New paintings under construction--- 2012-2013 //

Greil Marcus review of Savage Messiah

Greil Marcus review of Savage Messiah.

Laura Oldfield Ford, Savage Messiah (Verso). From 2006 through 2009, Ford produced the issues of the fanzine collected here: hundreds of pages of text, maps, bland drawings of vague faces, and cumulatively riveting photos of architectural detritus—roads, graffiti, housing blocks, filthy courtyards, storefronts, overgrown building sites, almost all of them utterly depopulated—chronicling a long walk through the back alleys and abandoned patches of a London remade through Thatcherist and New Labour gentrification and the evictions and new constructions of the looming 2012 Olympics. Read straight through, Ford’s work is the most convincing follow-through there is on the project of poetic urban-renewal inaugurated by the situationists Guy Debord, Ivan Chtcheglov, and Michèle Bernstein. In the early ’50s, they and a few other young layabouts began an exploration of Paris as a city that ran according to its own backward-forward-spinning clock, where a drift down the streets might so scramble time that 1848 would exert a stronger spiritual gravity than 1954. In places Ford echoes Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, her slideshow of sex and death in bohemian New York in the 1980s, and the cityscape in Andrea Arnold’s 2006 film Red Road, where in a decaying Glasgow foxes dart around the base of apartment buildings that are corroding from the inside, almost as strongly. On any given page, Thomas De Quincey, from his 1821 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,might be holding Ford’s hand: “I could almost have believed, at times that I must be the first discoverer of some of these terrae incognitae, and doubted whether they had yet been laid down in the modern charts of London.”

Number by number, Savage Messiah is a delirious, doomstruck celebration of squats, riots, vandalism, isolation, alcohol, and sex with strangers, all on the terrain of a half-historical, half-imaginary city that the people who Ford follows, herself at the center, can in moments believe they built themselves, and can tear down as they choose. The past is a shadow, an angel, a demon: most of what Ford recounts seems to be taking place in the ’70s or the ’80s or the ’90s, with the first decade of the twenty-first century a kind of slag-heap of time—of boredom, enervation, despair, and hate—that people are trying to burrow out from under. “1973, 1974, 1981, 1990, 2013,” she chants on one page. “Always a return. A Mirror touch. A different way out.” “Queen’s Crescent is the nexus of knife crime, a flashing matrix of Sheffield steel,” Ford writes in Savage Messiah #6, “…suspended somewhere between 1968 and 1981, and I sense my darling there, on the corner of Bassett St. and Allcroft Road. I’m searching the brickwork with dusty fingertips for the first Sex Pistols graffiti of 1976. He was here then, and possibly now, we drift in circles around each other”—and answering herself on the facing page: “In the fabric of the architecture you can always uncover traces and palimpsests, the poly-temporality of the city. As I lay my palm flat against the wall I grasp past texts never fully erasing the traces of earlier inscriptions.”

The aura of a mystical quest hovers over even the most sordid incidents, the ugliest photos of belongings piled up at the foot of an apartment block. John Legend’s “Ordinary People” is on the jukebox: “And all the guilt I harboured, all the shame, the walk around Highbury with so much hanging in the balance, tyranny of choice and the crashing cruelty of desire, it was all locked into that one anodyne song.”

             

http://www.versobooks.com/books/1022-savage-messiah

original article here

http://www.believermag.com/issues/201207/?read=column_marcus

Desire Lines

           

                                                                                                  

DESIRE LINES

Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, Barcelona. 21 November 2012 – 13 January 2013

The Espai Cultural Caja Madrid is delighted to present Desire Lines, an exhibition that gathers works by twelve international artists that – through the means of video installation, drawing, photography and performance– propose alternative ways of navigating the urbanlandscapes, by integrating poetics, playfulness, irrationality, oneirism and disruption into our experience of the city.

Artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Mark Aerial Waller, Francis Alÿs, Francisca Benítez, Mircea Cantor, Filipa César, Cyprien Gaillard, Regina de Miguel, Laura Oldfield Ford, Alejandra Salinas & Aeron Bergman, John Smith.

