Feb 29, 2008

Last night of the urinals

It is the final night for our monument to the spectre of conceptual art. Of all the concerns raised during our investigation of the public amenities riots of 1932, none were more pressing than the threat of an imminent breakdown of the fabric of society itself.

While Marcel Duchamp's fountain opened up the art halls of the continent to the idea of utilitarian objects possessing qualities of meaning as valuable as the mythological associations generally carried by great works of art- it was an idea that could only be introduced with a great deal of provocation at the time.

The mood was similar in Wellington nearly twenty years after the first unveiling of the fountain. When the Academy of Fine Arts refused to exhibit the fountain it was because they considered it a threat to what was valued as art at the time, although they may have thought it a boring and impish piece of imitation lacking in originality. Regardless of the mindset of the curators of the day, the fountain was refused. Not only that but several members of the Avant-Garde who had argued vigorously in favour of its inclusion were made to feel foolish for their support of progressive notions of social and cultural activity. It is strange that the backlash which this authoritarian attitude engendered, resulted in the wholesale and enthusiastic damaging of public utilities, by the Avant Garde, in an attempt to acquire their own works of art. Thus, sadly for the progressive idealists of the time the very source of their inspiration, the fountain from which great possibilities seemed to flow, became the target of misguided vandalism and acquisitiveness.

"Even in the most closed cultures men believe they are free and open to the universal; their differential character makes the narrowest cultural fields seem inexhaustible from within. Anything that compromises this illusion terrifies us and stirs up the immemorial tendency to persecution. This tendency always takes the same direction, it is embodied by the same stereotypes and always responds to the same threat. Despite what is said around us persecutors are never obsessed by difference but rather by its unutterable contrary, the lack of difference."

Rene Girard The scapegoat

Feb 26, 2008

Eager for progress

As a boy growing up on the streets of Paris the young Marcel Duchamp would sometimes venture with his playmates into the artistic district. It was on one of these occasions, as they ran back and forth across the road pushing a hoop and generally carrying on as children are wont to do, that a shot rang out across the neighbourhood.

In later years the now fully grown Marcel insisted that the bullet passed thru his hat and shattered the glass of a nearby window, but that is merely a matter of conjecture. In reality the shot was fired by the now notorious Alfred Jarry. This was many years since the demise of his unfortunate brother who had left behind the comforts of Parisian life in search of Pastoral harmony with nature, and ended up, as we know, falling foul of a pedestrian and a curb.

The young Marcel's mother, who was herself still lively for her years- upon hearing that crazed playwrights were now taking potshots at children in the artistic district, marched - and if the cliche' is not too onerous, with a rolling pin in hand to the doorstep of Jarry's apartment.

We can only imagine the remonstration received by Jarry at the hand of the young mother, as astonished Marcel stood by. Jarry's response has now become the stuff of legend- that his target shooting endangered her children, he replied, " If that should ever happen Ma-da-me, we should ourselves be happy to get new ones with you."

Whether impressed by such a degree of provocation or simply deciding that it was safer to keep his enemies close at hand Marcel began following Jarry, taking notes on the collection of dust , the rules governing exceptions, and the difficulties encountered in proving through chance that alternate realities do exist- an obsession attributed to his love of chess.

Sadly Jarry passed away, perhaps before his apprentices training was complete- however the foundation had been laid and Marcel went on to infamy of fame, as the case may be- depending how you look at it

Feb 25, 2008

Virtual Arcadia

We are delighted that the installation of our second monument proceeded in a discreet and trouble-free way. We feel something of its benign yet disconcertingly conceptual gaze fall upon us as we cross over the isthmus between two roads.
Already moss, branches and ferns have leaned gently over our spectral sprite as if it had always been there in that place. Clearly the great water-pump of the city and the smaller fountains of gas, water and air which make up the breath of the trees that hang over the amenity, remind us of a time when nature and man lived together in harmony.
Wishing to pause for a moments relief and clinging briefly in our mind to the image of this idyll, we must move now to the subject of the public amenities riots of 1932, this and some of the questions posed by the querulous Marcel Duchamp will comprise the substance of our next bulletin.

" His philosophy, briefly, is this: since the 17th century, certain enlightened thinkers have been taking the world away from the old-fashioned nature-bound life, and here he quotes Thomas Hobbes' famous characterisation of life as "nasty, brutish and short", and towards a new virtual world where we have conquered nature. Value now exists in imaginary things. "

Tom Hodgkinson Jan 21 The Guardian

Feb 21, 2008

Wheres Walter?

While busying ourselves in preparation for the installment of our second monument, we have lacked the time to inform our readers of the attack sustained by our first monument. Walter's status as a truely temporary monument was confirmed on Tuesday evening by what appeared to be an act of boisterous vandalism. What remains now is nothing but the shadow of Walter's form- his famous "Tireless" Bicycle.

