another proud moment for modern bluestockings, as one of our own unleashes her twisted genius on to the world....
lonelady of the brunswick chapter releases the debut album Nerve Up on warp records in february 2010. her first single is available now to buy or download. listen to immaterial here and read paul morley’s reaction....
meanwhile my young assistant maureen ward shares her thoughts on the making of the album and the creation of the studio in ancoats that she helped build for the occasion, a place they habitually referred to as the cell...
lonelady - a study in perversity.
ancoats. a rotting factory on the rochdale canal. winter 2008.
the sickly bouquet of bruised walls, a deep topography of powdery blown paint deposits, decoration transformed into excavation, flemish pieta pantones, air flecked with a million nameless swirling spores, conversation suspended in shards of icicles. rivulets of condensation trickle down a splintered window...
what little view there is through the tiny panes of shattered glass is defiantly none post-bomb manchester; a bricked up council estate awaiting the dubious pleasures of urban renewal, rows of gas canisters stock piled for some unnamed apocryphal horror behind barbed wire, the lurid mural of a ladies wrestling club hovering threateningly above the litter strewn canal, the drifting huddles of swans and geese the only witness to our unremitting foolishness - the gargantuan task of forging a homemade recording studio in a crumbling corner of a dilapidated mill, hewn from the tattered remnants of whatever mangled artefacts were to hand along the canal or dragged from beneath the brooding skeletal hulk of the resident gasometer...
...a perversely self imposed prison cell.
the daily trudge along the tow path, physically, symbolically turning our backs on the spectacle of the glossy cityscape. we ponder the contradictions of a city totally enamoured of its own mythologies yet woefully blind, nonchalant to the vicissitudes of these idealised landscapes - defiant birthplace of industrial and technological revolution, its non conformist radicalism the engine of social change and reform, yet equally home to unbridled entrepreneurialism, ostentation and rampant capitalism; two sides of the same coin perhaps. this schizophrenia, this contradiction is what makes the city what it is, is its maddening, fundamental nature...
like all Mancunians they were in a state of constant irritation that so much went on in the capital, whereas anyone could see that Manchester was in every way superior. george melly
i would like to live in Manchester. the transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable. mark twain
two portraits, two visions; one brash, entrepreneurial, in thrall to bright sparkly distractions - harvey nicks, selfridges, labels, gadgetry, cheryl cole, sky bar, panacea, fuck me heels on deansgate – tawdry symbols of wealth, status and street savvy; the other dark, monochrome, gothic, moody, motorways, satanic mills, cemetery gates and angel meadows, dead pop stars and disappeared night clubs….
brunswick. a north facing tower block window. winter 2009.
LL on my laptop in my high rise crow’s nest, i am teleported back to ancoats in the depths of winter, scrubbed, swabbed down, purple chilblained fingers warmed only by a daily pot noodle or huddled over a meagre flask of coffee; making something out of nothing, not so much searching for the light in the pouring rain as revelling in the perversity of its inhospitable barren beauty.
LL strips back the cheap veneer of glass and tinfoil, of ambition and lies, a self appointed sonic archaeologist digging away, peeling back layer after layer of suppressed topography until she has uncovered, recovered the brittle, workaday ordinariness of a manchester that has been trampled, buried and renovated until it is unrecognisable. a painful vulnerable process more root canal work than excavation, stripping away not only thirty years of expensive cosmetic surgery but exposing raw, ragged memories, ideals and nerves now wriggling, bare, helpless; the dove-grey patina of the old city that lurks beneath. a new kind of beauty is revealed, alive with the rich hues of slate and mauve we’ve been persuaded to outgrow, discouraged from appreciating.
immaterial tingles with the anticipation of youth, harking back to dreamy days when every moment was an adventure, every new dawn a promise; melancholia with a dash of optimism
repulsion jabs through my fingers as i type, its jagged brittleness emphasised by the hopeless inadequacy of what passes for my speakers.
marble twists relentlessly into my wizened heart with the shards of its serrated melancholy, a paean to every pang of suppressed remorse that lies hidden & crusted over after a lifetime of grown up composure.
nerve up is a paradox of hollow sumptuousness, its sparse eerie spaces ringing with a spiky anti-sexiness that’s riddled with erotically charged danger.
music is as personal as a favourite book. it conjures up longings, memories, emotions both welcome and best left alone. it takes us effortlessly to times, people and places we’ve cherished, forgotten or neglected. lonelady pickles out a manchester we seldom choose to revisit. she is harsh, discordant, uncompromising, imperious, unconcerned with approval, a study in perversity - stripped of those endless makeovers and gaudy recladding all that is best about the city is laid bare, if it could only be persuaded to stop dressing up like a whores boudoir, available for hire 24/7 in its desperate need for national and international endorsement.
where once we were first, modern and original, we are now corporate, branded, lapping up those international names that grace our high street, more sheep than shepherd, more herd than innovators.
LL claws at our subconscious, scrapes back our pretentions, the hollow sumptuousness of her prison cell a new route to our lost dignity.
Saturday 21 November 2009
Thursday 19 November 2009
manchester modernist society feature in Urbis Research Forum Review Vol 1!
a proud moment for the manchester modernist society....
back in august we collaborated with dr julian holloway and dr steve millington on The Alchemy of Concrete, a walking tour of the mancunian way followed by a public seminar at urbis.
the first issue of the Urbis Research Forum Review is now available to download from the urbis website. the review is the online publication of the Urbis Research Forum and this first issue features articles by julian holloway and our very own maureen ward.
the first issue of the Urbis Research Forum Review is now available to download from the urbis website. the review is the online publication of the Urbis Research Forum and this first issue features articles by julian holloway and our very own maureen ward.
the articles are based on the presentations given during the 'Mancunian Way: The Alchemy of Concrete' panel discussion held on 26 August, 2009. in the review julian and maureen explore the layered experience of the mancunian way – manchester’s elevated post-war motorway – and its impact on the places and people of the city.
