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Slave to the machine
Visual Arts North
Visual Arts South
Film and Television
Fifth Column

slave to the machine Michael Cunningham

Typewriting that refuses to die

Three women in retro sixties ‘secretarial’ drag and pantyhose sit behind their Olivetti Valentine electric typewriters and other anachronistic office equipment. Above them are various rules: ‘Typists reserve the right to begin and end each poem’, ‘No biting’, ‘Do Not Touch the Typist’. An old card catalogue contains hundreds of pre-typed titles of potential poems - previously unused titles. Someone from the audience chooses a title (or a blank card, to write their own title), and gives it to Typist #1, and the poetry-performance machine kicks into action.

A clatter of keys, and Typist #1 composes a verse. She passes the sheet to Typist #2. Then on to Typist #3. The trio don’t speak. Like angry robots, they only communicate through a secret language of honking horns, chiming bells and shrieking whistles. One final honk on their bicycle horns, and out of this assembly line pops an original, tailor-made poem. And another. And another. Every thirty-five minutes, a whistle blows and a wall projection proclaims ‘UNION BREAK’. Participants pay a dollar per poem, and can read them out, fold them away, whatever. And the typists keep a carbon copy. These surreal performances by the trio, collectively called The Typing Explosion, began in 1998, then expanded into theatrical pieces, multimedia installations and books. And finally last December, like their typewriters, they retired.

Today word processing has largely replaced the typing pools of worker-heroines, and typewriters are obsolete. Dead media, deader than a floppy disk, almost as dead as vinyl multimedia, or the cat piano, or Irish fire-beacons, or the Bletchley Park Colossus. Today Olivetti is the only Western company still producing manual typewriters.

Yet while the typewriter is as good as gone as a machine, ‘typewriting’ continues to resonate in the unlikeliest of media areas. Most film scripts nowadays still use a ‘typewriter’ font, usually Courier or Courier New. Producers and editors prefer this archaic format not just because it has molded their industry and habits, but because it works. Courier New, like all typewriter fonts, is ‘monospaced’, fixed-width: each letter takes up the same amount of space on a line, from a small ‘i’ to a capital ‘W’. So film people can guesstimate a script’s running time (a minute per A4 page), and this standard layout is ‘invisible’ - nothing unusual to distract them from becoming absorbed in the story and characters.

On this side of the Atlantic, the convention of Courier type in TV and radio scripts is beginning to disappear. Many production companies now use variable width typefaces that actors can read more easily, and the excellent ‘Writers’ Room’ on the BBC’s website gives examples and advice on the fonts the Beeb prefers - Times New Roman for TV drama, Arial for sitcoms and radio drama. Yet ‘typewriter’ fonts still cling on in the post-typewriter age, from new newspapers (such as the Daily Ireland’s secondary headline fonts) to old official documents. Courier New was the US State Department’s official ‘font-in-residence’ for its diplomatic material for decades, though last year they put it out to pasture, like an aging diplomat. The bureaucrats opted instead for the ‘crisper, cleaner, more modern look’ of Times New Roman. Ironically, their ‘new’ font comes from the 1930s, while Courier New 12 was created in 1955 by IBM.

But Courier is more than just a functional font. It’s a symbol of typewritten bureaucracy, streamlined anonymous efficiency and stark factuality. Today it’s like a phantom from another age, a visual shorthand for government secrecy, espionage and conspiracies. The typewriter may be gone, but ‘typewriting’ lingers on. It’s the ‘X’ in The X-Files.

Big fat story

The new exhibition of Joseph Beuys at Tate Modern looks as if it will establish him once again as the leading German artist of the twentieth century. Nicholas Serota himself is co-curating the show and is a fan of the artist. There has been a growing criticism of Beuys in recent years. The stories and myths he built up around himself have not stood up to research. Much of it questions the story of how he was a German Second World War pilot who was shot down over the Crimea and how he was rescued by Tartars who saved his life by wrapping him in felt and fat. In fact it must be the best example of an artist’s life experiences affecting their work.

