Category Archives: Travel Piece

Reflections on a Week at The EdinburghFestival

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EDINBURGH FESTIVAL COVER

By Joan K. Harris

As New York glides into fall, the resonance of the Edinburgh Festival is still being felt. The prize-winning “smash hit” of the Fringe Festival, the South African “Mies Julie,” based on Strindberg’s “Miss Julie,” will open the season at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, November 8th, for a four week run. And, while the festival continues in Edinburgh, hosting International Storytelling,”exploring Grimm,” October 19 – 28th, the really big month is August.

This August, the final week was my last chance for a summer get away after being stuck in the city for two years.

I was lucky. Dear friends I’d missed for years had just moved back to Edinburgh and offered to put me up. When I arrived, I couldn’t believe my good fortune: their spacious top floor flat looked out on the truly magnificent Edinburgh Castle. The down side… I had to climb up 69 steps to get there.

August 2012: the jubilant London Olympics were ending, the Paralympics were getting underway and, in New York, the US Open was in high gear. In Edinburgh, I quickly learned, every August means the smallish population doubles, many locals leave town, renting their homes for huge sums and prices on everything go up. This glisteningly beautiful,formal, grey-stoned city brightens and colorful throngs of tourists mix with performers from all over the globe. The atmosphere crackles with energy and… dare I say it? Yes, it is truly festive.

This largest annual arts celebration in the world started in 1947 after the dark days of the war, as a way to inspire hope through cultural expression. For years, I’ve heard it referred to as “the festival,” but the first and most important thing to know is that it is not simply one cultural festival. It is many festivals – just put Edinburgh in front of the following and you’ll get the idea: Art Festival, Book Festival, Comedy Festival, Film festival, Jazz and Blues Festival, Fringe Festival, Television Festival, and then, there’s the Military Tattoo, a historical bagpipe extravaganza. It just keeps growing. To pull it all together, the overall umbrella organization of Festivals Edinburgh was created in 2007. But beneath this umbrella, all the festivals have different and separate organizers with separate administrations (Assembly Rooms, Pleasance Dome, The Gilded Balloon, Underbelly for the Fringe, for example, and Usher Hall, Queen’s Hall, Festival Theatre, Royal Highland Centre and Royal Lyceum for the International). There are hundreds of events taking place at the same time, in different disciplines, and in different locations. Without a plan, it can be daunting, confusing, even overwhelming. www.festivalsedinburgh.com is a good place to start for next year.

The upside is, even if you miss some events you want, there is so much going on, you’ll still have a great time. Art galleries and some events are free, and the buoyancy of the street performers alone — actors, clowns, musicians, stilt-walkers, puppeteers — all promoting their shows daily on the Royal Mile — is almost worth the trip.

Because I’d done due diligence, read reviews in advance and put my ear to the ground on arrival, I experienced some of the best the Festival had to offer. In the space of one week, I went to 11 events and soaked up the vibrant energy all around me.

I chose three festivals: the signature Edinburgh International Festival, the Fringe Festival and the International Book Festival. Here are some basics: The EIF – Edinburgh International Festival, is the original, invited festival at the core, with its ever expanding branches. It is elegant and dignified, yet unpretentious and venerated worldwide. While the EIF presents theatre and dance, its heart and soul has always been classical music. Major orchestral concerts, chamber recitals and half a dozen operas. Here, highly acclaimed world class artists perform each year. For this festival, it is wise to book tickets in advance.

The Fringe Festival on the other hand, is, by definition, anti-establishment, casual and controversial. The quality, while generally good, can vary. At that original 1947 festival, artists who weren’t “invited” simply appeared, performed, and thus created “The Fringe.” Today, this experimental, no-holds barred and often political festival— theatre, comedy, cabaret and dance– is, for many, synonymous with “the festival.” Throughout the month of August, there are literally several hundred
Fringe events, from mid-morning into the wee hours, some free, sometimes in pubs. One official told me that if you went to all the events back to back it would take three years!

It was at the International that I saw two great, truly unique works of art, unlikely to be seen anywhere else: The Rape of Lucrece and Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores). The first had only a single actor onstage: the great, young Irish actress Camille O’Sullivan, accompanied by pianist Feargal Murray. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s presentation of Shakespeare’s poem, “The Rape of Lucrece” was simply and movingly performed in song. This tale of rape and subsequent suicide in the ancient corridors of power, in Ms. O’ Sullivan’s velvet voice, haunts me still with the modern knowledge of how societies have often destroyed women over this subject.

edinburgh 4

The second had a cast of countless characters, the actors doubling in many parts: Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores) or the Castaways of the Fol Espoir) (Sunrises), is a four hour epic created by the visionary French director, Ariane Mnouchkine’s Theéâtre du Soleil. Both works deserve the description “tour de force” and are examples of why devotees travel to Edinburgh.

Having missed Mnouchkine, now in her early 70s, at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2009, I was anxious to see this theatre legend’s work for the first time. The company, founded in the 60s, is a socialist collective, based in an old munitions factory just outside Paris. Each work is the result of months, often years of collaboration.

The audience get unwittingly involved en route to their seats, passing the actors, seen behind sheer-netted lace curtains, as they chat, apply make-up, slip into turn of the century costumes, read and relax. All clearly intentional preparation for the multi-layered artifice we’re about to experience.

