London agenda for Thursday 16 February
1. See something actually happen at Islington Town Hall with soul/folk musician Michael Kiwanuka
2. Wrestle one’s tongue to the ground at Shoreditch House’s Literary Death Match [Run Riot]
3. Ride around in a double decker of art [Flavorpill]
4. Sit around the Campfire with with rock photographer Ian Tilton [Flavorpill]
5. Consider oneself lucky that one is gawking at the Cleveland Street Workhouse rather than being a resident [Ian Visits]
6. Choose wines at Green & Blue [Tired of London]
16 Feb 2012
Sandra Kolstad
Grown-up-pop-princess Sandra Kolstad plays at Roundhouse Rising tomorrow night, all the way from Oslo. She’s like a talented and energetic performer by all accounts, and her new single, streaming below, should give you a taste. We’re excited.
16 Feb 2012
Reviewed: Song Dong's Waste Not - the objects are winning
Newly opened, and free, at the Barbican is Chinese artist Song Dong’s Waste Not – a collection of all the items his mother hoarded through her lifetime.
When Michael Landy destroyed all his possessions for art in 2001, the act provoked thoughts about consumption, materialism, and similar unfashionable forces which everybody repudiates in word and promotes in action.
Waste Not provokes similar thoughts.
A life reduced to objects is a terrifying thing. A hundred goggle-eyed toys menace the viewing path. For every toy, a box, for every box a polystyrene block. Packaging outnumbers product, plastic obliterates organic. It’s a vision of earth as hell, with plastic in place of flames.
There are touching items too. Personal items. A chalk drawing of a girl. A bucket of shells, perhaps taken from some family beach trip. A cooker, which looks much used. Was it? I don’t know. But the image resonates.
Many items here are rich with associations. But the viewer must imagine them. The woman who amassed this collection has gone.
The corpses of 10 umbrellas lie side by side with 30 paintbrushes. Lined up like this, so many of them together, the objects are sundered utterly from their uses. The umbrellas are so far from rain, the paintbrushes so far from paint, it’s as if they have come full circle and are lying in a factory before being shipped out. They might never have been owned at all. The person who possessed them does not define them in any way. But they now define her. The objects are winning.
Free at The Barbican until 12 June 2012 – Song Dong’s Waste Not
16 Feb 2012
Boris & Ken take note: Celtic and Rangers show how much rivals really need each other
For neutrals, watching big beasts like Ken and Boris slug it out is an enthralling spectator sport. But are these intense rivalries destructive, or do they raise the game of both involved? Mike Bonnet casts his eyes north of the border to see the damage that can be done when one half of a vicious rivalry throws in the towel.
16 Feb 2012
Open by Rhye
There are plenty of rumours circulating as to who might be behind this secretive LA duo. Not wanting to appear foolish at a later date, we here at Snipe plan on being thoroughly non-committal. You won’t get anything out of us, mainly because we haven’t got a clue. So just lay back, pour yourself a glass of cheap white wine and sink into this stunning, melancholy love letter of a jam. The Open EP is available now via Innovative Leisure.
15 Feb 2012
City Skills: The best places in London to break up with someone
Breaking up sucks. It might be the hardest thing you ever do. Sometimes though, it’s for the best. If you don’t love somebody, you must set them free.
The question is, where?
Their house? But your unwanted apparition might taint their home forever. Your house? But they will have easy access to the kitchen knives. A pub? But strangers might gawp at you. It’s tough. Here are some ideas.
1. Hampstead Heath, a windswept winter morning
You wouldn’t break up with someone on the Heath on a bright summer’s afternoon. That would be wholly inappropriate. But in the wintertime, against a grey foreboding sky, to the howling soundtrack of the wind through the hollow dead oaks, it makes perfect sense. The breaker-upper would be fortified in their resolve by the landscape’s grand, implacable power. The breaker-uppee would be consoled in their grief by the landscape’s grand, implacable power. Win win.
2. A capsule of the London Eye
Risky, but potentially rewarding. If you get the break up out of the way first thing then you’ve got 25 minutes to work through all the psychological stages leading through to acceptance of the break up, and a shared conviction to remain friends. This timetable is challenging, but doable, and would save these issues being played out to no-one’s benefit over the ensuing weeks and months.
3. The Reading Room, British Library
So there won’t be any shouting.
4. Hampton Court Maze
A place which, thanks to Henry VIII, abounds with pertinent resonances: the passion and fragility of love, the possibility of romantic renewal, the inevitability of death. And the maze – what is the maze but a living symbol of a love withdrawn? The quixotic, duplicitous, enticing labyrinth of love, leading nowhere, signifying nothing. And you’ll be able to run away and hide easily if it all goes badly.
