April's Fool, Avrill's Folly

Well I’ve been getting myself into hot water by being too critical of all the goings on around me, just sort of firing off a running commentary on allsorts and being a bit prickly pear shaped and hopping grumpy... must be springtime...
The grey and depressing sleet of the last months has found a way to the surface and spews forth even without encouragement from my natural tendency to be critical of all things... it seems to be an automated function by now and less the product of careful consideration and/or thought... Wondering all the while if it’s just me or is the world getting fatter and more obnoxious all the time?
To cheer me up I think of all the thousands of Gulag detainees who dug out the white sea canal and paid with their lives for the glory of father Stalin... that way I can consider my small and feeble existence as quite comfy by comparison... and so escape my own irritating nagging for a bit... This came about through the theme of this year’s Ostend retreat proposed by Hioco: Belonorkanal – though the unsmokeable smokes are mostly just empty tubing, the little bit of tobacco they stuff down the end hits you like a howitzer just when you don’t expect it... a real working class hit.
I think I still have a packet bopping around somewhere... but in any case this easter Monday seems a good moment to stand still and consider the many thousands of nameless victims that dug the trenches though which even today ships float freely from St. Petersburg to Archangel.

Pralinen

PralinEkkes
Well; it was Art’s birthday and I didn’t go to the party... didn’t feel like exhibiting my toothless grin and shrugging with hollow laughter... but I did have fun: By way of celebration I went and bought a box of pralines from an International Chocolate Consortium (ICC) and went & sat on a public bench outside the former Royal Palace in downtown Antwerp... sucking on dark chocolate while tossing out the white chocolate ( never understood that concept) for the birds...They’ve been having a tough winter & could use some fat. Meanwhile the demise of a friend and the earthquake on the news lingered in my head as I watched the passers by – and thought of Filliou’s consideration for the unsmiling Metro passengers back in 1963 – and still with all the consumer goods surrounding them I don’t see much improvement today.

Nuts to be pensioned

Well, as one of the last manifestations of the year (participation at a presentation (Machine #3) in Gent) the best I could come up with concerning the various considerations around the decommissioning of art, artist and artworld was the exclamation ejaculated by Gen.
Anthony C McAuliffe, (born Washington DC July 2, 1898) also just before X-mas sixty-five years hence - 22 December 1944: “nuts” (...and not some other four-letter word as reported) in response to an ultimatum by the German side... that about sums it up quite well – can’t live with it can’t be without it... a bind, a quandary and a dilemma... just have to wing it then.
So this year also ends with a bit question mark as to how it will go on, hoping for the best as usual... but already things are not looking too good, and the recent announcement that the former ICC / royal palace (Meir 50 Antwerp) will become an eatery and chocolate-outlet just reminds us how superficial officialdom will become when left to it’s own devices... following the money for the most part.. all part of the general sell-out / privatization scheme which has already proven to be a bad idea...
So it looks like the pensioned artists will have clamber back onto the barricades again... nuts!

And So Long & On & on

RVR and back again, again,

Well, the archive situation is not really moving along – or at least it seems so, the rear-view-reviews are slow to compile even though it should just be a matter of translating the program an doing some graphic adjustments... but also the context – it has to be illustrated just a wee bit, and so the question of how to go about it arises, and one thing leads to another, ultimately leading to courses in archival techniques in Gent, making things even more difficult, since there are different ways of going about organizing archives and the different stages and the diverse needs of possible users...
So the more we forge ahead the greater the distance between us and the goal first conceived... in fact, now wondering if at all possible... And then there is the shifting world of electronic media, different interpretations as to how best to store it, and the only recently (re) formulated laws, already inadequate in this fast-moving world...
So slow, slow, and ever so plodding, the archives are being considered.

reView retro inspection

(shoved by bulldozer)



There is quite a bit to review here... not only the running reflections which progress in fits and starts in between other (more pressing) activities, but also some which have only barely been formulated, often as an aside or digression from another line of research... and then some. It is difficult to decide on a strategy or to make priorities, often depending on some very subjective influences and chance encounters with lost fragments and such... giving it all a bit of a metamorphic feel and keeping it all as malleable as plasticine.
As time progresses without making greater headway the ongoing production of archive material slows the effort even further... sometimes it even feels as if it’s all going backwards... and maybe it is, depending on the current current, from low ebb to high flash flooding... (and so we come to the theme of the further research project... slightly shifting from ‘submersibles’ to fluid or fluctuating flux.)

more soon...

a breather & activity

Slowly Bureau Gruzemayer makes an attempt to emerge from the relative oblivion of moved archives & renovations... an ongoing process, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned... but in order to get a bit of fresh air this intervention by Odie Rynell Cash: “Offsider” – a series of projects, events & interventions... this being the first... He is currently engaged in a continuation of “DSP” (Distributing experience /Situation prompted / Prominent public relations) at the Poortgebouw in Rotterdam... this series was part of his last visit to Antwerp and Brussels in late 2007.
Specifically ORC will do a performance at the war memorial in the city park at 12:45,
“this is what happens when you follow the rules”
and then (from 2 to 5 p.m.) at the offices of Bureau Gruzemayer, an audio piece intervention/installation outside. “ring a trillion bells for dollar bills”
So, in fact we are engaging in another bout of ‘archive production’ rather than concentrating on the organization of existing material... but it has to be seen in context and new material is needed for a sense of continuity... no?

in the archival meantime

Ah les archives!

Well, the whole archive project has been put back on the back burner once again, while the improbable space on the second floor is refurbished to house at least part of the material subject to our further investigation... at the moment it’s a rather improvisational affair, (see image) but we hope to have some degree of functionality going by the beginning of summer (when it will probably be too hot to actually work upstairs...)
But we are getting there, the roof no longer leaks and the wind does not blow the papers off the table anymore thanks to the wonder of isolation.... viva la isolazzione!