Curated by: Lorena Muñoz-Alonso & Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz

Barcelona! La rosa de foc ha tornat!

.. Chanel. Burberry. Versace. Armarni. Calvin Klein.

crowd turns up Via Augusta --

-- ,, euphoria, a shimmering mirage--

bins set alight, tipped up; flares thrown into luxury stores.

Targets—banks, government buildings, chain stores, beauty salons, designer boutiques, luxury car showrooms, —
billowing red smoke and scuttling bourgeoisie//
smashed inside--


you watch the swarm file in, wrecking, destroying,, bent over Audis with crowbars,, 
 .== testosterone, panic,, euphoria-- --------------------------------------- a surge of power,, a new vitality,, breaking the veneer,, the flatness of  images adorning every surface..

every surface ruptured..

you see the undercover filth trying to get through and laugh with the rest of the crowd as they get chased off in a hail of rocks and bottles.

==you feel that giddy sense of euphoria..again, with the skies erupting in livid striations of manadrin and magenta,, fires raging across the city from Sants, to Raval to Gracia---

you feel it running round with the black bloc,,  the tension, the hot excitement..

heat propelling you ,, dispersing and regrouping.. the kinship of anonymity,,, those romantic narrow streets ,,so enraptured by it again.

The Raval is labyrinthine, it possesses multiple labyrinths within the grid of the city. The first labyrinth is easily penetrated and gives the impression that the barrio is drawing you in, that you are becoming immersed in it. This is only the beginning.. You quickly realise that within each portal, each alleyway and court there are mazes, arcades and labyrinths that do not yield so easily to you.

Drifting through the city at night is akin to dreaming;  lights dazzle, interiors glow, the heat propels you in a dream like trance. You feel the city more slowly, interiors reveal themselves like reveries. The streets are warm, enveloped in deep velvet heat with the sounds of shrieking and laughter rising in the languid air.

.

you love the black bloc, the libinal charge of it. a multitude, smashing banks with metal sticks, bricks and hammers.. the swarming malevolence, a day of vengeance,, you always align yourself with this,, the seething shadow side,, the obverse side of the beaming faces and empty platitudes on the giant hoardings..
 a refusal to be isolated..


 you are with the black bloc who have formed temporary allegiances now with indepenestes and CNT---

anarchitecture ,, blocks demolished

intense sequences of buildings where walls are suddenly cut away affording a view of all the floors simulataneously --

porous terrain , walls suddenly opening, portals.. hidden chambers, the catacomb revealed,,honeycomb mazes in the stone..

=.

heterogeneous, multitudinous spaces

for wreaking havoc

fires erupt on the streets. Everywhere, hotel lobbies, banks, the corner of every street, bins on fire.. a transformative moment, the black smoke,, you watch as hordes mask up, grabbing rubble, tearing up the stones from the street, copper pipe and crow bars from rucksacks..a wrecking spree through the luxury stores of Gracia to Sarria

Smashing banks,

mossos attack--

The rich cold eyes of the bourgeoisie , in their furs, in their patent heels, disdainfully walking at you, never stepping aside for you.. their cold imperviousness,, their callousness in the face of your suffering..of everyone’s suffering..
you shudder with hatred for them and the new sense of rising euphoria, like coming up on something.. feeling that giddy, prismatic distillation of pleasure..of power.. running round with this crew,, you watch them cower, the rich stripped of their power, scuttling away, you watch the shutters come down ahead of the march as it comes, not as a shuffling trudge but an uncontrollable, vicious rampage.

narrow streets of Gràcia,

five hundred black bloc rioting. , burning

smashing open every bank and

throwing flares

ruins, columns of smoke,

.Corte Inglés,

you feel the excitement, the tension, carried in a seething mass of black,, moving with a sense of power, of intimidation,, of getting your own back,, for all those times when you were made to feel insignificant.. when imperious doormen looked down at you as if you were nothing,,.

