Happy 1st Birthday, Slice of Life!

“Slice of Life” has been up and running for a year. It was my first (and, so far, only) blog and so I had no idea how long it would last and whether anyone other than me (and possibly a few encouraging friends) would read it.

A year on and I can say that far more people have visited it than I thought would be the case. While just over 7,000 hits in a year (and no, this does not include my clicks on the site!) may not rank it among the world’s most popular blogs, I consider those 600+ hits a month to be a respectable number.

What I find even more interesting though is the geographical spread of the people visiting my blog. One of the tools of the site’s hit counter is a map showing me which parts of the world the visitors live in. I’m always amazed to see a little marker on say the Democratic Republic of Congo, a South Pacific island, the Philippines, Bangladesh or Iran. As I don’t know anyone in any of those places, the site’s reach is definitely beyond my immediate circle of friends and colleagues!

A year ago I wrote: “The aim of my blog is to attract readers, in my current home city of Brussels and abroad, with an interest in culture in the broadest sense of the word.” Well, that aim certainly seems to have been achieved.

A year on and I’m also doing a lot more arts writing professionally. I continue to get a complete kick out of it and am sometimes surprised that I’m paid to do something I love so much.

Still, the (unpaid!) blog will certainly continue as it’s fun to have another outlet to write about culture and, when I’m lucky, hear about others’ reactions, experiences and ideas.

Keep reading, enjoying and exploring!

Karabits sets Brussels stage alive with Shostakovich symphony

Kirill Karabits seemed to put every last drop of energy into conducting the final chords of Shostakovich’s sixth symphony, ending with a 180-degree turn to face the audience and revealing a smile that you sensed had been on his face throughout the work.

For me, the symphony was the highlight of last Friday’s concert (October 23), performed by the Orchestre National de Lille at the Bozar concert hall in Brussels. From the rich intensity of the lower strings in the opening largo through to the timpani acrobatics at the close, I was totally drawn in.

One of the least performed of Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies, the sixth is unusually made up of just three movements. The first movement lasts more than half the total duration and is followed by an allegro and a presto, which musicologist David Fanning has described as “a spectral scherzo” and “a manic gallop.”

Karabits, who studied conducting in his native Kiev and is now in his early 30s, was a guest conductor with the Orchestre National de Lille. His main position is as principal conductor of England’s Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, where he has just started a four-year tenure. Given the number of engagements he seems to have lined up elsewhere as guest conductor, I’m optimistic that I’ll get another chance to see him conduct.

The rest of Friday’s concert was a contemporary piece, entitled Wailing, by Chinese composer Lu Wang, who was in Brussels to hear the performance, and Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto. The Chinese piece did little for me, and the concerto had brilliant moments – in fact the pianist Nikolai Demidenko was cheered back on stage for two encores - but the orchestra didn’t seem as at ease with this work as with the symphony. Luckily for me, my favourite part came last and so I left the concert hall with that uplifting feeling that comes when you have been transported away by music.

Mozaik Artistik: Brightening up Brussels

Mosaic paving stones have sprung up all over Schaerbeek, the 1030 postcode area of Brussels where I live. In front of almost 100 homes in the area, one paving stone has been replaced by a colourful square of ceramic or glass pieces indicating that the house is part of “Art 1030 – Mozaik Artistik”.

The idea behind this event is that for two consecutive weekends these buildings, be they private homes, workshops or small museums, open their doors and allow the general public a glimpse of the lives and works of local painters, sculptors and other artists. Some of the spaces are workshops crammed with pots of paint and wooden frames, others are living rooms temporarily transformed into mini galleries.

Last weekend I discovered the museum of spontaneous art, the workshop of the late Geo de Vlamynck, known in Belgium for a large mosaic he designed for the Neptunium swimming pool, and a private home where several artists were displaying their wares, which included photography, jewellery and stone sculptures. This weekend I might visit the house on my street where I first saw one of the mosaic street tiles and wondered why it was there.