Conceived by the company, the play, partially written by Hélène Cixous, is based on a posthumously published story by Jules Verne. The story, in 1914, tells of assassinations, archdukes, lovers, vicious bounty hunters, Indians and voyages to Patagonia. Like embedded Russian dolls, or a hall of mirrors, the play is a story within a story about making a silent film: a movie about a shipwreck and dashed visionary dreams. The primary stage is the rented attic of a favorite restaurant, the Fol du Espoir. English sub-titles are provided, as the story revolves around the left-wing filmmakers’ utopian ideals and the flaws of human nature (ego, lust, greed) that keep mankind from achieving them. Its brilliance was in achieving a full, deeply felt, portrait of humanity while we witness the openly artificial, melodramatic effects of silent film making. With each transparency, everything became more real. A panorama heightened by taking place on the eve of World War I.

At the Fringe Festival, I was treated to two plays performed by two exquisitely skilled actresses: Sandra Prinsloo in “The Sewing Machine” and Vicky Arcasis Casas in “Juana in a Million.” The organizer, Assembly Rooms, sponsored an invited South African season and imported the quietly touching “The Sewing Machine.” This is a story of an 82 year old Afrikaner woman, Magdaleen, now in a retirement home. Her best friend and confidante of 55 years, her sewing machine, has been by her side through adolescence, marriage, motherhood and South Africa’s potent political changes over the years. Writer Rachel Greeff and director Hennie Van Gruenen did not shrink from the hard truths: Magdaleen, who had unthinkingly gone along with apartheid, is not always likeable. Movingly performed by the brilliant Sandra Prinsloo, the play reaches its apex with the memory of a family tragedy that transformed her. During this part, in the proverbial phrase, you could hear a pin drop. Allowed the privilege of seeing into this life, through the consummate skill of this great actress, the audience, too, was transformed. Finally, it was the power of universal truths of family, change, aging and loss that kept me and others in our seats, unable to move, for several minutes after the play ended.

Another Fringe “must see” was Pleasance Dome’s “Juana in a Million,” co-written by the Mexican actress Vicky Arcaico Casas and director Nir Paldi. Based on true stories, it is a tale of forced flight from a violent Mexican town, after witnessing a killing by a drug cartel. The actress, almost dancer-like, gives a powerful, physical performance, of a story partially rooted in her own experience. It tells of Juana, a young, naïve, undocumented Mexican immigrant, desperately seeking a new life in London. The detailed intricacies of that quest, the deceptions, abuse and exploitation, were beautifully paralleled with Mexico’s history at the hands of its invaders. After each searing performance, as the audience filed out, we were asked to donate to a London legal group in aid of the millions of Juanas. Wallets opened, coins jingled into the collection box and tears were wiped away. Including mine.

In seven days, I’d seen three EIF plays, four Fringe plays, gone to three book talks and an art exhibit/lecture. By now, both my energy and the festival were winding down.

It made me sad to see the white tents dismantled. Green, beautiful Charlotte Square had just hosted the Edinburgh International Book Festival in the 50th year of a powerful legacy: The World Writers’ Conference of 1962. And while the Book Festival started in 1983, it was that groundbreaking, notoriously contentious conference in the culturally fertile 60s that arguably parented the whole thing. The fiercely debated issues: censorship and the future of the novel.

clown edinburgh

In 2012, the atmosphere is, by comparison, sedate and genteel. After leaving a Fringe performance, I was lobbied by an enthusiastic performer, shoving a flyer into my hand, to attend his friend’s politically-oriented show that night. I told him I had a conflict, had to go to the Book Festival on the other side of town. “Why’d you want to go there,” he snorted in disbelief. “Good God … it’s like being in bloody Hampstead! All those Ruperts and Cecils.” Yes, 2012. Sedate and genteel, but every now and then there’s a moment, sometimes an electric one.

Such a moment happened while I was there for Zadie Smith’s evening. It was the launch of the London native’s long-awaited fourth novel, “NW.” The event was sold out well in advance. Since “NW” was only released immediately after the book event, it couldn’t be discussed, but the devoted audience of Ruperts and Cecils hung on her every word. Smith is considered, by many, to be a wunderkind. Her first novel “White Teeth” debuted to thunderous acclaim, with comparisons to Dickens, when she was only 25. She is now 36 and a mother. With her previous 2005 novel, “On Beauty” also highly praised by the critics, she glided into the tent, her reputation secure, poised and self-assured, a tall slim figure wearing her signature turban. In the interview and the reading that followed, Ms. Smith did not disappoint. Though ”NW”, by now, widely reviewed, enthusiastically by some, less so by others, apparently did. But despite mixed reviews, no one could deny her brilliance. The novel centers on the section of London where Smith grew up, and examines the complicated lives of four people in their 30s who were born in the same housing estate or public housing.

She read a scene from “NW” about a playground incident that showed off her unerring ear for dialogue and satire. It pinpointed the crux of her many gifts: the layering of family and neighborhood characters, interacting in multi-cultural London’s complex landscape of race and class. There were, for me and others, a few surprises. She emphasized the contextual feeling of her book: her generation’s sense of ”genuine relativity,” of time speeding up as one grows older. This feeling is familiar to those of us who are older, but unusual for someone Smith’s age. Also, her talk of “self” and of her generation’s uncertainty of having a self. This was new and more personal. An existential reference I’d not heard before from this writer. That, coupled with her too sharp response to an innocent question about” voice,” provided fodder for the literati for weeks to come.