-- in the rush of elation,, the cascades, splinters of icy green, , plate glass reduced to crystals, millions of diamonds embedded in dusty streets,, a scrambling of codes, outside/inside collapsed.. you join the surge,, push through smashed portals into the expensive, citrus scents of designer stores,,

reach out and loop the gold chain around your wrist, the chanel quilted handbag,, the gorgeous buttery softness of the leather, loop it round your wrist, bundle it under your jacket, swirl in the crushing , panicked, exhilarated crush,, back out,, jagged reversing through broken windows.. panic, alarms shrieking, sirens muffled as police way back.. cheering from crowd...

more and more of crowd getting masked up,

Graffiti, red and searing black, branding rich zones,, becoming territorial marking, signs of malevolence,, a rejection of cosy 'street art', , cute manga,, --.. this has more to do with pichação... a mutant coding, black reconfiguration of signs, black mirror global branding...an act of revenge against the rich.

There's enough crew to keep the the riot vans back , held with burning bins, rocks and bottles first by indepes then by CNT activists—.

March breaks into a factions ,,

narrow winding streets defy order --

-- , leave Sarrià and return to Diagonal,

-- narrow streets where the walls emit the heat of the day and there are glowing alcoves, rose pink, amber, warm yellow,, little stone chambers .

that magic, that ecstasy,,..the feeling of being on an intense, incredible trip...

.

a rush like that is addictive,,it haunts you...

Corte Ingles,, a surge as the mob swarms around the police cordon..police can't attack because of huge surging crowd,, pavements smashed up and rocks thrown at police..

crowd seize petrol tanks and generators from press vans, barricades thrown together and pavements smashed to get more missiles.. police fire rubber bullets//then tear gas

there are a small crew of you and you want to get out,   regroup==recuperate before the battle rages on into the night--now the police are charging at the march and using batons, and you want to get up, high  above the city where you can watch the pall of black smoke settle across city and the fires burning in Raval .

You walk the steep winding paths to that abandoned radio transmitter you found once, a cluster of graffed up bunkers where the heat is smouldering in the concrete..where you can lie around with bottles of red wine, smoking and talking and planning..and you can take a good look at your friends and think of this as a clarifying process... through all the hardship, the stress and misery, you know who you can trust now.

lying around ,black clothing hurled on the ground

high above the city, a desolate outpost in parched scrubland, shadow formations of palms and cacti in amber light... you watch the the plumes of black smoke, flashes of fire.---

 a sign of times to come—an image from the future.

.

“La rosa de foc ha tornat!”

Images and text taken from forthcoming show

DESIRE LINES

Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, Barcelona. 21 November 2012 – 13 January 2013

The Espai Cultural Caja Madrid is delighted to present Desire Lines, an exhibition that gathers works by twelve international artists that – through the means of video installation, drawing, photography and performance– propose alternative ways of navigating the urbanlandscapes, by integrating poetics, playfulness, irrationality, oneirism and disruption into our experience of the city.

Artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Mark Aerial Waller, Francis Alÿs, Francisca Benítez, Mircea Cantor, Filipa César, Cyprien Gaillard, Regina de Miguel, Laura Oldfield Ford, Alejandra Salinas & Aeron Bergman, John Smith.

Curated by: Lorena Muñoz-Alonso & Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz

Documentation---2012 part 1

NEW ART GALLERY WALSALL--------------------------------------------------------

There is a Place.......
20 January - 14 April 2012

Artists include:  Christiane Baumgartner, Graham Chorlton, Laura Oldfield Ford, George Shaw, Barry Thompson, Paul Winstanley

 

There is a Place...brings together a group of artists who explore our psychic connectivity to landscape.  The drawings, paintings and prints within the exhibition reveal 'a sense of place' as seemingly generic urban and suburban views evoke personal and collective memories.  The reverie of teenage hideouts, suburban housing estates and motorway junctions, each depicted in painstaking detail, are at once familiar yet unnerving for all.

