bLOGOS/HA HA

On being over writ

2012-02-04T16:17:00.003+11:00

Recently we showed (here) this new 'old-style' textover acquisition by the NGV.

Here's something similar, a tableau from the later 1800s. Theatre of the Actors of Regard before a set of Golden Guillotine genre painthings, all centred on a cloudy skyscape mind with over-text. (Reckoned to be an early launch site for Theatre du Vide and Yves Kline's later Leap into the Void.)

click to enlarge

2012-01-28T15:55:00.009+11:00

Here's another detail from the mid-80s set, one of which was shown in yesterday's post.

In the collection of Heide Museum of Modern Art, it is also included in the Heide 30th Anniversary exhibitions, FOREVER YOUNG (until March).

Tomorrow, at that exhibition :

Authenticity when viewing art...

2012-01-27T14:45:00.017+11:00

We do miss listening to The Book Show (ABC Radio National) with Ramona Koval and her knowledgeable team. What a loss! (Here's the link to Don Watson's comments about this at The Monthly.)

In place of The Book Show is an arts mix, Books and Arts Daily.

One of yesterday's items was right up our street :

The article discussed, as listed at Radio National :

The blue link above will take you to the abstract. From there you can link to the original research article. It's full poetic title is :

Human cortical activity evoked by the assignment of authenticity when viewing works of art

Mengfei Huang1†, Holly Bridge2†,
Martin J. Kemp3 and Andrew J. Parker1*
1 Department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
2 Department of Clinical Neurology, FMRIB Centre, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
3 Trinity College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
† Mengfei Huang and Holly Bridge Joint first authors.

"The expertise of others is a major social influence on our everyday decisions and actions. Many viewers of art, whether expert or naïve, are convinced that the full esthetic appreciation of an artwork depends upon the assurance that the work is genuine rather than fake. Rembrandt portraits provide an interesting image set for testing this idea, as there is a large number of them and recent scholarship has determined that quite a few fakes and copies exist. Use of this image set allowed us to separate the brain’s response to images of genuine and fake pictures from the brain’s response to external advice about the authenticity of the paintings....

✂ ✂ ✂ ✂ ✂ ✂ ✂ ✂ ✂ ✂ ✂ ✂ ✂

bLOGOS/HA HA wonders if the core of the reality-instability problem might lie in the persistence of our self-cherishing integrity delusion; in our general refusal to wholly appreciate and practise a view that is not based on a notion of fixity and singularity.

Australia Day / Invasion Day

2012-01-26T16:09:00.005+11:00

On this National Public Holiday, here we're listening to the Australian Open while sorting through some image files.

This pic is from the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania, and seems apt to today : Australia Day / Invasion Day

Set in a Jesus+Dreaming Golden|Guillotine, Robert Dowling's Aborigines of Tasmania 1859.

THIS IS MISSING

2012-01-25T15:33:00.016+11:00

Our previous blog post started with a French Poste stamp by Ben.

this is a letter/
this is a stamp/
this is a language/
this is a blog/post/
this is a digital/image/
this is an act/of regard/
this is a moment/of mind/ / / /

The French Phrase it double well :

Qu'est-ce que c'est?

For Korean Zen it is the key koan :

What is this?

It is part of the Western (via negativa) way too :

What a delight then to see the front page of today's THE AGE.

What is this? It's about the theft, from the National Gallery of Victoria, of a contemporary artwork: Have you seen this painting? (2012) by Theatre of the Actors of Regard.

Described as "conceptual-text-on-traditional-landscape-painting intended-for-regard", it is rumoured to have been 'dis-appeared' by a rival practice of young Melbourne artists, The Absence.

Re. some French stamps

2012-01-23T10:31:00.003+11:00

We don't have a philatelist among our staff but we do all take an interest in the contents of the IN TRAY. For stamps and their arrangements, it is our French correspondents who delight us most often. Here are just a few recently received.

The first is by the artist Ben (Ben Vautier). A gentle mind sharpener in the French manner, is it not. Not a bill of post - there are other stamps for that.

Under Ben's stamp are two 2008 definitive 'Head of Marianne'. Designed and engraved by Yves Beaujard, these are also known as 'Marianne and Europe'.

Two more...

At the top is another version of 'Head of Marianne', designed for La Poste by Salvador Dali, 1979. (There's an interesting website here with a history of Frances's 'Head of Marianne' stamps, including the one above by Dali and another by Jean Cocteau, from 1937.)

The stamp beneath Dali's is from 1977, by the French font designer Roger Excoffon.

Fonts by Excoffon : Chambord (1945), Banco (1951), Mistral (1953), Choc (1955), Diane (1956), Calypso (1958), Antique Olive (1962–66).

These two stamps, with their free-flowing calligraphy in common, have obviously been brought together by a thoughtful, creative and generous sender.

As if to emphasise, this morning these arrived. One celebrates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the other, a meta stamp, celebrates the French Republic's JOURNEE DU TIMBRE.

Chamber of Regard

2012-01-15T15:52:00.002+11:00

We're watching Gordon Liu in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Shaw Brothers, 1978)...

A Praise to Master Drum View Practitioners :

Regardism Movement Popular In Europe

2012-01-09T16:44:00.006+11:00

Cheers to J.A. for alerting bLOGOS/HA HA to the performance by Theatre of the Actors of Regard at the opening of Dynamics of Painting (Kunstruimte 09, Groningen, The Netherlands).

Tremendous Wall Flower

2012-01-05T15:55:00.002+11:00

Theatre of the Actors of Regard alerts us to the latest tableau of GV at the NGV :

Gerard Vaughan admires Scully's Queen of the Night. Photo: Penny Stephens

Update Now

2012-01-01T15:53:00.002+11:00

HAPPY NEW GREGORIAN YEAR

Re. things that are interesting to look at

2011-12-28T15:54:00.005+11:00

Reviewing the year's local art scene, art critic for THE AGE Robert Nelson distinguishes between...

and reckons...

The red emphases are by bLOGOS/HA HA

You (who RN nominates as the subject : see paragraph 1 above) may or may not regard these as things that are interesting to look at.

SEASONS GREETINGS

2011-12-24T19:12:00.007+11:00

De Chirico & C0
Wish All Our Museum Clients
A MERRY METAPHYSICAL CHRISTMAS

May The Supreme Goddess As Void,
with projection-space for image,
Full-Fill Your Every Wish
List

The New Director Eyes The Field : image courtesy De Chirico & Co/FIAPCE

Dear Highly Recommended Website

2011-12-20T15:54:00.005+11:00

Kim Jong-Il The Dear Leader is Dead.

Here's the NYTimes report:

The NYTimes article also pictures Kim Jung-Il as The Great Regarder, greatly regarded by his dear people.

Korean Central News Agency, via European Pressphoto Agency

In this regard, bLOGOS/HA HA is grateful to Mitch at Pharmaikon for alerting us to the following Dear Website (click here) :

Here's their December 14 update:

THIS OFFICE TEMPORARILY UNATTENDED

2011-12-06T15:52:00.004+11:00

Our editorial and technical teams are taking an end of year break. Some will follow the sea to its source, others the clouds to theirs.

Be assured we'll keep an eye on things. If someone sees something you'll be the second to know.

SEASONS GREETINGS
TO OUR READERS & REGARDERS
FROM THE STAFF OF bLOGOS/HA HA

click image to enlarge

ABC Classic FM : Classic 100 - 20th Century

2011-12-04T18:04:00.012+11:00

ABC Classic FM runs a Top 100 listeners' poll each year. For 2011 it was Classic 100 - 20th Century.

Each listener could enter 1-10 votes of equal value for their favourite piece(s) of 20th century music.

The final result was announced yesterday. The top 100 can be seen here. Below is the top 1o.