I was sitting next to the young black Canadian woman, a graduate student studying in Edinburgh, who asked Smith how she found her “voice” and the implied advice for herself and others in finding theirs. Ms. Smith’s dismissive response was adamant and felt like a rebuke, a slap on the wrist, or even a brush to the face. If I experienced embarrassment for my new best friend, others must have too. This, Smith said, was the sort of question her students often asked. Voice, she said firmly, is a “late capitalist construct.” A few moments later, both face and the day were saved, when Smith went on to say she wanted her novel “to demonstrate that people of color do not think of themselves as exotic or other to themselves. We think of ourselves as white people think of yourselves, as central to ourselves, and not some stylization, political points, added extras: none of those things.” The tension of the moment mercifully dissipated and the atmosphere was restored to its Hampstead gentility. My Canadian friend smiled, no doubt, relieved, as she nodded her head toward Smith, then me and said, “That’s what I was getting at. That’s what I wanted to know… what motivated her to write.” I, too, was relieved and pleased with this declaration, especially for my young Canadian friend. Perhaps, because we were the only discernible black people in the huge otherwise all white audience, I was, admittedly, still smarting from the reflected embarrassment of just a few seconds ago. It was, definitely, as they say,” a moment,” and Smith’s remarks about “voice” have spurred internet comments from others who were present.

Later, she shared an insight, central to her novel’s territory, dissecting the intricate and nuanced class system entrenched in London. “My feeling is that people in particular classes look on people in other classes with some kind of pity or sorrow, or with a feeling that life must, by necessity, be hard in this other class. My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity…that’s the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people aren’t given equality of opportunity.” Smith divides her time between London and New York City, where she teaches creative writing at NYU.

Seven intense days. Exhilarating, but exhausting. Taxis were too expensive, buses too slow and in the peddie cabs, also no bargain, one risked life and limb every time your teenaged driver tested his brakes. Climbing those seven hills every day tested that old adage, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” To say nothing of mounting the 69 steps, when I got home. It was like a week’s membership to a gym!

Finally, the sad truth is, you’d be lucky to see everything you want. I missed the sold out “must see” hit of the Fringe, “Mies Julie,” but happily, it’s scheduled for Brooklyn in November and London in March. Wherever you look, wherever you are “The Festival” still goes on.

In the last few years, the phrase “the take away” has come into the American lexicon. It refers to the kernel or core substance of useful, remembered information from an interview or a news story. It also implies something fast or quick. What, one wonders, is the term for that deeper than factual truth, an illumination experienced through a work of art, or from being in the presence of a great artist. Whatever it is – that now internalized memory of transformative art — I carry with me from that one week at the Edinburgh Festival.