"Laws are currently being drafted to curb the killer pedestrian. With the aim of gathering fuller documentary evidence regarding the latter, we exposed ourselves to his ferocity, mounted on a heteromobile. The pedestrian we observed, an infant, behaved in complete conformity with out earlier description in the pages of this review. We had nothing further to ask of him once the experiment was over, so as a service to humanity we put him out of action."

Alfred Jarry the killer pedestrian


While we are what may be described as a Pan-civic organisation, perhaps the irony of bold but lonely Walter on his bicycle was not lost to the users of the locomotor machines on the thoroughfare. Perhaps Walter was too much of an exception to be tolerated. It is also a pataphysical notion however that the exception proves the rule, so while it seems now that Walter nolonger exists, it is in his absence that peculiarly we remember him at his best.

In light of this event, we have decided to move on to the subject of our second monument, currently to be situated in the midst of a comprehensive redevelopment and directly surmounting a disused public amenity. Our second monument looks back to a time when the roots of the city were put in place. New ideas were beginning to move across the globe, along with the wholesale transportation of goods came the origen of a trade in ideas. With the rapid development of a modern society the gothic edifice of a society in permanent repose began to crumble. This intermingling of Virtual Arcadias, endlessly reproduced in lands distant from their origen caused considerable friction in the Art society of the 1920's and 30's. This culminated in what was known as the public amenities riots of 1932. The perpetrator of which we make our next monument to.

"All great Aesthetic ideas are the same-narrowly obsessively imitative. Traditionally art is only spoken of in terms of mimesis. The passion with which we deny this is suspect, since art has rightly withdrawn from our world. By discouraging imitation we are not eliminating it but forcing it into the ridiculous fads and ideologies that make up our contemporary attempts at innovation. Our desire for originality end in insignificant efforts."

Rene Girard The Scapegoat

Feb 16, 2008


The following is taken from the secret manuscript of Alfred Jarry, the brother of Walter Jarry- a legendary offroad cyclist of Wellington, who from 1876-1882 could be seen in the hills around the city. It is a glimpse perhaps of relations between the two brothers, different but not dissimilar- for while Alfred was addicted to the speed and rush of Absinth, Walter was a risk taker of a different order, someone for whom "the beauty of speed" was equal to the experience of flying down a hill on his small bike. It is possible to say that Walter was in fact the originator of the BMX, in that he had made for himself an especially small bike, to match his own diminutive frame.

Excerpt from the manuscript:

"The doctor having taken occasion to park his sieve on the curb, and instructing his baboon faced assistant to prepare lunch with a slap to the neck, set off in the direction of the town. "Faustroll" he whispered to himself, "An epiphenomenom is that which is imposed upon a phenomenom, the whole foundation may be sand but dust still clings to your shoes."
It was at this point in his speculation that the doctor was surprised by the sight of a man, seated upon a bicycle and brandishing a riding whip while pursued by a group of hungry looking curs. "Faustroll" He mused to himself "How stupid those dogs must be, when all across France and indeed the civilised world, dogs along with children have learnt of the dangers of these new locomotor machines. Why would it be that these curs are seeking the shin of that unfortunate rider?" But as the offroader drew nearer he concluded "Haha, I see now that I have reached another epicentre- it is my brother, the antipodean." At which point he occasioned himself to hide behind another passerby suspecting quite rightly that his brothers predicament came from the leg of mutton, which protruded from his jacket."

Feb 12, 2008

The Diminutive Alfred Jarry


Alfred Jarry was considered to be the father of Absurdism , he lived in an apartment in Paris. He stood under 5 feet tall and as an Absurdist pioneer was happy that his landlord had lowered the roof of his apartment to half the usual height to make way for an additional floor, as an artist he was sad that the same landlord had not lowered the rent also. There is much that can be said about Jarry, but it does not concern public sculpture in Wellington.
It was in fact thru the auspices of the pataphysics research laboratory in London that we came across a manuscript which did concern us. Alfred Jarry was of course a well known playwright, much of his writing happened in the century before last. Thru secret connections in various Avant-Garde circles the research library came to hear of our efforts to uncover hitherto unknown psychic roots in Wellington, offering us proof of an extraordinary role that Wellington has played, almost since its beginning, in developing and nurturing lucid but hallucinatory notions of existence.

As a preamble to launching of our first monument , this Sunday outside thistle hall, at 5 o clock we will be reproducing segments of this previously unpublished Absurd manuscript - fully translated from its original French. But until then we leave you with this quote from the playwright, taken from his excellent essay - The killer pedestrian

"Now that, in our opinion, is an excellent, and for reasons that will become obvious as the circumstances unfold. In the year 1888 or 1889, tourists on bicycles or penny farthings were insulted, barked at, bitten and encouraged to topple over, until such a time as dogs, as we can see today, had acquired the habit of steering clear of the new locomotor machines, as they had previously learnt to do for cars. Canine education being now complete, the riding-crops and other defensive weapons of the cyclist of those bygone days have been thrown on the scarp-heap, like the tyre levers of the stone age."