10. PROKOFIEV - Romeo and Juliet Op.64

9. STRAVINSKY - Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)

8. ORFF - Carmina Burana

7. BARBER - Adagio For Strings

6, RODRIGO - Concierto de Aranjuez

5. RACHMANINOV - Piano Concerto No. 2

4. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS - The Lark Ascending

3. GERSHWIN - Rhapsody in Blue

2. HOLST - The Planets

1. ELGAR - Cello Concerto in E minor Op.85

It's not what this office expected. (As mentioned before, we have the Edition Peters score of John Cage's 4' 33" pinned high on the wall here. Apparently 4'33" came in at #121. No other Cage composition made the top 200.)

Our two bobs worth went to...

1. John CAGE - 4 '33"

2. Arnold SCHOENBERG - Pierrot Lunaire

3. Olivier MESSIAEN - Vingt regards sur l'Enfant-Jesus

4. Jimi HENDRIX - Third Stone from the Sun

5. Frank ZAPPA - 200 Motels

6. Karlheinz STOCKHAUSEN - Klavierstucke (1-X1)

7. Steve REICH - Come Out

8. Miles DAVIS - Kind of Blue

9. Conlon NANCARROW - Player Piano Studies

10. Philip GLASS - Einstein on the Beach

We celebrate the result with wild tambour and parfums mélodieux. BOUM! BOUM!

IN PRINCIPIO ERAT JOURNALISMUS

2011-11-29T14:20:00.004+11:00

Following on from yesterday's Walkley Awards pillory to (blog) post, and responding to a number of enquiries about our (dis)organisation at bLOGOS/HA HA, here is the first of an occasional series of office glimpses.

Today, one of our journalists at work.

from Pillory to Post

2011-11-28T11:41:00.022+11:00

bLOGOS/HA HA watched the Walkley Awards presentation on SBS last night. The most contentious decision - we noted that many in the audience of peers did not clap the acceptance speech - was for Most outstanding contribution to journalism to WikiLeaks.

This award was sponsored by Sky News, which is partially-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. A fine irony.

Appropriately, it was announced by senior journalist and 2010 Gold Walkley winner Laurie Oakes, a past defender of WikiLeaks and someone renowned for his own reports of leaked documents.

Laurie Oakes at the Walkley Awards last year :

Julian Assange accepted the award on behalf of WikiLeaks. He appeared by video, from his house arrest in England, with a backdrop of the upside down and wrong way around logos of the five major financial organisations that refuse to facilitate funds to WikiLeaks.

click here to watch the video of Assange's speech

Switched then to ABC 24 where there was a formal debate in progress : That WikiLeaks is a Power for Good

The third speaker for the affirmative was Stuart Rees, academic, author, Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation and Emeritus Professor at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia. He concluded with an extract from the once pilloried pamphleteer Daniel Defoe, from his poem A Hymn to the Pillory ( read it here ).

The background to that, from here. Sounds familiar...

detail from a much larger scene (here ) Daniel Defoe in the pillory 1862 line engraving by James Charles Armytage after Eyre Crowe

Another of the many who have paid dearly for their efforts to share information/power with the people is William Tyndale. For his translation and publication of the Bible, from the Hebrew and Greek of the educated power elite to the English of the many, he had to flee England. Arrested in Brussels by an ally of the English King, and tried there on charges of heresy, he was "strangled to death while tied at the stake, and then his dead body was burned". (Ironically, it is he who coined the term scapegoat.)

William Tyndale cries out "Lord, open the King of England's eyes". Woodcut from Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563)

ENJOY THE IMPERATIVE!

2011-11-26T14:39:00.004+11:00

Some say the National Gallery of Victoria has little interest in contemporary art.

Perhaps the recent run of full page advertisements in the Weekend Age are an attempt by that institution 'to be seen to be' engaged.

This is from today's paper :

But why does the first line of the promotional image caption say

Visitor enjoying

First : why "visitor"?
Second : why "enjoying"?

What we at bLOGOS/HA HA enjoy about this image is knowing a little more about what is actually happening : knowing that the dewdrops are suspended on strings, though this is not apparent in the advertisement; knowing that the 'visitor' is actually a member of T.A.R. (Theatre of the Actors of Regard) and is not so much visiting as performing; knowing that a fuller depiction of the scene would show the actor's braces are suspending, front and back, a meta pair of dependent-arising ideograms over his naked loins; knowing, too, the cloud of thoughts that bubble forth...

FACE-OFF

2011-11-25T13:53:00.013+11:00

Cease practice based
On intellectual understanding,
Pursuing words and
Following after speech.
Learn the backward
Step that turns
Your light inward
To illuminate within.
Body and mind of themselves
Will drop away
And your original face will be manifest.

Dogen

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

eyemaskingyou2C

2011-11-23T14:18:00.012+11:00

Last year the Sunday Age had an item about Princess Hijab.

Today something similar. A street artist in Sweden under the name Kelly Gang has taken to a mirror-billboard clothing campaign (YOUR FACE HERE) with Kelly mask paste-ups.

YOUR [OUTLAW] FACE HERE...

click image to enlarge

LOOK AT - this - FOR 4'33"

2011-11-18T15:08:00.016+11:00

Everyone at bLOGOS/HA HA is a John Cage fan. We have a copy of his sheet music for 4' 33' high on the office wall, reminding us at every moment...

Also, we know that J.C. is pin-up #1 at the FeetQuarters of Theatre of the Actors of Regard. Indeed, T.A.R. have issued a series of LOOK AT ... instruction cards in the manner of John Cage.

Not only is it still possible to purchase an authentic edition of the 4' 33" sheet music from

it is also possible to purchase a font of Cage's own hand lettering as used in the 4' 33" manuscript instruction. T.A.R. use that Cage font in their 4' 33" remix:

This all came to mind recently when we read a newspaper article
( here ) about the pianist Keith Jarrett and his dealings with chronic fatigue syndrome. In particular, we noted this sub-heading

From there to thoughts of Cage, and to a T.A.R. piano instruction.

aka TODAY

2011-11-11T11:11:00.007+11:00

Those of us who subscribe to the Gregorian calendar view are observing the present date's notable numerical time sequence :
MMXI.XI.XI.XI.XI.XI
2011.11.11.11.11.11
Year/Month/Day/Hour/Minute/Second
aka TODAY

Those of us who subscribe to other calendars may be regarding TODAY as belonging within one of the following YEARS :

For those of us in Commonwealth countries
TODAY
11th month, 11th day, 11th hour
is Remembrance Day (aka Poppy Day, Armistice Day)
LEST WE FORGET

Name of Time : ________________

2011-11-09T13:19:00.004+11:00

In the Waiting Room one eventually studies everything.

Today, this logo on a poster particularly engaged.

The poster headline enjoins us to

Celebrate
National Radiographers and
Radiation Therapists
Week

The last information taken in (before a total re-assessment) was that this poster was exactly one year old/late/out of date - it being for 8 - 12 November 2010.

Later, back home, the internet tells me that this week is also NRRTWeek. This week being 7 - 11 November 2011; but this week may be any time, may be this week next year, say, or some other this week between, or... More about this soon.

bLOGOS/HA HA is interested in the history and technology of in'spection [C17: from Latin inspicere, from specere to look], therefore interested to learn the reason for this commemoration date.

Interupting for a moment, here is a French chromolithograph from that time. From a card series imaging ways in which the new means of see-through depiction might extend the usual.

Rayon-X : Mademoiselle's fiancé has sent her his photograph.

courtesy : Theatre of the Actors of Regard

Sitting in a Waiting Room, imagining the names and histories of the divisions and seasons of Time.

Sitting in a Waiting Room with a poster for the right time of the wrong year, recalling a wonderful Goons episode about a similar situation.

What time is it, Eccles?

Bluebottle : What time is it Eccles?

Eccles : Err, just a minute. I, I've got it written down 'ere on a piece of paper. A nice man wrote the time down for me this morning.

Bluebottle : Ooooh, then why do you carry it around with you Eccles?

Eccles : Well, umm, if a anybody asks me the ti-ime, I ca-can show it to dem.

Bluebottle : Wait a minute Eccles, my good man...

Eccles : What is it fellow?

Bluebottle : It's writted on this bit of paper, what is eight o'clock, is writted.

Eccles : I know that my good fellow. That's right, um, when I asked the fella to write it down, it was eight o'clock.