edinburgh festival 3

Guatemala by Megan Youngblood

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I forwarded my ticket information to my mom, a round trip flight on American Airlines from JFK to Guatemala with a lay-over in Miami. Her response contained a link to the CIA’s travel website, which read as follows:
Guatemala has one of the highest violent crime rates in Latin America. In 2011, an average of 40 murders a week (51/100,000) were reported in Guatemala City alone and an average of 109 murders a week (41/100,000) were reported countrywide. The vast majority of murders do not involve foreigners; however, the sheer volume of activity means that local officials, who are often inexperienced and underpaid, are unable to cope with the problem…Criminals know there is little chance they will be caught or punished as the rate of convictions/resolution are very low.
I closed the link. It didn’t matter. It was the night before my flight. I was going anyways.
I drifted off to sleep. I dreamed of kidnappings and ransom.
It didn’t matter. I was going anyways.
Exactly one week later I sat quietly at a small table covered in white linen, scratching a starving dog behind his ears. He basked in the affection.
The pots and pans clanked in the kitchen of this small house while the woman whose home I had just entered made me dinner. The sign out front looked like it belonged to a restaurant, similar to the chalk boards that line Manhattan’s sidewalk, but this was definitely a dining room.
“Como te llamas?” asked Eileen, the seven-year-old daughter of the maitre d’, who seemed to work as the house waitress, as her mother did not speak Spanish or English. She was dressed in the traditional Mayan clothing most Guatemalan women wear: an embroidered top with a sash belt and floor-length skirt. Her black hair hung long, tied back into a pony tail. Her face was cherubic and her eyes curious.
“Me llamo Megan,” I responded, knowing well that my Spanish couldn’t even compare to that of a seven-year-old, feeling slightly embarrassed by my thick accent and broken language.
“De donde eres?” she continued. This was always the second question, and I always answered with hesitance. I hate the baggage my nationality carries. I hope to disprove the negative stereotype—at least a little.
“Soy de los Estados Unidos,” I responded. I am American.
Her eyes widened, “Mucha gente de tu pais no habla espanol,” she said with a youthfully wise look. Most people from your country don’t speak Spanish.
She continued a long string of rhythmic words which I half-understood. When her Mother called her into the kitchen they spoke another language, more African in sound than Spanish, a native Mayan tongue.
She returned to the small dining room table to tell me about her school, and enthusiastically pulled out her knock-off Barbie backpack, exploding with homework and assignments she wanted me to read. She removed a notebook for penmanship, one for arithmetic, and a book of vocabulary words, scrawled in Spanish and Quichean-Mamean with pictures to accompany them.
I sipped my lemonade and tried to repeat the words in Quichean-Mamean. She giggled and mimicked me back, entertained by my funny pronunciation.
There are 53 languages spoken in Guatemala, a country smaller in size than the state of Louisiana. The estimated literacy rate is a mere 48%–55%. Eileen at age 7 can read more than most of Guatemala’s population.
I smelled the food in the kitchen, and my stomach gurgled. I haven’t eaten since before my $2 boat ride across the lake from Panajachel. There were no ATMs or banks in San Marcos, a village of less than 2000 people, and I would have to return to Pana to get money if necessary. The CIA website reverberated in my mind:
Dozens of victims (mostly foreign tourists) have had their bank accounts emptied remotely from places such as Bogota, Lima, Caracas and the Dominican Republic shortly after using their ATM cards at a slew of banks in Antigua and other places. We strongly encourage persons not to use ATMs and if at all possible to withdraw money from a teller inside a bank with your credit card.
I had 200 Quetzales for the next 3 days, roughly $25. In New York, that can barely get me through a day. In Guatemala, it would be plenty.
One week ago I was home, on the island fondly self-regarded as the center of the universe: Manhattan. I was finishing finals at Hunter College, serving Mojito Cubanos for $10, taking the subway, checking in on Foursquare, Tweeting about how misspelled my name was at Starbucks. Now, I sat learning Quichean-Mamean from a seven-year-old in San Marcos on Lago de Atitlan, Guatemala.
Guatemala is a country characterized by its beautiful green landscape, active volcanoes, vibrant colors, historic ruins and culture, and extreme poverty, violence and corruption.  When asked about economic disparities in Guatemala, Guatemaltecos often say that seven families own all of Guatemala. The dozens of shanty towns lining the sides of freeways do nothing to refute this. Estimates say 56.2% of Guatemalans live in poverty.
My trip through Guatemala began in Antigua, a colonial town built in 1538 which has been preserved as a historical landmark. Antigua is swarmed with Americans and Europeans vacationing or learning Spanish in one of the dozens of Spanish schools. Because it was founded by Spanish conquistadors, the architecture is very European. The climate is milder, and the large number of tourists ensures proper regulations that reduce the amount of violence and crime visible in the city. Antigua is different, more westernized, and also known for its siren-like properties: many people come to visit, and never leave.
Antigua was once the capital of Guatemala, however it is surrounded by three volcanoes and a center for seismic activity. It has been destroyed many times throughout history by disastrous earthquakes. The earthquake of 1776 caused so much damage that the capital was relocated to what is now Guatemala City, or Guate as it is called.
Many of the churches throughout Antigua were destroyed in the earthquake of 1776, including La Iglesia de San Francisco. Despite the church being partially in ruins, people come to pray for cures to their ailments as many miracles have happened within this church. Paraphernalia of the healed hang from the walls: wheelchairs, letters of thanks, and crutches are displayed as a testament to the church’s powers.
Two other ruined churches in the city are Saint Joseph’s Cathedral, and La Iglesia de la Merced. I went on a tour and learned a lot about the history of the town, however the tour was in Spanish, and so there were moments of complete confusion.
Somewhere between this tour and miming my way through finding where the body wash and towels were located in a small convenience store, the phrase “Lost in Translation” took on a whole new meaning.
Within the hostels however, most of the time no translations were needed, as most of the travelers spoke English. The hostels in Guatemala are full of a restless and eclectic group, who typically define themselves as “travelers” and despise the word “tourist”. Most lament Americans for their love of 5-star resorts in Cancun, their lack of curiosity about other cultures, their desire to create Disneyland-fantasy-worlds for their vacations: a pool, with a pina colada, and an air-conditioned suite. Most have been traveling for months through Central America. Many have stories about being robbed, stranded, penniless and sans passport in a foreign city. Everyone has a story about their bout of “Montezuma’s Revenge” or the adverse reaction that people from Canada, the US or Europe experience from the water in Latin America. Yet there they were, braving it all over again.
Despite severe warnings against such behavior, most of these travelers will trek through the country by chicken bus, retired American school buses that probably wouldn’t have passed a smog test 45 years ago in America let alone now. The US sold these busses to Guatemala, where colorful paint coats the sides of the busses and they are often so full of people that the subways in New York City during rush hour seem like  luxury liners.
I decided to invest in a slightly safer method of transportation when moving around the country: I paid for shuttles and Pullman busses (although by the end of my trip I realized I definitely could have gotten away with a chicken bus ride or two).
On my overnight trip from Antigua to Tikal, about an 8-hour journey north, the police stopped our bus. At 4 in the morning, we were all required to file off the bus and wait for the police officers to give us the okay to continue to Flores, the nearest city to Tikal and the point of transfer for those trying to make their way up to the ancient Mayan city. After a brief and seemingly arbitrary inspection, we were allowed to reboard the bus, and continue on our way. This is apparently a common practice, and it is also common for bus drivers to carry cash in their back pocket to make sure they have their bribes ready for these sort of police stops.
Emboldened armed robbers have attacked vehicles on main roads in broad daylight. Travel on rural roads increases the risk of being stopped by a criminal roadblock or ambush. Widespread narcotics and alien-smuggling activities make remote areas especially dangerous…Criminals look for every opportunity to strike, so all travelers should remain constantly vigilant.
Tikal was once the largest city in the Mayan empire. The city is laid out in a precise and galactically-relevant manner. The various towers align with the sun on the summer and winter solstices. I climbed to the top of Temple IV, which overlooks the jungle canopy that now covers the former city. The toucans, howler monkeys, and mid-day tropical thunder storms clarified that I was in the jungle.
Although Tikal is now preserved as a National Park, the grounds are still used for rituals and ceremonies in honor of the gods. While at Tikal, I saw a group of Mayans who burned incense, a variety of plants and oils while they prayed. This was not for show, we were warned, and we were not to photograph it.
It is hard to imagine that these places can exist simultaneously–that there can be people praying to the Mayan gods, sitting among the howler monkeys in an ancient city that dates back to 400 BC at the same moment someone drops their latte on the subway platform, waiting for the 6 train.
Despite the jarring differences, the similarities are just as striking. Family values, friendship, good will, as well as violence, crime, and corruption manage to exist in all parts of the world.
The number of violent crimes reported by U.S. citizens and other foreigners has remained high and incidents have included, but are not limited to, assault, theft, armed robbery, carjacking, rape, kidnapping, and murder, even in areas once considered safe such as Zones 10, 14, and 15 in the capital. Since December 2008, 31 murders of U.S. citizens have been reported in Guatemala, including six in 2011 and three in 2012.
Back at the hostel in Flores, a group of us slightly dirty, mosquito-bitten travelers sat and watched as England beat Sweden in ‘football’.
“Where are you from?” a hostel-mate and fellow American asked me.
“I am from California, but I live in Alphabet City,” I responded.
He smirked.
“You know, Alphabet City is the only place in the world I’ve ever been robbed at gunpoint,” he said, as we drank a couple Gallo beers in peacefully swaying hammocks.

