The Olympic Torch Relay.

Sport The Olympic Torch Relay. The Olympic torch relay. I’m not sure where the capitals are supposed to go, but I was sure that for all my cynicism about ticketing allocation, the siphoning off of money from less populist culture to pay for it and LOCOG’s shenanigans, I had to attend the Olympic Torch Relay, the Olympic torch relay. Checks main website. Olympic Torch Relay it is then.

Indeed I can’t quite understand why you wouldn’t bother, especially if you had the opportunity. As it spaghettis across the country taking in most of the major cities and at least some of the minor towns, there’s certainly enough time. I know people who desperately wanted to see it but couldn’t get time off from their employer, so in a way I felt like I had to see it for them too.

Not everyone has that spirit, it seems. Passing up Hope Street this afternoon on the way the place where I’d be standing, a mother was herding her brood up the pavement. One her boys looked up and asked, “Aren’t we staying to see the Olympic torch?” to which is Mum replied, “Why?  It’s just someone running up the road carrying a torch.”

I was desperate to say something, say “Well, yes it is, but think of your boy in twenty years when he’s in the pub talking about all this and when asked if he saw it, his story’s going to be what you just said. It might get him the sympathy vote, perhaps even a sympathy drink, but if he’s desperate to see it you might as well give him the hour.” But I didn’t because it was none of my business.

Instead I carried on up towards the Metropolitan Cathedral, outside which the Archbishop of Liverpool was having his photo taken with five women in top hat, tails, miniskirt and fishnet stockings (Zatanna basically). Inside the cathedral’s café, a girl in a kimono practiced an intricate dance, swishing her sleeves around in circles. For a few moments, I felt like my life was being written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff.

I’d decided to stand in the university district on Brownlow Hill, near the red brick Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, guessing that the crowds would be thinner than in the city centre, and being students slightly more fun and less aggressive, mostly because I like to think that’s what I was like as a student and that has to be the template, doesn't it?

When I arrived at about four o’clock, the streets were empty which boded well for finding a decent speck.  But was early so I bought a 99 from an ice cream van, watched some of the entertainment laid on by the University radio station (Chinese drums), winced in Rymans at the exorbitant price of blank dvds and them met a friend in Blackwells who told me that the torch wouldn’t be passing by for another hour.

Eeep. Thankfully after some more strolling about, time passed relatively quickly and by about twenty to five I was standing up the hill outside one of the Electical Engineering buildings, the Sun reflecting brightly across its glass and white modernist tiling. On the balcony of the building, a group had gathered in swimsuits carrying beers. They were the happiest people there.

Waiting. Waiting. Chatting, to a couple of students stood next to me, about why we’d come, about the impossibility of buying tickets, about just what time the torch would actually be passing by. The crowds built. Random cheering ensued, mostly initiated by the people in swimsuits, sometimes after egging someone to remove most of their clothing too, something they succeeded in a few times. No, not with me.

At about 4:45, things occurred. After some stewards arrived to hopelessly ask us not to stand in the road, the first lot of support vehicles drove through, police on bikes (cheer), police car (cheer), Coca-Cola lorry (muted cheer), Samsung (cheerishing), Lloyds (cheer), yellow Olympic vehicles some carrying torch bearers (massive cheer) and then … a number 79 bus. The torch would be on time, then.

Which it was. At ten past five, more police bikes and cars, more Olympic vehicles, the security joggers in their grey track suits and in the middle the torch bearer, whoever he was. The experience of watching wasn’t unlike the Sea Odyssey giants of a few weeks ago, the surge of people, the shouty stewards, the desperate photography, the fleeting moments in which suddenly it's there, then just as suddenly it's gone.

I wish I knew who the torch bearer was. I’ve had a look at the Olympics website isn’t clear on exactly who had the opportunity when and the above photographic evidence is too indistinct for a positive identification. But he was smiling, enjoying himself and that’s the main thing. Certain other torchbearers haven’t seemed like they’ve really understood the honour.

After the biggest cheer went to the street cleaning wagon following the entourage it was over and the long walk to public transport began. I decided to head down Hardman Street to Forbidden Planet to collect my comics order (which is about what you'd expect). As I walked up Rodney Street, in the very distance I could see the torch passing another crowd outside Liverpool Cathedral.  Same cheers.

