Liverpool Biennial 2012: Museum of Liverpool (17)

Art Goodness know what the attendant at the Museum of Liverpool thought as I approached him this morning with my hands around either side of my face, jumper cuffs wrapped around my fingers. He certainly didn’t seem to react. Indeed it seemed as though it was something he saw everyday. When I asked him where the Biennial “thing” was, he simply smiled, walked me to the end of the display area and pointed: “Next to those lads” he said. I thanked him and carried on walking forward, the cuffs enclosed as far across my face as was possible for me to see where I was going through the slit.

This bizarre behaviour was prompted by the fact that despite it having been open for a year or two, despite it being the newest iteration of what was one of my favourite museums (of Liverpool Life), despite it being about my city, I hadn’t visited yet. Because permanent displays can only be visited once, I’ve been putting it off, then putting it off, then putting it off again, my future plan to visit the venue slowly, one display at a time. That will happen. It’s still to come. Once the Biennial’s over, I’m hoping to complete this other project and then to approach the museums not in Edwards book. It’ll be like Ian Visits for the North West.

This project meant I’d need to visit now and I didn’t want to see too much, hence my attempt to only see what I’d come to see. I think I mostly succeeded, though the methodology must have looked very strange indeed, mostly otherwise consisting of looking at the floor, furtive glances and at one point, a random dart to the left as I realised was going to be slap bang in the middle of something amazing, accompanied by me squawking “Not yet, not yet, not yet.” Unfortunately, the “thing” I’d come to see was in the middle of a much larger display but I just about managed to keep my attention on it, despite the many distractions.

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The “thing” is a cake. Well, no to be more specific it’s A Piece of Cake - 2 Up 2 Down/Homebaked, an architectural model with icing which makes it look like a cake, presumably because a real cake would be difficult to preserve in the warm atmosphere of the warm gallery over the extended display period of the Biennial and beyond. Unless it is a real cake. I’m not sure. Either way it’s an impressive sculptural work, even if, as it’s displayed here, against a wall in a perspex box, it’s difficult to see properly without crouching and craning. While I was there, most people didn’t pay it much mind, more interested in the giant heat pad on the wall next door were people can temporarily leave their hand print.

The model recreates the plans for the refurbishment of Mitchell’s Bakery, the soon to re-open business in Anfield. The artist, Jeanne van Heeswijk, was commissioned to work with the local community whose lives have been blighted by well meaning urban renewal which ignored their needs in favour of a government run programme. The 2Up 2Down project has been about putting the future of the neighbourhood back in the hands of the people who live in that neighbourhood, with architects like Urbed designing an alternative to the demolition projects of recent years, with affordable housing and the remodelling of this shop and terrace.

I’ll probably have an even better idea of what they’ve achieved when I visit the bakery next week (hopefully). Accompanying the “cake” is pair of headphones and an audio introduction to the history of the project offered by someone called Carl (“That’s Carl with a C not with a K”). He’s an affable presence, simplistically but clearly putting the wilful lack of interest from those outside the area as to what the people within that area actually wanted (based on a range of assumptions of the kind we Liverpudlians are becoming used to) in the jovial style of the kinds of audio guide that used to appear in the old Museum of Liverpool Life.

The audio is a version of a tour that is being offered to Biennial visitors to Anfield at weekends (which I’m sadly going to have to miss due to working every weekend) (I’m missing all of the Biennial weekend events for the same reason) (sigh). Laura Davies talks about the experience in today’s Daily Post and offers plenty of information about who Carl is, the source of his script and a few things I actually wish I didn’t know now. I certainly wouldn’t read it before visiting and listening to what he has to say because you’ll hear it with different ears and I was quite happy with the romance.

As a piece of art, I really like Heeswijk's synecdoche-like model.  There aren't many artworks which represent place where its made, which evokes the very "things" which are created inside.  It's a self-portrait of sorts but in which its a business and all of its underlying beliefs represented in an example of what it manufactures which also expresses physically what it is, can be or will be.  Presumably there are other examples of factories creating models of themselves, but there's also something poignant about seeing a symbol of renewal within a museum which has also regenerated itself.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: Some notes at this mid-point.

Art  With Exchange Flags I've reached the mid-point of this project or adventure of visiting all the Biennial venues in numerical order.  Well one over, but as we'll see it's a bit of a grey area anyway.  I wasn't going to break into the flow of simply posting venue reviews, but there are a few explanatory things which don't really fit into the structure of those posts and I also wanted an excuse to publish this photo of the interior of Lewis's as it is now.  I had wondered why the old department store hadn't been utilised as the Biennial's base venue, despite its perfect location.  This view of the gutted interior explains everything.

It was taken with my lofi camera phone and that's one of the other rules which has organically developed along the way, that I'd use this lofi camera phone for the illustrative pictures.  No reason really other than convenience.  I always forget to bring my proper camera and it seems easier to have a reason not to be bothered.  In taking these pictures I've also decided not to, as best I can, include images of the work itself.  I like surprises and during the opening weekend had much fun (or not) avoiding rss feeds and Facebook streams filled with photographs of art I hadn't seen yet.

The other rule is, as best I can, to rely on the Biennial booklet as my primary source of information about the work and how to get there.  Which explains why I turned up at the Open Eye Gallery when it was closed, somewhat how I got lost on the way to The Royal Standard and why the Everton Park trip was touch and go.  I think that if you're a tourist visiting the Biennial but who don't know the city, and you don't have an app-enhanced smartphone, the booklet would be your primary source and if the information therein is ambiguous, that's an issue.

The booklet has created a couple of small problems for the project.  Firstly, the "map numbers" don;'t correspond to the numbers on the inside pages.  On the address list and map key, (17) is supposed to be the Museum of Liverpool, but inside it's designated to the World Museum and there's no text to accompany whatever is at the Museum of Liverpool.  On the map, (18) is the World Museum, but inside it's the Walker and so on.  It's a typo probably due to some late editing, but nevertheless.  I've decided to stick to the numbers accompanying the map.

But I'm also in a quandry as to how many official venues there are, how many I need to visit.  The address list offers (27), completing with the Liverpool John Moores University Art and Design Academy, whereas the key on the reverse page concludes with the Static Gallery (30).  Plus the website lists a couple more without numbers, like Headspace @ Eggspace, and many of them are listed because they're hosting an event rather than an exhibition and when they are hosting an exhibition it's not necessarily part of the "official" Biennial, following the Unexpected Guest / hospitality theme.

Most of which shouldn't be seen as a criticism of the Biennial per se, they're simply the vagueries of deciding to attempt another one of these loony, self-defeating projects or adventures.  I expect I'll haunt all the venues up to the (30) and see what's there, then have a look at whatever's left on the website if I've any time left before the close of business on the 25th November.  I am enjoying myself and as in 2010, visiting places like Everton Park I wouldn't otherwise necessarily have a reason to see.  The Museum of Liverpool's next.  Whatever is there, I'm sure it'll be fascinating.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: Exchange Flags (16)

Art Apart from Wyatt and Westmacott’s horrific and glorious Nelson Monument at the centre, Exchange Flags will always be synonymous, at least for me, with the magazine programme with the same name broadcast by Granada television in the early 80s, co-hosted by Tony Wilson (so called becase this was the location of regional broadcaster's base of operations).  My memory of the programme is dim, I’d only just entered junior school, but it was one of the few television programmes from which I got a sense of the place where I lived rather than alien worlds like London and Texas. There are odd snatches of it on YouTube. Here’s Dead or Alive being absolutely awful, but worth it for the audience cutaways:

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On a rainy day, Hsieh Ying-Chun’s Re-Live offers welcome shade.  Scattered across Exchange Flags are a number of A-frame shelters designed for use in disaster zones where they can be easily constructed by unskilled people.  They’re not permanent structures, but with their solid metal frames and rigid fabrics, they’re more durable than the average tent and would seem to be capable of withstanding horrors more terrifying than what’s probably a light shower in comparison.  Nevertheless, I can imagine office workers rushing for them in lunch times and breaks when they inevitably become caught in an unexpected downpour.