 

 

 

Frieze Art Fair Report

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by Janet Bruesselbach

Frieze is the fourth art fair I’ve tasked myself with reporting. I’m not sure how extensively I should discuss the parts of it that are the same as all other art fairs. There is some absurdity to traveling to London for it, considering that the majority of the galleries exhibiting there are American. Of course, that means these American galleries know there’s enough money in Britain’s collecting institutions – including museums, other galleries, and collectors – to invest in making a showing and bringing everything over. And somehow, given both the experience I’ve already had and the much more serious, if not sober, attitude of Frieze, I’m inclined to be a bit less gonzo about the whole thing. That means I step away from my own experience and actually tell you what this particular white circus says about contemporary art. Unfortunately, because I’m far too rude for the double snobbery of the London art world, I was usually intimidated away from talking to more people or finding out how sales were, or if there were after-hours events, or any satellite shows in time to attend them. c’est la vie.

Hover over the images to get all the information.

Because it’s nearly the same people and the same art in very different modes, the most striking social difference can be found between Art Basel Miami and Frieze. Miami is a drug-funded party full of free food and drink and music. Frieze is all business. I suspect the difference in sponsors is a major factor: Frieze’s sponsor is mainly Deutsche Bank and several other large German companies. I do rather like the better organization and lack of silliness this gave the show.

Frieze is held, in what may have been an enormous structure to construct for a single weekend, in Regent’s Park, in the north near King’s Cross station and somewhat mid-city. Once inside, I lost all city orientation. In fact, on the second day I came, I persuaded the VIP desk to escort me through their lounge because I thought that way I would start at the side I hadn’t cruised yet. It turned out to still be near the regular entrance, so it was as if the back of the walled tent extended into another dimension.

As with other information-dense environments – like academic texts or postmodern novels or the internet – I focus on finding the most interesting art to me and those I experience these things vicariously for. Though it may be interesting to many, I’ve developed a blindness toward most abstract art, conceptual shtick, and supposed attempts at the avante-garde that so please critics. I focus on figurative painting because it’s what I do, web art and tech responses, cheeky references to art commodification, meta-genre, post-media, non-fetishizing multiculturalism, and things that remind me of people I like. So there I am, up front with my underinformed biases.

London and Frieze presented some clear themes to me. One was that I kept seeing trees in everything – information trees as well as a distincly English manner of painted tree. At the Tate, mostly, I also noticed an odd tendency to organize rooms so that the minority or political issues were always in dead end side rooms. Another Tateism that definitely reflected in Frieze was post-historicism: London’s millenium of political continuity encourages a disbelief in modernist style breaks. Art of the past is not only appropriated or responded to by contemporary art, but considered within the same context, with the same tropes.

Because art shows are only curated within the gallery booths, I can’t speak for the overall choices of the organizers. As usual, most of the space is rented by blue chip galleries, with a few solo shows in smaller spaces by galleries established in the last 10 years. There are several commissioned Projects. One was the giant hand-changed train station style sign, above, by Bik Van Der Pol. The most notable was Laure Prevoust’s series of small white text on black enamel paintings custom made for specific spots throughout the tent. Here’s a set of all those I could find. A bit more invisible is Oliver Laric’s recording of fair footage to be released as stock video footage – guaranteeing that this fair will come to represent all art fairs.

There were also a few particularly well-curated booths. The most eye-catching was Long March Space out of Beijing. Another was a conceptual installation by Austrian couple Muntean and Rosenblum using other artists’ work as well as their own.