Bluebottle : Well then. Supposing when somebody asks you the time, it isn't eight o'clock?

Eccles : Ah, den I don't show it to dem.

Bluebottle : Ooohhh...

Eccles : [Smacks lips] Yeah.

Bluebottle : Well how do you know when it's eight o'clock?

Eccles : I've got it written down on a piece of paper!

Bluebottle : Oh, I wish I could afford a piece of paper with the time written on.

Eccles : Oohhhh.

Bluebottle : 'Ere Eccles?

Eccles : Yah.

Bluebottle : Let me hold that piece of paper to my ear would you? - 'Ere. This piece of paper ain't goin'.

Eccles : What? I've been sold a forgery!

Bluebottle : No wonder it stopped at eight o'clock.

Eccles : Oh dear.

Bluebottle : You should get one of them tings my grandad's got.

Eccles : Oooohhh?

Bluebottle : His firm give it to him when he retired.

Eccles : Oooohhh.

Bluebottle : It's one of dem tings what it is that wakes you up at eight o'clock, boils the kettil, and pours a cuppa tea.

Eccles : Ohhh yeah! What's it called? Um.

Bluebottle : My granma.

Eccles : Ohh... Ohh, ah wait a minute. How does she know when it's eight o'clock?

Bluebottle : She's got it written down on a piece of paper!

Name of Name : ________________

2011-11-01T12:56:00.023+11:00

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
La, la ...

The lyric is from the early 70s hit by the band America.

Americain is the name of the horse favoured to win today's Melbourne Cup.

In Melbourne it's a public holiday and just about anyone who's everyone who knows nothing about horse racing will nominate their would-be winner. Chosen by a nice name, the colour scheme of the jockey's silks, a tip from a friend or just a blind stab.

bLOGOS/HA HA this year opts via the name : Lucas Cranach, from Germany. This horse with no name is named after the German artist Lucas Cranach (1472 – 1553). This artist with no name was named after...

sketch by A. Durer for sports magazine THE FIELD

7,000,000,000 PERSONS REGARD THEIR PROJECTION-SPACE

2011-10-30T22:41:00.010+11:00

Today has been nominated as the birth day of our 7 billionth present human companion.

A few days ago, on the Science Show (ABC.Radio National), Paul Erlich, who in 1968 published the book The Population Bomb, claimed he was the 2 billionth human on Earth at the time of his birth in 1932. ( transcript here )

These statistics are necessarily approximate, but Erlich's own example, living from 2 billion to 7 billion in just 80 years, certainly illustrates.

BE-HOLD ( WITH CARE )

2011-10-30T14:06:00.005+11:00

In our two previous posts ( here and here ) canny regardists handled their apparitions of the void with white gloved care.

Today, we follow those same white gloves to a third beholding:
MM and the Golden Guillotine

Head Bait used in Golden Guillotine

2011-10-29T15:23:00.011+11:00

or

Regardism Trap Goes Snap!

A few head-line-hooks, and now the pic, from today's newspaper.
article here

Hmmm. Those gloves...

By Royal Regard

2011-10-28T20:16:00.002+11:00

In Perth yesterday, this winning performance by the Royal Australian Patron of Theatre of the Actors of Regard.

photo from here

Sire, the peasants are revolting.

2011-10-25T12:02:00.014+11:00

On the evening of Sept 12, 2000 your correspondent was standing with many others outside the fence around the World Economic Forum (Melbourne) when the police suddenly baton charged us.

Beating Up :
A Report on Police Batons and the News Media at the World Economic Forum, Melbourne, September 2000
( read article here )
by Dr. Bernard Barrett, Historian. Forwarded to the Office of the Ombudsman, Victoria, 15 November 2000

Investigation of police action at the World Economic Forum : Ombudsman's Report ( read Report here )

See videos here

Watching these videos and revisiting the media from that time shows how much there is in common between the attitudes and actions around the 2000 WEF/S11 protests and the OCCUPY protests now. For all the players, little has changed.

Melbourne's mayor, Robert Doyle, has described the Occupy Melbourne protesters as "self-righteous, narcissist, self-indulgent rabble''. It was he who sent the police against them. He who watched from the Town Hall (see photo below, from today's AGE article Doyle faces council row on eviction). As with the S11 protests, when then Labor State Premier Steve Bracks supported the actions of the police and denigrated the protesters, this time Liberal State Premier Ted Baillieu did the same, praising the police from the same set script. (And today the Baillieu Government has announced the police will receive the large pay increase they've been lobbying for.)

In response to our OCCUPY/OCCUPATION (Get a job!) blog (here), we were delighted this morning to receive from a reader the spot-on image of 'diverse stakeholders' shown below. On the weekend we were discussing with a young Melbourne artist the ongoing influence of the 1968 National Gallery of Victoria exhibition The Field. ('Groundbreaking' is how one website describes it.)

Theatre of the Actors of Regard
presents

OCCUPY MELBOURNE : Position Vacant _ DIRECTOR : National Gallery of Victoria

2011-10-23T16:58:00.018+11:00

If you have what it takes to 'effectively connect with a diverse stakeholder base', this could be the right occupation for you.

Telephone : +61 3 9678 9600
or email : mel.search@ezi.net

Advertisement from today's weekend papers ( here )
click here to enlarge

Whereas, the wrong occupation...
Melbourne City Square, Friday

Crisis in Ngaba: A young Tibetan nun dies - Please act now

2011-10-18T16:39:00.008+11:00

We are old enough here to recall seeing with profound shock, in the press and on TV during the VietNam/America war, South Vietnamese Buddhist monks self-immolating in political protest.

. . . .

In recent months we have received urgent reports from Tibet about Buddhist monks, and now a nun, self-immolating in protest against ongoing Chinese repression.

3. Please email Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd today and ask him to speak up for these young Tibetans (CLICK HERE)

Society Notes

2011-10-15T20:57:00.004+11:00

Last night's concert by The Regardists, part of the NGV season of Looking at looking, was well attended.

Below, from Label Music (after Mussorgsky)

eyes BLOCKED out

2011-10-12T21:09:00.003+11:00

Over the past week there's been ongoing news about a 14 year old Australian boy in Bali charged with possession of a small amount of marijuana.

bLOGOS/HA HA is particularly interested in the first published photo of the boy in remand : the composition of the image and the strange etiquette of hiding the eyes with black rectangular blocks.

We first saw this image in The Australian print edition. It included another boy, not named, holding up, and presumably looking at, an iphone with illuminated screen. The screen appears too bright and out of focus for us to see what's pictured there. We surmise he is photographing the photographer photographing the Australian boy (and himself).

In this detail below, we note the mysterious balance of obscure rectangles : the unseen black blocked eyes and the over-bright rectangular screen.

Forensic enhancement of the screen reveals interference from our Label mind blocks. (see previous post here)

Perhaps The Australian realised this, too. In their online edition they removed the revealing meta screen. (We appreciate the appropriateness of the accompanying ads for DRAWING LIFE : MATISSE @ GOMA.)

But again, image enhancement reveals the mind of the present viewer.

click to enlarge

emptyful labeLABELabel practice - A Praise to the Two Truths : Ethel Spowers / BLACK BATS / Melbourne

2011-10-09T03:56:00.012+11:00

We've been researching the ground and lineage of local
umbrellatecture/umbratecture. In particular, that of Melbourne's BLACK BATS.

Ethel Spowers
born : 11 July 1890, South Yarra, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

- biography here -

died : 5 May 1947, East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

click to enlarge

Thoughts of John Brack's similar scenes. From the stylized dark silhouette (a taxi driver, perhaps, somewhat like Brack's artist-observer figure) holding the car door open for the departing mother and child momentarily glimpsed amid the anonymous umbrella-ed mass; to the clockwork exit of Melbourne's impassive, faceless city slaves in Collins St, 5p.m. (1955); later recast in the comings and goings, the mass movement of cards and pencils.

