When modern art is fun at Tate

By Julian Sudre


THE ART of taking in the visual aspect of abstract pieces of work is not the attraction du jour anymore. Tate Modern is embracing wall-to wall exhilaration in every sense of the term.

And why using only the faculty of seeing when you can absorb physically the heart-pumping sensation that is thrown into the bargain? For the next six months an experimental [art] is putatively helping people who suffer from depression.

The installation of the Test Site by the German artist Carsten Holler who came up with the idea of designing five fully-enclosed steel and plastic tubes which incontrovertibly are more fun than art, will provide London a parallel as unprecedented as the Eye in Waterloo.

Modern art has become alive and accessible to everyone and Tate Modern’s patter wants us to get on to it and scream for more.

Of course, such infantile approach to the business world creates a fantastic publicity, easily digested by the hoi polloi and consequently will enhance Tate’s profit margin.

To that end, one could infer that a bastion for modern art -- is swallowing the populace and will spit it out into more artistic, if yet reflective tableaux of cognitive human behaviour.

Unfortunately, the emperor of British contemporary art is slicing the apple in half. The first half – the Stakhavonite of modern arts – will always enjoy the diversity of the Tate and remain a stalwart for post-modernism. They, for good measure, are accepting revisionism as a form of creativity and evolution in the mores of a society.
The other half – the Luddites of intellectual advancement – refute incontestably the expansion of modernism in the abstract sense of the word. The enjoyment is purely first-hand and is as air-headed as inhaling helium.

The London eye was not playing for keeps; the structure was temporary. But the idea of blending uniqueness (be it magnificent or grotesque) with stomach-churning vistas was, undoubtedly, a grand stratagem to elicit publicity. It has worked so well that it has overshadowed Tower Bridge as the quintessence of a London postcard – near enough.

Tate is not, well hopefully, taking on an NHS style – good or bad – so as reduce queues or augment them but Holler said that sliding like skiing can help people from depression. So why has Disneyland not advertised itself as a cure for depressive folks yet?

At least Tate seems to distinguish between the virtues of art and therapies, never mind its advertising; but when a funfair is getting incorporated into Tate, it will be high time we drew the line between docile amusement and cerebral activities.

Veiling the untruths

By Julian Sudre


IN our lenient western society, where political correctness and uber-liberalism are surging far above rational ideologies, the candid utterance vocalized by the Leader of the House of Commons unequivocally has sparked fury in the Muslim circle.

Jack Straw declared that Muslim women who wore full veils made relations in the community more difficult and it was “a visible statement of separation and difference” added clearly fuel to the fire. But isn’t it taking a leaf out of France’s book when it comes to banning the veil in schools so as to enhance laicity and merge differences and, inter alia, religions onto an equal-footing, forward-looking society?

Let me take the example of the school uniform, which in this country, has enabled to dissociate pupils with their personal clothing thereafter eradicated the pigeonholing of working class and bourgeoisie into a neutral schooling terrain. Now comes the Muslim dress code into western schools which is accepted with compliant welcome because Britain is democratic.

I believe garments have always had a strong relation with our personality and I respect this as the bedrock of freedom. But here, we are talking about both ends of the spectrum. Either the body is covered up or bare of clothes. Why can't we strike a happy medium?

The law avers that nudity in public is an offence, whatever religion or country; never the less, libertarians assume it should be our rights to wear clothes or not, such sensitive issue revolves round the fact that a society must have a certain etiquette so as to avoid confrontation within. What if the Bible stated the use of clothes as superficial and irrelevant? Would you be comfortable talking to someone naked in your office? Being covered-up by a veil could engineer the same shock to a westerner.

In the Arabic world the Hijab fulfils the Koran’s edict that a woman should cover her beauty except what it is apparent of it – that is the face and hands. Once again, the Hijab is a headscarf and only covers the hair.
Religions are emblematic; evident clothing items worn such as the kipa for the Jews or the garb for the Buddhist monks represent the differences of cultures within religions.

The point Jack Straw was trying to make is our laissez-fair society has encompassed dogmas of diametrically opposite cultures becoming British. And once those doctrines are ingrained in our system, a public appeal for consistency in the freedom to see a woman’s face becomes an act of effrontery, if yet of aggression.

It goes without saying that people should be free to choose what they wear and according to their religion, belief or tradition, a democratic country should, by no means, take issue with this. But what the Leader of the House of Commons wants to highlight is the extreme belief that being covered-up epitomises Islam, in that, such reaction – certainly unorthodox to Muslims – could give food for westerners’ and Islamics’ thought. The Niqab has become part and parcel of a religious set of beliefs that human beings have tolerated and construed as the truss that supports the Islamic roof.

