I love the ICA. Ever since Charlie introduced me to London’s underground mainstream arts centre I’ve been a regular visitor, in awe of the £15 magazines and the often insane exhibitions that they put on. Though the gallery has had some difficulties in the past few years, mainly involving losing lots and lots of money, there has been some good news. For one, it’s now open on Tuesdays.

Sadly, though after visiting the gallery on a recent Tuesday it seems that opening hours may be the least of the ICA’s worries. Unlike when I first visited five years ago, the ICA feels more like a museum than a contemporary art gallery. Their current exhibition: ‘Remote Control’ explores the way that television changed the art world. Great, right? The only problem is that all the videos shown were recorded circa 1979. I guess it’s not a problem if a gallery wants to focus on the past; but the ICA feels out of touch, rather than offering a considered retrospective. Gallery visitors watch the videos as a novelty- often only watching each video for 15 seconds or so. And, to be honest, who cares about TV when art is facing its biggest challenges today from the Internet and modern technology. Though there is some engagement with these new technologies, it is limited to one of the most cynical pieces I’ve seen in some time. Called ‘Red Alert’ it is three apple branded screens side by side, all showing red. Just red.

The ICA’s new pride and joy, the studio, is meant to be the engine room of the gallery, igniting and encouraging debate. To understand the problems with the ICA and to an extent the problems with contemporary art in general you only need to have one look at it ; lying empty and bare, with 1970s press cuttings describing how radical and free thinking the establishment is. In essence, the gallery’s past success has prevented it from being radical today. Today, they cater mainly for tourists and old Guardian readers, pretty much as bourgeois as it gets.

There are two things that I am going to tell the truth about. One. Me and Charlie would have seen Diehard if we could, but it was sold out. Two. At lots of points during Sofia Coppola’s film Somewhere I felt bored. But, on the other hand, the film looked beautiful, the soundtrack was perfect and the acting was completely convincing. The film tells the story of a successful Hollywood movie star who is living the American Dream. He has the car, all the girls he could want and, most importantly, fame. But he isn’t happy. Through painfully long shots, sparse dialogue and few characters Coppola manages to get accross the loneliness and monotony of even the most exciting life.  Johnny (the main character) has a daughter, though, and it is their relationship that progresses the most throughout the film, with Johnny at last telling her that he was sorry he wasn’t “there for her more”. However, one of the problems with the film is that for all of the monotony there is not a particularly exciting plot. The film is 1hr 40minutes, yet it would be difficult to describe what actually happened in it. Yes, there is a huge amount of character development and yes, you really do realise the boredom of Johnny’s life by the end of the film, but you also realise that you yourself have been bored for large portions.  You have to give Coppola time and (a lot) of patience but ultimately it is rewarded as you get a real sense of what real life in Hollywood is like. And maybe that the American Dream isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I love this K-Swiss ad; the soundtrack, the light, the imagery, everything gives off the enjoyment of electricity of the world and associated this with the K-Swiss brand! Childish singing + passionate adults shows that youth doesn’t have to end. The Fed-Ex and sun safety ads are just super clever and both are very powerful messages.  The Fed-Ed ad would look PERFECT on a billboard by a brick wall.

The naughty noughties have expired, leaving the media nothing to do but reminisce on the decade that was.

Or wasn’t. The general consensus seems to be that the greatest advances made in the arts over the last ten years have been technological. In music, television and cinema, the industry has been falling over itself to cater for the interests of lonely, headphones-wearing teenagers plonked in front of oft numerous monitors. In music, this has led to a dilution of quality, a dearth of new music, and the now-terminal decline of the music album. Television and cinema, on the other hand, have proved more adaptable, with the explosion of reality television causing an about-turn in our expectations. Contemporary audiences now want to see, besides the customary blockbusters, something they can believe in. ‘Gritty realism’, to coin a phrase, is the name of the day (or decade, rather), and is what has led to the success of series like The Wire as well as films like Fahrenheit 9/11.