Unfortunately, I don’t know which of those artists made this, which I would usually skip, as it’s all the worst well-used art historical tropes, but it charmed me:

There were these two guys, a good one and a bad one, who were constantly chasing each other, thus maintaining the Good & Bad balance in the world. One day, due to some heavy thoughts in the bad guy’s head (about the misleading representation of evil in general and in the movie industry in particular), he slowed down the pace a bit and the good guy stared to catch up to him. “What if I stop entirely and the good guy reaches, even touches me?” The bad guy suddenly got this very unorthodox idea in his head, which, luckily, didn’t slow him down more.
“What is he doing?!” The good guy was really stressed by trying to maintain the centuries-old established distance between the two. There will be a happy ending to this extremely dangerous situation, though.
From the very center of this golden circle, through the holes, a fresh idea will come out and will pop simultaneously into the good and the bad guys’ heads. And almost immediately after the two of them will take off their white and black skins, the symbols for good and bad, and throw them into that opening, and they will hug each other, and will have a very good fuck (for which they have been waiting since the dawn of civilization) and after a short, unforgettable moment of relaxation, the two will spin out of the golden circle, which, from that moment on will become useless – and that is the really good news.

Interestingly, I am drawn to relatively abstract art when the abstraction derives from Middle Eastern tradition, as in this handwritten plexiglass and pen installation (using repeated quotes from the Cyrus Charter of Human Rights) at Dubai gallery The Third Line. I do get the sense that the strongest collecting force at Frieze is Arab royalty. I also overheard more conversations in German, Dutch, and French than in English. This is the realm of international elites, for whom all these fairs are in different parts of the same worldwide metropolis.


A schoolmate I’m happy to see make it here, and through a Vienna gallery at that. I do wonder whether this sold – it would have been lost in the crowd had I not recognized his work.


Grayson Perry combines several of the themes I saw: the New Aesthetic attraction to information spaces, and uses of historical craft techniques. In this case it almost orientalizes a Western tradition.



The biological mapping trope often aims to distill the appearance but not the goal of communicating, even though the artists that make it are usually close enough to crazy that they do have an untranslatable system.


The combination of impasto in these subtle colors with the scientific illustration style I found very fresh.


With its title, this analog application of digital vision also draws map analogies.




Three of extremely enlarged computer printouts of meta-digital art: one referring to the programs used, at several levels mixed with physical paint, to generate it. The second is an old, much-resaved, originally analog image blown up large enough to make a point of the jpg compression artifacts. Finally, an image made in 3 seconds with a default gradient but likely much more time was spent getting it transferred around and printed.


And net art is printed out and neatly framed in white, which is rather absurd.


In Damien Hirst’s art world, the artist’s identity, and issues of both uniqueness and ubiquitous surveillance, come into combination with generic artiness, sometimes more cleverly than others.



Somehow I’m more uneasy about including living animals in installations

Than I am about the treatment of your average artist’s assistant.


They say bankers talk about art and artists talk about money. Well, Torres makes art out of money, especially very inflated or nearly useless currencies. Here he picks up on the martial themes in a collage of different currencies.


One must always consider our poor, neon sign makers, exposed to the egotistical demands of artists not content to pick a medium they know and stick to it.

Finally, an image of some relevant nearby street art, and a hint at the missed alternatives:

 

The 2011 Venice Biennale d’Arte a Tour in Three Parts by Lee Klein: Part 2

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….This (the) main exhibition titled” Illuminations” and curated by  ” Bice Curiger  was especially bright went it came to the Katarina Fritsch’s work in the garden area of the arsenale (not to be confused with the Giardini where the national pavillions are in another seperate enclosure) .  Here in an outdoor waterside convergence four large and in two cases life size sculptures in day glo hues converge to form a statuary tableaux with a red madonna, a green prelate, a yellow skull, and a purple egg http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/bien/venice_biennale/2011/tour/illuminations_arsenale/katharina_fritsch stop one in their tracks. (there is currently another Fritsch grouping displayed at the sculpture garden of the MOMA here in New York City)
Next it was over as alluded to the Giardini; where it is as always to see the heralded pavilions those written about and awarded and which come all loaded with arrival hype. The United States of America’s pavilion of course on course was good for some overtly ironic heraldry and gymnastics over American airlines first class seats propped into the classical pavilion and a statue of Columbia on a tanning bed.  Excuse me for not thinking that this effort by the art team of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla mounted by the Indianapolis museum of art was more about the athletic prowess of the gymnasts and the treadmill runners atop the upturned tank than the explanation art theory which employed them… How is it that our bankrupt nation came to help to pay for among other things a piece of facedown later to be right sided hardware?
Germany won the lion d’or for best pavilion showing the films of the late Christopher Christoph Schlingensief the late filmmaker.  Here this viewer watched a lesbian chainsaw border crossing vampire movie and laughed with others at the gore until his belly was intermittently filled with laughs and disgust until he could take no more.
This writer eventually visited every pavilion in the Giardini and among those which stand out in his memory are the silly actor talking about Nureyev’s sexual pick up antics at the Spanish pavilion as part of a performance and more importantly Yael Bartana’s poignant retake on nationalism and fascism in a retake on inviting the Jewish Diaspora back to Poland to regain their citizenship.   In this role as provocateur Bertana is the first non Polish born representative or non pole to representing Poland at the Biennale and the work is her invitation for all the dispossessed peoples of  the world to follow suit with the repatriated Polish Jews as their guardians.
Then there was the Thai pavilion about an atrtist/character named Navin/Navin Rawanchaikul who stars In his own “Paradiso di Navin a  Mission to Establish Navinland”,   This effort was in the restaurant outside the gate of the giardini and one could get a flag and see the character photo-shopped into every scene around the world are actually there like a soft drink or international phone service commercial. Here is the website with  manifesto video feed and all http://www.navinproduction.com/ next this should be done with the male whore from the Jersey Shore i.e. the situation in the Horn of Africa, the Situation in Libya, The Situation in Syria, The Situation in Mexico and so on and so forth.
After the national pavilions this guest started wandering and eventually came upon dual shows for Anselm Keifer and Emilio Vedova.
Keifer (whose exhibit at Gagosian the previous year “This year in Jerusalem I rued missing) here was continuing his salute to Kabbalistic states of of creation which keep coming at one like oncoming street or highway traffic  allowing one to progress if not get runover.  Presently a heavily encrusted series of silver and green verdigris dark green canvases with reliefs of ship moving towards an endpoint hanging abounds in Venice. This exhibition is called “Salt of the Earth”.
Vedova bored me but at some point I met an Italian American visitor who inquisited at my every movement and had his wife trailing behind as he attempted to gain free access for her as well.
But outside of the national pavilions what most excited this individual was seeing the new annex of the Palazzo Grassi Francois Pinault palace for art its annex building the Punta Della Dogana familiar from many a painting by Il Canal aka Canaletto its interior redone by the Japanese minimalist who loves to work in concrete, Tadao Ando…
The man in black
Against the concrete wall by Tadao Andao
in an old building the new annex of the Palazzo Grassi
housing the art collection of Francois Pinault
The man in a black suit against concrete
and inside a silver circle back against concrete
Inside one of five silver circles
Or four and quarter from the bench where I sit
The stone is perfect perfecto
The square block made of warthogs mashed together
Bisecting the round of the fifth
Then fittingly the black suited white shirted man is gone
And another black suited guard moves through
to place his back against the wall
There is the hull of the black cast of a car
The wood ceiling above
Running water the opening of a bottle
Soft shoe across the floor
Music stands with notebooks opened to gestures
and my time in this city has just begun
I lean forward into garlands of lights

