the birth of the timid modernist...?

though it's traditional to regard december as the period of reflection and self assessment, it occurs to me, as this first month of 2009 draws to a very rapid close, that in reality january is when all the navel gazing actually happens. because january is the time when we re-read those crumpled lists and resolutions hastily made in the dazzling glow of new years brilliant and deafening fireworks, fooling us into temporary aberrations of unfounded optimism or sheer foolhardiness...

like the two faced janus it is named after, this first month looks as much at the retreating year as the coming one. it is a metaphorical bridge between the past and the future, the year we have lived and our aspirations for whats to come. it is in effect a rehearsal, a trial period for the rest of the year...a sort of introductory offer. january is for many somewhat bleak, stark and joyless after all that festive fun and frivolity and not for nothing has it been dubbed the most depressing month of the year. we have just these four weeks to try out, refine or abandon all those crazy dreams for self improvement, reinvention, flagellation, before the year starts in earnest. by february gym memberships drop, attendance at weight watchers crashes and the long dark nights can seem interminable.

as for me, i too have looked back at 2008, assessed my failures and achievements and made a long list of 'to does' in an effort to focus my attention for the coming year. i've also attempted to identify just what it is that im trying to do, or in contemporary parlance, understand and articulate my 'practice'.

the problem with being what often feels like a lone visual culturist in a city of poets, artists, playwrights, actors and novelists, is the sense of isolation, of not having the camaraderie of one's peers. and crucially unlike them, i simply dont have a practice, a title or definition to guide my progress. without this sense of self awareness or identity, my gaze tends to range far and wide, encompassing too many interests, and i am always in danger of floundering ineffectively in the backwaters of the cultural zeitgeist, a mere dilettante in a world of solid practitioners, all creating artefacts or making work within definite boundaries or disciplines.

last year i was writer in residence at apartment and i came to enjoy hiding behind that handy title, though i was ever uncertain as to my function amongst the artists and curators, an imposter in the world of art. i have also been made welcome amongst loiterers, flaneurs and urbanists, but again have no real purpose in their midst, a mere voyeur in a world of activity, agency and creativity. i have been shortlisted in the writing category of the manchester blog community, but turned out to be a fish out of water amongst the other worthy shortlisters, with no actual writing under my belt, no manuscripts, recitals or readings to my credit. i have a keen interest in the built environment and the metropolis, but am not an architect or landscape designer. i have presented papers about the way we live now and how we navigate space in todays city, but am hardly a social anthropologist or cultural geographer.

so this january i have been pitifully attempting to pinpoint just what it is i am, what is it i do and how i can do it better and more effectively, find an audience, fellow enthusiasts, some of my own kind to play with and find my own path amongst. and as we progress to february its surely time to get down to business, face the coming year, embrace it and do something useful with it...

looking back at my past ruminatings whilst preparing the Reading Room section of the recent apartment show i realise how much of my output has been a defence of modernism in general and especially what is all too often dismissed as 'grim' or 'utopian' but always misguided and failed post-war social housing. my new year list of urgent things to write about in the diary reiterates this, comprising as it does the umist hollaway wall, the threats to the umist campus, and the 20th century society's murals campaign.

owen hatherley in his brilliant blog 'sit down man you're a bloody tragedy' has as his visual motif the beautiful tag 'militant modernist', the title of his forthcoming book, described on the ballardian as

'a call to have the courage to be modern against all the current postmodern pieties of exhaustion and fragmentation' and 'a revolutionary modernism against its absorption into the heritage industry and the aesthetics of the luxury flat'.

it is also a call to arms to this humble scribbler to get off the fence and come out as at the very least a timid but determined modernist. perhaps this is my new title and aspiration for 2009:

EP Niblock, diarist, bluestocking and modernist, defender of the brutalist aesthetic!

Au Revoir Apartment....

i dont often fiddle around with the look and layout of the diary mainly because i have no idea how to change my wallpaper, insert my widgets or upload my flickr books so it was with some ceremony and much reluctance that today i clicked on layout and deleted one of the most significant sidebars of my vita nuova...

yes the observant among you might have noticed that the link to Apartment, my alma mater and kindly mentors for far longer than my actual residency, has finally disappeared. the recent events and installation at the gallery were a retrospective of sorts, a celebration of my year holed up in the cosy domestic space that is the cheeky nerve centre of creative brunswick. the show was extended 'by popular demand' (just who were you, i wonder...thanks for visiting, hope it was worth the trek!!) to 16 january but a lady never outstays her welcome and its already the 23rd with a new and exciting show in the pipeline so today i did the decent thing, packed up and metaphorically said ta-ta.

this deletion of course might mark the end of my official association with Apartment but not of our beautiful friendship or my abiding interest in their practice and i look forward to the unveiling of their new show with much anticipation.

