HENGING BETS: SMART ART

Jeremy Deller's artwork, Sacrilege. Source: Supplied

The ARTS section of The Australian January 06, 2014, carried a report that was cleverly titled Take a monumental leap of faith – see below. One sometimes wonders about smart titles. Is this the most important aspect of journalism these days? The subject of the article was Jeremy Deller’s inflatable Stonehenge described as ‘a life-sized, bouncy-castle version of the stones’ – hence the puns in the title.

Deller is labelled as ‘one of the most important artists of his generation.' He talks about this work in somewhat vague, patriotic terms: "It's like a canvas for the projection of ideals about self and country and the world we live in." The art is labelled as ‘social surrealism,’ whatever this might mean. No one seems to know much about it or its ambitions, not even the artist. The title of the work, Sacrilege, seems to be playing the same games as the journalists involve themselves in. There is a remote cynicism here, a careless indulgence in things seen to be personally ingenious.

The article continues with the comment: ‘Now it's Australia's turn to clamber all over this fun facsimile.’ It is this immanent closer involvement in the work, the ‘fun facsimile,’ that seems to stimulate the question: ‘So what is it that makes Sacrilege art, and not just another cheerful sideshow attraction?’ The article continues to describe the response given by the artist:

'Deller sips his cappuccino.

"I don't know," he says, preferring to let us figure it out.’

Well, there it is! At least it is stated clearly.

"No one knows why Stonehenge was built so they all bring their own version of it," says Jeremy Deller, the Turner Prize-winning artist.

No one knows, not even the artist. The logic seems to be that anyone can do anything and call it art, leaving it to the observer to work something out. This insulting game of Blind Man’s Bluff allows the charlatan to participate in games of power, claiming genius status out of nothing but an intimidating presentation that is labelled ‘art.’ Just what one is supposed to make of it is uncertain, but the report goes on to note:

‘The left-wing son of public sector workers, Deller did an MA in art history in his 20s and worked as a driver, postman and shop assistant before finding his way as an artist.’

There is always a certain cunning in this charade that art seems to have become. Here Deller adds the statement:

“What could be more defining of Britishness than Stonehenge, and what could be more mysterious?"

He seems to want to claim not only the ‘British’ authority of the icon, Stonehenge, as his subject, but also appears to seek to adopt its inherent mystery as a unique part of his creation: his ‘Art,’ apparently without knowing much about it. The whole circumstance rings with what feels like a dismaying heresay that pretends to hold real substance and meaning when no one acknowledges knowing anything about it, other than it is a ‘fun facsimile.’ The cheek alone seems to force the issue and intimidate others into a silent obeisance to self-proclaimed genius. Has art really come to such a confusingly pretentious muddle that threatens anyone who might query its being? Is art merely the bloated self-creation and promotion of the hero, a blind mind game of bluff seeking attention? Is art just a different business model that promotes ME and MY?

Has it all come down to heroes, with everyone expecting to be one every day and to be recognised as such by everyone else? Is it that the artist, the architect, has to become more extremely heroic than ever before in this ocean of supermen? In the same newspaper, on the same day, there was a report on the new rules on the use of social media that the Australian Olympic Committee is seeking to implement. It carried the title, I won’t be gagged by AOC: Torah. At least one Olympian was protesting, objecting to these controls. The article started with the words: ‘Olympic gold medallist Torah Bright has savaged the Australian Olympic Committee’s ban.’ It continued by noting the credentials of this protester: ‘This 27-year-old snowboarder, tipped as one of Australia’s best hopes at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.’ Now this makes the position hard to ignore!

The article suggests that she has made her point very clear: “I care not for the trivial policies of an organisation that comes into my sport once every four years.

“Freedom of choice and speech are humanity’s greatest gifts. I am the master of my social media. I am captain of my voice.”

The report noted that ‘Bright also publicly voiced her concerns on social media site Twitter over the weekend, stating the ban was “bullshit.”

Some voice! Some captain!