Turning onto Leece Street, I realised that the torch would be passing again up Renshaw Street. Picking up the pace, I dashed to the bottom and waltzed through the traffic onto the small island opposite the Sainsburys. Behind me the steps of St Lukes again were full and as the same vehicles passed by, it became apparent to them that they were very much in the wrong place. Surge forward.

But somehow I’d managed to plonk myself in front of all of them and was within feet of the path of the torch which, sure enough passed again. Another surge of people, more shouty stewards, more desperate photography, more fleeting moments of the torch being suddenly there, then just as suddenly gone. No photograph this time, just a memory of the torch's golden mesh sparkling in the daylight.

The Spectacle of the Lost, the new exhibition at one of the Liverpool’s unsung art venues, the University of Liverpool's Victoria Gallery & Museum

Art My first encounter with John James Audubon the artist who’s best known for his publication The Birds of America containing over four hundred life sized prints of bird species in North America when as a teenager I raided my Dad’s vinyl collection.  Although I generally ignored his Jim Reeves back catalogue, I was quickly attracted by An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer (spotify) and his song, Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, an autre piece about disposing of the wing'd "vermin" in a variety of cruel fashions. With wild abandon, Lehrer sings:

We've gained notoriety,
And caused much anxiety
In the Audubon Society
With our games.
They call it impiety,
And lack of propriety,
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names.
But it's not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.

At the age of about thirteen I didn’t know who Audubon was, or why he should have a society, and didn’t much care without the internet to help me, but I did very much enjoy singing his name (later I discovered the Audubon Society is essentially the US RSPB).  It wasn’t until years later when Liverpool Central Library had an exhibition about his book that I made the connection and grinned as I realised that I finally understood one of Lehrer jokes decades after I’d first heard it.  This Guardian article reminds me that was as late as 2004.

One of the reasons the Central Library was interested, apart from owning a copy of the book, was because in 1826, Audubon visited Liverpool to fund and publish his portfolio. He apparently stayed with the Rathbone family who were resident at the Greenbank House just around the corner from where I live in Sefton Park, a period in which he continued painting, presumably because of the mass of wildlife on his doorstep.

All of which makes me the perfect audience for The Spectacle of the Lost, the new exhibition at one of the Liverpool’s unsung art venues, the University of Liverpool's Victoria Gallery & Museum on Brownlow Hill, for which I attended the private view this evening. Curated by Laura Robertson of The Double Negative, it’s a gathering of works by the Birds' Ear View Collective, a group of artists interested in how birds interact with the modern urban environment.

Cleverly, the show begins in the museum’s own permanent display of Audubon paintings and drawings (the largest outside of the US), giving the visitor some visual tutelage in what the artist achieved. These are considerable images illustrating the visceral endeavours of a hawk pouncing on partridges or the noble, proud American wild turkey, with its tall neck and slightly arrogant features.

The power of Audubon’s achievement is undimmed by modern technology. Yes, television and film can build narrative and knowledge through editing and voice over and photography an even greater sheen of realism, but Audubon’s creatures have a presence, the unreal nature of painting somehow capturing aspects of their behaviour which still vividly leap from the page or canvas.

The rest of the show seems to seek to illuminate the brilliance of Audobon’s observations with an interest in the mortality of birds, with paintings and photography which underscore Audobon’s success in gifting his subjects such a rich inner life with a strong message of how man, at the risk of sounding like a Werner Herzog voiceover, in failing to appreciate their beauty ultimately causes their doom.

In the next room are further, rarely displayed examples of Audobon’s work, contrasted with the first pieces from the modern collective by John Barraclough. whose immense watercolours on paper show birds in their specimen status from the collection of National Museums Liverpool. Having seen examples of the originals when I worked at Liverpool Museum (as it was then) I can attest the accuracy of the fine brushwork on display here.

Yet, these prone eyeless bodies are somewhat depressing for all their formal brilliance.  They are scientifically important and at the Museum many are held in environmentally controlled areas with single existing examples of their species locked in bombproof safety, modern attitudes protecting the birds more now than we did when they were alive apparently.

That interest in the mortality continues into his Impact drawings which mimic the subtle remains of the shape a bird makes when hitting a window, white pages covered in scratches, and the photographic prints made with Alexandra Wolkowicz across the walls in the main space depicting birds which have fallen fowl of the city, carcasses found in diverse buildings across New York like the World Finance Center Gym and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Splayed across black backgrounds in shapes not unlike Audobon's own action paintings, the colours of the bird's feathers remain colourful even in death.  To be honest I'm not sure how we're supposed to feel about them.  Perhaps like the Audobon's what we're seeing is a record of bird behaviour, the repetitiveness of a particular kind of death within an environment stolen from them by humans.

