Liverpool Biennial 2016: The Walker Art Gallery.

"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke, and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace, we've got work to do!"

-- The Doctor, "Survival"

Art Here we are then the final destination for my TARDIS in the official Biennial at the Walker, the final venue for so many of these projects.   As ever the main contribution is the John Moores Painting Prize and as ever I spent a lot of time shaking my head, rolling my eyes, sighing and wondering what the judges were thinking.  After the generous selection of portraits and landscapes and illustrative paintings, in 2016, we're back to swathes of abstraction interspersed with dashes of melancholia and nihilism.  Having come to terms with the fact that I'll never be entirely happy with the selections in these biannual exhibitions and least of all with the chosen winner, let's excavate what I didn't find unattractive.

One of the key connections between many of the works is control and attention to detail.  Gemma Cassey's Halves II (Continuum), the painting I chose for the people's vote, has minutely rendered wavy lines in acrylic so close together that it's almost impossible to see how they might be kept separate.  Not just horizontal; by cross hatching them with vertical lines, she'll able to create two tones intersected in the middle.  It's fascinating.  On a much larger scale but with similar restraint is Alex Rennie's Totem, in which splodges of black paint against a salmon coloured background somehow create a three dimensional space filled with columns with perspective, the seemingly haphazard stroke choices being nothing of the kind.

There are some landscapes.  John Stark's Beasts of England II shows pigs being reared in a wet, muddy field offering an apocalyptic farming vision.  The always good Nicholas Middleton is back with Figures in an Arch, a much smaller, simpler work than usual depicting a group of shabbily dressed people and a chest of drawers on the edge of a darkened tunnel looking into the unknown.  Mandy Payne returns too with another of her paintings of a derelict tower block, No Ball Games Here, an austere image of a concrete balcony over looking more concrete balcony albeit painted in pastel colours.  The overall impression you gain from this collection is far from optimistic.  Gathered together it's entirely apocalyptic.  Thank goodness the Doctor will always be there to save us.

Next Destination:
Everywhere.

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Mr Chilli Restaurant.

Art "They're on the wall there, there, there, at the end there..." The restaurant worker has obviously had the same conversation with a few people who've wandered through the door asking to see the Biennial pieces. Perhaps she also leads them into the back to the photographs next to entrance to the toilets. She's very patient and I'm slightly embarrassed that having decided to complete the Biennial on this particular day, I don't have time to stop for food.

Elena Narbutaite and Eduardo Costa, Sun Kiss Feline, 1982-2016 originated as a performance/cum fashion shoot in the swimming pool area at the Adelphi Hotel. Utilising designs originally proposed by Costa in the early Eighties, Narbutaite hopes to give the impression of an interspecies transformation as the swimsuit bear leopard and tiger cut-out patterns.  As well as the display at Mr Chilli they've appeared in local fashion magazines.

Part of me wonders if the images would have been more effective as a piece of video art rather than as still images outside of magazines, a couple of the shots feel like still frames from a video piece.  Not a documentary about the making of the photos, there are certainly enough of those in the world, but these images moving, providing a better illustration of the transformation which without the accompanying note isn't obvious from the shots themselves.

As with the display at the Masterchef Restaurant the pictures don't seem out of place in the environment, the restaurant already filled with pictures and menus and advertising, which seems to the point of this strand, placing works in an environment where patrons who might not necessarily visit the Biennial can unexpectedly interact with the festival.  What have patrons to the restaurant made of these images?

Next Destination:
The Walker Art Gallery.

Liverpool Biennial 2016: 143 Granby Street.

"Well, if that's what you want. I mean it's a bit soon... I had so many places I had wanted to take you. The Fifteenth Broken Moon of the Medusa Cascade, the Lightning Skies of Cotter Palluni's World, Diamond Coral Reefs of Kataa Flo Ko... Thank you. Thank you, Donna Noble, it's been brilliant. You've... you've saved my life in so many ways. You're... You're just popping home for a visit, that's what you mean."

-- The Doctor, "The Sontaran Stratagem"

Art The time ship takes its final trip to Toxteth for one of the Monuments of the Future, a stained glass window from artist Arseny Zhilyaev illustrating The Last Planet Parade, the supposed final occasion when a particular concentration of planets and stars appear in the nights sky and viewable from a particular position on Earth and only on a single spot in the universe.

Within the space there's a long apparently biographical note, about how Zhilyaev's interest in space developed from childhood, his father seeing Yuri Gagarin on a visit to Manchester and experiencing his first Planet Parade, something he celebrates every 22 January with a fancy dress party.  As with many of the pieces in this Biennial, the fiction is frictional.

As well as the window, there's a display of news clippings, photographs and books connected to the biographical note, just the sort of literature my Dad kept from his childhood and I grew up reading before I could afford to buy franchise novels.  For the purposes of future historians and people who don't have time to visit the exhibition, here's a bibliography:

ANDERSSON, Poul.  1973.  The Rebel Worlds.  Coronet.

CLARKE, Arthur C.  1975.  The Lion of Comarre & Against The Fall of Night.  Corgi.

CLARKE, Arthur C.  1969.  Voices From The Sky.  Mayflower.

GREENHOUGH, Terry.  1979.  The Wandering Worlds.  New English Library.

MOORE, Patrick.  1978.  The Observer's Book of Astronomy.  F Warne Publishers Ltd.

TUCKER, Wilson.  1971.  The Time Masters.  Signet Books.

TURNELL, Reginald.  1975.  The Observer's Book of Manned Spaceflight.   F Warne Publishers Ltd.

VAN VOGT, A.E., 1973.  Children of Tomorrow.  F Warne Publishers Ltd.

Next Destination:
Mr Chilli Restaurant.

Liverpool Biennial 2016: ABC Cinema.

"Cut! Cut! Who let those bums in here?"

-- Steinberger P. Green, "The Feast of Steven"

Art In a rare move, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, the main draw for visiting the ABC Cinema was to view the interior of the building rather than the festival.  In the 90s, my film going was a relay between the Odeon on Lime Street, the 051 Cinema on Mount Pleasant and this edifice.  It's here I saw Wayne's World, Heat, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, It's A Wonderful Life on several occasions and many more.

