Unironic Ikonic

A vision of the world, now and in the near future, as dreamed up from within the business parks of genericised Silicon Valley, is presented in an exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Oozells Square, Birmingham. I visited it on Saturday. Called “Internet Giants : Masters of the Universe”, and devised by Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell, it features imagery and statements relating to (primarily American) information technology companies and their bosses.  

As far as I can tell it’s not supposed to be in any way ironic, critical or cautionary. What would be the point? Ordinary folk can draw their own conclusions, while these powerful and wealthy individuals are insensitive to all uncertainties, just as (as we have seen in a number of recent cases) they are to small matters like ethics, national laws, taxation, or intellectual property rights. They’re not bothered by the doubts and quibbles of lesser mortals, and are very sure of what’s good for everyone. Some of their products can be, of course, quite handy, and very evidently, many people like to use them. Unfortunately what is on offer at Ikon is completely up-itself, obscure, joyless, and tedious. A successful exhibition, like any successful work of art, shouldn’t need long-winded accompanying documentation to tell you what it’s supposed to mean (assuming it means anything).

The explanatory printed guide refers to a series of pixellated “mosaic” icons (well, of course) of 26 IT luminaries. These are, as the leaflet says, “combined in diptychs with their inspirational utterances”. What that means is that unless you’re seriously cross-eyed – or preferably “pixellated” yourself (there’s a big Wetherspoons nearby in Broad Street) -  it’s hard to tell what or who they are. Not that it matters a great deal. Megalomania is nothing special these days.

However, there is one “inspirational utterance” that outshines all the others, and it is by Mike Krieger of Instagram, who says “just because you’ve googled something doesn’t mean you’ve learned”. That’s a golden rule of education which should be etched in big letters across the top of every screen and taught to every infant well before it reaches – puling and wailing - for its first gadget. Most of the other “inspirational utterances” in the exhibition are too embarrassingly inane to be worth repeating here; a few more are sensible but state the obvious. The following five are my shortlist for, shall we say (politely), the most frightening and deadly unironic of these “utterances”:

1) “There is an important artistic component in what we do” (Larry Page - Google)

2) “You have to make words less human and more a piece of the machine” (Marissa Mayer – Google, Yahoo)

3) “I’m trying to make the world a more open place” (Mark Zuckerberg - Facebook)

4) “We want Google to be the third half of your brain” (Sergey Brin - Google)

5) “I want to put a ding in the universe” (Steve Jobs - Apple)

I’m tempted to add a sixth: “I’m an obnoxious undersized arrogant charmless pointy-headed geek with a small penis. I have a problem with the real world, and especially with people”. (Greedy Retard - Fruitcake). Perhaps I should go back and scribble it on a wall and see if anyone notices.

Suitably unimpressed I emerged into the sunshine, smug with the thought that none of the above characters would ever understand why an Oozell can never be Square.

Aesthetic frights in Liverpool 8

Few buildings in English provincial cities possess such a massive, dominant, solid, commanding presence as the Anglican Cathedral that sits atop the considerable incline to the south east of Liverpool city centre. Generally speaking I am reassured by the presence of this building, and from time to time I seek it out as a place of refuge and solace. Inside the Cathedral I feel physically, psychologically and spiritually safe; protected from the rest of a world in which, increasingly, I don’t. Together with the railway termini at Paddington and St Pancras, and the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, Liverpool Cathedral is one of the ‘safest’ buildings that I know and love in this country. From the outside, though, I’m not so sure.

But – apparently, and to quote one of Liverpool’s most famous sons - I’m not the only one. In a book called “Liverpool 8” (Murray, 1982) another John - John Cornelius - wrote amusingly and with warped Blakean undertones of the aesthetic fright caused by the Anglican Cathedral, of how it appeared strangely between buildings, sometimes looking unnaturally close, and how its shape changed when seen from different angles. "During the day”, he wrote, ”the Cathedral is weird, but fairly benign. At night? Well, it fairly puts the wind up me, sometimes. I don't mind telling you. I think it's something to do with the shape of it, like a head perched on a huge pair of shoulders. Yes: that's it. It's the slavish symmetry, the fearful symmetry, of the thing that causes the problems. I hate walking past it at night". He offered a drawing of himself scurrying along Hope Street, past the Cathedral, with a couple of "eyes" drawn in the tower. The picture was captioned: "Hurry quickly past, hoping it's not looking". Shudder.