The evening was topped off by a performance from Rob Peterson, whose audio work reading samples from Audobon’s diary also features in the space. Having flown in himself early this morning, he fittingly read entries describing Audobon’s own first impressions of Liverpool. He mainly talks about how polite we all are especially when giving directions, but notes an example of man's intervention, a caged bird near the breakfast table.

Perhaps it’s a bit ironic that my first inclining of Audobon is through a satirical song about man’s cruelty to bird and now I’ve attended an exhibition on just that same topic. It’s the kind of exhibition which is enjoyable because it’s interesting, because it asks questions and challenges the visitor. It certainly speaks to my own inherent double standards in being repulsed by the sight of the birds who had little chance against man’s progress, but adores roast chicken.

Until Saturday 25 August 2012. 

"my favourite programme, Blue Peter"

TV Blue Peter is Who I Am:

"I didn’t have many friends when I was young. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that I have Asperger Syndrome. I was lonely and miserable and having a difficult time at both home – my father was an abusive alcoholic – and at school, where I was bullied. I wrote letters to my favourite programme, Blue Peter. It didn’t hurt that it also had links to my other favourite, Doctor Who, and still does. [...] The first Blue Peter badge I won was the Green badge, for writing about the environment ..."

I'd like to think that kids still have same connection with the show that we used to [via].

strange and challenging

Music Netia Jones discusses collaborating with Maurice Senak on Oliver Knussen's opera versions of his books:

"I'm sick of Wild Things," was the first thing Maurice said to me. Knowing he might say no, making the opera project impossible, I explained my ideas and, heart in mouth, asked if I could animate his drawings. He said yes: "I like you and I trust you. Go where your imagination takes you." I almost fainted with joy."

Both operas are on Spotify and are just as strange and challenging as they should be:

"the meaning of a work can be illuminated"

Art Much as I love visiting art galleries, I hate visiting art galleries. Museums too. The main problems with art galleries and museums and art exhibitions is this: they're terrible places to see things.  Oh everything is available, walls and floors filled with stuff, interesting stuff, beautiful stuff, clever stuff.  Enough stuff for us to spend all day looking at it.  Stuff everywhere, all with the potential if not necessarily to change our lives, at least change the way we look at the universe.

But, we're not alone. There are other visitors walking about self-centeredly wanting to the look at the stuff their way and never with the same concentration we want to give. There's staff members with their radios and being staff members. There's noise. The noise of creaky floor, squeeky doors, visitors discussing the work, the chatter or school groups, all of which can be magnified depending on how large the space is and how popular the display.

Essentially, unless we're very, very lucky we can never give the stuff the concentration we really should, that it's really designed for.  Most art gallery and museums and exhibitions are a distracting one size fits all solution to an impossible problem.  How do we enjoy artwork for what it is, what it should be?

Perhaps we should be able to look at art in private.  We should be able to book a room in a building somewhere and at the same time an artwork from a collection.  At the appointed time we visit and sit in a comfy seat in a soundproofed large empty room.

On the wall in front of us is the painting we want to see or in the centre of the room the sculpture.  We then have as long as we like to contemplate the piece, perhaps with some background information to hand.  Web access or some such.  Then, when we're ready the next work we want to see is brought in by handlers or we slip home and book the next appointment.

All of which is dour and unfair and draws away from the excitement of visiting a busy exhibition in which a mass of humanity is collectively enjoying the experience of seeing great art, the potential interactions, the moments when the meaning of a work can be illuminated because of those interactions.  Plus the curatorial choices which demonstrate connections between the stuff based on where it's placed.  They're all the reasons I love art and places that display it.  All of you.

But sometimes, just sometimes ...

The Smithsonian Institute has a post about how a physics student sat in some rooms at  the Cleveland Museum of Art just watching how visitors interacted with the work and the space, drawing their movements on graph paper.  The results are relatively predictable but what I draw from it is that much of what happens in these places is about trying to see the stuff as best we can.  Under the circumstances.

