Okay we didn’t really hold a competition pitting the various corporate Christmas Cards we’ve recieved this year against one another. For a start we’re a young business and we don’t get many {most are actually just invoices from our suppliers within the Christmas period} but art & design collaborative Sparks deserve special attention this year for their ingenius business gift. You may not be familiar with the concept; businesses send each other Christmas cards which in some way reflect, nay, promote their individual approach to their respective industries. Clients and customers are given a timely reminder of their services on the back of the festivities. But this isn’t a cynical enterprise; countless friendships are formed across the shop counters and studios of London.

What Sparks have done is provide everything needed for a couple of like-minds to share ideas over a fairtrade hot chocolate spiked with a dash of whisky atop a die-cut felt coaster {drink responsibly; use coasters}. Inspirations listed include: the wise men & shepherds/coffee breaks/snowflakes/Joseph Beuys/ideas becoming flesh/cold weather. Seasonal genius. 

Heard Matt’s new composition tonight, ‘line and length’. It was made to sit between two bits of Bach variations. He was the filling in the musical sandwich. It was really fantastic. At first, having not read the programme, I thought he was doing a kind of oulipo sampling thing with the Bach, but then it became very clear when his music began. It certainly ends extremely well, and I thought he’d got the instruments to really work together like Bach had done. He got them to support each other in the sounds they made, and yet make all those stabbing gestures that modern stuff often makes. The Dutch group Calefax were playing the music, a quintet. They had loads of personality and used the stage really well, moved it subtle ways that really animated things. But they all looked EXACTLY LIKE THEIR INSTRUMENTS. I can’t stress this enough. They were like Pixar versions of the instruments they were holding, it was like a cheap Disney gag, but really happening. The tall red headed one even had a tall red bassoon. Quite full as well. Come on people, go see this stuff! Here is a completely different bit of music by Matt.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APIpG4wBA_E[/youtube]

A magazine called Cluster has published a short story from a book we will be releasing next year. It is a satire entitled ‘That Storkes will onely live in Republicks and Free States’. Cluster is a magazine edited by Renee O’Drobinak and Ana Cavic, as a site for making work rather than to document and analyse work that happens elsewhere. Here is their launch:

Here is their website

We arrived in Paris with an open mind, but when it came to art bookshops, all the clichés about people there began to occur! The art scene there appears to be really stale and people were very conservative and extremely rude. One example; the bookshop ‘books by artists - Florence Loewy’. It is normal, internationally, for book makers to approach shops, even unnannounced and ask if they’d like to see a selection of your work for their stock. Usually they say yes, and they come over, take a look through books, ask questions, and have a conversation. Even booksellers who decide they cannot sell this kind of book because of their remit take a keen personal interest and offer encouraging advice. The guy in this shop refused to stand up and come into the space so we had to squeeze into a space about two foot square. I put a book in front of him but he waited for me to open it for him like a toddler refusing to eat. When he was asked to hold one he turned about a page and a half before handing it back and saying he didn’t sell books like ours. From what was in the shop he clearly did sell our kind of books, what he meant was that we weren’t famous. We wouldn’t mind someone politely saying ‘no thank you’, but he decided to say yes and spend the next few minutes trying to humiliate us in little ways. Why go out of your way to be so rude?

These were the only reactions we have ever had like this. It is disappointing to see this city takes so little interest in anyone who isn’t already making megabucks, and therefore how is new work supposed to develop? This is probably why most of the work represented was by British, American, and German artists. Unfortunately there were also problems at the exhibition we’d been invited over to be in. When we found we didn’t like the direction things were taking we pulled our work out of the exhibition and we cancelled our presentation. Maybe we were incredibly unlucky, and you experienced things differently. If so please comment below or maybe you had a similar experience.

I took a friend with me to Norman Foster’s architecture firm’s 40th birthday party in the British Museum. We got a Private View of the terracotta army. We queued to shake hands with the man himself, rather like meeting Santa, but for grown-ups. When we got to him we realised we had no idea what to say, so I took his hand and said, “Congratulations. It’s a wonderful achievement.” Norman nodded his head and said a heartfelt thank you, then his face slowly melted into this ‘who the hell is this guy?’ look. I like engineering situations like this TOO MUCH!

Question: what gift do you get the architecture firm that has everything? 

Recently we went to the Conway Hall book fair and witnessed our sister Press, the Shytstem, giving a full and frank description of themselves. They break all the rules of public speaking.

Hello blog-chompers

Again Mrs Ping* must apologise for a protracted absence, but i’ve been very busy. Whilst I was away I finished my MA and thus marked the end of formal education/preparation for the rest of life for some time…..

Yikes that means I am, for the first time “living my real life.” For those of you who are looking at this with a puzzled but-I-thought-she-was-real-already look, no, what I mean is, well.. Well it’s that feeling that I am no longer training for something to come - the training is over, I am now living the life I have prepared for twenty-one years!!! Goodness, no wonder I’m a bit daunted these days.

Weirdly, I feel rather normal. I am co-running the Press, learning to print (I lie! the training goes on!) and bind, having “meetings”, preparing for Paris (yes we’re doing Illustrative Paris) and inbetween doing a bit of admin temping to keep the baliffs away. Just life really. But it’s good!

None of this makes for very good photo fodder, changes being mainly in my head and not very visual, so I instead will show you some of my own handiwork - a strawberry hat modelled by my cousin (Good Elf), my sister (Evil Elf), and me (Odd Elf).

I must credit my Grandma for showing me how to make them. Here’s a pic of the hat Grandmama made (big one) next to one I made (little one) on top of a sewing cabinet David’s Grandfather made. How’s that for a inter-family photo?

 

Rational Rec was at the South Bank last night. One of their finest ever performances; a truly mighty and insistent composition called Workers Union. And the best ever guitar piece by their axe-man - he played the strings directly with the jack and also used hair clippers on the pickups. A hilarious lady also gave us a lecture on how she was in the 60s and but she missed everything. It keeps on getting better.

Last night following a full-on two day printing marathon Ping* and I crossed over to Bush Hall to watch Elvis Perkins. The support, whose name escapes me, were an object lesson in mediocrity. I got that warning question ‘what is the point in this?’ flashing up occasionally. Basically EP did all the things they didn’t, so I hope they watched his wonderful set. 

I got a general feeling of EP’s musical ability at every turn. He sings well and distinctly, he plays in such a way as you feel reassured he knows his own music, and that each time he gets out a song he reshapes it a little. The only issue is that he has several songs that are dazzling, and many others that are a bit less engaging, making me wonder how the less successful tunes got through the net. Perhaps he’s in an idiom I don’t quite get. But a lot of songs I found unengaging on his album were brought to life live, which suggests the recording didn’t do them justice. The band were amazing, really good support actors directing the energy in all the right places. They looked like they’d only just dusted the Wild West off their boots; they found their moustaches, and some of their instruments, out there for sure. ‘Ash Wednesday’ was the highlight; you could have heard a pin split in half.

We went to the fireworks at Victoria Park. It was incredible. A giant flaming skeletal Guy set off a string of fireworks that launched a rocket the shape of Big Ben. Subsequent fireworks took the form of planets behind. It made me realise how much I’d like to send parliament into space. I wonder if firework reps travel the country to show their new products to display designers. Do they use software? I can imagine a lonely chap, working nights, travelling to see one firework set off.

Some people celebrated the return of a traditional Guy Fawkes to TH. But what exactly is it about the story that they find to be proud of? Trumped up charges for a group of young Catholics? Their torture? Maybe we need a Guantanamo Day. We can chain a orange boiler suited figure to a trailer and burn him. Or a de’Menezes Day!