The Thing Revealed

So, now that I have uploaded the info, I can reveal that I shall be making my Power Point debut at a conference this week in London.

SOUND::GENDER::FEMINISM::ACTIVISM is an all-day event at the London College of Communication and puts me in formidable company.

It will be interesting for me, as it is positioned very much as an academic research event, and my research and practice are completely removed from that sphere. Amusingly, I am in the last session of the day, titled Sexing the Groove, which happens to be a book in which I appear as a reference, so I guess the shoe fits.

What does please me immensely is to finally take some of my myriad interviews and present them as sound to a live audience. I have been bustling along, learning about multi-channel installations (and Power Point), and while my presentation is by no means super-finessed, I think it should stand on its content.  Hurrah.

Gossip: A Joyful Noise

Just listening to the stream of of the latest Gossip album, A Joyful Noise, via the Guardian website and first impressions are not good. Intrigued by Beth's comment she has been listening to a lot of ABBA, I clicked on the first track and was met by bland, tuneless flannel. And on it went. Only "Get a Job" seemed to have some melody. The rest were over-produced and characterless. What has happened to this band?

The Thing

Haven't blogged much lately, because I have been consumed by preparing A Thing. I can't say what it is yet, but I am working on it, diligently. Gathering information, synthesising it, learning new technologies (for me), such as the mysterious Power Point and Pro Tools. Yes, the thing will be a multi-media, audio-visual delight, A Thing of splendour. And it will encompass some of this other thing I have been working on for the last, oh, 17 years or so. Will let you know how it goes.

BTW can't say I am feeling the new Blogger layout. At All. It really has taken "creative white space" to extremes. Apologies if you are not a Blogger user and can't see the back end of the site. But, urgh. Don't like. Vimeo has also just revamped its site to make it spectacularly less user-friendly. Why, why, why?

Hole Reunion On-stage

They said it would never happen. But, for two songs it did in NYC. You can only watch in awe at the chaos that ensues when you invite Courtney Love to join you....

Filmic Friday

And then it was back to the films, as I made a return to my old stomping ground of Brick Lane for some bagels and then a visit to the Little Joe Clubhouse currently in residence through Sunday (as part of Fringe!) in the basement of Rich Mix, a venue that didn't even exist when I lived around the corner 10 years ago.

The Clubhouse is a wood and textile construction that would do the Scouts and Guides proud and indeed one of the visitors was an ex-Cub, so we bonded over childhood memories of... not going out to the woods and making fires. Didn't happen in my Brownie chapter in the Bronx.

There was a lot of time for bonding, as the scheduled film, Star, was delayed for some reason. But when the DVD got going, we saw some very entertaining clips of two little-known Indian disco films from the early '80s. As presenter Shanay Jhaveri explained, this was an intriguing experiment in a cross-cultural youth movement translating to film. Not too successfully, as it happens, as the films bombed and the actors didn't work again! It was marvelllously camp, with sassy women and tight-trousered men rocking the disco beat, surrounded by totally OTT lighting.

Stumbling out of that humming one of the songs, I headed to the Southbank for two Made In Britain programmes. I have seen the work of most of the directors on show, but not that of the twice Oscar-nominated doc director Lucy Walker and was looking forward to two of her films, Devil's Playground and the recent The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. In truth, I wasn't bowled over by either film, though she got brilliant access for both, as an outsider. DP is a 2001 account of the Amish tradition of rumspringa, when teens go out into the world to sample the forbidden before deciding whether to commit to the church or not. She found some intriguing subjects, most notably the wayward Faron and his on-off girlfriend Emma, who tempts him to leave the church and make a new life. But it felt overlong. Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom I found simplistic and a bit manipulative, with Moby's music used to push the audience's buttons in a way that is not necessary. The tragedy of the Japanese tsunami is powerful enough. It didn't need any cinematic trickery. It reminded me of Steven Spielberg's overly sentimental work. Perhaps this is something to do with Walker working in the USA.

After a brief pause, it was on to the second programme, Carol Morley's The Alcohol Years, which I have been keen to see since finding Dreams of a Life. Somehow I missed TAY when it was on Channel 4 all those years ago. It was preceded by two shorts, Everyday Something, which is really quite comic and disturbing at the same time and The Madness of the Dance, which I saw years ago at Raindance and hated. I still find it an uncomfortable mix of quasi-scientific pontificating and musical numbers, and I really, really don't like the final scene, which seems to ridicule the notion of mass hystaeria as experienced by women. But, I accept I may have misinterpreted it, as Morley's other films exhibit a keen empathy with her female protagonists. In any case, it certainly illustrates her fascination with real-life subjects, which she finds through newspaper clippings.

TAY, of course, is about her search for herself, as seen through other people's eyes. Having lost five years of her youth to alcohol-fuelled hedonism in Manchester, Morley journeyed back in 2000 to ask people who knew her then to recount their memories, and it really is a fascinating portrait, utterly unsparing in its criticism of her, her behaviour, her promiscuity and her relationships. What isn't said by anybody, really, is that this was clearly a vulnerable child seeking attention and love and not finding it. Speaking onstage afterward, Morley referred to two or three people in the audience as saving her, but her public demeanour is utterly lacking in self-pity or -congratulation. It's very Mancunian, I would venture to say. As a non-Mancunian, I did find the lack of captions most irritating, as the only people I recognised were Liz Naylor and Pete Shelley, but that is another Morley hallmark, as she likes to let the audience meet the characters without being prompted by captions. This quirk aside, I do find her work quite impressive, and look forward to her next project, which she teased would feature adolescent 1960s girls as we've never seen them on-screen.

Little Battles Launch

It's great to get out and experience some live music again after weeks of film viewing, and last night's She Makes War album launch was a spectacular return. It involved a journey down to Herne Hill, not my neck of the woods, but was well worth it. The venue, Half Moon, was surprisingly roomy, the sound crystal clear and the performance was something special.

Having released her second album, Little Battles, on Monday, She Makes War had gathered some comrades in arms to perform as her backing band, The Olympians, and what an array of musicians! Two violinists, a harpist, two backing vocalists, two guitarists, a keyboardist and a drummer came and went in a range of combinations, making for a very busy stage indeed. And at the centre of it, Laura Kidd aka She Makes War, relieved of her usual multi-tasking duties to play bass, a bit of ukulele and, occasionally, vocals only. She was visibly enjoying the spectacle, grinning broadly, high-fiving a bandmate and generally drinking in the building vibe.

Playing tracks from debut Disarm as well as the newbie, The Olympians applied themselves in grand style. I particularly liked the songs featuring the dual violins, or duelling fiddles, as I called them. There was something magical about the way the two women flanked Kidd as she sang, almost like stringed guardian angels. If I won the lottery (not that I play, mind), I would definitely hire two violinists to accompany me for the day, as I went about my business.