There's the occasion I attended a viewing of the 15 certificate of The Truth About Cats and Dogs in a screening with several families who'd clearly misunderstood the meaning of the title and somehow didn't leave during the phone masterbation scene.  When I complained to the manager, he too had thought that it was one for the kids "judging by the title".  Or Final Analysis where a friend and I spent the whole screening sat behind two older pupils from our school who were necking.

Twenty years later, I was initially slightly disorientated because the entrance is through the fire door onto Lime Street rather than up the main steps which is how it was accessed in 2008 when it was previously used as the Biennial's visitor centre, back when the festival had such things.  I mentioned that visit on this blog (which includes other cinema going anecdotes -- I wonder what Theresa is doing now).

On entry you're handed a torch by a volunteer because there are occasions when the space is plunged into darkness (see below) but otherwise you have a fair amount of freedom walk around the space where the stalls used to be.  Various artworks and installations have sectioned off the space but it's still possible to work out the geography of how the cinema was set out just before it closed in the late 90s.  The Liverpool Echo has plenty of images, even of spaces inaccessible to the public.

The key headline is that since 2008, when all three screens were intact, the two smaller auditoria have been removed so that the space has been returned to how it must have been when the cinema was originally built and it was quite natural for thousands of people to share the big screen experience.  What was the screen one (in my day) is back to being a currently inaccessible balcony and those smaller screens are now clearly where the stalls used to be.

Turning a corner reveals the old foyer, and I stood for a minute remembering where the original ticket office would have been and the refreshment stand.  As far as I can remember, by the time it closed the ABC still hadn't installed any kind of electronic ticketing so the hundreds of people piling in would still have been issued with a relatively primitive slip of the kind which served perfectly well for decades before box offices and refreshment stand were combined in multiplexes.

In a cycle of about fifteen minutes the space is plunged into darkness (hence the torches) and we're invited to sit in on of the collapsable chairs distributed across the front of the stalls to watch a piece of video art projected on a screen atop the stage in a decent approximation of the Picturehouse adverts featuring the music of Daniel Johnson.  For a few brief moments, even its its dereliction, the ABC Cinema on Lime Street returns to its original utility.

Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni’s The Unmanned: 1922 – The Uncomputable, "reflects on Lewis Fry Richardson’s attempt to build a huge weather-forecast factory".  On screen, women represent various elements of their gender stereotypical and biological, from comfort in dark times to pregnancy while a voiceover narrates various apocalyptic situations befalling the planet due to man's poor judgement in relation to how to save us from climate change.

Seeing all this the same week The Futurist just up the road was demolished it was impossible not mourn slightly the loss of these "authentic" cinema experiences albeit that in reality this was mostly about horrible projection and sound, uncomfortable seating and having audience members in even closer proximity with their noise and eating.  But there's something antiseptic and uneventful about multiplexes; you might as well watch most films at home (which is mostly what I do now).

As ever there have been announcements and plans about the future of the space.  Back in 2007 the plan was for a boutique hotel.  Now it's a live music venue and media hub, plans which feel more certain due to the number of stakeholders involved and proper planning applications.  Although part of me wishes it could remain a cinema in the style of those Picturehouse adverts, the dereliction becoming a feature.  True love will find you in the end.

Next Destination:
143 Granby Street

Liverpool Biennial 2016: George's Dock Ventilation Tower Plaza.

"Water is patient, Adelaide. Water just waits. Wears down the cliff tops, the mountains. The whole of the world. Water always wins."

-- The Doctor, "The Waters of Mars"

Art   For various reasons, I've walked near Betty Woodman's Liverpool Fountain on numerous occasions over the past few months since the Biennial opened but wanting to keep to the spirit of this project as much as possible made a point of either keeping my eyes front and centre or else selecting a completely different route in order to avoid it.  As we've discovered before, the best way to approach contemporary art is with a fresh eye in most situations and so why would I want to spoil myself?

Thankfully, it was well worth the wait.  A monumental sculpture, part of the Ancient Greece episode, it places shapes from sources that include, according to the Biennial literature,  "Greek and Etruscan sculpture, Minoan and Egyptian art, Italian Baroque architecture and the paintings of Bonnard, Picasso and Matisse."  Those influences are absolutely clear in the way the shapes have been fashioned and chosen colours, asymmetrical vases and statues in jarring colours.

The effect feels pleasingly dated, like a commission for the entrance hall of an office building or "modern hotel" from the 70s and 80s, not looking out of place, for example, in the old Senate House at Liverpool University or a Vegas money trap.  This isn't a criticism, one of my happiest days was visiting Le Defense in Paris and seeing work just like this at La Grande Arch and its surround commercial properties.

The shapes are augmented by copper piping pour water into a trough before, which was very welcome on the warm day I visited.  I stood for minutes with my hands cupped underneath letting the water flow into the space before periodically opening my fingers and letting the liquid fall through.  I did consider through it into my face but decided I didn't want to get my t-shirt wet.  Bedraggled has never been a good look.

Next Destination:
ABC Cinema

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Open Eye Gallery.

"You are here because you want to know the truth about this starship. And I am talking to you because you’re entitled to know. When this presentation has finished, you will have a choice. You may either protest. Or forget. If you choose to protest understand this: if just one percent of the population of this ship do likewise, the program will be discontinued with consequences for you all. If you choose to accept the situation—and we hope that you will—then press the forget button. All the information I’m about to give you will be erased from your memory. You will continue to enjoy the safety and amenities of Starship UK, unburdened by the knowledge of what has been done to save you. Here then, is the truth about Starship UK and the price that has been paid for the safety of the British people. May God have mercy on our souls."