The 2011 Venice Biennale d’Arte a Tour in Three Parts by Lee Klein: Part 1

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The poet John Farris said “Its not About Time” , but it is just ask the LIon D’or 2011 winner for best art piece in the main exhibition “illuminations” , Christian Marclay who has taken moments from cinema and verbally or visually quotes virtually every minute of the 24 hour day. And a Biennale is about time such as the amount of it between your arriving and departing flights to take flight of fancy to see every exhibit main and corollary as well as all of the national pavilions and even to find out which one should be seen.

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Off-Off-Broadway in Mumbai

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by Howard Pflanzer

How can you produce a brand new controversial American play in Mumbai?  I thought India would be an excellent place to produce and direct my new play, The Terrorist, a timely commentary on the US government policy of detention of South Asians and Muslims and the initiation of the war in Iraq.   The political climate in India was in some ways similar to the US, where the government had passed and implemented, The Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), which was modeled on the USA Patriot Act passed after 9/11.  In India as well as the US many “terrorists” were imprisoned without proper charges, access to legal counsel or a fair trial.  When the Congress party returned to power in India several years ago the act was rescinded.                                                                         

            The play is about Frank, who claims to be in security, his girlfriend, Claire, her boss, Roger, and a government agent, Paula, who is trying to find a terrorist conspiracy at all costs. The play explores each character’s particular view of terrorism.  Frank is a self-proclaimed fighter against terrorism, Claire is Frank’s supporter, Roger believes wholeheartedly in the US government’s fight against terrorism and Paula sees a terrorist conspiracy everywhere. Frank, Claire and Roger are ordinary Americans victimized by the US government.  In the end, the persecuted turn on their persecutor, Paula, in a bold reversal of roles.  Some people in the audience felt my ending did not take the terrorist threat seriously enough, while many others applauded the ending as a powerful protest against US government policies.

The Terrorist was presented at the Little Theatre of the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai for two performances, May 8th and 10th, 2003.  The play with a cast of four Indian actors, had a live tabla (an Indian percussion instrument) composed and performed by a young American musician, Daniel L. Scholnick.

The Terrorist was started at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois in August 2002.   I read an excerpt to a group of the other artistic residents and several people said “it would stir things up.”  I knew I was on the right track and completed the play in the fall of 2002 before I left for India.    Some revisions and additions were made during the rehearsals for the premiere production in Mumbai.

My liaison at the NCPA, Arundhathi Subramaniam, poet and administrator, whose husband is active in the Mumbai English theatre, read the play with excitement and approved it for production.  She arranged for me to have the Little Theatre for two performances and rehearsal space as needed and available and introduced me to the key staff people.

In my first few weeks in Mumbai, I went to see every new play in English that I could, to meet the writers, directors and actors.   Indian plays written in English are being presented with greater frequency by a growing number of Indian theatre artists.   Writers are finding their voices, writing in English that is neither British nor American, but Mumbai-English, inflected by the rhythms and words of the Hindi and Marathi languages.  And many actors are performing plays in English.

I cast Radhika da Cunha, appearing in a play, Class of ’84, as the government agent, Paula.  I auditioned a number of actors for the part of Frank, finally selecting Darshan Jariwala, who not only performs Indian plays in English, but in Hindi and Marathi.  After I chose him for the part, he was worried about his accent and I told him, “it would be an asset for the part.”   Avantika Akerkar, who was appearing in the Indian premiere of the Vagina Monologues, was cast as Claire.   As Claire’s boss, Roger, I cast Denzil Smith, a Mumbai actor with a wonderful voice who plays contemporary and classical parts.

