The Suicidal Cows

So a friend and I once started a band called the Suicidal Cows. We got as far as thinking up song names, planning the music videos, and we even started a blog.

Then things got a little complicated, and we never got around to actually composing the music. He moved away Berlin. I got a job that kept me busy. But mainly it's because we are both pretty lazy. In this case it's probably a good thing, seeing as neither of us can really sing or play an instrument.

Still, we're pretty proud of the names we came up with. Warning: they require a certain sense of humour to appreciate. 

World of Art

I've been experimenting with the Instagram App on the iPhone and it has confirmed my fears that any idiot - including me - can now take a picture, make it look 'artsy', and then consider themselves some kind of genius photographer.

I have to admit I'm actually proud of the way they turned out - you should have seen how bad the originals were.

There's an argument going around that technology today is taking away from 'true artists' in this world, but I don't think that's entirely correct. You still need a good eye to be a truly good; it's just easier nowadays to fake it in post, and that's an art form in and of itself. 

Having said that, these pictures might not blow your mind but I've seen far worse photographs displayed in actual art exhibitions. It seems like all you need to exhibit nowadays is a caption in which the words have gone through the 'Shift F7' machine, and where this:

A vacant antechamber acting as a passageway for the body of human resources that flow through and dwell in an edifice intended for personnel immersed in the daily operations of  the industrial world 

Should really have been labelled something like this:

It's an empty hallway in an office building, for fuck's sake.

I appreciate the thought people put into their art, I really do. What gets to me is when someone puts up something that my unborn art-retarded child could have taken, and tries to make it meaningful by using all the words they've ever read in the thesaurus and throwing them up on the caption.

Aesthetically pleasing Instagram art beats that kind of crap any day.

Which brings me to another topic: art, and how we value it.

The documentary 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' by Banksy is the best film about the art industry I've seen so far. Granted, haven't seen that many, but this one really blew my mind.

It starts off with an average if slightly eccentric guy documenting different forms of street art in Los Angeles with his video camera. Through some of the most bizarre circumstances, he eventually becomes a famous artist himself, turning the entire concept of what true art is on its head. I don't want to give away the details if you haven't seen it, but watch it if you can grab a hold of it. 

Then there's an article by David Grann from the New Yorker, called "The Mark of a Masterpiece: The Man Who Keeps Finding Famous Fingerprints on Uncelebrated Works of Art", which explores the world of art connoisseurs -  people who look at paintings to determine whether they are real or fake. It focuses on this one guy in particular who has apparently developed a 'scientific approach' to authenticate pieces of art: by scanning the paintings in question for fingerprints and then comparing them to prints found on the real thing.

His method is supposed to be the best alternative to the way connoisseurs usually evaluate paintings, which many argue is purely subjective. For example, some connoisseurs say they determine whether a painting is fake by 'the feeling they get' when they look at it. Obviously, this is an exaggerated description of how most go about it and there's a lot more detailed analysis involved. To be fair, I don't think it's unreasonable for people who have studied particular artists for years to be able to get an instinctive feel for the authenticity of a painting. The problem is that there have been a thousands of celebrated works of art that later turned out to be fake, so the method certainly isn't 100% accurate - far from it.

The article talks about all of this and looks at Peter Paul Biro's scientific method as a solid way of sorting out the real from the fake. Someone even made a documentary about how this 'forensic art expert' authenticated a Jackson Pollock painting that nobody in the art community believed was real.

Then comes the twist at the end: turns out, this guy is the biggest con of them all! Read it to find out about the details - it's a long one but well worth it.

The article really makes me think that people in the art world all deserve one another, whether a painting is real, has a terrible caption or came out of an Instagram App.

For West Wing Fans

In the New York Times Op-Ed Column, West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin wrote a 'what-would-happen-if' Barack Obama and Jed Bartlet had met to chat about the presidential campaign last year...

Brilliant!

Here's the link

Interesting...

So the official acronym of the "Singapore Corporation of Rehabilitative Enterprises", which deals with ex-drug addicts, amongst other 'offenders' of the judicial system, and which they proudly display on their website, is ....

