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Hi Cedar, old punk,
Hope you are fine. Saw today your internet blog and your review to my swap show at Hotel.
Just want to let you know that me and my artists would have been the first ones the Nazis sent to concentration camp.

Best,
Guido

Saturday
just in from the show at hotel,,, it was a gallery swap with guido baudach gallery from berlin... a group show of his artists...there was one, erwin kneihsl whose work was particularly nazi-esque,, all guido's artists have got a certain nazi something going on, but this erwin guy was unusually explicit with it.. then there was this after-drinks thing at that secret drinking place that's run by saint martin's students... i got home and the punk was watching rambo... first blood."


hi guido,,
all good thanks. and you know i'd be right in there with you. if you want me to point that out in my next blog, i'm happy too.

hope to see you soon,,
cedar

Dear Cedar,
why not? Guess it could be funny to see how you make the "Entartete Kunst" I show to something "nazi-esque" and back again. All in one blog.
You must be a genius.
Cheers,
Guido


Above you'll see a little email correspondence between me and guido baudach from berlin. Guido's gallery is one of my favourites in the world at the movement, I think the reason it's so good is that it's so rare to have galleries with any real atmosphere around them, or sense of community outside of making money. Guido has told me on a number of occasions that he doesn't give a fuck about money. And after working with him on a couple of projects, I believe him. I'm not sure how many other gallerists could say the same thing.

Having said that, I do think, lots of, not all, guido's artist do engage in a certain flirtation with nazi-esque imagery, that's not to say they are nazis - far from it - but, in my opinion, they certainly do explore this area of german history. They are german artists after all, so I think they are entitled to.


Friday
Was out west last night,, went to alexandre pollazzon's gallery first,, a show curated by artist mathew day jackson and amy davila called 'welcome to my world'. There was a "comic supplement" by david tompkins being given away which I quite liked... then we went to the andre butzer show at alison jacques,,, it's that very german,, bad painting,, kind of in the tradition of albert oehlen, with a bit of tal r thrown in... I don't mind it,, but the punk wasn't having any of it. then to a group show at max wigram,, which was based around the theme of invisibility... then max wigram did an after party in Soho which was good,, but the punk wanted to go home just as I started to enjoy myself...

Weekend
i seem to be spending a worrying amount of time on internet social networking sites. what's really worrying is that these sites seem to encourage a kind of online stalking of people you haven't seen for years,, and in reality have no real interest in seeing,, what's even more worrying is how adept i am at this kind of cyber stalking... and how easily it spills over into the real world... i seem to have developed several not quite healthy obsessions with the various activities of my various next door neighbours... but what can you do, it helps pass the hours away,, i like to be informed about these things... anyhow,,, on friday i went to the opening of brian griffiths' platform for art commission,,, actually, i didn't make the show itself,, just the after party,, which was a fairly jolly affair...... then on saturday night we went to a late night screening of HOSTEL,,, which i was curious about because of all the hype,,, as it turned out i thought the film was absolute dross,, of the worst order... i came to the conclusion that the film was going for a particular demographic to which i felt no affinity. actually,, i found the lack of plot of and real depth in the characters extremely annoying,,,, i also started to see the film more and more as a comment of the illegal trade in humans into the sex trade, a subject the film did absolutely no justice to. however, whatever.

then today i went over to portobello road,, somewhere i don't think i've been since moving back to london,, like 2 years ago... i went to get a hard to find cd,, which, was sold out when i got there,, which is kind of typical,,, so i just listened to some other stuff in the store and ended up picking up arcade fire's first LP,, to which i'm currently listening... then seeing as i was in that record-buying, sunday afternoon geek mode, i popped into a comic shop and had the extremely rare experience of finding a new comic that i actually liked... this absolutely almost never happens as i'm extremely limited in which comics i'll read... this mainly boils down to the style of drawing,, but that's a long and boring conversation,,, i'll save you the details... suffice to say the comic i found was called optic nerve,,, and visually had a strong resemblance to daniel clowes (of ghost world fame),,,but i enjoyed the couple of issues of optic nerve i picked up,, the storylines being juicily loser-like and fucked... things i can relate to... anyway, seeing as i was in the area, i thought i'd get the tube down to gloucester road to check out brian's piece, which i did. LIFE'S A LAUGH. well, i'm not to sure what brian's up to,, looks like a big assault course with a massive panda at its core.