--- Starship UK Video Announcer, "The Beast Below"

Art Despite being from this city and being at just the right age, I have absolutely no memory of the student protest which is the subject of the recording of performance piece and connected video documentation on display at the Open Eye Gallery. In April 1985, I would have been ten years old which judging by the photographs was about the same age as a lot of kids who began marching at St George's Hall and worked their way through through city centre down Dale Street to the Pier Head.  But living out in Speke, my world very much limited to South Liverpool and with my prospects looking in the direction of the Blue Coat School in Wavertree, perhaps it was just something happening elsewhere.

The Liverpool schools march has already been the subject of an exhibition at the Blue Coat in 2011, which was reported on by BBC News at the time.  That was more of a historical affair with many more of the photographs taken by local photographer Dave Sinclair, which are also somewhat the basis for part of this display.  One of the criticisms I have of this display is that these photographs don't have a more prominent position; they could for example have been presented in the upstairs gallery, which at the inception of the Mann Island version of Open Eye was designated as a space dedicated to archival photography, instead of the continuation of installations from artists which are carried over from other venues.

The oddity of watching the group of volunteers recreating the walk stepping along such familiar streets brought to mind Biennials of the past when there was much of a sense of international artists creating work which reacted directly to the city. To be honest I spent much of it trying to work out why a couple of the faces seemed familiar and although I recognised a few people from the Biennial team, there were a couple I can only conclude I've seen at press days or private views around the city.  But I appreciate the artist Koki Tanaka's approach to highlighting the past, and how this was an example of how protest can work, the Thatcher government did slow down and re-evaluate their plans for the YTS scenes which were the subject of the march, only attempting them again later in a different form.

The problem as a visitor is this video is presented on a flat screen at the entrance to the display in a main walk through to the other galleries and back to reception and so as I discovered on the day I visited, it's impossible to watch without having people jostling to get past.  On the day I was there, a college group were being given instructions from a teacher, drowning out the sound of the speeches on the video which provided necessary context at beginning and end of the march.  It's a puzzling curatorial choice to have the key exhibit in such a compromised position especially since there's plenty of space elsewhere in the room, where two other screens containing interviews with people who marched and their children can be seen relatively unhindered.

Listening to them describe the reasons why they attended in 1985 and how they feel the issues they were raising back then are still relevant, I reflected by on the only street protest I've ever attended as as an undergraduate in Leeds in 1993 (I think), joining a crowd of contemporaries marching from Headingley, up Otley Road to the City Campus protesting against the dissemination of the grants, the introduction of loans and tuitions fees.  But even then I felt very uneasy about the affair and said as much to the two journalists from the Leeds Student paper.  What had seemed like a grassroots expression against something which would stop higher education from being accessible to someone from a poor background like me, I quickly noticed had been joined by people holding aloft placards advertising the Socialist Worker and about other unrelated issues.  By the time we reached the city centre and the rally on the Headrow, I peeled away.

Next Destination:
George's Dock Ventilation Shaft.

Liverpool Biennial 2016: India Building.

"It's like a silence you can almost hear..."

-- Barbara Wright, The Space Museum

Next Destination:
Open Eye Gallery

Liverpool Biennial: Toxteth Reservoir.

"Spoilers."
-- River Song, "The Big Bang"

Art In commenting on Biennials and contemporary art in general, I've talked about how just like any other creative media, it's often best approached cold without much of a preview so that we can allow whatever we're being greeted with to wash over us, to luxuriate in our initial reaction however positive or negative that might be. There's not one occasion I think think of when I've thought better of a piece, enjoyed it more, having known about it first. Unlike painting, for example, contemporary art, due its generally inherent minimalism, often has a very short period within which to surprise, shock or amaze us if that's it's approach. If it has enough thematic or intellectual depth, that will develop afterwards, but it's the gut reaction which is usual the fundamental point of its existence.

If only I'd been able to see Rita McBride's Portal before stumbling into the darkness of Toxteth Reservoir but it's been another of the pieces whose image has been splashed around across social media and in publicity, because of its spectacularity, that it was impossible to approach cold and that's a shame.  Having been directed by a door person to keep my eyes fixed on a blue bollard until my eyes adjusted, I already knew what they were about to look at and although I was still astonished by the scale of it, I felt pangs of disappointment that this was still a secondary reaction hoping that the version of me in a parallel dimension who'd managed to avoid seeing the work ahead of time was suitably gaping at it with the correct aplomb.

As the accompanying video explains (and again please don't visit this page if you're at all thinking about visiting) the artist has always had a strong interest in science fiction and wormholes in particular and that's what she's trying to express, really quite successfully here.  Green laser beams bounce between walls across a hundred metre gap, creating a lattice of light broken by dust in the atmosphere.  On first inspection you might imagine that these are wires or fibre glass cables stretching between until you realise that's impossible.  Instead it's a version of the security lasers which appear in modern heist films stretched to their limit, in green rather than red and resembling the screens of code in The Matrix films.  Spectacular and large scale.  To get the full experience you must walk from one end to the other.

About the only reservation I have is that the accompanying sound is the echo and chatter of voices from the door people and people entering visiting rather than something to accompany the sight, a fitting sound effect like the sounds of the universe or time vortex something which echoes about the space in a similar way to the light.  This feels like a work which requires our concentration and yet the space is filled with audible distractions that bring us right back to reality.  Pretty quickly I cranked up my iPod and listened to some instrumental music which helped somewhat.  Of course, this would be a nonsense on busy days when the space is filled with people anyway but I'm a huge fan of verisimilitude, of going all out when attempting to communicate an idea.  Nevertheless, I'd still list this as a highlight of the Biennial and well worth the trip down one weekend when it's open.

Next Destination:
India Building.

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Rosebery Street.

" Every conversation with you just goes... mental. And there's no one else I can talk to. I've seen all that stuff up there, the size of it, and I can't say a word. Aliens and spaceships and things and... I'm the only person on planet Earth who knows they exist. Oh, that's just not fair."
-- Rose Tyler, "Aliens of London."

Art When is the best time to view public or street art? When it's sunny or when it's raining?  Walking up Princes Avenue this morning towards Rosebery Street, the heavens were very much open for business, pitching water everywhere, making the world grey and dark green with highlights of muddy brown.  Hud up, head down, I was entirely confident I was in the wrong place at the wrong time to see Alisa Baremboym’s Locus of Control, another of the Monuments from the Future.

