skullduggery - a battle of the sexes!

back from the york campaign, tired and triumphant, field trip successful…a new bookshop discovered, reunited with 2 old favourites, new stretch of wall scaled, much roman and medieval building technique admired, aimless mooching and people watching indulged in. just the kind of purposeless day trip that really requires a like minded companion and sidekick...

the trusty stillingfleet and i enjoyed a spot of impromptu al fresco dining in the museum gardens, consuming an alarmingly voluminous chip butty washed down with a can of lilt (the totally tropical taste) followed recklessly by a scoop of chocolate and vanilla local ice cream. stillingfleet, ever the dilettante, loitered delighted over a street cellist and a soprano, and ever the gentleman, carried my bag of freshly snaffled second hand treasures, most kind as they were rather onerous, little suspecting his less than honourable intentions. renowned as he is for the sin of book coveting, i am still reeling from his latest bout of magpiery.

ladies beware the wily bibliotaph.

ostensibly the bookish gentleman is a perfect companion for a dyed in the wool bluestocking (punlovers, i'm on form today!), but they are never to be entirely trusted! whilst comparing and purring over our respective finds at lunch, my splendid 1950’s volume of ‘current literary terms’, initially mocked in the shop for being somewhat ‘out of date’, turned out later to be the essential tome for the stillingfleet library, and the inevitable haggling, cajoling, and blatant naggery began.

countless doughty females have straddled the globe, the equal of our male counterparts in adventure, exploration and fortitude, and i am the last to resort to the myth of a fairer sex. however, there is something simply ungentlemanly about tearing a book freshly acquired from a lady’s mitt, taking advantage of her shorter arm span, and popping the said item into one’s own satchel.

clearly, there’s no honour amongst boffins…

there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home

or in my case, there's no place like away from home...

readers, i'm feeling a little discombobulated. expeditions that were intended to lend a little substance and empirical inspiration to my mullings on modernity, the metropolis and my attempts to cut a path through the tangles of progress, have contrarily but predictably only reiterated an underlying disquiet.

was it the ubiquitous cranes, the inevitability of another change in the skyline, or the ceaseless self promotion of the building site hoardings? whatever it was, my first reaction on returning to downtown manchester was dismay. it also probably wasn’t a great idea to investigate the shiny parallel universe/city that is spinningfields and the euphemistically named ‘left bank’ straight after the delights of avignon, residence of a string of 14th century popes, or maguelone, evocative ruin of the 10th century fortress-cathedral on the outskirts of montpellier…

i know it's a cheap shot to compare one's home town to the glamour and novelty of the holiday destination, but there's something about manchester, quintessential modern city, birthplace of the industrial revolution, and home to radicals, revolutionaries and incandescent talent ever since, that is increasingly depressing. plus, the knowledge that what i find disturbing is precisely what the city fathers, and the ever increasing 'triumph' of the relentless regeneration since the bomb, approve merely increases my distress, agitating my long overdue dyspepsia!

there seems to be an unlikely alliance between marketing manchester, journalists, cultural commentators and producers to wax lyrically and uncritically about the reinvention of the city, a version predicated on the implicit consensus that manchester prior to 1996 was simply a black hole of mediocrity, of dark age squalor. as i don’t even adhere to the popular myth of the actual ‘dark ages’ (preferring the notion of a vibrant culture not reliant on the written word) i’m hardly likely to be persuaded by a pre 96 dark age. am i alone in remembering that the 80’s and 90’s were actually quite fine thank you very much, and we managed rather well without 25 branches of starbucks, neros, and costa coffee? that we didn’t go naked before London deigned to transplant flashy, waggishly trashy versions of their stores onto the ‘millennium quarter’? and that endless identikit luxury loft villages on former ncp car parks are no substitute for metropolitan communities that are affordable, sound proofed, and bounded by leafy green space with which to take in some unpolluted air? pre-bomb life was undoubtedly more rough and ready, it was certainly less slick, less packaged, and definitely unpredictable after dark, but it was splendid in its adaptability, proud of its inventiveness, unique in its history.