Download the Review here for two very different but complimentary ways to rethink and reconsider the urban dragon and brunswick monolith that is the flyover....
Thursday 12 November 2009
No Love Lost - Julie Campbell reflects on Damien Hirst at the Wallace
whilst in london for the TINAG festival, we brunswick bluestockings managed to take time out from our urbanist duties to enjoy a mooch out and about in the capital: whilst i went round the corner to the sophie calle exhibition at the whitechapel, julie adventured further afield to the damien hirst exhibition at the wallace.
its rather fashionable to loath hirst, and his foray into 'proper' painting hasn't been without its detractors, as though hirst has either sold out and gone traditionalist or doesnt have the right or qualifications to make a mark on canvas at all. all in all its difficult to get beyond the hype when confronting an artist as infamous as hirst, so when julie agreed to share her thoughts and feelings about her visit, i was eager to read them. and hope that you will be too.....
many thanks julie for this beautiful meditation, reproduced here in full....
No Love Lost
Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst
Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst
---------------this is not an art review------------
White lines criss-cross through every painting (bar one).
Lines that denote the parameters & perimeters of reality and perception.
As though Hirst slammed a length of timber onto the canvas surface and scratched hundreds of thin lines in haste, in desperation – or maybe he knew exactly what he was doing, knew what these demarcations were meant to imply.
They striate, radiate and scaffold space like spectral architect’s drawings. They set up a network of spatial territories; boundaries, imagined rooms, antechambers, corridors, and non-spaces.
They unite objects, surfaces and space in a spiderweb geometry draped across the frame that suggests an underlying Matrix-esque logic...a Grand Plan.
They seem somehow both terribly frail, yet as implausibly strong as the cables of a parachute, or the cord of a tightrope.
They are like cordons separating us off from colour, flesh, warmth, life.
They come from nowhere and lead nowhere…
Because, these paintings are a matter of Life and Death: they confront the human journey across the tightrope of existence; our wobbly navigation above the inexorable void.
*
Across and inside the surface are smeary modulations of paint-movement; of application & erasure, second thoughts and losses of heart. Memory tells me inky blacks and oily midnight blues dominate; standing in front of these paintings for long enough, I seem to step into the gloop, and intuit further colours...fleeting purples bulge momentarily…a streak of grey pulses faintly…crimsons swim darkly below the surface like sea-monsters ..Here in the painting I am fathoms down, into the deepest colour of all, that of the void.
This straining and twisting in the mire seemed like something trying to assert itself, something trying to be born: meaning itself.
*
Dots, sharks and butterflies. These Hirst motifs are reiterated here in a new awful truth: the bright ‘butterfly paintings’ are shadows of their former selves, now scraps of wings floating in darkness. The shark in formaldehyde was a majestic presence, even though it was dissected. Now it is reduced to a skeleton fragment, a plaintive jaw weeping and protesting soundlessly to no-one.
In previous work, Hirst’s dots seemed joyful, playful. Dots re-feature in many of these paintings; here their vitality is diminished to pale dabs like the blinking patterns of towerblock lights; perhaps they allude to cities past and future… Atlantis or Bladerunner, gleaming sadly like civilizations swallowed up.
*
Occasionally a seemingly random object appears: a startlingly yellow lemon…the dark leaves of a houseplant…a table…an ashtray. These seem modern emblems of memento mori, of ancient ceremony updated; the wine and bread are now mundane fragments, poignant because of their familiarity.
*
The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth; this large triptych particularly moved me. The right-hand panel features a large set of Jaws-y jaws. Staring into those jaws as they roared their catastrophic Message of Emptiness, I felt my hair blown back as the horror reached shrieking point. ..this void-filled shark jaw is infinitely more violent than the hacked-up shark bodies.
(As I walked through the exhibition, the walls, floor and ceiling began to tremble...a corner of wall peeled back to reveal gaping blackness...the Nothing behind the façade started to become palpable…)
The Wallace Collection, its architecture and furnishings, are all designed to elevate, impress and glorify. Velvet carpets drape marble staircases. Lavish gold frames fill the walls. In the context of these luxurious surroundings, Hirst’s work presents a stern remonstration; all that is now solid shall melt into air. Gold turns to dust. The skulls laugh mockingly, unimpressed by the grandeur.
The skull is present in nearly every painting, chief representative of absence, the calling-card of Death. I think of the charismatic Death from Bergman’s Seventh Seal: he would like this exhibition. The skulls are unbelievable reminders of the immutable Fact. I wiggle my skull around but decide no, that can’t possibly be how I end up. Also, they are vulnerable: is there anything so lonely as a skull? No lips to talks with, it stares out longingly for all time. I used to be alive like you, it wails, trying to be enthusiastic, trying to persuade me its still with it, still got it. But all its ‘got’ is being dead, forever.
These paintings have their genealogy in the old masters and Bacon...but the sumptuousness of these works have been reconfigured to arrive at starker conclusions in Hirst’s vision. The corporeal flabbiness of flesh has been denuded. It melts away. Bacon’s kaleidoscopic palette has been sucked into a black hole, there’s nothing left but varying shades of blackness, which are quite endless. The life element has been emphatically cordoned off; the signage reads ‘you are now entering the waste land’.
*
Bringing your own inner code of associations to an exhibit completes the circuit between artist, gallerist and viewer. I had a good chance of ‘liking’ this exhibition, because Hirst’s new work engenders many ‘things I like’: there’s the Joy Division song title, large black panels carving unknown spaces into the 2D plane, questions about existence and meaning, paint, psychological spaces, more questions, disturbing answers, physics, philosophy, laughing blackly.
A scientist on TV just said; ‘a physicist finds infinity abhorrent’. So do I!
*
This subject never gets boring; it is the story of our annihilation.
*
I am enraged at the prospect of not existing. Tears well impotently in my eyes.
I leave the gallery feeling enervated, shaken, empty, alive; looking forward to the warmth of the company of friends.
Painting couldn’t seem more relevant, more urgent.