Even after viewing the piece, which sits on a patch of grassed waste ground, near some derelict house, I don't know if I saw it at it's best.  Certainly a sunny day would have led to the metal shining brightly, perhaps even other worldly.  But the wet weather meant the ground was slightly less accessible so there was a genuine effort involved in getting close and peering through the holes at the plastic construct within (which is also viewable on the artist's website).

From the outside the object resembles an environmental pod of some kind on an alien world, or a cage being used to encompass some beast.  The edges of the sculpture have begun to rust which speaks towards the idea of an object which is becoming part of the environment, as though abandoned by whatever it is which has made it.  Like the other monuments in this episode, if we embrace the fiction, it sits apart from the location inviting us to speculate on its origin.

Next Destination:
Toxteth Reservoir.

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Bluecoat.

"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff."

-- The Doctor, "Blink"

Art As you will have noticed from the customary culinary communication, last Monday I visited the British Library.  The reasons for this and the inevitable emotional trauma can wait for another day, but imagine my surprise on visiting the Bloomberg New Contemporaries show at The Bluecoat this morning only to find myself watching a webcam video of two people sat in what looks like the same area where I drank the soup, albeit at least year a before me.  I did indeed say out loud to no one in particular, "Is that the British Library?" and "Oh jeez, it is" (I've been saying "Oh jeez" a lot lately having picked it up from Rory Gilmore during my recent binge watch of the Gilmore Girls).  At some point not everything that happens in my life will be connected through some kind of bizarre, synchronous recreation of the opening sequence from Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia, but not yet.  This was not just one of those things.

As ever, Bloomberg is Bloomberg in that you'll not like everything and the chances are you probably actively dislike most of what's on display and that's certainly the case again.  This is the thirtieth anniversary of its first appearance at the Bluecoat and its travelled the world and other parts of Liverpool in the meantime, turning up in the Copperas Hill post office building in 2012 and the Horseshoe Gallery at the World Museum in 2014.  Both those settings were vast which left the work feeling dislocated and unconnected, more like the exhibition part of a conference which has otherwise  been cancelled.  The Bluecoat has intimacy in its favour and a greater ability for the objects to interact with one another, the curators noticing the obvious visual similarity between Janine Lang's startling video piece Shooting Clouds, which rotates a camera around a cumulonimbus at parallel height as it disintegrates with Cumulative Loss, Kate Fahey's digital collage of billowing smoke.

There's also, as is usually the case, a single piece which makes the whole visit worthwhile, or with the works from Karolina Magnusson Murray and Leon Platt, three pieces, although they're all interconnected.  The Application, The Name and The Work run for around half an hour each on a flat screen in the largest room.  One of the inherent problems with Bloomberg is this tendency to display works with long durations and not provide chairs, but after an initial glimpse of this, I simply went into the corridor outside and borrowed one which didn't seem to be in use (having asked permission first).  Which isn't to say I was aware of the duration first.  I'd assumed about half an hour.  But so absorbed was I in these three moving image pieces that an hour and half passed without me noticing.  I even asked one of the invigilators if the stated duration was incorrect, that I couldn't be sat for that long.  "Well, it's half eleven now" he noted.  Yes, yes it was.

The three "films" seem to deconstruct the process of creating and submitting a work to the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition.  All three are recordings made using a webcam and based on how the camera is often repositioned this must a separate unit attached to the top of a laptop screen rather than a lense fitted onboard.  In each, the artists sit facing us, looking into the screen or in the space addressed by the camera and it's a single shot which lasts for the entire duration of that video.  The view will be familiar to anyone who uses Skype or Chatroulette or seen the film Unfriended, turning us into a kind of ghost in their machine, looking out voyeuristically eavesdropping on their behaviour.  On that level it's already fascinating but it's the content and the magnetic charisma of the participants which led me to spend the same duration as Unfriended watching them.

The order of the three pieces is not unlike Pulp Fiction.  The Application has Murray and Platt sitting in the British Library atrium debating how they should make the application to be part of Bloomberg, considering the kind of work they do and how to describe their collaboration.  The Name has them in a domestic setting, we assume their flat having a steaming argument about the content of the work they're going to submit and the ramifications of deciding whose name appears first in the collaboration.  The Work presents us with the video of which we've already heard snippets during The Name, in which the artists rigorously discuss what the work they're making should be about, in other words what's notionally the discussion about what the work includes is the work itself.  Through the three recordings, we're watching the beginning, end and middle of the process, although I turned up in the middle of The Name, so I saw half the end, the beginning, then the middle and then the other half of the end.

In all three pieces, we see the two artists having some kind of argument.  The Application offers the more polite, passive aggressive jockeying which inevitably happens in public spaces when the theatre of cruelty is rehearsed through micro gestures, unfinished sentences, questions which are really suggestions and the slow widening of the space between the participants on the bench and so screen.  The Name shows all out war, as domestic privacy means that volcanic passions can bubble across the surface scorching everything in their path, old arguments brought into play during the new, running away from the situation either physically or mentally through ignoring the other person or simply pretending an argument isn't happening at all.  The Work merges the two as someone with very clear ideas of what they want to achieve finds themselves dealing with a partner who doesn't know really and is procrastinating.  Would you like a coffee?

Whatever the intentions of the artists in creating the work (see the following paragraph), the film studies student who's still looking for the perfect job in me can't help wondering if they've somehow made a romantic comedy in the style of mid-noughties Abbas Kiarostami, with his lengthy shot durations focused on faces, improvised with the passion of a Cassavetes piece.  People who argue with this intensity tend to be in love, at least in my experience and once you have that idea fixed in your head, everything which happens on screen is either a hilarious riot or deeply disturbing from moment to moment.  Every now and then Platt's eyes boggle momentarily at something Murray's said, he's very much the straight man in this, or his face blanks as he realises he's clearly said the wrong thing and Murray's about to shut him down.  I frequently found myself laughing in the gallery space.  Some scripted comedies are less funny than this is in places for the right and wrong reasons.