What they’ll find inside is an exhibition about the artist’s work in areas which have been hit with such disasters, some natural but often political or financial.  He co-operates with the local community to create homes that are biocompatible, sustainable and self-sufficient even to point of training the local people to be able to construct the properties themselves though often there is already a tradition of house-building. On one of the boards, I think it says that 70% of all the housing in the world is created in this way to some degree. Some are grander designs than others, but all share the element of having been built by their owners.

Wandering from frame to frame, there is the potential for information overload as we’re confronted with dozens of photographs of different types of building and short explanations of the kinds of projects being undertaken.  Perhaps the most receptive audience would be an architecture student.  But it’s impossible not be impressed by the demonstration of sheer force of will being exhibited by these disparate peoples not to accept the lot they've been given. Perhaps the most interesting is how in China in areas where concrete has overtaken soil as the main property of the ground beneath people’s feet, they’re making plant life part of the fabric of the buildings instead.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: St. George's Hall (15)

Art  As I type this, I’m trying to remember the last time I visited St George’s Hall on Lime Street.  Not just wandered around outside or used the plateau as a short cut to get to the Walker Art Gallery.  My blog suggests it was the last Biennial, in 2010, for the launch, but that can’t be true.  Can it?  The city’s community centre is such an ever-present architectural object, that I’ve assumed that I’m a regular visitor.  Certainly I used to be.  But nope, not been inside since Lewis Biggs Touched us.

Which isn’t to say I really went inside yesterday.  As you’ll see, the hall is hosting a public art piece, but a Biennial A-board outside the entrance with a large white arrow suggested something else was happening inside.  So in I went and found a café where the old reception used to be and a little shop (I like a little shop).  I asked the receptionist.  No, he said, no official Biennial within the Hall but the Independents Biennial does have a display but its closed on Mondays.

I told him about the sign, which I now realised was pointing “up” not “inside”.  I wasn’t the only person to suggest that, he said.  I had a glance around the little shop and exited back onto St George’s Place and as is the routine, took out my Biennial booklet, read the text and tried to decide what to make of whatever had been placed in front of me, accompanied by the soundtrack album to [500] Days of Summer (“They made a statue of us …”).  As I was leaving I noticed: the A-board had gone.

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Although Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson work in a range of media of which neon signs like the one attached to the end of St George’s Hall are just one example, their thematic connections is politics, and more expressively civil liberties.  Another of their installations, Constitution of the Republic of Iceland (2008/11), featured the said documented plastered on the wall of a gallery space along with a video piece featuring an experimental theatre projected based on the same document.

For this Biennial, the artists have followed in the footsteps of similar architectural interventions on Liverpool landmarks (cf, Emese Benczur’s Think About Your Future on The Futurist in 2010) and placed the phrase “The Right To Right” in flashing lights, its final word change to “wrong” after each flash.  It’s eye-catching and certainly visible from as far away outside the shell of what used to be Lewis’s (have a look through one of the open windows next time you’re passing).

It’s a statement and also a question.  What right do we have to rights?  To aid the discussion, the artists have collaborated with philosopher Nina Power, whose talk on the co-modification of the human I attended and loved at the last Biennial, to produce a text chatting around the topic which has been produced as a newspaper available at some venues and is also online here.  I recommend that you read it immediately, though I’ll not pretend I understood more than about 20% of it.

From what I gather, her overall thesis is relatively simple.  We all have rights as human beings.  But good luck finding two people who agree on what those should be, a disagreement not aided by one person always wanting to find some way of restricting another’s rights because they think it’s just common sense, or they have a religious conviction or because they believe it will keep the peace, stop a war, end suffering, that sort of thing.

I don’t happen to think anyone has the right to carry a gun.  But people who have guns in most cases think that they should have the right to carry a gun so that they can defend themselves from other people who also think they have the right to carry a gun and don’t think that the law is a good enough deterrent or set of rules.  In other words, just because I don’t think people should have guns is not enough to stop people from having guns so they’re going to get them anyway, no matter how hard it might be.

I don’t happen to think anyone has the right to tell a woman if she can or can’t have an abortion (just as I think it’s up to any human being to decide what to do with their body).  But there are some people who think that any child, however they’re conceived, has the right to a life, even if the mother’s own life is ruined or the child itself isn’t going to have a decent life themselves.  Both of those decisions are about choice.  Who has the right to choose?

I don’t happen to think that it’s up to people who aren’t gay to tell gay couples whether they can or can’t marry or indeed have any of the same rights as straight couples.  That this remains such a big issue in the 21st century shames us all, especially since the people who are making this an issue are doing it for no other reason other than bigotry and homophobia.  What two people they don’t know want to do with their lives, has to do with them, they can never logically explain.

All of which suggests I’m relatively left wing.  I am relatively left wing.  I hate the right wing.  Whereas the left wing is all about increasing freedom, the right wing always seems to be about creating restrictions.  I’m yet to see a moment in history were a right wing approach hasn’t ultimately been a disaster and the left wing approach hasn’t.  Well, ok, there’s communism, but isn’t that just what happens when something goes so far left it catches itself coming back the other way?

All of which is simplistic to the point of redundancy, but however much of a supporting argument we might want to present, however many quotes, our reaction to events will always be instinctual.  We feel revulsion when a fourteen year old girl is shot in the head for campaigning for her gender to receive the same education as men in her country, but inconsistently that revulsion is shared by people (well, ok, politicians) who want to restrict their own society's children’s access to education in other ways (and do).

But where does all of that leave a neon sign attached to the side of building?  Without Power’s text, would I have had this discussion (such as it is)?  I know that my first reaction was to wonder if the “Right” have the right to be “Right” quickly realising that indeed, that for all the hatred they provoke either through ideological belief or financial convenience they unfortunately do.  Because if we tried to stop them, we’d be just as bad as them.  Why does there even have to a "they"?  Why can't it all just be "us"?

Liverpool Biennial 2012: Everton Park (14)

Art The first thing you notice on entering the Heyworth Street entrance of Everton Park, as directed by the Biennial booklet, is the view. Living at the top of the tower block, I’ve become somewhat used to seeing the geography laid about me as I wake up in the morning and although the Pier Head stretches out in the far distance, it’s Liverpool Cathedral which dominates our skyline (as well as the shiny roof of the massive Tesco on Park Road). Nevertheless as I wandered up the main pathway I was greeted with this:

Or rather the version of this which my own eyes captured rather than the poor camera on my previous generation mobile telephone. From inside the city centre it’s not quite possible to take in just how much the skyline has changed, how these modernist edifices are slowly invading the airspace, and why there might be jitters about the planned increase in office blocks in the Peel Holding’s development, Liverpool’s own equivalent of Paris’s Le Defence. As you can see from this view, that ferry’s probably already sailed and extra edifices would simply add to the uniformity of this visual.

Finding Everton Park was relatively easy thanks to a bus (no.17) from Queens Square and a sympathetic passenger who knew which part of Heyworth Street I needed alight. Finding the art in question was less so. Having entered at the gate far above, the big red banner leading the way, after looking at the view, I wandered around aimlessly in the pouring rain for about half an hour, with only Berlioz’s Te Deum for dramatic company, my only guide the booklet’s taunting photo (taken by old friend of the blog Pete Carr) of gardeners in bright sunlight as a guide.

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Only after doubling back on myself and returning to the entrance did I notice a thin line of cut grass leading up a hill. Taking a chance, and walking slowly so as not to slip over, I edged upwards. At the top I looked down and finally found what I assumed to be Fritz Haeg’s Foraging Spiral with Heyworth Street beyond. Essentially if I’d approached the entrance from the bus stop way before I would have noticed the start of the piece, but because I’d gotten off the stop closest and further up, I’d completely missed it, attracted in by the banner and massive gate.