Julie Campbell 11/11/09
Lines that denote the parameters & perimeters of reality and perception.
As though Hirst slammed a length of timber onto the canvas surface and scratched hundreds of thin lines in haste, in desperation – or maybe he knew exactly what he was doing, knew what these demarcations were meant to imply.
They striate, radiate and scaffold space like spectral architect’s drawings. They set up a network of spatial territories; boundaries, imagined rooms, antechambers, corridors, and non-spaces.
They unite objects, surfaces and space in a spiderweb geometry draped across the frame that suggests an underlying Matrix-esque logic...a Grand Plan.
They seem somehow both terribly frail, yet as implausibly strong as the cables of a parachute, or the cord of a tightrope.
They are like cordons separating us off from colour, flesh, warmth, life.
They come from nowhere and lead nowhere…
Because, these paintings are a matter of Life and Death: they confront the human journey across the tightrope of existence; our wobbly navigation above the inexorable void.
*
Across and inside the surface are smeary modulations of paint-movement; of application & erasure, second thoughts and losses of heart. Memory tells me inky blacks and oily midnight blues dominate; standing in front of these paintings for long enough, I seem to step into the gloop, and intuit further colours...fleeting purples bulge momentarily…a streak of grey pulses faintly…crimsons swim darkly below the surface like sea-monsters ..Here in the painting I am fathoms down, into the deepest colour of all, that of the void.
This straining and twisting in the mire seemed like something trying to assert itself, something trying to be born: meaning itself.
*
Dots, sharks and butterflies. These Hirst motifs are reiterated here in a new awful truth: the bright ‘butterfly paintings’ are shadows of their former selves, now scraps of wings floating in darkness. The shark in formaldehyde was a majestic presence, even though it was dissected. Now it is reduced to a skeleton fragment, a plaintive jaw weeping and protesting soundlessly to no-one.
In previous work, Hirst’s dots seemed joyful, playful. Dots re-feature in many of these paintings; here their vitality is diminished to pale dabs like the blinking patterns of towerblock lights; perhaps they allude to cities past and future… Atlantis or Bladerunner, gleaming sadly like civilizations swallowed up.
*
Occasionally a seemingly random object appears: a startlingly yellow lemon…the dark leaves of a houseplant…a table…an ashtray. These seem modern emblems of memento mori, of ancient ceremony updated; the wine and bread are now mundane fragments, poignant because of their familiarity.
*
The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth; this large triptych particularly moved me. The right-hand panel features a large set of Jaws-y jaws. Staring into those jaws as they roared their catastrophic Message of Emptiness, I felt my hair blown back as the horror reached shrieking point. ..this void-filled shark jaw is infinitely more violent than the hacked-up shark bodies.
(As I walked through the exhibition, the walls, floor and ceiling began to tremble...a corner of wall peeled back to reveal gaping blackness...the Nothing behind the façade started to become palpable…)
The Wallace Collection, its architecture and furnishings, are all designed to elevate, impress and glorify. Velvet carpets drape marble staircases. Lavish gold frames fill the walls. In the context of these luxurious surroundings, Hirst’s work presents a stern remonstration; all that is now solid shall melt into air. Gold turns to dust. The skulls laugh mockingly, unimpressed by the grandeur.
The skull is present in nearly every painting, chief representative of absence, the calling-card of Death. I think of the charismatic Death from Bergman’s Seventh Seal: he would like this exhibition. The skulls are unbelievable reminders of the immutable Fact. I wiggle my skull around but decide no, that can’t possibly be how I end up. Also, they are vulnerable: is there anything so lonely as a skull? No lips to talks with, it stares out longingly for all time. I used to be alive like you, it wails, trying to be enthusiastic, trying to persuade me its still with it, still got it. But all its ‘got’ is being dead, forever.
These paintings have their genealogy in the old masters and Bacon...but the sumptuousness of these works have been reconfigured to arrive at starker conclusions in Hirst’s vision. The corporeal flabbiness of flesh has been denuded. It melts away. Bacon’s kaleidoscopic palette has been sucked into a black hole, there’s nothing left but varying shades of blackness, which are quite endless. The life element has been emphatically cordoned off; the signage reads ‘you are now entering the waste land’.
*
Bringing your own inner code of associations to an exhibit completes the circuit between artist, gallerist and viewer. I had a good chance of ‘liking’ this exhibition, because Hirst’s new work engenders many ‘things I like’: there’s the Joy Division song title, large black panels carving unknown spaces into the 2D plane, questions about existence and meaning, paint, psychological spaces, more questions, disturbing answers, physics, philosophy, laughing blackly.
A scientist on TV just said; ‘a physicist finds infinity abhorrent’. So do I!
*
This subject never gets boring; it is the story of our annihilation.
*
I am enraged at the prospect of not existing. Tears well impotently in my eyes.
I leave the gallery feeling enervated, shaken, empty, alive; looking forward to the warmth of the company of friends.
Painting couldn’t seem more relevant, more urgent.
Julie Campbell 11/11/09
Tuesday 10 November 2009
an evening of modernist delights - wine, films about concrete, iconic postcards...
the night before the tinag festival, the manchester modernists had their six month birthday party, their first proper grown up soiree, billed as a celebration of the city, with wine and nibbles, a couple of short films from the north west film archives and the launch of those lovely new postcards....
we were nervous. for the last few months we have held a variety of get togethers and they have all been great fun, we have met lovely people who love the city and have seemed willing to join in our rather peculiar events, but we have never so far held a party. parties are funny things - you invite people, you arrange entertainments, refreshments and distractions and hope that people will come and once there wont be disappointed or bored. we didnt know which would be worse - that no one would come and we would be all alone with our metaphorical party streamers, or that people would come and hate it! as 6.30 drew ever nearer, we distracted ourselves with last minute arrangements and waited with dread for the doors to open and a guest to appear.