One of this edition of prints is slated for auction later this year, in Melbourne of course.

bLOGOS/HA HA is always interested in matters of LABEL

rhymes with Babel

The particularities of the Label composed for a recent auction advertisement that illustrates this print are as follows :

Compare this with the Label for this same (sic) image at
PRINTS AND PRINTMAKING : Australia Asia Pacific :
(for technical reasons it's given here without the two-column format of the original)

Here, by further comparison, is the standard bLOGOS/HA HA Black Label layout. BLACK BLOCKS for BLACK BATS.

When re-presented as words, the Title (including meta-Title) component of the above will be familiar to our regular regardists :

Regardism is go!

2011-10-07T00:00:00.010+11:00

Yesterday, Power to the People : Contemporary Conceptualism and the Object in Art opened at ACCA.

Today, The Monthly arrives in the mail. From it falls a postcard advertisement for a new exhibition at the NGV.

LOOKING AT LOOKING : The Photographic Gaze

The advert features the NGV 2008 purchase (with the assistance of the Bowness Family Fund for Contemporary Photography) of Thomas Struth's Pergamon Museum 1V, Berlin, 2001.

Here's the local version, not in the exhibition (reproduced without assistance) : Theatre of the Actors of Regard, National Gallery of Victoria, 1974.

LOOKING AT LOOKING : The Photographic Gaze begins while the NGV is already staging the similarly-named exhibition
10 ways to look at the past. (See our post here.)

There was a time, not so long ago, when Art was all about the thing-in-itself and art for art's sake; when I don't know much about art but I know what I like was the default mockery of the Standard Ignorant Viewer; when illustrations of the thing-in-itself (usually a painthing) were cropped at the inner or outer edge of the frame, usually cropping the frame, and invariably excising the hanging wires, the wall, the floor, the source of illumination and always the observer.

Now, slowly slowly slowly...

Regardism is go!

Here's looking at you, kids...

Power to the People

2011-10-06T01:10:00.012+11:00

'Curated by Hannah Mathews, the exhibition celebrates the role of the audience within this expanded field of art making. In reconsidering the potentials for art outside the autonomous object, the exhibiting artists open up the conventional object/subject relationship to make room for the viewer to play a more performative role in the exhibition. This political shift, from precious object to engagement, implicates the audience more strongly in the work itself: art that continues to be fuelled by the power of the people.'
(from the ACCA website)

Power to the People
Contemporary Conceptualism and the Object in Art

ACCA : Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
6 October – 20 November 2011

Viewers become a work in progress
Dan Rule/The Age,
5 October 2011

CATS EAT BIRDS

2011-10-01T16:41:00.009+10:00

Earlier this week we received an envelope from France with a pair of black and white 1971 Dead Bird Regard stamps - L'Oiseau Mort, after Greuze. With red obliteration.

In a world where everything's a sign, and a sign for something else as well, it seemed surely a pointer to Saturday (Cats vs Magpies : AFL Grand Final, MCG Melbourne).

CATS EAT BIRDS
Geelong cheer squad banner raised as Cats goal in the first minute

Cats celebrate at Kardinia Park. (Catman centre)

photo: Joe Armao/The Age

Final score :
Geelong 18.11 (119) def. Collingwood 12.9 (81)

La jeune fille qui pleure son oiseau mort
painthing by Greuze
engraving by Gandon
stamp by France
The tears of a young Magpie barracker
translation by bLOGOS/HA HA
present regard by

Half-time at the G

2011-09-30T13:07:00.009+10:00

SLAVE GUITARS with members of Melbourne's BLACK BATS (pictured below) in rehearsal for their half-time performance at tomorrow's Collingwood v Geelong AFL Grand Final.

Melbourne is famous for its fluctuating weather. (Four Seasons in One Day - Crowded House) It's not surprising, therefore, that umbratecture has evolved such a distinctive form in this place. No surprise either, given the 30% chance of hail hitting the MCG during tomorrow's game, that these home town favorites should be called on again for their extraordinary crowd-crazer rendition of Chuck Berry's Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll! .

when one becomes one hundred

2011-09-29T11:56:00.010+10:00

Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia, turns 5o today.
Happy Birthday, we say. Joyeux anniversaire, slightly different.
(Does one still receive a telegram from The Queen when one becomes one hundred?)

1oo is regarded as important, by some. Ten to the power of ten.

108 is regarded as sacred, by some

64 is the number your correspondent has long imagined as cause for octopus celebration

5772 is the Jewish calendar year. It begins today.

Meantime the boats of Visa seekers continue en mass towards the Australia(n) Processing Facility~Offshore in the Giardini Pubblici, Venice.

The Gillard Government's Venice Solution still has many critics.

Happy Birthday, Prime Minister!

More Taking A Punt

2011-09-28T19:26:00.016+10:00

In Venice the boats continue to arrive at the Paul Cox designed, redesignated Australia(n) Processing Centre~Offshore.

The banks of the canal are looking worn now and much of the Giardini foliage has been trampled as the boatpeople numbers increase.

Cultural emigres and other desperate persons, each hoping for a Temporary Exhibition Visa to the proposed Australia(n) Pavilion ~Offshore.

The new arrivals quickly assimilate into the watching crowd.

Many are umbratects, or umbrellatects, and all distinctive as such. Theirs is perhaps the keenest interest in the Venice Biennale~ Australia(n) Pavilion~Offshore project.

There are many entire families. Above, parents watch for boats as their children fish.

There are unaccompanied minors, too. And children who are lost or separated. Below, a boy panics.

White-faced heron family

2011-09-25T12:24:00.001+10:00

The office of bLOGOS/HA HA is in a bush setting shared with a great variety of birds. By size, from silver eyes, pardelottes, robins, fantails, firetails, honey-eaters; blackbirds, thrushes and native pidgeons; many parrots and cockatoos; magpies, crows, currawongs; kookaburras and wattle birds; ducks; owls (usually only heard), hawks and the occasional wedge tailed eagle. (Recently, there was a great bird panic - all alarm calls and fleeing flight - as a wedge-tailed eagle skimmed overhead with a ring-tailed possum in its talons.)

Though not rare in Australia, the white-faced heron or blue crane is not common in this place. The arrival of a pair, then the building of their nest almost immediately above us is like having very special guests.

In recent weeks they have sat through gale-force winds (115 km at Ballarat) and nights down to zero. Our awareness and admiration grows. Currawongs and wattlebirds, regular raiders for blackbird and other chicks, have checked close and attempted to intimidate, but without success.

Three chicks are now being fed by their dutiful parents.

Rhinoceros! Rhinoceros!

2011-09-22T13:15:00.016+10:00

Today is World Rhinoceros Day. It's true - we heard it on the radio this morning.

Which is quite a coincidence because, following a tip-off by the Black Bats, we've been researching the history of one of our favorite plays, Rhinoceros (1959) by Eugène Ionesco.

As part of that research, we talked with members of a local Theatre of the Actors of Regard tableaux troupe. Ionesco's Rhinoceros was well known to them also. Discussion about that lead us on to Pietro Longhi's Clara the rhinoceros (1751).

click here to enlarge

Apparently, this painthing was one of the key inspirations for the founding of Theatre of the Actors of Regard.

As is stated in the Wikipedia extract, Pietro Longhi was a Venetian and the scene above is Venetian too. Thus link-by-link we return to our ongoing consideration of Australia's Venice Solution: the proposed AUSTRALIA(N) PAVILION~OFFSHORE

The tip-off mentioned earlier is that Melbourne's mischievous Black Bats have organised with a group of Venetian umbratects (UV) to present today, among the crowd who increasingly gather around the AUSTRALIA PROCESSING FACILITY in the Giardini Pubblici, an umbratecture performance after Ionesco' Rhinoceros.

AUSTRALIA : Doors Closed _ file photo

While that is happening in Venice, in the Australia(n) Parliament the Gillard/Labor Party government will attempt to amend the law that the High Court recently ruled illegal, the sending of asylum seekers to places Offshore for Processing.