Acting as bookends were my favourite tracks from the two albums, opener "Shields and Daggers" and closer "Scared to Capsize", which ended up in a surprising and delightful singalong, as Kidd stalked the stage with her megaphone and then did a turn through the audience, before returning to the stage to take her bow.

LLGFF Recap

My round-up of the 26th London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is now live on The Quietus site.

Made in Britain

A quick word about the Made in Britain series at the BFI Southbank. This edition of the ongoing programme celebrating UK filmmakers is devoted to women directors and runs through the end of April.

It's a great chance to check out the back catalogue of celebrated filmmakers like Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, and Lucy Walker, as well as artist-turned director Gillian Wearing. A pity they couldn't have found space for any women of colour, though.

Tonight Clio Barnard is in conversation after her amazing film, The Arbor. Carol Morley and Joanna Hogg will also participate in Q&As.

LLGFF: Sisters in Struggle

Happy April Fool's Day. There will be no pranks played in this post, which winds up my coverage of the 26th London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

Saturday's viewing started with a DVD of Joe + Belle, a real find and one of the highlights of the festival for me. An Israeli comic drama directed by Veronica Kedar, the film finds drug runner Joe going on the run with psychiatric patient Belle, who had broken into the former's flat in order to commit suicide. Joe's reaction to finding this stranger in her bathtub, razor in hand, is exquisitely deadpan, setting the tone for the rest of the picture. As they get deeper and deeper in trouble with the law, their relationship also deepens, setting up a most cryptic finale.

Second highlight of the day was Icelandic drama Jitters (dir Baldvin Z), which also had comic elements amid its teenaged highjinks and parental disapproval. Sensitive Gabriel has an encounter with fellow student Markus while on a school trip to Manchester. Returning home to join his group of friends, he finds himself called upon to solve all of their problems while keeping his own uncertainty at bay. What I really liked about this film is that it gave free rein to teenaged passions, especially drink and sex, while at the same time allowing the kids intelligence and sensitivity. The adults were shown to be distant or out of touch with their offspring, while trying to be authority figures, which really rang true.

And then on to the concluding programme and most problematic of the day: Mommy Is Coming + Sisterhood, two films from Berlin, both related to queer feminist porn. MIC is the latest from Cheryl Dunye, one of my favourite filmmakers since the 1990s, and is an odd mix of screwball comedy and porn, or, as I decided, screwball with the emphasis on the screw. Gender-bending, a fish out of water, and adopted identities provide the humour, while visits to a sex club provide the porn element, as well as the atrociously bad acting. Even Dunye, as the cab driver who picks up all of the characters, over-acts. Maybe it was meant to be a parody of trad porn. Anyway, that and her use of to-camera interviews proved to be quite irritating, tripping up the comedic moments time and again. Odd, really that Dunye and co-writer Sarah Schulman should choose to do porn at this time in their illustrious careers. And a very thin piece it is, too, at only 67 mins.

The companion piece, Sisterhood, directed by Marit Östberg, is a doc on her gang of collaborators who make queer feminist porn in Berlin. It references a film of hers, Share, which showed last year at the festival, but which I have not seen, making the actors' constant nods to it less than illuminating. And, quite frankly, it was a bit dull. While I admire the performers' thoughfulness on their participation in porn and what makes it compelling for them, I do not share that interest and found my attention wandering to the dog, Billie, which was in all of the group interview shots. How did it stay still so long? How did it stay awake?

So, not the best end to the festival, but a sign that many, many tastes are being catered for. Oh, and the Dyke March ending up at the BFI lent a rather surreal air to the proceedings. Emerging from a shorts programme, I wandered in a daze through the throng, wondering, "Where did all these women come from?" Spirits were high, and though the sun had long since departed, a warm glow suffused the hall.

LLGFF: Glam and Swagger

Last night was glam night, with the European premiere of Jobriath A.D., followed by a party, which I missed, because I opted for the Alice Walker premiere.

Anyway, glam has never been of particular interest to me. Too many ridiculous guitar solos, tight trousers, and boys playing at being transgressive. So there's the disclaimer. To my mind, Jobriath's story is far more interesting than his music, which is liberally sprinkled throughout the doc. Starting out as a cast member of Hair, he moves to New York, meets manager Jerry Brandt and gets signed to Elektra. So far, so good, but Brandt hyped his client to the skies, made all kinds of promises of epic greatness Jobriath could not meet and used the singer's sexuality as a selling point. Calling himself "the true fairy of rock", Jobriath was openly gay at a time when many of his contemporaries were hinting at bisexuality to seem daring. But it backfired spectacularly on him. One of the questions the doc doesn't address is why the gay community was so indifferent to him.

But, things didn't go well for the singer, and after being dropped by Elektra and Brandt, he never regained his standing as the next big thing. Interestingly, he reinvented himself as a piano bar singer called Cole Berlin, and there is a piece of intriguing footage showing him in this guise, winking at the camera, nattily dressed in suit and tie with a 'tache. It seemed he had found his calling before he fell ill and died of AIDS in 1983. Jobriath barely speaks in the doc, so dominated was he by Brandt's plotting and scheming. A shame, as he did appear to have a talent for performance, strutting about on The Midnight Special in a Bowie-cum-Pierrot get-up. Director Kieran Turner asked after the screening for a show of hands as to who thought Brandt was good or bad and the vote was pretty evenly divided.

There is a fair amount of strutting in Stud Life, Campbell X's fiction debut and, apparently, the only British feature on show. A love triangle of sorts, the conflict pits butch JJ's best friend Seb against her new lover Elle in what the director-writer calls "mates before muff". I immediately had a problem with this: 1) I don't like the term "muff" to refer to a human being and 2) why can't one be friends with one's lover? Ah, maybe it's a butch-femme thing. Anyway, Seb and Elle don't get along, and JJ is not the most tactful of souls, all swagger and bragging until the shit hits the fan and she needs to reach out to Seb and Elle to reach some kind of compromise. There is a good supporting cast of familiar faces on the queer scene and some funny moments, but it feels a bit self-consciously hipster.

LLGFF: Alarm Bells

The world premiere work-in-progress screening of Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth must have hit the audience just right. So mellow was everyone taking in the good vibes of Walker's presence on screen, accompanied by conversation between director Pratibha Parmar and programmer Naz Jamal that when a fire alarm went off during the first audience question, there was scattered laughter, applause and then a very jovial exit from the cinema. Kind of a bummer to end on, but all good things must come to an end. The seven clips screened included readings by Walker, reflective interivews with the writer and comments from the great and good, including Jewelle Gomez, Quincy Jones and her ex-husband. Parmar hopes to complete work on the doc in the autumn.