I developed a production concept for the play that included a live tabla player on stage.  The stage at the Little Theatre was much deeper than it was wide.  I divided the stage into five playing areas: Frank’s workshop, where he is creating his “security” device, Claire and Roger’s office, a street area, a park area and a café.  Other transitional places were spun off from these locations.  The four actors remained seated at the back of the stage in a darkened area when not in a scene, along with the tabla player who performed live throughout the play.  The actors were able to move smoothly from one scene to the other underscored by the tabla.  All the playing areas had shadowy illumination which highlighted the ambiguity of the situations in the play.  The final scene of the play, where the characters are interrogated, was lit by a powerful flashlight, which was aimed at each actor’s face as he or she was questioned.

The fifth actor in the play was a musical instrument, the tabla.  It became a live musical presence.  I had listened to Indian vocal and instrumental music in a number of  Mumbai’s venues before I began rehearsing The Terrorist..   Every type of musical performance I heard used the tabla.  I thought, why not create a contemporary tabla score to emphasize theatrical elements in the scenes and link the scenes in the play.  I would use a traditional Indian instrument in a non-traditional way.  It would be a wonderful way to propel the action.   The composer, Daniel L. Scholnick, was excited by the concept and developed the score while watching the rehearsals.  After the performances, audience members commented how effective the music was in moving the plot along.

During the first few rehearsals, the actors thought the characters were simple because my dialogue is so spare, but as we worked they became challenged by the characters’ interactions.  As we explored their roles and improvised some scenes, the actors began to dig into their parts and complex characters began to emerge who defined their conflicting attitudes towards terrorism.  One of the actresses, Radhika da Cunha, had never done animal exercises in her acting classes, and we worked on her developing dog-like characteristics (listening for and smelling out terrorists) which she seamlessly incorporated into her performance as a government agent.  In the scene, which I dubbed “the discovery of the weapons of mass destruction” scene, Roger, played by Denzil Smith, did a brilliant improvisation underscored by tabla sounds, in which everyday tools: a screwdriver, a pair of scissors and a plastic hair band became extraordinary objects of terrorist menace.

My stage manager, Vijayalaxmi Londhe, went with me to the Chor Bazaar (Thieves Bazaar) in Mumbai to purchase props.  She bargained in Hindi and we bought everything from a powerful flashlight to an electrical switch that was the “security” device Frank was working on.  Going to the Chor Bazaar with its crowded streets and hundreds of shops of Muslim vendors was a theatrical experience in itself.  And I thought about the hundreds of Muslim detainees in the US imprisoned after 9/11.

To publicize the play, I obtained a list of the half dozen writers/editors who covered cultural activities in the Indian English language press and phoned each one personally.  Unlike in New York or other major American cities, it was not necessary to write a press release, but in each case when I spoke to a journalist, I pitched the basic idea of the play and the unusual circumstances of its production.  The Asian Age did a feature with a photo, “The Terrorist Strikes in May”, with a face-to-face interview about me as a playwright/director working in Mumbai, which appeared two weeks before the opening of the play.  The other press pieces were published around the time of the performance.  Midday ran an article, entitled, “Staging a Terrorist” about the subject of the play with a photo of two of the actors.  Afternoon did a feature, “The Terrorist Hits the Marquee” with a photo of me and the cast posed in the rehearsal space.  Briefer articles appeared in The Times of India and The Indian Express, which had profiled me earlier in the year.

To create further interest in the play, three scenes were performed by the actors on the tiny stage of the Tea Centre as part of the COHO Arts Festival in Mumbai to an audience of eighty people who crowded into the space the Saturday before the premiere.   The scenes were well received and this helped to produce a buzz about the play.

On a shoestring budget with great help from Indian theatre people, who worked in the English Indian theatre, the play was rehearsed for five weeks.  I focused on getting the Indian actors to perform as an ensemble and give an American feel to their performances.  Their training in Indian traditional theatre performance techniques helped them to create the stylized feel for the play that I was seeking.  It was a challenge for me to work with the actors to incorporate their techniques into my production but in the end it was greatly enhanced.

A few weeks before the production opened I was told by the director of the American Center, a career diplomat, that they would give me money to produce any other play during this time of the Iraq invasion.  I refused.  I was then asked not to mention the American Center or the Fulbright program as assisting this production in the program and publicity.  The play was officially produced by an Indian foundation under the auspices of the National Center for the Performing Arts where I was a visiting artist.

The Terrorist was performed twice to packed houses.  All the officials from the American consulate turned out including the director of the American Center.   And the Indian Fulbright newsletter did a brief article with a photo about how I had directed a production of The Terrorist with some of Mumbai’s leading actors about “the psychological effects of terrorism” which the play was clearly not about. After each performance there were questions and a discussion of the politics of the play.  Most of the Indian audience members shared my concern about American policies in Iraq and towards the detainees.  I did another short performance piece, Surveillance, which was thematically related to the play.  The Terrorist was documented through photos and a video. After the performances were over, I found out there had never been a premiere of a new American play in Mumbai before.  It seems I had made theatre history way Off-Off Broadway.

Howard Pflanzer was a Fulbright Scholar in India during the spring of 2003.   The Terrorist was given its   American Premiere at the Laurie Beechman Theatre of the West Bank      Café NYC by the Unofficial New York Yale Cabaret (UNYYC) in June 2006.