Black Bats/UV poster : black hide/silver horns

click to enlarge

WEST SPACE 2011 FUNDRAISER

2011-09-20T12:11:00.009+10:00

This as the Australian Government and the Opposition squabble over their competing visions for Asylum Seeker Offshore Processing Legislation.

Hendrix Live at FIAPCE

2011-09-18T21:18:00.012+10:00

Our senior member of staff informs us that today is the 40th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix Xit

He's brought in his LP of ARE YOU EXPERIENCED to show us. No question mark, he points out about the caption, and like a pair of Buddha eyes. On the back in biro, Dec 1967.

Reckons a year after Jimi died he reformed as FIAPCE !?

click to enlarge

Reckons those eyes on ARE YOU EXPERIENCED must have haunted him for this one too, along with his EP of Voodoo Child, Hey Joe and All Along the Watchtower

Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful...

click to enlarge

Lama Lhundrup

2011-09-14T14:15:00.006+10:00

News arrives. Lama Lhundrup, the much loved Abbot of Kopan Monastery, Nepal, has died.

In 1988 your correspondent had the good fortune to be at Kopan Monastery over several months. Lama Lhundrup registered deeply. From that time, here he is with Lama Osel at his side making offering prayers at the 12th century ruins of the great monastic university Nalanda, India.

At our door here, we've a tulip also in its last days of radiance. Petals wider each day, soon they will fall away. Projection-space of the Dutch mania. Projection-space colours of that great monk's robes.

9/11

2011-09-11T10:16:00.007+10:00

Oddly, perhaps; subconsciously, intuitively... the first image that comes to mind is by El Greco. In the beginning was the Word (LOGOS)

The Adoration of the Name of Jesus

The Third of May, 1808
by Goya (1814)

26 April 1937
Guernica (1937) by Pablo Picasso.

a detail of Guernica :

20-2-1919
Date of a postcard correspondence, send from St Philbert, France,
addressed to Chere petite Marie et Luciess
L' Aéroplane (1909)
The postcard image

To end this anniversary sequence

Crawl or fly out (1973)

by Colin McCahon, from his Jet out series

see them all here

Temporary Exhibition Visas : Unofficial Processing Process

2011-09-10T06:52:00.000+10:00

In Australia, the Government and Opposition continue to argue the merits and possibilities of establishing an Australia(n) Offshore Facility.

Meanwhile, in Venice the queues continue to grow at the proposed Visa Processing Facility, the previous Australia(n) Pavilion in the giardini of the Venice Biennale. New Arrivals desperate to gain a Temporary Exhibition Visa to the still-hypothetical Offshore Australia(n) Pavilion have been pressuring Australian Officials for some form of status documentation .

Although it has no legal validity, to mollify the visa seekers Officials have begun rubber-stamping the various proffered identity documents.

Venice portrait studios are said to be exceptionally busy.
What backdrop would you prefer, Signora?
Something 'offshore'?
Something to show off your umbrella?
Certainly...

WoManStyling LaFrance

2011-09-08T01:30:00.006+10:00

Our previous post was ManStyling Marvellous Mebourne (here) - lots of history, language and ideas in those three words.

Today we regard the arrangement of stamps on an envelope recently received from Dreux, France : WomanStyling LaFrance, lots of history, language and ideas here too.

click image to enlarge

Alongside the six Yves Beaujard-signed "definitive" stamps of the 2008 Marianne et l'Europe series...

...are two tag-signed stamps that re-present the street art of MISS.TIC

Marianne and MISS.TIC : equally and indifferently over-stamped cancelled obliterated

ManStyling Marvellous Melbourne

2011-09-05T15:47:00.006+10:00

Melbourne Spring Fashion Week begins today.

We Who Are Men at bLOGOS/HA HA are looking forward to

In conversation : ManStyling
( event information here )

It's always a joy to behold any (dis)play of Richard Nylon (above), a participant in the ManStyling discussion; as it is to follow the adventures in vêtements of bLOGOS/HA HA's favorite French fashion correspondent, Louis Marchon.

This is Louis in tableau vivant as the Actor of Looking (Fashion)

Theatre of the Actors of Regard

Offshore Pavilion Solution : The Response

2011-09-04T01:53:00.000+10:00

Since word got out about the Offshore Australia(n) Pavilion option for Australia's participation in the Venice Biennale the response has been extraordinary.

As reported on ABC.TV : Debate over Australia's cultural stage in Venice

Although the Offshore Solution is yet to get the official nod, umbratects internationale, under their distinctive club-colours umbrellas, along with the zippier zealots of the Art Cult are already arriving en masse at the former Australia Pavilion in the Venice giardini.

Insisting this will soon be confirmed as the Processing Facility for the Offshore Australia(n) Pavilion - despite the denials of puzzled Australian Officials - the New Arrivals are forming orderly queues in anticipation of being among the first to be issued Temporary Exhibition Visas.

Even a Black Bat, from Melbourne...

Offshore Australia(n) Pavilion for Venice Biennale

2011-09-01T19:28:00.023+10:00

Yesterday, the High Court of Australia ruled 6:1 against the legality of the Australian Government's proposed offshore asylum-seekers swap-deal, the so-called Malaysia Solution.

Several months ago we suggested here "in line with Australia's current immigration self-portrait, the next Australian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale could be sited offshore".

Since then we've been contacted by an umbratect (of Melbourne's Black Bats) who has already done just that.

bLOGOS/HA HA understands that the Australian Government and the Australia Council are aware of this development. And that their support for it is under active consideration.

The proposal is :

☂ that International Travelers (IT) to the Venice Biennale who wish to enter the Offshore Australia(n) Pavilion (OAP) be required to meet strict Eligibility Criteria (EC) [yet to be determined]
☂ that the present, Philip Cox designed, Australia(n) Pavilion in the Giardini be retained, but not for the purpose of staging exhibitions
☂ rather, that it serve as an orderly, regional, application and assessment Processing Facility (PF) re. eligibility to access the offshore site
☂ that those determined as Eligible (E) be required to fully fund own visitation costs : i.e. at no cost to Australian Tax Payers (ATP)
☂ that those determined as Eligible (E) agree to travel blindfolded to and from Exhibition Australia (EA)
☂ that those determined as Eligible (E) be issued Temporary Exhibition Visas (TEV)
☂ finally, that the location of the Offshore Australia(n) Pavilion remain known only to Australia(n) Officials (AO)

click image to enlarge

Re. creating the curator

2011-08-28T16:15:00.023+10:00

THE AUSTRALIAN frequently takes pot shots at postmodern regard.

A few, quickly gathered

The headline
In search of old meanings and lost information
by Amanda Bell, in today's Weekend Australian ( article here )
might well have indicated another such. Not so.

It was the sub-heading, in the paper edition, that first caught our attention:
Are our views being sculpted by social networks and search engines?

bLOGOS/HA HA is interested in view, views, viewers, regard, the act and the actors of looking et al. So, it was the first part of the question we particularly savored: Are our views being sculpted?

A prosaic reading of this asks if our views are being formed, being shaped by these certain forces. The article, however, is written by the creative principle of a Grammar School, pictured in the article with her students in a visual arts class (see photo below). Hence, the nuanced make-verb to sculpt. And thus, our reading here, that (one's/our) view can be (regarded as/viewed as) sculpture. View as sculpture.

The second part of the question relates to the tools of the sculptor/sculpting : ...by social networks and search engines?

The article is peppered with c words, concentrating on two: creativity and curator. Bell provides evidence - news here - that those who previously chose to name themselves as artist, now also claim themselves as curator.

The gist of concern...

Later...

Consider ( article here )

Amanda Bell with visual arts students ( photo : The Australian )
The student's open-fingered hand, in the centre of the photo, appears to be identifying with the tree she depicts with the other. Good get, that photographer. (Lyndon Mechielsen)

Inspector In The Frame

2011-08-25T13:41:00.012+10:00

The Inspector inspects...

Fair cop?

Or classic photographer's set-up?