Which isn't to say you're not constantly aware that there's presumably a fair amount of artifice involved, that we're not necessarily watching reality.  Are we really seeing three incidents which happened to be filmed, or the visual backfilling of a structure?  Was this the actual moment when they submitted the application or a recreation and did they plan the sticking points ahead?  In choosing to film the discussion of what the work is about and make that the work, was that a decision made beforehand or did it emerge naturally?  Is the argument they have over billing real?  Certainly we're provided with enough doubt as the audio from the The Work somewhat acts as a commentary to the discussion which is also happening in front of us during The Name, even interacting in a way not unlike the dvd scene in Doctor Who's Blink.  Is this even their flat?  Do they even live together as is mentioned during the ebb and flow?

Samples of each of the works appear on the couple's Vimeo page (actually mentioned in the video) along with a lengthy chunk of The Name and skipping through, it's startling just how raw some of the emotions seem to the extent that if it is some kind of improvised character piece, Murray in particular could seamlessly change professions.  I suppose what niggles at me is the extent to which Platt's aware of what's being shot in the space while the argument is in full flow, shifting his camera to include Murray as she steps out of his breathing space taking her mug and blanket upstairs.  Were these the only three videos recorded or are we seeing the videos they chose to fill the gaps?  Looking at their biographies might provide some answers.  Asking the artists directly too (since as is usual with Bloomberg there isn't some accompanying text).  However fascinating that is, I probably don't want to know.  Who needs mundane answers?  The mystery is far more entertaining.

Next Destination:
Rosebery Street

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Exhibition Research Lab.

"Get some Mellow. Makes you feel all bendy and soft all day long."

-- Pharmacist, "Gridlock"

Art Well, this adventure was quite the challenge. When I attended the exhibition the other Monday,  the video section, an important rosetta stone explaining the context of the rest of the work wasn't working and on asking at reception in the building no one seemed to know how it should be turned back on. I tweeted and phoned Biennial and someone very kindly texted me later to tell me the video was back on but I was home by then.  Returning the subsequent Thursday, the image was playing but no sound.  The receptionist came and after trying to turn the projector on and off again, passed me the remote, I offered to have a look, and after fiddling with it for a bit managed to get the sound booming out of the speakers.

The introductory video is a vital component of Suzanne Treister's HFT The Gardener (transcript here), setting up the fictional conceptual scaffold on which the rest of the show hangs, albeit on buffet tables covered in glass.  Through a hypnotic series of images we're introduced to former stock market trader Hillel Fischer Traumberg, who after a hallucinatory experience on the trading floor decides to turn his back on the business world to become an "outsider artist" hooked on shrooms and other forms of mind-altering drugs who utilises mathematics in order to find tangible connections between potent plants and company trading stocks.  In other words, it's ten minute video designed to allow the artist to place a pair of metaphoric quotation marks around what's to come.

Across the rest of the exhibition we're presented with the "results" of "Traumberg's" "research".  There are "gematria charts" in which various FT Global 500 companies are represented by a series of brightly coloured psychoactive plants.  There are diagrams which explains how these two entirely disparate entities could be mathematically connected.  "Outsider artworks", drawings depicting the 92 psychoactive plants with their traditional uses and illustrations of their mental effects, like a Rock Family Tree of psychedelia.  Paintings of the visions he "shared" with "shamans" throughout the world.  Video stills and photos which have been used during the introductory film.  Plus a series of "glitch graphs" which are supposed to chart the active compounds in psychoactive plants.

All of which synopsis should indicate that I wasn't that much inthralled by any of this.  Some of Triester's other project seem very intriguing, but The Gardener hits a nexus of subjects with which I'm less impressed.  The heroic city trader.  The mind altered outsider artist.  The notion of setting up a fictional artist and then working within the rules of their artistic expression as a way of expressing your own interests.  Never quite being sure if the thing I'm looking at is supposed to be satire.  Whilst sections of it are well executed and I could imagine someone else finding much to think about, and I did see one visitor on the Monday who was very excited despite the video not working, I faded pretty quickly into a miasma of why questions on the Thursday in an empty gallery space and no one to discuss the implications.  If ever I needed an invigilator to talk to, it was here.

Oh well, you can't like everything... After this I think I need somewhere that is truly tranquil, peaceful, restful.  A panacea for the cares of mind. Or somewhere fun.  How about B ...

Next Destination:
Bluecoat.

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Hondo Chinese Supermarket.

"You are not the only remarkable thing on this earth, Jack. Consider the jellyfish. The species turritopsis nutricula is considered to be immortal. Its cells undergo a process called transdifferentiation. Quite simply, it can revert to a younger state and grow old again. And then repeat. Without limit. It’s possible there are individual jellyfish on this planet that have existed for thousands and thousands of years."

-- Olivia, "Torchwood's Miracle Day: End of the Road"

Art In an early incarnation, back in the 60s, the building which now houses the Hondo was the offices and warehouse for a wholesale company where my mother worked, something she'd tell me stories about growing up each time we headed up Upper Duke Street.  Although the supermarket has been in place for many years now, the remnants of its former uses remain in its shell.  The warehouse at the back is still a warehouse.

Part of the Chinatown episodes, obviously, there are two pieces inside.  Sitting on a shelf in amongst the merchandise and next to a screen displaying footage from a security camera, a flat screen television plays Ian Chang's Something Thinking of You, which utilises algorithms and artificial intelligence to show a creature evolving of their own accord within a digital forest environment, a polygonal snake resembling a dragon.

Unfortunately when I visited it didn't seem to be doing much, just rolling around the landscape, which resembles an alien rainforest, creating rendering glitches in its wake.  Eventually it stopped dead underneath a tree and remained there for minutes.  I stood patiently waiting, dodging now and then to allow people to leave the supermarket (the screen is opposite one of the counters and near the exit) but nothing much else happened.