What is going on here? Is art, is architecture, now involved in this singular claim for my scream, my voice to be heard, my work to be seen, no matter what I might have to say, ‘bullshit’ or not? Where does the sense of meaning, that link to things human, of the spirit, come into play? If art is simply entertaining fun on odd facsimiles where everyone is left to make of it whatever one might, then we live in a spinning void, a world of stimulating chaos claiming to be mysteriously meaningful, where everyone can be momentous.

The report on the AOC’s rules finished by noting that ‘those athletes that did not Tweet or upload photos to Instagram, (in the London Olympics), ultimately came out on top. . . . They won.”

There was a television programme on the Australian swimmer Murray Rose some months ago on Australian Story on ABC TV. He stated that he not only loved swimming, that he had a feel for water, but that his remarkable success was based on the concept that when he was swimming, he concentrated only on swimming. A BBC programme on religion some years ago summarised the Buddhist philosophy as being: when you are walking, know that you are walking. The idea carried a further insight: When you find the Buddha, kill him.

Olympians, artists and architects might learn from this understanding, knowing their sport and their art intimately in any participation, any doing - loving; concentrating, as the craftsman of old called it: ‘Having concentrated, he set to work.’ Without such commitment, one is left floundering in one’s own self-important indulgences. There is something more in art, architecture and sport than ME and MY voice; my thoughts. It is this ‘something more’ that needs to be contemplated in silence and with humility. It might even require a 'monumental leap of faith'; but it does not involve bouncing on a replica of Stonehenge that recent research has revealed as a burial ground with a complexity of processional ways more profound than ever expected. Sadly, the inflatable facsimile only highlights something else: smart art.

The article is reproduced here as The Australian restricts some content on line. 

Take a monumental leap of faith

JANE CORNWELL

THE AUSTRALIAN

JANUARY 06, 2014 12:00AM

Jeremy Deller's artwork, Sacrilege. Source: Supplied

IT'S 7am and a couple of thousand people are standing, shivering, on Salisbury Plains in Wiltshire, England. It's as dark and possibly as cold and wet as it was just before dawn 5000 years ago, when the ancients gathered here to celebrate the winter solstice: the renewal of the light after this, the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere.

Back then, of course, there were no metal barriers and neon-clad stewards, no rules restricting access to Stonehenge, Britain's most famous ancient monument, inside which we're about to romp for 90 minutes, through what will be a mizzle-shrouded sunrise.

There's a sense of expectation as we make our way towards the prehistoric stone circle, with its iconic silhouette and powerful, almost supernatural vibe. Several druids in cloaks lead the way, tapping the ground with wooden staffs topped with rams' horns; tourists with backpacks and dreadlocked neo-pagans rub elbows with a guy dressed as springtime figure the Green Man, his face hidden by a mask of leaves, and a person wearing a large rubber unicorn's head.

"No one knows why Stonehenge was built so they all bring their own version of it," says Jeremy Deller, the Turner Prize-winning artist whose Sacrilege project - a life-sized, bouncy-castle version of the stones - is about to grace the Sydney and Perth festivals. "It's like a canvas for the projection of ideals about self and country and the world we live in," he adds. What could be more defining of Britishness than Stonehenge, and what could be more mysterious?"

It's two weeks before the winter solstice, and I am meeting Deller, 47, for coffee near his home in north London. It has been a bumper year for the debonair Englishman, frequently described as one of the most important artists of his generation. His English Magic exhibition at the Venice Biennale summed up his "love-hate relationship" with his country by including everything from Neolithic hand axes and William Morris fabrics to drawings on the theme of the Iraq war and a mural inspired by Prince Harry's alleged shooting of an endangered bird.

"I saw Venice as an opportunity to get things off my chest," says Deller in his quiet, understated way. And to promote his heroes: "William Morris humanised the Industrial Revolution with his art, writing, politics."

