Culture Wars: Articles

A tantrum thrown or a tantrum shown?

2010-09-01T15:37:09Z

Essentially, Belgian collective Ontroerend Goed have done a Duchamp. They have framed a piece of theatre and presented it as a living artefact. Unlike Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’, however, the thing presented remains in the same context. There is no signification about its status. Presenting a piece of theatre – warts and all – in a theatre is like showing us a urinal on the wall of the Gents. How are we supposed to know to look differently?

Fragile fiction

2010-09-01T15:23:20Z

You are aware that this is not just your experience, but our experience. Who am I to intervene in the experience of other paying participants? They’ve come to see the company, not the heckler.

No trace of the token

2010-09-01T15:11:44Z

While it flows efficiently, thanks to diligently executed transitions as four screens slide into positions to create all manner of landscapes, it can still stutter. You’re always aware of the process of application that must, at one point, have asked, ‘OK, how can we stage this?’

‘The Big Society’ (or ‘Compulsory Voluntarism’)

2010-08-26T13:45:24Z

‘The Compact Code of Good Practice on Volunteering’ continues: ‘The key element (of volunteering) that it is freely undertaken’ (my italics). Maybe the government thinks that this simply means ‘done for free’ but in fact it describes an activity ‘willingly, uncoercedly or generously’ given. As such, it is about the rights of the person who gives up his/her time.

The Whingeing Nation

2010-08-26T13:13:05Z

What irks the most is when the pungent smell of negativity crops up in a system that is working. Criticism should be constructive for it to be justified. Rants about the myriad problems in society only serve to fuel the fire of cynics who pick apart the threads of progress.

You can hear it in my accent when I talk

2010-08-26T01:57:37Z

The real highlights of the exhibition are the small cultural insights of the sitters New York stories displayed beside the stunning photographs. Their concerns and motivations highlight what it means to be English, to be an immigrant and where the two intersect.

Seeing stars

2010-08-24T14:49:26Z

In the main, Bryony Lavery sticks to the rules in her treatment of five aspiring Scottish boxers, subverting proceedings with a final sucker punch that, though well concealed, isn’t quite the knockout blow that’s needed.

No mere monorail

2010-08-24T14:47:14Z

There are some stunning vantage points and some intriguing moments within En Route. The sense you get of Edinburgh as a particular and a universal, the deeper exploration of what cities are for and how they function, is strong.

When improv goes wrong

2010-08-24T14:45:42Z

There’s a relentlessness to Big Wow’s style that just tips the scales. For all that their exasperated straight man and downtrodden goof formula is perfectly honed, we’re never given a chance to breath under a barrage of chaotic gags.

Crying out for cuts

2010-08-19T12:27:38Z

Their words, scattergun non-sequiturs, are all doubting caution; their bodies are squirming contortions. Rather wonderfully, the rhythm of their movements recalls the stuttering animation of early arcade games, lending a dated quality to proceedings.

‘There’s a show in this’

2010-08-19T12:25:32Z

While Kimmings parades in a series of ridiculously extravagant costumes, from lederhosen to feathered headdresses, the bra and knickers to which she strips are comparatively demure and classy. Underneath it all, there’s a vanity that belies her clowning and public disgrace.

The world rotating around them

2010-08-19T12:24:08Z

There’s real smoothness to Hickson’s dialogue as well. It’s entirely apt, for example, that the quixotic Twitch is quick to translate life into metaphors and similes, where Polo snaps forth blunt realities best left unspoken.

Grey old Luton

2010-08-19T12:22:47Z

Wyatt relates events, amongst a cyclone of tangential offshoots, in relentless jabber of information. Her tone swings between warped pride, defensiveness and borderline self-loathing.

The internet: made for Islam?

2010-08-19T11:54:44Z

But what of the ostensible contradiction between Islam and modernity? Far from being in antithesis to Islam, the internet is entirely germane to a religion that has always been ‘wiki’ in its nature.

CW editorial note - 16 August 2010

2010-08-16T14:49:05Z

Edinburgh festivals, Brutalism and Cognitive Surplus