The artists in this exhibition capture the most overlooked and peripheral spaces of our towns and cities, those unremarkable and unclaimed spaces that we each make our own.

DELIRIOUS ANXIETY STATES---DRIFTS IN A SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE---Futian//Luohu//OCT---

Delirious anxiety states--- 狂热的焦

THE FUTURE IS OBSIDIAN, BLACK MIRROR REFLECTING BLACK SUN---

未来如黑曜石，黑色镜面折射出黑色太阳

AGIP//CHEVRON//TEXACO//STATOIL//SHELL

31st JANUARY 1979

2012/2013/2014------

意大利石油总公司/ 美国雪佛龙石油公司/美国德士古石油公司/挪威国营石油公司/荷兰皇家壳牌石油公司

2012-2014 1979年1月31日----2012年-2014年

--dank subways beneath motorway,

pestilential pools and slicks of spit.

Financial district-

Obsidian/ Copper / ----futures refracting.

You think about him again,, rooftops in Peckham and Dalston,

a burning heat wave, lying on parched ground,,, eyes vivid in the dusk..,,,

SINO FUTURES--- 中国未来主义—急速进入原始资本主义的幻觉

-hallucinatory rush to feral capitalism-

Black cartography. //chambers interconnecting,

黑镜组成的墙，通往可视但不可探索的领域

Golden lion statues , International hotels.

== labyrinthine corridors above street level, 街道上建造的迷宫般小径

Numbers graffed on trees, ,covert transactions,

corporate boulevards hiding micro labyrinths.

You walk under motorway bridges, tarmac rippling in the heat.

--resting in doorways, under plastic sheets

sleeping under staircases in multistorey apartments,, towering empty blocks where concrete floors are split into plywood cells, overalls drying on steel girders.

Dreamland// Sky Acropolis//// Golden Dream Bay

bamboo ladders, walkways spanning rubber trees--

you cross a parking lot

---. brutal intersection, pylons and skyscrapers..

push through a corrugated iron fence,,
---dilapidated flats and precincts,

Mad Max//Bladerunner//Bahrain

不稳定性---森林制图，被汽车和树木阻挡的道路，隐藏的网络，---树顶的瞭望台和预警系统

distorted faces melting in 37 degree heat----bamboo scaffolding, surveillance platforms nested in palm trees. .

, makeshift camps seeping through factory fences-- Heaps of crushed concrete, , lorries carting sand and cement..

portkabins, washing lines , hens scratching dusty ground.

You are led into the complex ,like a ghost, seen but not spoken to-- occupying the honeycomb;

workers flats connected by aerial walkways,

in the upper floors ,baby clothes drying and men shouting,

chimneys stinking,

yellow smoke.

--enclaves, inner courtyards.. dialects indecipherable outside--brutalist hives,, networks of alcoves (cells), ---black bean sauce,, shredded ginger---- //

7 death and lucky number

Lucky 8, 888, ---it is there three times in a row.

Cartoon packaging , abstract glyphs---.

The future is fortified against instabilty----Black sites, black prisons—

widespread rioting, barricades of cars, bamboo and corrugated iron.--

cascades of tenements clad in black plastic--leading to the final place.
Meltdown

Occult numeracy, hidden pathways--- 神秘的算术，隐匿的道路

A WAVE OF PROTESTS STRETCHING INTO THE FUTUTE-- 74,000 “MASS INCIDENTS”, UP SEVENFOLD SINCE 1994.

一波波的抗议延续至未来。74,000宗“群体性事件”，自1994年以来骤增7倍

Black obsiadian, black mirror ---flashback panoptican gaze---

黑曜石，黑镜子—折射全景敞视---隐藏的权力者监视的目光

--secret corridors beneath shopping malls--, 购物广场地下的秘密通道Dank arcades,, low quality knock offs. Chanel, Marc Jacobs, labels hanging off,

sitting about with babies and cats , or slumped in shadowy recesses slurping noodles.