The previous evening the same director hosted a programme comprising her 1991 doc A Place of Rage, accompanied by two new shorts made for a deluxe DVD. Not having seen this film since its original release, I was curious to see how it would stand up and found that the interviews with Walker, Angela Davis and the late June Jordan still hit home, explaining their activist work and writings as black women. The two new shorts find Davis reflecting on her life and one of Jordan's poems collected into one reading.

The day started with me finally finishing my aborted viewing of Yes Or No, having wrestled with the unreliable DVD players all week. This Thai film is unexpectedly sweet and a tad twee, almost an Asian 90210, what with its bratty teens, disapproving Moms, and budding young love. Kim, a tom, and Pie, a girly girl, are thrown together as college roomies, Pie having escaped from lipstick lesbian Jane, who turns her attentions to Kim. Surely Pie, who can't stand toms, won't mind? But she does.... No points for guessing the ending, but it was surprisingly sturdy as a comedy, despite the terrible pop interludes meant to illustrate our heroines' inner turmoil.

Now if I could just manage to finish Vito... I got almost to the end before time ran out. But the first 80 minutes or so of this doc flew by. Having known of Vito Russo as the author of The Celluloid Closet (which I picked up at a used bookstore in San Francisco in 1991, and which disappeared from my collection a few years later), I wasn't aware of his history as an activist prominent in post-Stonewall NYC and a founder of GLAAD and ACT UP. The archive footage shows him to be a thoughtful critic and powerful speaker lost, like so many others, before his time to AIDS.

LLGFF: The (Not So) Perfect Family

Phew. A flurry of family dramas to get through. Just seen is The Perfect Family, Anne Renton's sly look at a would-be white picket family unit coming apart at the seams. Matriarch Eileen (Kathleen Turner on fine form) is a devout Catholic who attends Mass every day and spends every other waking hour serving the community and assuming her husband and offspring will follow her moral compass. Except hubby Frank is a recovering alcoholic, son Frank Jr. has left his wife, and daughter Shannon isn't going to get married... to a man, anyway, as Eileen discovers to her horror. A host of clever one-liners and a genuinely moving performance by Turner in what could have been a horrendously unsympathetic role make The Perfect Family a delight.

Another comic mother takes the lead in the Argentine film Mother Tongue (dir Liliana Paolinelli), as Estela learns rather late that her 43-year-old daughter Ruth has a lover of 14 years and sets about making up for lost time--by hitting the women's bars! The relationship between mother and daughter takes some twists and turns in this quirky tale.

Much more sombre in tone is Circumstance, Maryam Keshavarz's Iranian drama in which the kids take-centre stage. Best friends Atafeh and Shireen are leading double lives, veiled school girls by day and secret clubbers by night. This being Teheran, both are possible but the stakes are high for those who get caught doing anything un-Islamic, which includes the budding romantic relationship between the girls... Aside from one hilarious sequence in which the girls and their friends dub Sex and the City into Persian, the film is largely a tension-building affair, as Atafeh's increasingly paranoid brother Mehran intrudes into the girls' relationship, forcing her to make a decision about her future.

LLGFF: Gun Hill Road

Haven't seen much drama yet, but this ranks as the best so far. I was immediately intrigued as the title indicates the setting, a Latino neighbourhood in the Bronx, not too far from where I grew up.

Michael is a 17-year-old doing the usual teenaged stuff: dressing up, dating, going to nightclubs to do spoken word and attempting to transition by sneaking off to buy hormones from a local dealer. OK, not so typical. Add in two absent fathers (one biological and one chosen), and a mother who has her own secrets, and Michael aka Vanessa has a lot on her plate. When chosen dad Enrique (Esai Morales) is released from jail and returns home to find his little boy has changed, trouble is afoot.

Of course it all gets messy and the pot well and truly boils, but there are moments of comedy, as well, and Harmony Santana as Michael/Vanessa offers a very sweet vulnerability in the role, tentatively asking her boyfriend why he doesn't take her out, as promised. Esai Morales as the macho dad trying to understand, while dealing with his own compromised masculinity, is impressive. It doesn't seem that long ago he was playing the teenaged roles. How time flies.

LLGFF: Genre Bending

Last night found me watching two ambitious, if flawed and sometimes tedious, docs, to varying degrees of frustration.

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (dir Marie Losier) featured the intriguing premise that its titular couple sought to fuse themselves into one being: the Pandrogyne. Genesis P-Orridge's entire career has been spent shape-shifting, changing names, bands and identities, though it remained unclear whether the desire to fuse with Lady Jaye actually placed P-Orridge in the transgender camp (P-Orridge seems to prefer "we" as the pronoun of choice). Though P-Orridge's voiceover provided the narrative flow of the doc, in my mind, the important questions went unanswered: Who was Lady Jaye? What was their relationship about? And what is Pandrogyny? Instead Marie Losier's camera lingered on P-Orridge, mugging, showing off implant-enhanced breasts, performing turns and recounting scandals past. Lady Jaye remained in the background, breezing in and out of shot and saying almost nothing. It really never felt like the two names in the title were at all warranted. Genesis Remembers would be a more fitting title, as Lady Jaye is no longer with us.

Earlier in the evening, I spent a bum-numbing two hours sitting through This Is Not a Dream (dirs Ben Walters/Gavin Butt), a recap of the breakthrough of queer voices into the realm of alternative television, from cable in the 70s to the current You Tube "stars". Again, the premise intrigued, but the delivery was marred by interminable interviews with not very interesting people, badly edited. Bright spots included Vaginal Davis recounting the Fertile La Toyah Jackson project and Nao Bustamante's "intervention" on Joan Rivers' talk show (missed that, myself). But, a lot of it was unnecessary flab and could have been trimmed way, way down. Kudos to Dickie Beau for the live spots, which would have worked better in a reduced running time.

LLGFF: the Future of Language

Just finished a whirlwind day at the Southbank Centre attending my first day at the LLGFF, which has been underway since Friday. Caught 2.5 screenings, conducted an interview and swung by the Royal Festival Hall to watch Laurie Anderson's Sounds from a Room performance live from the adjacent building.

To recap: Hit So Hard is a really emotive and illuminating doc on the life and near-death of Hole drummer Patty Schemel, chock full of archive footage she shot while on tour in the '90s, supplemented with up-to-date interviews with all of the band members and various observers and associates, among them Phranc, Gina Schock and Patty's mother and brother.

I'd hotfooted it back from Laurie Anderson's "The Future of Language" to speak to Patty before the screening, meaning I had yet to see the film, but we had a good chat about her early inspirations (amazingly similar to my own), as well as her current life in Los Angeles, where she has a dog-walking business.