what we have now amounts to an everytown, a commodified dreamscape that’s overpriced and overcorporate, an open air trafford centre. without some critical discourse we are in danger of losing the essential character of manchester, of ironing out the corns, bunions and scars that make the unique footprint of a well loved and lived in city. my travels beyond the ‘post bomb dream’ have reminded me of just what makes a city irresistible – the juxtaposition of shabby chic and opulent with historic and avant garde; the palimpsest of experience and history, the fresh and the faded, the gnarly and the new. my task is to discover that manchester, if its not too late…

so tomorrow i’m taking a last refuge in the classics and a train to york with my own latter day mr stillingfleet, dear friend, honorary bluestocking, stalwart classicist and assyrian enthusiast. we shall perambulate the walls, wallow in the faded grandeur of the museum and cathedral, browse in secondhand bookshops, and generally inhale an surfeit of antiquity,

after that its back to the tricky contradictions of postmodernism!

miss niblock en vacances!

zut alors!

my london adventures have been unexpectedly upstaged by a sojourn in avignon, home of the antipopes...picture miss niblock cycling through dappled countryside and ruminating on medieval papacy in gothic cathedrals and lofty castles!!!

a bientot mes amis..

tony wilson - manchester situationist and flaneur

i am posting the following missive from a young member of my circle, the brunswick bluestockings, about a manchester character whose life, career and philosophy was the epitome it seems to us of the post modern flaneur and situationist...

tony wilson died yesterday; mr manchester himself, as paul morley - looking as shocked as we all feel, regardless or not of whether we knew him personally - explained on bbc breakfast news this morning. though he’d been ill for some months i didn’t really take it too seriously or give it much thought; because, i now realize, he was such an implicit ingredient of the city that i couldn’t envisage him not being here. not simply a famous face, he was a visible, physical man about town. unlike many mancunians who ‘make it’, this was a man who stayed put, who loved the place, who created, nurtured and built a manchester not just to stay for, but attract others to. plus this was a man always on the go and with such a lot still to say! a boundlessly enthusiastic and energetic man who was a constant and vociferous supporter of all things mancunian. in fact, no one can possibly write a blog from manchester or come from manchester without wanting to mark the passing of this remarkable and always controversial ‘mr manchester’.

tony wilson was not only the creator of the hacienda, the maverick behind factory records, and more recently ‘in the city’, the annual muso convention that’s become something of an institution, he was a manchester situationist, perhaps the first. heavily influenced by debord and his coterie, the hacienda, named after a celebrated line in a 1953 tract by ivan chtcheglov http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/Chtcheglov.htm, a friend of the future situationists, was more than a night club, though it became undoubtedly and notoriously the night club to end all night clubs, ushering in the superclub and dance scene that defined the 90’s - it was the breathing manifesto of the situationist internationale, and a look at the original application form is an intriguing glimpse into a generation that owe a debt to the spirit of those gallic agitators.

in the first 4 or 5 years, the hacienda was in reality a social club, a meeting point, a refuge, a place to call home, often half empty (and bloody freezing) but always welcoming, after a teenage spent taking one’s life in one’s hands at an array of (in era order) roxy/bowie, punk, new wave/alternative nights at unwelcoming venues across the city, where it was often wiser to reveal your homemade outfit in the toilets, once safely past the meatheads, casuals and townies…

catholic grammar school boy, and cambridge educated, he was on the face of it an unlikely advocate for everyday culture - bookish and counter culturish, someone with ideas at once above and below his station! whilst he was on tv being loved and loathed in equal measure, this little bluestocking was ducking and diving her daily path to catholic grammer school, the local snob in ridiculous costume and too many books under her arm...luckily he clearly revelled in this reputation, half snob, half scally. it feels now as if there was never a time that tony wilson wasn’t sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. probably it was just that there were less tv channels then, but as far back as the early 70’s you couldn’t turn the box on and not bump into the young tony, a 'groovy' long haired presenter on granada reports, an institution that was still rather stuffy and ‘world servicey’, with bespectacled side parting’d school teachers types for presenters. his natural insouciance, at once languid and spirited, was the first hint that things were on the move, that the old guard was on the wane, that the establishment was in for a challenge. plus there was a clutch of girls at my school with a crush on him, the kind normally reserved for the likes of the bay city rollers, who would rush to granada studios after final lessons to catch a glimpse or get his autograph…a modern celebrity in the making, surely the first and last news presenter with a fan club?! and surely still the only journalist by day presenting local news and current affairs, whilst by night inventing radical and seditious music / cultural programmes such as ‘so it goes’ and ‘revolver’, shows that were the antidote and antipathy to whisperin’ bob harris and the old grey whistle test. to this fish out of water from a dour backwater in north manchester’s badlands, a lifeline had been thrown.