Haeg’s work was created in partnership with the local residents and collaborators, part of a project the main plans for which are at the World Museum, or will be since for me they’re in the future (18).  There’s plenty about the project at the artist's website, which included an archaeological dig, the planting of this garden and a temporary dome utilised for conversations about the future of the park and area. The Biennial booklet mentions an HQ, but since I couldn’t see anything else on my visit, I’m assuming that’s the temporary dome of which he speaks.

The Foraging Spiral is “a 6 foot wide by 450 foot long bed of wild, native, and edible plantings” which begins at the road and continues into one of the fields ending in a circle with wooden tree stumps in the centre. Haig has a list of the plants on his website. On this rainy day, few were that visible apart from some small, scarlet red flowers, the colour almost brighter version of the Biennial’s signature colour which acted like beacons against the brown surrounding branches and leaves and even browner dirt. That’s probably a decent, if inadvertent metaphor for the festival flourishing in the city.

Having visited walled gardens in the past and seen these plants carefully laid out in rows and tended, it’s surprising to find them in this relatively urban environment open to the elements. I’m honestly not sure how I’m meant to feel about it. Since they are edible, are we supposed to help ourselves if the fruit has ripened? Will this be a permanent reminder of this festival bring produce every twelve months? Will it be looked after? Perhaps those questions will be answered when I see this video at the exhibition in a couple of weeks.  Watching it before would be cheating.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: The Royal Standard (13)

Art Rather shamefully this is the first time I’ve visited The Royal Standard for no other reason than I have the geographical awareness of a pigeon when the Earth’s core’s halted disrupting the globe’s magnetic field and it seemed like very far to go by public transport.  The  Biennial booklet map has a red spot with the venue number (thirteen, which as you see may be relevant) and an arrow pointing up away from New Quay (near The Mersey).  It's important to note at this point, I consulted no other maps.  It’ll be fine, I said before visit.  Out loud.  To people.  Well …

Here’s how I got there:  having left METAL, which is at Edge Hill Station, I took a train back to Lime Street Station and went down to the underground, to the Wirral Line.  At which point I realised I couldn’t actually get the train to Moorfields due to the single direction, clockwise train traffic in Liverpool city centre.  After asking for information via the big blue button on the platform I was advised, because Central Station’s Northern Line platform is still closed for refurbishment to travel out to Hamilton Square and change platforms.

I travel out to Hamilton Square and change platforms.  I travel back to Moorfields and change lines jumping the Kirby Train out to Sandhills, the only passenger at 4:30 in the evening walking out of the station.  At which point I remember that the Biennial map doesn’t especially say where the venue is.  Outside I ask a passer-by.  He points me in the direction of Vauxhall Road, which is The Royal Standard’s address.  As he walks away I notice his staff badge.  He’s police liaison office.  Which is lucky.

I walk in the direction he suggests and reach … Commercial Road.  Well, hum.  There isn’t anyone about.  Then I notice across the road, and across a playing field, Peter Coyne’s funeral directors.  There’s a telephone number which I can’t quite make out.  Is it .. 702 … 022 …2?  Or 0022?  I cross the road.  I climb the hill on the edge of the playing field and stand against the railings.  I still can’t tell which it is but decide to phone it anyway.

It’s the right number:  “Peter Coynes?” says a voice.  I ask him if he’s on Vauxhall Road.  He says he isn’t.  I ask if he knows where Vauxhall Road is.  He asks me why.  I explain to him that I’m looking for directions and he gamely asks where I am and I explain I’m across the playing field from him and that his was the only telephone number around.  He realises where I am.  “Oooh …” he says and explains that if I keep walking up Commercial Road I’ll reach Vauxhall Road.  I thank him.

Now that I have the number of a funeral directors seared into my memory I start walking.  And walking.  And walking.  And walking some more.  None of the buildings I pass, the disused commercial unit, the derelict pubs have a house number on so I don't actually know how far I'm walking, how close I am to The Royal Standard.  I’m not even sure if I’m walking the right direction up Vauxhall Road.  I’m walking towards the city centre with seems about right.  It starts to rain.  I begin to have Oxford Road flashbacks.

I keep walking.  And walking.  By this time I’ve decided that wherever The Royal Standard is that (a) I should have brought their phone number with me, (b) I won’t be walking back to Sandhills and (c) I should have checked Google Maps.  I’m passing bus stops.  The buses are every half an hour but I’m prepared to wait.  Or get a taxi.  At this point I don’t care.  I keep walking.  Eventually I reach some houses and a house number.  328.  I look again at The Royal Standard’s address.  131.  Sigh.

I walk some more.  At a certain point I realise I must be getting somewhere.  The commercial properties are in use now as are the pubs.  I pass The Green Man.  I’ve heard of The Green Man.  I walk some more and eventually I pass Liverpool Community College.  Then a William Hill betting office, a newsagents and then within sight is the Vauxhall Business Centre and above what looks like a modernist take on the entrance into a inn courthouse, The Royal Standard’s logo.

I visit The Royal Standard, the details of which are below.  Inside as part of the whole, well you’ll see, I ask for directions back.  I’m shown the Biennial map and it’s noted that I’ll know I’m in the right place when I see the Superlambanana.  Well, that’s very close to Liverpool so it must still be a bit of a walk away.  Well, ok, that’s fine.  I leave The Royal Standard and steel myself for this long walk.  I phone home to let people know I’m still out and about and as I’m talking …

… I pass the Superlambanana and as I look up I can see what’s now called the Radio City Tower, the top of Municipal Building and the top end of Hatton Garden and the flags outside the Central Perk theme coffee shop.  Well, that was a load of walking and messing about on trains for no reason other than telling myself I got a lot of exercise in.  I go for a coffee.  On one of the plasma screens, Joey Trabianni is pondering how he managed to get to another Valentine’s Day without a girlfriend.  Me too, Joey.

I look again at the Biennial booklet map and ponder.  What’s that red blob pointing up away from New Quay for anyway?  Why is it not pointing up from Hatton Garden, indeed, why isn’t the map zoomed just a little bit further out so the red spot marks the location?  But it’s unfair of me to blame that map.  I should have consulted other maps.  An A-Z.  Google Maps (which actually says, Transit: Moorfields).  I’ve been told in the past I need to be more relaxed about things.  Less planned out.  Well, I've tried that now and …

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For this Biennial, the Royal Standard has commission five artist-led groups to occupy their gallery space for two weeks, each exploring the festival's themes of private and public hospitality.  It’s a good idea and unlike some venues which have a single exhibition for the duration might lead to some repeat foot traffic.  Not from me of course, what with my numeric approach to visiting the venues.  Depends what happens after (30).

For these two weeks it’s the turn of Dundee's Generator Projects with The Agency.  On the venue’s own leaflet (which has a fantastic map) (really none of the above in The Royal Standard's fault so it’s probably unfair that the majority of this post is about my own stupidity) (though the map’s not on their website) (no, let’s more on) we’re told that its “a paradigm of the cultural economy, an articulation of the values of an artist-run space through the commodification of one within another.”

Through the Standard’s entrance is a small waiting room and beyond that an office with The Agency printed on the door.  Which is unexpected especially after, well, see above.  There are two desks, two people, a man and woman.  The man welcomes me in, asks me to take a number, there is a ticket machine, and asks me to look at a leaflet and ask if I want to know what’s on offer.  I ask if they have a toilet (see above).  They do, which I’m grateful for.

Back in the office, I sit on a couch, pleased about the rest and flick through a brochure.  There are photographs of what looks like an Ibiza-like club tour, except there’s one shot of people watching a presentation and the overall impression is of something other than the kinds of things you’d expect to find on an Ibiza-like club tour.  At this point I am wondering what I’ve let myself in for.  Is this a job agency, a travel agency and as my natural psychological barriers shunt up, I consider my next move.