I capped off the evening with a screening of Girl Or Boy: My Sex Is Not My Gender, Valerie Mitteaux's portmanteau documentary on four individuals born women who now identify as men or none of the above, among them none other than Lynnee Breedlove, ex of Tribe 8, whose bandmate Lesley Mah turns up in wedding footage in Hit So Hard. Truly a small world. Afterward, Mitteaux answered questions, and various testimony was given by audience members as to the limits placed on identity by the state, people's imaginations, and indeed the language we speak. Mitteaux said her film was meant to break out of the box and look beyond binary gender identity and that she hoped in future it would not be given so much consideration.

London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival: Opening Night

Tonight the 26th LLGFF opens with the road comedy Cloudburst. Starring venerable Oscar-winners Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker as lezzies on the lam, the film breaks new ground in presenting a long-term lesbian couple as heroines of their own adventure, while presenting their relationship as a given. After 31 years together, Stella and Dot find themselves separated when Dot's grand-daughter has her committed to a home. Stella breaks her out and the two go on the run.

Dukakis is a revelation as Stella, an unreconstructed butch, trading earthy jokes with her partner, while giving anyone who crosses her path an earful of her foul-mouthed opinions. The opening shot establishes the feel of the film brilliantly, with Dukakis, resplendent in flannel shirt and cowgirl hat, at the wheel of a pick-up, humming along to k.d. lang (several of whose early songs feature on the soundtrack). Marvellous.

Fricker has the tricky task of offering understated support as Dot, the blind, fragile partner to Dukakis' exuberant lead, but she also has some great moments, although the comic setpiece that finds her headbutting a naked man in bed is misjudged. The film does occasionally stray into crude slapstick, but there are so many great moments that the mis-steps don't spoil the fun.

One might question the necessity of introducing Ryan Doucette's metrosexual dancer Prentice to join the women on the run, but perhaps writer-director Thom Fitzgerald thought this would provide eye candy for the boys, the number of times Doucette takes off his shirt.

I was looking forward to meeting Ms. Dukakis for an interview today, but she has cancelled her appearance at the festival. A shame that, as I was hoping to get some butch tips from her.

Other highlights to look forward to: docs on Alice Walker, Patty Schemel, Vito Russo and Jobriath; hotly-tipped dramas Circumstance, Gun Hill Road and Stud Life; and chances to see Weekend, Pariah and Potiche.

The 26th London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival runs from 23 March to 1 April at BFI Southbank.

Standing Drummer, Kneeling Guitarist

As a long-time devotee of music, one sees peaks and troughs, and recently I have heard little to inspire me: playlisted radio, awards handed out to mediocrities--it's a bit dulling to the senses.

And then there's Plaided. Watching their progress from a distance, I wondered where this Vienna duo would go, and last night's gig at the Lexington gave the answer. Formed from the ashes of Ilsebill, Plaided take guitar and drums places they didn't know they wanted to go, down dark post-punk alleys, teeming with pissed-off Riot Grrrls who've nicked Kleenex's records.

A delightful study in contrasts, the band features diminutive Veronika on scratchy guitar and plaintive vocals, complemented by the Amazonian Julia on tribal drums, the two making such a racket one would think four or five players were on stage. But for the last number they switched, and Veronika prowled the stage, a single drumstick in hand, while her bandmate knelt down to pick out her guitar part.

Watching from the audience were some of their Vienna posse, including some burlesque performers and erstwhile Ilsebill bandmate Lena, who is now studying in the UK. It all added to the rough-hewn charm of the gig.

Plaided have one single out on Fettkakao, with an album to follow in summer.

Happy IWD

Hope you are enjoying International Women's Day, which has been trending at the top of Twitter's topics all day.

The news has been mixed, with a BBC exec stating the corporation no longer worries about gender; Pussy Riot still in jail; and an exhibit of women musicians shot by women snappers opening in London.

Here's Pussy Riot in action.

Radio: the professional way

Just catching up on my Deutsche Welle news, when I thought my player was malfunctioning. I distinctly heard the newsreader pause and then utter: "Scheisse", before continuing. (03:39)

Wow! What was the producer doing allowing that to go out unedited?

Extra funny points for it being "langsame gesprochene" reports designed to teach non-natives German!

If Not Us, Who?

My review of this film, which opens in the UK tomorrow, is up now at The Quietus.

The editors re-wrote the headline and intro. I am biased, but I prefer mine: "War of Words: ideological bed-hopping in Andres Veiel's lumpen drama... "

I mean: "ideological bed-hopping". That's pretty good, right?

Took me 24 hours to work out that "Baader Romance" was a Lady Gaga reference. Not down with the kids.

She Makes War

Last night hopped down to trendy Hoxton to check out She Makes War at the Underbelly, a venue I have never visited. Wow! Art Deco meets punk seems about right for Hoxton Square.

I had arranged to interview Laura (aka SMW) before the gig, so sat through soundcheck taking some sound snippets for the podcast and then we had an insightful chat in the aromatic surrounds of the ladies loo, as she made herself up. I find gig preparation fascinating, and was impressed by her multi-tasking in applying quite large under-eye sequins while discussing her songwriting.

Then it was time for the gig, by which time I found myself under-powered, so sat in one of the plush chairs rather than standing at the front, which is my preferred position. The sound had improved markedly from soundcheck, though the buzz of crowd chatter still cut through, to my annoyance.

She Makes War is the epitome of DIY and came armed with electric guitar, acoustic guitar, ukulele and multiple pedals, all well deployed. Vocally, she was in fine form. I pondered whom her voice recalls, and it finally hit me: Grog, when she was in Flinch, all those years ago (not her present goth pomp incarnation). It has the same forceful, slightly mannered quality of a voice that demands to be heard.

Her looping technique is quite marvellous, building up layers of sound, both vocal and instrumental, and then breaking it down again. I found myself writing down snippets of lyrics, as well. She was joined for new single "In This Boat", by Mish from headliners BirdEatsBaby, the latter's keyboard adding little flourishes to SMW's guitar and vocals. Bodes well for the second album, due in April.

Joining the Dots

Earlier in the week I ventured out to Tate Modern for the much-heralded Yayoi Kusama retrospective. Kusama was a name I'd heard but not really known much about, other than that she was name-checked in Le Tigre's "Hot Topic". Recently, Amanda Palmer blogged about Kusama's Obliteration Room on a visit to Brisbane, which piqued my curiosity and, lo and behold, the Obliteration Room also makes an appearance at the Tate. But you have to look for it, as it is not part of the main exhibit.