Deller's touring exhibition All That is Solid Melts into Air examined the impact of the 18th century manufacturing boom - the Industrial Revolution - on British popular culture, complete with a vintage jukebox playing the sounds of a bygone factory. Then there is Sacrilege: commissioned by the Glasgow International festival of art and a hit at London's Cultural Olympiad, the inflatable Stonehenge has been bounced upon at 33 sites across Britain. Now it's Australia's turn to clamber all over this fun facsimile.

So what is it that makes Sacrilege art, and not just another cheerful sideshow attraction? Deller sips his cappuccino.

"I don't know," he says, preferring to let us figure it out.

Deller's social surrealism has broadened the definition of contemporary art. His Battle of Orgreave was a 2001 re-enactment of a violent confrontation in Yorkshire during the miners' strike in 1984. He won the 2004 Turner Prize with Memory Bucket, a documentary about Crawford, Texas, where George W. Bush owns a ranch, and the notorious siege in nearby Waco.

In 2009 he took a road trip across US, towing a car destroyed by a bomb attack in a marketplace in Baghdad: "It was intended to get people talking," he says.

The left-wing son of public sector workers, Deller did an MA in art history in his 20s and worked as a driver, postman and shop assistant before finding his way as an artist. Despite the often collaborative nature of his work he would rather not be considered an artist-producer, unlike his early mentor Andy Warhol, at whose Factory studio in New York the then undergraduate spent two formative weeks in 1986.

"I was very influenced by the idea of the artist as free spirit," says Deller, who in 1993, while his parents were on holiday, used the family home for an exhibition titled Open Bedroom. "You could run a magazine, make film, TV, prints, paintings, music ... You could use whatever you could get your hands on."

The themes Deller tackles are more easily definable: identity and class, nature and progress; music, memory, the artist as mystic. A big fan of the likes of David Bowie as well as British-style brass bands, Deller brings the same DIY aesthetic to creating art that the punk movement brought to making music. His contemporaries the Young British Artists, or YBAs, did much the same, garnering attention through controversy.

But unlike, say, Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin, of whom he isn't fond ("Greedy, rapacious, self-pitying, self-obsessed"), Deller doesn't make work to sell, and eschews using anything that feels autobiographical.

Unless, that is, he's positioning himself as a fan (his English Magic exhibition included a painting of a giant William Morris standing in the Venetian lagoon, sinking a boat owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich), or linking a personal interest to public art created with the public in mind.

Sacrilege was originally conceived as one of a series of inflatables commemorating forbidden spaces in Britain: "I also wanted to do Buckingham Palace and a military installation," he says, "but I couldn't do it all."

Stonehenge felt the most resonant. The standing stones in their concentric circle have fascinated through the ages: John Constable painted them under a crepuscular sky; William Blake used their image in Jerusalem; and 18th-century archeologist William Stukeley's romantic but fictitious image of the druids, the priestly class of the Celts, worshipping at Stonehenge, has persisted to the present day.

Deller walked among the stones as a child in the 1970s, before vandalism and erosion led to the site officially being roped off from the public in 1977. Did he feel their healing energy? "Er, no," he says. "But I like archeological remains and ruins; I like the humour of Stonehenge as well."

We talk about the monument's cameo as a shrunken stage prop in the spoof rock documentary This is Spinal Tap; of the way it has inspired such art installations as Fridgehenge and Carhenge. His own work, he says, also pays homage to the anarchic freak-out culture of film director Ken Russell and the space-rock band Hawkwind, who recorded a live album at the Stonehenge Free Festival (Stoned Henge) in June 1984.

But where the summer solstice continues to attract up to 30,000 revellers to the site each year, it's the more intimate winter solstice that really lets people get up close and personal.

There is much touching of the great stones as the first rays of the sun poke weakly over the horizon. A soundtrack of live drumming and chanting gets everyone moving; the unicorn is shaking its head.

Amid a scrum in the middle of the circle, a Gandalf lookalike is reciting the Druid's Prayer. I step on to a boulder to get a better look. "Oi, get off," a steward says crossly. "Show some respect."