“So, um, what do you have to offer?”  I ask.  Seems like the thing to do.  Having not read the Standard’s leaflet because I don’t see it until I'm leaving, I’m wondering about the level of fiction I’m being subjected to, the extent to which the two people I’m in the room with are performing for my benefit or if the artifice simply extends to the space itself with its crushingly authentic details.  I briefly wonder how I’m even going to write about it for this blog.

This isn’t helped by two artist-types who wander through apologising for not being able to make an appointment.  I wonder:  Was there a real appointment?  If there was a real appointment, what could it possibly be given that this place has only been open a night and a day.  If it’s not a real appointment, does that mean that they’re having that conversation in that way for my benefit because I’m in the space?  Was that a conspiratorial glance I saw between them?

I had to ask then, didn’t I?  “So, um, what do you have to offer?”  The woman, who having read the leaflet I now strongly suspect is the artist Catrin Jeans, begins to explain that they’re trying to sign people up for an arts tour which is taking place during The Long Night, the evening when all of Liverpool's arts venues open late.  It’s a sales pitch.  But it’s a nervous one and again I’m not sure if she’s really nervous or if she’s acting nervous.  Is anything she’s saying in the way she’s saying it part of the patter or are we having a real conversation?

She shows me around the office.  The pictures in the brochure are on one of the walls (these pictures in fact) and she talks about what might happen on the walk, that it’ll be starting at The Royal Standard and I could hop in and out again.  I tell her I’m not sure if I’ll be available that evening, which is true, I’m not, but it sounds as though I’m fobbing her off I think, which I wasn’t supposed to be, but it’s the space, this agency, it’s so authentic, my tendency to say no to everything has kicked in.

What about the authenticity of the walk?  Given that it's the culmination of this two week installation or performance work or whatever this is, to what extent will the artifice of this agency be extended there?  If I do sign up, what can I expect?  It's all very perplexing and not helped by the fact that I'm wandering if it'll visit some of the venues I won't have numerically "reached" yet on my own way around.  I don't ask because it's becoming apparent that the last thing which is need at this moment is a mention of that.

We sit again.  She gives me an application form and I also take one of Generator’s business cards.  The whole process feels exactly as it might in an agency.  I’m being terribly polite, I feel, in that way I do when I’m faced with desks and people offering jobs or when I need to make a good impression.  I give her one of my blog’s Moo cards which presumably means she will have read this post too.  She’s probably thinking, “You thought I was acting?”  Or some such.  Probably.  Sorry.

All the while the man is working at his computer.  Some kind of letter.  Is that letter real?  Is that proper gallery based admin or is he just doing that for my benefit?  When I leave will be he back to solitaire or visiting Facebook?  When I go, do they relax?  Have I interrupted something more useful?  Perhaps its what they’re wearing which has thrown me.  Does he usually wear office casual?  Does she, with her blue jack and neck scarf?  They’re both very smart, smarter than me.

She asks if there’s anything else they can help me with.  I ask for directions and that conversation’s related above.  I thank them both, and head for the door.  As I leave I stop to pick up the Standard’s leaflet and consider what just happened again, and the point at which reality stopped and the fiction began.  The photographs and material about the previous tour around Dundee (plus the Standard’s leaflet) point to the content being genuine.  But, what about everything else?  The artist's own tumblr doesn't explain either way.

Reflecting back onwhile watching Red Dwarf this evening, I’ve decided that recent Biennial experiences, the perception meddling likes of Markus Kahre’s inn and all of the self-imposed build-up, the walking, led to me expecting to find an art piece and that’s potentially what I found and what I reacted to, even if most of it wasn't.  Which should explain to those involved why I too seemed to be engaging in some kind of performance and why I regarded them with a certain suspicion throughout.  Again, sorry.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: METAL (12)

Art Metal is an arts organisation begun in 2002 which currently inhabits part of the shell of Edge Hill Station. For this Biennial, rather than provide exhibition space, they're offering a pop-up cafe and a series of lunchtime talks and evening performances around the Biennial's theme. Their website offers some idea of the kinds of activities they're providing. Due to the slightly manic approach I'm taking to the Biennial, I've somehow managed to visit when there aren't any events on, but have the sounds of a rehearsal for tonight's show by Oreet Ashery swirl around me because ....

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... this is the first of these blog entries I'm writing at the venue.  On arrival I've been introduced to a library space on the first floor of the building, a gorgeous bare brick room rather like a studio flat, with cushioned benches, a large sculptural book case and the mac I'm typing this into. I've barely used a mac before. It took me five minutes to work out how to cut & paste so I could add the link to Metal's website above.  The space is meant to be somewhere for visitors to gather and relax before and after performances.

The book and dvds which a sign says have been lent by friends and colleagues, have been selected to reflect the Biennial's theme.  Each of the shelves has a connected subject heading.  "Indoctrination", "Psyche","Invasion", "Apocalypse", that sort of thing.  While the usability rating would implode, sometimes I wish bookshops and larger libraries would adopt this kind of eclecticism, books grouped around ideas and concepts rather than genre.  What's to say a science book about meteorology shouldn't be filed with Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm?

At Metal we find across the categories, Slaughterhouse 5, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Globalization and its Discontents, The Lancashire Witches, Naked Lunch and Dancing with Men from tonight's performer, Ashery.  Without posting a complete list, a quick glance suggests that what they have in common is an investigation of the implications of hospitality, of wanting to share ourselves as human beings and our culture and how that has positive and negative outcomes, and how some might not necessarily want to be as hospitable through avoidance.

What would I add to this library?  Well, Timon of Athens might be symbolic of how hospitality could become exploitation (which would mean you'd also have to include a dvd of Torchwood's Children of Earth too).  Some Jane Austen.  No Logo is already here, but how about Mark Stein's How The States Got Their Shapes, which above all else is about accommodation and disagreement, nibbling geographical notches in perfectly square territories, sometimes due to an oscillating attitude to globalisation and isolationism.  Now it's time for me to go.  I don't want to outstay my welcome.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: Liverpool One (11)

Art  My memory being what it is, I’m slowly forgetting the geography of the area that’s now Liverpool One.  I remember the massive Argos and the old Radio Merseyside building, the Quaker Meeting Place and the massive hotel, but John Lewis seems to have been dropped on their footprints so successfully I couldn’t specifically say exactly where they would be standing.  During the 800th birthday celebrations in 2007, I attended a series of talks in the Lady Chapel at Liverpool Cathedral.  The one public comment I remember vividly was from someone who was clearly very distressed by the rate of change.  “They’re ripping the heart out of the city” they said.  I wasn’t sure if that was true.  Now all I want is for the old Zavvi store to be turned into a Waitrose.

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If I have a general attitude to the kinds of places which require lists, it's to avoid them.  Unlike Groucho, I don't care to belong to any club that wouldn’t have me as a member.  I don’t have any pangs of jealously when I pass queues and cordons and confident looking people holding clipboards.  Which isn’t to say I haven’t attended events with lists, it’s just that they tend to be during the day or early evening, feature guest speakers and close when these other places are about to opened.  Such attitudes are probably why I’m also a lonely person, but if the only way to gain acceptance to some section of society is to reconfigure yourself so that you can be accepted by that section of society, I’ll retain my individuality, thank you.

Which is probably why, when I stood in front of Elmgreen & Dragset’s But I’m on the Guest List Too!, I somehow knew that when I tried to open its big silver door with VIP emblazoned on it, it wouldn’t open.  Well ok, I did see that it was concreted down too which was also an indication, but the implication was already clear.  Thou shalt not pass.  The text in the Biennial booklet says that the piece is “examining the hierarchy of values and meritocracy established by celebrity culture, the artist’s oversized VIP door, slightly ajar, invites the viewer in but cannot be fully opened.”  You could replace the m-word in that sentence with “mediocrity” too I suppose and it would mean much the same thing.

