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This is the annexe to the OtherStuff site
Blog Archive
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2009
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January
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- Further to... the two films -- Beyond the Pale
- Further to... a bit more Finlay (because we like him)
- Further to... "sky-like attitude"/"infinite touch ...
- Further to... Raccoons
- Further to... Ian Hamilton Finlay: Blues
- Further to... Ian Hamilton Finlay: Little Sparta
- Further to... File's Residual Definitions -- by Be...
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January
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20 comments:
From the Tate Gallery notes:
"He was fascinated by the slogans and rhetoric of the French Revolution. Ici on Danse (1996) can be translated as ‘here we dance’ or ‘here people dance’. These words were displayed at the entrance to a festival that was held on the site of the Bastille in July 1790 to celebrate the anniversary of the storming of the infamous prison. It can therefore be seen as a defiant statement of the revolutionary spirit."
Zeph--
As to IHF's work on the French Revolution, here's my favourite: a 1987 series of poem-cards titled Revolutionary Pursuits:
It is not true
that the blade was terrible:
it was Terrible.
_________
In the first chapters
of the Revolution
when the ribbons
were still on the haycocks...
(note--those last two lines italicized)
_________
You cannot step
into the same Revolution
twice.
_________
"Who are these men
who have no streets
named after them?"
--French person of 1787, on
The Committee of Public Safety, 1794.
_______
The French Revolution
was something other
than the French nation
on the psychoanalyst's couch.
________
Three Parties
in The Convention:
The Mountain, The Plain,
The Ravine.
_______
In the Picturesque landscape
of the Revolution
the wildest of the banditti
were all ex-lawyers.
_______
For the best of the Jacobins
the Revolution was intended
as a pastoral whose
Virgil was Rousseau.
_______
Revolutions conceived in the fields
are very different from
Revolutions conceived in the cellar.
_______
(Keeping in mind the original set were loose cards; I've arranged them in the accidental order they happen to be in, in the place I've kept them all these years. And not forgetting too the cards have different-colored backdrops, interesting typography, and are centered not set flush-left. As Madame B. usefully reminds, "It's a shame people can't see them." But still, people--use your imaginations!)
Thought this also might interest Otherstuffers, from Brian Kim Stefans, writing about IHF's work in 1996:
Finlay's is a representational art that returns to the trees, wind and waves sacrificed in early modernism, but passing up the medium of paint and canvas so that the perceiver is returned to the object direct. A poem of his from 1968, composed entirely of the names of trawlers, contains a note of nostalgia that disappears when one realizes that the nostalgia being expressed is composed out of actualities that are, nonetheless, in danger of being lost; the trawlers become, in this way, concrete poems speaking of the loss of themselves both as medium and subject:
Green Waters
Blue Spray
Grayfish
Anna T
Karen B
Netta Croan
Constant Star
Daystar
Starwood
Starlit Waters
Moonlit Waters
Drift
really interesting guys, all of it, from revolution to trawler, from rousing to haunting
do you have a scanner B? I for one would like to see an/some originals...
File--
No scanner... but don't I wish. Only really began using computers at all in past few years, post-stroke, seeking a window on a world I don't get around much in anymore. But still limited to basic Mac attack, and so envy some of the things you've done with visuals using programs I don't have/ understand.
But hunt-and-pecking those Revolutionary Pursuits was at least a way of getting deeply into them all over again (slow ways are tiresome and frustrating but have their educative uses).
Interesting though to consider that when IHF began working there were of course no computers. But he was a printer and of course that helped.
The conceptual expansiveness of his whole project grows more and more wonderful, to me, as the years go by, because it's always entirely trained in the minimal and the momentary, at the point of immediate verbal/visual attack...with the amplitude coming as a kind of double/triple take ripple effect.
The work excited me (and others) greatly when it first started emerging in the 1960s; and (unlike some other things that seemed exciting then) it's seemed to age very well, getting better and better and more and more relevant with the years. Lovely evidence of that now in the way you and Zeph have taken to it.
(This cozy little spot is starting to feel a bit like the Finlay Annexe.)
as brilliant as these are (even without the graphic presentation) I wonder what you think about the place of slogans in poetry/art these days?
we live in the midst of wraparound sound bites; teachers and trainers are taught to use them, politicians, ad-men, even churches... there was a point (probably the point that Finlay was inspired to produce work in this format) that sloganism was hip but is the short, sharp shock a little passe now?