There is much to be found in Kusama's work. An octogenarian, she has worked in numerous genres, locales and time periods, from Op Art and Pop Art, 1960s hippy happenings in New York, art films and of course, the ubiquitous dots. Her early phallic sculptures occupy a couple of the early rooms. Then there is a series of rather flat, dark paintings, and then it gets more interesting, with photos and film of her performances on the streets of New York, including one outside the New York Stock Exchange. Occupy would love that. The last three rooms offer a delightful juxtaposition of dark and light, with room 13 exploding into glorious colour, showing that in the 1990s she was still moving in new directions, even if the captions offer a rather sobering preoccupation with an inability to find love.

As I entered the final room, a disorienting infinity chamber, the guard at the entrance barked, "Move along, please!", denying people the pleasure of lingering in its wonder. We then found ourselves dumped out in a concrete antechamber, unable to get back into the exhibit. So much for retracing my steps and visiting previous rooms, as I'd intended. A sorry end to the visit.

The biography of Kusama is not really apparent throughout the exhibit, but a tiny glimpse is found in the short film on view outside the entrance. In it, the artist, a vibrant woman with a startling cherry-red bob, is seen at work in her studio in Tokyo, across the road from the mental institution where she lives. It is never explained whether she actually has a mental illness, but she has lived there by choice since 1977. This nugget of information rather leaves questions hanging in the air.

One could make a case for spending a care-free hour in the Obliteration Room, tucked away on level one, and skipping the main exhibit altogether. After all, it is fun, immersive, colourful, and interactive, as well as context- and cost-free. It touches obliquely on the artist's themes, embracing dots, colour and repetition. When I visited, it was half term and numerous parents had brought their restless offspring for a day out. The kids loved it, climbing all over the furniture, stickering the adults and themselves, as well as all of the furnishings.

The bright colours of the stickers are irresistible, and I found myself standing on a chair stretching to put a sticker on the ceiling, enjoying the freedom to do what in any other context would be vandalism. This obliteration feels like nothing so much as an obliteration of normalcy, of filling in something that is blank. But it is called the Obliteration Room for a reason, giving voice to Kusama's fears and fascinations. Not really child's play, at all.

Words and Visions

There's been precious little Kunst on Kunstblog so far this year, but I am making up for this slow start, with three exhibits so far this week. Will leave Kusama until later, but tonight I was in Hackney for two private views, both of which were in the same complex in Regent Studios.

First up: Needle's Eye at Transition Gallery, also home to Garageland magazine. Four painters were on show, and I was at first confused, as the paintings had no labels. Who was who? This was quickly ameliorated by the accompanying fact sheet, but I also had my own private tour, courtesy of curator Ruth Solomons, who explained the links between the artists. Aside from them all having some connection with Bow Arts Trust, she explained, they have also influenced each other.

Seeing the works unlabelled side by side, I was able to work out some distinguishing features: Ben Walker works from a very dark palette, Kim Baker's work recalls the Impressionists, and Lisa McKendrick has an interest in science. Louisa Chambers's series can be read either individually or together, and I particularly liked her sci-fi lighthouse, Beams. The show opens tomorrow and runs through 11 March.

Then it was upstairs to Five Years for the wordy A Pigeon, a Kitchen and an Annexe: Sites of Alternative Publishing, which was appropriate, because it was all about words turned into art. The Ladies of the Press* collective set out texts for all of the contributing publications (Annexe, Pigeon, and VerySmallKitchen) to respond to, and the result was a multi-faceted installation crammed into a tiny room, the centrepiece of which was a cardboard column, courtesy of VerySmall Kitchen.

While manoeuvring myself around the space, I bumped into several people with very nice cameras, one of whom turned out to be from Pigeon, and after Ana from Ladies of the Press* made introductions, I spoke to the Pigeon crew about their practice. Still in education, they are concerned with making their process transparent and honest. They also work both online and in hard copy, which referenced a question I had: what is the role of print in the digital age? Some of this conversation should turn up in my next Odd Girl Out podcast, but the answer seems to be: print is alive and kicking for awhile yet.The exhibit opens tomorrow and runs through 4 March.

My week

It's been a busy week, with visits to Tate Modern and Occupy LSX, as well as some snowy walks through the 'stow (or #awesomestow, as it's known on Twitter--Cringe).

I have also been on 't social media, uploading films to Vimeo to join my second Odd Girl Out podcast on Soundcloud. Do check them out and comment, if you like.

Am quite enjoying the snow, although I am not too suited to cold climates. I have found, however, that the fingerless gloves I bought for a costume last year come in right handy for typing in this weather.

Human Sirens

Human Sirens in Pyhajoki from Hai Art on Vimeo.

Advice from Sundance

Courtesy of Women and Hollywood comes this post on advice for women filmmakers.

Chicken and Egg party from Trixie Films on Vimeo.

Occupy Takes Centre-stage

Some of the best theatre around these days is to be found on the streets, rather than in proscenium theatres, and I have watched the burgeoning Occupy movement with interest. While the tent cities that have sprung up around the world get the headlines, often because of clashes with the police or threats of eviction, lesser attention has gone to the very creative avenues that the protesters have gone down.

In London, for example Tony Blair was on trial this week for war crimes, in proceedings that could be watched online. Today Vivienne Westwood was speaking about the banking industry at the Tent City University (politics makes strange bedfellows) and tomorrow, a teach-out on City finances will be conducted in the Barbican Centre.

The trial venue was the grey monolith of Old Street Magistrates Court, which hasn't seen such proceedings since 1996, which is almost as long as I have lived in London. Many is the time I have walked past its sad frontage, wondering why this behemoth remains unused. Which is part of the point of the movement: to enter these corridors of power and demand they be accountable. And to make salient points about distribution of wealth and privilege, power and profit.

But it is increasingly being done in rather clever ways, with spinoffs into music, design, etc., showing that it isn't just placard-waving that makes a statement. It kind of reminds me of the early days of the queer movement in the '90s, which moved away from mass street protest and into other avenues, with smaller, more focused confrontations with the seats of power. But, of course there was no Twitter then. This is a zeitgeisty movement.

Winter Duet

Traipsing around south London on the coldest day of the year, I interrupted the animated conversation of these two, as they admired the clear blue sky and wondered where the warmth went.

Riot Grrrl is not dead compilation

It's good to start off the new year with a bounty of music, and Riot Grrrl Is Not Dead! comes courtesy of Riot Grrrl Berlin, who have collected bands from across Europe and North America (with a smattering from South America, the Antipodes and some place called Grrrlmany--look that up on Google Earth!) for a free download comp.