The story has gained mythical status and is seen as a way of understanding how the artist transformed himself from German soldier to artist. It is a device he used to separate himself from his past and allow for reinvention. The question is, if, as has been proven, much of the story is invention, does this question Beuys’ transformation. Should we now return to his earlier life to inform ourselves about his methodology and art. When talking about influences he often referred to place, to the misty part of Celtic Germany where he was born. It is also easy to see German Romanticism and Symbolism in his work. If we accept this romantic pilot inspired story, we jump directly from nineteenth-century art to contemporary art without having to address the art in between. Much of the art in between was the very art that questioned the social values that led to Beuys’ being a soldier.

In a world where myth and reality have been consciously mixed, it is good to turn to the reality of actually recalling the times Beuys was in Belfast and to stories that he has not had the opportunity to put his own twist on. One story I have read recently was that a bomb went off near the art college and a piece of masonry landed at Beuys feet. I was a student at the college at that time but have no memory of that bomb. What I do remember was a long rambling lecture in the Ulster Museum. Beuys drew on his Celtic background and drew interlocking spiral designs to illustrate his ideas. The blackboards he used to illustrate his talk are still sometimes exhibited by the museum.

Exhibiting the blackboards is something that has also been questioned. I do know that Beuys was aware of them as objects. I was talking to Alastair MacLennan recently and he told me of going to talk to Beuys when the two of them were taking part in an exhibition in Germany. What Beuys was doing when Alistair went to visit was spraying fixative on the boards. If he was not happy with some of the marks on the boards he would wipe them out or alter them before spraying on the fixative. On another occasion Beuys said to Alastair “it is as important for an artist to come up with an idea that has as strong a hold on people as Christianity has.” Alastair and I talked about the possibility that perhaps in his mythical world he saw his rescue from a burning plane as his own resurrection.

One benefit Belfast certainly got from another visit by Beuys was the setting up of Art and Research Exchange (ARE). Through the Free International University Beuys gave some money that helped start an organization that became ARE. This artist-run initiative would give many young artists, myself included, there first opportunity to exhibit in Belfast.

Regardless of the myths and stories that surround the man, one thing that we can always turn to is the work. What he was certainly capable of doing was creating work that was both beautiful and engaging. His drawings are quite magical and his sculptures and installations were always worth the visit, which is not something that is as common as it might be. I suppose if there is a moral to this story it is that if you have a questionable past, make sure you leave behind good art. Regardless of the questions I have about the man, I have nothing but admiration for the work.

VISUAL ARTS SOUTH Aidan Dunne

If you’re not in…

The annual AIB Art Award is quite precisely structured and focused. It goes to an artist of promise, but contenders must be proposed by a publicly funded gallery already committed to exhibiting their work, and the award must go towards the cost of an accompanying publication. There is a clear logic to all of this. Publications are more and more important for artists (and indeed for institutions), and when funding is tight, and it is always tight, often the publication is where cuts are made. The provision that the gallery must propose the artist means that the award is directed towards an artist who has already taken real steps towards professional commitment - it makes sense to heighten the effectiveness of a project already in train.

Having served on the jury since the award’s inception, I think it’s possible for me to make one or two observations without betraying any confidences. It is apparent given the response that artists are more than alert to the usefulness of the award. The stipulation that the galleries must be publicly funded spaces obviously imposes a fairly stringent limitation on applications. But in the event the surprising thing is just how many publicly funded galleries do not submit applications.

On the face of it, there is absolutely no reason why they should not. They have nothing to lose and quite a lot to gain. It could be argued that the venue doesn’t really gain, that it is the artist who does, but experience and indeed common sense suggest that what is good for the artist is good for the venue. The level of administration involved in the arts generally has increased exponentially in the recent past. Funding applications can attain Baroque levels of detail and complexity. And it is true that, in relation to the award, the venue has to tackle the administrative burden of filling in the application form and providing the specified ancillary material. Yet all of that material is pretty standard stuff, surely the kind of thing that is pure routine for any arts organisation and any curator or administrator. And, in fact, it should be said that the galleries who do propose artists do so with great efficiency and professionalism. They seem to take it entirely in their stride.