In the case of the aforementioned, the ‘grittiness’ stems from minimal camera work combined with a no-star cast. The latter is particularly important: actors act, the rest of us don’t. We can only be ourselves. Fish Tank (2009), with the only recognisable face being that of Michael Fassbender, demonstrates perfectly the benefits of this absence of artifice. Its protagonist, Mia Williams, is played by Katie Jarvis, a teenager plucked from council estate-obscurity to play what turns out to be a starring role. Fame has not changed her, however, as even when Fish Tank was awarded the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Jarvis declined to attend in favour of staying at home – the same estate as before – to take care of her newborn baby.

Fish Tank itself shows a similar refusal to bow to convention. Its story follows fifteen-year-old Mia, who has just been expelled from school and is left to fill her time wandering aimlessly around her council estate. Her friends have turned against her, while her family, consisting of a prepubescent sister and an alcoholic mother, live forever in denial of one another’s existence. What quality time they have is spent in front of the television and all of them, the youngest included, drink to oblivion. Yet there is hope in the form of Mia’s talent for street dancing, as well as the arrival of a new man in her mother’s life. Connor (Fassbender) brings the family together, insisting from the start on including the children in everything the couple do. He emboldens Mia, showing her the attention she craves deep down and encouraging her to take her dancing to a professional level. The question, of course, is whether their newfound domestic bliss can last.

For all its realism, Fish Tank is rife with symbolism and ambiguities. It is shot beautifully, with endless richly-coloured landscapes alongside intimate close-ups of characters, and speaks more through the power of its visuals than through its (mostly minimal) dialogue. Recurring images of animals in chains, such as the white horse that Mia twice tries to set free, show clearly the dangers of living in a confined environment, namely, that a person loses all perspective and with it any real sense of who they are. Thus, at the film’s heart, lies a simple identity crisis. It is not so much a case of Mia having to escape the estate; rather, she must learn to appreciate her human potential and how to apply it in any setting.

Perhaps the worst aspect of growing up is that we expect steadily less from others. Yet, when this happens, and whether we notice it or not, we come to expect more from ourselves. Fish Tank shows that human beings are not to be holed up and ‘taught’ independence (by, for example, a social worker like Mia’s) but must learn it for themselves.

Words – Charlie Chichester

It is not surprising that, of all the members of The Strokes to have embarked on solo projects, Julian Casablancas’ album has perhaps been the most eagerly anticipated. Responsible for writing almost all the songs on the first – and most critically acclaimed – two albums (Is This It, released 2001 and Room On Fire, released 2003), he is the creative force behind a band that is often said to have ‘saved rock’n’roll’. This may or may not be hyperbolic, but it is certainly true that they emerged from a relative wasteland of rock music around the year 2000, dominated by bands such as Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit.

Casablancas has been involved in several collaborations (e.g. with Santogold in My Drive Thru in 2008) but Phrazes for the Young was really the first opportunity to hear what his would do if he was not tied down to The Strokes’ tastes, reputation, and the very standard rock line-up of two guitars, bass, drums and vocals.

Based on the single 11^th Dimension, one might assume that the album does not stray very far from the Strokes’ style, albeit replacing analogue with digital for the most part in choosing synths and programmed drum parts over traditional rock instrumentation. A riff that evokes a similar mood to The Strokes’ You Only Live Once (whilst bearing an uncanny resemblance to David Bowie’s Rebel Rebel) gives way to a fairly epic chorus which is to some extent reminiscent of the grander moments of First Impressions of Earth (2006). There are also lyrical similarities to the song You Only Live Once: where we had platitudes about the nature of Mankind (“Some people think they’re always right / Others are quiet and up-tight”), we now have advice about how to live our lives: “Forgive them / Even if they are not sorry”. Fair enough – the title of the album is Phrazes for the Young, after all.