I only found out about it courtesy of Twitter (yes, about four years behind the times), but it's been available for a few weeks now and features a mix of old and new, including the US band Scarce, whom I've never heard described as Riot Grrrl, and several who've been associated with Ladyfest. There is no band info in the zip file. For that, you need to scroll down the website page to get the links. Enjoy!

2011 Favourites

So, a brief recap of 2011's brighter moments, according to yours truly. This was an unusual year, in that I never left London, and my picks reflect that.

Favourite art exhibit:
Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage
A legal psychedelic trip, with bubbles, knickers, and all manner of visual delights. Running at Hayward Gallery until 8 January.

Favourite film:
Dreams of a Life, dir. Carol Morley
Moving and profound imagining of a life lost in London. Running now in UK.

Favourite gig / live event:
Sound and Silents
Live scoring of four short films from early women directors, which played at Queen Elizabeth Hall in March as part of the Bird's Eye View festival.

Favourite album:
W, Planningtorock
A late spring release that I continued to play into winter. Quite moody, at times disturbing, but also playful conceptual album from Janine Rostron, whose stage get-up resembles one of Buffy's demons.

Shirin Neshat on Winter

This is Shirin Neshat's contribution to the New York Times' Seasons project. Sadly, there is no way to embed it.

Politics, Art and a President

So, farewell to Vaclav Havel, one-time dissident-turned president. I was always impressed that the first president of Czechoslovakia, Masaryk, was a philosopher and the first president of the Czech Republic was a playwright, and one influenced by the Velvet Underground, at that. It says a lot.

International Human Rights Day

Today is the 63rd anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. I don't think Hillary Clinton has made an appearance in this blog, but here is her speech this week declaring that LGBT rights are human rights.

Dreams of a Life

My Quietus story on Dreams of a Life is finally live, although I could have written something twice as long, such was my enthusiasm for the film and the abundance of quotes I had from my chat with director Carol Morley. There is so much to say about this documentary on Joyce Carol Vincent and about how people in cities can become strangers to each other.

I reviewed the film briefly when it premiered at the London Film Festival, but only saw it on a preview DVD, so am curious to see how it plays in a cinema with an attentive audience. It's out in the UK on 16 December and also has a preview at the spanking new Hackney Picture House on 9 December, with Morley and star Zawe Ashton conducting a Q&A.

There is also a very strange interactive companion piece, Dreams of Your Life, which I took for a spin a couple of days ago. It's a bit like sitting down with an inquisitive therapist or taking a phone call from a menacing stranger. Not for the easily disturbed.

The pause that refreshes

One of those days. Loads of ideas. Technical hitches. Nothing quite getting finished.

Bad Reputation live

Wahey! Here's Joan Jett and her pick-up band, Foo Fighters, performing her classic "Bad Reputation" on Letterman (is he still on?).

Coming soon to a pie near you

This intriguing specimen is a pumpkin, a Chinese pumpkin grown in Maldon, Essex, to be precise. I acquired it yesterday after fruitless weeks of searching for a pumpkin for my yearly excursion into pumpkin pie, which I guess is my reminder to self that I'm American by birth.

Anyway, the market trader assured me its sweetness is unsurpassed and it should keep for two months! The day of reckoning is next Wednesday. I hope what it lacks in aesthetic appeal it will make up for in flavour.

Art in Abundance

I haven't had time to blog for the last couple of days, so busy was I running around London to intriguing events.

First up, the private view of For the Messengers at Woolfson and Tay, followed by a public event featuring artist Jude Cowan and newsreader Jon Snow, who proved to be a gushing fan of Ms. Cowan, pronouncing her a star and confessing that when he finds himself out on location in, say, Japan during the tsunami, he wonders to himself, "What would Jude think?"

Last night it was a double bill of art and music, with the private viewing of Susie MacMurray's exhibit, The Eyes of the Skin, at Agnew's Gallery. Not familiar with her work, I was highly impressed by her use of household materials such as rubber and shrink wrap, to create evocative pieces with myriad explanations. Here Come the Girls, for example, features numerous lipstick-smeared wine glasses suspended from the ceiling in a rather seedy bouquet.



Lastly, and appropriately, late at night, it was a trek out to my old stomping ground of Archway to see Sydney three-piece gothabilly act The Dark Shadows. Although I have several of their records, I had never seen them live and was rewarded with a brisk and entertaining set in the very cramped conditions of The Hideaway (no stage!) running through much of their oeuvre and peaking with their cover of "Eisbär", which features on their new EP, 11:11. I don't think I've ever sung along to a song in German before. Bliss.

Google honours Curie

Happy Birthday, Marie Curie. And Trotsky. And Joni Mitchell. Now there's a party.


An amusing line in the Mirror's bio of Curie, regarding her and Pierre: "their mutual interest in magnetism drew them together". Ouch.

Naming: My Faves

This is a rather startled-looking Miranda July, whom I met recently at a press junket for her film, The Future, which opened today in the UK. Although we only had 12 minutes or so to speak, she was quite chatty about her past in the DIY music and art world, which I duly wrote up for a piece in The Quietus.

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the link and found this title: "From Queercore to The Future: Miranda July Talks Independent Art". Although queercore is actually only mentioned once (by me) in passing, it gets into the headline! I wondered how often that word had appeared on the site and, using the handy Search facility, discovered it's the second time ever. Pretty cool.

It reminds me of a few times when I decided there were certain words that I had to put in my articles, if only because they were so completely at odds with the typical readership of a particular publication.

To wit: "punk" in the Financial Times and "communist" and "dominatrix" in Pop Matters. I also handed in a piece to The Wire with the title "Naming the Waves", which is the name of a collection of lesbian poetry from the 1980s. This, I thought, would be my crowning achievement as a mischievous queer journalist. Sadly, when the article was published, the editor had re-named it "Wave Theory". Pfft.

For the Messengers exhibit

Opening today in sunny Bermondsey is Jude Cowan's debut solo exhibit, For the Messengers, which echoes her recent poetry collection of the same name and is similarly inspired by her work at the Reuters archive.

Showing along with Jude's artwork will be two films I recently shot with her, one of which illustrates the poems performed live in various locations and was shot on a gloriously sunny day around Hackney Wick.

The other documents some of her preparation for her performance at the Fifteen theatre festival in September and was shot on a slightly less sunny day in a church on the Isle of Dogs. We also braved the security restrictions of Canary Wharf to record a quick interview outside Reuters HQ.

Turning the films around quickly enough for the exhibit proved something of a challenge for me. Luckily, I am a seasoned journalist and used to deadline pressure! Looking forward to seeing the whole thing come together. DIY, innit?

LFF: Dendera

If you only see one film about elderly Japanese women bent on a bloody revenge mission, make it this one! Yes, Dendera ploughs its own furrow, turning an intriguing concept into a gory struggle.... against a bear.