Sacrilege runs from January 8 to 26 at the Sydney Festival, then February 17 to March 1 at the Perth Festival.

SURPRISING MAREEL NUMBERS

Mareel’s cinema figures continue to surpass all expectations

2013-07-03 11:59:54-04

The popularity of Mareel’s two cinema screens is showing no sign of letting up. Attendances have passed the 80,000 mark in the ten months since the venue opened – just over double the 39,000 projected for the first full year and the equivalent of three visits for every islander.

One can only be pleased to see the new arts centre in Lerwick is being used so well. The report in The Shetland Times told of an impressive figure: 80,000 cinema attendances in ten months! The temptation was to deconstruct this claim to see if ordinary experience might confirm it. It seemed that numbers have always been a problem for the Mareel when they referred to dollars, so could this claim correct? Council bailed out the Mareel to the tune of an extra one million pounds.

Over a period of ten months, the average cinema attendance is 8,000 persons per month. To put this in context, Lerwick has a population of about 7,500, with the population for the whole of scattered islands of Shetland being about 23,000. If one assumes that the Mareel is open every day, this gives a conservative average cinema attendance of about 250 persons a day, every day of the year: about three percent of the population of Lerwick.

Wikipedia records that the Mareel has two cinemas, one accommodating ‘about 160 people’, the other ‘about 40 people.’ So each session, with each cinema in use, has 200 seats available.

Assuming that each day has four sessions in each cinema, the calculations indicate that about 60 people turn up for every twin session.

So the figure of 80,000 comes down to an average of about a 33% occupancy.

The projected figure of 39,000 seems to be very modest; or perhaps just prudent? This is about a16% occupancy when taken over ten months; less for the year. Was it really planned to have less than an average of six people in the smaller cinema and 26 in the larger one? All of these folk could have fitted into the smaller cinema! It seems a supreme luxury to have a choice; but why should Shetlanders be denied the option that is available in most other places if it can be afforded? Shetland has the oil money – well, it had it.

To be fair, the Mareel is not open every day. I recall one cold, windy and wet public holiday when it seemed that watching a movie might be just the thing to do, only to discover that the Mareel was closed. ‘Why?’ is another question to be pondered. So revising the calculations for, say, a five-day week average, the total daily attendance becomes 400 people. This equates to an average of 100 persons per twin session, assuming that there are four sessions a day. With the two cinemas both working, offering 200 seats per session, this is a 50% occupancy. It certainly is an impressive figure. Shetlanders must be true movie buffs!

The strange thing is that for the times that I have been in the vicinity of the new arts centre, I have never seen any great number of vehicles parked nearby. Maybe many local folk walk to the Mareel; or do they visit as groups delivered by buses that park elsewhere?

Figures can be mesmerising when flashed about with statistical analogies of various scales and sizes. One thinks of the comparison of the flea jump when converted into a cow jump of equivalent ability. When considered differently with the calculation that every one Shetlander visits the movies once in every three months, it does not sound so immediately startling. This attendance and the average 50% occupancy are figures that many cinemas in the world would be very happy with. One really has to leave it to experience to confirm these statistics, remembering every session that does not achieve the average attendance will require another with many more moviegoers than the mean. What really does happen every day at the Mareel?

One hopes that the circumstance is not such that nothing critical can ever be said about the Mareel. Will the statistics ever be subjected to an objective, independent audit? Enigmatically, everything that gets reported about the Mareel and the events held there are all very favourable; perhaps too much so?

