EILIS: Jenny and I were discussing suicide pacts at an exhibition opening and the conversation turned to Kurt Cobain, and we realised he was a really important early teenage obsession - the first grown up who fascinated us - inspiring these careful pencil drawings, melodramatic poetry, and scrawled journals... For some people thats the last time they sit down to make art, for others its the first time they take making art seriously.

JENNY: The kind of aspect of 'teen art' that interests me is that it seems to be a totally different impulse to the way I make art now. I don't even think that I thought what I was making was art when drawing pictures of Kurt on copybooks etc. It seems to be more of an innocent impulse where the only motivation is allowing yourself to spend time thinking about that person. It's kind of an exercise in obsession.

EILIS: We figured a lot of our peers probably had the same experiences, and we wanted to celebrate the vitality of that first expressive teenage art as much as we wanted to re-visit our old Kurt obsessions.

Is the exhibtion a piss take, steeped in irony or is there part of you that thinks its worth commemorating Kurt?

EILIS: The exhibition is quite sincere. We were aware of how it could come across as a joke, or immature, and that didn't really bother us. We knew some people would get it, and some people wouldn't. I think most people who saw the show got it.

The idea of commemorating someone like Kurt is a really confusing concept, and thats why I really wanted to do this exhibition. There's so much going on with the idea of a tribute to Kurt because he was so vocal about hating his celebrity status, but at the same time he feared being forgotten. Recently I've been really interested in that kind of moral confusion - believing in one thing while being unable or unwilling to avoid participating in its reverse. I think most Kurt Cobain fan art is trapped in that confusion.

JENNY: Yeah, I can see how the show could be interpreted as a piss-take and i think there are certain elements concerning celebrity and worship which we've attempted to undermine but essentially we're genuinely intrigued by the kind of artwork made by fans and feel that there's a kind of intensity to it that's quite unique.

EILIS: Yeah, there's an undiluted enthusiasm in it that I admire because as you get older it usually gets complicated by cynicism and art college.

Where does the vintage teenage art on display come from?

EILIS: We put the word out about our plans for the exhibition, and some friends gave us their old drawings. We also spent a lot of time on Kurt Cobain fan sites and YouTube and found a lot of people still making crazy Kurt Cobain art, and other people still proud of Kurt art they made ten years ago.

Figures like Kurt Cobain tend to inspire an obsessive fanaticism among teenagers - why was/is there such an identifaction with him and are there any comparable figures today?

EILIS: I think Kurt Cobain had an amazing charisma that's hard to find. He's kind of an eternal teenager. He was a master of apathetic melodrama - a kind of "yeah, I'm completely emotionally tortured, but.. whatever.." attitude that is achingly cool. To me Kurt Cobain isn't really a person who ever existed, he's like a fictional figure thats a part of my past, like an old imaginary friend, but one that I happen to share with millions of other people my age. I think its much easier and more rewarding to be fanatical about a dead celebrity than a living one. There's only a limited amount of information and photographs to look at, and then you get to imagine the rest yourself.

JENNY: I kind of wonder what how this kind of fanaticism would have been affected had he not committed suicide and how much this kind of 'cult of martyrdom' has affected such obsessions. These kind of stories are great fodder for documentary makers and biographers as they seem to allow myths surrounding these figures to escalate. It seems that teenagers are more susceptible and/or willing to buy into these myths.

EILIS: I can't think of any comparable figures today. I'm not sure if thats because I'm older and I'm not really interested in celebrities, or if its because popular culture and the music industry has changed so much since the early 90s. With the charts being so diverse, and the music industry getting more democratic, and everyone having huge music collections, I'm not sure its possible anymore for one persons death to affect so many people on the scale Kurt Cobain's did.

The show opened last and runs by appointment until Kurt's anniversary, the 5th of April. For more information email info@eilismcdonald.com and check out this for more info.

Labels: Art, Eilis McDonald, Jenny Brady, Music, Seomra Spraoi

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Breaking Up With The Photocopier The Loserdom Archive Goes Online.

The zerox machine certainly extended a whole new life to home publishing, breeding a whole swathe of often badly designed zines from counter-cultural communties as a result. The stark contrasts of the photocopier wrecked havoc with photos and the cut and pasted text of the typewriters that scripted their articles soon gave zines an image that quickly became misunderstood. What was the consequence of functionality quickly became almost revered as an anti-aesthetic associated with independent production and punk.