Wednesday
We went to see the wicker man last night in Peckham... have you seen it? What an awesome film,, very olaf breuning as the punk pointed out.... Was that what the 1970's were really like? All weird rituals and pagan free sex murder? Hmm.


Friday
good morning and greetings from hotel orient express, istanbul.. i am totally wiped... I just got into town last night and there was the opening party,,, which was pretty good,,, i didn't have my invite/accreditation sorted,, but still managed to blag myself plus 8 other people in,,, which i was kind of impressed by... before that we'd been on this hotel roof top for the launch of a project curated by michelle cotton and sylvia kouvali featuring mark tichener, mustafa hulusi, babak ghazi and others.. the project is a big electronic billboard on the top of a hotel roof and the artists had all made LED works in the jenny holzer vein.. actually holzer had done the last project on the same billboard.. then after that it was a quick pit stop in a local turkish cafe for some pretty good tapas style dining then to another show called URA! which had a performance going on of some noisy art band who were, how should i say? yes, "a challenge" to listen to... and there was also a show in the space,, one installation by David Dorrel, Melissa Frost and Mihda Koray called The Slayer Pavilion, which i liked,,, it was the set of a teenager's bedroom with loads of Slayer posters and stuff and in the middle of the room there was a kid who'd hung himself...

David Dorrel, Melissa Frost and Mihda Koray

then we went off to the opening party which was big fun with artists from the biennale doing a good job manning the decks... after that it was either time for bed or the chance to hit one more bar and maybe catch another performance... i, perhaps foolishly, given my current state, opted for the bar option and so ended up with my fellow party hard companions in the gayest of gay turkish techno discos you could imagine.. it wouldn't have been so bad,, except it was fairly empty and it was by this point way past my bed time.. so it was a fairly quick drink there then off toward home... one cool thing on the way however is on the street here you often see people selling cooked mussels.. we had no idea what the deal was with them,, but tried some anyway,, and the mussels are all stuffed with a kind of risotto rise with the mussel on top,, and you buy the mussels separately,, it's a perfect late night snack..

Saturday
yesterday was a bit of a wash-out... we went to the textiles area,, which is all these textile shops/workshops in a certain district of istanbul and a couple of the workshops that are empty had been used to install work in.... i have to say it really wasn't my scene,, loads of video and photography,, all "issue" based... as you know i have a very low tolerance level for videos on globalism and the other ills of the world. also an actual issue with the installation and setting i found was that the setting was so much more interesting than the work,, particularly with all this work claiming to be speaking about poverty and so on,, but the location itself was such a fantastically beautiful monument to the clash of wealth and poverty that it almost felt like a perverse waste of time to watch a video on this same subject, when you could actually look at the real thing right there in front of you. there was a great moment when i saw this old guy making these amazing kebabs on the street,, he had such an interesting method,, the kebabs themselves were a bit salty mind..

then i we went to this seminar with a very impressive line up of all the previous curators of Istanbul on the panel,,,, that was pretty interesting though I have to admit I snoozed off a few times... and then later on it was off to this weird swanky opening for of the turkish deutsche bank collection... they had a few good works,, but it all felt kind of kitsch,, it was a nice boat trip out to the venue, mind,, then it was off to the official biennale opening party,, which was dire,, with some extremely bad music,, i think when we arrived they were playing the Ghost Busters theme song,, and it didn't improve,,, then,, to top it all off,, it started bucketing down and i got absolutely drenched,, totally wet through and it took forever to get back to my hotel.