an intellectual, a radical, a social historian, a broadcaster, an entrepreneur, a passionate mancunian, one could easily argue that he was the original architect behind the current renaissance of the city as much as the architect of the modern music scene. a look at the many online obituaries is testimony to his influence and the following guardian online article by john harris neatly sums up and acknowledges the contradictions surrounding his ambitions and achievements, a heady cocktail of philosophising, anarchism, swagger, idealism, foolhardiness and confidence. http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/08/tony_wilson_19502007.html

easy to be blasé now, but in the early 70’s there was no ‘museum of the city’, no marketing manchester, no urban splash, no regeneration blueprint. somewhat post war in atmosphere, a living lowry cliche in many respects, for years before the hacienda, his irregular (friends we are delving into prehistory here!) so called ‘factory nights’ were the only option for a night out that didn’t involve chicken in a basket. that probably sounds postmodern, quirky and fun to you nowadays, all bloated and culture fatigued on your city life pull out guide to manchester lifestyle, but that’s the point; then, unlike today, there was nothing, nowt, zero, ziltch…not so funny now, is it?

wilson enabled me and my generation to create our lives, our scene, if you will; he opened the doors to a different manchester, parallel to the existing one around us. in an era that has become more than ever about the marketing opportunities of culture, art, music, talent in general, when it seems anything and everything is a ‘brand’, it's perhaps easy to misunderstand or underestimate the intentions, idealism, radicalism and sheer naiveté of wilson and factory's out and out rejection of any appropriation or commercialism of their endeavours. eventually of course it imploded all around him and the label, but for a while manchester’s pop culture was at the van guard of an obscure but highly significant french philosophy. this raincoat brigade were anglo situationists walking the city totally anew, on the peripheries and margins of the city centre, pre-empting urban regeneration by 20 odd years, ushering in this 24 hour city of today, a legacy that is something of a double edged sword and not without problematics, but that’s another diary date…

Tony Wilson, passionate mancunian, least likely to want a blue plaque - nostalgia and monument making never being his thing, no ‘legendary cavern’ tourist trail for him – and perhaps sufficiently woven into the fabric of our city and its future to not warrant such a leaden stamp of approval - the city and its streets are already the poorer without you.

a bluestocking in london

what better place for flaneurie, to begin my fresh exploration of the city, than in London: after all its easier to look afresh and curiously at a city that’s not your own.

i love cities, i love their ramshackle and chaotic nature, the speed and ferocity, i love the freedom and anonymity in the crowds, people watching, listening in on snippets of conversation, making up vignettes about strangers' lives…less and less does this palpable excitement happen in my own city, which in contrast seems so often predictable and over familiar.

sometimes a spell away is just what the doctor ordered, and a few days in London provided the ideal opportunity to refresh my jaundiced eye...

letters to atticus

my diary has recently taken on a more experimental tenor; less a personal, private means of expressing my thoughts and mental ramblings, and more a formal journal, an actual work in progress. this is somewhat unexpected, and consequently these pages may reveal just how unprepared i am to make this metaphorical transition. like cicero a propos his 'letters to atticus', this was never meant for publication – but, like cicero, making this protest is a tad disingenuous.

its a physical transition too. since becoming 'writer' or 'thinker' in residence at apartment (not terms i'm entirely comfortable with and may well shrug off - after all i'm no derrida, or even agatha christie!), i have been popping into the space, the experiment that is this ongoing artwork or ideas laboratory, almost daily. from here i eat toast and drink tea, chat to hilary and paul or maeve and cherry, eavesdropping into the world of art and artists before settling down to a day of thinking, writing and researching the hybrid, whirling, blurry boundaries of the contemporary big picture.

apartment is more a situation or outlook than an institution; a space where friends and colleagues meet, share ideas, create work. cheeky, impertinent, an agent provocateur, apartment parodies the gallery, the institution, while at the same time seriously exploiting the possibilities of both. its domestic informality is a framework and catalyst for a new interrogative discourse, an entirely different way of circumnavigating contemporary practice and cultural debate. and like situationism its a strategy, a tactic, a reflexive dialogue more than an orthodox organisation. of course its not alone in wishing to foster this multi-disciplinary vision; visit situations, the bristol based project for more insights, inspiration and information: http://www.situations.org.uk/index.htm

the possibilities for this intellectual 'meta lab' are boundless; lets hope i can do it justice. armed with the words of irit rogoff off i set into this brave new world with a 'curious eye' to discover new questions, new possibilities, new conversations...