essential

"(...) France que mon coeur aimer doit"
Charles d'Orléans


Normally I do not care that much
if my language's spoken or not
I know that I will be diving
in it next time in Paris
but there's no time this time
the tunnel got stuck:
some hot on cold or cold on hot
with metal? (I'm not too sure and who cares?
This is the work of the engineers)
and I fear I cannot breathe, I fear I cannot breathe
as I have not reached the island, my island of France
and I feel like the poet, ages ago, who was made a prisonner
and saw France from Dover.

"We continue to strongly advise customers whose journeys are not essential not to travel"
Now you define essential.

So nice so far

about a friend's recent move to Wales

She tells me it's another country
the language is difficult she says
she explains the changes at the beginning of words
but she loves it
another time scale she says
-like in my village I say.
No one rushes back after lunch
people in Oxford don't have the time
for me she adds I'm honey-mooning
everything's so nice so far

fête chez moi c'était très bien merci à tous!

Вы красавица

eh oui, ça va de plus en plus mal... j'apprends le russe, enfin j'ai commencé d'essayer...

un bar à Paris

Nicholas Hedges: individuals taken from photographs of St. Giles Fair, 1908, 1913 and 1914

I saw this the day after the fair had gone. And the day after, it had gone too. A nostalgic account of things, or perhaps it is just to tell us: size the moment. Enjoy the fair. And I did. I hope you did too. Otherwise, next year?

Ms Gloom

I've never quite understood the English
(I loved one once but I won't speak of it)
and I can't remember what I am here for,
in this island; the comfort of Knowing
would help, I think, with the difficulty of Being
or perhaps this is all a lie: perhaps wherever I'll be
there'll always be this fucking melancholy?

Yes. There are days like that
-out of love, out of reach-
when nothing appears right, nothing
but the day that will come next, perhaps.

Good fun at the MAO last Thursday, lots of music with Bruno singing (I didn't know he sung as well as improvising on the cello... and making violins...!) and Felicity Ford taking pictures of whoever was courageous (drunk?) enough to be a volonteer...and (ceci explique cela...) the cider was wonderful!
http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/Events/Music
http://www.thedomesticsoundscape.com/wordpress
My picture taken by Felicity Ford.

Now you see it!

Now you see it.
And here we are again: about trying to write a review, not sure yet I'm going to bother with the Oxford Times... also I don't feel 100% honest now because I HAVE JUST BOUGHT MY FIRST ART PIECE... very excited about that!

Let's speak about other stuff seen tonight then... the most striking really is Julie Monaco's work called well I'm not sure how it's called actually but it is made completely from a computer: no acrylic painting, no pictures re-worked on photoshop, no: completely from the machine. Julie even went all the way to some LA image studio to learn the craft... It is like a bit of a plane that comes crashing into a stormy electronic sea or a compacted and slightly pxssxd off Japanese letter jumping out of a dark page... fascinating. Dark though, very dark, very un-human (et pour cause...) so for a bit of comfort, you can rest your eyes for a moment on Barbara Petzold's Snowberry Bride: tender touch of paint on canvas, pink colours, but it is not my favourite one of her work, I do admit I very much liked the quasi-comical and almost naive in their style, of smaller painting of people running after their dogs, or the rather melancolic green paintings, I know I know it says that the woman is in a forest, but she could well be sleeping under water, like a lorelei.

Nina Fandler's Shark Tank ... well what can I say? I wasn't too keen but many kids were... and perhaps yes, I would have loved to see her earlier works about planes, people waiting in airports...

Once again, a great exhibition organised by Gaby (no I assure you, she's not giving me money to write all this!), I very much wish I had been at the opening in the Chapel !

I am

on twitter now, well apparently, not sure really. I have written a twitter-poem... 140 signs... a tricky thing... the more rules we have, the better it is... no?