'Artless police officers prove the picture of gullibility' (The Age)

article here

Choisissez! c'est à la carte

2011-08-22T14:14:00.004+10:00

Regardez!
la carte postale

one cart upon another
meta-cart (1912)

click image above to enlarge

Look!
Theatre of the Actors of Regard

one regard upon another
meta-art

Disappearance Day Centenary

2011-08-21T11:08:00.024+10:00

Today is the 100th anniversary of the theft of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa [aka La Gioconda/La Joconde] from the Musée du Louvre, Paris, by Vincenzo Peruggia (below).

Here are a few of y/our postcards from around that time

click image to enlarge

all of which, under your image, recount the bottom line :

LA JOCONDE, de Léonard de Vinci
Disparue du Musée du Louvre le 21 Aout 1911

On this first card someone's over-written that, upside down
so you can glance down and read,
and over your lovely mouth there's a smudge of postal ink

or somesuch

It's the sort of thing could provoke a young Marcel
to pen a saucy mot and
add a hairy frame a swell
o' tongue et la langue, even

by Marcel Duchamp (1919) : click image to enlarge

Here's another postal souvenir to celebrate this day and date.

Just three weeks since your disappearance,
the sender signs their initials and their date (Le 13/9/11)

over the monogram of the printer,

or is it of the publisher?

or some passing engraver tagger?

The more you are
the less you are

The less you are
the more you are
Infinitely Empty

Supreme Goddess as Void
with projection-space for image

HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY

from all your admirers at

bLOGOS/HA HA

NGV Reveals Latest Acquisition

2011-08-18T14:34:00.026+10:00

Yesterday

senior actors

at the National Galley of Victoria

used a classic LOGOS-centric, Golden Guillotined painthing

Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist

by Correggio

as mise en scène

to the revealing of

the NGV's latest, 15oth anniversary acquisition

Black Veil ] Theatre of the Actors of Regard [

at a of cost of $AUD5.2 million.

bLOGOS/HA HA applauds this bold addition to the NGV collection.

Yesterday's presentation by NGV director Gerard Vaughan and NGV trustee Andrew Sisson was wholly inspired.

Few will question the appropriateness of this acquisition
Black Veil ] Theatre of the Actors of Regard [
but we wonder how many of yesterday's media assembly fully gauged the wit and wisdom of that presentation.

Some have since published in their articles and reports certain facts about the background artwork - the artist's stage name (Correggio), his given name (Antonio Allegri), the better known names of selected peers (Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo), the authenticity (tick), price, size, aesthetics, provenance and so on - but, apart from their various attempts to render the title of that picture, we have read no analysis as to why this object with this scene was centre+stage in yesterday's tableau. Why was this object this scene the one to receive the Black Veil?

That is where the cleverness lies. Rather than merely holding up, or down, or pointing to, or in some other way indicating a ready set stand-alone display of
Black Veil ] Theatre of the Actors of Regard [
as might well have been done
yesterday's presentation reveled in layers and levels.

First (as described in a 'live report' on ABC radio) the media theorin were led through a titillation of basement corridors into a room where they beheld against a black background an exemplar art historical object set within a Golden Guillotine, this all held aloft (see: Triumph of Christianity over Paganism, by Tommaso Siciliano, 1585) on an artist-style easel pedestal.

Act one :
Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist :
within the Four Right Angles of that painthing's Golden Guillotine is a tableau of three significant figures. At the centre is the baby Jesus. Later he will be known under the stage name The Christ and will be reckoned to be The Logos, The Word made Flesh, Agnus Dei - obviously bLOGOS/HA HA has an interest in this - and we all know he will come to be represented by the Sign of +he Cross, inverted torture frame of the Four Right Angles. In summary, we are presented with a classic, originary [Western, Christian] Phallo-LOGOS-centric opening scene. In the Centre, The One; with supporters of import to either side : mystical earth mother Mary and Media Agent to the Word, John the Baptist.

Act two replicates the form, then releases a killer punch.

Act two, tableau one :
Again the centre position is the most important. The Golden Guillotine, previously seen to frame that within its bounds, now is seen to turn on itself, as it were, and frame that without, in this case its supporters to either side : the Director as Ring Master (Frame Master) Advocate on one side and on the other the Trustee Provider Regardist ("You look at the way things move over time, and this is a great opportunity to buy something using our dollar and get a lot of value for it." - Andrew Sisson).

Act two, tableau two :
Cometh the moment...

...cometh the Thing.

Gallery unveils its newest, nearest and dearest
NGV unveils highest priced piece in its history
NGV UNVEILS MAJOR ANNIVERSARY GIFT - NGV Media

Black Veil ] Theatre of the Actors of Regard [

Gasps from the theorin, the immediate recognition of the rightness and boldness of this acquisition; then quiet as the implications begin to build

This Heady Victory : A Restoration Comedie

2011-08-17T00:01:00.004+10:00

Oh, this moment of imperfect regard

of this digital reproduction

of a damaged photographic print

of a damaged object

as regarded by Daphne Mayo

in this 1912 tableau vivant [ Theatre of the Actors of Regard ]

came to bLOGOS/HA HA attention

today

as, first, a roughly repaired, cropped, black-and-white

click above to enlarge

dot-screened detail

of an ink printed document

from the U Q ART MUSEUM

inviting us to attend

on 24 August

The Daphne Mayo Lecture 2011
Contemporary Australian Photography since 1980

by Anne Marsh

author of

Look :
Contemporary Australian Photography since 1980

photo by Polixeni Papapetrou

a post script :
Researching the 1912 tableau at University of Queensland Library - Daphne Mayo Collection ( here ) we were greatly surprised to also find there this image of another Daphne Mayo construction,
from 1921, The Student's Head

Thus ...

the characters proclaim as One

this Play is done!

UK umbratecture

2011-08-15T15:06:00.005+10:00

Interesting to see the UK acknowledging umbratecture.

click image to enlarge

Those National Pavilions! ...

2011-08-13T16:12:00.007+10:00

Another something of influence on the present generation of Melbourne's BLACK BATS

THOSE NATIONAL PAVILIONS! ...
JUST LIKE IN MY DREAMS!

see :
ANACHROTECTURE NOW :
An Other Australia Pavilion for Venice Biennale

click image to enlarge

Above, with BLACK BAT umbratect at Ewing Gallery, 1984
at the exhibition ARCHITECTURA PICTA _ curator Tony Clark

From there into the Joseph Brown Collection, Melbourne.

Later, rejected by the National Gallery of Victoria when Joseph Brown donated his collection to that institution. Sent to auction.

ANACHROTECTURE NOW : An Other Australia Pavilion for Venice Biennale

2011-08-10T16:13:00.028+10:00

AUSTRALIA [SIC] wants to update it's Official Anachrotecture at the Venice Biennale.

It is proposed there be a new Australia(n) Pavilion to replace the present one, designed by Philip Cox and opened in 1988.

From Day One, the presentecture was regarded by some as unsatisfactory, as Australia unFelix unSettled unKnown.
O Antipodean Pavilion of Restless Desire
O Objecture of Self Craving

There is much discussion about who should be permitted to enter the proposed Official Competition for A Nuther One.
( Click here for Ray Edgar's article "Top talent edged out" in yesterday's Melbourne AGE. )

Some are calling for a Sectional Open Competition (i.e. Open to ARCHITECTS ONLY. Click here for that. )

Others are calling for an anonymous, fully open Open Competition. Others (aware that "A politician always wins") are calling for an Open Judgement. Others are merely calling COOEEEEEE!

Whatever is chosen as the Chosen One, you can bet from Day One it too will be regarded as... unsatisfactory. ("We have nothing to unlearn but ignorance itself.")

bLOGOS/HA HA has been researching National Pavilions at International Expositions, from the first Venice Exposition in 1896 onwards. (To see a selection of these click here. ) To us, they all look OK - they are what they are - and they all look funny. All in and out of time. All anachronistic anachrotecture.

Future designs so far proffered appear to us no more or less anachronistic than those of past and present.

The Australia allotment at Venice is beside a waterway.

Here is how it is described at this website : [2008.04.22] Ideas Competition for a New Australian Pavilion at Venice Biennale

Here next, with a comparable waterway setting and boat people passing, is Ernest Coffin's depiction of the Australia Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition, Wembley, England 1924.