Sunday
let's hope today is better!
yesterday was much better,, in terms of seeing the show etc.. i think we started at the wrong place yesterday by viewing the textile market first,, anyhow,, yesterday we started at the ataturk cultural centre,,, which is a totally amazing 1970's style cultural centre with all these incredible architectural details and fittings.... on first appearance,, it did seem as if the whole place was some kind of wild installation, with these modernist chandeliers made out of hundreds of light bulbs and these sculptures dotted around the place, which look exactly as 1970's corporate/communist sculpture should... the list of artists whose work this place reminded me of was just too long... but there was actually some contemporary art placed in this fantastically futurist setting.. for my money, again, rather like the textile market that we'd seen previously, curator hou hanru choices couldn't really hold their own against the marvellous setting. there were perhaps a couple of exceptions,, but for me, and this really is just a matter of personal taste, hardly anything worth mentioning.

Allora & Calzadilla

then after that we eventually ended up at the main venue,, which probably would have been the best place to start,, still.. from the start the work in this venue felt far more rambunctious and loud and a bit more my speed. the first piece i saw was a video by allora & calzadilla (Jennifer allora and Guillermo calzadilla) which involved someone riding around istanbul on a bike which had a bit of a flat tyre. the only odd thing was that every time the rider stopped to pump up the tyre, he used a bagpipe made out of dead lamb. he'd blow into the bagpipe and play a little tune,, and the air would go through and fill the tyre up for a bit. a singing kebab, kind of.

Then there were some cool and quirky pieces by Taiyo Kimura,, one of them was a chair designed for the invigilators to sit on,, but it looked like a crouching person.. and made for a convincing double take.. then there were these absolutely awesome sculptures made with plasticine by hamra abbas,, which I think were easily some of the best work in the show.. the works looked like three dimensional remakes of kama sutra images,, with the people not only having sex, but also holding deadly weaponry. OH YES! I bumped into hamra later and she told me the images weren't actually from the kama sutra, but something similar. She also said that she'd had to come to Istanbul to make the work, as she'd previously been working in Pakistan, but the sculptures would have never made it out of the country because of the strict laws about sexual imagery. My friend, who I was walking round the show with, told me the actual position the figures are in in hamra's sculptures are impossible to get into in reality,,, she had apparently tried several times.

Hamra Abbas

Paul Chan

Another piece which I really liked was the projections on the floor by paul chan. I missed his show at the serpentine in London, and had heard mixed reviews, but I thought these looked great. One thing which really started to come across walking around the main section of the Istanbul biennial was that often, even if I didn't like the actual works, the way they were installed, and the overall exhibition design was extremely impressive and engaging... one work which was kind of typical of this was a big interactive second life video projection by cao fei from Beijing,, I actually quite liked the cao fei video, so it's not totally typical, but the all-engulfing environment that was part of the piece with chairs and banners and computers and loads of other stuff is kind of what I'm talking about. Another thing I liked about the way the show was installed was how stark and raw it was, all the cracks and pipes and stuff was all left showing, which I thought was every effective in creating an atmosphere of slightly out of control sprawling chaos.

Then later that evening there was an opening at what I think was a commercial gallery called RODEO,, which was in a fantastically charismatic large old building,, the opening was good too,, it felt a bit more young and edgy than a few of the things we'd been to previously... The show also featured another work by mustafa hulusi, who is clearly istanbul's favourite son. Actually his posters looked really good I thought.

Then after rodeo,,, there was talk of an exhibition which was happening in a brothel,,,, or something,, I was kind of tired, but, an exhibition in a brothel! I could sleep on the flight home - this I had to see. As it turned out there was a show in a kind of brothel, well the main part of the show was an artist-run space called pist, run by didem ozek and osman bozkurt, with a part of the show taking place in this weird bar, which might well have been a brothel, though no one I was with could work out exactly what it was,,, on the evening we were there it was certainly full of loads of art-world types looking a bit lost, lots of burly local guys, looking a bit put-upon, and lots of scantily clad bar maids, looking.. well, scantily clad. Eventually everybody got equally drunk, and it just seemed like another sleazy art opening