This first twitter poem

best in LA to walk tall even if small but if the gun have woken up best not to walk at all... rip you from the gang, lying under the am sun

was influenced by Gina Loring

Rose in the morning

Seen in the north of Germany, one fine July morning

Blau Weiss Rot

Sommer im Sierksdorf immer:
die Welt in den Augen der Freunde
die so licht ist
und tanzt wie Mädchen im Wald
(A. liesst Friedrich...)
und die Fahne Schleswig-Holsteins liegt,
ohne Lüge, wie ein Frankreich am Strand

Summer with Red Ceilidh

Something strange will happen this summer

Something strange will happen this summer, 26 June-20 July 2009 @ 10 St Clements, OX4 Oxford (the ex-pram store)
Five emerging German artists: Max Frintrop, Martin Galle, David Ostrowski, Michail Pirgelis, Sven Weigel

"Something strange will happen this summer" is the first show of Notfamousyet, a new art consultancy and gallery in Oxford created by Gabriele Dangel. In true Diaghilev-like manner Ms Dangel went to Germany, invited David Ostrowski, who in turn invited some of his friends and she went back to England with the little troup she is now looking after. The use of a "discarded unstylish environment" that is a recently abandonned shop is very intentional: it is about illustrating the urban themes of the five artists.

There are very different styles and media here, from art-objects to mixed techniques on canvas, from the more traditional oil on canvas to video installations.

David Ostrowski is definitely my favourite with his fantastic collection of owls, in particular th two oil and lacquer on canvas which are extremely well structured: the golden number is not far I feel but some parts of the pieces are very graffiti-like with sprays of colours exactly the same colour as the frame. Somehow, it is in between what we could call "high art" and "popular", like a Tintin's or a Mickey's print mixed with Albrecht Dürer.

Martin Galle's style, though using the same "classical" techniques, is completely different: his portrait of a young girl is almost photorealistic and two other painted canvases show decorated walls. Are they walls that he had decorated himself as a graffiti artist?

Max Frintrop's influences for the show tonight are sci-fi books from the now defunct DDR (German Democratic Republic), "Space is the place!" he claims in his myspace's page and one has indeed the feeling one goes back in time with a rather comic sculpture made of plastic and balloons called Marschbefehl (marching orders). His series of small oil on canvas representing stars are nicely playing with the colour blue.

Michail Pirgelis is obsessed with planes' parts and how you can recycle them. The luggage compartment for example becomes an impressive acoustic speaker. There are windows or outer skin of planes that you can touch and think... isn't that very thin and very light? -And isn't that all completely contemporary after the Air France disaster?

And finally Sven Weigel's work is using more modern media, his Dancer projects an old video of a classical ballerina or his Candle Study works with a mirror.

All art shown here is available to buy, and I thought as a very decent price. Most established art galleries in Oxford show mostly horrors at prices the same..., so it is a relief to see at last, something different, "something strange" perhaps, but something of quality.

(published with kind permission of the Oxford Times)

Boat race 2009

Afterburn 24 May-1 June 2009

AFTERBURN, The Studios, 30b Henley Street

Emily Alexander, Jaya Mansberger, Philip Marston, Sam Race.

Sam Race's most recent works Because of all we've seen and The love letter come from collecting images of furniture from the internet and making sense of them by representing them together, somehow it is about reappropriating the foreign. There is a lot of tenderness and intimacy in the texture: their size and technique as well as using oil on board are reminiscent of the past Burgundian and Flemish masters. Having just come back from the Brookes’ end of year students’ exhibition, it was interesting to compare these two paintings with the LOL installation as they all are a response to the virtual world, one using traditional material (oil on wood), the other being an installation. LOL (Laugh out loud) is a series of open laptop computers, each showing 'funny' videos from youtube. It is both touching and scary, perhaps reflective on what Baudrillard could have written on the 'man bubble' created by virtual universes.

Jaya Mansberger's latest style is perhaps more austere and small-scaled than her previous works such as her Untitled series (2006) representing young women in whitish hoodies. Her triptych Veiling the Empty (2009) or Silence (2009) makes me think, quite rightly, about what Lucian Freud used to say about art, that it has to do with urgency. One could almost hear silent screams. There is also another triptych with oils on round canvasses The Trance, Afterwards and the Turnaround (2009)

Emily Alexander's photographs Perceptions of Absence also deal somehow with silent screams with images of what looks like a deserted hospital. One image, of a patient's room, is particularly moving, and could easily be perceived as a metaphor on death. Each picture is strongly constructed and their playing with 'clair-obscur' is once again reminiscent of the intimate scenes of the Flemish.

Philip Marston is the only artist in the exhibition to be dealing with multi-media installation. There’s this installation where you “burn” the image of balloon on your retina, or a piece of paper subjected to blue light. One wishes more explanation would be provided on something perhaps too intriguing on its own.

It is definitely an exhibition to go to, either on your way to, or back from Brookes' exhibition as they complement each other, one using traditional material (painting, etching), the other more contemporary (performance art, mixed-media).