by 6.30 the room was looking comfortable enough with about 20 people and we busied ourselves meeting and greeting and rearranging chairs and tables for the screening. then suddenly we were packed to the rafters, tables and chairs filled with expectant faces, whilst the back was a standing room only scrum. maureen gave a short welcome and then handed over to steve millington who had unearthed 2 fabulous short films, one depicting the clearances and rebuilding of hulme, the other being the story of the building of the mancunian way. they were both poignant, sometimes unintentionally hilarious, and evocative.
afterwards milling about and handing out sets of postcards, it seemed that everyone had enjoyed themselves, and we heaved a sigh of relief. as i hurried off to get ready for london next day, i left my little gang of modernists packing away and chatting to stragglers, the sound of good times ringing in my ears.....
thanks to everyone who worked so hard to help make it all come together, who gave their time and sponsorship and goodwill. and thank you for attending and spreading the word - we hope you enjoyed it and come again soon!
and many thanks to steve for his gorgeous films and fantastic introduction, which was described to me by one attendant as passionate and inspiring! brilliant and entirely pertinent as it turned out to much of what was hot on the agenda at tinag....
here's a transcript of his introduction -
Manchester Modernist Society Launch 22nd October 2009
Venue: An Outlet, Dale St Manchester.
Acknowledgments:
Edwin Trout – Concrete Society – for his kind permission to show their film
Manchester City Council – permission to show other film
Marion Hewitt and Geoff Senior – NWFA
Institute of Place Management – sponsoring the event andAn Outlet – for hosting us
Cheers to Maureen Ward and Jack Hale for inviting me to introduce this event
There are two questions I would like to raise – what is the ideal city? And is it worth saving the modern city?
Hopefully in answering these question we can begin to explain exactly why we are here tonight to formally launch the Manchester Modernist Society, why we are about to sit down and watch a film about concrete.
What is the ideal city?
What is the ideal city? It is one of those questions that provokes intense debate about the nature of society, which often says more about the anxieties we share about urban life. What solutions might we pursue to improve the city– to eradicate the blockages that complicate our everyday lives, to improve the look and feel of the city and make living or working in it a more pleasurable experience. But how can we also make the city a more just place? And importantly how can the ideal city also provide a sustainable environment for future generations?
In answering the question – what is the ideal city – we uncover more questions – we start to engage in the big questions about how best to organise our economy and society - in questions about what constitutes social progress or spatial justice.
In Britain, over the last century, several visions of the city have emerged, presenting their Utopian version of what the ideal city might look like. Unsurprisingly earlier visions tackled the big questions of the day - the terrible injustices and squalor which emerged in the Victorian city during a phase of rampant and unregulated industrial capitalism - The Garden City movement, for example, Ebeneezer Howard's symbolic union of town and countryside – which combined the progressive elements of industrialisation with the traditional virtues of rural life.
In post-war period Britain, a radically different paradigm emerged – the Modernist Movement, advocating state-led technocratic fixes to rationalise and order the chaotic legacies of Victorian capitalism, through the construction of a new metropolis amidst the ruins of cities scarred by war.In practice – this reconstruction entailed the clearance of working class communities on a massive scale. The critique of this planning regime is well rehearsed – I don't want to dwell on it tonight, other than to mention Jane Jacobs' attack on modernist planning in the 1960s, and her argument that the messiness and diversity of the city is perhaps is intrinsic to urban life, something to be cherished and not cleansed out of existence. Whereas modernist visionaries such as Le Corbusier talked about the death of the street, Jacobs set out to save it. The spirit of Jacobs' work is still with us, through the growing influence of the New Urbanism movement in the USA and its impact on urban design and architectural practice.
In contemporary Britain state-led urban planning is now an archaic concept. Since the advent of Thatcherism, we have witnessed the rise of the entrepreneurial city, elevating the role of private speculation in driving urban development, placing faith in the market to resolve urban problems, together with an emphasis on personal choice and individual consumption.The aggressive Neoliberal tendencies of the entrepreneurial city, however, were augmented by the optimism underpinning the arrival of New Labour, who appointed Richard Rogers to lead the Urban Task Force and produce a new blueprint for the British city - a particularly Blairite vision – which continued to foreground prviate sector leadership, but offered a vision whereby individuals operated within a framework of civic responsibility or active citizenship. Rogers, amongst others, also established a fascination within professional circles to hold up the mythical European City – as the urban ideal – the city as a 24hr centre of cosmopolitan culture and creativity, a city of boulevards, apartment blocks, museums and street cafes, a cappuccino culture. The thousands who have adopted the city centre as their place of residence – perhaps gives some credence to the realisation of this vision.
It is important that we acknowledge how these visions – are not ideologically neutral. Each comes laden with political or cultural values regarding the relationship between people and place. It is also important that we recognise how these movements have shaped the urban landscape, sometimes producing very successful projects, but also spectacular failures. Importantly we should avoid packaging the history of the city into neat parcels of time. Rather the development of the city is subject to continuities and discontinuities, which allow ideas and practices from one vision to bleed into another, to produce a complex and fractured city. The city is also an unfinished project, and will always be so. That said - undoubtedly we learn lessons along the way – mass clearance, for example, has shown us how communities can be destroyed overnight – but it then take decades to rebuild them.
It is easy to blame planners and architects for their failure to deliver our Utopia – whatever it may be – but you cannot ignore the wider context in which the city operates. The Credit Crunch, for example, alerts us to how powerful global processes push and pull the city in different directions - rendering it in a constant state of flux.
But the Credit Crunch has also lead to us to cross-roads – where do we go next in pursuit of the ideal city?
Half empty apartment blocks, aborted construction sites, the skeletal remains of once exciting new projects - litter the Mancunian landscape – concrete memorials to the failure of market systems to secure the city's immediate future. But a return to the state-led strategic planning of the Fifties and Sixties is out of the question – especially if we anticipate the next General Election result.