I ask in terms of new work and not in any way to criticize the gems above...
mm, we cross-posted B, I hadn't seen your last comment when I wrote mine but notice you have in part answered my question
very sorry to hear about your stroke (and lack of scanner, but less so) and heartened to hear of you finding positives in the slow ways (a lesson to us all)
I had wondered about his technique and found out about his various methods of printing, though I don't think he produced the base schematics of boats/tanks etc. himself, tho he re-contextualizes them brilliantly
"The conceptual expansiveness of his whole project grows more and more wonderful, to me, as the years go by, because it's always entirely trained in the minimal and the momentary, at the point of immediate verbal/visual attack...with the amplitude coming as a kind of double/triple take ripple effect."
Yes, the pregnancy of minimalism and the resonance of a single pebble in a pond, they are hugely effective in that way but I don't think they would be perceived as Avant Garde these days (which is as it should be and no reflection on the quality of his work for his time) and might even be dismissed as "not poetry" (thinking of a specific comment by an academic on a GU poetry blog recently).
that said, I for one was/am still genuinely excited by what you've led me to in the last few days, his art definitely stimulates my creative juices and I've lived through the Frankie Goes to Hollywood T-shirts, so maybe I've just answered my own question above and as that same GU blog ended "Who are the Avant Garde these days?"
oh, and don't have any problems myself with a Finlay Annexe but perhaps Zeph would like to define her hopes for this site...
At the moment I see the Annexe as a space to follow up things which get mentioned on OtherStuff, to post extra photos or continue a discussion which might be a little more technical/academic.
I think we can follow leads here and take them along for a while, so it's the Finlay Annexe at the moment but another OtherStuff piece might take us to another poet.
so what do you think about the place of slogans then Zeph? In the interest of discussion and all that...
This is all very interesting, and I need a neon "ici on danse" sign for my house.
yes Munni in our house too, especially in mornings on a school day it could be 'ici on danse, on crie, on pleur, on et desesperer..'
scuse the mangled franglais!
"But still limited to basic Mac attack"
Go easy on me, BtP!
File: slogans, as in advertising, power-point etc, tend to be what the scriptwriting business calls 'on the nose'. "It's the economy, stupid", "Because you're worth it" mean exactly what they say, no subtext.
For poetry, I'd have thought that if you're going to pare the text down that much, then it has to have several layers of meaning, or have attached significance like the French Revolution association. Though of course, some of the best slogans have that too - "Yes we can" said by an African-American has tremendous resonance.
Zeph--
Very interesting point in response to File's question. The evolution and history of this particular slogan provide maybe the best capsule paradigm of the whole issue of the uses and power of slogans. Long before its use in the Obama campaign, the slogan was popularly identified with the rare grooves of the New Orleans funk masters Allen Toussaint (who wrote the song "Yes We Can") and Lee Dorsey (who famously first recorded it). In its permutation into Spanish the slogan then had a specific and important place in the struggle of immigrant Latin-American farm workers to organize and gain equal rights in the US. For those who are curious (and wish to have some fun), that history can be traced in part as follows:
Lee Dorsey's original 1970 recording of Allen Toussaint's funk classic "Yes We Can":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqITJFGyq4s
___________________
Pablo Peregrina (2008) performs "Si se puede", a song inspired by the 1972 Cesar Chavez/ Dolores Huerta rallying cry for the United Farm Workers' organizational movement and later employed to similar purpose in the 2006 US immigration reform campaign:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJDOwLFo3tQ
___________________
The Pointer Sisters' 1973 cover version of "Yes We Can" (here sung live on the great R&B TV show "Soul Train"):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qHAZ25HYqU&feature=related
____________________
2007 Bob the Builder Music Video ("Can we fix It? Yes we Can!"):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZnYzD-LnSU&feature=related
____________________
2008 Barack Obama commercial (Bob the Builder Remix):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o42kU7stEo&feature=related
_____________________
2008 Barack Obama/ Pointer Sisters "Yes We Can" Remix:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU9HvvqzyRY&feature=related
Thanks for those, BTP, I shall pick a time tomorrow to play them all and reflect on Bob the Builder's contribution to American politics.
And is it just me, or does Obama always say 'America' and never 'the United States'? And is that a bit of post-Bush rebranding? or is it about tapping into traditional patriotism, after all the song isn't 'United States the Beautiful'...?
Zeph,
It's not just you; I noticed that too, in the course of compiling this brief little video history of the most successful political advertising campaign in the history of... ah, you thought I was going to say Venezuela, I bet.
The Obama/Pointer Sisters remix is great!
Yes! Weekend!
But still very little time for clips, unfortunately.
Nice place, this.
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