This dust--or Cello Powder, as the piece is called--is then poured into one hundred identical pots to be sold to the audience as souvenirs. Maybe he’s saying that everything is transient, emulating birth, life, and death with a stringed instrument? Or maybe he just wants to take what many would consider to be the most beautiful and erotic instrument in the world and use it to make an uncharacteristically aggressive noise and then destroy it in some sort of highbrow punk statement? Whatever his intentions, I find myself absolutely loving it. Or at least I do until I find out that the cello was worth €6,000, making each pot of wooden crumbs £60 in today’s exchange rate. Couldn’t he have used a cheaper instrument? Perhaps the expense of the cello is necessary to the power of the performance, but I can’t help feel that it raises some ethical issues.
You could do a lot with that sort of money and he’s just pulverized it, and I can’t imagine he can convince one hundred Scots in the middle of a recession to part with sixty quid for a jar of chippings and a CDR. It would have been more effective to give them away free, and to expect to be paid for these is more than a little preposterous and only serves to alienate the audience that were previously supportive. And who paid for the cello in the first place? Does he get arts funding in his native Greece for this? And how much was he paid for the gig? Now I’m just confused.
This is not the only performance to leave me bewildered at the Instal 09 festival in Glasgow, which hosts experimental and avant-garde music from all over the world. The very mention of experimental and avant-garde music is enough to make most people run for the nearest karaoke bar, but if you have even the slightest sense of adventure I would recommend you try it. You won’t like everything and some of it might seem plain silly, but that’s OK--it probably is. It can be baffling, beautiful and quite often terrifying, but the very fact that it exists at all is cause for celebration. In these days of P2P file-sharing and the Live Nation monopolisation of venues, promoters and ticket sales, Arika--the curators of the festival--and their myriad sponsors offer a truly alternative, human, mind-expanding experience.
My personal favorites were Eva-Maria Houben, who played little more than one note on the Glasgow University Chapel organ for about an hour; Smack Insecten, a collaboration with Glasgow’s own Nackt Insecten and Karen Constance, which was all psychedelic feedback swirls and digital noise; and Rolf Julius, who plays pre-recorded sounds from several iPods through little speakers inside little bowls and various other little things, and it often sounds like a digital tropical forest, very gentle and very gorgeous. I’ll be there next year.
My one criticism of the festival, on a purely selfish level, is that I wish it had been on during the week so I didn’t have to endure the horrors of the city at the weekend. I rarely venture into Glasgow on a Friday or Saturday these days, because by and large the place is usually filled with fucking lunatics. I suppose that not so long ago I could’ve been considered to be one of those fucking lunatics myself, but the older I get the more I realize that weekends are better spent with family, TV and maybe even a book. I just can’t cope with pissed children anymore.
The last train home was nice and quiet though, nothing of concern at all until we pulled into my local station. I spied a woman having incredible difficulty navigating the steep staircase up to street level and, being the chivalrous gentleman I am, offered an arm to help. Had I not, I imagine she would’ve tumbled down the stairs and snapped her neck--there’s an awful lot of steps in my station. I helped her to the top and began my goodbye but just as I turned she stumbled and I catch her. She’s clearly incapable of going anywhere on her own, so the good Samaritan in me suggests I walk her home. She thanks me as she takes my arm again, but also wants me to know that she’s a bad person.
“Well, you don’t seem that bad to me,” I say, and she really doesn’t. Judging by her clothes, hair and all those other subtleties that inform a first impression, she appears to be an otherwise respectable lady who’s just had a bit too much of the sauce, and I think she says this is due to a lover’s tiff but I can’t quite understand her garbled tale. Anyway, on our way down the road, something falls from her bag. “Hold on, you’ve dropped something,” I say, and stop to pick it up. It’s a knife.
“Fuck me, have you got a knife?” I say, surprised but almost amused. The first impression she made on me must have been very convincing, because without hesitating I automatically hand it back to her as if it were a lipstick or a mobile phone. I somehow know she’s not going to hurt me.
“I would never use that,” she slurs, “it’s just for protection,” and then she invokes Moira Jones and I know exactly what she means. Moira was brutally raped and murdered in Glasgow’s Queens Park, which is practically just round the corner from where we are. The park is known for night-time ne’er-do-wells and ruffians, but the murder was a great shock to the community. Moira had been parking her car a few feet from her front door when she was attacked and dragged through a hole in an iron fence into the park, where she would spend the last few minutes of her life being raped and repeatedly beaten, kicked and stamped on.
So as I say, I know I’m safe with this knife-wielding woman. What really surprises me is that she tells me she’s a police officer, and has been for 17 years. Can there be any sadder and more frightening analogy for the state of our cities’ streets today? Even off-duty WPCs have taken to carrying illegal weapons because they think they’re not safe, and I’d like to think that they would know what they’re talking about. I wait until I’ve seen her front door close and click behind her, and then I begin to head home. I hear a commotion on the main road and decide to take a detour, checking over my shoulder every few steps of the way until I reach my flat.
AIDAN MOFFAT
You could do a lot with that sort of money and he’s just pulverized it, and I can’t imagine he can convince one hundred Scots in the middle of a recession to part with sixty quid for a jar of chippings and a CDR. It would have been more effective to give them away free, and to expect to be paid for these is more than a little preposterous and only serves to alienate the audience that were previously supportive. And who paid for the cello in the first place? Does he get arts funding in his native Greece for this? And how much was he paid for the gig? Now I’m just confused.