"SCORE".

...too easy.

Death by (over) conceptualisation

I was curious when I heard about a new cocktail bar called Klee that had recently opened in Portsdown Road. They had a strange but interesting concept: strictly no beer and no wine – purely cocktails; and, as I discovered when I walked into the bar, they had no menus either.

The first thing the bartenders tell you is that they’re here to create a personalized, one-of-a-kind cocktail, just for you. You feel super special right away, if a little overwhelmed by the choice. I had no idea what I wanted the first time I stepped in, and I can’t remember what I ended up getting, but I do remember that the drinks were pretty damn good. That; and it was fun chatting to the bartender and watching him shake his stuff.

The second time I went back, my friends and I decided to stay outdoors. They have an outside seating area that’s slightly more rustic than the inside. You sit on wooden banks that conjure up memories of tiny wooden splinters dug into the surface of your fingertips when you were little, clambering around on the playground. No matter, at least you can smoke freely and enjoy your personalized cocktail outdoors.

A friend and I wound up at the bar again one night looking forward to cocktails outdoors. When we sat down on the wooden benches and asked the waiter what he could recommend (we felt like old pros, having been there before!), we got a bit of a slap in the face when he told us that they no longer served cocktails outside - only beer, wine and champagne were allowed now.

– Why? was my obvious first question.
– For quality reasons, he replied, a little sheepishly, a little snootily.
– What quality reasons? I asked.

Apparently it was a part of their much tightened and ‘more’ carefully thought out concept. They now refuse to serve cocktails outside because it takes away from the ‘Klee experience’, i.e. customers interacting with the bartenders inside. Apparently they believe in that part of their concept so much so that they reneged on the no wine and no beer policy, on customer’s freedom of choice, and on basic economics.

– Fine, we said, can we sit inside then?
– No, the inside is full.

Since we’d come all the way to Portsdown Road for cocktails, we relented and asked for a glass of wine instead. And then found out that they only serve wine in bottles. Okay then.

The fourth and last time I went to Klee, I thought I knew how to beat the system. I went inside with a few friends, and, after being told that all seats inside were either full or reserved, asked the waiter if we could order our cocktails inside, ‘interact’ with the bartender to make Mr. Concept Guy – whoever you are – happy, and then take our drinks outside. They weren’t impressed by what I thought was a pretty clever (and logical) idea, and told me that went against the ‘concept’, too.

– But , they added, if we wanted to have a quick drink before the people who had made reservations came, we could.

We should have left, but it was another case of giving in. I really wanted my friends, who had never been to Klee, and whom I’d raved to about their cocktails, to try at least one cocktail before we left. So we sat down on the sofas in the corner, and expectantly waited for the bartender to offer up suggestions on what yummy, personalized drinks he could make us. Really shouldn’t have held my breath.

– You pick a fruit, what fruit do you want? He asked.

Fruit? Why did it have to start with fruit? It limits a plethora of alternative options. Like those Linnaeus classifications you use in science class to find out what type of organism you’re looking at in your biology textbook. You start from the top and decide whether it has a vertebrate or gills or whatnot, and each choice leads you towards what might end up being a fish, but will rule out that it could be a mammal. Or in drink speak: If I have to start off by picking fruit, I’m never going to travel down the list that will get me a chocolate espresso martini, am I? And if you’re a first timer, you really don’t know the options you have and go with the flow. Okay, so maybe it was just the one incompetent bartender, but still.

My overwhelmed friend picked raspberry as his fruit.
The bartender suggested a raspberry-saketini.

I went with the flow and picked blueberry.
The bartender suggested a blueberry-saketini.

I started at him, really hoping he was kidding. When he stared back at me in earnest, I asked him slowly, like I would ask a five year old.

– But aren’t they the same thing?
– No, he assured me, they’re different.

They weren’t. And unless Klee changes its hypocritical, die-hard stance on being ‘true to the concept’, I won’t be going back.