The latent problem is that while the Shetland Council is wanting to close down all public toilets, (reportedly to save seventy thousand pounds a year), and has removed all skips and rubbish collections from the islands to save even more money, Council has put an extra one million pounds into the Mareel in order to save it from serious financial problems of overspending on its construction budget. Apparently the builder was asked to do more work than had been originally contracted for. It would appear to be political dynamite for the Mareel to be anything but a screaming success in every way possible, otherwise the Council may not look to be too wise at all. As an aside, it is interesting to note that the article on the Mareel in the blog http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/the-mareel-new-arts-complex-for-lerwick.html

was not published by The New Shetlander, but the item on dialect was: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/on-language-shetand-dialect.html

Maybe all the islands' trash should be dumped outside the Mareel to become an artwork just to make a point. Where else might all of the refuse end up? Images of old Shetland with islands filled with rusting rubbish come to mind. Gosh, the Mareel pile might even win the Turner Award! It could become a Guiness world record: a true tourist attraction! The situation is bleak, but it does highlight just why the Mareel must never be seen to fail, or fail to impress. It sets the scene for cynicism on the reported surprising numbers that must be some of the best in the world, all when the carpark at the Mareel stays nearly empty!

I went to the movies in Brisbane the other evening. It was a large cinema complex with nine theatres. The theatre space we were in held six people for the movie showing when it could seat about 400 visitors. When we came out, the large foyer spaces were empty. I am sure that the managers were hoping that every citizen in Brisbane, a city with a population of about 2.2 million people, might go to a movie at least once every three months to provide th theatres with an average 50% occupancy!

Just what is really going on? The poor Council has no money for repairing local halls, maintaining public toilets, or collecting general rubbish, but it has all the money it needs for this great hall at Lerwick that has its own real problems that will, it appears, never ever be mentioned or debated. The great irony is that the Lerwick public toilet is one of the best projects to be built in this town for years. It is a real gem. Meanwhile the Mareel is struggling with its own concerns. These include financial, architectural and planning issues! These, alas, it seems, will never be mentioned.

Unlike the harbourside public toilets, the Mareel has no presence when viewed from everyday Lerwick, in the daily ‘toing and froing’ of ordinary life. It has no civic identity in the old town. One has to detour down a lane to the water’s edge in order to see it other than as an angled portion of roof in gaps between stone walls. One then has to move on further to the edge of the dock in front of the Museum and Archives Building and look back if one wants to see its unique promotional image, its grand illusion mirrored in the water that the interior spaces almost ignore.

Dare one suggest that the cinema figures are a grand illusion too? Have the mass attendances for the one-off performance theatre events been mixed into the cinema attendances to make them look much better than they really might be?

Surely the Council’s attitude couldn’t be: let the islanders look after their own waste, while we spend their money on 'cake,' and Councillors’ salaries too? One might have thought that a commitment to the arts has to be based on a comprehensive concept of respect, care and concern for all aspects of life, including its ‘dirty’ aspects, not just the ‘smarty-arty’ side of things. After all, aren’t life and art supposed to have some nexus that is not simply an either or?

POSTSCRIPT 08 January 2014

The concerns with the inundation of sea water noted in http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/the-mareel-new-arts-complex-for-lerwick.html are real, not some extremist 'green' hysteria involving future climate change and rising oceans, as the report in The Shetland Times of 06 January 2014 indicates. With the recent high tides around Shetland, the water was lapping almost to the doors of the new Shetland Museum located on the docks next to the Mareel. One wonders: what might happen with high tides and gales?

Established 1872. Online since 1996.

High tides around the isles

06/01/2014, by Shetland Times

Friday and Saturday both experienced higher than average high water marks around Shetland.

The boat deck at the Small Boat Harbour in Lerwick was completely submerged with about 20-30cm of water above it at around 1pm on Saturday.

The high tides at Freefield meant the water was lapping almost up to the doors of the Shetland Museum in Lerwick. It also meant the former fishing boat Pilot Us and other vessels in the area were above the jetties where they are berthed.

 The water was lapping almost up to the doors of the Shetland Museum. Photo: Mark Berry

 High tides at Freefield in Lerwick. Photo: Ian Leask

The boat deck at the Small Boat Harbour in Lerwick was completely submerged on Saturday. Photo: John Coutts 

The boat deck at the Small Boat Harbour in Lerwick was completely submerged. Photo: John Coutts

http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2014/01/06/high-tides-around-the-isles/

The following report in The Shetland Times of 07 November 2013 confirms the financial problems Shetland Arts has found itself with. It seems that the arts have displaced angling interests too.