Opener Out of the Blue is vaguely similar to Someday (from Is This It), although there is a synthy wall of sound instead of strumming overdriven guitars. The rest of the album, however, is far more eclectic, sometimes verging on weird. References to assorted styles of music are everywhere: the intro and chorus of Left & Right In The Dark sounds like his take on Calypso music, although far less annoying; 4 Chords of the Apocalypse is essentially a Motown soul ballad; Ludlow St is a cross between the soundtrack to Stanley Kubric’s A Clockwork Orange combined with country and Western music, and album closer Tourist is a crazy cross between Indian music, reggae and a blues shuffle.

Other than 11^th Dimension, my particular favourites are probably some of the weirder songs on the album. River of Brakelights begins like a really bad drum’n’bass or garage track (or something…), and is often very obscure harmonically, but resolves very satisfyingly and eventually becomes another epic. Rock ballad Glass is perhaps the closest Casablancas gets to ‘beautiful’, with ethereal synths and skittering beats and a heartfelt chorus finally giving way to a slightly bizarre synthesized pastiche of J.S. Bach.

While undoubtedly interesting, Casablancas seems to be trying above-all to demonstrate that he can fuse together countless musical styles and that he is not a one-trick-pony. Phrazes for the Young is not a successful album. In his stated aim of trying to capture some of the grandiosity of “Classical music”, he makes most of the songs around 5 or 6 minutes long and therefore very overweight for a pop album. Secondly, his voice is mostly processed and homogenous rather than the decadent, visceral howl we heard on The Strokes’ albums. Finally, and maybe most importantly, there is a lack of atmosphere about the record. With The Strokes, we get New York cool, cigarette smoke and leather jackets. With this, we get a mish-mash of musical styles and a smooth, overproduced sheen. Congratulations are deserved, as some of the songs are really pretty great, but let’s hope the forthcoming Strokes album is less clinical and bored-sounding.

6.5/10

Words: Anthony Friend, Pictures: Edward Myung

I saw Avatar at 3.40am last night/this morning on 3D IMAX because that was the only time not sold out in the next three weeks. And goddammit was it worth it. It made a staggering impact on me, something I was not even slightly surprised by because beautifully realised sci‐fi worlds with fun characters tend to do that to me (Serenity and 2001: A Space Odyssey unquestionably my two favourite films, in that order). In fact Avatar made such an impact on me that I’ve decided I won’t be watching Sin Nombre today as I had planned to, simply because I cannot bear to watch a film right now that isn’t Avatar. I want to see it again on IMAX ‐ in fact I will see it again on IMAX because I cannot go through life having only had that experience once. Anyway, I couldn’t get Avatar out of my head so I thought I’d write a review of it, why not?

Wow. Just, wow. Avatar is the first film I’ve seen since 2001: A Space Odyssey which left me truly in awe. Speaking analytically, yes the dialogue is corny and the Na’vi chanting is pure kitsch but somehow that just doesn’t matter. The visuals are jaw dropping, and when I say that I mean it literally. On regular occasions I found my mandible sagging and a tingle of sheer blownawayness shoot up my spine. God it’s a good looking film. The most surprising thing about Avatar, though, is not the staggering visuals (well, we expected them didn’t we), it’s the fact that it has characters, and we like the characters. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is one of the most purely likeable characters I’ve seen in a long time and a lot of films – his enthusiasm for, well, everything, is infectious and you can’t help but smile when (for instance) he leaps onto the back of a gigantic deadly flying thing in order to tame it without moment’s thought for his own safety, simply because he can. The Na’vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) is of course yet another of Cameron’s strong female roles (again, nothing new here) but once again we as the audience grow to like her, in part I think because we can identify with how she reacts to Jake. Her initial annoyance at his perceived immaturity (expressed in one of the film’s worse lines) turns gradually to affection as she falls in love with the same enthusiasm, the same refusal to ever slow down, give up or take the easy route, that makes Jake such a hit with the audience. Jim Cameron described Sam Worthington in a recent interview as a ‘force of nature’ and it seems Sam has put some of that whirlwind energy (in fact, all of it, and more besides) into Jake Sully. If I have spoken about Jake a lot it is because he truly is the centre, nay keystone, of the film. He is the audience’s gateway to Pandora. I have mentioned how Neytiri’s likeability centres on the audience’s identification with how she reacts to Jake. Well part of Jake’s likeability is a result no doubt of the audience’s ability to identify with how he reacts to Pandora. On the other side of the fence as it were, Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is one of the best baddies ever committed to screen (yes, I recognise the echoes of Ben Lyons skulking in the background as I make that statement but I am fully prepared to defend it). Lang feasts upon the scenery like a ravenous Great Leonopteryx. In fact it’s a damn good thing most of it was computerised otherwise he might have eaten the lot. In doing so, he sets a new benchmark for badassery – this is a man so badass that he can breathe the noxious Pandoran atmosphere without a mask and at one point it took him a good thirty seconds to begin to care that he had been set on fire. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is bloody entertaining.