Pourquoi j'aime la princesse de Clèves

Pourquoi j'aime la Princesse de Clèves... les raisons tout d'abord... : ben déjà parce que le type qui dirige mon pays s'est permis de critiquer (il est aussi gaffeur que moi ce type... seulement moi je ne dirige pas un pays...), merci à monsieur Briggs du collège de "Toutes les âmes" (oui, même les françaises...) d'avoir parlé de cela dans la Gazette de l'endroit où je travaille pendant la journée...

J'aime la princesse de Clèves parce que je ne l'ai pas étudié à l'école... je sais pas si vous avez remarqué, mais souvent les trucs qu'on étudie à l'école, on aime pas trop ensuite... donc la princesse de Clèves, pour moi, ça a été une lecture buissonnière et les lectures buissonnières, c'est comme les amours, c'est les meilleures...

J'aime la princesse de Clèves parce que Monsieur Sollers n'aime pas. Sollers ça va, j'ai été fan pendant pas mal d'années, maintenant je me fatigue de ses récentes et fausses gymnastiques sexuelles et intellectuelles (enfin quand même: merci pour les bios de "Casa" et Mozart) mais je n'ai jamais compris cette critique, ou plutôt si... : impossibilité de comprendre une logique (donc "ill"-logique pour la plupart des mecs) féminine. Tant pis pour lui...

J'aime la princesse de Clèves tout simplement parce qu'il y a, comme toutes les oeuvres d'art, des moments de pure beauté qui vous arrachent quelques larmes, réelles ou rêvées.

J'essaie de trouver ma copie, je ne trouve pas, ça craint.. je me souviens maintenant, elle est à Paris ma princesse, une super copie über prout achetée à grand renfort d'euros à la petite boutique à côté de l'imprimerie nationale (où mes grand-parents ont travaillé pendant longtemps... ce qui a permis à mon grand-père de se faire tuer, littéralement, par son travail...)... bon je me rattrape, j'ai l'anthologie de monsieur Jean d'Ormesson (dont l'un des ancêtres, je crois, est décrit par madame de Sévigné dans ses lettres, une histoire de procès je crois)... le terme über prout revient c'est vrai, c'est une langue qu'on ne parle plus... et alors? Et ce n'est pas la langue de mon milieu et alors aussi ? Ce sont des belles choses écrites sur les sentiments de gens qui n'ont pas à s'inquiéter d'argent et de nourriture, comme les romans de Sagan aussi. C'est vrai, quand on y pense, il y a un petit côté midinette à ne penser qu'à l'amour et quand on est si riche on peut se permettre..., mais pourquoi pas?

Ce qui m'étonne quand même, c'est que le type qui dirige mon pays vient lui aussi d'un milieu aisé... ce qui doit le défriser peut-être, c'est la "logique" féminine... je me demande quelquefois ce que serait le monde de la France aujourd'hui, s'il y avait eu autant d'auteures au XIXième siècle qu'au XVIIième... maintenant on a des livres-bombes comme Baise moi ou King-Kong Théorie... ben Virginie, on peut te comprendre...

Ernest gone missing

But where on earth is Ernest? He's gone missing, it's official. Chris... what have you done with him? You murderer!

faut-il quelquefois ne pas regarder?

difficile à dire vraiment... l'autre jour j'étais sur Cornmarket, enfin non, l'autre rue, celle où il y a le Mark et Spencers, je ne me souviens jamais du nom de cette rue, anyway... je marchais, il y avait un pigeon mort sur la route, je continuais de marcher. Et puis j'ai vu un groupe de filles qui avaient l'air dégouté. Je me suis dit elles exagèrent, c'est un pigeon mort, ça arrive sur les routes puisqu'il y a des voitures. J'ai regardé de nouveau le pigeon, et je n'aurais pas dû vraiment : le pigeon n'était pas mort, il était en train de crever. Il a lancé une des ses pattes vers le ciel, ça m'a fait sursauter, j'pensais qu'il était vraiment mort moi ce pigeon, je m'y attendais pas. On aurait dit Beethoven sur son lit de mort, sauf que Beethoven c'est Beethoven, tout le monde s'en souvient, comme si on y était mais oui c'est ça... Un pigeon c'est pas la même chose, un pigeon c'est comme la mort elle-même : on s'en fout, on a pas envie de savoir avant l'heure. C'est comme la mouche de Duras, on regarde pas, on passe, circulez y'a rien à voir. C'est vraiment la mort...It's really death, naff off, nothing to see, nothing to say, it's like Duras' fly, we don't give a -... we don't wanna know before our time. A dying pigeon, it's nothing, it's like the fly, it's like death itself. It moved still, looked like Beethoven on his dead bed, no really, but Beethoven is Beethoven and everyone's heard about the story, as if we had all been there yeah right. The pigeon was dying, he wasn't dead. I looked at it, and I should not have done. I thought, they're a bit too much, these girls on the street making these faces, it's a dead pigeon, happens on the streets since you have cars, not such a big deal. I continued walking, there was a dead pigeon, I was walking on Cornmarket, no, not Cornmarket, the other street, where you have the Mark & Spencers, it's difficult to answer really, sometimes: is it a good idea to look?