The Koran does not mention the wearing of the Niqab, or worse the Burqa. Its connection has been intertwined into the translation of its scriptures. Niqaabi do believe that being veiled maintains the private zone of their faith. It buttresses their belief in Allah. Chastity in Christianity is what the Niqab is to Islam.

This is where Islamics have crossed the line; being accepted into a country does not mean the democratic thread will weave round their principled pattern. It is high time that someone spoke up for the sake of both beliefs and stressed the inaptitude to interpret the religious message of God. Those [tenets] should in no way be admitted into western cultures as western cultures would not be established in Islamic countries.

Never, whatever religion it is, the divine message will ask to hide the female body behind a swath of cloth. Those who do, should reconsider reading Allah’s Scriptures, revalue the articles of faith and open their mind to the purpose of life.

BABYSHAMBLES

Review ****
Brixton Academy
October 05th, 2006


By Julian Julian



IN ANTICIPATION of Pete Doherty’s gig last night at the Brixton Academy, the exhilaration was running high and the intensity was felt with consistency.

His arrival on-stage with a scrubbed-up appearance, sporting a V-necked purple sweater over a white T-shirt spoke volumes on someone who seemed to portray the antithesis of rock-star eccentricity of attire selection.

Pete Doherty manifestly with his meek deportment that at times, had the semblance of a school-boy that produced first-class marks, perfectly blended into his music style that was stripped of shambolic performance, no less.

Launching into a punchy and well-timed reading of Piping Down from Babyshambles’ first album, the crowd instantly was hooked. But what kept the crowd even more transfixed was the brief cameos of Doherty’s girlfriend, Kate Moss.

The supermodel lent vocals to his song La Belle et la Bete for a split-second but her voice carried light morsel of inaudible murmur. No sooner was Kate done with her fleeting appearance than she scarpered off the limelight.

His performance was laced with harmonica the whole evening, an instrument that he aptly tweaked with, delivered fervently some good improvisations.

If Pete Doherty were to sustain such good-nature in his performances and retain the impact of his delivery as he so well demonstrated it last night
One could start thinking that, genuinely he has sloughed off his lost-in-the-world skin to re-establish an image of professional and career-driven artist.

The writer's block

By Julian Sudre



Stockbrokers in the city would never encounter those vacuous segments of activity in their working days, which inter alia, would be some absurd oxymoron in the logic of their dynamics.

On the other hand, writers do apprenhensively stumble upon the fearful blank screen.
The cringe-worthy hunt for the next piece that indelibly inprints itself on the journalist’s mind can only foment the incessant trepidations of the clock ticking by and a computer screen staring at you without a bit of inspiration.

But by all odds, these latter professions partake in the same streak of impetus; the verisimilitude of crunching figures – or words per se – in a minimal time frame enhances production and precipitates the adrenaline into an existentialism level.

We, writers, gasp for the imaginative fairy hand that taps into the lucrative fountainhead that spurts out fresh ozone to our readers.
While stockbrokers get an instant rush of satisfaction on the equity roller coaster, the degree of impetus is only distinguishable in terms of the rhythm of their enterprise.

Journalists have retracted the word -- weekend – from their lexicon and added incontestably an army of combative words that perhaps know how to stoutly stand in the right place. Those words will become through osmosis the brushes of the artists that elaborate on and bring history to the academician under his magnifying glass.

Stockbrokers juggle with figures the way journalists do with words – trenchantly to the point with respectable leverage. Only they have added the word – weekend – to their lifestyle when the market is put to rest. This is why their rhythm is slightly more structured despite the inevitable capricious nature of the financial world.

Nevertheless, the main trait, they share, as I mention above, is the impetus that their profession involves and also the adroitness at regulating with unflappable concentration, the flow of data that enter their mind to be processed with strict accuracy. A sine qua non of both jobs which is pertinent to their eligibility to handle such positions.

But the main point of this column is to show that words used by journalists and writers can have a definite impact upon the reflective part of the reader. Words are fodder for the mind that steal over you with the puissance of a tsunami. They penetrate your mind and get ensconced for a lifetime in the mechanics of expression and elocution.

Whereas, numbers are computed, quantified and totalised, into unprecedented mathematical analysis. The main difference between numbers and words is the former is used to generate life; the latter will honour it and keep it alive.


I think now, I have come over the cringe-worthy picture of a blank screen thanks to these little words that have embellished my page and I hope the [numbers] of readers will bring life to my column.