But urban living continues to beguile and frustrate us. The cost of housing, congestion, disintegrated public transport, areas of blight and decay, alienated working classes, poorly designed public spaces, poor health, deprivation, the surveillance culture, the ASBO generation – point to a general discontent with urban living in Britain. Our flirtation with city centre loft living – perhaps is just a momentary diversion. Some would accuses the British as being anti-urban – we don't really love our cities, because all the evidence is there that we don't care or tend for them – and at first opportunity - we rather be living out an idyllic existence in the countryside.
Is it worth saving the modern city?
We like to criticise planners and architects – for getting it wrong. Its something of a sport in Britain, like blaming the referee for a heavy home defeat. With hindsight we like to look back and ask - what might have been? If only this flyover had not ploughed this neighbourhood, if only we hadn't knocked down that building because now we would consider it to be an architectural gem.
This logic leads us to an assumption that somehow all heritage and conservation is intrinsically a good thing. But a sentimental obsession with protecting the past - hides an underlying danger of petrifying the city – a city fixed in time - according to a narrowly defined set a conventions about what constitutes esteemed architecture or urban design. Perhaps we should think of heritage as being something which is actively produced and contested. How we construct our common heritage, therefore, is not only about memory, but also forgetting.
The irony is that the 19th century architecture – so highly cherished in Manchester today – was put there mainly by industrialists who cared little for conservation themselves.
And for the planners who reconstructed Manchester after 1945 – the Victorian landscape established by these industrialists were part of the problem – grim reminders of labour exploitation and injustice, obstacles to be removed – to make way for progress and the city of the future.
So it is interesting that we find ourselves here at the launch of the Manchester Modernist Society, because my understanding is that - to be modern - involves a sense of being/self – that is always in movement – to celebrate a city, for example, that is always in a state of progression towards some better future. So there is a certain tension, therefore, in coming together to launch a society dedicated to raising awareness and protecting Manchester's historic modernist architecture. As good modernists shouldn't we just let it all go and embrace the future?
Without doubt the Modernist landscape of Manchester – is slipping away – illustrated by the ensuing battle to save Gateway House, for instance. Mass housing developments, Fort Ardwick, Fort Beswick, the Hulme Crescents – which replaced dense working class neighbourhoods - have themselves become victims of mass clearance and redevelopment. Many would argue that this is good thing – but a symbolical landscape - one defined by the Welfare State and a vision of social unity – has now subject to the logic of market forces. Public spaces and buildings of old are sliding away behind a veil of privatisation.
Manchester is being overlaid with a soft post-modern sheen - the smothering of concrete's hard surfaces, the smoothing of brutal edges – the bending of straight lines – the progressive sanding away of the roughness and brutality of the Modern City. This unique landscape – a product of its time - is melting into the air. We are left with remnants, bits and pieces – legacies of a social democratic state in the making – reminders of a time when a strong political ideology informed an attempt to socially engineer a more equitable society – a better society – solving urban problems through technocratic fixes – a genuine effort to capture the spirit of modernity in built form.
The solidity of modern architecture and its sheer brutalism - unlike Manchester's ornate Victorian gems – represent a challenge to contemporary speculators and urban planners – they are structures which are not easily converted into stylish apartments, or A-grade offices – European café culture sits uncomfortably within a rain-soaked concrete precinct in Collyhurst, for example. Modernist buildings possess an aesthetic that jars against the creation of the entrepreneurial city – as a place to do business, to celebrate individualism, and promote wealth generation over social equity.
The Council Estate for instance – once was a form aspirational living for the working class – but here we start to chart the shift in our collective aspirations. Public housing is now a marker of illegitimate difference, a landscape of blight – a sink hole for failed and washed up citizens. Our attitude towards the council estate and other products of modernist planning - reflects the current disdain for all things public – which began perhaps with reform of the welfare state – and Thatcherite assertions that there is no such thing as society, only individuals and the choices they make.
I would maintain, that these modernist 'carbuncles' – or 'ugly gems' – form an important part of the history of Manchester. These structures continue to exert a looming presence, producing menacing shadows over Manchester's attempt to re brand itself as an open, entrepreneurial and cosmopolitan place. These buildings have a ghostly – spectral presence in the city – haunting us about pre-Thatcherite days – a glimpse through to another world –an upside down place where state planning and collectivism took presidence. It is surprising then - that modernist architecture has become a figure of hate, vilified for its ugliness and alienating properties – a built environment that is simply not worth saving. A place which is best forgotten as Manchester engineers a 'better neoliberal' future. Perhaps then the Manchester Modernist Society might provide us with a way rethinking the city as other or different, perhaps even functioning as a mechanism through which to challenge and resist the pernicious elements private corporate investment and control of urban space.
During the mass clearances of the 1960s - formal and comprehensive archives were constructed by Manchester and Salford Corporations, of working class in areas prior to redevelopment, extensive film and photographic records, oral histories, and other testimonies – prior to the construction of the modernist city.
But as this disappears, there is an absence of systematic documentation of the lives of ordinary people, living and worked within it. For many Mancunians – their experience of the modern city was real and direct – as they encountered a built environment that gave form to the 'cradle to the grave' expectations established through the Welfare State – shaping our experience - from the moment of birth in an NHS hospital, times spent in clinics, dental waiting rooms, the doctor's surgery – educations forged within Secondary Modern schools or comprehensives – lives spent in tower blocks, shopping precincts, public squares, moments spent on concrete benches, in telephone boxes, within municipal buildings – libraries, courts, town-halls, fire-stations, swimming baths. The modern city transformed how we moved across Manchester – through a landscape of flyovers, motorways, bridges, underpasses, bus stations. Perhaps the Modernist can also alert us to the importance of documenting the lives and experiences of the people who lived through it. It is important, therefore, that we understand this disappearing landscape more deeply, acknowledge its richness and diversity, and challenge the common-sense assumption that it blighted the lives of a generation. And with its impending demise, it is essential then we do begin to acknowledge and raise awareness of Manchester Modernist Landscape – and how it has shaped the lives of ordinary people.