Modern Art Oxford repainted

Oxford, samedi soir

Samedi soir...
Certains Anglais d'Oxford, les plus réservés, hurlent dans les pubs tous les gros mots qu'ils se sont retenus de dire pendant la semaine, finissent par tituber comme s'ils se trouvaient sur le Titanic en dernière heure et pissent leur trop-plein sur le premier mur venu sur lequel ils s'accrochent comme à une bouée de sauvetage ; à la fermeture des pubs, c'est toute l'île qui tange alors, à la dérive. Saturday night... some English people from Oxford, the most reserved ones will yell in pubs all the bad words that they were not allowed to say during the week, and finish by walking funny as if they were on the Titanic at the last hour and piss their last pint on the first wall they will meet and cling onto as if with a safety belt. At the closing of pubs, it's the whole city that shakes then, like a broken iceberg.

Marseille

Notre Dame de la Garde, Marseille
Beauté de ce nom... Elle nous garde, elle nous surveille... elle nous aime sans nous emm... Parfait.

une question de langue/a question of language

Yesterday was quite an interesting day for languages, either spoken or...else... some decided to have a separate conference and speak their languages (French, German). Some others delighted with their smooth talks, or got admired by their talk without words: you know who's leading whom.

avoir un crush sur quelqu'un

ça veut dire quoi exactement, "avoir un crush sur quelqu'un?" et pourquoi c'est cette personne-là et personne d'autre?

Réponse : il n'y en a pas.

C'est... un je-ne-sais-quoi mais pas un presque-rien (désolée monsieur Jankélévitch)

De toute façon j'ai jamais rien compris à ce livre, que je n'ai pas fini.

C'est avoir un crush quoi.

Mais c'est vrai qu'il y a quelqu'un que je vois pour la seconde fois, aujourd'hui et que je suis étonnée d'être charmée parce des choses qui ne me plaisent pas. Elle a des rides par exemple, elle est fripée comme un chien chinois (enfin non, j'exagère un peu, elle serait plutôt comme ça et puis c'est quand même pas tout de même comme l'autoportrait de Duras au début de l'Amant) mais enfin, elle parle avec une voix un peu prout et là non plus je n'aime pas et en même temps ça me plaît. Bizarre.

Enfin non, ce qui me plaît le plus c'est son intelligence... ça, ça ne pardonne pas : j'en tombe raide

en rentrant chez ouam/going home

the funny name of a lane

Oxford/Paris exhibition

Didn't really like this exhibition (apart from one stuff, an album of the correspondance between the artists, one in Paris, the other one in Oxford) but anyway juge for yourself either à Paris à lagalerie 27, rue de la Forge Royale, 75011 www.actuelart.fr

or at the OVADA Gallery, 21 Gloucester Green www.ovada.org.uk

http://www.barbaresiandround.com/

barbaresiandround.blogspot.com

folk festival

oxford-paris

"Would you like to go out and play?"
she used to say, over the phone,
free of speech in her city
as I was working
in the heart of the other

the rive droite city, the one and only,
the slow-beat city,
the universe-city they'd say loudly
the ones from there, scribbling their scribbles
black ink on white paper.

"Sorry sweetie, I used to whisper,
can't go out and play".
I had my games there,
paid the rent in some weird kind of way
"later maybe" I'd say, thinking "surely"

and crossing the river later on in the day
in rive gauche I'd arrive and see her surely
with l'amour and all these kind of things.

Both of us then would admire,
safe from the other side,
the reassuring sight of sunset
the universe-city sinking as fast as a Titanic.