art galleries become more interactive, with Live and Performance Art?  Will art spaces and exhibitions and private views go on-line? Such as bubblebyte.org , an on-line gallery reaching a global audience to rival well known physical art galleries.

Owning art is still setting record sales at Christie's, but how will future art be sold and owned?
Has Live Art always purposely subverted the market?