May 15, 2008
Vivienne Westwood, Riz Ahmed and Shami Chakrabarti
Kicking ass together in this short film of interviews shedding more light on Liberty’s Charge or Release campaign against 42 days pre-charge detention.
May 15, 2008
Imagine Video
Another rights-tastic post! Here’s a 30 second cinema advert from Liberty, featuring a voiceover by Britain’s Most Plummy, Simon Callow.
Liberty is campaigning to block government proposals to extend the length of time someone can be held without charge from 28 days to 42. There is absolutely NO EVIDENCE to support this dangerous and counter-productive measure. They’re just trying to look tough. The crucial vote will be taking place in the coming weeks, please support the campaign! I am a weeny bit biased, so don’t just take my word for it - visit www.chargeorrelease.com and see for yourself.
May 15, 2008
15 of the most valuable things you’ll ever own
You probably don’t ever think about them, but they are priceless. And trust me, you’d miss them if they were gone. I’m talking about your human rights.
Having just said I will be posting on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, here I am on Thursday morning failing to write about East London. The reason is Bloggers Unite for Human Rights. You probably know about the amazing work that Amnesty does abroad, but if I can’t zoom in on the East End for this one, I can at least look at human rights in the UK, because - like charity - they begin at home. Liberty is probably the organisation that does the most on this in the UK and they rock pretty hard.
So what are your rights? Here’s a list of them as they stand in the Human Rights Act 1998:
Which one would you be happy to give up?
About 6 months ago I started working at a human rights charity. It was a completely new area for me. I have since come to realise two very important things:
- We are lucky to live in the country that we do. Once a nation’s human rights framework has been dismantled or compromised, there is no protection. There’s no way to complain, there’s no way to make a change, you cannot hold anyone to account. I know the total shambles that is parliamentary politics at the moment doesn’t provide a great deal of comfort, but it really is better than the alternative. Not that we can rest easy - I urge you to watch Taking Liberties if you get the chance. It’s pretty damn scary
- Human rights only work if everyone has them. If you are happy to see somebody imprisoned without trial, then you are forfeiting your own protection. If you are, like me, educated, white, and middle-class, it’s unlikely that They will be coming for you anytime soon. But use your imagination, and try to understand what it would mean for someone to be arrested and held without charge and with no explanation.
It is vital that we safeguard these principles, even if it means standing up for the rights of people that we despise. That is a tough pill to swallow, I know. But we mustn’t arm our government, our future governments, with weapons that could one day be turned on us.
May 14, 2008
Is public art a waste of space?
I know that’s the question that has been keeping you awake at night too. So on behalf of all of us I went to a free arts debate on the subject last week in the National Gallery. I’ll come back to it later but Apollo magazine has a good summary of the issues that came up.
What had got me thinking about the topic in particular was the abundance of bad public art in East London, and Stratford especially. We’re literally falling over the stuff out here. My kneejerk reaction now is to see it as a symptom of shoddy regeneration and council underspend - with a few notable exceptions, the sculptures / light installations / memorial fountains here add nothing to our experience of the environment we live in. The pieces aren’t attractive, challenging, interactive, thought-provoking, inspiring, controversial or any of the other things you might wish from art in the public domain.
What *really* irritates me is when you look past the sculpture and see a high street full of drunks, junkies, homeless people, or a forest of yellow murder boards. I am as arty farty as they come and I still think ‘surely you could be spending the money on something more worthwhile?’ At the debate Joan Bakewell said that “the effect of public art is that you see the space around it”, as well as the thing you’re ‘meant’ to look at. Perhaps that’s the problem? If you dumbly parachute ‘art’ into a place without considering the surrounding space you’re just drawing attention to the mismatch. It’s the indifference which jars - the indifference of the people who commissioned it is mirrored by the indifferent reception of the people who live with it.
Two examples from the centre of Stratford spring to mind. One is the ‘World Peace’ sculpture (1984) outside Morrisons: not only is this unimaginative to the point of GCSE coursework, it also completely disconnected from the place around it. The overwhelming feeling you get when you look at it is ‘why on earth is this here?’ That is if you see it at all.
I feel the same about the series of photographs called ‘Stratford Circles’, which reside in an attractive spot between the multi-storey car-park and the road, at the back of Krisp clothing store. Really, what is the point?
Just for balance, there is a piece I like a lot as well - the ‘Railway Tree’ by Malcolm Robertson. It is a pleasure to look at, it has a strong visual impact, and attempts to say something about Stratford’s unique identity. Even so, I think it suffers from the location, surrounded by busy road and office blocks - it discourages interaction because the only reason people would be near it is if they were crossing the road. And actually it’s a sculpture that works well up close because you can get into its ‘roots’, and feel the texture of the girders, and really appreciate the size of it. It’s only when you get close that is becomes tree-like.
The question of democracy in art came up at the debate - how do you involve the public in getting the art they want for their community? I certainly don’t have the answer. East London has an incredibly vibrant artistic community and loads of great stuff going on. What I’d like to know is how we can tap some of that originality and boldness and bring it into the public realm. A hip studio in Dalston or the fantastic Whitechapel gallery are open to the public, of course, but they are intimidating places, and often half-deliberately inaccessible, physically and intellectually.
There is lots going on in Stratford at the moment on the public art front, with a new Platform for Art initiative underway and advertised in the station. It would make me happy if the committees behind future projects took on board something that Sandy Nairne said at the arts debate: “Good public art changes, and makes, public space.”
I shall close this very serious gigantipost with a link to a picture of artist Mark Titchner, because he is pretty. Oh and also he was on the arts debate panel and has done lots of good stuff promoting human rights. Go Mark!