Available to take away from the counter is a colourful free sheet containing another of Lu Pingyuan's charming stories, The Two-Sided Lake which appears in English and Chinese on reverse.  Or Chinese and English on reverse if you will.  A short story about a diver who emerges unexpectedly from a lake in near a small village in China, it somehow manages to inadvertently reference Torchwood's Miracle Day although we can be pretty sure that wasn't the artist's intention.

Next Destination:
Exhibition Research Lab

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Pullman Hotel.

"The great god Vulcan must be enraged! It's so volcanic! It's like some sort of... volcano! All those people!"

-- Caecillius, "The Fires of Pompeii"

Art What amounts to be my 500 year diary for this journey, the Biennial booklet, isn't clear about how to access this example of their annual commissions programme. There's mention that the film is shown at end of each screening during their film programme but nothing which attaches it to this location. So I got in touch:

@feelinglistless You can watch an artist film by Raphael Hefti. Just ask at reception. More info here: https://t.co/p6O8hIUjaJ

— Liverpool Biennial (@Biennial) July 31, 2016

The link indicates that if you ask at reception "they will guide you to a room where it is being shown".

The reception is near the entrance, a staff member and a laptop. When I asked, she turned to a colleague who said something about the remote control not having batteries and then about the room having been book, but I was quickly ushered to a giant plasma screen in a nearby lounge area, and Sky News was turned to a channel dedicated to showing Raphael Hefi's An Alumothermic Reaction Producing Liquid Steel, Filmed at 2000 Frames per Second, 2016 and here I sat on a very comfy sofa watching this fifteen minute film amid the clinking of glasses in the bar being prepared on one side and clients checking in on the other.

The film was shot in the Kings Dock.  As part of a live performance, to quote the booklet, "a huge pile of sand worked as a makeshift foundry, and with a technique usually used to repair high-speed railway lines [...] The welding process melts steel very quickly: lava-like flows of molten metal poured down the sand. finding final form as the material cooled down.  Heft references heavy labour and iron casting, the backbone of contemporary infrastructure: processes that have long histories but that usually remain hidden."

The images burn off the screen, the white heat of the raging metal flowing through dunes and out of silos in an enthralling beautiful expression of humanity's control of the elements, albeit with the usual caveats about us being a general blight on gaia.  There's no particular narrative as we're shown various elements of the process and ferocious temperatures bend towards abstraction, like the rushes from a Godfrey Reggio movie (Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi) without the customary Philip Glass score, replaced by "natural" sounds.

The website has much business about the technicalities of capturing the images, "using a 150lb, 4k resolution, ultra-high definition camera that captures 2,000 images per second, the artist collaborated with the film crew to test the possibilities and technical properties of the equipment, exceeding the parameters it has been designed for. Some parts of the equipment even melted in the process."  This is unsurprising and a demonstration of how nature finds a way.  I'm amazed there's no mention of injury.  As shown, these elements seem as though they'd continue forever if prompted.

Actually watching this in the atrium added to the atmosphere, what with the screen hanging in a recess on a wall with a surface resembling bronze.  Watching it on a much larger screen, a cinema version is being shown at FACT every Thursday at 6:30pm, must be an even more involving experience although it's arguably just slightly too long, the host of images just slightly losing their power within the repetition.  Or it's possible I was simply distracted, wondering what visitors were making of this art work as they made sure they had a bed to sleep in that night.

Next Destination:
Hondo Chinese Restaurant.

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Granby Workshop.

"You know, there is no means whereby I could prove to you that that crystal is any different from any other piece of quartz, and yet it is unique. As you say, ridiculous!"

-- The Master, "The Time Warrior"

Art Like the Homebaked Bakery in 2012, Assembly's Granby Worskshop is an example of community project as artwork.  From the website: "Liverpool Biennial has commissioned Assemble to create a new artwork on the occasion of the International Festival for Business (IFB) 2016. Granby Workshop, a social enterprise collaboration between the residents of Granby neighbourhood in Toxteth and artists collective Assemble, presents a showcase of their work outside the Exhibition Centre Liverpool during the three-week festival in a new commission."

The artist's intervention in the process is that all the object being created are unique, embracing "chance and improvisation".  A sign was commissioned for the launch of the IFB 2016 and these tiles have been installed on the wall of the workshop and that is what I travelled out to Toxteth to see.  Of course, thanks to the randomiser this meant I had to travel past a couple of other shows which I'll be returning to later in the year.  But choosing this route means that I'll be able to address each of the pieces as separate experiences rather than have them become submerged into one another.

After parking the TARDIS in the knot of a nearby tree trunk, I set about viewing the titles, a nine-by-nine grid which seems to be the selection on the left of the image reproduced in the booklet and on the website.  These are white surfaces covered in abstract shapes, like Matisse cut-out with more colourful gradation.  There doesn't appear to be an intent to illustrate anything in particular but its impossible for the brain not to infer trees, hammers, bird's wings, the shapes of continents or some kind of misshapen planet.  Importantly they are all different.  A factory manufactured version would create uniformity by repeating the shapes across a bathroom.  Not here.

Next Destination:
Pullman Hotel.

Liverpool Biennial 2016: The Oratory.

"Listen!"

-- The Doctor, "Listen"

Art The Oratory is one of Liverpool's hidden jewels.  Sitting in the grounds of Liverpool Cathedral it must look like some old mausoleum, and only when it's open does it show its true purpose and if nothing else, the Biennial provides people with the opportunity to see inside for an extended period.  Back in 2010, the Biennial held a press preview at the Oratory showcasing transcendent Laura Belem’s The Temple of a Thousand Bells, in which what must have been that many small, glass objects were hung from the ceiling whilst a story was told to us.  That wasn't first visit.  My first visit was part of the Art Collections project and you can find a detailed review of the statuary and the building's history on this very blog.

Although there's work from other artists around the edges of the interior of the kind which is threaded through all of the many venues, the key focus is on a giant flat screen television presenting Lawrence Abu Hamdan's Rubber Coated Steel, in which the artist (who we previously encountered in Derby Square) utilises the mechanism of a gun range to illustrate a subtitled but not heard transcript of a trial in which he successfully proved that two Palestinian boys were shot by real bullets rather than rubber rounds.  As the visual evidence is presented to the court demonstrating the difference in sound between the two, they're brought forward on the clips usually filled with the targetable torso or else video footage.