A full list of the places taking part in “Art 1030 – Mozaik Artistik” is in the catalogue, available online (click here) or as a hard copy at one of the centres organising the event, such as the Maison des Arts/Huis der Kunsten (Chaussée de Haecht 147 Haachtsesteenweg). One of the participating artists is Ingrid Schreyers, who created the mosaic tiles and who takes personalised orders if you fancy brightening up the street in front of your own home.

Emerging from Words and Music

The final essay is almost complete, the finishing line in sight. For the last eight months I have been studying ‘Words and Music’ at the Open University and a whole new world has opened up to me. I’ve discovered German lieder, had the opportunity to study the importance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and explored how John Milton used the biblical story of Samson and Delilah for his dramatic poem Samson Agonistes, which in turn was adapted by George Frideric Handel for his oratorio Samson.

Having both a literary and musical background, for me the joy of this course was its interdisciplinary nature, the opportunity to analyse how text and music work together and how they enhance or detract from each other. My favourite components of the course were those dealing with classical music, but the module covered everything from South Asian art songs to Broadway musicals. There were even short sections on The Beatles, rap artists (I can now recognise a couple of Eminem songs!) and Sicilian storytellers.

The course allowed me to look in more depth at some areas that I was already familiar with and discover others that were completely new to me. I reacquainted myself with literary theory, explored new ideas in musical theory, brushed up on reading texts critically and learnt how to listen more closely to music using a score. In short, I was reminded what a great intellectual stimulus academic study is and what a joy it is to be learning more about a topic that you’re passionate about.

So as I do my final checks before sending off my last essay, on Virginia Woolf’s short story The String Quartet and Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden string quartet, my mind is already wondering what to study next. A Masters in Music is one possibility. Decision time is mid-December, so I still have a few more weeks to think it over.

In the meantime, I hope to find more time to write about my “cultural excursions,” which have recently included a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth by the UK-based Cheek by Jowl theatre company - a world premiere in the Belgian town of Namur no less! - and a concert of New Orleans music by the Fondy Riverside Bullet Band. Macbeth has inspired composers to write music on the play’s subject, and the New Orleans music inspired a text about war, loss and celebration that was combined with the music for their recent performance: the links between words and music seem to be everywhere!

Gilbert and George come to Brussels

Gilbert and George are probably the most recognised artists in Britain, the interviewer suggests, pointing out that there wouldn’t be many a London cabbie who didn’t know who they were. “Very sweet, isn’t it,” says George deadpan, pausing for dramatic effect and then adding “For one reason or another”.

The gags and the lines just keep coming. Sometimes it’s one half of the duo doing the talking, sometimes they do a quick back and forth and sometimes they speak simultaneously and then burst out laughing. Listening to Gilbert and George talk about their art and their life is an absolute delight.

Smartly dressed in light brown suits and tan leather shoes (they are keen to point out that they don’t always dress the same, just similarly), the pair, now in their 60s, give an impression of formality and correctness. So when George embarks on a tale or two in his plummy English accent, and then rounds it off with coarse language or innuendo, the comic effect is brilliant.

The two work seamlessly together, the one almost merging into the other as they finish off each other’s sentences and constantly talk in the first person plural. On their work: “We don’t see it as work, we can say what we want, it’s an enormous freedom and privilege”. On their daily walks around London: “We walk all the time, you are feeling it non-stop, what is going on. We always go towards ideas that interest us.” On their evening ritual of eating the same dish at the same Turkish restaurant: “We don’t waste our brains reading menus”.

George, born in England, and Gilbert, born in Italy, met in 1967 at St. Martin’s School of Art where they were both studying sculpture. “We just drifted together,” George says. “We were alone”, too “freakish” to become art teachers, adds Gilbert. And so from their home in the East End of London, the duo began creating their “art for all”. And more than 40 years later, they still live in the East End and they are still creating.

A selection of their latest work, the Jack Freak Pictures, opens today (and runs until Oct. 31) at the Baronian Francey gallery in Brussels, one of seven European galleries showing different selections of the series. The entire collection, made up of 153 new artworks and created with the help of just one assistant (“he’s only allowed to scan!” Gilbert emphasises), will be exhibited at the Bozar in Brussels in the autumn of 2010.