May 10, 2008
Geff Geffty-Geffrye
Hope y’all appreciate the Izzard reference. Has anyone seen him recently? Is he still funny? I still heart him lots but Bill Bailey has been my comedy hero for some time now, especially after I managed to persuade his agent to get him to do this.
Anyway! I was going to say a little bit about the Geffrye Museum on Kingsland Road. I went on the bank holiday, through deserted Liverpool St station.
The Geffrye is a museum of - bear with me - middle-class living rooms from 1600 to the present day. The really odd thing is that it is set out in a row of pretty 18thC almshouses, so you go along from house to house looking at these fake rooms, with fake bay windows and doors. It feels a bit like a film set.
It was fun having a look around, but the whole thing was a bit unsubstantial. There simply wasn’t enough stuff to create a picture of rooms people would actually have lived in. A few details had been added, like a tea set laid out, or a half-finished letter, but the overall impression was of complete sterility. And that’s fine in some ways, it just seemed that elsewhere the museum has worked really hard to encourage visitors to relate to the way people lived in these periods, with samples of furnishings and finishes that you could touch, for example. I know it is a totally different endeavour, but I couldn’t help comparing it to Dennis Severs’ astonishing house on Folgate St.
Although respect to the Geffrye for including a bit about gender and the Victorian house - as men from the middle classes increasingly went out to work rather than living above their shop, workshop or counting house, the home became a newly ‘feminised’ place. The domestic female ideal was often figured as the ‘angel of the house’, famously murdered by Virginia Woolf in 1913. Here’s some more info about the changing ideals of womanhood in Victorian Britain, in case you’re interested in that sort of thang.
May 7, 2008
Creepy trees at Hollow Ponds
In advance of a picnic trip if the weather holds, I thought I’d share some eerie pictures of twisted trees at Hollow Ponds in the Leytonstone end of Epping Forest. I’m sure it’ll look less spooky in the sunshine, but there was something a little wild and strange about the place, certainly compared to your usual tidy 
London park.
It *almost* made me miss the countryside. To visit mind, not to stay. For those of you that don’t know, I have a severe case of ruraphobia: the fear of accidentally moving to the countryside. The Leytonstone move isn’t helping, but I’m facing my fear 
What were the Hollow Ponds like in the 1930s? ‘FlyingBunny’ remembers his childhood visits there in the BBC People’s War archive:
There were always rowing boats for hire on the pond and it was always my ambition to hire a boat and explore the many islands there were.
It seemed to me then that the winters were very hard and I loved to play in the snow. My dad made me a toboggan which I took up to the Hollow Ponds and as there were lots of small hillocks I had a great time charging up and down them. There was one such occasion that I caused a major flap at home because I was so enjoying myself that I lost track of time, and arrived home about two hours late. They were just about to send out search parties for me.
There were also many occasions when the pond was frozen over and the ice would be covered with skaters. Even at night the cars would park around the pond and play their headlights on the surface of the ice so that the skaters could see. These events attracted many street vendors who brought barrows with braziers on and sold hot chestnuts and baked potatoes.
Wow, eating hot potatoes and skating by car headlight! Also I not only want a toboggan to play with, I want more excuses to say ‘toboggan’. Even typing it feels good.
May 5, 2008
Dancing bots in Bethnal Green
Bank holiday weekend, woo! An East End accomplice called on Sunday night and asked if I wanted to go the Box Bot B Movie Bank Holiday Nightmare at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. I said something along the lines of ‘hell yeah!’ and off we went.
Unfortunately we arrived too late to make ourselves cardboard box ‘n’ tinfoil robot outfits but there were a few botting about when we got there. There watched some, uh, performance art, and jumped around to a punky electro band called Toy Toy. Not sure who the red-haired robot DJing just beforehand was but she played Talking Heads, The Slits and Le Tigre so I was joyful 
Other attractions included a montage of B movie clips showing on a big screen, and a ‘laboratory’ bar which hadn’t really made much of a departure from a previous incarnation as a gazebo (although it was artfully draped with tinfoil). You could choose from a range of mysterious liquids in chemical colours with names like ‘Brain Fluid’ or ‘Essence of Monster’ (in case you were wondering, if you mix them they taste of fruit salad chews) There were also free flying saucers and some dangerously twisty straws.
Around midnight there was a prize-giving for the best costume, which revealed that three girls had come as Stepford wives - really nice concept, but it was a shame that they were just in everyday Bethnal Greenwear (The Pipettes have a lot to answer for…)
It was a superfun night, given a wonderful delirious edge by the fact it was a *Sunday* night. And we were, you know, *OUT*. Truly I’m living life on the edge.
PS Admit it, you were tempted by the 300 flying saucers for £5.80 offer, weren’t you? If you have just finished entering your debit card details, well, I salute you.
May 4, 2008
Animals on the Underground
Right, normal Sajarina service is resuming after the election debacle.
I saw this poster for IFAW at Leytonstone station just after a colleague had alerted me to the existence of Animals on the Underground, where you can see a whole menagerie of tube creatures.
The moorhen is my favourite. But then I have a bit of a thing for moorhens as there used to be loads of them stalking around the crocuses at the back of my college. Moorhen chicks aren’t the cutest baby creatures, but they do win comedy points for being small black balls of fluff with massive feet protruding beneath. Especially on the rare occasions that they fall over
May 2, 2008
Poor old London
Four years of Boris it is. Sigh.
I feel bad for Diamond Geezer. George Galloway was my MP while I was living in Bow and thoroughly useless he was too.