The Biennial booklet suggests "it's a work about aesthetics, politics and the potential violence inherent in both noise and silence", which, I'd suggest, includes the inherent biases we have in interpreting both we see and more importantly hear.  If we're conditioned to assume we're hearing a rubber bullet then that's what we'll hear.  If it's a live round, then that instead.  Those in the court admit that they can't tell the difference and without the sound wave patterns Hamdan submit, it wouldn't otherwise be clear at all.  It's an enthralling piece which demands our patience, because we can only see the words of the court transcript and so we're constantly having to dart our eyes between what's being "said" and what's being "shown".

Not that I thought this first time around.  As is often the case with video art, I can in the middle and didn't have an understand on the context.  Plus three security guards were being shown around the building by a fourth and at the vital moment when the artist's own voice emerges from the speakers to provide some necessary context, the guard decided to raise his voice so he could be heard over the sound of the artwork.  All of which distraction led me to feeling a certain tedium as the legalise played out.  Like many of the Biennial presentations, there's a clear narrative which simply doesn't work if you enter in the middle.  But after deciding to watch the whole piece again from the beginning, I managed to grasp what was being presented and was mesmerised.

Next Destination:
Granby Workshop

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Exchange Flags.

"Gracious. During all my travels, I don't think I've ever come across this. Magical. Isn't it extraordinary? I say, are you there Chesterton? Chesterton. What are you doing, dear boy? Fiddling and gaping over there. Come over here and learn something."

-- The Doctor, "The Web Planet"

Art The TARDIS lands near an unusual artifact, a wooden structure covered in clay which resembles the back end of a Zarbi burrowing in the block paving.  As you can see from his tumblr, the artist Sahej Rahel, creates artifacts and objects influenced by science fiction and fantasy as though they've then subsequently become lost for thousands of years and become fossilised.  There are tables filled with items at Cains Brewery in this vein, set out like the results of some archaeological dig and in Exchange Flags here's what could be the uncovering of the remnants of some Pompeii level disaster.

Next Destination:
The Oratory. 

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Everton Park.

Art As well as the territory of this year's Biennial, the accompanying booklet also highlights "annual commissions", artworks created by the Biennial as part of their community outreach. Koo Jeong A's Evertro is a key of example of the approach, a fully functional "wheels" park just on the edge of Everton's lung for the use of local people which also fits within the artist's usual interests and processes.

Finding the wheels park was surprisingly easy, a 19 bus to a stop outside Everton Park, a walk to the concrete pathway which presents on the most picturesque views of the city, followed by asking for directions from some overalled gentlemen in a white van directing me to wander down the hill towards St Anne's Street.  Afterwards, it was easier to continue walking on into town than back up to the bus stop.  And cheaper.

Typically, I visited the sculpture at its least presentable moment, what with its key asset being an ability to glow in the dark and finding myself standing on the edge in the early afternoon.  But it still feels like a more developed, thought through design than you might expect from a skate park, with definite curves and triangles and death defying dips in the middle.  Walking the park and stepping between the shapes I pondered how dangerous it must be,

The only visitors were two boys on bicycles, just at the moment when I was trying to take some photographs of the site.  They'd not seen this public information film.  Luckily I have.

"Hey, mate, are you playing Pokemon?" they shouted.
"No."  I replied abruptly.
"Do you play Pokemon?"
"No."
"What are you doin'?"
"Taking photographs."

At which point I gathered my things and ushered myself away as quickly as possible.

Next Destination:
Exchange Flags.

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Derby Square.

"Doctor Who is required! Bring him here!"

-- WOTAN, "The War Machines"

Art What to photograph in Derby Square? With the TARDIS landed, do I turn my camera to the Victoria statue or the Law Courts? The description in the Biennial booklet mentions the latter directly, so here they are looking like part of the landscape from an off-Earth Pertwee story.  Which is quite apt because Lawrence Abu Hamdan's Hummingbird Clock, three sets of white tourist binoculars resembling CCTV cameras trained on the Town Hall and its clock, with their buzzing electrical current could be part of a UNIT viewing and listening post quite rightly out in the open for everyone to see.

The visual joke is obviously a take on "who watches the watchers" with the Town Hall notionally being the centre of government in the city, although it's the police control room which has the power to view citizens as they go about their business.  Two views are fixed on the clock and the Minerva statue on the roof.  The other can be shifted left and right although at such angle that all it can glimpse are the edges of tree branches and nondescript chunks of building.  The only distinct image viewable is also the clock.

The Humming Bird Clock refers to what the Biennial booklet says is "a new kind of public time piece that exists physically and online" (online here in fact) (fair warning that website contains strong humming from the start).  As the text on the object explains the National Grid gives off an almost silent humming the disruptions in which have been used by security services to check if a recording has been altered by matching the time and place with this noise.  Hamdan's piece online and on the street is an attempt to create a sort of public domain version.

Like the Mariana Castillo Deball's To-day 9th July 2016, this contribution to the Monuments from the Future episode is interactive and as I sat pondering where to be put my camera, I noticed a huge number of people, children and adults looking through the viewfinder, reading the text, perhaps wondering what the digital read out on the front meant.  There's already some graffiti, someone's been at it with a pink marker writing slogans, initials.  But this is a very bold place to put a piece of public art at one of the nexus points in the city

The objects are also giving out hum, but mixed with the usual bustle of the city, buses and chatter, the lunch eaters sat on the benches nearby didn't seem unduly irritated.  In the evening silence, especially after midnight, the effect must be stranger, more ominous.  Rather like the surveillance we know is taking place surrounding our lives, it's easy to block out its existence, forget like the noise in daytime.  It's only when that surveillance makes itself known, through some news item breaking the silence do we appreciate how far its encroached on our lives.