Let me start again. Somewhere in a Japan where it is always snowing, village protocol dictates that residents who turn 70 are dumped on a mountainside and left to die. One woman, Mei, refuses to die and slowly builds up a women-only community--Dendera--out of those deemed expendable.

But, Mei's survival instinct is stoked by the burning injustice of being so callously discarded and she wants revenge on her former neighbours, especially the men who dictate policy. This may be an extended metaphor for modern society. Or it may be a needlessly explicit gorefest, as the women become distracted from their desire for vengeance by a bear that wanders into the camp and wreaks terror on it. Not out of any malign intent. But, rather because it's a bear and is hungry.

While it was great to see these women kicking ass, I just couldn't get into the bear hunt and was rooting for the poor creature to escape or join forces with the women. But, no. Lots of blood. Lots of chases. One character asks, "And who won?" Indeed.

LFF: Difficult Second Feature

Three eagerly awaited films playing at this year's London Film Festival are from second-time feature directors.

Marjane Satrapi, having left Iran in her teens, lives in France and her new film Chicken with Plums follows Persepolis, an adaptation of her comic strip. The first surprise is that it is live action, not animation, although it features a similarly starry cast in small roles: Isabella Rossellini, Maria de Medeiros, Chiara Mastroianni and Golshifteh Farahani (another Iranian exile) among them. However, the lead role is the family patriarch, played by Mathieu Amalric, and his is an unsympathetic character, a self-obsessed musician detached from his children and resentful of his wife, whom he married without loving her. Although there are comic moments, I found myself growing restless before the end.

Nadine Labaki's Where Do We Go Now? follows the enormously enjoyable Caramel and doesn't disappoint, expanding the cast of characters from the workers in a Beirut hair salon to a village in a remote area. The main conflict is the interference of the outside world on this small village where Christians and Muslims have lived side by side for generations but where violence is always threatening to break out and news coverage is viewed as a threat to peace. Labaki takes a back seat, allowing her ensemble to shine and shine they do, especially the women who take centre-stage pretty quickly. While the comedy is broad, there were plenty of belly laughs and the subject is oh-so-topical.

If Labaki is broadening her horizons, Miranda July seems to be shrinking hers, retreating from the ensemble that held sway in her debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know, to focus on two people, a floundering couple inhabiting a flat in the Los Angeles suburbs, in The Future. July plays two roles, one half of the couple and a cat that provides a voiceover. Yes, indeed. But, you can do that when you're the writer-director. It's a bold move and I didn't mind the cat's narration. It was more confusing when it all went a bit Donnie Darko three quarters of the way through. Most curious.

LFF: Hackney Lullabies

A quick word about a lovely short showing at the festival. Any film with Hackney in the title takes my notice, but I was not expecting a film from Germany to choose the LBH as its subject.

And what a lovely film Kiyoko Miyake's Hackney Lullabies is. The subjects are mothers with immigrant backgrounds raising their children in the People's Republic. They want their kids to be integrated, while at the same time maintaining their roots.

And they do this by calling on their own childhoods to sing them lullabies and nursery rhymes. The mothers are delightful, sharing bits and pieces of why they live there and their aspirations for their kids. And then they sing the lullabies, in a range of languages that are not English, with the subtitles dancing across the screen. Never has Hackney looked so beautiful. Diane Abbott would approve.

LFF: Journeys

Another day at the festival and another sighting of Diane Abbott. This time the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington turned up at a screening of Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey, Lelia Doolan's precis of the life of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey. I say precis, because as Doolan herself acknowledged, her 88-minute documentary is cut down from three hours.

As it stands, this version covers Devlin's entry into Parliament at 21, her arrest for inciting violence in the Bogside riots and her subsequent involvement in the hunger strikes of 1980-81. It all goes quiet after an attempt on her life in 1981, and her disillusionment with the peace process that led to the Good Friday Agreement was a curiosity to me. I asked Doolan if McAliskey chose not to be involved or if she were excluded and her answer was contradictory. So, let's have that three-hour version to fill in the gaps! Abbott might agree, as she called the doc amazing. One might speculate as to why the MP (who was sitting front and centre, not to the left) might find common ground with an outsider who professed to not want to be part of any club. But, that would be speculation.

Closer to home, I was less impressed with Strawberry Fields, which has its world premiere tonight. Frances Lea's melodrama, a Microwave project, is set on a strawberry farm in Kent and centres on the group of fruit pickers, introduced as being a motley band of immigrants and rogues. That might have been interesting but the focus is actually on a newcomer to the group, the flighty Gillian, who goes incognito as Tammy. The performance by Anna Madeley is twitchy and irritating and when her even more dizzy sister Emily arrives, the irritation levels go through the roof. Emily is meant to be troubled, possibly mentally ill, but as played by Christine Bottomley (excellent in last year's The Arbor), she seems to be channeling Marilyn Monroe, breathy-voiced and flirty. It gets worse, much worse. Nice fruit, though.

LFF: Deep South Drama

Two dramas from South America were among my recent viewing. Hard Labor (dirs Juliana Rojas / Marco Dutra) is a Brazilian dramedy which is part social critique and part horror film, as a bourgeois couple face the dual challenges of starting a business (her) and finding a new job following redundancy (him). Their financial pinch doesn't stop them from hiring a maid, and the three characters orbit each other, illustrating class conflict and thwarted aspirations. The horror aspect is downplayed, serving more as a metaphor for oppressive working conditions than anything else. An intriguing oddity.

Ostende (dir Laura Citarella), from Argentina, is a slow-burning character study of a woman on holiday whose propensity for observation fires her imagination to wild proportions, as she conjures up all manner of explanations for the older man who appears to be squiring two young women. What could he be up to? And has she really thwarted a kidnapping? This is the only film I've yet viewed whose closing credit sequence changes how one views the rest of the film. Still not sure whether I liked it or not, though.

LFF: A Troubled Life

Carol Morley's doc Dreams of a Life receives its world premiere tonight at the LFF. Morley is known for her flights of fancy with the documentary form, but here she reins herself in for a gripping and troubling consideration of the life of Joyce Carol Vincent. Who? Who, exactly, for Ms. Vincent was the unfortunate soul whose dead body lay undetected in her London flat for more than two years.

How did a woman described by acquaintances as beautiful, vibrant, intelligent, ambitious and so forth come to such a grim end, surrounded by unopened Christmas presents? Why did nobody look for her? In search of answers, Morley (unseen and largely unheard behind the camera) placed adverts asking for those who knew (or thought they did) Vincent to come forward, and their on-camera interviews form the narrative of Dreams of a Life, as they offer sometimes contradictory assessments of a woman who seemed to hold herself apart and may have chosen to die alone.