One of the 30 painteds exhibited in that pavilion ( see them here ) offered any alert regardist a surprise meta-critique.

James R Jackson's The holiday (1916) depicts two early Australian umbratects abroad, arriving by boat and settling themselves under their own satisfactory umbrellatecture, on an embankment not dissimilar to that outside the Official Pavilion.

This scene and the sly wit of its inclusion in the Motherland Official Oversight of 1924 would later be taken as inspiration by Melbourne's BLACK BATS.

So to Pavilion Australia Future Past . The 2008 Ideas Competition for a New Australian Pavilion at Venice Biennale was promoted by Di Stasio and staged as an exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art.

Theatre of the Architors of Regard _ click image to enlarge

Here is the "Professional Winner" of that competition - Davide Marchetti, Rome. (There was also a "Pre-Professional Winner". Conclusion: the overall winner is The Profession.)

So, an architect from Rome is chosen by The Profession as the Ideas Competition winner for Pavilion Australia at Venice.
Here's the Pantheon, Rome. Go figure?!

image courtesy : Theatre of the Architors of Regard

And instead of the tomb of Raphael...

image courtesy : Theatre of the Architors of Regard

Same Time Same Place : The Scratch

2011-08-06T22:07:00.015+10:00

another Saturday night
listening to/ listening to/ listening to/ listening to/ listening to/

another scratchy old LP/
old LP/ old LP/ old LP/ old LP/ old LP/ old LP/ old LP/ old LP/

click image to enlarge

☀ ( ( BLACK ☂ BATS { { : ) : )

2011-08-04T11:02:00.004+10:00

In Sydney (
late 2oth century (
under the aegis of Theatre of the Actors of Regard (
members of Melbourne's BLACK BATS

{ see: umbrellatecture / umbratecture }

perform a tableau of proscenium arcs and mindful regard

The BLACK BATS original sketch for the Sydney tableau...

...was, in part, inspired

☀ ( ( ☂ { { !

by Jørn Utzon's 1957 spark of clustered arcs

submitted to the competition for a Sydney Opera House design.

The BLACK BATS sketch, in toto ((((

Melbourne umbrellatecture / umbratecture

2011-08-01T14:29:00.001+10:00

Melbourne has a lively culture of architecture, and of its shadow
umbrellatecture (see also : umbratecture)

Below is the logo of the BLACK BATS (MELB)

KILLER HEADLINE

2011-07-31T20:06:00.012+10:00

A well-known Victorian horse racing identity has referred us to the cover of today's Sunday Territorian.

Along with Sense Of Sun's recent Darwin win
there's this poem of regard

But what a stunner, the feature headline!

This at a time when questions, speculations and revelations about 'media baron' Rupert Murdoch, his son James and the practices of their News Corporation employees have produced so many of the world's news headlines during the past two months.

Finer print reveals that it's referring to "Bradley John Murdoch, who is serving 28 years at Alice Springs Correctional Centre for shooting the British ... Read more about this story in today's Sunday Territorian. ... ".

So, of course, it's not about Rupert or James. But that first, fooled impression stays to tease. The stray seed is planted, that the most powerful newspaper LOGOS man in world ...

WEST SPACE the next generation

2011-07-28T10:12:00.004+10:00

The latest incarnation of WEST SPACE opens tonight!

The opening is tonight : 6 - 9pm

WEST SPACE
Level 1, 225 Bourke Street
Melbourne, Victoria, 3000
Australia

exhibition hours :
Wed - Fri 12 - 6pm
Sat 12 - 5pm

website : http://westspace.org.au/

10 ways to look at the past

2011-07-27T13:49:00.022+10:00

"I have seen the future
and it works"
Lincoln Steffens
after visit as journalist to Communist Russia
- 3 April 1919 -

"I have looked at the past
and cannot find it."
TAR
after visit as regardist to National Gallery of Victoria
- 27 July 2011 -
(see below)

Coincident with the National Gallery of Victoria's present-time exhibition :

10 ways to look at the past
23 July 2011–19 February 2012

Theatre of the Actors of Regard (TAR) will perform, at that exhibition, ten unheralded tableaux :

It being presently obscured
23 July 2011–19 February 2012

Title, script and stage directions for the ten are as follows :

THE REAL REGARD

2011-07-26T06:44:00.009+10:00

On Saturday afternoon, before Cadel Evans successfully raced the final time trial of the Tour de France, bLOGOS/HA HA souvenired this newspaper banner from the local general store.

Everything in everything. How curious, the use of the word REAL here. It would have been quite sufficient to simply say CADEL. Everyone would have got that. CADEL YOU BLOODY BEAUTY. Instead, it seems to suggest there is an other CADEL REALITY : THE UNREAL CADEL / THE FAKE CADEL / THE REALISTIC CADEL / THE SURREAL CADEL ...

Main Entry: real
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: genuine in existence
Synonyms: THE absolute, actual, authentic, bodily, bona fide, certain, concrete, corporal, corporeal, de facto, embodied, essential, evident, existent, existing, factual, firm, heartfelt, honest, in the flesh, incarnate, indubitable, intrinsic, irrefutable, legitimate, live, material, original, palpable, perceptible, physical, positive, present, right, rightful, sensible, sincere, solid, sound, stable, substantial, substantive, tangible, true, unaffected, undeniable, undoubted, unfeigned, valid, veritable CADEL
Antonyms: THE dishonest, fake, false, feigned, imaginary, invalid, untrue CADEL

The Herald Sun (Melbourne) is a Rupert Murdoch tabloid. We at bLOGOS/HA HA reckon the REAL CADEL caption is a zeitgeist thing, a possibly subconscious possibly deliberate inversion out of the REAL JULIA / FAKE JULIA headline mindset. ("Cadel Evans, he's a real leader. Not like that electorally illegitimate Julia Gillard.")

The Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has been hammering hammering a small set of catch phrases into the nation's news reports every day since he failed to win the last election and then, in a close result, lost the balance of power to an Independents-supported Labor Minority Government. Hence his FAKE JULIA obsession.

Here's an instance from February this year, as reported on ABC Radio National :

And this was yesterday, as reported on ABC Radio National :

All this talk about REALITY (sic) ...

From last night's 7PM ABC TV News :

DINKING with Dad and Oppy and Cadel

2011-07-25T04:07:00.003+10:00

dink (regional : Australia, New Zealand)

verb (t)
1. to convey as a second person on a horse, bicycle, or motorcycle
noun
2. a ride obtained from being dinked

Below is an uncropped photo, taken by mum : Dad, with his Malvern Star bike and Gladstone bag on the handlebars, about to dink your junior correspondent to school. Most likely it was for my first day at school, with dad on his way to work as the local pharmacist - Kangaroo Flat, Victoria, 1956. (Mum also designed that pair of lotus flower wrought-iron gates.)

"Can you give me a dink?"

Such a means of transport is illegal now, but back then we all rode bikes and dinking was common. Even double-dinking, with a second passenger on the handle-bars. True. (There are also accounts of this at the Macquarie Dictionary's Australian Word Map.)

Kangaroo Flat is on the Calder Highway, 4 miles to the Melbourne side of Bendigo. That gum tree lined road can be glimpsed outside our Lotus Gates. Bicycle racing was very popular in Victoria back then so as well as people riding past our place to and from work and school there were always large numbers of cycle athletes going about their training.

Even before that, when dad was young and living in Shepparton, he and his friends would cycle and race from Shep and back to Bendigo and Melbourne and so on. I'm pretty sure dad said he knew and cycled with Oppy, who came from nearby Rochester.

This is my photo of dad beside the statue of Oppy at Rochester in 1997 on a trip back to Shep.

Hubert 'Oppy' Oppenheim has been mentioned by many in the last 24 hours, in the light of Cadel Evans' magnificent victory in the Tour de France. Australia, and Victoria in particular, has had a century of bicycle culture which is now realised and recognised in the crowning of Cadel Evans in Paris.

Thanks for the dink, everyone.

