Friday 24 October 2014

The Passing of The Biennial 2014

It’s been a funny Biennial, gaining mixed reviews. Some of them proclaiming doom and gloom or criticising the lack of political engagement.

Myself I wrote this for The Double Negative focusing on how I saw it as a Biennial which presented work that played with the conventions of the gallery space and the role of the visitor within that gallery space.

Three months on and how does this still stand up? Well Claude Parent at Tate Liverpool is still a playful, exciting change to the normal modes of gallery viewing. While the exhibition upstairs is interesting if a little hit and miss.

Though it’s always great to see work by Susan Hiller.

Whistler at The Bluecoat, I feel pretty much the same as I first saw it.

As for Sharon Lockhart’s exhibition at FACT I still find Lockhart’s use of the gallery space more engaging then the actual concepts that inform the work.

What of the main exhibition at The Old Blind School? On my final visit though I enjoyed the many sci-fi tinged works I felt that a lot of it had lost it shine. Now I see the edges of the projection screen of William Leavitt’s Artic Earth and Michael Stevenson’s remote controlled doors where far to accommodating for you notice that anything was awry.

Ultimately how do I feel about the Biennial? Well I’m not sure after the initial excitement of its arrive I never found myself possessed by a urge to revisit many exhibitions. On the whole I have had a more positive reaction to the 2014 Biennial then others. Looking back on it I wonder if this has been a Biennial that didn’t really have its mind on the here and now, but rather it was looking towards its possible future expanding outside the city centre.

Maybe this is true of most Biennials I guess we’ll see in two years’ time.



Sunday 5 October 2014

Thinking City: Adam Chodzko, Liverpool Biennial


Funny, when things seem to come together.

The way life can connect seemingly disparate things. Giving the impression of a greater meaning, I think that this is sometime referred to as synchronicity. A recent experience of this phenomenon involves my current (paid) job, a novel, the current social-economic situation and a performance lecture.

That lecture by Adam Chodzko took place in an abandoned above ground reservoir in Toxteth.  Now Liverpool gets its water from elsewhere it stands as an monument to Victorian engineering and bravado.

So where once were tonnes of water stands Chodzko and his seemingly modest presentation. Though the reverberation of his voice throughout the space lends his voice a certain booming gravitas

Fitting as Adam is talking about some huge subjects, literary. One of the things under discussion are super container ships. Modern leviathans that cross oceans and seas, making sure that you and I have things like iPods, Lego and training shoes.

This is where the first ‘connection’ comes into play. I have recently read Simon Ings novel ‘Dead Water’ a multi-layered narrative, which features a character Eric Moyes who creates these shipping lines and uses them to hide a terrible secret.

Both Ings and Chodzko touch on the strangeness of these sea born giants which despite their size are as invisible as air. How these thing follow a unique idea of fluid dynamics, operating to the imagined pressures of commerce.

The creation of a constant flow of things and stuff which threatens to overwhelm us and fill the spaces we inhabit. Which brings me to the third ‘connection’ recently I have found myself employed (by a company known for tiny pens, that’s not IKEA) this puts me rather neatly at the end point of this epic voyage of stuff.

One of many who facilitate the ‘last mile’ of that journey. Helping everyone fill their homes with stuff, in the lecture Chodzko speculates that this collection of stuff will lead to the instigation of people creating and dealing with smaller and smaller spaces. He provides this by showing us his prototype living space created from a IKEA wardrobe.

All this may just be preparation for a future, a future that will take place on the giant super-boats. These will become the cities of a flooded world, a world flooded with water and stuff. Once aboard this floated cities we will be surrounded by all of our stuff that we would arrive at some kind of nirvana.

A capitalistic equilibrium, a utopia on the ocean waves.

When where on our never-ending cruise, what will happen to the mega-docks that where once home to these behemoths? Well Chodzko suggests that the ultimate role for these docks, such as the proposed Liverpool 2 superdock is as massive earth-works, as land art. Their destiny is to become supersized monuments to entropy like Robert Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’ or even oversized versions of J.G Ballard’s empty swimming pools.

The archaeology of this future is to be built through commerce, we are building it.