Angling association loses hatchery as Kergord is put on the open market

07/11/2013, by Peter Johnson

Shetland Anglers Association is urgently seeking a new hatchery after its lease at Kergord was term­inated and the building allegedly “rendered inoperable”.

According to the angling associ­ation it was never given the option of extending its £1,500 a year lease and extensive reinstatement work would need to be undertaken before the hatchery could be up and running again.

One angler, who did not want to be identified, questioned the legality of “damaging” the hatchery while it was still being leased by the angling club. He claimed that the fish ladder had been filled in, pipework removed from the building and the dam emptied.

“It has been rendered unusable as a hatchery and is no longer viable as a hatchery without major re-invest­ment,” he said. “I doubt the legality of this, but our main concern is that we have been left without a hatchery.”

The anglers association has re­stocked large numbers of sea trout grown in Kergord into areas that have traditionally supported strong populations.

Association secretary Alec Miller said: “We are not happy about this. We were surprised that we were not consulted when the work was undertaken as we were the lease holders at the time.”

The hatchery owner, Shetland Arts, is selling the building and surrounding land to raise capital following an expensive and pro­tracted dispute with construction firm DITT over the building of the Mareel arts centre. It had given the owner of the adjacent land, Brian Anderson, permission to remove sluices from the dam after he complained about flooding on his ground.

http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2013/11/07/angling-association-loses-hatchery-as-kergord-is-put-on-the-open-market/

5 April 2014
see also: 
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html

NEW GEHRY PROJECTS IN ALEPPO?

The page-six story was suggested in the headline that read: Scores die as Assad pummels Aleppo rebels.  It was the image accompanying this report in The Australian of 24 December 2013, ironically Christmas eve, a time of peace and happiness, that prompted the observation that the pictured bomb damage looked very much like a Gehry project. It is a very sad thought because the reflection overlooks the serious suffering that the people of Syria are having to endure. It is also regretful to note that what is being promoted as the high art of architecture mimics the physical outcomes of battle, as this again ignores the blood that is being shed, while egos are being pumped up in the promotion of personal genius with such unique, 'aesthetically' extreme extravagances.

We need to ask more questions about the direction in which we are seeing architecture moving. What has happened to empathy? What has happened to an architecture that can care for people and enhance the spirit, rather than captivate and surprise, even alarm the eye? What has happened to simple, quiet beauty?

Look again at Aleppo; look closely, as we are on the edge of being very callous with our new architectural expression. Is this a sign of our times that concentrates on matters personally heroic rather than considering others, their physical situation, their feelings, their circumstances and concerns - their everyday being?

Look closely lest we forget the nexus between form, function and feeling, and suffering, with our new cleverness. Here 'smart' is given its different, more stridently stinging interpretation, because it does not look very smart to convert images of suffering into an aesthetic drama of difference all for the sake of a singular 'arty' identity: an emotional defiance that declares only more of ME and MY greatness.

see:

http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/event-architecture.html

20 June 2014
A few Gehry projects not at Aleppo:

Q.E.D.

3 February 2019
see: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47103109 

'Gehry' cityscape?

GOLD COAST GUGGENHEIM GANGNAM: WOW!

  
The Spectator Australia publishes a regular Diary page segment that is written by a different guest author each week. Eugene Robinson had been invited to write this page, (page v), in the 16 November 2013 edition. The Diary intends to add some interesting personal stories to the magazine’s content. Eugene Robinson chose to write about his time in Australia. It is interesting to see the country through another’s experiences.