"a Banco do Brasil building"

Art Anthony Gormley's installation piece Event Horizon places a few dozen of his burnt nude sculptures (not unlike those in Another Place on Crosby Beach) on rooftops across a city, like angels watching over the crowds below. Their appearance in San Paulo as part of a new retrospective has unnerved the population:

"The police were here a few days ago because they received calls that a man was going to jump from a building," said Carol Menezes, a receptionist at a Banco do Brasil building where one of the statues sits on a roof 25 stories above the sidewalk. "It's interesting, creative. I was surprised when I first saw it. I guess it's art, so many strange things are so why not this?"

The installation originally appeared in London in 2007 but these images of the new iteration from Wired are especially arresting.  ArtLyst has a longer piece about the whole show.

"more visual data"

Film The BBC have posted a short piece about the restoration of Alfred Hitchcock's first film The Pleasure Garden.

 The main points of interest are that four alternative versions of the piece have been married together to produce the longest version to date some twenty minutes longer and the image has been stabalised.

Watch out too for how the scanned print looks before its been cropped - there's more visual data on either side of the resulting version something that weirdly hadn't occurred to me having spent years seeing these things in academy ratio.

Here's what I wrote about the film when I was watching all of Hitch's career in order: "Showgirls without the rampant sexuality and subtle performances".

I'm looking forward to reappraising it.

Alan Barnes's Trail of the White Worm

Audio For  the first half of the final story of the series, writer Alan Barnes's Trail of the White Worm takes us right back into the Hinchcliffe end of the franchise with a Holmesain story that riffs on an old horror classic, features a megalomaniac Time Lord foe and is thick with the atmosphere of the late 70s, portrayed on audio via the culture clash between the exoticism of punk culture and the parochialism of Derbyshire’s Hardyesque bygumism. It’s as though the whole thing’s happening in Dominic Sandbrook’s dreams on a night when he’s fallen asleep after a reading Bram Stoker’s book, its supernatural elements still rattling about his brain.

The TARDIS drops the Doctor and Leela in the Peaks, where they find themselves embroiled in the search for a missing girl and the mystery of mucus deposits across the rocks of the Dark Peak Gap, created by what the locals calls a “you know what” but whose identity is rather given away from the title. Before long we’re straight into the classic structure of the time travellers becoming separated, with different bits of the back story being revealed to them and us, the Doctor’s deductive powers filling in the vital missing pieces, Barnes leaving just enough breadcrumbs that we might ourselves be able to guess if we’re listening carefully enough.

Apart from Bob Holmes, the other writer who most obviously comes to mind is Paul Magrs.  This is first of these plays which seems to tonally glance deliberately in the direction of the AudioGo range especially in the latter sections when the White Worm becomes the focus and the listener’s challenged to imagine the unimaginable. Certainly the characterisation’s as bonkers as Hornet’s Nest, featuring Colonel Splindleton an aristocratic big game hunter who has access to a massive arsenal of weapons and an aristocrat labelled Demesne Furze (which in reality’s a leafy new build in Headington, Oxford) (no really, it’s on Google’s street view).

As ever with this series, Big Finish’s attracted an A-list for audio cast. The Colonel’s  huge gestures and Vernian adventurism is perfectly suited to Michael Cochrane, veteran of The Archers and an eerily accurate Malcolm Muggeridge on Holy Flying Circus, the Monty Python bio.  He’s joined by Rachael Stirling, yes that’s Tipping the Velvet and Boy Meets Girl’s Rachael Stirling as Demesne, almost unrecognisable with her pitch perfect, according to Tom in the extras, impression of Ealing regular Joan Greenwood, rolling her rrrrs and sounding about twenty years older. Impeccable.

There’s Becci Gemmell from Land Girls too as Julie, a kind of quick witted I can’t believe she’s not Lucie Miller figure with aspirations for the bright lights of Carnaby Street but the clear draw here is the return of Geoffrey Beavers as the Master in a story set chronologically before his debut in the role in The Keeper of Traken. Without the cumbersome make-up to deal with, Beavers is able to bring his rich consonants to a role which he’s made his own across a number of the these audios, the perfect mirror image to the fourth Doctor, Anthony Ainley never quite was during their single adventure.

I hope you’ll forgive the fixation on casting but they are one the highlights and with at least six paragraphs to fill and not wanting to give away too much of the story, I’m left to free associate with my starry eyes. Perhaps the only advice I’d offer is saving the play for next month and listening along with the final couple of episodes from The Oseidon Adventure. Though it’s relatively self contained, it does still feel like half a story and will perhaps be most satisfying with the other half, which features some of the same characters and resolves much of what happens here. Apparently.