This is not the only performance to leave me bewildered at the Instal 09 festival in Glasgow, which hosts experimental and avant-garde music from all over the world. The very mention of experimental and avant-garde music is enough to make most people run for the nearest karaoke bar, but if you have even the slightest sense of adventure I would recommend you try it. You won’t like everything and some of it might seem plain silly, but that’s OK--it probably is. It can be baffling, beautiful and quite often terrifying, but the very fact that it exists at all is cause for celebration. In these days of P2P file-sharing and the Live Nation monopolisation of venues, promoters and ticket sales, Arika--the curators of the festival--and their myriad sponsors offer a truly alternative, human, mind-expanding experience.
My personal favorites were Eva-Maria Houben, who played little more than one note on the Glasgow University Chapel organ for about an hour; Smack Insecten, a collaboration with Glasgow’s own Nackt Insecten and Karen Constance, which was all psychedelic feedback swirls and digital noise; and Rolf Julius, who plays pre-recorded sounds from several iPods through little speakers inside little bowls and various other little things, and it often sounds like a digital tropical forest, very gentle and very gorgeous. I’ll be there next year.
My one criticism of the festival, on a purely selfish level, is that I wish it had been on during the week so I didn’t have to endure the horrors of the city at the weekend. I rarely venture into Glasgow on a Friday or Saturday these days, because by and large the place is usually filled with fucking lunatics. I suppose that not so long ago I could’ve been considered to be one of those fucking lunatics myself, but the older I get the more I realize that weekends are better spent with family, TV and maybe even a book. I just can’t cope with pissed children anymore.
The last train home was nice and quiet though, nothing of concern at all until we pulled into my local station. I spied a woman having incredible difficulty navigating the steep staircase up to street level and, being the chivalrous gentleman I am, offered an arm to help. Had I not, I imagine she would’ve tumbled down the stairs and snapped her neck--there’s an awful lot of steps in my station. I helped her to the top and began my goodbye but just as I turned she stumbled and I catch her. She’s clearly incapable of going anywhere on her own, so the good Samaritan in me suggests I walk her home. She thanks me as she takes my arm again, but also wants me to know that she’s a bad person.
“Well, you don’t seem that bad to me,” I say, and she really doesn’t. Judging by her clothes, hair and all those other subtleties that inform a first impression, she appears to be an otherwise respectable lady who’s just had a bit too much of the sauce, and I think she says this is due to a lover’s tiff but I can’t quite understand her garbled tale. Anyway, on our way down the road, something falls from her bag. “Hold on, you’ve dropped something,” I say, and stop to pick it up. It’s a knife.
“Fuck me, have you got a knife?” I say, surprised but almost amused. The first impression she made on me must have been very convincing, because without hesitating I automatically hand it back to her as if it were a lipstick or a mobile phone. I somehow know she’s not going to hurt me.
“I would never use that,” she slurs, “it’s just for protection,” and then she invokes Moira Jones and I know exactly what she means. Moira was brutally raped and murdered in Glasgow’s Queens Park, which is practically just round the corner from where we are. The park is known for night-time ne’er-do-wells and ruffians, but the murder was a great shock to the community. Moira had been parking her car a few feet from her front door when she was attacked and dragged through a hole in an iron fence into the park, where she would spend the last few minutes of her life being raped and repeatedly beaten, kicked and stamped on.
So as I say, I know I’m safe with this knife-wielding woman. What really surprises me is that she tells me she’s a police officer, and has been for 17 years. Can there be any sadder and more frightening analogy for the state of our cities’ streets today? Even off-duty WPCs have taken to carrying illegal weapons because they think they’re not safe, and I’d like to think that they would know what they’re talking about. I wait until I’ve seen her front door close and click behind her, and then I begin to head home. I hear a commotion on the main road and decide to take a detour, checking over my shoulder every few steps of the way until I reach my flat.
AIDAN MOFFAT
cello grinding is nothing. try a brass instrument. those are the tough ones.
Posted by: tk | 30/03/2009 at 15:25
what's the cocaine exchange rate? it's not £60 is it? just wondering if it's supposed to be a statement or something. personally, i hope not.
Posted by: olga | 30/03/2009 at 16:02
Psychedelic feedback swirls sounds nice. Have you used a FM3 Buddha Machine? Ambient loops. One of my favorite stoned toys.
Posted by: Marcus | 30/03/2009 at 16:25
some one needs to remind him that he's not Pete Townsend and smashing a cello on stage is really just not very cool.
Posted by: boggle_brains | 30/03/2009 at 16:30
im at uni in gla and its fuckin amazing. sure 3 students got slashed outside our halls on maryhill and a women got sexually assaulted ther, i got the fuck battered outta me one night and ended up in a surgical ward but its all part of life. i dont feel unsafe much.
glasgow till i die.
Posted by: lkng | 30/03/2009 at 23:55
Sounds wonderful
Posted by: ... | 30/03/2009 at 23:56
I grew up in Newton Mearns, one of the few civilised areas of the Glasgow conurbation. I have now grown up and have a professional job, but it’s certainly not in Glasgow, it’s in Edinburgh where people don’t want to ‘chib yer maw’ or ‘gless yer napper’ just for supporting the wrong football team. I hate Glasgow, it’s a shithole, and I can say that because I come from there!
Posted by: Civilised Till I Die | 30/03/2009 at 23:56
#3 stay in embra ya fuckin rocket…….
Posted by: Southside | 31/03/2009 at 13:57
"Civilised Till I Die" I'm so glad that you managed to find a place like Edinburgh, where there's NO violence at all, you delicate little flower. No crime in Edinburgh at all, no, that fact is well documented.
Newton Mearns might be civilised but it's also where Glasgow's drug dealers of the moment buy £500,000 houses with their new found money. People from Newton Mearns wear it like a badge of honour, a guard against the commoners below them.
If you weren't a stuck up bell end, yer maw would remain un-chibbed and yer napper would remain unglassed. Enjoy your safe, secure, crime-free haven of Edinburgh!!
Posted by: Merchiston | 31/03/2009 at 14:17