Because of its immense size, in certain lights and from certain angles, the building can indeed be perceived as monstrous and scary, sat there in all its stony solidity on its ridge. You need a suitable state of mind, of course, to fully appreciate the scariness. Because of its great height the tower can be seen from many miles around – even from the Clwydian hills of Flintshire – and naturally it’s also very intrusive into views closer at hand. Combine massivity with height and mental preparedness and you have three useful ingredients for constructing an aesthetic fright, to use Susanne Langer’s term. Add a fourth component, surprise, and you have a complete recipe. Off you go.

As you walk round the surrounding area, not just the adjacent Hope Street as per John Cornelius’s description, but slightly further afield, try and solicit surprise. I know, it’s a bit like trying to tickle yourself, but areas likely to be rewarding in this respect are the Ropewalks quarter and the up and coming Baltic Triangle, and more especially the districts to the south and east, Toxteth, primarily, the area popularly known by its postcode, Liverpool 8. 

 
Naturally, you will expect to see the Cathedral along the line of sight of suitably aligned streets. There it will be, reliably, in the distance. What you may not expect is when it peers over other buildings at you, when it “sees” you, when it “gets” you. Even on a sunny day, even among today’s cheerful replacements for the dark streets of the old inner city, the effect can be to send a shudder up your spine, to raise the goosebumps, to activate the hairs on the back of your neck. If you are feeling guilty – and you must be guilty of something – you may suspect that it isn’t just the Cathedral that is “looking” at you, but that the Almighty is deploying one of his more spectacular architectural minions to take a closer look at you, to inspect you, perhaps to find you wanting - a theistic extension of the pathetic fallacy, if you like. OK, mad, surreal, but enjoy anyway. And while you’re around those parts, take a trip to the top of the tower; the views are wonderful. Partly, of  course, because Liverpool is wonderful and partly, because when you’re up there, on top of it, the Cathedral can’t “get” you.

Not West Bridgford No 15

When I posted “Not West Bridgford No 14” in July 2015 and “Not West Bridgford Again” almost a year later, on both occasions I intended for them to be the last in a series of quirky reports on places which subjectively resemble aspects of West Bridgford, the suburb of Nottingham in which I grew up. Recently, however, I visited somewhere that was far too good to exclude from this selection of scenes that could be West Bridgford, ought to be West Bridgford, should be West Bridgford, but aren’t, and hence I felt the compulsion for another blog on the same theme.

For this is West Bridgford on Sea. For some strange reason, a high proportion of West Bridgford-alikes are seaside towns, despite the original being located almost at the geographical centre of England. I know – as per earlier blogs – that previously  I’ve detected traces in seaside resorts as far apart as Frinton in Essex, Ansdell and St Anne’s in Lancashire, and Colwyn Bay – jewel of the North Wales Riviera – but the photograph above is, atmospherically, the best yet. It is, in fact, a very pleasant  road in Rustington, West Sussex, and if you carry on down the thoroughfare in the picture, it turns right at the far end, briefly joins another road, and then there you are – at the sea front. Though neither West Bridgford nor Metroland, this is the perfect suburb, leaded lights in the front doors, the whole number … and with the breeze and shingle of the English Channel a couple of minutes’ walk away. It makes me so jealous !

Chartwell

In recent weeks some publicity has been given to the notion that certain institutions like Tate Britain or the National Trust are not “exciting” or “relevant” enough for some sections of society. One’s instinctive and ungenerous response is “long may that continue”, for the subtext underlying these complaints is predictable and does not need unpicking here. More generously, I would urge that for anyone seeking excitement and relevance – whatever their background or circumstances – few places are potentially more rewarding than Chartwell, the Kentish home of Sir Winston Churchill, and now in the care of the National Trust.