Doctor Who: Trail of the White Worm by Alan Barnes is out now.

Good as Gold, the results of this year's Doctor Who script to screen competition

TV  Last night, Blue Peter broadcast Good as Gold, the results of this year's Doctor Who script to screen competition and you can watch it here:



Now, isn’t that fun? However entertaining the spin-off media is, particularly the audio exclusives from AudioGo or the Doctor Who Magazine comics, they’re never quite the same as the television version with its acting and music and camera whooshing around. And there they are for the first time since Christmas, The Doctor, Amy, the TARDIS console room and the chemistry we’ve enjoyed this past few years. Just three minutes including credits and whooping from the Blue Peter audience, but a magical three minutes.

Much of that has to do with the Children of Ashdene School or more precisely Rebecca, Emily and Libby from Year 6 who’ve cleverly looked at the fundamentals of what makes a Doctor Who story, as the first Doctor says, “the great spirit of adventure” and run with it, making it the Time Lord’s primary motive after some needling from Amy. None of the wanting to be left alone which has epitomised all of the Doctors at some point or other. If they’re not having an adventure at least once a week, there’s something wrong with the universe. Amen to that.

As with much of the newer series, kids entering the competition were handed a shopping list of what their script had to include. The scripts had to be no longer than three minutes when performed, have an Olympic theme, set either in the TARDIS or a new planet or world (but not both) and feature the eleventh Doctor plus Amy AND/OR Rory PLUS either a Judoon, Cyberman, Ood or Weeping Angel AND/OR a brand new human character (this can be a contemporary figure or a historical character).

None of which is quite werewolves, Shaolin monks and Queen Victoria but still has a few problems and it’s to the writer’s credit that they have managed to shoehorn all of that into three minutes. Shrewdly they’ve realised there isn’t much room in that time to give Amy and Rory something to do, especially in something this plot based, so they’ve stuck with just the former, which suggests that maybe this story happens some time in new series five, after The Time of Angels, perhaps as late as when Rory has been wiped from existence.

The Olympic theme was a big ask. This could have manifested itself in a metaphoric sense but the kids have gone with a more terrestrial theme and inevitably the result contradicts Fear Her as the athlete says he’s going to be lighting the flame. By rights this minisode should feature the tenth Doctor. But demonstrating a Dicksian understanding of the franchise, they’ve realised that “established events” should never get in the way of a good story so time’s been rewritten and here we are with a version of the London 2012 opening ceremony in which the TARDIS lands in the middle.

That’s the other interesting choice. Given the opportunity to set this particular adventure elsewhere, we have another minisode set in the console room. Perhaps that’s why it was chosen by the judges, but again in writing they’ve realised that establishing some new planet at the beginning wouldn’t have left much narrative real estate for something to actually happen. Even without an EXT, shot in the script, most people watching will know what this place looks like so it’s a perfectly reasonable shorthand. Plus there’s something seductive about only just glimpsing what’s beyond its door.

That the TARDIS has an "adventure" setting shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. As we discovered in Steven Moffat’s Space/Time, it already has the capacity to enter "conceptual space", presumably an offshoot of the Land of Fiction (which was used as part of the promotion for the series). Unless the Doctor’s simply glossing the randomiser to Amy as a way of showing off and tantalising those of us who vaguely wish the TARDIS’s guidance systems would fall apart and we could return the haphazard approach to destinations of the 60s.

Another ingenious decision is in selecting the Weeping Angels. Partly that might just be ruled by taste – the Angels are the coolest of the aliens on that list – but again like the TARDIS console room, they have a shorthand. The problem with Judoons, Cybermen or Ood is that they have to have a motive, some reason to be there, they’d need some dialogue. We know the Weeping Angels simply want to make you die slowly. Plus they have a recognisable catchphrase that has an inbuilt terror. They exist therefore they’re scary.

The Doctor also gets a bit of a speech. It’s a bit Huw Edwards, and “destroy the very spirit of respect, excellence and friendship it represents" isn’t going to beat “they’re indomitable” or “do I have that right”. But it shows that Rebecca, Emily and Libby have done some research into the history of the games and what they represent.  Along with Fear Her, it would be entirely appropriate to broadcast this again as part of the BBC's main coverage.  Genuine thought’s gone into this script.  Perhaps after this.