You could argue the reason I avoid such places is the fear of rejection of finding out I’m not on the list, that by going out of my way to not even be in the hairs breath of the list, I’m protecting myself.  That is a thing with me, something I tend to often with other, well, things.  But as this big silver door demonstrates, it’s also because I know that there’s always another level of exclusivity.  Everyone is faced by this door no matter how many others they’ve been ushered through.  The fact that we can walk around it, that if we could open it and walk through we’d find nothing we didn’t have already, the same pavement, same view of the Albert Dock, might indicate that it’s always a false promise, a transparent dangling carrot.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: Tate Liverpool (10)

Art With its main contribution to the Biennial elsewhere, Tate Liverpool this year have decided to utilise some gallery space to present Thesholds, a selection of work from their collection offering a microcosm of the festivals themes of, as the Tate website explains, “the uncertain boundaries of personal, geographical, political and cultural identities. The exhibition explores powerful themes including British identity, migration and the global effects of regional conflicts.” It’s important to keep that in mind as you wander around because, as is often the case in group shows, the connection between the works can otherwise seem a bit tenuous.

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With Scottish independence back on the agenda, it’s apt that Tate Liverpool should select Layla Curtis’s United Kingdom as one of the pieces in this group exhibition. Originally created at the turn of the millennium during devolution and the reconstitution of the Scottish Parliament, as with many of her works, Curtis has utilised the contours of a map of Britain and reconfigured the internal geography, on this occasion shifting the elements of the Scottish and Welsh nations within the shape of England and vice versa. Subsequent works have attempted similar projects with Japan, the United States and the European Union.

This isn’t some slap happy collage; coastal cities have become land locked and the lines of the roads have been kept reasonable logical so that if this place really existed, perhaps in one of Markus Khare’s parallel dimensions, it would be entirely possible to navigate even if some M-roads would become A-roads and others might drop into the oceans. As the artist says, “Travelling has always been an integral part of my life. Like most people I rely on and trust maps to find my way, locate myself and plan journeys. By dissecting, dismembering and collaging maps to create new, hybrid maps, I aim to explore the effects of disturbing this trusted system of mapping.”

This is a piece which rewards careful study and part of the fun is seeing where your given city had ended up. Liverpool does pretty well, slotted in somewhere towards the Inner Hebrides. On the other map, it’s amusing to find Aberdeen in London’s place, when you consider that Curtis is a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art. It would be interesting to know how she chose the placements for the cities. Was there a plan, is any of the weighting autobiographical, or was it simply that this was the best way this geographical jigsaw fitted together? Either way, England seems to benefit aesthetically from receiving an excess of countryside.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: The Monroe (9)

Art The Monro seems like a nice place. There were certainly plenty of people passing through the doors of many stripes, but it’s impossible to comment further than that because the Biennial bypasses the bar with an entrance to the rooms above via a separate doorway. The festival inhabits an old flat, the kind of dwelling I always imagined Sherlock Holmes lived in before I was old enough to realise that (a) he’s a fictional character and (b) he’d need rather more space than this. At the top of the stairs sits a lone volunteer. Having hiked over from Copperas Hill, I sit briefly and get my breath back and we chat about visitor numbers. Because this isn’t one of the “main” venues, it’s more of connoisseur’s choice, the Biennial equivalent of art house cinema so there's less people through the door than some others.  Apart from him, I was alone for the duration.

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Since this is the connoisseur’s choice, the Biennial equivalent of art house cinema, if you are intending to visit, I’d stop reading at the close of this paragraph. The Biennial’s booklet is pleasing vague on the specifics, that this is “a welcoming and cosy environment where slight physical and sensorial shifts conjure against the peace of mind of the guests, suggesting that the site might be haunted”. That’s only the half of it. If there was a theme park dedicated to Alfred Hitchcock, this would surely be installed in the Bate’s Motel recreation next to Janet Leigh’s room with its blood splattered shower curtain and sensor activated Bernard Hermann sting. Now stop reading. Speaking as someone who worked out the twist of The Sixth Sense from the trailer, I know how important it is to keep some surprises. Spoilers …

Are they gone? Why are you still here? I imagine that it’s either because you’ve already visited and know what I’m talking about, aren’t bothered about visiting, in which case, more fool you, or you’re nowhere near Liverpool in which case I hope to give you a flavour though this meagre description of the experience will inevitably fail to capture the shock and awe. Like Audrius Bucas & Valdas Ozarinskas’s Black Pillow, there’s a moment when everything you believe to be true disintegrates, just before your rational mind kicks in seeking an explanation. Markus Kahre, the artist has channelled the work of MR James, so if you’re a fan of the old Christmas adaptations of his work this is for you. All of which sounds like so much build-up but it really is that good. And that’s my final warning.  Stop reading now.

Still here? Well ok then. After glancing through the first room, which has the Dane Mitchell’s spectral glass objects and Janine Antoni’s cast of the inside of her mouth cupped around the bowl of a silver spoon, I’m drawn towards a doorway which turns into a small corridor. Passing through, an apparatus on the wall makes an unsettlingly air propelled noise which makes me jump. That’s the preparation. At the end of the corridor is a door, and through the door a room. It’s the guest room of the inn, a small low bed, a small carpet with the corner turned up and a chair and desk upon which sits a fan. Above this within a mirrored frame is a black surface reflecting the room I’m standing in. It’s curious. There’s something not right. I look the image up and down but can’t put my finger on what it might be.

It’s through this black mirror I notice the other door in the room. I turn and see a bright light shining through, a bright light which isn’t in the image in front of me. That’s odd. It’s then I notice. I’M NOT IN THE IMAGE IN FRONT OF ME. I look down at my hands. They’re still there. I’m not invisible. Questions, oh the questions. How is he, he being the artist, doing that? I’ve watched enough episodes of Doctor Who and Fringe now to know that the only way to find out is to investigate so I hold up my hand and gingerly move it forward. And forward. And forward again right through the mirror. Which isn’t there. Astonishingly, what the artist has done is recreate the room I’m standing in the closest detail in the space next door (explaining the corridor) right down the turned up corner of the carpet and a tiny fault in the surface on the top of the lamp.

I carefully lean forward and peer into this other space. The bed, which is in a place which wouldn’t easily be seen through the “mirror” anyway is also reflected in this other space. I turn. Intrigued I move into the other room and again, the same arrangement, the same room and beyond that room another, also reflected. This is slightly less effective because of the need to create the illusion of another room beyond through a bright light and yet as a design and narrative achievement it’s still extraordinary and unsettling and even with an enquiring mind with the capacity to sit on the edge of what human perception might conceive. Kahre has decided that this doesn’t require a title, but obstinately, it’s called “No Title” rather than “Untitled”. Any kind of title would be a spoiler I suppose.

It’s a sculpture, it’s an installation, but to an extent it’s also performance art but with a visitor being acted upon rather than acted too. The Fringe and Doctor Who references above were not accidental. In No Title, Kahre, as well as jolting our primal expectations of reality, nudges the part of us who wonders if there are parallel dimensions and how different they may be, some darker in which the version of us is having an even worst life or lighter, taking a path akin to heaven on Earth with us existing somewhere in between. But Who fans will see the similarity to the entropy increases elements of Logopolis, the Doctor and Adric’s dash through nested TARDISes, the console rooms becoming darker the deeper they explore. I will admit that just briefly my internal cloister bell did chime.