The supporting characters (and by extension actors) are mostly excellent and, unusually for a big movie juggling multiple character threads while expending most of the running time in action sequences, the decisions they make, the things they say and do, all seem to make sense, to follow from the character rather than from the requirements of the plot (are you reading this, Michael? What about you, Roland?). If I had to single one actor out among many it would be…you know what I’m going to say already, don’t you? You don’t? If so, you may have forgotten that Sigourney Weaver plays a chain smoking ethical botanist. In contrast to the emotional, artistic side of the film (that is to say, the characters and the visuals), the cerebral side, the political message the film tries to convey (which has been so remarked upon I feel it unnecessary to define it), is slightly nauseating in its sickly sweet incontestability, not to mention the simple fallacy of its invocation of Rousseau’s mythical ‘Noble savage’ (i.e. the Na’vi) and Lovelock’s fanciful Gaia Theory (in this case, Gaia = Eywa, the Na’vi deity). Thankfully, despite the cloying misanthropic appearance of these themes, another, more sophisticated reading of the film may provide hope for those of a humanist bent. One review I read remarked upon how after a while, the Na’vi begin to look normal and the humans become the aliens. It is certainly true that when Quaritch’s gunships face off against the Na’vi warriors with their bows and arrows there are undeniable echoes of Independence Day (I’m not suggesting a causal link, Eywa forbid, merely a conceptual connection).

The reversal, however, is deeper than that. A friend (one of the ones I saw the movie with) said afterwards that he was supporting the humans throughout, mostly because he liked Quaritch so much, but partly because he felt a loyalty to his species (or so he claimed). Leaving aside the arguments against Darwinism‐as‐ethic, this got me thinking on the essence of humanity. Now I am not suggesting for one minute that Jim Cameron had Hegel or Marx in mind when he wrote the Avatar screenplay but the concept of alienation, particularly Marx’s formulation, provides a fascinating reading of the contrast between the humans and the Na’vi. Marx believed that the bourgeois were alienated from their humanity though their exploitation of the proletariat. The proletariat, by contrast, when they reached true consciousness, would become purely and solely human. The exploitation of the Na’vi and of Pandora in general by the ‘Sky People’ would seem to suggest, at least from a Marxian perspective, much, if not total, alienation. Colonel Quaritch and Giovanni Ribisi’s odious mine boss, Parker Selfridge (the humans are there to mine a valuable mineral worth twenty million a kilogram) both exhibit total inhumanity toward the Na’vi in their aggressive pursuit of profits, the essence of bourgeois alienation. The Na’vi, on the other hand are practically and (this is important) theoretically peaceful. They are humane in their treatment of all Pandoran life forms, killing some in order to eat them but always maintaining a sense of loss, never allowing their relationship with the natural world to become exploitative. They are, in a sense, the incarnation of essential humanity. The above train of thought introduced me to a whole new dimension in the Avatar experience as I realised that far from being brash and simplistic in its themes it could actually be interpreted in quite a subtle and intelligent way. As I have already said, I doubt Jim Cameron wrote the screenplay with Die Deutsche Ideologie in mind but as Harold Pinter remarked when asked which interpretation of one of his plays was the correct one, the answer is ‘all of them’.

