London Original Print Fair

Similar to last year’s Summer Exhibition, the London Original Print Fair is a bit overwhelming in terms of the number of galleries represented and the range of works exhibited. The elegant Royal Academy of Art was organised more like a souk: the gallery space was conspicuously turned into a marketplace. The prints were crowded on the walls and clumsy dividers separated collections. During times like these, however, it is evident that the art market is not feeling pressure similar to that of the retail and automotive industries. Gallery owners were busy introducing their artists’ works to hotel designers and private collectors alike.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

You learn something new every day. Last night we attended the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance of Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Royal Festival Hall; there I discovered that the wedding march is a movement in the piece.

I always enjoy visiting the South Bank. Whether it’s to pick up pate at Borough Market, seeing a play at the National Theatre, attending the annual Slow Food Festival, visiting an exhibit at the Hayward Gallery, or dining at Oxo Tower, the South Bank has turned into a regular destination for us on the weekends. I never tire of the infinite opportunities for “culcha” and the view of Parliament while crossing the Thames.

“Would I Follow Me?”

In my earnest attempt to host a mini-TED conference, I’ve asked the attendees of my book club to take turns giving a presentation and doing a Q&A. Last Friday ZL, one of the co-authors of “Would I Follow Me?,” lead the discussion around leadership in the workplace. She and her NLP colleagues recently published an e-book which they are currently marketing to NLP practioners and the mainstream reading audience. While I agreed that mind training is a useful tool for attaining authenticity in the work place and with family and friends, I disagreed with the book’s vilification of the corporate wok environment. Many of the book’s authors (each author contributed a single chapter), critiqued the corporate workplace as an environment where employees are unable to self-actualise. Even in the current market crisis where job opportunities are few, employees are at risk of being downsized and where power is in the hands of management versus the employee, I disagreed with the writers’ treatment of corporate work. Large organisations create job and are necessary for a democratic and capitalistic society to function healthily.

Creationism versus Evolution

Creationism versus evolution remains as significant a debate in the culture war today as it did eighty years ago during the Scopes trial.  The creation-evolution controversy continues to rear its head, particularly in relation to the ongoing debate regarding the use of stem cells. Dr. Robert W., a reproductive physician in England, spoke to this morning about allusions to genetic modification and reproductive technology in the Old Testament. He suggests that science and religion can co-exist and are in fact mirror images of one another, like warring Siamese twins unwittingly dependent on one another yet struggling to evolve independently.

Dr. Robert W. posits that science and religion are compatible, despite what TEDster Richard D. argues in books like The G-d Delusion. For Dr. RW, religion and science are “expressions of man’s uncertainty”. Religious creationists and scientists pose answers to where we come from and where we’re going. Dr. RW warns against arrogance; strides in scientific knowledge should make us more aware of how little we know rather than instil a false sense of confidence. For Dr. RW, both science and religion pose the threat of danger in the way in which both camps promise certainty in a world where randomness determines more than we’d like to admit.

Gerhard R. at the NPG

The “Gerhard R. Portraits” exhibit is unlike any other one I’ve seen at the NPG. For one, the NPG decided to do away with mounting captions next to the works; instead, the captions are published in the free programme. Second, the portraits are arranged out of numerical order according to the programme. Whereas I love the idea of reading about the works from the programme rather than from a tiny plaque mounted on the wall closely surrounded by half-a-dozen people, I am mystified by the portrait arrangement. That said, back to the art.

GR’s portraits are paintings based on photographs of his family members, celebrities and ordinary people. The portraits contain a sense of photo-realism due not only to the exactness of detail but also because of the artist’s ability to capture dynamism, mostlyby creating a sense of bluriness. Portraiture, whether realistic or impressionistic, tends to focus on capturing a moment in time; most portraits can be extrapolated as an extension of still life as subject. What distinguishes GR’s work is his focus on the dynamic: movement, that what suggests life. At the exhibit, I thought about how rarely art captures dynamism; GR’s ability to capture movement underscores his ability to capture life versus the sense of death-like stillness contained in most portraiture.

“Miss Polly Rae and her Hurly Burly Girls”

“Miss Polly Rae and her Hurly Burly Girls” is an entertaining burlesque and variety show at Leicester Square Theatre. Miss Polly Rae’s frame is as petite as her voice is big, and her Hurly Burly Girls get kudos for their dancing, looks and humour. All of the theatre employees have one talent they showcase pre-show on a rotating basis; last night we watched a bartender perform Ella F.’s “Summertime”, a slow, moody and classic jazz number. More entertaining than the crass hostess Ivy P. and the tap-dancing juggler Stewart was the comedic pop act “Frisky and Mannish”. Poking fun at pop lyrics we all know (ie. Lilly A.’s “The Fear”, Katy P.’s “I Kissed a Girl”) and embrace without interrogating, Frisky and Mannish expose us to the inane and dark side of pop lyrics while making us laugh at the music and ourselves.