As I step out of the space and back down the corridor.  I can’t quite remember what I said to the volunteer though I imagine it was something along the lines of “That’s just, but that’s just amazing”, a word which is over-used but on this occasion entirely accurate, the dictionary definition “causing great surprise or sudden wonder”. Which this does. Which this did. Ironically when I was at Copperas Hill beforehand, I’d remarked to someone that the kind of art I tend to like has a surface which then dissolves into something, I’d scrabbled around for the right word but what I should have said was profound. The “oh so that’s it” moment. Which is why it’s important to be a spoilerphobe even with art exhibitions because some art is best experienced rather than simply seen.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: Liverpool John Moore's University Copperas Hill Building (8)

Art The old sorting office on Copperas Hill has always had slightly mythical qualities, at least for me. When it was still a sorting office, every post box in Liverpool would give details of when its final collection would be and then underneath information that a final collection of the day would take place at 7:15 at Copperas Hill. I’d look at that and wonder if there was ever a circumstance in which, having missed the 5:50pm deadline on a given post box someone would have to rush to Copperas Hill before the final deadline. A few months before closure I did make a point of visiting, just to see what the building was like and popped a Lovefilm dvd over at reception at about seven o’clock. Sure enough it was in Peterborough, where the dvd rental company is based the next day, travelling, I also romantically imagined, on the night train.

The sorting office closed two years ago this month and since has been bought by John Moores University to provide replacement accommodation for the departments at the IM Marsh Campus in Aigburth, which they’re selling off. In the meantime it’s been borrowed by Liverpool Biennial to house another of The Uninvited Guest pieces, Bloomberg New Contemporaries (previously housed at the AFoundation in the Baltic Triangle which is now the Camp and Furnace) and City States, the festival within a festival in which a group of cities have invited some of their best artists to create thirteen small exhibition inspired by the Biennial’s main hospitality theme. It’s also worth visiting to see the interior of this mythic building which still has most of its post office fixtures and evidence of being a place were people lived and worked.

Let me offer a “quick” survival guide for visiting LJMU Copperas Hill:

- Give yourself at least half and if possible a whole day, you will need to the time if you want to give everything the attention it deserves. This is a massive building with lots to see.

- Visit The Univited Guest piece first, then Bloomberg then City States. With the best will in the world, seeing Bloomberg last could be a bit anti-climactic.

- Wrap up warm. Somehow, at least when I visited on Friday, the temperature seemed lower inside the building than out. The end of my nose was cold.

- Don’t drink too many liquids before you go. The building lacks running water so although there are lots of old toilets and signs pointing to the old toilets, the only lavatory is a port-a-cabin in a yard out back which is miles away by stairs and lift from City States on the floor above.

- Pace yourself. Take breaks. If there’s video art take the opportunity to sit down.

- But don’t go to Costa Coffee at Lime Street Station and have a chai latte though as I did. It’s rancid and not patch on the golden cup of joy that FACT’s cafe sells.

- Visit the City States cities in alphabetical order as they’re all listed in the booklet. Because it’s all on one floor it lacks the rabbit warren element of the old CIC setting. By visiting the cities in alphabetical order, I found myself criss-crossing the floor catching tantalising glimpses of exhibits yet to be visited with feeling of traversing the world like Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Or Michael Palin, depending on your taste. This also has the benefit of beginning in Birmingham then going international and ending in Wellington, which has a potential going away present. You’ll see.

- You’ll also need the map that they’re giving out at reception.

- Explore. One of the benefits of the building is that there are loads of offices and rooms around the edge which have been utilised as mini-viewing areas for the video art. But some of them aren’t obvious even with the map. Usually in City States if there’s a black curtain, something’s hidden inside. That’s especially true of Gdansk.

- Pay attention to the red sandwich boards. Each of the different countries in City States is signposted by a sandwich board in the Biennial livery. On one side the given city is named and on the other there’s an explanation which is sometimes more detailed than the booklet. It’s always worth stopping to have a read before plunging into the given exhibition.

- Don’t read below the upcoming stars if you’re going to visit. As is so often the case it’s good to have surprises, especially in one case because the object is so inexplicable.

- That’s it.

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The most explicit unexpected guest, Jorge Macchi’s contribution, Refraction, is about perception. The first perception is that the room we’re standing is filled with steel girders, leaning against the walls, towering above us despite having a bend in the middle. As we walk around them, we know that there’s something a bit off, but we can’t quite put our finger on quiet what. The artist is playing a mental game with us, the artistic equivalent of that moment when you meet a friend or something more and notice that there’s a difference about them but you’re too embarrassed to ask what. Is it the hair? Have they had their ears pierced? Put on weight? Or as is the case here, is it the way they’re leaning? Does it have something to do with the way the wall’s painted?

A bit tired and lacking in concentration I decide to skip to the end and look at the information board outside the room which says that Macchi is interested in optics and perception, which is fine but doesn’t provide many answers. Thankfully the booklet is a bit more helpful. It explains that the artist has created “an environment that plays with the occurrence of being suddenly submerged in a pool of water”. Glancing again the girders and I notice that they’re all bent at exactly the same point, a point which matches the line on the wall. When I was wandering around inside the room, I was effectively drowning in an imaginary sea in what could be the remains of some terrible marine disaster, which probably does say a lot about my particular perception of the world.

I expect I’m a bit troubled that the information board and the booklet having different information, the latter offering a more specific explanation. Shouldn’t they be the same? Re-entering the room, I immediately stand next to the wall to see where I would be in relation to the surface of this imaginary water tank. My eyes are just above the line, which means with a bit of floating I could well survive, which is reassuring. With this extra piece of information, the work gains extra depth as I remember Kate Winslet and Leo fighting along corridors or divers in wetsuits in a dozen nature documentaries. I wonder if a visiting group filling the space would have the same reaction, unable to move about in quite the same way.  Perhaps this is an installation best enjoyed alone.

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Perhaps the most thematically intriguing piece in Bloomberg New Contemporaries is George Eksts’s Circumspects, which helpfully for those of you outside Liverpool can be viewed on the artist’s own website here. As you can see, if features a giant circular cage with spinning compartments, each containing a horse moving forwards at night. There’s no word of explanation about the piece on that website, or Bloomberg’s which offers a short CV and all this interview the artist gave to Used magazine adds is that he’s interested in progress, completion, time and the temporary. "I like things that are unfinished or beyond complete. The structure of my work is of more importance to me than the content, for example the endlessness of the videos and the relationships established between one and the next” he says and that he’s a “terrible storyteller”.

Here’s what I think the piece is about. In choosing to shoot this real world utility in this way I  think that he's offering homage to the dawn of cinema in the digital media of the modern age. Victorian photographer Eadweard Muybridge was famous for a few things. He was acquitted of shooting his wife’s lover on the grounds of “justifiable homicide”. He was one of the few people who photographed the Tlingit people in Alaska. He’s probably best known for his motion photographs in which he set up a line of cameras, twenty-four in a row for twenty four frames and recorded the movement of humans and mammals, for the first time proving I think, that a horse has all four of its legs off the ground when galloping. The wikipedia page has examples of these efforts turned into animated gifs.

But he also developed the Zoopraxiscope, potentially the first projected moving image, in which a glass disc was spun in quickly to give the illusion of movement. For this he took his inspiration from the Zoetrope, the large cardboard cylinders spun on a drum with a mirror in the middle which have much the same effect for just a few people, created originally in feudal China. What I think, either inadvertently or on purpose, is that Eksts has produced a video of a life sized, realistic, anti-illusion version of a Zoetrope or the kind, which might have Muybridges photographs in the middle. The horses aren’t galloping, merely exercising, I suppose, but the effect is really similar, asking us to concentrate on their movement. The repetitive nature of the image only adds to that impression. Perhaps.

