Christmas already

What to say? A beautiful, bakingly hot July day, and then here is Morrisons the supermarket chain, with a massive facade-sized bow - on a church - saying Christmas. And Christmas trees. Could this point to the craziness of faster and faster fashion cycles (though Morrisons - fashion - what gives)? Or the crassness of over-consumption expanding into every crevice of ordinary life? Or the commercialisation of  religion hits rock bottom?

Or maybe I am just over-reacting (just tell me I am over-reacting....)

Duchamp at the Barbican

The Barbican - which must have two of the most 'difficult-to-use' art gallery spaces in London - is currently showing an exhibition linking the work of Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham and John Cage; all connected and often explicitly referring to each other in their works. Called the Bride and the Bachelors (and running until 6th June 2013) the show has been orchestrated by artist Phillipe Parreno, to include soundscapes and dance performances, with the aim of moving beyond conventional art curation.

The work - of course - is just fab (well actually beyond fab), and it's nice to have dance interludes and musical accompaniment to an art show. But for all the cleverness of its idea the setting left me cold. Because the captions and wall texts are just the same old same old - dry as dust curatorial explanations of who met who when, and detailed documentation (proof?) of individual borrowings and influences in each case. Nothing taking us beyond the selected group, or having a richer, less interfering, relationship to the works. Surely taking art curation past its intense focus on the visual and the textual needs more than just adding a few 'haptic' activities to an otherwise completely standard mix?

Image from Zimbio  

pop

More music, this time experimental pop (gypsy punk?) at cafe oto, a really lovely, very relaxed venue. Le Volume Courbe/Volume Curve is the band of french-born, london-based Charlotte Marionneau, and like Ichi - in attitude not musical style - makes me feel quite optimistic about the future of contemporary popular music beyond the manufactured mainstream.

city bingo 1: all those dog-walkers

We used to play a game in Moscow called city bingo. The aim was to suggest things that were deeply specific to that particular place, but not so common that you ended up spotting them all the time. Both surprisingly easy and difficult to do. Well, now I am going to start for London. And it has to be something to do with parks and dogs. In my local park, having a dog is a deeply social activity; in fact is mainly an excuse for a lot of chatting.

(And the careful collecting of dog shit in little plastic bags seems quite a 'London' thing too.)

magic

Have been finding difficult to post, hence the months long gap: not quite sure what my 'voice' is/should be (which is another way of saying that I don't quite know why or what I am writing). Coming back to London is such a return to the familiar and complacent - lacking the everyday strangeness that was one of the great joys of living in Moscow - that it is easy to barely notice what is going on, or find it interesting enough to pass on.

But then. But then. Find myself (almost by accident) at theVortex in Dalston watching and listening to Ichi. And it reminds me what is brilliant about living in London. Which is that at some point most things weird, eccentric and wonderful do end up here. Ichi is a Japanese musician who arrives on stage on stilts, one of which converts into a banjo/double bass; whose central instrument is a steel drum, supported by an un-expected array of (musical) household objects and hilarious looking but beautifully sounding home-made instruments. This alternative percussion is then matched by an extraordinary voice and songs about miscellaneous nonsense ("this song  is about a toaster..") which are also gorgeous to listen to.

He is just SO of the moment; a mix up of sophistication, naivety, innovative energy, high seriousness and ironic foolishness.

And I laughed all night.

I should note that Ichi was opening for Richard Dawson, who was also has a very singular style: just so fond of folk music, however raucous or sweaty.