The diary started with some name-dropping, (The Spectator is good at this), with Mr. Robinson telling how, on his second day in Australia, he was walking with Lord Black and met I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on Circular Quay in Sydney. After a quick chat, he adds: ‘I looked ahead at the brilliant white shells of the Opera House, which was where Lord Black and I were headed, (for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas), and up at the magnificent arc of the great bridge, and thought: wow. Oz is a pretty interesting place.’ Strangely, this makes it sound as if these very obvious, truly landmark structures had not been noticed previously! Wow!

Robinson continues on with more about the festival and then reports: ‘After a day-long conference . . . my wife Avis and I flew off to the Whitsunday Islands.’ Then there is some advice given to Australians: ‘You don’t know how lucky you are. Australian airports . . . (are) both faster and less demeaning (than some others).’ Wow! Thanks!

On the Great Barrier Reef experience, he says: ‘Hamilton Island was beautiful and tranquil - a perfect spot for a quick three days-in-paradise vacation.’ Wow! Then the journey resumes: ‘From there we flew on to Canberra to visit some dear friends’ - followed again by more name-dropping. ‘The museums are impressive . . . We had good Thai food . . . The next day our hosts drove us to a countryside roost . . . for a very good lunch.’ . . . Wow!

He concludes: ‘And on our last day, as we were being driven to the airport to fly home, we stopped and watched a large group of kangaroos. . . . You really have kangaroos, just hopping all over the place. The moment was enchanting and unforgettable. An amazing place Oz.’ WOW!

The text concludes with the note: ‘Eugene Robinson is a columnist for The Washington Post.’ This was his Australia! WOW!

So there is was, with what seems to be just one week in Australia, Mr. Robinson fleetingly saw the opera house and the bridge in Sydney; sat on the reef beaches of Hamilton Island for a couple of days; visited some of Canberra’s public buildings in the parliamentary triangle; spent time at a few local restaurants; and saw a few kangaroos as he was leaving. Wow! He experienced nearly every cliché Australia can promote and felt smugly satisfied: ‘an amazing place Oz.’ WOW! This vision encapsulated his Australia. The real concern is that he leaves Australia contented after seeing so little, with his, (and his wife’s), experience finally embellished with what appears to be the highlight: the sight of a few nuisance rogue roos that he passed as he was departing, leaving him convinced that he, and no doubt his wife, had captured the true Oz experience, naively believing, it seems, there were kangaroos hopping everywhere across the continent. The tourist brochure had been confirmed from so little. Sadly, the circumstance is close to pure farce.

How many tourists or visitors experience such a specialised and limited array of ‘icons’ that represent only the ‘souvenir’ façade of our country, as seen on the TV promotional pieces? The true substance of place is ignored, left concealed by the easy glitz, the ticking off of glimpses of what one has been told to see. Meaning and place are much richer, deeper and more complex than any skimpy, shallow overview of highlights. A place has to be lived, touched, felt, known, and understood in depth if it is to be comprehensively perceived. Land itself is important, its feel: just ask the aboriginal residents.

After reading this Diary, it became clear how easy it is for a place to develop an image that misrepresents its true strengths and complexities - its significance; its substance; its story: history. The concern is that such insubstantial understandings of place can get used as a reference for its growth and development as well as its promotion, as guidelines that conceal the songlines of its being. It is a strategy that only adds to the shallowness of the perceptions of place, reinforcing every cliché while true value and meaning are squashed, blighted by the mass dazzle of things superficially sparkling.

Springbrook World Herutage Area

The proposals for the Gold Coast Cutlural Centre came to mind. All of the three finalists seem to have based their concepts of an ephemeral understanding of this region that has popularly come to be known as an ad hoc accumulation of clichés. The perception of the Gold Coast is of a fun destination; a playground; the theme park capital of Australia; a holiday venue where excess, diversions and differences are sought, expressed and experienced like nowhere else. Lying latent behind this understanding is the intellectual mockery that sees this portion of Queensland as crass and indulgent, complete with extremes of bad taste and perverted morals, ignorant, with a dismal lack of ethics that extends deep into its fabric that has been shaped by slick developers seeking fast ‘gold’ from the shoreline gloss. This attitude is encompassed in the reflexive local joke that tells how Victorians see the Gold Coast as ‘the arsehole of Australia’; a statement that gets the parochial punch line response: but a lot of Victorians pass through! Got ya! Rivalry between the states is strong. The destination is in fact seen as a wintering playground for those in colder, less sunny regions of Australia, a place to relax all inhibitions. This aspect becomes embedded in youth who use the area for the mayhem of ‘schoolies’ week every year.

