Kevin Blake's Blog

I don’t usually get into shameless plugging like this, because this blog’s all about integrity and the pursuit of some higher truth through professional styled journalism in a common-man’s world. But many of you problem know of the infamous Chris Croucher and Mark Beynon already, and if you don’t – quite possibly deserve to learn those names now while you can still say “oh yeah, I remember when they did…”

So I’m helping you, really. And in return, you can go ahead and watch their excellent short film ‘The Beachcombers’, which has been nominated into the top 6 of the Best of Borough Awards 2008.

• Watch and vote for The Beachcombers

And if you don’t like these sort of things, just vote for it anyway and go join the Facebook group. Like I said, shameless

Antony Gormley is probably most widely known as the man behind The Angel of the North. Actually, he’s the man of the Angel of the North, using his own body as the subject for a huge number of sculptures designed to challenge our perception of ourselves and the space that we live in. Recently, as part of the Blind Light exhibition at The Hayward, Gormley has erected 31 casts of himself and put them on rooftops and walkways around London. Well, not personally – I’m sure he had some help. Every one of them faces the Hayward gallery, turning the watchers into the watched – and keeping Londoners looking skywards for the last 2 months.

Putting aside the rumours that Gormley himself is actually inside one of the life-size casts, I naturally wanted to find them all. So since I had this afternoon off from work and it’s not far from the office, I decided to stalk Antony Gormley’s creations for a little while. And I think, armed with a trackstick and camera I’ve managed to find all 31 of them. It’s very difficult to tell now, which are the same statues from different angles.

Three viewing terraces at the Hayward provide the means to see all of the statues, and as Gormley’s previously commented – it’s very interesting to become part of the small community on that rooftops, trying to find them all. Whether actively pointing them out – or passively seeing other people do the same. It’s also rather eery to have all of those lifeless bodies staring back at you.

And Event Horizon isn’t the only attraction nearby. Inside the gallery, there are a huge number of sculptures and exhibits , including Allotment II, 300 reinforced concrete life-sized units each modelled upon the inhabitants of Malmo. Every single one is different, and you can’t help but be impressed at the sheer number of them, as well as yes – as the guide says – it’s anthropomorphic heaven. Throw away all your 20th century ideals of not being allowed to have first impressions any more. These are concrete blocks, and you won’t be hauled off to jail for being sexist, racist, ageist or judging someone by their appearance in any way. You can’t help but find your favourites or make random judgements over what sort of person they would be. Well I couldn’t.

Blind Light, the namesake of the entire exhibition is a massive glass box filled with a bright white fluffy cloud. The result of this, is that once inside you can’t see a damned think. After wandering around, barely able to see your own hands held out in front of you – you will have no idea where you are. Ghostly shadows will occasionally pass by and if you keep going, you’ll find the edges of the box where spectators will see your face emerge from the mist. It’s very surreal, but a great experience, and yet another example of Gormley making the spectators a part of the art. Not one for the claustrophobic, perhaps.

I won’t list everything else, I promise. Go for yourself and experience the world through different eyes. What I will do, is talk about another Gormley gem in the mostly forgotten area of London that we call Greenwich. The Quantum Cloud stands at 30m tall, making it even larger than the Angel of the North at Gateshead. In fact, until the construction of the B of the Bang sculpture in Manchester, 2005 – it was the largest sculpture in England. The Quantum Cloud sits on the Thames, by the pier at the newly opened O2 Arena, formally known as the Millennium Dome. It’s formed of hundreds of 1.5m lengths of random steel rods, at the centre of which you can make out the 20ft tall man standing amongst the cloud. But don’t look too closely, or you won’t see it. Magic eye, eat your heart out.

Around the corner from Leicester Square, away from the glamour and excitement of the Spiderman 3 premiere comes the distant roll of thunder. This is the sound of over four thousand horses with a single purpose; to canter, trot, gallop, jump and put on one hell of a show for all of London. All to the tune of ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’.

This was the scene at Trafalgar Sq, St Georges Day 2007, where Spamalot cast and crew were on hand to provide coconuts to any who wished to take part, and to teach a cast of thousands how to ride Python-style. The current record holders, New York – with 1,789 attendees set in March last year. We’re British, and nobody is better at looking complete and total tits than the British.

We arrived around 17.40 and exchanged our already printed registration forms for fine pairs of coconuts, so to speak. These were to be our finest of steeds for the evening, and guarantee us a place on the throne of history. “That guy from Capital One” was on stage to keep the early-comers amused, before Ken Livingstone arrived to rally the troops and offer words of support. It’s St Georges day, so we should all be incredibly proud to be British as well as be especially proud of the fantastic institution that is the British Film Festival. After about four hours of Ken being on stage, I was awoken to the sound of clip-clops in my ear and enthusiastically threw my coconuts together in an insane frenzy. If nothing else, so that Ken would leave the stage before he had a chance to bound into another pride speech

Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, members of the original Holy Grail, Python crew were next up – to offer advice on how to manage your horse, as well as introduce the training video. Coconuts clipped, coconuts clopped, and coconuts everywhere embarked upon their slow but inevitable journey to becoming small piles of dust. That is to say, we were all pleased to greet them

And what followed was a quick trip to the local Cafe…
“Nine Kroenenburgs please.”
“Nine?”
“… Better make it ten”.
… And much practising of the lungs, clipping, coconut mexican waves (Tsunami’s, more like), and clopping before the big event.