Also mixing the dramatic and the documentary is Shock Head Soul, Simon Pummell's inventive telling of the story of Daniel Paul Schreber, a self-styled mystic who was committed to an asylum in Germany in the early twentieth century. Schreber resisted his diagnosis, explaining that he received messages from God, and he wrote up his ideas in an document that was praised by Jung and Freud, among others.

While Pummell allows the eloquent Schreber his space and displays the brutal treatments he was subject to, the mix of genres doesn't always work. In particular, the use of modern psychoanalysts (in period dress, no less) offering testimony and sometimes addressing characters directly is incredibly awkward. The animation sequences, as well, illustrating Schreber's visions also become intrusive after awhile. Ambitious, but flawed.

London Film Festival: Teenage Kicks

Having done my LFF preview for The Quietus via preview DVDs and press screenings, it was a relief to get to the festival proper and lo! Friday turned up not one but two girl-girl dramas in the shape of Pariah and She-Monkeys.

Pariah, a debut feature from Dee Rees, started life as a feature-length screenplay, reached the screen as a short and has now been realised in its original form. 17-year-old African-American Alike, aka Lee, is taking the first steps into baby dykedom, trying out a street butch style and pondering whether strap-ons are her thing. It's all a bit hypothetical, as she's a virgin and looking to her butch pal Laura for advice. But, she's still in the closet around her family, including her strict and religious Mom, and her always-at-work police officer Dad.

Having drawn on her own life, Rees has crafted the film with honesty and artistry in abundance. The early club scenes in which the characters riff and bluff in street speak may be difficult for outsiders, but the emotions felt by Lee, which she can only really express in her writing, are easily relatable. At the screening, one audience member asked how black American audiences had responded to the film, and my head turned, as I thought I recognised the voice of the questioner. Blow me down! It was only Diane Abbott MP, taking a day off from her political duties to take in some cinema. She told me she thought the film was lovely and only wished more people had turned out.

Later that evening, I returned to the VUE to see the hotly tipped She-Monkeys, nominated for the Sutherland Award for most notable debut feature. To my eyes this film was less than the sum of its parts, with an excellent premise--the rivalry and power struggle between two young equestrian acrobats--let down by too much internalising.

I really had no idea at the end of the film whether the central relationship between Emma and Cassandra was one of love, hate, lust, manipulation or other. In fact, the most expressive character in the film was the six-year-old sister of Emma. She had the best lines. The post-film Q&A with director Lisa Aschan also rates as one of the least informative I've seen. I don't know whether she was nervous, tired or tired and emotional, but her answers were largely monosyllabic and punctuated by giggles.

Liane Lang: House Guests

The titular guests are inhabiting a house in Hackney Downs. But, their origin is apparently a house lived in by Rudyard Kipling in Vermont, of all places. Lang's mixed media installation is set in two rooms, one darkened with brown walls, and one brightly lit with white walls.

The darkened room looks like a study and one wall is taken up with her looped video, also called House Guests. It is projected onto what looks like stacks of papers and is an animation of a visit to Kipling's house, populated by moving furniture and unseen ghosts. The soundtrack is understated and sometimes overshadowed by the clock on the wall of the room. I found it intriguing.

The white room is more stark, with photos that seem to come from the video. Why two rooms? For more guests?

House Guests runs through 22 October at WW Gallery.

Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage

Long overdue, Pipilotti Rist's retrospective at the Hayward Gallery is a bit of a tonic for the stressed Londoner. Approaching the gallery from Waterloo Bridge, one's first glimpse is of pants rustling in the wind. A bit of typical whimsy from Rist, this piece, Enlighted Hips, introduces the viewer to the artist's preoccupation with the body, as well as her sense of humour.

Once inside, one can feel immediately overwhelmed: to one side, huge, overlapping installations, to the other, a darkened room crammed full of videos, searching spotlights and diaphanous enclosures. What's it all about? Unless one can read the small guide in the dark (I couldn't) or memorise the map on the wall (ditto), one might be a bit clueless as to the titles.

But, in the end it didn't much matter. I wandered, crouched, poked my head through a hole, lay on some cushions shaped like clothing-covered body parts and slowly, slowly relaxed into the vibe. It's the most artistic chill-out space ever.

The three-screen installation, Lobe of the Lung, in particular, found a host of visitors reclining on cushions (not especially comfortable, it must be said), their forms doubled by the mirrors behind them. I leant against the mirror and then found my view blocked by an arriving mother with child and pram in tow. It's the first time I've ever been obstructed at a gallery by a pram. "Ooh, piggies," cooed the child. Not sure how Mummy explained the vaginas.

Ah, yes, the vaginas. Rist is especially attracted to the female form, zooming her mini-cameras around her own body, to depict menstrual blood and close-up views of the pudenda. But, her take on it is less biological than the body-centred art of 1970s feminism. Rist views the body as landscape, and she intersperses her internal visuals with plants, flowers, all spewed out in such bright colours as to appear psychedelic, with equally far out titles: one video is called Pimple Porn.

Interestingly, for all the explicit female bodies on display, the only advisory comes upstairs in the Project Space, where a sign warns of male nudity on show. Hypocrisy in art? Surely not. Cool videos, though, especially her early work, Ever Is Over All. The glee with which she smashes those car windows. It's infectious.

Glamour of the Gods

Now into its last month or so, the Glamour of the Gods exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery delves into the John Korbal collection to showcase the so-called golden age of Hollywood, when stars were STARS.

What is most striking, aside from the super-high production values of these portraits, is the extreme and, now, obvious artifice involved. Nothing was left to chance--not the clothes, the lighting, the framing and, of course, the correction.

In the pre-Photoshop age, this must have been quite labour-intensive, but as one example showing Joan Crawford pre- and post-retouched shows, it makes all the difference. Gone are those freckles, worry lines, and, indeed, anything that might show her actual facial features. Wouldn't want those to get in the way of the arched eyebrows that were her trademark. Odd how influential this look was.

Still, it's always welcome to see Marlene, Katharine, Greta and others splendidly turned out, looking down on all us little people.

Raw materials

Everything in its time

A Worthy Winner

Congratulations to PJ Harvey for scooping the Mercury Music Prize for Let England Shake. A concept album about war is a hard sell, and those extra album sales "from a low sales base" (so sayeth WENN) will be well appreciated. Amazing she's been around for 20 years already, and yet still seems like a "new" artist.

The Gas Masked

This is what happens when two worlds collide south of the river on a sunny Thursday afternoon. Jude Cowan supplied the gas mask, bicycle, fan and camera. I busked the shots, in between sniffling. She edited to accompany one of her World News Vision improvised songs. Et voilà!