Article, The Australian, Friday, 22 November 2013

The brash rudeness of this pretend paradise is accepted as part of its divergence and disparity, giving the region its ‘edge’ in doubtful character: snide and dodgy; the not-so-cheap but nasty, anti-intellectual, ‘Queensland’ location standing beside some glorious natural wonders - the beaches; the headlands; the rivers; the creeks; the wetlands; the forests; the bushland; backed by the hinterland: the hills; and the mountains with unique World Heritage quality flora and fauna. These surroundings are indeed World Heritage listed for their unique biodiversity. Yet no one would ever know this from the hype of the promos that push the fun and games: Movie World; Dreamworld; Sea World; Wet and Wild; and the buzz of high, high-rise development and its lights. Any subtle feeling for place is squashed under the careless, indulgent extremities of entertaining propaganda: see

http://springbrooklocale.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/who-or-what-is-tourist.html

  The only attention that the World Heritage region gets is when it is seen as a location for mass tourism transported by the dream of a cableway: wow! There have been repeated attempts to achieve this outrageous outcome that is based on the hype of the clichés rather than on any love, respect, and concern for place - its flora and fauna that has been recognised by the rest of the world.

Springbrook World Heritage Area

In spite of all of this natural world wonder, it is the clichés that have become the core identity of this region, the plaything for designers to ‘reference.’ The finalists in the cultural centre competition indulge the idea with a big spider; a pink poodle; a big man; bungee jumps; water slides - all these become part of an intellectual joke that continues on with its disparagement in these chosen schemes, albeit it latently - as ‘architectural’ references. Why should architecture reference? What story is being pushed? What is the theory here? Why? Does this simply become the old contextual concept of the 1980’s? Is it an excuse to mock - a reason to be extravagantly playful, to make things ‘interesting’ within a cunning ‘cultural collage’? Is this the only idea that architects know of? What else might inform form and hold meaning in this place that the winner sees as becoming ‘the soul’ of the region? Is this ARM wrestling, playing with concepts and outcomes? What is the function of function these days? Indeed, what is the function of references - of soul?

ARM 'Eiffel Tower' proposal, with waterslide and bungy jump surround

Dare one ask how fast one might end up travelling down the waterslide as presently illustrated by ARM? Might one ever ask if it would be impossible for the bungee leap to never whip against the building fabric? It would be ironic if folk could lose and arm or a leg in this project by ARM! These thoughts have hardly any connection to the other deliberation that asks how the experience of art in the ‘museum’ wrapped in a waterslide jump has any relationship to these excrescences beyond that expressed by the Mayor when he suggested that mum and dad could enjoy the Picassos, (does the coast have some or is this a cliché for ‘art’?), while the kids were jumping and sliding. Has he no children? Will these game pieces ever be built, for they are game indeed? Are these ideas just a Melbourne joke that takes the ‘mickey,’ the ‘piss’ out of Queenslanders, the ‘rednecks’ of Australia? Is there now a private giggle that belligerently says, “I told you they’d love it - the hillbillies!”? WOW! More Gold Coast clutter and chaos! - ?

Burleigh Heads National Park, Gold Coast

So is this how we get the ambition for the ‘Guggenheim Gangnam’ style: the ‘Bilbao’ effect with more outrageous screams, both metaphorical and those from the waterslide-bungy jump art gallery? If only Frank Lloyd Wright had such ideas - poor fellow; so limited! He is probably gyrating now as the words rage on, mindlessly encompassing his Guggenheim in the wild Gold Coast ambitions.