But of course the above paragraphs do not matter. Not a jot. They, and Avatar’s political themes, are nothing but an intellectual exercise when the true brilliance of it is in the viscera, the emotion, the tugging of the heart strings and the flowing of the adrenalglands, the love, the war, the beauty, the awe. Avatar is, quite simply, epic.

Words: Philip Howe, Pictures: Avatar Official flickr

When I grow up, I want to be Sophie Calle. Though it might be tempting to laugh at some of her concepts when told them by someone else, the execution and presentation of some of the most theoretically absurd and pretentious ideas are perfectly balanced. Starting with a hundred and two interpretations of a ‘dear jane’ letter from a man she was having an affair with the exhibition flits from accounts of smiles to random New Yorkers to documentation about lending a bed to someone in San Fransisco. What was so unsual about this particular Sophie Calle exhibition is that there was a film installation. BUT SOPHIE CALLE ONLY USES TEXT AND PHOTOS. At the very end; in the last room, the artist’s unmistakably arty voice can be heard admitting to anyone who will listen that she worked on a project for 15 years and never had an idea. Though she could have just stuck some pretentious text to the millions of ATM machine images she was gifted by a bank (showing the interaction between man and machine- whatever) she showed how she had attempted to come up with a concept for the images, but nothing had come to her. Instead, she presented the images in silver frames and they simply spoke for themselves. The whole exhibition was really intriguing and interesting. Calle’s work shows that there is merit in the journey and method, not just the destination or project. She got 24 people to occupy her bed for 8 days. What’s the point? There isn’t one. What was the result? Millions of beautiful images and words showing just a tiny fragment of humanity. That’s it. And you should see it too. Until 3rd January

The Turbine Hall is by some distance the largest indoor space devoted to art in the world. Seeing artists’ attempts to overcome the ‘obstacle’ of 3,400 square metres of floor space has been mostly a joy over the past ten years, with Miroslaw Balka’s How It Is the most daring and conceptual thus far. With a giant steel box he has sought to turn the bright expanse of the Turbine Hall in on itself, drawing his audience into a black hole in which they are supposed to lose themselves to the dark.
Except, he hasn’t quite succeeded. The structure, from the outside, is a monstrosity, possibly to make you appreciate all the more the subsequent loss of sight. It is also silly how the box seems to have been put in the wrong way round; the audience must walk all the way to the end of the hall, to one or other side of the box, before turning back on themselves to go in. Then, once inside, it is still possible to make out the figures of everyone else present; there is simply too much light allowed in by the lack of an entrance curtain (and, we presume, Health and Safety).
All of these factors combine to compromise the illusion of infinity to great effect, with Balka’s work full of failed allusions to, among others, Plato’s cave and some of the ‘darker’ events in Polish history. Instead, if you would rather a better approximation of how long a piece of string is, try to think back to the exact moment you fell asleep last night. Everyone knows the sensation of awakening. The reverse, however, is more intangible.

Words: Charlie Chichester, Pictures: Guardian

As balls of string go, this particular one is pretty unique. Its rustic qualities shine through not only in its warm brown colouring but also its hairy, worn texture. The string itself is strong and durable, capable of dealing with almost any binding task you throw at it. Knotability is good, with no areas of weakness along the entire length, creating ideal conditions for even some of the most complex knots.