All in all then, an economic, neat, funny, snack of a story which can stand along side all the rest of the minisodes written by professionals which is a credit to its authors and to the production which invited them. With Confidential cancelled, competitions like this will be instrumental in inspiring the programme makers of the future and hopefully even the children who weren’t successful in the seeing their work filmed will have enjoyed the process enough to be motivated to become the production team of the future.

"a PR was sitting in on an interview"

Journalism Jason Arnopp interviews an anonymous PR about their work. On interviews:

“Oh, and you know what PR’s hate more than sitting in on interviews? Journalists commenting on the fact that a PR was sitting in on an interview in the copy. Let’s be clear, the public do not care about this, and it doesn’t make interesting copy. It’s petty point scoring that just sours your relationship for no real reason.”

Two things on this. Firstly, as a member of the public I do like to hear about this. If there's a PR in the room, as the interviewee suggests, it means the subject can't and won't be as open as if they weren't which is presumably why the journalist mentions their presence.

(B)  Interviews are boring.  If you're a fan of someone, you'll read dozens of interviews with them and there's an element of churn, the same stories over and again.  What makes them different is the journalists and although some would prefer them to be anonymous stenographers, some of the best interviews I've read have been about the journalist as much as the subject.

There's a balance and sometimes it can go wrong, but in the main, when a journalist mentions the PR, they're doing their job properly and probably producing interesting copy around that which isn't just reproducing the contents of a press release.

the launch of this year’s Liverpool Biennial at the old Cunard Building

Art  Last night I attended the launch of this year’s Liverpool Biennial at the old Cunard Building. Each year my access has been increasing and there’s something a bit thrilling about being introduced to the festival this early.  As I entered the massive room where highlights of the programme would be revealed, it occurred to me that I’ve been to enough of these things now that I’m seeing familiar faces, some of which I can talk to, which is a blessed change from the Biennial in 2008 when I wrote about “the sheer brace of strangers”.

The massive room in which we gathered was the luxury lounge for first class passengers before and after embarking and disembarking from Cunard's passenger liners. I spent some of the time simply looking at the deco ceiling and walls wondering how, like the Town Hall, such a beautiful piece of architecture could be so perennially off limits to the public. If the Biennial have made at least one good choice this year, it’s making the Cunard Building its base, since the fact the building will be open has a curiosity factor in and of itself. For some, the art will be an added bonus.

After a cup of coffee and my usual slightly embarrassed explanation to new people as to what I do (“I write a blog. It’s called feeling listless…”), the presentation began. At which point I can reveal that I also wrote this blog post last night because the contents were embargoed until after the London press launch at Tate Britain this morning. This too is quite exciting. I’d never attended an embargoed press event before. Afterwards I even had to ask what it really meant, at least in terms of not wanting to piss anyone off.

I can certainly understand the slight buzz some journalists have of knowing something someone else doesn’t. But I’m also oddly a bit gloomy about knowing so much this early. Granted, as the new artistic director Sally Tallant quickly listed the various venues and artists whose work will be filling them I couldn't absorb everything, and in some cases they’re not sure exactly what these new friends will be bringing, there are still a couple of works which seem like they would have worked best as unexpected pleasures. Even arts festivals can have spoilers, it seems.

The main title of this year’s festival is “The Unexpected Guest” and the theme is “hospitality” which as the press notes explain is “an attitude and a code of conduct fundamental to civilisation, as well as a metaphor whose conditions and energy inspires artists”. It’s a loose enough topic to bringing in a range of ideas and arguably great art should be “hospitable” as it draws the viewer in to the world of the artist’s inspiration, though it shouldn’t necessarily be interchangeable with “accessible”.  Some of the very best art is also about as hospitable as the surface of Pluto.

Weathering well the various venue closures in the years since the last Biennial, this year’s festival has absorbed some which were part of the independents last time, like Metal and The Royal Standard. The Victoria Gallery and Museum at Liverpool University has also been made official venue as has the old postal sorting office on Copperas Hill, now owned by John Moore’s University, which will house the Bloomberg New Contemporaries and City States, both moving from the Baltic Triangle.