Before leaving, I attempted to recreate the shot in the booklet of the Town Hall clock.  Remarkably. by holding my iPod's lense up to the viewfinder on the binoculars and setting it at the correct angle, I was able to see the image on the generic fruit based mp3 player's screen in all three instances.  Indeed the resulting photographs are crisper than what I was able to see with my naked eye.  Which either means machines have overtaken humans as the dominant species on the planet, or I need to go and get my eyes tested.

Next Destination:
Everton Park

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Epic Hotel.

"It seems to me there's so much more to the world than the average eye is allowed to see. I believe, if you look hard, there are more wonders in this universe than you could ever have dreamt of."

-- Vincent Van Gogh, "Vincent and the Doctor"

TV I'm standing outside the Epic Hotel glaring at a sign.

 With no visible way of entering the property, I'm now trying to discover where exactly the Biennial piece might be.

There's a direction on the front of the property to visit Seel Street for access, and yet the map very clearly states that the visitor needs to be on Duke Street.

Just as I'm about to pull away, a smartly dressed woman with long dark hair approaches carrying a Biennial booklet.

Now she's glaring at the sign too.

We agree that we should probably walk to Seel Street and see if we can get any help there.

As we begin to stroll up Duke Street, she decides to stop and photograph some fly posters and graffiti, so I continue but go completely off course, turn back into Wolstenholme Square instead of walking further up Slater Street and turning onto actual Seel Street.

If you're from Liverpool, you'll know this is entirely foolish.

Ironically, it's here that Nation used to be and I would have visited anyway if the fire hadn't led to the Mark Leckey video being moved to the Blade Factory.

Realising my error, I begin stepping backwards up towards Slater Street.

My one off companion for this adventure is coming towards me, so I hold my hands up in a "hold on" gesture.

I begin rifling through the Biennial booklet looking for the office's telephone number.

My companion waits nearby fiddling with her phone as I'm connected to the office.

After one voice I'm passed to another, who at first doesn't seem to know which piece I'm talking about.

So I turn to the relevant page in the Biennial booklet and begin reading.

See if you can spot the moment when the penny drops.

"Lu Pingyuan has written a series of stories that can be encountered across episodes, and in the Biennial’s book. One describes a two-sided lake that a diver uses to swim between continents, and another tells the tale of little Kiki whose origami figure comes to life as a disgruntled artist. A third, which can be seen painted on the side of the Epic Hotel ..."

There is more text but I didn't need it.

Thanks, I say, so that's what it is.

I tell my companion.

She says as I did, "Oh that!"

So we walk back down into the Wolstenholme Square, stopping for more photographs, this time of Jorge Pardo's Penelope sculpture, originally created for the 2006 Biennial, then cutting through a car park and back on to Duke Street.

There it is on the side of the building, this Lu Pingyan piece which describes some business about Vincent Van Gogh and cloning.

The Biennial website has a photograph with a tree obscuring some of the text so you'll have to visit if you want to read the rest of it.

We'd both noticed it on the way down to the hotel but thought it was some form of derelict advertising which can often be seen on old buildings so didn't pay it any mind.

With a tree obscuring some of the text we crossed the road so we could read the rest of it.

After that my companion offers some thanks for my help.

"I don't think I was much help" I tell her, before offering directions up to FACT.

Luckily she has the map in the Biennial booklet so doesn't have to rely on my directions.

Sometimes I wish I read the Biennial booklet before seeing a piece.

But I like surprises.

After taking the above illustrative photo in the kitchen catering supply shop opposite, I'm off to my ...

Next Destination:
Derby Square

Liverpool Biennial 2016: Welsh Streets.

"Ogri, come. I command you."

-- Vivien, "The Stones of Blood"

Art Back when I was signing on for Income Support or whatever each contemporary government was calling unemployment benefit, my route walking to the job centre on Park Road was down High Park Street, which meant I passed the so-called Welsh Streets fortnightly on a Monday.  Then these were thriving suburban terraced streets not that I paid much attention what with wanting to get to the signing on desk at the given time and always running late for.

Returning other day, I was shocked to see, despite hearing, that they're marked for demolition, every house empty and boarded up, one street painting completely black, every house top to bottom.  The result is eerie, as though some fantastic or even apocalyptic event has befallen the local population forcing them to leave their homes.  There is a pilot scheme to refurbish some terraces but the overall feelings is of intruding into a space which humanity has vacated.

Which makes it the perfect setting for Lara Favaretto's Momentary Monument - The Stone, a giant, monolithic hollow granite boulder which has landed in the centre of Rhiwlas Street, perhaps the most apt of the Monuments of the Future.  Boulder implies an ovular object, but this is a large rectangular shape, one side smooth, the other three carved with a brick shaped pattern and the overall effect is as totemic as the black objects of Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick and just as forbidding.

To turn into Rhiwlas Street and be confronted with the monument is a disorientating experience, in that way that the best Biennial public art has been over the years, placing the inexplicable in explicable places.  Even though you're aware this is an artwork created with human thoughts and hands, it's nevertheless entirely alien, just the sort of probe we might imagine the Lemurians from Yin-Ju Chen's Extrastellar Evaluations (at Caine's Brewery or FACT) might send.  Or an Ogri.

Favaretto has created similar pieces elsewhere. This article has a similar piece created for the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo back in 2009.  Like that commission, The Stone in Toxteth is temporary.  The slot on the front allows visitors to make a donation to charity (on this occasion Asylum Link Merseyside), money which will be collected by demolishing the boulder at the end of the Biennial (which is apt given the possible fate of the surrounding streets).  I liked the way my change jangled as it hit the interior floor.

Because of its transient nature you have to see this piece now.  One of my great regrets was not being able to see Rachel Whiteread's House when it existed.  But be warned, it's very photogenic, which is presumably why it's been utilised to illustrate this Biennial in many publications and as the main graphic on their Twitter profile.  So if you haven't seen it yet, I'd strongly recommend you avoid spoiling the moment of initial contact, turning the corner into the street to see it in the stone for the first time.  It's breathtaking.


Next Destination:
Epic Hotel