We need to be careful though not to over-romanticize – and avoid uncritical appreciation of modernist architecture. I still work in a City Council designed educational block – its not exactly a Workers Utopia. There remains a validity to the criticism targeted at modernist planning by the likes of Jane Jacobs. So we should avoid becoming too maudlin about this lost Utopian landscape. Ultimately the quest for the ideal city – is a dream, a vision – it will always be an unfinished and untenable project. But the Manchester Modernist Society can at least help us appreciate and document a time when politicians were more concerned with ideology than expenses, a time when a cohesive vision of the city as a place of social unity, justice and equity emerged, and provide us with a charter to challenge the dogma and injustices of privatisation and think about the city as a space of collective action.
Steve Millington
22nd October 2009
North West Archive Films:
Film NO. 1282 Hulme Redevelopment
Film No. 1222 The Mancunian Way.
we were nervous. for the last few months we have held a variety of get togethers and they have all been great fun, we have met lovely people who love the city and have seemed willing to join in our rather peculiar events, but we have never so far held a party. parties are funny things - you invite people, you arrange entertainments, refreshments and distractions and hope that people will come and once there wont be disappointed or bored. we didnt know which would be worse - that no one would come and we would be all alone with our metaphorical party streamers, or that people would come and hate it! as 6.30 drew ever nearer, we distracted ourselves with last minute arrangements and waited with dread for the doors to open and a guest to appear.
by 6.30 the room was looking comfortable enough with about 20 people and we busied ourselves meeting and greeting and rearranging chairs and tables for the screening. then suddenly we were packed to the rafters, tables and chairs filled with expectant faces, whilst the back was a standing room only scrum. maureen gave a short welcome and then handed over to steve millington who had unearthed 2 fabulous short films, one depicting the clearances and rebuilding of hulme, the other being the story of the building of the mancunian way. they were both poignant, sometimes unintentionally hilarious, and evocative.
afterwards milling about and handing out sets of postcards, it seemed that everyone had enjoyed themselves, and we heaved a sigh of relief. as i hurried off to get ready for london next day, i left my little gang of modernists packing away and chatting to stragglers, the sound of good times ringing in my ears.....
thanks to everyone who worked so hard to help make it all come together, who gave their time and sponsorship and goodwill. and thank you for attending and spreading the word - we hope you enjoyed it and come again soon!
and many thanks to steve for his gorgeous films and fantastic introduction, which was described to me by one attendant as passionate and inspiring! brilliant and entirely pertinent as it turned out to much of what was hot on the agenda at tinag....
here's a transcript of his introduction -
Manchester Modernist Society Launch 22nd October 2009
Venue: An Outlet, Dale St Manchester.
Acknowledgments:
Edwin Trout – Concrete Society – for his kind permission to show their film
Manchester City Council – permission to show other film
Marion Hewitt and Geoff Senior – NWFA
Institute of Place Management – sponsoring the event andAn Outlet – for hosting us
Cheers to Maureen Ward and Jack Hale for inviting me to introduce this event
There are two questions I would like to raise – what is the ideal city? And is it worth saving the modern city?
Hopefully in answering these question we can begin to explain exactly why we are here tonight to formally launch the Manchester Modernist Society, why we are about to sit down and watch a film about concrete.
What is the ideal city?
What is the ideal city? It is one of those questions that provokes intense debate about the nature of society, which often says more about the anxieties we share about urban life. What solutions might we pursue to improve the city– to eradicate the blockages that complicate our everyday lives, to improve the look and feel of the city and make living or working in it a more pleasurable experience. But how can we also make the city a more just place? And importantly how can the ideal city also provide a sustainable environment for future generations?
In answering the question – what is the ideal city – we uncover more questions – we start to engage in the big questions about how best to organise our economy and society - in questions about what constitutes social progress or spatial justice.
In Britain, over the last century, several visions of the city have emerged, presenting their Utopian version of what the ideal city might look like. Unsurprisingly earlier visions tackled the big questions of the day - the terrible injustices and squalor which emerged in the Victorian city during a phase of rampant and unregulated industrial capitalism - The Garden City movement, for example, Ebeneezer Howard's symbolic union of town and countryside – which combined the progressive elements of industrialisation with the traditional virtues of rural life.
In post-war period Britain, a radically different paradigm emerged – the Modernist Movement, advocating state-led technocratic fixes to rationalise and order the chaotic legacies of Victorian capitalism, through the construction of a new metropolis amidst the ruins of cities scarred by war.In practice – this reconstruction entailed the clearance of working class communities on a massive scale. The critique of this planning regime is well rehearsed – I don't want to dwell on it tonight, other than to mention Jane Jacobs' attack on modernist planning in the 1960s, and her argument that the messiness and diversity of the city is perhaps is intrinsic to urban life, something to be cherished and not cleansed out of existence. Whereas modernist visionaries such as Le Corbusier talked about the death of the street, Jacobs set out to save it. The spirit of Jacobs' work is still with us, through the growing influence of the New Urbanism movement in the USA and its impact on urban design and architectural practice.
In contemporary Britain state-led urban planning is now an archaic concept. Since the advent of Thatcherism, we have witnessed the rise of the entrepreneurial city, elevating the role of private speculation in driving urban development, placing faith in the market to resolve urban problems, together with an emphasis on personal choice and individual consumption.The aggressive Neoliberal tendencies of the entrepreneurial city, however, were augmented by the optimism underpinning the arrival of New Labour, who appointed Richard Rogers to lead the Urban Task Force and produce a new blueprint for the British city - a particularly Blairite vision – which continued to foreground prviate sector leadership, but offered a vision whereby individuals operated within a framework of civic responsibility or active citizenship. Rogers, amongst others, also established a fascination within professional circles to hold up the mythical European City – as the urban ideal – the city as a 24hr centre of cosmopolitan culture and creativity, a city of boulevards, apartment blocks, museums and street cafes, a cappuccino culture. The thousands who have adopted the city centre as their place of residence – perhaps gives some credence to the realisation of this vision.