In an era where web publishing, blogging and print on demand have blown wide open a route to ease of production for the aspirant writer it remains wholly frustrating that some of the most creative documentary commentaries and polemics on alternative culture remain moribundly attached to outdated methods of distribution. Confusing past seizures of useful technological advances with an aesthetic mode they deprive themselves of whole new audiences to limit themselves to a relatively exclusive and closed underground.

Escaping this misplaced attachment to the photocopier, long running Dublin fanzine Loserdom has finally made the decision to place its archives online. Loserdom is the work of Anto Dillon, who recently used his college thesis on the history of zine publishing in Ireland to pull together a Zine Show in Anthology Books. The website features photos from the punk scene, interviews ranging from Fugazi to Saul Williams and Mudhoney, comics documenting the life of cyclists in the mess that is Dublin commuting and enough quality writing and thought to make most bloggers blush. For those of you who haven't taken the chance to visit Seomra Spraoi, its provision of a new home to the Forgotten Zine Archive might equally prompt you.

Labels: Internet, Loserdom, Media, Punk, Seomra Spraoi, Zines

# posted by antrophe @ 1:27 AM

(2) comments

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Library Thing and Bad Books.

The Irish blogosphere is awash with people posting pictures of their bookshelves on the net this week. Given the high levels of procrastination I am prone to, any new internet fad is met with welcome arms, and now you can browse my virtual book shelf in the making too. Its worth asking the question, is this one among many of the pleasurable vanities the net opens up for us to indulge in? Library Thing sounds exactly like the virtual equivilent of leaving that unread tome on the coffee table to silently impress your friends. Until there is a greater conformance in handheld technologies offering the chance to share digitally ripped books, I can't see paper copies becoming redundant anytime soon. Neither can I see hard backs being downloaded over Soulseek for a quick toilet seat reading session. I hope Library Thing represents a genuine opportunity to further community, as those within a relative geographical vicinity of each other are now presented with the opportunity to swap and share books. But will they use it? Like most of these burgeoning online network that attempt to stumble off line, I'll relinquish holding my breath and await the hactivist liberation of Google books or Questia. Where once we browsed through libraries, we now secretly perve through other's virtual book shelves in trepidation of asking a lend.

Meanwhile in the real world and at the opposite end of this fragmented and individualised reading experience is Bad Books. For over a year now, a group of Dublin activists have been struggling to find a place to rent in Dublin to open an space and meeting point for artists and activists. Recently the Seomra Spraoi collective behind the idea, opened their new autonomous space and in doing so have provided a home for the itenerant Bad Books libray and the Forgotten Zine archive. The Bad Books library was started back in the heady days of the Magpie Squat on Leeson St. A library was set up, membership was on the premise of donating three books and you are in. Complete with its own unique libray membership cards held by assorted anarchists and alternative types, the library thrived before the squat was evicted, leaving over 500 books and 1,500 zines homeless. Temporarily given shelter in the Unawarehouse on the Nth Strand, the books and zines now have a new home in the centre of town. Carrying mostly rare, expensive and hard to get books of cultural criticism, political theory and histories from below, the new home provides an opportunity for more people to donate some of those books providing a dusty intellectual aesthetic to your hallway to a place where they'll be cherished and used.

Bookish types may be interested in a special sale to raise cash for future projects over on Autonomedia. Linked for years to Semiotext(e), both publishers have been central early conduits for translations of radical continental philosophies to English. In the early days this meant Baudrillard and Delueze, now it means Negri and Federici. From breifly checking through the highlights, I recommend Cracking the Movement, just back from Amsterdam myself and rearing to get into this highly commended account of the early days of the contemporary Dutch squatting scene for some hints towards its now declining role. Caliban and the Witch is equally worth a look for a heady combination of a queered up feminist theory, that seeks to contextualise the meanings given to the female form within its reproductive use for capitalism. They also maintain the excellent Interactivist Exchange, a visit once a day is gauranteed to keep the Sky News blues away - trust me. And after that if you need a free bookshelf you could do worse than browsing through Leinster Freecycle for the pine book case I spotted this morning.

Labels: Internet, Literature, Seomra Spraoi, Zines

# posted by antrophe @ 9:39 AM

(0) comments