It is noticeable that a substantial number of galleries quickly grasped the point of the award as a useful opportunity for themselves, as they should. Others realised within a year. Yet others seem reluctant or indifferent about it. It’s odd to hear curators bemoan the lack of funds to do things properly or at all while knowing that they haven’t put in a proposal for the award.

It is true that a degree of anticipation is involved. That is, the venue has to know what its exhibition programme is. But then again, if it doesn’t know, surely it’s in trouble. The days of programming on a wing and a prayer are long gone. There is the question of the venue knowing that it has programmed work by an Irish artist in whom it has confidence, which, again, it presumably should have. It could be that certain kinds of project do not particularly lend themselves to association with a major corporation. Fair enough. But within the programming year, surely not all solo shows rule themselves out.

Perhaps venues who have submitted once or more and been unsuccessful feel it is not worth their while, that the award is in some way tailored to an select few in terms of both institution and artists. Yet a glance at the list of previous winners strongly suggests this is not the case. It’s all very well for a juror to protest that the process has been open to all comers and closely debated, but the evidence really is there in the roll-call of those who have won the award and been on the short list.

One is led to the conclusion that curators may not quite be tuned into every possible source of support. That their minds are on other things. Perhaps the advent of yet another scheme involving a formal application is just one thing too many. It’s impossible to know exactly why but, at a time when curation and administration are increasingly professionalised, it is enough to make you wonder just how effective many of our curators and administrators are.

film and television Stephanie McBride

Operating theatre

The broadcasting landscape, locally and globally, changed irrevocably in the latter part of the twentieth century. Audience fragmentation, the growth of digital specialised channels, increased commercial pressure on broadcasting institutions, the rise of ‘reality TV’ formats and the expansion of the entertainment quotient across programming, all inevitably gave rise to fears about how a traditional and high-minded public-service broadcasting ethos was being eroded in the changed conditions of production and reception. Many critics continue to deplore the decline of serious programming, seeing the traditional documentary squeezed out of the schedules - one even suggesting that we may be on the verge of a ‘post-documentary’ era. Such pessimism is hardly new in the field of television and in popular culture. Yet it’s also clear that programme-makers have been forced to respond in different ways to the changed broadcasting environment.

One response by the Republic’s state broadcaster RTÉ has been to open up several series which draw on traditional documentary techniques and modes of address. And one of these strands, Arts lives, has slipped neatly into the late-night schedule. Its range is unconfined by style or subject - from the artistic appraisal to the biographical and the personal, dealing with an eminent dead painter one week and exploring the career of a leading living actor / artist the next. The series, tellingly, is broadcast under the ‘RTE Factual’ label and department.

In this Arts lives slot, the recent documentary Olwen Fouere: theatre of the flesh was a very clear example of this straddling of both the artistic and the personal. While preparing to play in Seamus Heaney’s The burial at Thebes and the Widow Quin in Synge’s The playboy of the western world, a near-fatal traffic accident plunged Fouere into the claustrophobic hospital world of infection and pain. The programme provided a mid-career retrospective, framed through a very close-up and personal odyssey of her recovery. Structured in this way, we entered the medical terrain through her perspective. Her commitment to exploring her fears and anxieties - as well as the positive experiences - during her struggle to recover was as honest as her own demands on her body, both physically and psychologically, within her performance career. These parallels became a central force in the documentary, and sequences of her childhood landscape, her memories and her losses, and her hospital experiences built up into a convincing portrait of the artist.

Many contributors to the programme identified Fouere’s honesty and integrity as an artist - speaking of her refusal to compromise, her tenacity and her determination. It is these characteristics which come through in this record of her illness and recovery and which give the piece its power - not in any epic sense but in her quiet moments, in the way she talked about her wounds and the infections, the healing, the setbacks and her fears about getting back to work. In one sequence she is curious about her leg wounds, and in another she talks compellingly about how the feet are the centre of all performance. There is no attempt to gloss over or back away from the visceral - it’s an up-close camera on the seeping leg wound; a painfully intimate lens on her bruised and swollen face; and all the time there is her uncompromising exploration of her situation in both human and artistic terms.