so, like some tearful but not too gushing bafta winner, i should like to take this opportunity to say a few words to mark the occasion:

thank you Apartment for harbouring this peculiar experiment in creative/ theoretical /cultural writing and for guiding me safely through the choppy seas of the contemporary art world. at the moment it feels rather as if i have been left to drift on a flimsy raft of my own inadequacies or a child attempting those first difficult wobbles on a bicycle without the stabilisers, but soon i hope i shall sail triumphantly towards new horizons and adventures, all the better for the lessons learned at apartments little desk and in the company of such inspired and inspiring souls as hilary and paul and all the coterie of the brunswick collective!

its been a pleasure and a privilege but lest we forget, its not goodbye its only au revoir...

dawn chorus now available to read in skookum boom

so just the other day i was surprised and really delighted to find that my summer holiday musing dawn chorus has been published in Skookum Boom, an independent non-profit zine/magazine based in London, which i had come across on facebook months and months ago. issue 7, priced just 80p and packed with a smorgasbord of interviews, essays, satire, poetry and prose, is a psychogeographical trip across, through and beneath the city. it is probably not stocked here in manchestershire but copies can be sent direct to you for a most modest outlay....

here they are in their own words, a self managed creative collective with a wide range of pursuits, dedicated to encouraging free platforms for groups, artists and ideas of all kinds...

sb welcomes submissions of poetry/artwork, short stories and debate. direct your own submissions to skookumboom @ hotmail.co.uk and editors teddy and niall, to whom i owe a big thank you and much admiration for their wide ranging enthusiams, diy attitude and support of multidisciplinary creativity and outputs...and an anachronism like myself!

new year resolutions...umists hollaway wall

just when it seems there simply cant be any sections of the city left to regenerate, that the looming recession might just be the accidental saving of the few remaining post-war architectural gems happily minding their own business and bringing harmless joy to some of us, worrying news pops up to the contrary...

anthony hollaway's 1968 sculptural wall is practically invisible and entirely neglected. chances are you've passed it on the way from piccadilly station to the umist campus or to stockport road and barely noticed this overlooked treasure. or perhaps you have noticed it subliminally and dismissed it as merely a graffitied eyesore.

but this is no ordinary wall, as anyone who looks at it more closely and gives it a second chance will discover. even moss covered, lichen ridden, strewn with discarded takeaways, assorted rubbish and bird droppings, the hollaway wall is a delight, its sturdy exuberance a testimony to the hardy optimism of a small band of utopian modernists of post-war britain, a lovely and elegant length of concrete sculpture. it is as architecturally significant as the piccadilly pavilion, centrepiece to the renovated piccadilly gardens by signatect tadao ando, commissioned at enormous expense for the 2002 commonwealth games, the obligatory 'iconic gateway to the city'.

a deceptively simple curved concrete wall with a covered space on its concave side providing yet more coffee chains and a modicum of shelter, the pavilion has hardly faired much better than the hollaway and is already looking a little shabby, sandwiched inelegantly between rows of plastic urinals and tram machinery. nonetheless this concrete structure, part buffer, part artwork, is a significant coup for the city - ando's first ever british project. to fully appreciate just why this self taught superstar is regarded as one of the world's greatest architects, read benjamin secher in the telegraph. in truth, though ando's reputation is well deserved, the piccadilly pavilion, commissioned as a prestigious kick start to the regeneration of a shabby section of central manchester, now seems hardly the serene japanese garden he aspired to and it has as many detractors as admirers.

in sharp contrast to this and other contemporary iconotastic commissions, the hollaway wall which made no such bold claims and sits unobtrusively in a quiet corner of the city, finds itself in suddenly in the limelight, its future uncertain. in short, it seems that not satisfied with wreaking havoc on the owens campus the powers that be have turned their pitiless gaze towards the splendid umist, with plans apparently afoot to sell off much of the site which includes some of the city's finest and sadly increasingly rare 1960s buildings and structures.

the 20th century society is currently featuring the wall in its building of the month section and is supporting a well deserved submission for listing status. richard brook, senior lecturer at manchester school of architecture, waxes lyrical about the wall, its significance and context within umist as part of a broader 60's utopian vision -

The masterplan for the campus was developed in 1960 by W.A. Gibbon of Cruickshank and Seward and it is Gibbon’s legacy that presides over the stepped site as it descends toward the Medlock Valley. Chandos Hall, the Renold Building, the Barnes-Wallis building and the Ferranti Building are all by Gibbon and all feature his trademark white concrete. He is known to have visited Brazil prior to this commission and was influenced by the work of Niemeyer, though the only real flourishing gesture is the curved stair that elegantly sweeps into the courtyard between the Renold and Barnes-Wallis buildings. The Renold Building was unsuccessfully proposed for listing in November 2005. A further two of the group are currently under threat from the sale and redevelopment of the site as the University of Manchester seeks to consolidate its estate. Also under threat is the innovative Chemical Engineering Pilot Plant by H.S. Fairhurst; originally the service runs were all defined in their own specific colours, predating Pompidou by five years.