For all the reasons we’ve discussed, I’m reluctant to look too closely at what’s coming up (you can read about them yourself at the Biennial website when it's updated), but there are a few things which made me chuckle during the presentation. Singapore artist Ming Wong is remaking Chinatown in his own language with himself playing all the roles. That’ll be in the public realm as will The Mad Lift, an Oded Hirsh installation at Liverpool One in which a lift looks like its crashed to the surface as though a hidden civilisation is accidentally interacting with ours. That’s a real lift. Amazing.

At the Bluecoat, John Akonfrah is producing a installation work about the life and philosophy of Stuart Hall, the professor who I remember from my not-so misspent youth watching Open University programmes during school holidays. The Open Eye Gallery will house Kohei Yoshiyuki’s collection of images of couples having sex in parks and their spectators, captured with infrared cameras, images which will apparently only be viewable in a darkened room via torchlight in an attempt to recreate the artist’s own processes.

There’s plenty more and I’m neglecting whole venues, but the information’s all up here as well as in the professional media. After a Q&A in which I managed to stutter through a query about the venue of the other launch (“And where is the Liverpool launch happening? Oh err I mean London …”), the Biennial’s directors and curators all rushed off to taxis so that they could catch their train and I wandered out of the building with some people towards the bus home with a feeling of having been made welcome. The Liverpool Biennial 2012’s hospitality has begun.

"Why should museums and galleries close at 5.30?"

Museums Last week some time, I commented during a live chat at The Guardian's website about the future of museums. This week, a round-ups been posted and my comment has been included. Here we go:

"From advanced interactive technology the conversation turned to the most basic of museum fundamentals – opening times. Commenter feelinglistless made the point:

"Why should museums and galleries close at 5.30? Why is it only possible for most of us to only see things at the weekend (when often they're closed on Sundays too)?"

"It seems to me that regional museums and galleries suffer because they're not seen in the same light as theatres, cinemas, concerts, restaurants etc in terms of a destination for free time or entertainment," he added.

Tapping into a market of working professionals who leave work as the museum doors close could not only increase foot flow and sales but might also have a positive effect on how the wider public view museums as a whole. By opening up the space into sociable and after-work hours, the museum becomes a entertainment hot-spot.

All of the panel offered their support for museums to open a little later and to provide evening events on a weekly or monthly basis – much like the Natural History Museum's After Hours programme."

It's interesting that they said "a little later".  My suggestion is for them to open as late as nine or ten o'clock.  Perhaps not every night.  The Louvre keeps its door opening until 9.45pm on Wednesdays and Fridays (but then it doesn't have enough staff to have all its rooms open all the time and is shut on Tuesday).  I'm not saying its a perfect example.

But we have to get out of this just being for special events and make it the norm.  For it to be accepted and expected.  Extra hours would cost money because of staffing and utilities and whatnot but it's not entirely unlikely that the extra footfall to use restaurants and shops.  Potential donations may compensate.

I'd be against charging for just these particular hours since that would nullify the benefits and limit access.  But this has to be something worth looking at.  As a nation we're rather stuck in rut in relation to our evening's entertainment and this would go some way to offering some extra freedom to those of us who keep the engines running during the day.

"the show was more like MAD TV on an off week"

TV This AV Club post about fictional artistic endeavours picks a few easy targets, suggests a couple which I'd disagree with (RENT) but inevitably finds itself on the sunset strip. In Studio 60:

"In order to justify the show’s hyperbolic take on late-night sketch comedy as the epicenter of America’s perpetually boiling culture war, the show-within-a-show would need to cross-pollinate Saturday Night Live at its zeitgeist-capturing best with the ballsy, timely, politically engaged satire of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Alas, judging by the glimpses of sketches viewers had the misfortune to see, the show was more like MAD TV on an off week, a regrettable collision of shameless mugging, broad comedy, and parodies of celebrities (Holly Hunter, Juliette Lewis) who haven’t been culturally relevant or well-known enough to make for good satirical fodder in decades. Studio 60 had all manner of problems, but setting the bar for its sketches impossibly high certainly didn’t help."

Someone in the comments makes the interesting point that if you're with the show by the time the sketches actually appear, somewhere in episode three, your suspension of disbelief accepts that the sketches are brilliant within the diegesis of the show because the characters believe they are.  Even though for most of the time they're not.