Vive le Tour!

Cadel Evans and the Hero's Journey

2011-07-24T13:25:00.017+10:00

This is the logo of Sports Mad Australia

Sports Mad Australia made the image below in 1991 : The Wonderful Laughing Journey of Saint Kidney. For once, the picture does literally tell the story.

click to enlarge image

The journey of a hero who sets out on a binary eye cycle and along the way, through the geography of pain, heals the dualistic wound.

This epic of the AFL came to mind again over the recent weeks of this year's Tour de France, and especially during the last few days, witnessing the enormous courage of the Australian cyclist Cadel Evans, lead rider for team BMC.

Duality of determinants in the duel for the crown
Rupert Guinness : Sydney Morning Herald July 24, 2011
click to read article

Let it all hang out : Australian Art of the 70s

2011-07-19T14:46:00.013+10:00

There are a couple of old favorites in this exhibition (- 7 August)
at the Ballarat Art Gallery .

First, Frank Littler's wonderful hot! crazy Pro News, circa 1975.

Here at Pro News bLOGOGOS/HA HA we have no inside knowledge about Mr Littler's intended readings, if any. However, in the dark light of the current revelations about Media Chief Rupert Murduch's NEWS of the WORLD, it's shame and demise, and the ongoing investigations into that newspaper's journalists' hacking of the phones of everyone from Royalty to a murdered child... it's hard not to see Rupert et al pictured here in excruciating hellish detail.

In the last week we've seen live on World TV not only Rupert and James Murdoch and their former now-arrested editor of News of the World grilled before a committee of the British Parliament, we've also seen the two most senior London police officers resign over police involvement.

Frank Littler's cockatoo screeching radio and television Media Man is accompanied onstage and off by the boys in blue. One of them even reads a rag with the headline MANAGING DIRECTOR

In the off stage shade at the bottom right corner, a blind or otherwise eyes-closed someone (a Pro News journalist perhaps) is playing along on a customized black phone-guitar. Yakkety Yak hackety hack...

That darth tool echoes the Instrument of the Passion, the eyeless guitar-body being fingered by the headliner.

These two Pro News guitars find familiar company in the form of the PUPPET CULTURE FRAMING SYSTEM at work in this other exhibition favorite from 1979 :

The Puppet Culture Framing System was also configured around this time as a guitar...

Hence

Slave Guitars
formerly known as
Slave Guitars of the Art Cult

Who, ME? US? WE?

2011-07-09T17:58:00.011+10:00

Here's another from the Paris EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE.

A souvenir from LA MAISON DU RIRE (The House of Laughter), an expo presentation by the journal LE RIRE (Laughter),
a favourite of bLOGOS/HA HA.

This is a 1900 drawing of the exterior of La Maison du Rire.
(It's from here)

And, especially for all our PUPPET CULTURE subscribers, an interior view of the above : LA SALLE DES MARIONNETTES.
(From here)

The exterior frieze presents the grand parade of passing persons.

The souvenir emphasises the same.
These are, you are, we are...
Types de la Rue.

And what of the communiqué?

This self-declaring card of backwards regard??

Carte rétrospective ...

"............. .......!."

2011-07-06T12:32:00.008+10:00

Dear Old Friends!

Next, five years after the first Venice Biennale
(see our Venezia 1895 blog here), this postcard from Paris's
EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE DE 1900
Le Chemin de fer Electrique et la Plate-Forme mobile
(The electric railway and mobile platform)

click image to enlarge

Our bLOGOS/HA HA expo correspondent James begins his report with a quote :

". . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . ! ."

WAR ON TERROR LINGUA

2011-07-03T15:13:00.012+10:00

Being a follower of the emptiness teachings makes barracking for The Bombers an emptiness practice par excellence.

It never ceases to amaze this observer that in Australia one can wear a red and black beanie or scarf featuring the word BOMBERS and everyone who sees it thinks FOOTBALL.

This in the time of The War on Terror.

Nor (amaze) to hear the fans loud urging Come on Bombers!
As on Saturday night when against the predictions of all the expert commentators...

Nor (amaze) to read a newspaper headline such as the next day's
Bombing raid stuns Geelong
The Age, 3 July 2011
article here (including full photo by Sebastian Costanzo)

Nor amaze to hear us sing

See the Bombers fly up, up!
To win the premiership flag.

This from 1980-1983 :
collection: Art Gallery of Western Australia

DANIEL THOMAS TURNS 80

2011-06-29T13:57:00.016+10:00

Happy Birthday Daniel!

recently...

Internationale Universelle Generale View

2011-06-28T00:01:00.021+10:00

Another opening, another show. And another card to tell the tale.

The previous postcard was from the first Venice Biennale, 1895.

This time it will be Paris and the Exposition Universelle of 1900.

As always, who's in and who's out constructs the larger exposé, whether Esposizione Internationale (Venice) or Exposition Universelle (Paris). Below are the National Pavilions that made the cut for Paris 1900.

bLOGOS/HA HA regards these with a certain lost-in-space curiosity, especially at this time when project Australia has just announced there is to be a new\different|other/Australia(n) projection-space for the next Venice Biennale.

Maybe, in line with Australia's current immigration self-portrait, the next Australian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale could be "sited offshore" at either Christmas Island or Nauru (Howard Government; endorsed by present Abbott Opposition) or at Timor-Leste, New Guinea or Malaysia (Gillard Government).

At bLOGOS/HA HA we've long appreciated the over-ma(r)king palimpsestry of Arnulf Rainer. Below is the cover of a recent book that surveys Rainer's practice, epitomised here by a handmade bloodcolour markover & signature.

With that in mind, here is the earlier mentioned 1900 postcard, a Vue Generale of the Exposition Universelle, overmarked with a shitearthcolour brushstroke & signature (R. Appert).

click image to enlarge

On the other side the same fine pen addresses all this to

Mademoiselle Betsy Castreman
76 rue des Brasseurs
à Mamur
Belgique

exhibition announcement

2011-06-22T10:00:00.003+10:00

The fine art of the exhibition announcement. Something already disappearing as many galleries defer to email announcements.

Here's one from the heap, from 1895. Something on the back of which one might pen an account to another.

Something for a stamp, for an obliteration. Something to be sent, to be delivered, to be received.

Something to be kept, perhaps, to be put somewhere ...

... to show someone sometime.

Prima Esposizione
Internationale d' Arte
della Citta di Venezia • 1895

click to enlarge

Australian artists at 2011 Venice Biennale

2011-06-18T18:55:00.010+10:00

From Buddhism's enlightenment project (see yesterday's blog)
we return again to the Venice Biennale.

The overall title of the 2011 Biennale di Venezia is
ILLUMInazioni – ILLUMInations

Australian artists participated strongly in this year's Biennale.
As well as Hani Armanious's The Golden Thread at the official Australian Pavilion ("one of the best" - Alain Seban, President of the Centre Georges Pompidou) and the three artists presented by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art during the vernissage, there were also a number of other notable Oz contributions.

One of these was an off-site domestic-style pavilion by Theatre of the Actors of Regard. It is a direct and literal response to the Biennale's ILLUMInation theme.

Using a revolutionary new sight-sensing paint technology, the set's signage is engineered to register, amplify (feedback) and return any gaze directed onto it. This produces in the observer an unexpected mind-concentrating effect, as if blinded with one's own light/sight/projection capability.

We see in the image above the word illuminate "blissed out by the search light of the mind" (as described by T.A.R.). Similarly below, and elsewhere on the set.

interconnected

2011-06-13T22:54:00.001+10:00

What a pleasure to arrive at the tram stop opposite Young & Jacksons and see there Australian Tibetan families, with parents and grand-parents in traditional clothing, on their way to the teachings of the Dalai Lama.

At 9.20 this morning we were welcomed to the Melbourne Convention Centre for the third and final day of His Holiness' presentation of Shantideva's A Bodhisattva's Way of Life, and a further welcome was extended "to the 28,000 who are with us online". Internet access to this event was only announced a couple of days ago. Open universe(ity) interconnectedness...