5. The place you got together
Not an obvious choice, I grant you. Indeed, some might think it rubs salt in the wound. But the principle of ring composition, whereby a piece of art finishes where it starts, is a well established aesthetic device. By breaking up with someone in the place you got together, you ensure that when they look back on the relationship it will be with a satisfying, almost novelistic sense of completeness. They may not appreciate that now, but in the long run this can only be enriching. In my case, it would certainly soften the blow if I knew the person breaking up with me had given thought to the memorial repercussions.
See also:
Annoying habits of Londoners # 2: Being upset when strangers gawp at you
The five best frozen pizzas on the London convenience store market
Five great London journeys into the sunset
Five filthy, dirty, obscenely sexual poems from the past
Photo – A Pillow of Winds on Flickr under Creative Commons
Follow Mike
Twitter: @MikPollitt
Email: michael.pollitt@snipelondon.com
15 Feb 2012
London agenda for Wednesday 15 February
1. Listen to the dark, introspective group We Are Band [Le Cool]
2. Go swimming with ‘a playful site specific dance theatre performance based on the much loved outdoor public pool’ by Der Lido [Run Riot]
3. Of all places, see the pop-up graffiti art show at the O2 [Flavorbill]
4. Watch a Film for a FIver at the Water Poet. Tonight, Potiche [Don’t Panic]
5. Walk through scandalous Victorian Barnet [Ian Visits]
6. See David Shrigley’s Brain Activity [Tired of London]
15 Feb 2012
The "Brick Lane not Tarmac Lane" cause is ahistorical, sentimentalised guff
Brick Lane has about as much historical connection with this guy as it does with its surface
The ‘Brick Lane not Tarmac Lane’ petition is one of the most ridiculous bandwagons of the year.
It’s absolutely fine that local residents and businesses should raise objections about a lack of consultation. But to complain that the resurfacing threatens “this historic street” is pure cobble cobblers.
Headlines such as:
East London Lines – Olympic Games take the bricks out of Brick Lane
BBC News – Brick Lane’s bricks to be covered over
imply that Brick Lane and its brick surface have some ancestral connection, are so deeply entwined, so symbiotically linked, that to have one without the other would threaten the integrity of the street itself. Rubbish. The current brick surface is about a decade old! Some real history:
This street existed under its modern name as early as 1550 when a survey of the Manor of Stepney mentions two tile garths on its eastern side. (ref. 1) These were places either where clay was dug to make tiles or perhaps where brick-earth was dug. In Agas’s map of c. 1560–70 Brick Lane is shown, apparently quite without buildings. [British History Online]
And what’s this?
In 1772, Commissioners were appointed with power to pave certain streets in Spitalfields and all of Brick Lane within and without the parish. [Ibid]
Roads get resurfaced. Different materials get used at different times. It’s still the same street. The decision to lay the existing bricks down in the first place can be seen as a ridiculous and sentimentalised attempt to fit the surface to the name, one which is now being corrected.
Argue against the lack of consultation, or the fact that the plans privilege cars over pedestrians, by all means. But appeals to history and character have absolutely nothing to do with either.
Petition – Brick Lane not Tarmac Lane!
British History Online – Brick Lane
Snipe – Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city’s self-esteem
14 Feb 2012
London agenda for Tuesday 14 February
1. FInd your Valentine in a people lottery at the Dolphin’s Slagbox [Le Cool]
2. Visit a symposium of romance with author Roman Krznaric at the Idler’s Art of Love [Run RIot]
3. Listen to a five-piece play the songs of the soundtrack great at Ennio Morricone in Love [Flavorpill]
4. Share resentment with novelist and speaker, Rick James, at I hate V-DAY part-TAY [Don’t Panic]
5. Discuss how neurosciences will change our moral and legal notions of criminality and responsibility at LSE [Ian Visits]
6. Have lunch at Tachbrook Street Market [Tired of Life]
14 Feb 2012
Teary Eyes and Bloody Lips by Moonface
Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade has teamed up with Finnish dramatists Siinai for the new album from his Moonface solo project. The rather grandly titled, With Sinnai: Heartbreaking Bravery, is released April 16th via Jagjaguwar. Download Teary Eyes and Bloody Lips below, if not for the opening line alone.
13 Feb 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- Could red kites be London's next big nature success story?
- Number of people using Thames cable car plunges
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
© 2009-2026 Snipe London.