Walkways over motorways ,,dusty arcades. Sino-pop ,

LV,, D&G--

. Chanel quilted purses spilling from cardboard boxes-- You get lost in a maze of cubicles-- bare fluorescent tubes and racks of flimsy garments-----

Emerge in white glare..

KFC and Burger King, grotesque theme park proportions, lysergic hutongs sprouting in the arcades---

intense heat.. arms, back of neck burning.

Mcdonalds milkshake , shot through with syrupy mango

dreams of childhood return in VHS --.

multi coloured pop videos blitzing out of the tv---.

80s colours, the world you dreamed of stepping into---

The future

You walk on the edge of the motorway,

--cube structures , portals to underground labyrinths--,

lemon yellow, faded coral...

plastic ceiling becomes disco floor , luminous formations---

winding paths through scented parkland, peach blossom and jasmine..

cerise flowers cascading over balconies--. You walk through verdant canopies, huge rubber plants and sweet osmanthus. You hear disembodied sounds of a tannoy in the theme park below.

mosaic tiles, pink and green.

, peanut, chilli, szechuan peppercorns--

orange uniforms drying.

flats to house factory workers .

model villages of England, Bourneville, Port Sunlight, New Earswick, filtered through a chlorophyl lens.

You think about his kisses, his face melting in the heat of that basement--

--- //, hexagonal disco floor,, obsidian rays,
—face disintegrating in smoked glass

You knew once it started it couldn't be contained.. perfume bottle smashed on the scorched ground... you felt his desire,, his anxiety... you knew it would be cataclysmic--

you saw him running around with the black bloc and that was it—


Luxurious. Sensual. Timeless.

episodes shifting seamlessly , your skin burning--


Violet Leaf, Mandarin, Rose, soft suede---

parallel times

Peckham estates occupied by Irish squatters-- Euro collapse, mass emigration-- unemployed Britons... how bad does it have to get?

CONTROL=STABILITY 控制=稳定

dormitories and squatter camps,

migrant workers asleep on street..

Runes, hieroglyphs,

mobile conurbations of portakabins, tarps and scaffolding..

---sharing single rental rooms with no facilities

You think if he was here there would be someone to talk to,, because in this climate of paranoia you don't trust anyone.. you formulate strategies and plans in your mind and guard the last unpoliced territory you have.

 Your emails black out, you black your own words out===

black paint, diagrams written in chalk on black walls-- lines,,movements, coding systems----

黑色颜料、黑板上用白粉笔勾勒出的图表—线条、运动、代码系统

hidden from eye of power,,, shattered black crystal

--a wave of protests stretching into future . 74,000 "mass incidents", up sevenfold since 1994.

control strategies collapsing in the tropics------

预防热带地区未来不稳定性瓦解的策略

kerosene burner in corner---.

Happy Valley, Window of the world, lit up like Vegas.

LV, Burberry, Chanel..

security flanked by army and police .------

black glass

black crystals

black paint thrown----

you know if he was here you would just fall into it, this humid sequence of hallucinations.

1995 returning -1981--

widespread outbreaks of disorder----

black smoke, black bloc-- in bed in that room with black walls--

You like his shoulders...

windows shattering,,, ,vapours of black smoke---.

No internet and you can't understand the tv –

you sit and write in the mauve shadows of your room--

Tsing tao and chinese pringles.

Traces of past memories turn to the present. intoxicating jasmine, refined muguet, and sensual rose absolute. it is mysterious and fragile—yet leaves a lasting trail.

A fragrance full of light , balanced with dark apertures. 



过去记忆的踪迹延续至今，醉人的茉莉花，优雅的铃兰，魅惑的玫瑰熏香。神秘而脆弱----留下持久的余味。

带着光亮的香气，与黑暗的缝隙相和谐。

shattered black crystal 破碎的黑水晶

THE FUTURE IS OBSIDIAN, BLACK MIRROR REFLECTING BLACK SUN---

未来如黑曜石，黑色镜面反射出黑色光线