A Cultural Day

[tamaranth]

River Sounding: Tower Bridge
Originally uploaded by tamaranth

Yesterday I went to London and did Culture with ladymoonray (and later swisstone).

River Sounding at Somerset House. This is an excellent son et lumiere installation -- very much dependent on the site for its effect. Also, a fabulous opportunity to mooch around under Somerset House and peer at 17th-century memorial stones. And to check out the vibrations in the coal-holes.

Then we went on a boat to Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera at Tate Modern. As this has just opened it was rather crowded: I may have to go back when it's quieter, there was some stuff I didn't get to see.
Fourteen rooms, themed, ranging from surreptitious photography and stealth cameras, to celebrity-stalking (starting with Degas leaving a pissoir and including this fond photo of the Queen),

to erotica -- including the weird and disturbing set of photos of voyeurs in Tokyo parks by Kohei Yoshiyuki: apparently the 'game' is to get close enough to touch a copulating couple without being noticed.
We were both unsettled by the notion of being photographed without one's knowledge: but why? It's not as though it really steals your soul: and as habituees of London, we are constantly filmed on CCTV (for all the good it does).
The photographs of violence were somewhat unsettling too. Once I saw photos of a suicide I was expecting photos of 9/11 and people jumping: glad to be wrong.
Less engaged by surveillance / military photography though am amazed at the distances involved: a rather blurry beach photo was taken from 42 miles away ...
Sophie Calle's L'Hotel also made me itchy: she took a job as a chambermaid and examined guests' possessions, deduced their habits etc. Oddly, I think this is something I actually expect to happen -- possibly too many detective novels at an impressionable age -- but it also feels invasive, though utterly anonymous. Calle's accompanying text is curiously touching, compassionate, human.
I'd like to go back and get a better look at the erotica (most of the early stuff is small, and people were crowding round to look): and to see Nan Goldin's Ballad of Sexual Dependency (slide show with accompanying Velvet Underground soundtrack). And a closer look at Man Ray's photos of Barbette.
A rather good illustrated review here.

Then we had some Drink in preparation for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. A film that is either about freerunning or about Weapons of Mass Destruction: tosh, but enjoyable tosh, and ever so pretty. Alfred Molina especially fab as kohl-limned bandit chief. Gemma Arterton does Sassy Heroine better than Keira Knightley. Jake Gyllenhaal a surprisingly convincing action hero. "Wrong sort of Persians," said swisstone, though I do not know what he was expecting from a movie based on a video game. (Anyway, it is set in The Past^TM and not in any recognisable bit of History.)

Then we had pizza and more drink and then I took the slow (uncrowded) train home.

Comments

[gummitch.livejournal.com]

Regarding PoP:SoT, I was rather taken with Gyllenhall's English accent, obviously necessary because almost everybody else in the cast with a speaking part appeared to be British. We were also distracted by trying to work out who the heck played the older brother. As it turned out, it was Richard Coyle, who like Jack Davenport, used to be in Coupling (the movie's director did PotC). Coyle sans beard has also been on billboards all over the place, and trailers every ten minutes on Sky TV as the lead in their recent adaptation of Going Postal