This building is flanked by a sculptural wall, similarly at risk, about which little has been written or researched. The wall was built in 1968 to designs prepared by artist Anthony Hollaway, commissioned by the University of Manchester Institute of Science + Technology (UMIST). The artist was working in collaboration with architect Harry M. Fairhurst; they also worked together to design the concrete relief panels of the Chemistry building on the same campus and, much later, the windows at Manchester Cathedral.

Many of the structures similar to this, by artists, were retaining walls. This was designed as a sound buffer. As such, this particular wall has more ‘object’ status as it stands upon its field rather than embedded within. The work was designed to ‘enhance weathering and texture’ by the use of ‘rough sawn formwork’.

modernists, urbanists, mancunians - don't let this careworn creature disappear. please don't take for granted that this and other post war icons will survive the tail end of the noughties building boom or the current recession. visit the wall, get close up and take in its battered beauty, love and cherish it. stroll around the resplendant umist campus with its concrete flourishes, its cornucopia of public artworks, murals and secluded gardens, its harmonious marriage of victorian splendour and 60's optimism. then show your support and demand its listing and appreciation. and do it now, before its too late...

as for me, the holloway wall is as much a part of my life and my quirky corner of manchester, my personal m1, as the mancunian way and its neighbouring tower blocks, so 2009 might just be the year this sprightly bluestocking turns activist and chains herself to it....

More Life of a Bluestocking...

it seems that there are still a few souls hoping for a chance to see the life of a bluestocking timeline and show at Apartment, so hilary and paul have been kind enough to extend the installation until Friday 16 January!

do come along.

details of viewings informal appointments and how to find us are on apartment's site here.

new year blues...

2009 is a few days old now and already my attempts at looking the new year straight in the eye and tackling it head on with vigour, optimism and a long list of 'to does..' has fallen by the wayside or at least hit the doldrums.

it started so well.

i have a brand new burnished leather year planner, a birthday gift that ive been itching to start popping into my bag for jotting down notes whilst enjoying tea and scones in boffin hq (museum cafe) or cappucino and norlander toast in boffin central (oklahoma), and plenty of christmas books to read in cosy corners of the city, warming hot chocolate in hand, such as cornerhouse, waterstones or blackwells. plenty in short to while away the cold snap of winter in style and offer inspiration for my own humble ambitions...

but instead books lie neglected, new journal remains untouched, favourite haunts unvisited, as i mope and grumble into the new year. even the flurry of snow last night failed to thrill me, as i ran onto the landing and leaned onto the motorway parapet, the better to immerse myself in the brief midnight snowglobe effect. all these things merely heighten my new year blues.

the observant among you might recall in past postings mention of my oldest friend, dearest confidente, and comrade in books and outings, bibliophile and assyrian scholar mister benjamin horatio stillingfleet. a few of you may even remember his part in my edwardian adventures. it was he, dear reader, who came to my rescue in the case of the cult of the assassins, bundling me homeward in a packing case bound for the british museum, it was he who gave his expertise and assistance in my postgraduate studies at girton, it was he who accompanied me in my archaeological campaigns and adventures and yes, it was he who was the alleged ferguson in the ferguson gang's legendary exploits. in short he has been my right arm, my trusty sidekick and stalwart companion in countless adventures these past 100 years or more and 2008 has been no different.

new years eve we spent as always with a short meander through brunswick to boffin hq for coffee and a peruse of the morning papers in companionable silence, occasionally pointing out the odd snippet of news or comparing some nonsense or other, before deciding on the days itinerary and planning future expeditions. later on we met up with bertie for tea, the two of them enjoying their perennial squabble over the crossword.

midnight found us sharing a balcony view over the city as firework displays illuminated the skies into a urban meteorite storm as grand as any aurora borealis. only then did the blasted stillingfleet unveil his plans for 2009.


so here i am 5 days into this fledgling year and 5 long days without my stillingfleet who true to his word has retreated deep into the diaries and itinerary of Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece by Patrick Leigh Fermor. i wish him well on his voyage of discovery and intellectual retreat but am somewhat at a loss without him and feel his absence acutely. my travels across the city will be the duller without him and so i fear will be the pages of this diary.

au revoir mon ami. a bientot...

postscript. this evening a mysterious package arrived at the door. it contained a rare and handbound copy of dust, a treasure of historigraphy that i have been pursuing eagerly for some time, with a familiar inscription from my old friend; plus a handbook of paper aviation for bertie! my spirits revived, i determine not to let him down in his absence. i open the flyleaf and begin....