Gilbert and George were interviewed by Michael Bracewell at a public event at the Bozar on Sept. 8 2009.

Knokke Biennale and Contemporary Art

I wrote in a recent article “If contemporary art is your scene, then the Knokke Biennale should be in your diary.” To be honest though, I’m not really sure that it’s my scene. Of course it depends on how you define contemporary art, but when I walked into Hoet Bekaert’s summer gallery in Knokke - grandly/ironically called the Knokke Biennale – my immediate reaction was “is this it?”

A replica of a matchbox, a donkey’s head that had been used as a stage prop, a photograph resting on two drums of cat food, pieces of carbon copy paper with phrases such as “This looks like something I’ve seen before” mounted on light boxes...you get the picture.

Once the ideas behind the works had been explained, I started to appreciate them more. There is definitely a part of me that seeks to understand and analyse, wanting context and background. And I like to think that I have a relatively open mind. But had I seen these works anywhere but in a gallery, would I really have given them a second glance?

As I was shown round the small garage-like space, I still had a lingering doubt that I was perhaps being taken in by one big joke. After all, the whole Knokke Biennale idea had been done tongue-in-cheek (and brilliantly so), so maybe this was just one more element.

But no, these were works by well-known names on the contemporary art circuit: the donkey’s head was by Thai artist Surasi Kusolwong, who has exhibited at London's Tate Modern; and the work using cat food drums was by Amanda Ross-Ho, with whom the Hoet Bekaert gallery will be going to London’s Frieze Art Fair this year.

Gallery co-founder Jan Hoet Junior was keen to dispel the assumption of many that contemporary art is something that anyone can do. For me though that wasn’t the source of my doubts. It was rather the fact that when I viewed the works, I didn’t feel anything (other than perhaps bewilderment). I want colours or shapes or textures to prompt some instinctive response, to have aesthetic appeal - is that too old-fashioned a thought? or am I just missing the point?

The Return of Ulysses: ballet, the absurd and dancing in flippers

The Royal Ballet of Flanders has gone on its summer holidays. But before they disappeared I caught the company’s final performance of the 2008-2009 season in Bruges, Belgium, and spoke to the ballet company’s artistic director Kathryn Bennetts.

The Return of Ulysses was the dance performance with which the Antwerp-based ballet company chose to round off their season and the one that it’s taking to the Edinburgh International Festival this August.

The choreography is a combination of classical and contemporary dance; the music switches between Henry Purcell and songs from the 1950s and 1960s such as those of Doris Day; and the costumes are all black for the protagonist Penelope and her many suitors, and a gold skirt suit for the goddess Athena and flippers, goggles and a tutu for Poseidon. It’s a performance of contrasts, one of “light and shade,” as Bennetts put it.

The story of the return of Ulysses is related from his wife Penelope’s perspective. It has been 20 years since Ulysses left to fight in the Trojan wars and in those intervening years of seemingly endless waiting Penelope has fought off many suitors – to various degrees of success, in the eyes of the choreographer Christian Spuck, it would seem. Penelope is subjected to a fair amount of aggressive male behaviour on stage but the suitors’ competitiveness and jealousy of each other means that Penelope is ultimately the one with her pride left intact.

Bennetts sums up the narrative as “an absurd story”, pointing to the absurdity of Penelope waiting for her husband for so many years and then not even recognising him once he finally does return home. The choreographer wants “to express the absurdity of things: the absurdity of the suitors' struggle for power, the absurdity of the gods who do not heed the laments of humans, the absurdity of Penelope endlessly waiting and the sardonic irony of her failing to recognize Ulysses,” as the Royal Ballet of Flanders says on its website. Unsurprisingly perhaps comparisons have been drawn with Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’.

Bennetts dedicated the performance in Bruges to Pina Bausch, the German choreographer who had died just a few days earlier.

To read more about this performance and another Flemish company going to the Edinburgh Festival, click here.