The dining room at Chartwell

I visited Chartwell just over a week ago, on a day when the rain was so heavy that a tour of the wonderful gardens was impossible, but which meant that more time was available to spend inside the house. Here one may view the domestic environment and many artefacts associated with the greatest Englishman ever. Churchill earns that accolade, not only for seeing us through the Second World War, but because of his extraordinary passion for life. Though he lived to the age of ninety, he was a man seemingly constantly aware of transience and mortality, and determined to live life to the fullest.

Admittedly very comfortably privileged by birth, and often helped by being well-connected, he created his careers (plural) by himself. He was fortunate in that dire circumstances contrived to permit him the unique role as saviour of the nation and the postwar glories that followed, to complete that “walking with fate” for which he had long prepared, despite frustrating years in the political wilderness. Quite apart from that supreme role, what he crammed into those ninety years was breathtaking. Though in some respects a flawed personality, attention seeking, egocentric, often perceived as wayward and politically fickle, prone to unwise decisions and to depressions and excesses which hint at bipolar disorder (the curse / blessing of the creative), Churchill remains hugely relevant and exciting as an example of what a human being can achieve. He acknowledged, tongue in cheek, that history would be kind to him because, not only did he create it, but he would write it up afterwards. He knew exactly what he was doing. Chartwell is the living record.

In our current era, when so many people – often not very happily, it seems – lay great emphasis on their “identity”, and usually on one or more of the commonplace, fundamental and hence not very interesting “identity” labels which one way or another we are all tagged with – ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, body shape, religion – Churchill remains the star of multiple identity, of refusal to be typecast or imprisoned by a single vector of personality. He’s just like us all, in a way, but writ large, with latent potential fully realised, and fitted to the circumstances of the times. Each one of us carries more than a single label. Each of us is a minority of one, and is to be respected as such, a unique combination of many roles and characteristics, inherited or otherwise; Churchill took this truth to the extreme and made the best use of it.

Chartwell, with its rooms stuffed with memorabilia, photographs, documents,  paintings, uniforms, medals, awards, and artefacts of all kinds, recalls Churchill’s astonishing CV of multiple roles and abilities. Here we can find the soldier, military strategist, constituency MP, world statesman, writer, orator, gardener, builder, historian, wit, family man, bon vivant and socialite, artist, and fighter - for freedom, for tolerance, for fairness, for the subtlety and beauty of the English language, for a better and safer world, for the best in everything, for life - all rolled into one superlative existence.

To compare this colossus of a man with some of the sour, shabby, whining, thick, inarticulate, twisted, crabby, humourless, mean-spirited, incompetent, single-issue, up-themselves individuals who strut (or waddle) today’s political stage (and not just in this country) is to be deliberately and unavoidably cruel. For Churchill was a giant who could be at home in the highest society, who could negotiate with the great and the good and the not so good from around the world, who could be reduced to tears by the plight of ordinary families blitzed out of their homes, who could mastermind the winning of a world war almost single handedly, a man for whom everything was his oyster. And his cigar, and his champagne. One can’t imagine Churchill yelling impotently at Hitler to “get lost”, or having much truck with some impudent harpy from television news, or inspiring a nation facing imminent invasion by tweeting “… we shall never … oh bugger, I’ve run out of characters”. His was a more substantial age than ours; is anything flimsier than software? His was an age when victims in their millions were bombed, imprisoned, tortured, starved, gassed, shot, incinerated, thrown anonymously into huge pits. Such were the fates that he saved us from, in an era when racism and fascism were more than lazy reflex hyperbolic slurs, an era in which victims weren’t offered counselling or compensation or someone’s head on a plate or star billing on daytime television after being offended by a text message or an act of unwanted affection.

When we crave excitement and variety and relevance – and above all inspiration as human beings – Churchill is there. Today we enjoy the basic freedoms that he was so central in defending. Those freedoms still need protecting and nurturing, for there are plenty of people around ready to destroy them. Among our freedoms is that of not being trapped by simplistic notions of identity, the freedom to be as much as one is capable of in the short time available, the freedom to make the best of it.

Go to Chartwell and be inspired to do something with your life.