While the piece offered insight into her artistic style and her avant-garde practice, the one big surprise was that it omitted any reference to her distinctive vocal quality - the grain of her voice which is central in her delivery - stretching and extending the range of the possible in performance.

Interspersed throughout were extracts from her past performances - illuminating the richness and range of her work since the 1980s, as well as the demanding performance in Passades following her convalescence. The piece was directed by Dara McCluskey and produced by the independent house Mass Productions. The programme-makers, through adopting her unflinching approach and intelligent address, indicated the way ‘factual’ output can be both engaging and instructive - holding its own amidst the chattering barrage of ‘reality’ entertainment genres.

fifth column Tim Stott

We’re not playing any more …

We might look at visual art as an ongoing set of games, with certain rules, procedures and strategies setting the parameters of play. Some of the latter have endured throughout centuries (such as that of applying paint to a flat surface, or that a given artefact provide an aesthetic experience); others come and go. So, although we cannot claim that art has some definitive game structure, we might say that we know a game as art because there are recursive traits, the various art-games resembling each other like the members of an extended family. To identify something as art is usually to trace its family tree, comparing it to other family members whose status is agreed upon. In this way, for example, although Byzantine icon painting and Dada might seem incongruent, they can both, by some rather convoluted genealogy, be classed together as two specific games within art. As with any family, there are disputes over who or what is and is not to be included.

So one story goes: but one can perhaps see how this story of resemblances might go on forever; that at some level all games resemble those privileged as art. There is another story, however, that tells of the many extra-familial, or ‘non-art’, factors which halt this infinite regression, affecting the protocols of play and disposing players towards certain ‘moves’ within certain games. For instance, where the ‘truth’ of the game, or the winning strategy, comes as second nature to a good player, this ‘natural’ ability, for the most part, comes from having learnt the past victories of others: and a winning strategy only works, of course, so long as the pattern of a particular social order recurs in the game.

Some see the games of art as a swapping of stories - a broad, ongoing conversation where “everyone is a player, nobody makes the rules, and the game never ends”: the idea remains that anyone can play, even if not everyone does. But this just keeps the game within the family, with unspoken limits on who talks and who listens, and on who can and cannot play.

It has been suggested that this playful bonhomie is politically effective. Undoubtedly, there are ways to analyse games and discern the blueprint of a socio-historical moment within them. There is also a politics of these games. But this is quite different to substituting these games for politics.

Why are games important to art or politics? Because even though the most rebellious satire is “no less conventional than a dialogue between lovers,” still, when we follow rules and play games, where it might lead cannot be predicted. When we say that the game must come out like this, this ‘must’ is not intrinsic to the rules themselves, but a particular attitude that we have towards them - it is something of a wish-fulfilment, a ‘despotic demand’ to determine what has not yet happened.

These demands are contested, back and forth, claim and counter-claim: likewise, the many attempts to show with hindsight that things were always going to come out like they did. What lends weight to these conflicting claims are the justifications that support them. These justifications demand agreement from others, to persuade them of one’s strategy; and they are made sense of in terms of how they are accepted into the ongoing conversation.

There is, however, a point at which things cannot be justified - they simply are, “that’s just the way it is,” and so on. This is the background, the ‘form of life’ against which games are played: a wordless space of gestures, hungers, etc.; a compressed space crossed by the totality of social relations. When the games of art interrupt this background, when they conspire to alter it, they become political. And this is the point at which we might exit the circular logic of conversations - that everything must change so that everything remains the same - and submit what is taken for granted in a given, material situation to the improper and unpredictable logic of games.

To appropriate the haughty words of André Breton: “until further notice, anything that delays the conversation - and that plays with the most serious intent - has my full approval.”

Article reproduced from CIRCA 111, Spring 2005, pp.25–32

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