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City States is so huge, and covers so many artists, that choosing a single object would be unfair and so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. In the next paragraph but four. Before we reach it, I did want to add a quick word for the Birmingham and Hong Kong sections. The former includes a display of memorabilia for the grindcore band Napalm Death much of it lent by founding members Nicholas Bullen and Miles “Rat” Ratledge, whose music, judging by the accompanying concert video I can barely understand but does remind me of an argument I had with friend at school about whether the heavy metal genre really exists.  I can still remember my young voice arguing the point and him saying “there’s no such thing as heavy metal, it’s grindcore…”

Nearby, brummy film collective, the Flat-Pack festival have produced a compilation of promotional videos for the town including a paean to the modernist joys of the old Bull Ring Shopping Centre, the kind of nightmare of glass and consumerism that George Tati had fun with in his film Playtime and There is a Better Lifestyle, a 1989 attempt at attracting yuppies to the city which spends much of its duration stressing how close it is to other places including an airport out and whose key message, and this is a direct quote, “it’s not really as hideous as you might think”. Half a dozen B-Ark survivors line up to praise the cultural elements of the city, stressing the nearness of the countryside and watersport venues and how it’s possible to visit Stratford to see shows “six months before they’re at the West End.” This strident piece of cultural history is also available on Vimeo.

Thence to Hong Kong, whose exhibition All Are Guests explores “the intricate subject-object” dichotomy between the individual and the city. Its key work is “So …Soap” which documents the work of the SLOW women’s collective who produce handmade soap which allows them to look after their families whilst enjoying flexible working hours. The other artistic voice, CoLAB, are responsible for the soap's brand name, packaging designs and marketing, part of which constitutes the presence at City States, a promotional video showing a specially designed cart, a wash basin and water reclamation system, being taken around the city offering the wider public an opportunity to sample to soap and wash their hands, which is soundtracked by a surprisingly catchy bit of dance music.

Like the George Eksts piece this appeals because it reminds me of the pioneering spirit that accompanying some of the earliest commercial innovations. Just the other day I was reading about “Pluto Lamps”, gas lamps which sprang up around London at the turn of the century before last that as well as providing light included a vending machine capable of dispensing “a gallon of hot water, or a halfpennies worth of Beef tea essence, Cocoa, Milk, Sugar, Tea or Coffee” [via]. Deep in the recesses of my brain I seem to remember that around the same time, carts similar to the SLOW’s promotional model (which is also in the exhibition space) were actually dragged around cities so that passers-by could pay a nominal amount to wash their hands in a forerunner to public conveniences.

But the one object I want to focus on, um, where to begin?  How about:  Every now and then at an exhibition you’ll greet something so bizarre, so unruly that you just have to stand and gape. Well, congratulations to Vilnius whose “exhibition” contains a single inexplicable object, produced jointly by artists Audrius Bucas & Valdas Ozarinskas. It’s a Black Pillow. It’s a giant inflatable Black Pillow which is the same size as the Copenhagan. Torshaven, Rekjavik, Nuuk and Incheon exhibition spaces altogether, consuming, I’d estimate, one sixth of the area dedicated to City States, stretching from floor to ceiling. Standing within the vicinity of most of its edged its impossible to see much else in the field of vision and loomed larged as I passed by on my way to the various cities listed above which are entirely hidden if you look for them from the other side of the room.

Apparently there have been visitors to City States who unaccountably missed it. Perhaps its an example of what Douglas Adams described in one of his novels as an SEP, or “somebody else’s problem”, something which so far out of human experience that our minds block it out automatically. Actually its more like what’s generally known in science fiction circles as a BDO or a Big Dumb Object, a huge alien mass which wanders into orbit threatening humanity or otherwise offering benevolence until we target our nuclear warheads at it. Perhaps its also like the thirty-five foot long twinkie Egon Spendler metaphorically utilises to capture the enormous increase in telekinetic energy in New York which heralds the climax of Ghostbuster. It’s big. Really, really big.

But it isn’t dumb. Far from it. The first version of was produced in 2010 for an exhibition in Vilnius itself. The idea was originally to “appeal exclusively to the limits of the viewer’s phenomenological experiences” or blow our tiny minds. But it’s monolithic, black shading and massive dimensions led the locals to quickly see it as a metaphor for the prevailing mood in the country as their economic crisis hit. As the sandwich board text says, “Black Pillow took a symbolic shape and dimension accumulating all the possible personal and collective failures of our lives” or a massive empathic sponge. Except inflatable and made of vinyl or whatever the substance is. To stand before this object is to look into your own soul, which to take the metaphor to its limit, is probably empty.

Werner Herzog believes the “common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.” I wonder if he’d modify that belief if he saw this. Strolling around the edges of the pillow I notice dirty foot prints across its surface which presumably happened when the artists were installing the piece. They’re distracting but they also oddly serve to remind me that the thing is man made. Every now and then I try to fall into it, perhaps bounce off it, but the form is too immense. It can’t be pushed either. Or climbed. I tend to hate art which expects us to offer our own interpretation, usually because it means the artist doesn’t have their own. But this Black Pillow is somehow beyond interpretation. It just exists, this benign, thoughtless shape.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: The Open Eye Gallery (7)

Art Let’s begin with a warning. Contrary to the information in the Biennial booklet (“all exhibition venues will be open to the public from 10AM to 6PM, daily”) and some websites, the Open Eye Gallery is (so far) keeping its usual office opening hours of 10.30am to 5.30pm, Tuesday to Sunday. It’s closed Monday as I discovered when I wandered over there after visiting the Hotel Indigo at the beginning of the week and ended up having a conversation on the doorstep which I’m embarrassed to admit included phrases from me like “but I’ve come here specially” and “Sefton Park” and “well, there’s my bus fare” and “it’s because I’m visiting them in numerical order”.

Happily, it was open today (Friday). The new Mann Island berth has a different convenience than Wood Street; whereas that was an excellent stop off during a shopping trip, here it’s become part of the Albert Dock tourism run, along with Tate Liverpool, the Museum of Liverpool, Maratime Museum and Liverpool One which means it could benefit from increased visitor numbers. In 2010, the complex hosted Hector Zamora’s artificial birds dangling from the glass ceiling outside the gallery. This year those have been replaced with coloured banners advertising Mann Island itself as a place to live, thrive and survive.

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At this new site, the Open Eye Gallery has a rolling programme of commissioning artists to decorate the façade of the building in their own style which perfectly suits Sinta Tantra who creates wildly colourful decorations and structures of giant architectural sizes. She was responsible for the pastel patterns on the bridge at Canary Wharf (a piece entitled A Beautiful Sunset Mistaken for a Dawn) which appeared on some of the contextual footage during the television coverage of the London Olympics and her website also highlights a giant fibre glass egg produced to dangle outside the Royal Festival Hall.

Tantra has covered the façade of the gallery in diagonal blocks of florescent colour in various shades, golds, blues, pinks and white. She’s attempting to create “a spectacle of submergence and superabundance” and it's certainly a visually rich intervention.  I visited on a relatively cloudy day, but judging by this photo, the effect of the sun against these reflective walls is stunning. Rather like one of Christo’s wraps, it turns the building into an enticing gift waiting to be opened and also contrasts spectacularly against the dark, brooding monolithic marble of the rest of the edifice.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: Hotel Indigo (6)

Art Liverpool’s Hotel Indigo is part of an international franchise chain of “boutique” hotels which stretches across most of the states of America, the various geographical easts and continental Europe. Each of the rooms is apparently individually furnished, the overall hotel taking inspiration from the surroundings (the Edinburgh outlet does seem more rustic than “ours”). It’s also the home of a Marco Pierre White Steakhouse, Bar & Grill. Seems just right that part of a Biennial which has “hospitality” as its core theme should have some activity within a hotel, though it’s worth noting that it’s also the main accommodation partner for the festival.

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Runo Lagomarsino’s public intervention is in the plush men’s loo on the ground floor within the restaurant area. Only afterwards did I consider the implications of that for someone with a XX chromosome and just rang the reception desk of the hotel to check. Apparently they’re happy for another member of staff to accompany a female visitor who’s interested or a friend. Nevertheless as you’ll see, it’s surprising that the artist didn’t simply consider producing a duplicate version of the piece for the women’s toilet since the constituent items aren’t “unique” exactly.