It is important that we acknowledge how these visions – are not ideologically neutral. Each comes laden with political or cultural values regarding the relationship between people and place. It is also important that we recognise how these movements have shaped the urban landscape, sometimes producing very successful projects, but also spectacular failures. Importantly we should avoid packaging the history of the city into neat parcels of time. Rather the development of the city is subject to continuities and discontinuities, which allow ideas and practices from one vision to bleed into another, to produce a complex and fractured city. The city is also an unfinished project, and will always be so. That said - undoubtedly we learn lessons along the way – mass clearance, for example, has shown us how communities can be destroyed overnight – but it then take decades to rebuild them.
It is easy to blame planners and architects for their failure to deliver our Utopia – whatever it may be – but you cannot ignore the wider context in which the city operates. The Credit Crunch, for example, alerts us to how powerful global processes push and pull the city in different directions - rendering it in a constant state of flux.
But the Credit Crunch has also lead to us to cross-roads – where do we go next in pursuit of the ideal city?
Half empty apartment blocks, aborted construction sites, the skeletal remains of once exciting new projects - litter the Mancunian landscape – concrete memorials to the failure of market systems to secure the city's immediate future. But a return to the state-led strategic planning of the Fifties and Sixties is out of the question – especially if we anticipate the next General Election result.
But urban living continues to beguile and frustrate us. The cost of housing, congestion, disintegrated public transport, areas of blight and decay, alienated working classes, poorly designed public spaces, poor health, deprivation, the surveillance culture, the ASBO generation – point to a general discontent with urban living in Britain. Our flirtation with city centre loft living – perhaps is just a momentary diversion. Some would accuses the British as being anti-urban – we don't really love our cities, because all the evidence is there that we don't care or tend for them – and at first opportunity - we rather be living out an idyllic existence in the countryside.
Is it worth saving the modern city?
We like to criticise planners and architects – for getting it wrong. Its something of a sport in Britain, like blaming the referee for a heavy home defeat. With hindsight we like to look back and ask - what might have been? If only this flyover had not ploughed this neighbourhood, if only we hadn't knocked down that building because now we would consider it to be an architectural gem.
This logic leads us to an assumption that somehow all heritage and conservation is intrinsically a good thing. But a sentimental obsession with protecting the past - hides an underlying danger of petrifying the city – a city fixed in time - according to a narrowly defined set a conventions about what constitutes esteemed architecture or urban design. Perhaps we should think of heritage as being something which is actively produced and contested. How we construct our common heritage, therefore, is not only about memory, but also forgetting.
The irony is that the 19th century architecture – so highly cherished in Manchester today – was put there mainly by industrialists who cared little for conservation themselves.
And for the planners who reconstructed Manchester after 1945 – the Victorian landscape established by these industrialists were part of the problem – grim reminders of labour exploitation and injustice, obstacles to be removed – to make way for progress and the city of the future.
So it is interesting that we find ourselves here at the launch of the Manchester Modernist Society, because my understanding is that - to be modern - involves a sense of being/self – that is always in movement – to celebrate a city, for example, that is always in a state of progression towards some better future. So there is a certain tension, therefore, in coming together to launch a society dedicated to raising awareness and protecting Manchester's historic modernist architecture. As good modernists shouldn't we just let it all go and embrace the future?
Without doubt the Modernist landscape of Manchester – is slipping away – illustrated by the ensuing battle to save Gateway House, for instance. Mass housing developments, Fort Ardwick, Fort Beswick, the Hulme Crescents – which replaced dense working class neighbourhoods - have themselves become victims of mass clearance and redevelopment. Many would argue that this is good thing – but a symbolical landscape - one defined by the Welfare State and a vision of social unity – has now subject to the logic of market forces. Public spaces and buildings of old are sliding away behind a veil of privatisation.
Manchester is being overlaid with a soft post-modern sheen - the smothering of concrete's hard surfaces, the smoothing of brutal edges – the bending of straight lines – the progressive sanding away of the roughness and brutality of the Modern City. This unique landscape – a product of its time - is melting into the air. We are left with remnants, bits and pieces – legacies of a social democratic state in the making – reminders of a time when a strong political ideology informed an attempt to socially engineer a more equitable society – a better society – solving urban problems through technocratic fixes – a genuine effort to capture the spirit of modernity in built form.
The solidity of modern architecture and its sheer brutalism - unlike Manchester's ornate Victorian gems – represent a challenge to contemporary speculators and urban planners – they are structures which are not easily converted into stylish apartments, or A-grade offices – European café culture sits uncomfortably within a rain-soaked concrete precinct in Collyhurst, for example. Modernist buildings possess an aesthetic that jars against the creation of the entrepreneurial city – as a place to do business, to celebrate individualism, and promote wealth generation over social equity.
The Council Estate for instance – once was a form aspirational living for the working class – but here we start to chart the shift in our collective aspirations. Public housing is now a marker of illegitimate difference, a landscape of blight – a sink hole for failed and washed up citizens. Our attitude towards the council estate and other products of modernist planning - reflects the current disdain for all things public – which began perhaps with reform of the welfare state – and Thatcherite assertions that there is no such thing as society, only individuals and the choices they make.
I would maintain, that these modernist 'carbuncles' – or 'ugly gems' – form an important part of the history of Manchester. These structures continue to exert a looming presence, producing menacing shadows over Manchester's attempt to re brand itself as an open, entrepreneurial and cosmopolitan place. These buildings have a ghostly – spectral presence in the city – haunting us about pre-Thatcherite days – a glimpse through to another world –an upside down place where state planning and collectivism took presidence. It is surprising then - that modernist architecture has become a figure of hate, vilified for its ugliness and alienating properties – a built environment that is simply not worth saving. A place which is best forgotten as Manchester engineers a 'better neoliberal' future. Perhaps then the Manchester Modernist Society might provide us with a way rethinking the city as other or different, perhaps even functioning as a mechanism through which to challenge and resist the pernicious elements private corporate investment and control of urban space.
During the mass clearances of the 1960s - formal and comprehensive archives were constructed by Manchester and Salford Corporations, of working class in areas prior to redevelopment, extensive film and photographic records, oral histories, and other testimonies – prior to the construction of the modernist city.