This is what all of us had been born for. This was the moment that 4,382+ insignificant and small lives, would become somehow more meaningful and fulfilled. We would show New York – nay – we would show the world who makes the biggest, and greatest coconut orchestra of all time. And show them we did. There are surprisingly no youtube videos of the event at the time of writing, but there is no doubt in my mind that soon they will flood the internet by the .. tens. When that happens, we can show you as well. But for now you’ll have to just trust me

It amazes me now, listening to Sister Hazel as well as listening to Liam Frost on the way home. There is just something inherently wrong with any song that doesn’t have coconuts in the chorus. We were taught this at school when music class had no guitars, keyboards, or computer-generated music. Instead – a single Xylophone with missing keys, and an assorted accompaniment of random percussion instruments cobbled together sometime in the early 50′s. I managed to avoid exposing my coconuts on the train though. If the song wasn’t written with coconuts, they just can’t be added randomly. Or can they?

Anyway, this is a discussion for future debate, and I’m getting way off track. So, record attempt – great. We achieved greatness with over 4,382 musicians. And as a reward, the entirety of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (the film version, not Spamalot) was aired on a huge screen in the middle of Trafalgar Sq. There’s a lot to be said for sitting on a cold ground, cross-legged staring up at a film with huge numbers of other people in total silence, aside from the raucous clip-clip, clip-clop of every coconut in the square whenever King Arthur trotted around the screen, and screams of Nii!

And that’s what it’s all about, so go on – give a whistle.

For the last two weekends, I’ve used the hot days to take in all London has to offer in the way of cheap music festivals that have high associations with things that are cold and tasty. It might seem like I’ve limited my options somewhat, but fortunately there have been two such festivals that fit the bill heavily sponsored by Innocent smoothies, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
The Ben and Jerry’s was a bargain price of 5 pounds per day (though Danesy got the tickets off of ebay for the slightly more normally priced 16 pounds). I had the pleasure of seeing The Wonder Stuff (of immense 90s fame) Jose Gonzalez, and some slightly less-knowns like Captain (fantastic singles out and about at the moment), Nerina Pallot and Vincent Vincent and the Villains. There was also a huge authentic wooden helter skelter in the middle of the park, and lots of little fair-type games around the outside. The positives being all important; I won a badge from magnetic fishing! Sadly, I also got a bit of friction burn on my elbow from the wooden helter skelter. That’ll teach me for not wearing long sleeves.

The best part of all though… As much free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream as you can eat! Did I forget to mention that earlier on? I started to feel ill but couldn’t get enough of ‘oh my apple pie’, or ‘phish food’. Mmmmmm.

The Innocent festival was massive. The north part of Regent’s park was literally jam packed full of people, as this one’s a free festival (for entry). We only got one free bottle of innnocent drinks (cranberry one). Still really good And that had The Puppini sisters, Whisky Cats, Nouvelle Vague, and finally Arrested Development as the headliners. I like my guitars and melodies a lot more than Arrested Development provide – but they were still very good – and it was a great day out in the sunshine…. Even if it did take over 45 minutes to queue up for 4 glasses of pimms, they made up for it though with the various signs dotted about all over the place, like: “No glass. No selling. No barbecues. And definately no selling glass barbecues”. Well I thought it was good…

The great thing about both of them were the high morals that the companies (at least claim) they stand for. Lots of charity work across the world, and do no harm were the themes of both. Great use of recycling bins, bio-diesel fuels, no plastic plates or cutlery, bike racks etc were on hand at one or more of each of the festivals. I even came away from the Ben and Jerry’s festival with a tree! Well, it’s a seed, and it comes with fertiliser and you can grow it in the Ben and Jerry’s pot it came in. Really good weekends all in all – I can highly recommend them next year!

Free ice cream. What more incentive do you need?

The latest addition to my DS games family, Movietyme delivered me a copy of Brain Age today (called Brain Training in the UK). The idea behind Brain Age is a set of daily training tasks for your brain, which might involve mathematical, reading, perception, and reading skills to help stimulate the brain.

It doesn’t sound like your average game, but some clever marketing and people’s desire for a quick fix to being smart have already made the game a top seller in a huge number of markets, worldwide.

And so far, it’s been great fun I’ve learnt the secrets of Sodoku and become quietly addicted, and got myself a highly respectable brain age score. I’ll find a place on my sidebar to update my brain age on the blog every now and then. Hopefully I can top my current score of .. 73. Yep, that’s right, I have the brain of a 73 year old. Old and wise. Actually, it doesn’t quite work that way as it’s the lower the better – it’s demonstrating that there’re dead brain cells beyond my years.
Hopefully the next few weeks will improve… Especially if I write clearly enough so that Brain Age can recognise my chicken scratch handwriting