CNA event

Wednesday night we held our first Ldn JLC-sponsored fundraising event. At the Soho House, CNA read from her Orange Award-winning novel Half of a Yellow Sun, the book which inspired me to sponsor a woman in Nigeria. That night I learned that not only does she have a way with words (CNA is as casual speaking literarily as a pro-basketball player dribbling a ball at the neighbourhood court) but also with humour. In addition to autographing my copy of Sun, she sketched what was meant to look like my face to which I responded that her talents clearly lay in the literary rather than also the artistic realm.

After reading a few passages from the houseboy and the heroine’s points of views, we held a Q&A. In writing Sun, CNA was inspired by her family’s stories from life in Nigeria during the Biafra civil war. She also spoke about how her writing comes from a “place of discontent” and described how until people began treating each other with compassion, she would always find a reason to write. In addition to promoting her recently-published book of short stories, she is planning her next novel, another piece of historical fiction.

My question to CNA was one I’d always wondered since reading the book for the first time more than two years ago. I asked her about critics’ comparison of the novel to Chinua A.’s Things Fall Apart, the seminal Nigerian novel. After reading her book for the first time, I re-read Things Fall Apart only to find that the two novels are completely unlike in terms of narrative style and even themes. I asked CNA how CA’s work inspires her own and what was her response to critics’ lumping their works together. CNA was thankful for the opportunity to assert that yes, their works are completely different in terms of style (hers is clearly the result of a western education and immersion in western literature) and themes (her work has a robust feminist slant). That said, she describes growing up in what used to be CA’s house in Nigeria, to which her editor responded “was the most interesting thing about” CNA. While the audience laughed, I was struck by the sometimes subtle and other times obvious ways Fate rears her head.

After the event, a group of us dined at the Groucho Club. One of the guests, a doctor whose speciality is pain, talked about how CNA’s work interests him because it presents torture from a literary perspective. The doctor organises annual medical conferences where experts discuss the psychological and physiological effects of torture, much of which happens in the Africa and Middle East during periods of strife. In central London, he and his colleagues treat recent migrants who wear on their bodies the trauma and scars of their country’s conflict, poverty and corruption. Listening to him reminded me that in order to succeed in our organisation’s mission to support women survivors of war, we need to come as close as we can to understanding their plight and that the best way to do so short of visiting these women is by organising more educational events.

“Saturday Night”

The revival of Stephen S.’s musical “Saturday Night” is well timed. Amidst the aftermath of the G-20 summit, calls for tighter regulation of the financial markets, and the ongoing media circus around the Bernie M. scandal, SN reminds us that greed for making a quick buck in the stock market is not characteristic of contemporary life; instead, it even foreshadowed the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Taking place on the eve of the original crash, the show is somewhat entertaining for its flapper aesthetic and jazzy sound, but what really amused us was how our mutual employer’s name cropped up in the song  lyrics and how closely the anti-hero’s financial scheming resembles that of Bernie M.’s. Although the show falls short of expectations, what intrigued me was how obviously nuanced, funnier and more interesting the women’s parts were compared to the comparatively flat male parts.

ADB on “Work”

The most recent Economist magazine positively reviews ADB’s recently-published The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, without a doubt a well-timed literary event which coincides with the G-20 meeting in East London where anarchists are protesting because work is scarce and sorrow plentiful. We recently saw ADB at the School of Life where he presented material from The Consolations of Philosophy, my favourite of his works. Tonight he spoke at the Royal National Theatre on the Southbank about his newest tome.

ADB is unique scholar on at least two accounts: he is a living philosopher and a funny one. In the opening of his talk he describes how until the 18^th century, people sought love and fulfilment in their “mistress and hobby” rather than “marriage and work”. During his two years immersed in a variety of companies including a biscuit factor and career counselling office, he describes himself as having engaged in rather obscure thinking such as contemplating the existence of an airplane cemetery followed by his hook phrase “as one would” while simultaneously rolling his eyes.

What is most refreshing about ADB, apart from his self-deprecating humor, is his ability to redirect our attention at the apolitical nature of mainstream discussions about work, family, love, success and happiness.  We live in a society where when one lacks any of the above it is due to the individual’s inadequacies rather than the limits of modern life.

Tonight he quickly glossed over the idea of “suppressed eroticism” at work (companies are jealous for workers’ attention, thus mandating office romance off-limits), the notion that the industry we currently work in is mortal and will be replaced by a succession of industries working towards eventual extinction, and the idea that work serves as a (welcome) distraction from pondering the bigger questions in life.  When asked his assessment of how the global credit crunch is affecting people’s relationship to work, he responded by saying how the middle-class expectation that work serve as a tool for fulfillment will evolve towards the blue-collar attitude that work is a way to make money. Additionally, he described how people are recalibrating their risk assessment of various career paths. Judging from the full house tonight, I suspect that a number of people walked away wondering if perhaps working as a full-time philosopher might be a more financially-rewarding, if not more fulfilling, career path than working as a credit officer at the Bank of England.

http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13361038