Personally, I accepted them because most of the time these kinds of late night shows tend to be relatively patchy and repetitive anyway (even in the UK).  Plus Sarah Poulson's impressions are so uncanny, they are genuinely funny despite their lack of relevance.  Also in some episodes, especially later in the season, the sketches aren't supposed to work because the writers have lost the plot.

singer-songwriter Zoë Bestel

Music In last night's Countryfile, Matt Baker visited Scotland's National book town, Wigtown, to talk about its Hay-on-Wye like collection of bookshops and regular arts festivals. In one especially beguiling moment, Matt was shown as the single audience member for an impromptu gig by local singer-songwriter Zoë Bestel.

 Wanting to find out more, I checked Google and found her official website, which is richer than sites for some well established artist, and has a blog entry about the experience and entertainingly for those of us who're fans of how programmes are made, a short video of what happened in the five minutes before the bit that was on television.

I think it's only fair to force you to link here to watch it, but it's well worth it for  proof that Matt's much the same in "real life" as on television and the background action when the cameraman, otherwise glancing through the bookshelves realises what's going on, realises how good Zoe actually is (and she is very, very good) and dashes out to get his camera.

There are worse ways of gaining some national exposure. Her EP is up on Spotify and embedded below.



Signed copies can be bought here too.

"the marginalisation of children"

TV On the Blue Peter switch. There's a quote in this Guardian column from Greg Childs, the director of Children's Media foundation which "aims to promote media for children and young people":

"We understand the logic of what they are doing, but there is a symbolism about this that the BBC is not taking into account."

"Our worry is that you are saying to kids, you are no longer on our main channels, you are niche, and that other things might follow. We are always concerned about the marginalisation of children. At some point in the future, if more money is needed for daytime, for example, where is that money going to come from?"

In an ideal world, Blue Peter would continue to have a prime slot on BBC One or BBC Two just before the news (or Eggheads), but tonally it's a different programme to everything else on the channel right now.  The ratings can't justify it either -- the majority of its audience is watching it on CBBC anyway.  But looking at that quote, I wonder if what we're seeing in the diversification of channels across digital services isn't similar to the redevelopment of the BBC's radio networks in the late 60s, but much more gradually.

Then, the Light Programme, Home Service and Third Programme shared audiences and demographics and types of programmes but then rationalised into Radios One to Four splitting their relative audience into demographic groups.  In other words in audience terms, CBBC/BBC Three is Radio One, BBC One/BBC Two is Radio Two, BBC Four is Radio Three and BBC News is Radio Four.  That's not perfect obviously, there's still some cross over, but it's the general sense.

We don't complain much that Radio One doesn't have classical music, just as its odd when Radio Four plays disco as it did the other day when Donna died.  Audiences are happy to be segmented on that service and even more so with the extra digital only stations like 6Music.  It's only really nostalgia which assumes that BBC One should cater for particular niche audiences when there are other channels capable of doing it just as well.  We'll talk about the mess that is BBC Two some other time.

"All News Dan Harmon"

TV I've never seen Community, but people I respect have and say it's quite good and that's because of its creator and show-runner Dan Harmon. Or rather he was show-runner and now he isn't. As ever rumours are filtering across this digital wasteland, but rather than simply letting them, Harmon's taken to his blog and set a few things to rest. Or tried to:

"The important one is this quote from Bob Greenblatt in which he says he’s sure I’m going to be involved somehow, something like that. That’s a misquote. I think he meant to say he’s sure cookies are yummy, because he’s never called me once in the entire duration of his employment at NBC. He didn’t call me to say he was starting to work there, he didn’t call me to say I was no longer working there and he definitely didn’t call to ask if I was going to be involved. I’m not saying it’s wrong for him to have bigger fish to fry, I’m just saying, NBC is not a credible source of All News Dan Harmon."

It's a classy piece of writing, tonally well thought through and leaving fans of the show in no doubt as what the show won't be like in the coming season.

my elderly brain

Life I've been a bit under the weather this past couple of days, mostly tiredness, bit headachy, not that you'd necessarily have noticed, given the review from yesterday morning.

 That was a battle in and of itself but felt important to do the following morning when all the memories where still sloshing around in my elderly brain.

It did mean I wasn't up to seeing in real life a friend I met online what feels like years ago who happened to be in town, which is more than a bit rubbish.

But given that I have always wanted to meet them, I think it best when I do meet them, that I meet them when I'm at least conscious and capable to coherent communication for longer than a few minutes.

Which I am now, but they've gone, such is the way of things.