There is one major downfall to this particular ball however: the string seems to be discontinuous in that the ball is fabricated from seperate pieces of string tied together at each end, resulting in one longer piece which is then balled. Not ideal for length-intensive jobs where the knotted ends act as points of weakness. I have personally experienced a few minor mishaps with this string holding out for a while, yet buckling without warning. I guess there is one positive to come out of all of this however, that being the answer to the question ‘how long is a piece of string?’ is hereby answered.

The aesthetic qualities of the ball never cease to amaze me. Its use as a decorative object is unparalleled in the string community, as can be seen from the above picture, it catches afternoon light in a sublime and inspirational fashion. This adds to the value of the ball – in essence you are buying a product with multiple uses: functional and ornamental.

I would be tempted to give a generous 8 out of 10 for the ball, however too many a time have I been disappointed by the frankly inadequate length of the individual strings. I’m feeling harsh but for this reason, I bring the score of the product down to a more humble 6 out of 10. Though this puts a slight dampner on things, there are more varieties of this new generation of durable, rustic string set for release later in the month, and I’m sure the market leaders are working on new and innovative ways to lengthen each segment of string. Expect great things in weeks to come, and as always, my watchful eye will be here to identify and comment on any new ball of string variety that reaches our shelves!

Hunter Thomson

Walking into the Ed Ruscha exhibition at the Hayward I felt an odd sense  of calm. It might have just been because me and Hunter had gone at a time when the gallery was virtually deserted- 8.30 on a friday evening – but there was definitely something about the air that perfectly framed the vivid, bold typography and images that made up the exhibition. Images like ‘Give him anything and he’ll sign it,’ which was of a bird with a pencil for a beak and a rubber for a tail are put together with a simple charm, but also hold a darker image about contemporary America. Other favourites included the ‘Back of Hollywood’, which did exactly as the title describes, with the warm red of the sky cut into by black silhouetted outlines. Ruscha’s bold and striking colours in ‘Not a bad world is it?’ accompanied with his trademark font gives off a warmth not usually seen on a white gallery wall. Walking out into the winter darkness after the exhibition Hunter summed it up perfectly: ‘ I’m not overwhelmed, or underwhmed. Maybe just whelmed.’ Recommended, but go when it’s dark. Olly

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I have little criticism for Ed Ruscha, even though he did break away from an Abstract Expressionist style which he was taught (a style which I find myself still very fond of). His paintings are said to incorporate elements of typography while still retaining aesthetic qualities of the predominant style drummed into him during his education. Breaking free from the unplanned, gestural brushstrokes of the Abstract Expressionists, Ruscha instead chose to carefully predetermine the visual outcome of all his images. With influences ranging from film and the cinema to the array of visual imagery surrounding him in everyday metropolitan life, he rendered very graphic paintings that employed an organised and carefully planned underlying structure.

I walked through the exhibition marvelling primarily at the way the seemingly solid and permanent walls seemed to have been shifted weightlessly into a new formation. The very first painting – namely ’1935′ was in fact one of my favourites. Completed whilst still in an Abstract Expressionist education, the top two of the three divided sections of a rectangle were home to a build up of layers of different coloured paint. The shapes – their sizes and execution – were remeniscent of Rothko’s rectangular works, yet underlying this motif were the numerals: ’1935,’ beautifully hand painted.The contrast in this piece, and indeed many others during his early period, between the typography and expressionistic surfaces is stark and engaging

Another piece which I loved was his ‘Standard Station,’ because of its plunging perspective and detailed paintwork. I’m guilty for still being allured by very accurate representations, and yet this petrol station was (due to the perspective) by no means truthfully representational. Its graphic qualities are achieved through flat colour, straight lines and again this same underlying geometric grid which Ruscha so commonly finds himself working with. The show was entertaining and intriguing, yet some of the later works, which frequently consisted of only a word or phrase atop a colour gradient, I found repetitive. Monumental and hard-hitting though they may be by themselves, their clustered quantity somewhat softened their impact. Hunter

Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting – Until Sunday 10 January 2010