Just above the two wash basins on a wall at right angles to a mirror are two pictures. One is a canvas print of a photograph of a bust relief portrait of a bearded gentleman in Elizabethan clothing which a label beneath indicates is F or Francisco Pizarro González, the Spanish conquistador who conquered the Inca Empire. Next to this is a framed print of what we must also assume is Pizarro in full armour galloping manfully forward rapier aloft. Beneath are the words, “Pan American Union, Washington DC”.

Accompanying these, beneath a stone is an A5 printed booklet containing a reproduction of this text (at this link) in which the artist describes an artwork which never was, the corpse of a toad he named Pedro, which is was unable to conserve long enough to display in an upcoming exhibition. The Pizarro connections are that the unfortunate amphibian was found in Buenos Aires and was to have been shown in Sao Paolo along with some “pink wallpaper based on the rubrica of Francisco Pizarro”. There’s a photo of that wallpaper here.

Except, as I stand looking at these objects and even after reading the text, I’m not sure of what any of it "means". The Biennial booklet simply lists the artists name and that this is a public intervention with a direction to see the entry on the Lagomarsino piece in the Cunard Building, “An Offensive Object in the Least Offensive Way”. That features a statue of a macaw owned by the artist’s neighbour in Sao Paulo which she’s agreed could be shipped to Liverpool to accompany an early 20th century tourist advert for Brazil which contains a picture of a similar Macaw.

There’s plenty about the Macaw on the Biennial’s website. But there’s nothing about the Hotel Indigo piece, not even a title. Sifting around the loo in my memory I don’t recall seeing an information board and if there is it’s not in an obvious position (I don' think). We can attempt to make our own connections about Pizarro and the implications the conquistador’s actions might have for someone who lives in South America and how the bust of the man and the print mirror the macaw and the print in the other piece, whose title could equally apply.

But from a presentational perspective its disappointing that a visitor’s somewhat left in limbo, presented with objects which we might find interesting but without a necessary explanation aren’t able to appreciate the artist's efforts. There doesn’t even seem to be a title. A glance around the web offers the few other clues I’ve linked above but it's especially problematic that there isn’t anything on the Biennial website at least. Unless I’ve missed something. Which as we both know isn’t an unlikely scenario.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: FACT (5)

Art  And so to FACT one of the Biennial’s main venues.  It’s difficult to remember a time when the FACT centre didn’t exist or what was in its place on Wood Street before all of this art and cinema took up residence here.  It’s only when compiling this tag for my blog that I realised just how regularly I’ve been a visitor even if it’s been to the cinema less and less.

Indeed it’s only on this visit that I noticed how some of the staff have FACT on their t-shirts and other Picturehouse.  As was explained to by an usher as I idled by the Box screen, there is an invisible demarcation line through the building, with everything on the left being owned and run by the arts organisation and everything on the right by the cinema chain.

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In the area which used to be the Media Lounge, Pedro Reyes has installed Melodrama and Other Games, a kind of playground for existential angst in which strangers and friends are tasked with playing games which the artist believes can “foster new tools for collective problem solving”.  The walls are covered with brightly coloured posters in pastel shades, most eye-catchingly “Pillow Fight” next to a storage facility filled with all kinds of soft furnishings.

An invigilator approaches and explains some of the above and asks if I’d like to have a go.  I wonder if there are any solo items and I’m introduced to a map of the Great Britain filled with words, the aim of which is to read rhythmic poety out-loud as quickly as possible.  She says that because I’m on my own I’ll only need to go as far as Scotland but since that would seem like a job half finished I indicate that I’ll work my way through to Dover.

Shouting nonsense in public is surprisingly easy once you get started (which is presumably why politicians happen) and beginning with “Ingle Angle Golden Bangle” and finishing with “Iggle Oggle Black Bottle Out” I work my way through the Milliganesque mess of verse influenced by regional accents and sayings each indicated by a geographic location and arrow.  Liverpool has no arrow, but since Ipswich didn’t have The Beatles it probably balances out.

Reading unfamiliar verse is unsurprisingly difficult and I do trip over my words a couple of times and have to stop briefly around Birmingham because it's becoming increasingly difficult to read without bending over so I carry on with the indentical poster above.  I think I briefly have an audience too which serves me right though I’m not sure how much they are entertained.  But this is the kind of art I tend to like, with an interactive element, sometimes mental, sometimes mental and physical.

Reyes’s main game is Melodrama, a homage to Snakes and Ladders which forces the player through the ups and downs of a relationship.  The invigilator manages to corral a couple of other visitors, two girls, students I think, to play and the three of us sit around the table giggling our way through the various stages from meeting at a party to marriage to a party, the up arrows indicating emotional fulfilment, the down arrows signifying the pitfalls, the arguments, settling for less, that sort of thing.

The experience of playing with strangers is presumably different than with friends.  Friends tend to know all of your secrets and each circle is a potential reminder of some moment experienced.  Strangers are a blank slate and although there were a few knowing glances between the other two, none of us were prepared to say too much.  The simplicity of the game presumably means its own as enjoyable as the company and the three of us were never going to be fast friends.

Perhaps relationships are a form of "collective problem solving".  Even if the only people involved are the people involved, rather than the family and friends with their ears to listen, voices with advices and shoulders to cry on, the word "problem" so often used in relation to relationships suggests that there has to be something to solve.  Except, of course, some problems are crossword puzzles, some are campaigns in Portal and some are the Hadamard conjecture.

For the end of the experience Reyes has left prizes in the form of the posters of the games so we can enjoy them again at home and they’re now sitting next to me as I type.  The invigilator suggests I return when it’s busier and it's true this probably works best when there are more people to watch or enjoy the games with.  But Reyes has at least created workm that like of the best artwork, forces the visitor out of their comfort zone.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: The Tea Factory (4)

Art  As is so frequently the case with these curious missions, attempting to apply order invariably still leads to some chaos.  There are still some museums or art galleries in the north-west which are still not quite appraised because they were closed for renovation when I visited.  Many Hamlets have been too far out of geographical reach.  In 2010 I never did quite manage to see the Raymond Pettibon piece.  So imagine my lack of surprise, having chosen to visit the Biennial venues in the official map key's numerical order, as I stood in front of the shutters at number four on the list, The Tea Factory, understandably closed because of a cracked window, lights off, unpersoned.  Fortunately, some of the photographs are available online, so I have at least been given a taste of what lies within.

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In a surprising coincidence, it’s the nature of the “outsider” and the distance which separates a photography and his subjects which underpins Sabelo Mlangeni’s Men Only, the railings and glass separating this visitor from his photography.  Mlangeni is a South African documentary photographer whose subjects are as diverse as the countryside gay community and abandoned or ghost towns.  As the Biennial pamphlet explains “his images focus on the grey area between opposing forces, such as acceptance and discrimination” both of which he experienced when he moved from his birthplace at Driefontein near Wakkerstroom in Mpumalanga to Johannesburg in 2001.

The one photograph I was able to see clearly is from the Men Only series.  Man Tehuis features two males, one wearing a leather jacket, the other a shirt, both open revealing their chests, outside the George Goch hostel on the East Rand of Johannesburg.  As the photographer's website explains, the artist spent a few weeks at the hostel, living with and shooting the routines of the inhabitants.  Although originally opened in 1961 to house migrant mineworkers, the hostel is now used by new arrivals in Jozi working their first jobs as taxi drivers or security guards.  Only male residents are allowed and they all predominantly have a black population underscoring that some elements of apartheid are still in evidence.

One of the men grins at us, a cigarette in his hand.  The way his other hand links with the other man we might assume that they’re gay but it’s impossible to know for certain.  Along with the other photos in the sequence we are able to see just how close the artist came to the residents as he’s able to capture what seem like appalling conditions not unlike British slums and workhouses, people living in rooms also akin to modern prisons.  That this man is able to smile is a surprise, though like a prison these men are living hand in glove and so at least have the comfort of human companionship however intrusive that may be.  Perhaps Mlangeni’s showing us that sometimes, we’re not “outsiders” for very long.