But as this disappears, there is an absence of systematic documentation of the lives of ordinary people, living and worked within it. For many Mancunians – their experience of the modern city was real and direct – as they encountered a built environment that gave form to the 'cradle to the grave' expectations established through the Welfare State – shaping our experience - from the moment of birth in an NHS hospital, times spent in clinics, dental waiting rooms, the doctor's surgery – educations forged within Secondary Modern schools or comprehensives – lives spent in tower blocks, shopping precincts, public squares, moments spent on concrete benches, in telephone boxes, within municipal buildings – libraries, courts, town-halls, fire-stations, swimming baths. The modern city transformed how we moved across Manchester – through a landscape of flyovers, motorways, bridges, underpasses, bus stations. Perhaps the Modernist can also alert us to the importance of documenting the lives and experiences of the people who lived through it. It is important, therefore, that we understand this disappearing landscape more deeply, acknowledge its richness and diversity, and challenge the common-sense assumption that it blighted the lives of a generation. And with its impending demise, it is essential then we do begin to acknowledge and raise awareness of Manchester Modernist Landscape – and how it has shaped the lives of ordinary people.
We need to be careful though not to over-romanticize – and avoid uncritical appreciation of modernist architecture. I still work in a City Council designed educational block – its not exactly a Workers Utopia. There remains a validity to the criticism targeted at modernist planning by the likes of Jane Jacobs. So we should avoid becoming too maudlin about this lost Utopian landscape. Ultimately the quest for the ideal city – is a dream, a vision – it will always be an unfinished and untenable project. But the Manchester Modernist Society can at least help us appreciate and document a time when politicians were more concerned with ideology than expenses, a time when a cohesive vision of the city as a place of social unity, justice and equity emerged, and provide us with a charter to challenge the dogma and injustices of privatisation and think about the city as a space of collective action.
Steve Millington
22nd October 2009
North West Archive Films:
Film NO. 1282 Hulme Redevelopment
Film No. 1222 The Mancunian Way.
Monday 9 November 2009
food for the soul - angels of anarchy at manchester city art gallery
angels of anarchy opened to national reviews at the city gallery at the end of september. there was a glamorous sounding preview attended by most of manchester (except myself as usual - always the last to know...) plus the irrepressible jeanette winterson for good measure. everyone seemed to have been there or at least be talking about it....
so far so usual. its not too often that a gallery gives its space over to an all female perspective and when it does it can garner as much criticism as praise. so i was intrigued by the premise. but without the invitation to submit a review of the exhibition to a strict deadline, im still not sure i would have attended - partly because of the price tag, partly because of the subject matter and partly i have to confess because im rarely excited by the city art gallery.
but a couple of things drew me there....the opportunity to find out more about the intriguing leonora carrington, a personal favourite of mine, and curiosity to see what this new lens, this new way of looking at an easily stereotyped art movement, might reveal: a counter balance to the whitworth's subversive spaces show earlier in the year, which similarly debunked myths and preconceptions, but from a totally different perspective. unlike angels of anarchy the whitworth show toured and can still be seen at the Sainsbury Centre UEA, Norwich, 29 Sep-13 Dec.
writing for a deadline and with word contraints is rather different than pootling about in a corner of cyberspace, chattering to yourself about whatever arcane topic takes your fancy, and predictably i found the task difficult. im not sure that what eventually emerged was an actual art review - im not an art critic, just a citizen with an interest in piecing together some insight into recent and contemporary culture from the many creative outputs available to me, but together with the other reviews posted up by more experienced art reviewers and bloggers, a peruse of the angels of anarchy website should hopefully inspire you to take a trip over to the city art gallery and make up your own mind...
whatever your perspective, this is a landmark exibition, and together with the whitty's subversive spaces is an unmissable opportunity to catch first hand the results of the usually invisible world of the academic researcher in the fields of visual culture and history of art. their painstaking work, four years or so in the making, has given this old bluestocking, at least, much food for thought.
angels of anarchy is showing at MAG until 10 january 2010. visit their dedicated website for information, a programme of surrealist events and activities, and a whole host of opinions and reviews, including my own...
so far so usual. its not too often that a gallery gives its space over to an all female perspective and when it does it can garner as much criticism as praise. so i was intrigued by the premise. but without the invitation to submit a review of the exhibition to a strict deadline, im still not sure i would have attended - partly because of the price tag, partly because of the subject matter and partly i have to confess because im rarely excited by the city art gallery.
but a couple of things drew me there....the opportunity to find out more about the intriguing leonora carrington, a personal favourite of mine, and curiosity to see what this new lens, this new way of looking at an easily stereotyped art movement, might reveal: a counter balance to the whitworth's subversive spaces show earlier in the year, which similarly debunked myths and preconceptions, but from a totally different perspective. unlike angels of anarchy the whitworth show toured and can still be seen at the Sainsbury Centre UEA, Norwich, 29 Sep-13 Dec.
writing for a deadline and with word contraints is rather different than pootling about in a corner of cyberspace, chattering to yourself about whatever arcane topic takes your fancy, and predictably i found the task difficult. im not sure that what eventually emerged was an actual art review - im not an art critic, just a citizen with an interest in piecing together some insight into recent and contemporary culture from the many creative outputs available to me, but together with the other reviews posted up by more experienced art reviewers and bloggers, a peruse of the angels of anarchy website should hopefully inspire you to take a trip over to the city art gallery and make up your own mind...
whatever your perspective, this is a landmark exibition, and together with the whitty's subversive spaces is an unmissable opportunity to catch first hand the results of the usually invisible world of the academic researcher in the fields of visual culture and history of art. their painstaking work, four years or so in the making, has given this old bluestocking, at least, much food for thought.
angels of anarchy is showing at MAG until 10 january 2010. visit their dedicated website for information, a programme of surrealist events and activities, and a whole host of opinions and reviews, including my own...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
